EARLY CHILDHOOD.
And now began my mother's time of struggle and of anxiety. Hitherto,
since her marriage, she had known no money troubles, for her husband
was earning a good income; he was apparently vigorous and well: no
thought of anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed
that he left his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary
distress. It was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the
outcome of all was that nothing was left for the widow and children,
save a trifle of ready money. The resolve to which my mother came was
characteristic. Two of her husband's relatives, Western and Sir
William Wood, offered to educate her son at a good city school, and to
start him in commercial life, using their great city influence to push
him forward. But the young lad's father and mother had talked of a
different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public
school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the
"learned professions"--to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the
Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more
earnestly urged by my father than that Harry should receive the best
possible education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last
wish. In her eyes, a city school was not "the best possible
education," and the Irish pride rebelled against the idea of her son
not being "a University man." Many were the lectures poured out on the
young widow's head about her "foolish pride," especially by the female
members of the Wood family; and her persistence in her own way caused
a considerable alienation between herself and them. But Western and
William, though half-disapproving, remained her friends, and lent many
a helping hand to her in her first difficult struggles. After much
cogitation, she resolved that the boy should be educated at Harrow,
where the fees are comparatively low to lads living in the town, and
that he should go thence to Cambridge or to Oxford, as his tastes
should direct. A bold scheme for a penniless widow, but carried out to
the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate body a more resolute mind
and will than that of my dear mother.
In a few months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in
Richmond Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow,
then, she betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set
herself to look for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond
of long words, and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day
my mother related with much amusement how he had told her that she was
sure to get on if she worked hard. "Look at me!" he said, swelling
visibly with importance; "I was once a poor boy, without a penny of my
own, and now I am a comfortable man, and have my submarine villa to go
to every evening." That "submarine villa" was an object of amusement
when we passed it in our walks for many a long day.
"There is Mr. ----'s submarine villa," some one would say, laughing:
and I, too, used to laugh merrily, because my elders did, though my
understanding of the difference between suburban and submarine was on
a par with that of the honest grocer.
My mother had fortunately found a boy, whose parents were glad to place
him in her charge, of about the age of her own son, to educate with
him; and by this means she was able to pay for a tutor, to prepare the
two boys for school. The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of
serious trouble to me, for it stuck out straight behind when we knelt
down to family prayers--conduct which struck me as irreverent and
unbecoming, but which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a
year my mother found a house which she thought would suit her scheme,
namely, to obtain permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then head-master of
Harrow, to take some boys into her house, and so gain means of
education for her own son. Dr. Vaughan, who must have been won by the
gentle, strong, little woman, from that time forth became her earnest
friend and helper; and to the counsel and active assistance both of
himself and of his wife, was due much of the success that crowned her
toil. He made only one condition in granting the permission she asked,
and that was, that she should also have in her house one of the masters
of the school, so that the boys should not suffer from the want of a
house-tutor. This condition, of course, she readily accepted, and the
arrangement lasted for ten years, until after her son had left school
for Cambridge.
The house she took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and
replaced by a hideous red-brick structure. It was very old and
rambling, rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the
top of Harrow Hill, between the church and the school, and had once
been the vicarage of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it
was so far removed from the part of the village where all his work
lay. The drawing-room opened by an old-fashioned half-window,
half-door--which proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever
I had on a new frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew
through--into a large garden which sloped down one side of the hill,
and was filled with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel,
may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant
and gooseberry bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading
down the sunny slopes. There was not a tree there that I did not
climb, and one, a widespreading Portugal laurel, was my private
country house. I had there my bedroom and my sitting-rooms, my study,
and my larder. The larder was supplied by the fruit-trees, from which
I was free to pick as I would, and in the study I would sit for hours
with some favourite book--Milton's "Paradise Lost" the chief favourite
of all. The birds must often have felt startled, when from the small
swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish tones the
"Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of Milton's
stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim
the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass
in Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son,"
Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of
the churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by an
old wooden fence, over which clambered roses of every shade; never was
such a garden for roses as that of the Old Vicarage. At the end of the
terrace was a little summer-house, and in this a trap-door in the
fence, which swung open and displayed one of the fairest views in
England. Sheer from your feet downwards went the hill, and then far
below stretched the wooded country till your eye reached the towers of
Windsor Castle, far away on the horizon. It was the view at which
Byron was never tired of gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close
by--Byron's tomb, as it is still called--of which he wrote:--
"Again I behold where for hours I have pondered,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay,
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wandered,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray."
Reader mine, if ever you go to Harrow, ask permission to enter the old
garden, and try the effect of that sudden burst of beauty, as you
swing back the small trap-door at the terrace end.
Into this house we moved on my eighth birthday, and for eleven years it
was "home" to me, left always with regret, returned to always with joy.
Almost immediately afterwards I left my mother for the first time; for
one day, visiting a family who lived close by, I found a stranger
sitting in the drawing-room, a lame lady with a strong face, which
softened marvellously as she smiled at the child who came dancing in;
she called me to her presently, and took me on her lap and talked to
me, and on the following day our friend came to see my mother, to ask
if she would let me go away and be educated with this lady's niece,
coming home for the holidays regularly, but leaving my education in
her hands. At first my mother would not hear of it, for she and I
scarcely ever left each other; my love for her was an idolatry, hers
for me a devotion. (A foolish little story, about which I was
unmercifully teased for years, marked that absolute idolatry of her,
which has not yet faded from my heart. In tenderest rallying one day
of the child who trotted after her everywhere, content to sit, or
stand, or wait, if only she might touch hand or dress of "mamma," she
said: "Little one" (the name by which she always called me), "if you
cling to mamma in this way, I must really get a string and tie you to
my apron, and how will you like that?" "O mamma, darling," came the
fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." And, indeed, the tie of love
between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till
the sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to
slacken in the slightest degree.) But it was urged upon her that the
advantages of education offered were such as no money could purchase
for me; that it would be a disadvantage for me to grow up in a
houseful of boys--and, in truth, I was as good a cricketer and climber
as the best of them--that my mother would soon be obliged to send me
to school, unless she accepted an offer which gave me every advantage
of school without its disadvantages. At last she yielded, and it was
decided that Miss Marryat, on returning home, should take me with her.
Miss Marryat--the favourite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous
novelist--was a maiden lady of large means. She had nursed her brother
through the illness that ended in his death, and had been living with
her mother at Wimbledon Park. On her mother's death she looked round
for work which would make her useful in the world, and finding that one
of her brothers had a large family of girls, she offered to take charge
of one of them, and to educate her thoroughly. Chancing to come to
Harrow, my good fortune threw me in her way, and she took a fancy to
me and thought she would like to teach two little girls rather than
one. Hence her offer to my mother.
Miss Marryat had a perfect genius for teaching, and took in it the
greatest delight. From time to time she added another child to our
party, sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl. At first, with Amy Marryat
and myself, there was a little boy, Walter Powys, son of a clergyman
with a large family, and him she trained for some years, and then sent
him on to school admirably prepared. She chose "her children"--as she
loved to call us--in very definite fashion. Each must be gently born
and gently trained, but in such position that the education freely
given should be a relief and aid to a slender parental purse. It was
her delight to seek out and aid those on whom poverty presses most
heavily, when the need for education for the children weighs on the
proud and the poor. "Auntie" we all called her, for she thought "Miss
Marryat" seemed too cold and stiff. She taught us everything herself
except music, and for this she had a master, practising us in
composition, in recitation, in reading aloud English and French, and
later, German, devoting herself to training us in the soundest, most
thorough fashion. No words of mine can tell how much I owe her, not
only of knowledge, but of that love of knowledge which has remained
with me ever since as a constant spur to study.
Her method of teaching may be of interest to some, who desire to train
children with least pain, and the most enjoyment to the little ones
themselves. First, we never used a spelling-book--that torment of the
small child--nor an English grammar. But we wrote letters, telling of
the things we had seen in our walks, or told again some story we had
read; these childish compositions she would read over with us,
correcting all faults of spelling, of grammar, of style, of cadence; a
clumsy sentence would be read aloud, that we might hear how unmusical
it sounded, an error in observation or expression pointed out. Then, as
the letters recorded what we had seen the day before, the faculty of
observation was drawn out and trained. "Oh, dear! I have nothing to
say!" would come from a small child, hanging over a slate. "Did you not
go out for a walk yesterday?" Auntie would question. "Yes," would be
sighed out; "but there's nothing to say about it." "Nothing to say! And
you walked in the lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes?
You must use your eyes better to-day." Then there was a very favourite
"lesson," which proved an excellent way of teaching spelling. We used
to write out lists of all the words we could think of which sounded the
same but were differently spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night,"
and so on, and great was the glory of the child who found the largest
number. Our French lessons--as the German later--included reading from
the very first. On the day on which we began German we began reading
Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and the verbs given to us to copy out were
those that had occurred in the reading. We learned much by heart, but
always things that in themselves were worthy to be learned. We were
never given the dry questions and answers which lazy teachers so much
affect. We were taught history by one reading aloud while the others
worked--the boys as well as the girls learning the use of the needle.
"It's like a girl to sew," said a little fellow, indignantly, one day.
"It is like a baby to have to run after a girl if you want a button
sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned by painting skeleton
maps--an exercise much delighted in by small fingers--and by putting
together puzzle maps, in which countries in the map of a continent, or
counties in the map of a country, were always cut out in their proper
shapes. I liked big empires in those days; there was a solid
satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a large part of
the map was filled up thereby.
The only grammar that we ever learned as grammar was the Latin, and
that not until composition had made us familiar with the use of the
rules therein given. Auntie had a great horror of children learning by
rote things they did not understand, and then fancying they knew them.
"What do you mean by that expression, Annie?" she would ask me. After
feeble attempts to explain, I would answer: "Indeed, Auntie, I know in
my own head, but I can't explain." "Then, indeed, Annie, you do not
know in your own head, or you could explain, so that I might know in my
own head." And so a healthy habit was fostered of clearness of thought
and of expression. The Latin grammar was used because it was more
perfect than the modern grammars, and served as a solid foundation for
modern languages.
Miss Marryat took a beautiful place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in
Dorsetshire, on the borders of Devon, and there she lived for some five
years, a centre of beneficence in the district. She started a Sunday
School, and a Bible Class after awhile for the lads too old for the
school, who clamoured for admission to her class in it. She visited the
poor, taking help wherever she went, and sending food from her own
table to the sick. It was characteristic of her that she would never
give "scraps" to the poor, but would have a basin brought in at dinner,
and would cut the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money she
rarely, if ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself
to seek permanent employment for any one seeking aid. Stern in
rectitude herself, and iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her
influence, whether she was feared or loved, was always for good. Of the
strictest sect of the Evangelicals, she was an Evangelical. On the
Sunday no books were allowed save the Bible or the "Sunday at Home";
but she would try to make the day bright by various little devices; by
a walk with her in the garden; by the singing of hymns, always
attractive to children; by telling us wonderful missionary stories of
Moffat and Livingstone, whose adventures with savages and wild beasts
were as exciting as any tale of Mayne Reid's. We used to learn passages
from the Bible and hymns for repetition; a favourite amusement was a
"Bible puzzle," such as a description of some Bible scene, which was to
be recognised by the description. Then we taught in the Sunday School,
for Auntie would tell us that it was useless for us to learn if we did
not try to help those who had no one to teach them. The Sunday-school
lessons had to be carefully prepared on the Saturday, for we were
always taught that work given to the poor should be work that cost
something to the giver. This principle, regarded by her as an
illustration of the text, "Shall I give unto the Lord my God that which
has cost me nothing?" ran through all her precept and her practice.
When in some public distress we children went to her crying, and asking
whether we could not help the little children who were starving, her
prompt reply was, "What will you give up for them?" And then she said
that if we liked to give up the use of sugar, we might thus each save
sixpence a week to give away. I doubt if a healthier lesson can be
given to children than that of personal self-denial for the good of
others.
Daily, when our lessons were over, we had plenty of fun; long walks and
rides, rides on a lovely pony, who found small children most amusing,
and on which the coachman taught us to stick firmly, whatever his
eccentricities of the moment; delightful all-day picnics in the lovely
country round Charmouth, Auntie our merriest playfellow. Never was a
healthier home, physically and mentally, made for young things than in
that quiet village. And then the delight of the holidays! The pride of
my mother at the good report of her darling's progress, and the renewal
of acquaintance with every nook and corner in the dear old house and
garden.
The dreamy tendency in the child, that on its worldly side is fancy,
imagination, on its religious side is the germ of mysticism, and I
believe it to be far more common than many people think. But the
remorseless materialism of the day--not the philosophic materialism of
the few, but the religious materialism of the many--crushes out all the
delicate buddings forth of the childish thought, and bandages the eyes
that might otherwise see. At first the child does not distinguish
between what it "sees" and what it "fancies"; the one is as real, as
objective, to it as the other, and it will talk to and play with its
dream-comrades as merrily as with children like itself. As a child, I
myself very much preferred the former, and never knew what it was to be
lonely. But clumsy grown-ups come along and tramp right through the
dream-garden, and crush the dream-flowers, and push the dream-children
aside, and then say, in their loud, harsh voices--not soft and singable
like the dream-voices--"You must not tell such naughty stories, Miss
Annie; you give me the shivers, and your mamma will be very vexed with
you." But this tendency in me was too strong to be stifled, and it
found its food in the fairy tales I loved, and in the religious
allegories that I found yet more entrancing. How or when I learned to
read, I do not know, for I cannot remember the time when a book was not
a delight. At five years of age I must have read easily, for I remember
being often unswathed from a delightful curtain, in which I used to
roll myself with a book, and told to "go and play," while I was still a
five-years'-old dot. And I had a habit of losing myself so completely
in the book that my name might be called in the room where I was, and I
never hear it, so that I used to be blamed for wilfully hiding myself,
when I had simply been away in fairyland, or lying trembling beneath
some friendly cabbage-leaf as a giant went by.
I was between seven and eight years of age when I first came across
some children's allegories of a religious kind, and a very little
later came "Pilgrim's Progress," and Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Thenceforth my busy fancies carried me ever into the fascinating world
where boy-soldiers kept some outpost for their absent Prince, bearing
a shield with his sign of a red cross on it; where devils shaped as
dragons came swooping down on the pilgrim, but were driven away
defeated after hard struggle; where angels came and talked with little
children, and gave them some talisman which warned them of coming
danger, and lost its light if they were leaving the right path. What a
dull, tire-some world it was that I had to live in, I used to think to
myself, when I was told to be a good child, and not to lose my temper,
and to be tidy, and not mess my pinafore at dinner. How much easier to
be a Christian if one could have a red-cross shield and a white
banner, and have a real devil to fight with, and a beautiful Divine
Prince to smile at you when the battle was over. How much more
exciting to struggle with a winged and clawed dragon, that you knew
meant mischief, than to look after your temper, that you never
remembered you ought to keep until you had lost it. If I had been Eve
in the garden, that old serpent would never have got the better of me;
but how was a little girl to know that she might not pick out the
rosiest, prettiest apple from a tree that had no serpent to show it
was a forbidden one? And as I grew older the dreams and fancies grew
less fantastic, but more tinged with real enthusiasm. I read tales of
the early Christian martyrs, and passionately regretted I was born so
late when no suffering for religion was practicable; I would spend
many an hour in daydreams, in which I stood before Roman judges,
before Dominican Inquisitors, was flung to lions, tortured on the
rack, burned at the stake; one day I saw myself preaching some great
new faith to a vast crowd of people, and they listened and were
converted, and I became a great religious leader. But always, with a
shock, I was brought back to earth, where there were no heroic deeds
to do, no lions to face, no judges to defy, but only some dull duty to
be performed. And I used to fret that I was born so late, when all the
grand things had been done, and when there was no chance of preaching
and suffering for a new religion.
From the age of eight my education accented the religious side of my
character. Under Miss Marryat's training my religious feeling received
a strongly Evangelical bent, but it was a subject of some distress to
me that I could never look back to an hour of "conversion"; when
others gave their experiences, and spoke of the sudden change they had
felt, I used to be sadly conscious that no such change had occurred in
me, and I felt that my dreamy longings were very poor things compared
with the vigorous "sense of sin" spoken of by the preachers, and used
dolefully to wonder if I were "saved." Then I had an uneasy sense that
I was often praised for my piety when emulation and vanity were more
to the front than religion; as when I learned by heart the Epistle of
James, far more to distinguish myself for my good memory than from any
love of the text itself; the sonorous cadences of many parts of the
Old and New Testaments pleased my ear, and I took a dreamy pleasure in
repeating them aloud, just as I would recite for my own amusement
hundreds of lines of Milton's "Paradise Lost," as I sat swinging on
some branch of a tree, lying back often on some swaying bough and
gazing into the unfathomable blue of the sky, till I lost myself in an
ecstasy of sound and colour, half chanting the melodious sentences and
peopling all the blue with misty forms. This facility of learning by
heart, and the habit of dreamy recitation, made me very familiar with
the Bible and very apt with its phrases. This stood me in good stead
at the prayer-meetings dear to the Evangelical, in which we all took
part; in turn we were called on to pray aloud--a terrible ordeal to
me, for I was painfully shy when attention was called to me; I used to
suffer agonies while I waited for the dreaded words, "Now, Annie dear,
will you speak to our Lord." But when my trembling lips had forced
themselves into speech, all the nervousness used to vanish and I was
swept away by an enthusiasm that readily clothed itself in balanced
sentences, and alack! at the end, I too often hoped that God and
Auntie had noticed that I prayed very nicely--a vanity certainly not
intended to be fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the
somewhat Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little
morbid, especially as I always fretted silently after my mother. I
remember she was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss
Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I
was ever the blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but
away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast
somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never
came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in
"Paradise Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned and
hoofed horror, but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always
hoped that Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end. The
things that really frightened me were vague, misty presences that I
felt were near, but could not see; they were so real that I knew just
where they were in the room, and the peculiar terror they excited lay
largely in the feeling that I was just going to see them. If by chance
I came across a ghost story it haunted me for months, for I saw
whatever unpleasant spectre was described; and there was one horrid
old woman in a tale by Sir Walter Scott, who glided up to the foot of
your bed and sprang on it in some eerie fashion and glared at you, and
who made my going to bed a terror to me for many weeks. I can still
recall the feeling so vividly that it almost frightens me now!