TO OLD STREET BY THE LANES.
And after April when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows,
... And buttercups the little children's dower.
--R. Browning.
In those days, as I have said, the hawthorn spread across the fields and
market-gardens that lay between Kensington and the river. Lanes ran to
Chelsea, to Fulham, to North End, where Richardson once lived and wrote
in his garden-house. The mist of the great city hid the horizon and
dulled the sound of the advancing multitudes; but close at hand, all
round about the old house, were country corners untouched--blossoms
instead of bricks in spring-time, summer shade in summer. There were
strawberry-beds, green, white, and crimson in turn. The children used to
get many a handful of strawberries from Mr. Penfold, the market-gardener
at the end of the lane, and bunches of radish when strawberries were
scarce. They gathered them for themselves on a bank where paving-stones
and coal-holes are now and a fine growth of respectable modern villas. I
believe that in those days there were sheep grazing in Kensington Gore.
It is certain that Mr. Penfold kept Alderneys in the field beyond his
orchard; and that they used to come and drink in a pond near his
cottage. He lived with his wife and his daughter, under an old tiled
roof, and with a rose-tree growing on the wall. In the window of the
cottage a little card was put up, announcing that "Curds-and-whey were
to be had within," and the children sometimes went there to drink the
compound out of Emma Penfold's doll's tea-things. The old pond was at
the garden-gate: there was a hedge round about it, and alder-trees
starting up against the sunset, and the lanes, and orchards beyond. The
water reflected the sunset in the sky and the birds flying home to the
sound of the evening bells. Sometimes Emma would come out of the
cottage, and stand watching the children play. She was a pretty girl,
with rosy cheeks and dark soft eyes. It was a quaint old corner, lonely
enough in the daytime; but of evenings, people would be
passing--labourers from their work, strollers in the fields, neighbours
enjoying the air. The cottage must have been as old as Church House
itself. It was chiefly remarkable for its beautiful damask rose-trees,
of which the red leaves sprinkled the threshold, across which pretty
Emma Penfold would step. I think it was for the sake of the rose-tree
that people sometimes stopped and asked for curds-and-whey. Emma would
dispense the horrible mixture, blushing beneath her basket-work plaits.
Sometimes in May mornings the children would gather hawthorn branches
out of the lanes, and make what they liked to call garlands for
themselves. The white blossoms looked pretty in Rhoda's dark hair; and
Mademoiselle coming to give them their music-lesson, would find the
little girls crowned with May-flower wreaths. It was hard work settling
down to lessons on those days. How slowly the clocks ticked when the
practice hour began; how the little birds would come hopping on the
window-ledge, before Dolly had half finished her sum; how cruel it was
of Mademoiselle to pull down the blind and frighten the poor little
birds away. Many pictures in Dolly's gallery belong to this bit of her
life. It seems one long day as she looks back to it, for when the sun
set Dolly too used to be put to bed.
As for little Rhoda she would be sent back to Old Street. When prayers
were over, long after Dolly was asleep, she would creep upstairs alone
to the very top of the house, and put herself to bed and blow out her
own candle if Zoe did not come for it. How bare and chill and lonely it
was to be all by oneself at the top of that busy house! 'I don't think
they would come, even if I screamed,' Rhoda would think as she lay
staring at the cupboard-door, and wondering if there was any one behind
it.
Once the door burst open and a great cat jumped out, and Rhoda's shriek
brought up one of John Morgan's pupils, who had been reading in his
room.
'Is anything the matter?' said the young man at the door.
'Oh, no, no--o! Please don't say I screamed?' said little Rhoda,
disappearing under the bed-clothes.
'Silly child!' (This was Aunt Morgan's voice in the passage.) 'Thank
you, Mr. Raban, I will go to her. A little girl of ten years old
frightened at a cat! For shame, Rhoda! There--go to sleep directly,' and
her Aunt Morgan vigorously tucked her up and gave her a kiss.
The Morgans were a cheerful and noisy household; little Rhoda lived
there, but she scarcely seemed to belong to it: she was like a little
stray waif born into some strange nest full of active, early, chirping
birds, all bigger and stronger than herself. The Rev. John Morgan was
master of the nest, which his step-mother kept in excellent order and
ruled with an active rod. There were two pupils, two younger brothers,
two sisters, and Rhoda Parnell, the forlorn little niece they had
adopted. Downstairs the fat parlour-maid and the old country cook were
established, and a succeeding generation of little charity-boys, who
were expected by Mrs. Morgan to work in the garden, go errands, and
learn their catechisms, while blacking the young gentlemen's boots in a
vault-like chamber set apart for that purpose.
Mrs. Morgan was a thrifty woman, and could not bear to think of time or
space being wasted, much less comestibles. Her life had been one long
course of early rising, moral and physical rectitude. She allowed John
to sit in an arm-chair, but no one else if she could help it. When poor
little Rhoda was tired, she used to go up to the room she shared with
Zoe, her youngest cousin, and lie down on the floor. If Zoe told her
mother, a message would come immediately for Rhoda to help with the poor
flannel.
This poor flannel was Mrs. Morgan's own kingdom. She used to preside
over passive rolls of grey and blue. She could cut out any known garment
in use in any civilized community. She knew the right side of the stuff,
the right way to turn the scissors. She could contrive, direct, turn
corners, snip, snap on occasions, talking the whole time; she was
emphatic always. In her moments of relaxation she dearly loved a
whisper. She wore a front of curls with a velvet band and
Kensington-made gowns and shoes. Cassie and Zoe, when they grew up to be
young ladies, used to struggle hard for Knightsbridge fashions. The
Kensington style was prim in those days. The ladies wore a dress
somewhat peculiar to themselves and cut to one pattern by the Misses
Trix in their corner house. There was a Kensington world (I am writing
of twenty years ago) somewhat apart from the big uneasy world surging
beyond the turnpike--a world of neighbours bound together by the old
winding streets and narrow corners in a community of venerable elm-trees
and traditions that are almost levelled away. Mr. Awl, the bootmaker, in
High Street, exhibited peculiar walking-shoes long after high-heels and
kid brodekins had come into fashion in the metropolis. The last time I
was in his shop I saw a pair of the old-fashioned, flat, sandalled
shoes, directed to Miss Vieuxtemps, in Palace Green. Tippets,
poke-bonnets, even a sedan-chair, still existed among us long after they
had been discarded by more active minds. In Dolly's early days, in
Kensington Square itself, high-heels and hoops were not unknown; but
these belonged to ladies of some pretension, who would come in state
along the narrow street leading from the Square, advancing in powder,
and hoops, and high-heeled shoes--real hoops, real heels, not modern
imitations, but relics unchanged since the youth of the ghost-like old
sisters. They lived in a tall house, with a mansard roof. As the
children passed they used to look up at the cobweb-windows, at the
narrow doorway with its oaken dais, and the flagged court and the worn
steps. Lady Sarah told Dolly that Mrs. Francis had known Talleyrand,
when he was living there in one of the old houses of the Square. At any
time it would be easy to conjure up ghosts of great people with such
incantations of crumbling wall and oaken device and panel. Not
Talleyrand only, but a whole past generation, still lives for us among
these quaint old ruins.
The Kensington tradespeople used to be Conservative, as was natural,
with a sentry in the High Street, and such a menagerie of lions and
unicorns as that which they kept over their shop-fronts. They always
conversed with their customers while they measured a yard of silk or
sold a skein of thread across their counters. Dolly would feel flattered
when Mr. Baize found her grown. Even Lady Sarah would graciously reply
to his respectful inquiries after her health on the rare occasions when
she shopped herself. Mrs. Morgan never trusted anybody with her
shopping.
'_I_ always talk to Baize,' she would say, complacently, coming away
after half-an-hour's exchange of ideas with that respectable man. She
would repeat his conversation for the benefit of her son and his pupils
at tea-time. 'I think tradespeople are often very sensible and
well-informed persons,' said Mrs. Morgan, 'when they do not forget
themselves, Mr. Raban. Radical as you are, you must allow that
Kensington tradespeople are always respectful to the clergy--our
position is too well established; they know what is due to us,' said
Mrs. Morgan gravely.
'They don't forget what is due to themselves,' said Mr. Raban, with an
odd sort of smile.
'That they don't,' said Robert Henley, who was Morgan's other pupil at
that time. 'I daresay Master George wishes they would; he owes a
terrible long bill at Baize's for ties and kid-gloves.'
Presently came a ring at the bell. 'Here he is,' cries John, starting up
hastily. 'No more tea, thank you, mother.'
George Vanborough used also to read with John Morgan during the
holidays. The curate's energy was unfailing; he slaved, taught, panted,
and struggled for the family he had shouldered. What a good fellow he
was! Pack clouds away, no shades or evil things should come near him as
he worked; who ever piped to him that he did not leap, or call to him
that he did not shout in answer. With what emphasis he preached his dull
Sunday sermon, with what excitement he would to his admiring sisters and
mother read out his impossible articles in the _Vestryman's Magazine_ or
elsewhere, how liberally he dashed and italicised his sentences, how
gallantly he would fly to his pen or his pulpit in defence of friend or
in attack of foe (the former being flesh and blood, and the latter
chiefly spiritual). And then he was in love with a widow--how he admired
her blue and pink eyes; he could not think of marrying until the boys
were out in the world and the girls provided for. But with Joe's wit and
Tom's extraordinary powers, and the girls' remarkable amiability, all
this would surely be settled in the course of a very short time.
The Morgan family was certainly a most united and affectionate clan. I
don't know that they loved each other more than many people do, but they
certainly believed in each other more fervently. They had a strange and
special fascination for George, who was not too young to appreciate the
curate's unselfishness.
The younger Morgans, who were a hearty, jolly race, used to laugh at
George. Poor boy, he had already begun to knock his head, young as it
was, against stone walls; his schoolfellows said he had cracked it with
his paradoxes. At twelve he was a stout fellow for his age, looking
older than he really was. He was slow and clumsy, he had a sallow
complexion, winking blue eyes, a turn-up nose, and heavy dark eyebrows;
there was something honest and almost pathetic at times in the glance of
these blue eyes, but he usually kept them down from shyness as well as
from vanity, he didn't dare look in people's faces, he thought he should
see them laughing at him. He was very lazy, as sensitive people often
are; he hated games and active amusements; he had a soft melancholy
voice that was his one endowment, besides his gift for music; he could
work when he chose, but he was beginning life in despair with it, and he
was not popular among his companions; they called him conceited, and
they were right; but it was a melancholy conceit, if they had but known
it. The truth was, however, that he was too ugly, too clever, too clumsy
to get on with boys of a simpler and wholesomer mind. Even John Morgan,
his friend and preceptor, used to be puzzled about him and distressed at
times. 'If George Vanborough were only more like his own brothers, there
would be something to be done with him,' thought honest John as those
young gentlemen's bullet-heads passed the window where the pupil and his
preceptor were at work. If only--there would be a strange monotony in
human nature, I fancy, if all the 'if onlys' could be realised, and we
had the moulding of one another, and pastors and masters could turn
assenting pupils out by the gross like the little chalk rabbits Italian
boys carry about for sale.
Dolly was very well contented with her brother just as he was. She
trusted his affection, respected his cleverness, and instinctively
guessed at his vanities and morbidities. Even when she was quite a
child, Dolly, in her sweet downright way, seemed to have the gift of
healing the wounds of her poor St. Sebastian, who, when he was a little
boy, would come home day after day smarting and bleeding with the arrows
of his tormentors. These used to be, alternately, Lady Sarah herself,
Cassie Morgan, and Zoe, the two boys when they were at home for the
holidays, and little Rhoda, whom he declared to be the most malicious of
them all. The person who treated George with most sympathy and
confidence was Mrs. Morgan, that active and garrulous old lady, to whom
anybody was dear who would listen to the praises of her children.
Robert Henley, as I have said, was also studying with John Morgan. He
had just left Eton. Lady Sarah asked him to Church House at her
sister-in-law's request; but he did not often find time to come and see
them. He used to be tramping off to Putney, where he and his friend
Frank Raban kept a boat; or they would be locked up together with ink
and blots and paper in John Morgan's study. Raban was older than Henley.
He was at College, but he had come up for a time to read for his degree.
Old Betty, the cook at John Morgan's, was a Yorkshire woman, and she
took a motherly interest in the pupils. She had much to say about young
Mr. Raban, whose relations she knew in Yorkshire. Betty used to call
Frank Raban 'a noist young man.'
'He's Squoire's hair and grandsun loike,' she told Rhoda and Dolly one
day. 'They cannot do n' less nor roast a hox when 'a cooms t' hage.'
After this Rhoda used to stand on tip-toe and respectfully peep through
the study window at the heads and the books and the tobacco-smoke
within; but there was a big table in the way, and she could never see
much more than her own nose reflected in the glass. Once or twice, when
George was in the way, as a great favour he would be allowed to
accompany the young men in one of their long expeditions in big boots.
They would come home late in the evening, tired and hungry and calling
out for food. At whatever hour they came old Betty had a meal of cold
meat and cake for them, of which George partook with good appetite. At
Church House, if George was late for dinner he had to wait for tea and
thin bread-and-butter at eight o'clock. Lady Sarah, who had fought many
a battle for George's father, now--from some curious retrospective
feeling--seemed to feel it her duty to revive many of her late husband's
peculiarities, and one of them was that nothing was to be allowed to
interfere with the routine of the house. Routine there was none at the
curate's, although there were more hours, perhaps, than in any other
house in Old Street. The sun rose and set, the seasons drifted through
the back garden in changing tints and lights, each day brought its
burden, and the dinner-time was shifted to it.