Produced by Anne Grieve, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
ROUND THE SOFA.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“Mary Barton,” “Life of Charlotte Bronte,” &c. &c.
TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO., 47 LUDGATE HILL.
1859.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
PREFACE.
Most of these Stories have already appeared in <i>Household Words</i>: one,
however, has never been published in England, and another has obtained
only a limited circulation.
ROUND THE SOFA.
Long ago I was placed by my parents under the medical treatment of a
certain Mr. Dawson, a surgeon in Edinburgh, who had obtained a
reputation for the cure of a particular class of diseases. I was sent
with my governess into lodgings near his house, in the Old Town. I was
to combine lessons from the excellent Edinburgh masters, with the
medicines and exercises needed for my indisposition. It was at first
rather dreary to leave my brothers and sisters, and to give up our merry
out-of-doors life with our country home, for dull lodgings, with only
poor grave Miss Duncan for a companion; and to exchange our romps in the
garden and rambles through the fields for stiff walks in the streets,
the decorum of which obliged me to tie my bonnet-strings neatly, and put
on my shawl with some regard to straightness.
The evenings were the worst. It was autumn, and of course they daily
grew longer: they were long enough, I am sure, when we first settled
down in those gray and drab lodgings. For, you must know, my father and
mother were not rich, and there were a great many of us, and the medical
expenses to be incurred by my being placed under Mr. Dawson’s care were
expected to be considerable; therefore, one great point in our search
after lodgings was economy. My father, who was too true a gentleman to
feel false shame, had named this necessity for cheapness to Mr. Dawson;
and in return, Mr. Dawson had told him of those at No. 6 Cromer Street,
in which we were finally settled. The house belonged to an old man, at
one time a tutor to young men preparing for the University, in which
capacity he had become known to Mr. Dawson. But his pupils had dropped
off; and when we went to lodge with him, I imagine that his principal
support was derived from a few occasional lessons which he gave, and
from letting the rooms that we took, a drawing-room opening into a
bed-room, out of which a smaller chamber led. His daughter was his
housekeeper: a son, whom we never saw, was supposed to be leading the
same life that his father had done before him, only we never saw or
heard of any pupils; and there was one hard-working, honest little
Scottish maiden, square, stumpy, neat, and plain, who might have been
any age from eighteen to forty.
Looking back on the household now, there was perhaps much to admire in
their quiet endurance of decent poverty; but at this time, their poverty
grated against many of my tastes, for I could not recognize the fact,
that in a town the simple graces of fresh flowers, clean white muslin
curtains, pretty bright chintzes, all cost money, which is saved by the
adoption of dust-coloured moreen, and mud-coloured carpets. There was
not a penny spent on mere elegance in that room; yet there was
everything considered necessary to comfort: but after all, such mere
pretences of comfort! a hard, slippery, black horse-hair sofa, which was
no place of rest; an old piano, serving as a sideboard; a grate,
narrowed by an inner supplement, till it hardly held a handful of the
small coal which could scarcely ever be stirred up into a genial blaze.
But there were two evils worse than even this coldness and bareness of
the rooms: one was that we were provided with a latch-key, which allowed
us to open the front door whenever we came home from a walk, and go
upstairs without meeting any face of welcome, or hearing the sound of a
human voice in the apparently deserted house--Mr. Mackenzie piqued
himself on the noiselessness of his establishment; and the other, which
might almost seem to neutralize the first, was the danger we were always
exposed to on going out, of the old man--sly, miserly, and
intelligent--popping out upon us from his room, close to the left hand
of the door, with some civility which we learnt to distrust as a mere
pretext for extorting more money, yet which it was difficult to refuse:
such as the offer of any books out of his library, a great temptation,
for we could see into the shelf-lined room; but just as we were on the
point of yielding, there was a hint of the “consideration” to be
expected for the loan of books of so much higher a class than any to be
obtained at the circulating library, which made us suddenly draw back.
Another time he came out of his den to offer us written cards, to
distribute among our acquaintance, on which he undertook to teach the
very things I was to learn; but I would rather have been the most
ignorant woman that ever lived than tried to learn anything from that
old fox in breeches. When we had declined all his proposals, he went
apparently into dudgeon. Once when we had forgotten our latch-key we
rang in vain for many times at the door, seeing our landlord standing
all the time at the window to the right, looking out of it in an absent
and philosophical state of mind, from which no signs and gestures of
ours could arouse him.
The women of the household were far better, and more really respectable,
though even on them poverty had laid her heavy left hand, instead of her
blessing right. Miss Mackenzie kept us as short in our food as she
decently could--we paid so much a week for our board, be it observed;
and if one day we had less appetite than another, our meals were docked
to the smaller standard, until Miss Duncan ventured to remonstrate. The
sturdy maid-of-all-work was scrupulously honest, but looked
discontented, and scarcely vouchsafed us thanks, when on leaving we gave
her what Mrs. Dawson had told us would be considered handsome in most
lodgings. I do not believe Phenice ever received wages from the
Mackenzies.
But that dear Mrs. Dawson! The mention of her comes into my mind like
the bright sunshine into our dingy little drawing-room came on those
days;--as a sweet scent of violets greets the sorrowful passer among the
woodlands.
Mrs. Dawson was not Mr. Dawson’s wife, for he was a bachelor. She was
his crippled sister, an old maid, who had, what she called, taken her
brevet rank.
After we had been about a fortnight in Edinburgh, Mr. Dawson said, in a
sort of half-doubtful manner to Miss Duncan--
“My sister bids me say, that every Monday evening a few friends come in
to sit round her sofa for an hour or so,--some before going to gayer
parties--and that if you and Miss Greatorex would like a little change,
she would only be too glad to see you. Any time from seven to eight
to-night; and I must add my injunctions, both for her sake, and for that
of my little patient’s, here, that you leave at nine o’clock. After all,
I do not know if you will care to come; but Margaret bade me ask you;”
and he glanced up suspiciously and sharply at us. If either of us had
felt the slightest reluctance, however well disguised by manner, to
accept this invitation, I am sure he would have at once detected our
feelings, and withdrawn it; so jealous and chary was he of anything
pertaining to the appreciation of this beloved sister.
But if it had been to spend an evening at a dentist’s, I believe I
should have welcomed the invitation, so weary was I of the monotony of
the nights in our lodgings; and as for Miss Duncan, an invitation to tea
was of itself a pure and unmixed honour, and one to be accepted with all
becoming form and gratitude: so Mr. Dawson’s sharp glances over his
spectacles failed to detect anything but the truest pleasure, and he
went on.
“You’ll find it very dull, I dare say. Only a few old fogies like
myself, and one or two good sweet young women: I never know who’ll
come. Margaret is obliged to lie in a darkened room,--only half-lighted
I mean,--because her eyes are weak,--oh, it will be very stupid, I dare
say: don’t thank me till you’ve been once and tried it, and then, if you
like it, your best thanks will be to come again every Monday, from
half-past seven to nine, you know. Good-bye, good-bye.”
Hitherto I had never been out to a party of grownup people; and no court
ball to a London young lady could seem more redolent of honour and
pleasure than this Monday evening to me.
Dressed out in new stiff book-muslin, made up to my throat,--a frock
which had seemed to me and my sisters the height of earthly grandeur and
finery--Alice, our old nurse, had been making it at home, in
contemplation of the possibility of such an event during my stay in
Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and
angelic to be ever worn short of heaven--I went with Miss Duncan to Mr.
Dawson’s at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty room,
perhaps I ought to call it an antechamber, for the house was
old-fashioned, and stately and grand, the large square drawing-room,
into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson’s sofa was drawn. Behind her a
little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it,
bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and that was all the light in the
room, which looked to me very vast and indistinct after our pinched-up
apartment at the Mackenzie’s. Mrs. Dawson must have been sixty; and yet
her face looked very soft and smooth and child-like. Her hair was quite
gray: it would have looked white but for the snowiness of her cap, and
satin ribbon. She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of French grey
merino: the furniture of the room was deep rose-colour, and white and
gold,--the paper which covered the walls was Indian, beginning low down
with a profusion of tropical leaves and birds and insects, and gradually
diminishing in richness of detail till at the top it ended in the most
delicate tendrils and most filmy insects.
Mr. Dawson had acquired much riches in his profession, and his house
gave one this impression. In the corners of the rooms were great jars of
Eastern china, filled with flower-leaves and spices; and in the middle
of all this was placed the sofa, on which poor Mrs. Margaret Dawson
passed whole days, and months, and years, without the power of moving by
herself. By-and-by Mrs. Dawson’s maid brought in tea and macaroons for
us, and a little cup of milk and water and a biscuit for her. Then the
door opened. We had come very early, and in came Edinburgh professors,
Edinburgh beauties, and celebrities, all on their way to some other
gayer and later party, but coming first to see Mrs. Dawson, and tell her
their <i>bon-mots</i>, or their interests, or their plans. By each learned
man, by each lovely girl, she was treated as a dear friend, who knew
something more about their own individual selves, independent of their
reputation and general society-character, than any one else.
It was very brilliant and very dazzling, and gave enough to think about
and wonder about for many days.
Monday after Monday we went, stationary, silent; what could we find to
say to any one but Mrs. Margaret herself? Winter passed, summer was
coming, still I was ailing, and weary of my life; but still Mr. Dawson
gave hopes of my ultimate recovery. My father and mother came and went;
but they could not stay long, they had so many claims upon them. Mrs.
Margaret Dawson had become my dear friend, although, perhaps, I had
never exchanged as many words with her as I had with Miss Mackenzie, but
then with Mrs. Dawson every word was a pearl or a diamond.
People began to drop off from Edinburgh, only a few were left, and I am
not sure if our Monday evenings were not all the pleasanter.
There was Mr. Sperano, the Italian exile, banished even from France,
where he had long resided, and now teaching Italian with meek diligence
in the northern city; there was Mr. Preston, the Westmoreland squire,
or, as he preferred to be called, statesman, whose wife had come to
Edinburgh for the education of their numerous family, and who, whenever
her husband had come over on one of his occasional visits, was only too
glad to accompany him to Mrs. Dawson’s Monday evenings, he and the
invalid lady having been friends from long ago. These and ourselves kept
steady visitors, and enjoyed ourselves all the more for having the more
of Mrs. Dawson’s society.
One evening I had brought the little stool close to her sofa, and was
caressing her thin white hand, when the thought came into my head and
out I spoke it.
“Tell me, dear Mrs. Dawson,” said I, “how long you have been in
Edinburgh; you do not speak Scotch, and Mr. Dawson says he is not
Scotch.”
“No, I am Lancashire--Liverpool-born,” said she, smiling. “Don’t you
hear it in my broad tongue?”
“I hear something different to other people, but I like it because it is
just you; is that Lancashire?”
“I dare say it is; for, though I am sure Lady Ludlow took pains enough
to correct me in my younger days, I never could get rightly over the
accent.”
“Lady Ludlow,” said I, “what had she to do with you? I heard you talking
about her to Lady Madeline Stuart the first evening I ever came here;
you and she seemed so fond of Lady Ludlow; who is she?”
“She is dead, my child; dead long ago.”
I felt sorry I had spoken about her, Mrs. Dawson looked so grave and
sad. I suppose she perceived my sorrow, for she went on and said,
“My dear, I like to talk and to think of Lady Ludlow: she was my true,
kind friend and benefactress for many years; ask me what you like about
her, and do not think you give me pain.”
I grew bold at this.
“Will you tell me all about her then, please Mrs. Dawson?”
“Nay,” said she, smiling, “that would be too long a story. Here are
Signor Sperano, and Miss Duncan, and Mr. and Mrs. Preston are coming
to-night, Mr. Preston told me; how would they like to hear an old-world
story which, after all, would be no story at all, neither beginning, nor
middle, nor end, only a bundle of recollections.”
“If you speak of me, madame,” said Signor Sperano, “I can only say you
do me one great honour by recounting in my presence anything about any
person that has ever interested you.”
Miss Duncan tried to say something of the same kind. In the middle of
her confused speech, Mr. and Mrs. Preston came in. I sprang up; I went
to meet them.
“Oh,” said I, “Mrs. Dawson is just going to tell us all about Lady
Ludlow, and a great deal more, only she is afraid it won’t interest
anybody: do say you would like to hear it!”
Mrs. Dawson smiled at me, and in reply to their urgency she promised to
tell us all about Lady Ludlow, on condition that each one of us should,
after she had ended, narrate something interesting, which we had either
heard, or which had fallen within our own experience. We all promised
willingly, and then gathered round her sofa to hear what she could tell
us about my Lady Ludlow.
MY LADY LUDLOW.
CHAPTER I.
I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they were
in my youth. Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches, carrying six
inside, and making a two days’ journey out of what people now go over in
a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a screaming whistle,
enough to deafen one. Then letters came in but three times a week:
indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a
girl, the post came in but once a month;--but letters were letters then;
and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like
books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky
notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence,
which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well!
they may all be improvements,--I dare say they are; but you will never
meet with a Lady Ludlow in these days.
I will try and tell you about her. It is no story: it has, as I said,
neither beginning, middle, nor end.
My father was a poor clergyman with a large family. My mother was always
said to have good blood in her veins; and when she wanted to maintain
her position with the people she was thrown among,--principally rich
democratic manufacturers, all for liberty and the French
Revolution,--she would put on a pair of ruffles, trimmed with real old
English point, very much darned to be sure,--but which could not be
bought new for love or money, as the art of making it was lost years
before. These ruffles showed, as she said, that her ancestors had been
Somebodies, when the grandfathers of the rich folk, who now looked down
upon her, had been Nobodies,--if, indeed, they had any grandfathers at
all. I don’t know whether any one out of our own family ever noticed
these ruffles,--but we were all taught as children to feel rather proud
when my mother put them on, and to hold up our heads as became the
descendants of the lady who had first possessed the lace. Not but what
my dear father often told us that pride was a great sin; we were never
allowed to be proud of anything but my mother’s ruffles: and she was so
innocently happy when she put them on,--often, poor dear creature, to a
very worn and thread-bare gown,--that I still think, even after all my
experience of life, they were a blessing to the family. You will think
that I am wandering away from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who
had owned the lace, Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my
mother and my Lady Ludlow. And so it fell out, that when my poor father
died, and my mother was sorely pressed to know what to do with her nine
children, and looked far and wide for signs of willingness to help, Lady
Ludlow sent her a letter, proffering aid and assistance. I see that
letter now: a large sheet of thick yellow paper, with a straight broad
margin left on the left-hand side of the delicate Italian
writing,--writing which contained far more in the same space of paper
than all the sloping, or masculine hand-writings of the present day. It
was sealed with a coat of arms,--a lozenge,--for Lady Ludlow was a
widow. My mother made us notice the motto, “Foy et Loy,” and told us
where to look for the quarterings of the Hanbury arms before she opened
the letter. Indeed, I think she was rather afraid of what the contents
might be; for, as I have said, in her anxious love for her fatherless
children, she had written to many people upon whom, to tell truly, she
had but little claim; and their cold, hard answers had many a time made
her cry, when she thought none of us were looking. I do not even know
if she had ever seen Lady Ludlow: all I knew of her was that she was a
very grand lady, whose grandmother had been half-sister to my mother’s
great-grandmother; but of her character and circumstances I had heard
nothing, and I doubt if my mother was acquainted with them.
I looked over my mother’s shoulder to read the letter; it began, “Dear
Cousin Margaret Dawson,” and I think I felt hopeful from the moment I
saw those words. She went on to say,--stay, I think I can remember the
very words:
‘Dear Cousin Margaret Dawson,--I have been much grieved to hear of
the loss you have sustained in the death of so good a husband, and
so excellent a clergyman as I have always heard that my late cousin
Richard was esteemed to be.’
“There!” said my mother, laying her finger on the passage, “read that
aloud to the little ones. Let them hear how their father’s good report
travelled far and wide, and how well he is spoken of by one whom he
never saw. Cousin Richard, how prettily her ladyship writes! Go on,
Margaret!” She wiped her eyes as she spoke: and laid her finger on her
lips, to still my little sister, Cecily, who, not understanding
anything about the important letter, was beginning to talk and make a
noise.
‘You say you are left with nine children. I too should have had
nine, if mine had all lived. I have none left but Rudolph, the
present Lord Ludlow. He is married, and lives, for the most part,
in London. But I entertain six young gentlewomen at my house at
Connington, who are to me as daughters--save that, perhaps, I
restrict them in certain indulgences in dress and diet that might
be befitting in young ladies of a higher rank, and of more probable
wealth. These young persons--all of condition, though out of
means--are my constant companions, and I strive to do my duty as a
Christian lady towards them. One of these young gentlewomen died
(at her own home, whither she had gone upon a visit) last May. Will
you do me the favour to allow your eldest daughter to supply her
place in my household? She is, as I make out, about sixteen years
of age. She will find companions here who are but a little older
than herself. I dress my young friends myself, and make each of
them a small allowance for pocket-money. They have but few
opportunities for matrimony, as Connington is far removed from any
town. The clergyman is a deaf old widower; my agent is married; and
as for the neighbouring farmers, they are, of course, below the
notice of the young gentlewomen under my protection. Still, if any
young woman wishes to marry, and has conducted herself to my
satisfaction, I give her a wedding dinner, her clothes, and her
house-linen. And such as remain with me to my death, will find a
small competency provided for them in my will. I reserve to myself
the option of paying their travelling expenses,--disliking gadding
women, on the one hand; on the other, not wishing by too long
absence from the family home to weaken natural ties.
‘If my proposal pleases you and your daughter--or rather, if it
pleases you, for I trust your daughter has been too well brought up
to have a will in opposition to yours--let me know, dear cousin
Margaret Dawson, and I will make arrangements for meeting the young
gentlewoman at Cavistock, which is the nearest point to which the
coach will bring her.’
My mother dropped the letter, and sat silent.
“I shall not know what to do without you, Margaret.”
A moment before, like a young untried girl as I was, I had been pleased
at the notion of seeing a new place, and leading a new life. But
now,--my mother’s look of sorrow, and the children’s cry of
remonstrance: “Mother; I won’t go,” I said.
“Nay! but you had better,” replied she, shaking her head. “Lady Ludlow
has much power. She can help your brothers. It will not do to slight her
offer.”
So we accepted it, after much consultation. We were rewarded,--or so we
thought,--for, afterwards, when I came to know Lady Ludlow, I saw that
she would have done her duty by us, as helpless relations, however we
might have rejected her kindness,--by a presentation to Christ’s
Hospital for one of my brothers.
And this was how I came to know my Lady Ludlow.
I remember well the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her
ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the
mail-coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the ostler
said, if my name was Dawson--from Hanbury Court, he believed. I felt it
rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant by going
among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother had
intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with a hood to it, such as
in those days was called a chair, and my companion was driving
deliberately through the most pastoral country I had ever yet seen.
By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man got out and walked at the
horse’s head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much indeed; but I
did not know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared not speak to
ask to be helped down the deep steps of the gig. We were at last at the
top,--on a long, breezy, sweeping, unenclosed piece of ground, called,
as I afterwards learnt, a Chase. The groom stopped, breathed, patted
his horse, and then mounted again to my side.
“Are we near Hanbury Court?” I asked.
“Near! Why, Miss! we’ve a matter of ten mile yet to go.”
Once launched into conversation, we went on pretty glibly. I fancy he
had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him; but
he got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him. I let
him choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I could not
understand the points of interest in them: for instance, he talked for
more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a certain dog-fox
had given him, above thirty years before; and spoke of all the covers
and turns just as if I knew them as well as he did; and all the time I
was wondering what kind of an animal a dog-fox might be.
After we left the Chase, the road grew worse. No one in these days, who
has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what they were.
We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along the
deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally met
with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look about me
at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was too muddy
for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to do, just
before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. But by-and-by, when we came to
the fields in which the lane ended, I begged Randal to help me down, as
I saw that I could pick my steps among the pasture grass without making
myself unfit to be seen; and Randal, out of pity for his steaming horse,
wearied with the hard struggle through the mud, thanked me kindly, and
helped me down with a springing jump.
The pastures fell gradually down to the lower land, shut in on either
side by rows of high elms, as if there had been a wide grand avenue here
in former times. Down the grassy gorge we went, seeing the sunset sky at
the end of the shadowed descent. Suddenly we came to a long flight of
steps.
“If you’ll run down there, Miss, I’ll go round and meet you, and then
you’d better mount again, for my lady will like to see you drive up to
the house.”
“Are we near the house?” said I, suddenly checked by the idea.
“Down there, Miss,” replied he, pointing with his whip to certain stacks
of twisted chimneys rising out of a group of trees, in deep shadow
against the crimson light, and which lay just beyond a great square lawn
at the base of the steep slope of a hundred yards, on the edge of which
we stood.
I went down the steps quietly enough. I met Randal and the gig at the
bottom; and, falling into a side road to the left, we drove sedately
round, through the gateway, and into the great court in front of the
house.
The road by which we had come lay right at the back.
Hanbury Court is a vast red-brick house--at least, it is cased in part
with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place are of
brick,--with stone facings at every corner, and door, and window, such
as you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the gables, and arched
doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady Ludlow used to tell
us) that it was once a priory. There was a prior’s parlour, I know--only
we called it Mrs. Medlicott’s room; and there was a tithe-barn as big as
a church, and rows of fish-ponds, all got ready for the monks’
fasting-days in old time. But all this I did not see till afterwards. I
hardly noticed, this first night, the great Virginian Creeper (said to
have been the first planted in England by one of my lady’s ancestors)
that half-covered the front of the house. As I had been unwilling to
leave the guard of the coach, so did I now feel unwilling to leave
Randal, a known friend of three hours. But there was no help for it; in
I must go; past the grand-looking old gentleman holding the door open
for me, on into the great hall on the right hand, into which the sun’s
last rays were sending in glorious red light,--the gentleman was now
walking before me,--up a step on to the dais, as I afterwards learned
that it was called,--then again to the left, through a series of
sitting-rooms, opening one out of another, and all of them looking into
a stately garden, glowing, even in the twilight, with the bloom of
flowers. We went up four steps out of the last of these rooms, and then
my guide lifted up a heavy silk curtain, and I was in the presence of my
Lady Ludlow.
She was very small of stature, and very upright. She wore a great lace
cap, nearly half her own height, I should think, that went round her
head (caps which tied under the chin, and which we called “mobs,” came
in later, and my lady held them in great contempt, saying people might
as well come down in their nightcaps). In front of my lady’s cap was a
great bow of white satin ribbon; and a broad band of the same ribbon was
tied tight round her head, and served to keep the cap straight. She had
a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across her
chest, and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown, made with short
sleeves and ruffles, and with the tail thereof pulled through the
pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a useful length: beneath it she
wore, as I could plainly see, a quilted lavender satin petticoat. Her
hair was snowy white, but I hardly saw it, it was so covered with her
cap: her skin, even at her age, was waxen in texture and tint; her eyes
were large and dark blue, and must have been her great beauty when she
was young, for there was nothing particular, as far as I can remember,
either in mouth or nose. She had a great gold-headed stick by her chair;
but I think it was more as a mark of state and dignity than for use; for
she had as light and brisk a step when she chose as any girl of fifteen,
and, in her private early walk of meditation in the mornings, would go
as swiftly from garden alley to garden alley as any one of us.
She was standing up when I went in. I dropped my curtsy at the door,
which my mother had always taught me as a part of good manners, and went
up instinctively to my lady. She did not put out her hand, but raised
herself a little on tiptoe, and kissed me on both cheeks.
“You are cold, my child. You shall have a dish of tea with me.” She rang
a little hand-bell on the table by her, and her waiting-maid came in
from a small anteroom; and, as if all had been prepared, and was
awaiting my arrival, brought with her a small china-service with tea
ready made, and a plate of delicately-cut bread-and-butter, every
morsel of which I could have eaten, and been none the better for it, so
hungry was I after my long ride. The waiting-maid took off my cloak, and
I sat down, sorely alarmed at the silence, the hushed foot-falls of the
subdued maiden over the thick carpet, and the soft voice and clear
pronunciation of my Lady Ludlow. My teaspoon fell against my cup with a
sharp noise, that seemed so out of place and season that I blushed
deeply. My lady caught my eye with hers,--both keen and sweet were those
dark-blue eyes of her ladyship’s:--
“Your hands are very cold, my dear; take off those gloves” (I wore thick
serviceable doeskin, and had been too shy to take them off unbidden),
“and let me try and warm them--the evenings are very chilly.” And she
held my great red hands in hers,--soft, warm, white, ring-laden. Looking
at last a little wistfully into my face, she said--“Poor child! And
you’re the eldest of nine! I had a daughter who would have been just
your age; but I cannot fancy her the eldest of nine.” Then came a pause
of silence; and then she rang her bell, and desired her waiting-maid,
Adams, to show me to my room.
It was so small that I think it must have been a cell. The walls were
whitewashed stone; the bed was of white dimity. There was a small piece
of red stair-carpet on each side of the bed, and two chairs. In a closet
adjoining were my washstand and toilet-table. There was a text of
Scripture painted on the wall right opposite to my bed; and below hung a
print, common enough in those days, of King George and Queen Charlotte,
with all their numerous children, down to the little Princess Amelia in
a go-cart. On each side hung a small portrait, also engraved: on the
left, it was Louis the Sixteenth, on the other, Marie-Antoinette. On the
chimney-piece there was a tinder-box and a Prayer-book. I do not
remember anything else in the room. Indeed, in those days people did not
dream of writing-tables, and inkstands, and portfolios, and easy chairs,
and what not. We were taught to go into our bedrooms for the purposes of
dressing, and sleeping, and praying.
Presently I was summoned to supper. I followed the young lady who had
been sent to call me, down the wide shallow stairs, into the great hall,
through which I had first passed on my way to my Lady Ludlow’s room.
There were four other young gentlewomen, all standing, and all silent,
who curtsied to me when I first came in. They were dressed in a kind of
uniform: muslin caps bound round their heads with blue ribbons, plain
muslin handkerchiefs, lawn aprons, and drab-coloured stuff gowns. They
were all gathered together at a little distance from the table, on which
were placed a couple of cold chickens, a salad, and a fruit-tart. On the
dais there was a smaller round table, on which stood a silver jug filled
with milk, and a small roll. Near that was set a carved chair, with a
countess’s coronet surmounting the back of it. I thought that some one
might have spoken to me; but they were shy, and I was shy; or else there
was some other reason; but, indeed, almost the minute after I had come
into the hall by the door at the lower end, her ladyship entered by the
door opening upon the dais; whereupon we all curtsied very low; I,
because I saw the others do it. She stood, and looked at us for a
moment.
“Young gentlewomen,” said she, “make Margaret Dawson welcome among you;”
and they treated me with the kind politeness due to a stranger, but
still without any talking beyond what was required for the purposes of
the meal. After it was over, and grace was said by one of our party, my
lady rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in and cleared away the
supper things: then they brought in a portable reading-desk, which was
placed on the dais, and, the whole household trooping in, my lady called
to one of my companions to come up and read the Psalms and Lessons for
the day. I remember thinking how afraid I should have been had I been in
her place. There were no prayers. My lady thought it schismatic to have
any prayers excepting those in the Prayer-book; and would as soon have
preached a sermon herself in the parish church, as have allowed any one
not a deacon at the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house. I
am not sure that even then she would have approved of his reading them
in an unconsecrated place.
She had been maid of honour to Queen Charlotte: a Hanbury of that old
stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and heiress of
all the land that remained to the family, of the great estates which had
once stretched into four separate counties. Hanbury Court was hers by
right. She had married Lord Ludlow, and had lived for many years at his
various seats, and away from her ancestral home. She had lost all her
children but one, and most of them had died at these houses of Lord
Ludlow’s; and, I dare say, that gave my lady a distaste to the places,
and a longing to come back to Hanbury Court, where she had been so happy
as a girl. I imagine her girlhood had been the happiest time of her
life; for, now I think of it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in
later life, were singular enough then, but had been universally
prevalent fifty years before. For instance, while I lived at Hanbury
Court, the cry for education was beginning to come up: Mr. Raikes had
set up his Sunday Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching
writing and arithmetic, as well as reading. My lady would have none of
this; it was levelling and revolutionary, she said. When a young woman
came to be hired, my lady would have her in, and see if she liked her
looks and her dress, and question her about her family. Her ladyship
laid great stress upon this latter point, saying that a girl who did not
warm up when any interest or curiosity was expressed about her mother,
or the “baby” (if there was one), was not likely to make a good servant.
Then she would make her put out her feet, to see if they were well and
neatly shod. Then she would bid her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.
Then she inquired if she could write. If she could, and she had liked
all that had gone before, her face sank--it was a great disappointment,
for it was an all but inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant
who could write. But I have known her ladyship break through it,
although in both cases in which she did so she put the girl’s principles
to a further and unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten
Commandments. One pert young woman--and yet I was sorry for her too,
only she afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury--who had got
through her trials pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt
all, by saying glibly, at the end of the last Commandment, “An’t please
your ladyship, I can cast accounts.”
“Go away, wench,” said my lady in a hurry, “You’re only fit for trade;
you will not suit me for a servant.” The girl went away crestfallen: in
a minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see that she had
something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed, she sent for her
once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware
of French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king’s
and queen’s heads.
The poor, blubbering girl said, “Indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t hurt a fly,
much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs neither, for
that matter.”
But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read nor
write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards
addition and subtraction; and, afterwards, when the clergyman who was at
Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had appointed
another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the points on
which he and my lady did not agree. While good old deaf Mr. Mountford
lived, it was my lady’s custom, when indisposed for a sermon, to stand
up at the door of her large square pew,--just opposite to the
reading-desk,--and to say (at that part of the morning service where it
is decreed that, in quires and places where they sing, here followeth
the Anthem): “Mr. Mountford, I will not trouble you for a discourse this
morning.” And we all knelt down to the Litany with great satisfaction;
for Mr. Mountford, though he could not hear, had always his eyes open
about this part of the service, for any of my lady’s movements. But the
new clergyman, Mr. Gray, was of a different stamp. He was very zealous
in all his parish work; and my lady, who was just as good as she could
be to the poor, was often crying him up as a godsend to the parish, and
he never could send amiss to the Court when he wanted broth, or wine, or
jelly, or sago for a sick person. But he needs must take up the new
hobby of education; and I could see that this put my lady sadly about
one Sunday, when she suspected, I know not how, that there was something
to be said in his sermon about a Sunday-school which he was planning.
She stood up, as she had not done since Mr. Mountford’s death, two years
and better before this time, and said,--
“Mr. Gray, I will not trouble you for a discourse this morning.”
But her voice was not well-assured and steady; and we knelt down with
more of curiosity than satisfaction in our minds. Mr. Gray preached a
very rousing sermon, on the necessity of establishing a Sabbath-school
in the village. My lady shut her eyes, and seemed to go to sleep; but I
don’t believe she lost a word of it, though she said nothing about it
that I heard until the next Saturday, when two of us, as was the custom,
were riding out with her in her carriage, and we went to see a poor
bed-ridden woman, who lived some miles away at, the other end of the
estate and of the parish: and as we came out of the cottage we met Mr.
Gray walking up to it, in a great heat, and looking very tired. My lady
beckoned him to her, and told him she should wait and take him home with
her, adding that she wondered to see him there, so far from his home,
for that it was beyond a Sabbath-day’s journey, and, from what she had
gathered from his sermon the last Sunday, he was all for Judaism against
Christianity. He looked as if he did not understand what she meant; but
the truth was that, besides the way in which he had spoken up for
schools and schooling, he had kept calling Sunday the Sabbath: and, as
her ladyship said, “the Sabbath is the Sabbath, and that’s one thing--it
is Saturday; and if I keep it, I’m a Jew, which I’m not. And Sunday is
Sunday; and that’s another thing; and if I keep it, I’m a Christian,
which I humbly trust I am.”
But when Mr. Gray got an inkling of her meaning in talking about a
Sabbath-day’s journey, he only took notice of a part of it: he smiled
and bowed, and said no one knew better than her ladyship what were the
duties that abrogated all inferior laws regarding the Sabbath; and that
he must go in and read to old Betty Brown, so that he would not detain
her ladyship.
“But I shall wait for you, Mr. Gray,” said she. “Or I will take a drive
round by Oakfield, and be back in an hour’s time.” For, you see, she
would not have him feel hurried or troubled with a thought that he was
keeping her waiting, while he ought to be comforting and praying with
old Betty.
“A very pretty young man, my dears,” said she, as we drove away. “But I
shall have my pew glazed all the same.”
We did not know what she meant at the time; but the next Sunday but one
we did. She had the curtains all round the grand old Hanbury family seat
taken down, and, instead of them, there was glass up to the height of
six or seven feet. We entered by a door, with a window in it that drew
up or down just like what you see in carriages. This window was
generally down, and then we could hear perfectly; but if Mr. Gray used
the word “Sabbath,” or spoke in favour of schooling and education, my
lady stepped out of her corner, and drew up the window with a decided
clang and clash.
I must tell you something more about Mr. Gray. The presentation to the
living of Hanbury was vested in two trustees, of whom Lady Ludlow was
one: Lord Ludlow had exercised this right in the appointment of Mr.
Mountford, who had won his lordship’s favour by his excellent
horsemanship. Nor was Mr. Mountford a bad clergyman, as clergymen went
in those days. He did not drink, though he liked good eating as much as
any one. And if any poor person was ill, and he heard of it, he would
send them plates from his own dinner of what he himself liked best;
sometimes of dishes which were almost as bad as poison to sick people.
He meant kindly to everybody except dissenters, whom Lady Ludlow and he
united in trying to drive out of the parish; and among dissenters he
particularly abhorred Methodists--some one said, because John Wesley had
objected to his hunting. But that must have been long ago, for when I
knew him he was far too stout and too heavy to hunt; besides, the bishop
of the diocese disapproved of hunting, and had intimated his
disapprobation to the clergy. For my own part, I think a good run would
not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He
ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often
heard of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the
sexton and clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon
came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other--some
said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a
wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar’s saying, “the
Devil take you,” was worth a shilling any day, whereas “the Deuce” was a
shabby sixpenny speech, only fit for a curate.
There was a great deal of good in Mr. Mountford, too. He could not bear
to see pain, or sorrow, or misery of any kind; and, if it came under his
notice, he was never easy till he had relieved it, for the time, at any
rate. But he was afraid of being made uncomfortable; so, if he possibly
could, he would avoid seeing any one who was ill or unhappy; and he did
not thank any one for telling him about them.
“What would your ladyship have me to do?” he once said to my Lady
Ludlow, when she wished him to go and see a poor man who had broken his
leg. “I cannot piece the leg as the doctor can; I cannot nurse him as
well as his wife does; I may talk to him, but he no more understands me
than I do the language of the alchemists. My coming puts him out; he
stiffens himself into an uncomfortable posture, out of respect to the
cloth, and dare not take the comfort of kicking, and swearing, and
scolding his wife, while I am there. I hear him, with my figurative
ears, my lady, heave a sigh of relief when my back is turned, and the
sermon that he thinks I ought to have kept for the pulpit, and have
delivered to his neighbours (whose case, as he fancies, it would just
have fitted, as it seemed to him to be addressed to the sinful), is all
ended, and done for the day. I judge others as myself; I do to them as I
would be done to. That’s Christianity, at any rate. I should
hate--saving your ladyship’s presence--to have my Lord Ludlow coming and
seeing me, if I were ill. ’Twould be a great honour, no doubt; but I
should have to put on a clean nightcap for the occasion; and sham
patience, in order to be polite, and not weary his lordship with my
complaints. I should be twice as thankful to him if he would send me
game, or a good fat haunch, to bring me up to that pitch of health and
strength one ought to be in, to appreciate the honour of a visit from a
nobleman. So I shall send Jerry Butler a good dinner every day till he
is strong again; and spare the poor old fellow my presence and advice.”
My lady would be puzzled by this, and by many other of Mr. Mountford’s
speeches. But he had been appointed by my lord, and she could not
question her dead husband’s wisdom; and she knew that the dinners were
always sent, and often a guinea or two to help to pay the doctor’s
bills; and Mr. Mountford was true blue, as we call it, to the back-bone;
hated the dissenters and the French; and could hardly drink a dish of
tea without giving out the toast of “Church and King, and down with the
Rump.” Moreover, he had once had the honour of preaching before the King
and Queen, and two of the Princesses, at Weymouth; and the King had
applauded his sermon audibly with,--“Very good; very good;” and that was
a seal put upon his merit in my lady’s eyes.
Besides, in the long winter Sunday evenings, he would come up to the
Court, and read a sermon to us girls, and play a game of picquet with my
lady afterwards; which served to shorten the tedium of the time. My lady
would, on those occasions, invite him to sup with her on the dais; but
as her meal was invariably bread and milk only, Mr. Mountford preferred
sitting down amongst us, and made a joke about its being wicked and
heterodox to eat meagre on Sunday, a festival of the Church. We smiled
at this joke just as much the twentieth time we heard it as we did at
the first; for we knew it was coming, because he always coughed a
little nervously before he made a joke, for fear my lady should not
approve: and neither she nor he seemed to remember that he had ever hit
upon the idea before.
Mr. Mountford died quite suddenly at last. We were all very sorry to
lose him. He left some of his property (for he had a private estate) to
the poor of the parish, to furnish them with an annual Christmas dinner
of roast-beef and plum-pudding, for which he wrote out a very good
receipt in the codicil to his will.
Moreover, he desired his executors to see that the vault, in which the
vicars of Hanbury were interred, was well aired, before his coffin was
taken in; for, all his life long, he had had a dread of damp, and
latterly he kept his rooms to such a pitch of warmth that some thought
it hastened his end.
Then the other trustee, as I have said, presented the living to Mr.
Gray, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. It was quite natural for us
all, as belonging in some sort to the Hanbury family, to disapprove of
the other trustee’s choice. But when some ill-natured person circulated
the report that Mr. Gray was a Moravian Methodist, I remember my lady
said, “She could not believe anything so bad, without a great deal of
evidence.”