They stwons, they stwons, they stwons, they stwons.
--Scouring of the White Horse
'So' (wrote Ethel in her daily letter to her father) 'mine is at
present a maternal mission to Leonard, and it is highly gratifying. I
subscribe to all your praise of him, and repent of my ungracious
murmurs at his society. You had the virtue, and I have the reward (the
usual course of this world), for his revival is a very fresh and
pleasant spectacle, burning hot with enthusiasm. Whatever we do, he
overdoes, till I recollect how Wilkes said he had never been a Wilkite.
Three days ago, a portentous-looking ammonite attracted his attention;
and whereas he started from the notion that earth was dirt, and stones
were stones, the same all over the world, he has since so far
outstripped his instructors, that as I write this he is drawing a plan
of the strata, with the inhabitants dramatically arranged, Aubrey
suggesting tragic scenes and uncomplimentary likenesses. His talent
for drawing shows that Averil's was worth culture. If our geology
alarm Richard, tell him that I think it safer to get it over young, and
to face apparent discrepancies with revelation, rather than leave them
to be discovered afterwards as if they had been timidly kept out of
sight. And whether Hugh Miller's theory be right or wrong, his grand
fervid language leaves the conviction that undoubting confidence in
revelation consists with the clearest and most scientific mind.'
* * * * *
'June 30th.--I consider my boys as returned to their normal relations.
I descended on them as they were sparring like lion-cubs at play,
Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage doings, but
cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting, done up,
railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a delicate boast to
me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's forte is certainly
veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though
quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases
Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than the victim can bear,
and then relieves his feelings in my room by asseverations that the
friendship with Leonard will be on the May and Spencer pattern. The
sea is the elixir of life to both; Leonard looks quite himself again,
"only more so," and Aubrey has a glow never seen since his full moon
visage waned, and not all tan, though we are on the high road to be
coffee-berries. Aubrey daily entertains me with heroic tales of diving
and floating, till I tell them they will become enamoured of some "lady
of honour who lives in the sea," grow fishes' tails, and come home no
more. And really, as the time wanes, I feel that such a coast is
Elysium--above all, the boating. The lazy charm, the fresh purity of
air, the sights and sounds, the soft summer wave when one holds one's
hand over the tide, the excitement of sea-weed catching, and the
nonsense we all talk, are so delicious and such new sensations, (except
the nonsense, which loses by your absence, O learned doctor!) that I
fully perceive how pleasures untried cannot even be conceived. But ere
the lotos food has entirely depraved my memory, I give you warning to
come and fetch us home, now that the boys are in full repair. Come
yourself, and be feasted on shrimps and mackerel, and take one sail to
the mouth of the bay. I won't say who shall bring you; it would be fun
to have Daisy, and Mary ought to have a holiday, but then Richard would
take better care of you, and Tom would keep you in the best order.
Could you not all come? only if you don't yourself, I won't promise not
to take up with a merman.'
* * * * *
'July 4th.--Very well. If this is to make a strong man of Aubrey, tant
mieux, and even home and Cocksmoor yearnings concern me little in this
Castle of Indolence, so don't flatter yourself that I shall grumble at
having had to take our house on again. Let us keep Leonard; we should
both miss him extremely, and Aubrey would lose half the good without
some one to swim, scramble, and fight with. Indeed, for the poor
fellow's own sake, he should stay, for though he is physically as
strong as a young megalosaur, and in the water or on the rocks all day,
I don't think his head is come to application, nor his health to
bearing depression; and I see he dreads the return, so that he had
better stay away till school begins again.'
* * * * *
'July 7th.--Oh! you weak-minded folks! Now I know why you wanted to
keep me away--that you might yield yourselves a prey to Flora. Paper
and chintz forsooth! All I have to say is this, Miss Mary--as to my
room, touch it if you dare! I leave papa to protect his own study, but
for the rest, think, Mary, what your feelings would be if Harry were to
come home, and not know what room he was in! If I am to choose between
the patterns of chintz, I prefer the sea-weed variety, as in character
with things in general, and with the present occasion; and as to the
carpet, I hope that Flora, touched with our submission, will not send
us anything distressing.'
* * * * *
'July 17th.--Can you send me any more of the New Zealand letters? I
have copied out the whole provision I brought with me for the blank
book, and by the way have inoculated Leonard with such a missionary
fever as frightens me. To be sure, he is cut out for such work. He is
intended for a clergyman (on grounds of gentility, I fear), and is too
full of physical energy and enterprise to take readily to sober
parochial life. His ardour is a gallant thing, and his home ties not
binding; but it is not fair to take advantage of his present
inflammable state of enthusiasm, and the little we have said has been
taken up so fervently, that I have resolved on caution for the future.
It is foolish to make so much of a boy's eagerness, especially when
circumstances have brought him into an unnatural dreamy mood; and
probably these aspirations will pass away with the sound of the waves,
but they are pretty and endearing while they last in their force and
sincerity.
'"Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth;"
'and one's heart beats at the thought of what is possible to creatures
of that age.'
* * * * *
'July 21st.--You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our
"Christian Year," and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when
other children were learning the Robin's Petition, what think you of
this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the poems?
No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower, when
people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To take up
one of his works after any of our present school of fiction is like
getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or an
offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment for a
book to be really tasted--not thrust aside because crammed down--no, it
would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double
mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould people, but to let
them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity will soon unmake all
the shapes that just now seem to form under my fingers like clay.
'At any rate, the introduction of such a congenial spirit to Sir Walter
was a real treat; Leonard has the very nature to be fired by him, and
Aubrey being excessively scandalized at his ignorance, routed a cheap
"Marmion" out of the little bookshop, and we beguiled a wet afternoon
with it; Aubrey snatching it from me at all the critical passages, for
fear I should not do them justice, and thundering out the battle, which
stirred the other boy like a trumpet sound. Indeed, Leonard got Mab
into a corner, and had a very bad cold in the head when De Wilton was
re-knighted; and when "the hand of Douglas was his own," he jumped up
and shouted out, "Well done, old fellow!" Then he took it to himself
and read it all over again, introductions and all, and has raved ever
since. I wish you could see Aubrey singing out some profane couplet of
"midnight and not a nose," or some more horrible original parody, and
then dodging apparently in the extremity of terror, just as Leonard
furiously charges him.
'But you would have been struck with their discussions over it. Last
night, at tea, they began upon the woeful result of the Wager of
Battle, which seemed to oppress them as if it had really happened. Did
I believe in it? Was I of the Lady Abbess's opinion, that
'"Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith he swerved"?
'This from Aubrey, while Leonard rejoined that even if De Wilton had so
done, it was still injustice that he should be so cruelly ruined, and
Marmion's baseness succeed. It would be like a king wilfully giving
wrong judgment because the right side failed in some respectful
observance. He was sure such a thing could never be. Did I ever know
of a real case where Heaven did not show the right? It was confusing
and alarming, for both those boys sat staring at me as if I could
answer them; and those wonderful searching eyes of Leonard's were
fixed, as if his whole acquiescence in the dealings of Providence were
going to depend on the reply, that could but be unsatisfactory. I
could only try plunging deep. I said it was Job's difficulty, and it
was a new light to Leonard that Job was about anything but patience.
He has been reading the Book all this Sunday evening; and is not De
Wilton a curious introduction to it? But Aubrey knew that I meant the
bewilderment of having yet to discover that Divine Justice is
longer-sighted than human justice, and he cited the perplexities of
high-minded heathen. Thence we came to the Christian certainty that
"to do well and suffer for it is thankworthy;" and that though no
mortal man can be so innocent as to feel any infliction wholly
unmerited and disproportioned, yet human injustice at its worst may be
working for the sufferer an exceeding weight of glory, or preparing him
for some high commission below. Was not Ralph de Wilton far nobler and
purer as the poor palmer, than as Henry the Eighth's courtier! And if
you could but have heard our sequel, arranging his orthodoxy, his
Scripture reading, and his guardianship of distressed monks and nuns,
you would have thought he had travelled to some purpose, only he would
certainly have been burnt by one party, and beheaded by the other. On
the whole, I think Leonard was a little comforted, and I cannot help
hoping that the first apparently cruel wrong that comes before him may
be the less terrible shock to his faith from his having been set to
think out the question by "but half a robber and but half a knight."'
* * * * *
'August 1st.--Yesterday afternoon we three were in our private
geological treasury, Leonard making a spread-eagle of himself in an
impossible place on the cliff side, trying to disinter what hope,
springing eternal in the human breast, pronounced to be the paddle of a
saurian; Aubrey, climbing as high as he durst, directing operations and
making discoveries; I, upon a ledge half-way up, guarding Mab and
poking in the debris, when one of the bridal pairs, with whom the place
is infested, was seen questing about as if disposed to invade our
premises. Aubrey, reconnoitring in high dudgeon, sarcastically
observed that all red-haired men are so much alike, that he should have
said yonder was Hec--. The rest ended in a view halloo from above and
below, and three bounds to the beach, whereon I levelled my glass, and
perceived that in very deed it was Mr. and Mrs. Ernescliffe who were
hopping over the shingle. Descending, I was swung off the last rock in
a huge embrace, and Hector's fiery moustache was scrubbing both my
cheeks before my feet touched the ground, and Blanche with both arms
round my waist. They were ready to devour us alive in their famine for
a Stoneborough face; and as Flora and Mary are keeping home
uninhabitable, found themselves obliged to rush away from Maplewood in
the middle of their county welcomes for a little snatch of us, and to
join us in vituperating the new furniture. If Mary could only hear
Hector talk of a new sofa that he can't put his boots upon--he says it
is bad enough at Maplewood, but that he did hope to be still
comfortable at home. They have to get back to dine out to-morrow, but
meantime the fun is more fast and furious than ever, and as soon as the
tide serves, we are to fulfil our long-cherished desire of boating
round to Lyme. I won't answer for the quantity of discretion added to
our freight, but at least there is six feet more of valour, and Mrs.
Blanche for my chaperon. Bonnie Blanche is little changed by her four
months' matrimony, and only looks prettier and more stylish, but she is
painfully meek and younger-sisterish, asking my leave instead of her
husband's, and distressed at her smartness in her pretty shady hat and
undyed silk, because I was in trim for lias-grubbing. Her appearance
ought to be an example to all the brides in the place with skirts in
the water, and nothing on to keep off eyes, sun, or wind from their
faces. I give Flora infinite credit for it. Blanche and Aubrey walk
arm in arm in unceasing talk, and that good fellow, Hector, has
included Leonard in the general fraternity. They are highly
complimentary, saying they should have taken Aubrey for Harry, he is so
much stouter and rosier, and that Leonard is hugely grown. Here come
these three boys shouting that the boat is ready; I really think Hector
is more boyish and noisy than ever.
"Five precious souls, and all agog
To dash through thick or thin."
I'll take the best care of them in my power. Good-bye.'
* * * * *
'August 2nd.--Safe back, without adventure, only a great deal of
enjoyment, for which I am doubly thankful, as I almost fancied we were
fey, one of the many presentiments that come to nothing, but perhaps do
us rather good than harm for all that. I hope I did not show it in my
letter, and communicate it to you. Even when safe landed, I could not
but think of the Cobb and Louisa Musgrove, as I suppose every one does.
We slept at the inn; drove with the Ernescliffes to the station this
morning, and came back to this place an hour ago, after having been
steeped in pleasure. I shall send the description of Lyme to Daisy
to-morrow, having no time for it now, as I want an answer from you
about our going to Maplewood. The "married babies" are bent upon it,
and Hector tries to demonstrate that it is the shortest way home, to
which I can't agree; but as it may save another journey, and it will be
nice to see them in their glory, I told them that if you could spare
us, we would go from the 29th to the 4th of September. This will bring
Leonard home four days before the end of the holidays, for he has been
most warmly invited, Hector adopting him into the brotherhood of papa's
pets. I am glad he is not left out; and Mary had better prove to
Averil that he will be much happier for having no time at home before
the half year begins. He still shrinks from the very name being brought
before him. Let me know, if you please, whether this arrangement will
suit, as I am to write to Blanche. Dear little woman, I hope Hector
won't make a spoilt child of her, they are so very young, and their
means seem so unlimited to them both, Hector wanting to make her and us
presents of whatever we admired, and when she civilly praised Mab,
vehemently declaring that she should have just such another if money
could purchase, or if not, he would find a way. "Thank you, Hector
dear, I had rather not," placidly responds Blanche, making his
vehemence fall so flat, and Leonard's almost exulting alarm glide into
such semi-mortification, that I could have laughed, though I remain in
hopes that her "rather not" may always be as prudent, for I believe it
is the only limit to Hector's gifts.'
* * * * *
'29th, 8 A. M.--Farewell to the Coombe of Coombes. I write while
waiting for the fly, and shall post this at Weymouth, where we are to
be met. We have been so happy here, that I could be sentimental, if
Leonard were not tete-a-tete with me, and on the verge of that
predicament. "Never so happy in his life," quoth he, "and never will
be again--wonders when he shall gee this white cliff again." But,
happily, in tumbles Aubrey with the big claw of a crab, which he
insists on Leonard's wearing next his heart as a souvenir of Mrs.
Gisborne; he is requited with an attempt to pinch his nose therewith,
And--
2.30. P. M. Weymouth.--The result was the upset of my ink, whereof you
see the remains; and our last moments were spent in reparations and
apologies. My two squires are in different plight from what they were
ten weeks ago, racing up hills that it then half killed them to come
down, and lingering wistfully on the top for last glimpses of our bay.
I am overwhelmed with their courtesies, and though each is lugging
about twenty pounds weight of stones, and Mab besides in Leonard's
pocket, I am seldom allowed to carry my own travelling bag. Hector has
been walking us about while his horses are resting after their twenty
miles, but we think the parade and pier soon seen, and are tantalized
by having no time for Portland Island, only contenting ourselves with
an inspection of shop fossils, which in company with Hector is a sort
of land of the "Three Wishes," or worse; for on my chancing to praise a
beautiful lump of Purbeck stone, stuck as full of paludinae as a
pudding with plums, but as big as my head and much heavier, he brought
out his purse at once; and when I told him he must either enchant it on
to my nose, or give me a negro slave as a means of transport, Leonard
so earnestly volunteered to be the bearer, that I was thankful for my
old rule against collecting curiosities that I do not find and carry
myself.
'August 30th. Maplewood.--I wonder whether these good children can be
happier, unless it may be when they receive you! How much they do make
of us! and what a goodly sight at their own table they are! They are
capable in themselves of making any place charming, though the man must
have been enterprising who sat down five-and-twenty years ago to
reclaim this park from irreclaimable down. I asked where were the
maples? and where was the wood? and was shown five stunted ones in a
cage to defend them from the sheep, the only things that thrive here,
except little white snails, with purple lines round their shells.
"There now, isn't it awfully bleak?" says Hector, with a certain
comical exultation. "How was a man ever to live here without her?"
And the best of it is, that Blanche thinks it beautiful--delicious free
air, open space, view over five counties, &c. Inside, one traces
Flora's presiding genius, Hector would never have made the concern so
perfect without her help; and Blanche is no child in her own house, but
is older and more at home than Hector, so that one would take her for
the heiress, making him welcome and at ease. Not that it is like the
Grange, Blanche is furious if I remark any little unconscious imitation
or similarity--"As if we could be like Flora and George indeed!" Nor
will they. If Blanche rules, it will be unawares to herself. And
where Hector is, there will always be a genial house, overflowing with
good-humour and good-nature. He has actually kept the 1st of September
clear of shooting parties that he may take these two boys out, and give
them a thorough day's sport in his turnip-fields. "License? Nonsense,
he thought of that before, and now Aubrey may get some shooting out of
George Rivers." After such good-nature my mouth is shut, though, ay di
me, all the world and his wife are coming here on Monday evening, and
unless I borrow of Blanche, Mrs. Ernescliffe's sister will "look like
ane scrub."'
* * * * *
'September 2nd.--Train at Stoneborough, 6.30. That's the best news I
have to give. Oh, it has been a weary while to be out of sight of you
all, though it has been pleasant enough, and the finale is perfectly
brilliant. Blanche, as lady of the house, is a sight to make a sister
proud; she looks as if she were born to nothing else, and is a model of
prettiness and elegance. Hector kept coming up to me at every
opportunity to admire her. "Now, old Ethel, look at her? Doesn't she
look like a picture? I chose that gown, you know;" then again after
dinner, "Well, old Ethel, didn't it go off well? Did you ever see
anything like her? There, just watch her among the old ladies. I
can't think where she learnt it all, can you?" And it certainly was
too perfect to have been learnt. It was not the oppression that poor
dear Flora gives one by doing everything so well, as if she had
perfectly balanced what was due to herself and everybody else; it was
just Blanche, simple and ready, pleasing herself by doing what people
liked, and seeing what they did like. It was particularly pretty to see
how careful both she and Hector were not to put Leonard aside--indeed,
they make more of him than of Aubrey, who is quite able to find his own
level. Even his tender feelings as to Mab are respected, and Blanche
always takes care to invite her to a safe seat on a fat scarlet cushion
on the sofa (Mrs. Ledwich's wedding present), when the footmen with the
tea might be in danger of demolishing her. Leonard, and his fine eyes,
and his dog, were rather in fashion yesterday evening. Blanche put out
his Coombe sketches for a company trap, and people talked to him about
them, and he was set to sing with Blanche, and then with some of the
young ladies. He seemed to enjoy it, and his nice, modest,
gentlemanlike manner told. The party was not at all amiss in itself.
I had a very nice clerical neighbour, and it is a very different thing
to see and hear Hector at the bottom of the table from having poor dear
George there. But oh! only one dinner more before we see our own table
again, and Tom at the bottom of it. Hurrah! I trust this is the last
letter you will have for many a day, from
'Your loving and dutiful daughter,
'ETHELDRED MAY.'