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THE FAIRCHILD FAMILY
BY Mrs. SHERWOOD
[Illustration: "_Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild had three children, Lucy, Emily
and Henry._"--Page 1.]
THE FAIRCHILD
FAMILY
BY Mrs.
SHERWOOD
EDITED WITH
INTRODUCTION
BY
MARY E.
PALGRAVE
WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
FLORENCE M.
RUDLAND
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Introduction
The History of Lucy, Emily, and Henry Fairchild was begun in 1818,
nearly a century ago. The two little misses and their brother played
and did lessons, were naughty and good, happy and sorrowful, when
George III. was still on the throne; when gentlemen wore blue coats
with brass buttons, knee-breeches, and woollen stockings; and ladies
were attired in short waists, low necks, and long ringlets. The Battle
of Waterloo was quite a recent event; and the terror of "Boney" was
still used by nursery maids to frighten their charges into good
behaviour.
Perhaps some of those who take up this book and glance at its
title-page are saying to themselves. We have plenty of stories about
the children of to-day--the children of the twentieth century, not of
the early nineteenth. How should it interest us to read of these little
ones of the time of our great-grandparents, whose lives were so dull
and ideas so old-fashioned; who never played cricket or tennis, or went
to London or to the seaside, or rode bicycles, or did any of the things
we do?
To anyone who is debating whether or no he will read the _Fairchild
Family_, I would say, Try a chapter or two before you make up your
mind. It is not what people _do_, but what they _are_ that makes them
interesting. True enough, Lucy, Emily and Henry led what we should call
nowadays very dull lives; but they were by no means dull little people
for all that. We shall find them very living and real when we make
acquaintance with them. They tore their clothes, and lost their pets,
and wanted the best things, and slapped each other when they disagreed.
They had their good times and their bad times, their fun and frolic and
their scrapes and naughtiness, just as children had long before they
were born and are having now, long, long after they are dead.
In fact, as we get to know them--and, I hope, to love them--we shall
realize, perhaps with wonder, how very like they are to the children of
to-day. If they took us by the hand and led us to their playroom, or
into "Henry's arbour" under the great trees, we should make friends
with them in five minutes, even though they wear long straight skirts
down to their ankles and straw bonnets burying their little faces, and
Henry is attired in a frock and pinafore, albeit he is eight years old.
We should have glorious games with them, following the fleet Lucy
running like a hare; we should kiss them when we went away, and reckon
them ever after among our friends.
And so, as we follow the _History of the Fairchild Family_ we shall
understand, better than we have yet done, how children are children
everywhere, and very much the same from generation to generation.
Knowing Lucy and Emily and Henry will help us to feel more sympathy
with other children of bygone days, the children of our history
books--with pretty Princess Amelia, and the little Dauphin in the
Bastille, with sweet Elizabeth Stuart, the "rose-bud born in snow" of
Carisbrook Castle, and a host of others. They were _real_ children too,
who had real treats and real punishments, real happy days and sad ones.
They felt and thought and liked and disliked much the same things as we
do now. We stretch out our hands to them across the misty centuries,
and hail them our companions and playmates.
* * * * *
Few people nowadays, even among those who know the _Fairchild Family_,
know anything of its writer, Mrs. Sherwood. Yet her life, as told by
herself, is as amusing as a story, and as full of incidents as a life
could well be. When she was a very old woman she wrote her
autobiography, helped by her daughter; and from this book, which has
been long out of print, I will put together a short sketch which will
give you some idea of what an interesting and attractive person she
was.
The father of Mrs. Sherwood--or, to give her her maiden name, Mary
Butt--was a clergyman. He had a beautiful country living called
Stanford, in Worcestershire, not far from Malvern, where Mary was born
on May 6, 1775. She had one brother, a year older than herself, and a
sister several years younger, whose name was Lucy.
Mary Butt's childhood, in her beautiful country home, was very happy.
She was extremely tall for her age, strong and vigorous, with glowing
cheeks and dark eyes and "very long hair of a bright auburn," which she
tells us her mother had great pleasure in arranging. She and her
brother Marten were both beautiful children; but no one thought Mary at
all clever, or fancied what a mark she would make in the world by her
writings.
Mary was a dreamy, thoughtful child, full of fancies and imaginings.
She loved to sit on the stairs, listening to her mother's voice singing
sweetly in her dressing-room to her guitar. She had wonderful fancies
about an echo which the children discovered in the hilly grounds round
the rectory. Echo she believed to be a beautiful winged boy; "and I
longed to see him, though I knew it was in vain to attempt to pursue
him to his haunts; neither was Echo the only unseen being who filled my
imagination." Her mother used to tell her and Marten stories in the
dusk of winter evenings; one of those stories she tells again for other
children in the _Fairchild Family_. It is the tale of the old lady who
was so fond of inviting children to spend a day with her.
The first grand event of Mary's life was a journey taken to Lichfield,
to stay with her grandfather, old Dr. Butt, at his house called Pipe
Grange. She was then not quite four years old. Dr. Butt had been a
friend, in former days, of Maria Edgeworth, who wrote the _Parents'
Assistant_ and other delightful stories; of Mr. Day, author of
_Sandford and Merton_; and other clever people then living at
Lichfield. He knew the great actor, David Garrick, too, who used to
come there to see his brother; and the famous Dr. Samuel Johnson, who
had been born and brought up at Lichfield. But to little Mary, scarcely
more than a baby, these things were not of much interest. What she
recollected of her grandfather was his present to her, on her fourth
birthday, of "a doll with a paper hoop and wig of real flax." And her
memories of Pipe Grange were of walks with her brother and nurse in
green lanes; of lovely commons and old farmhouses, with walls covered
with ivy and yew-trees cut in grotesque forms; of "feeding some little
birds in a hedge, and coming one day and finding the nest and birds
gone, which was a great grief to me."
Soon afterwards the nursery party at Stanford was increased by two
little cousins, Henry and Margaret Sherwood. They had lost their
mother, and were sent to be for a time under the care of their aunt,
Mrs. Butt. They joined in the romps of Marten and Mary, and very lively
romps they seem to have been. Mary describes how her brother used to
put her in a drawer and kick it down the nursery stairs; how he heaped
chairs and tables one on the other, set her at the top of them, and
then threw them all down; how he put a bridle round her neck and drove
her about with a whip. "But," she says, "being a very hardy child, and
not easily hurt, I suppose I had myself to blame for some of his
excesses; for with all this he was the kindest of brothers to me, and I
loved him very, very much."
When Mary was six years old she began to make stories, but she tells us
she had not the least recollection of what they were about. She was not
yet able to write, so whenever she had thought out a story, she had to
follow her mother about with a slate and pencil and get her to write at
her dictation. The talk Mary and Marten heard while sitting at meals
with their parents was clever and interesting. Many visitors came to
the house, and after a while there were several young men living there,
pupils of Mr. Butt, so that there was often a large party. The two
little children were never allowed to interrupt, but had to sit and
listen, "whether willing or not"; and in this way the shrewd and
observant Mary picked up endless scraps of knowledge while still very
young. She tells us a good deal about her education in these early
days. "It was the fashion then for children to wear iron collars round
the neck, with a backboard strapped over the shoulders; to one of these
I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year. It was put on in
the morning, and seldom taken off till late in the evening, and I
generally did all my lessons standing in stocks, with this stiff collar
round my neck. At the same time I had the plainest possible food, such
as dry bread and cold milk. I never sat on a chair in my mother's
presence. Yet I was a very happy child, and when relieved from my
collar I not unseldom manifested my delight by starting from our
hall-door and taking a run for at least half a mile through the woods
which adjoined our pleasure grounds."
Marten, meanwhile, was having a much less strict and severe time of it.
Mr. Butt was an easy-going man, who liked everything about him to be
comfortable and pretty, and was not inclined to take much trouble
either with himself or others. While Mary was with her mother in her
dressing-room, working away at her books, Marten was supposed to be
learning Latin in his father's study. But as Mr. Butt had no idea of
authority, Marten made no progress whatever, and the end of it was that
good Mrs. Butt had to teach herself Latin, in order to become her boy's
tutor; and Mary was made to take it up as well, in order to incite him
to learn.
The children were great readers, though their books were few. _Robinson
Crusoe_; two sets of fairy tales; _The Little Female Academy_; and
_AEsop's Fables_ made up their whole library. _Robinson Crusoe_ was
Marten's favourite book; his wont, when a reading fit was on, was to
place himself on the bottom step of the stairs and to mount one step
every time he turned over a page. Mary, of course, copied him exactly.
Another funny custom with the pair was, on the first day of every
month, to take two sticks, with certain notches cut in them, and hide
them in a hollow tree in the woods. There was a grand mystery about
this, though Mary does not tell us in what it consisted. "No person,"
she says, "was to see us do this, and no one was to know we did it."
In the summer that Mary was eight years old, a quaint visitor came to
Stanford Rectory. This was a distant relative who had married a
Frenchman and lived at Paris through the gay and wicked period which
ushered in the French Revolution. Mary's description of this lady and
her coming to the rectory is very amusing: "Never shall I forget the
arrival of Mme. de Peleve at Stanford. She arrived in a post-chaise
with a maid, a lap-dog, a canary-bird, an organ, and boxes heaped upon
boxes till it was impossible to see the persons within. I was, of
course, at the door to watch her alight. She was a large woman,
elaborately dressed, highly rouged, carrying an umbrella, the first I
had seen. She was dark, I remember, and had most brilliant eyes. The
style of dress at that period was perhaps more preposterous and
troublesome than any which has prevailed within the memory of those now
living. This style had been introduced by the ill-fated Marie
Antoinette, and Mme. de Peleve had come straight from the very
fountain-head of these absurdities. The hair was worn crisped or
violently frizzed about the face in the shape of a horse-shoe; long
stiff curls, fastened with pins, hung on the neck; and the whole was
well pomatumed and powdered with different coloured powders. A high
cushion was fastened at the top of the hair, and over that either a cap
adorned with artificial flowers and feathers to such a height as
sometimes rendered it somewhat difficult to preserve its equilibrium,
or a balloon hat, a fabric of wire and tiffany, of immense
circumference. The hat would require to be fixed on the head with long
pins, and standing, trencherwise, quite flat and unbending in its full
proportions. The crown was low, and, like the cap, richly set off with
feathers and flowers. The lower part of the dress consisted of a full
petticoat generally flounced, short sleeves, and a very long train; but
instead of a hoop there was a vast pad at the bottom of the waist
behind, and a frame of wire in front to throw out the neckerchief, so
as much as possible to resemble the craw of a pigeon.
"Such were the leading articles of this style of dress, and so arranged
was the figure which stepped forth from the chaise at the door of the
lovely and simple parsonage of Stanford. My father was ready to hand
her out, my mother to welcome her. The band-boxes were all conveyed
into our best bedroom, while Madame had her place allotted to her in
our drawing-room, where she sat like a queen, and really, by the
multitudes of anecdotes she had to tell, rendered herself very
agreeable. Whilst she was with us she never had concluded her toilet
before one or two in the day, and she always appeared either in new
dresses or new adjustments. I have often wished that I could recall
some of the anecdotes she used to tell of the Court of Versailles, but
one only can I remember; it referred to the then popular song of
'Marlbrook,' which she used to sing. 'When the Dauphin,' she said, 'was
born, a nurse was procured for him from the country, and there was no
song with which she could soothe the babe but 'Marlbrook,' an old
ballad, sung till then only in the provinces. The poor Queen heard the
air, admired, and brought it forward, making it the fashion.' This is
the only one of Mme. de Peleve's stories which I remember, although I
was very greatly amused by them, and could have listened to her for
hours together. My admiration was also strongly excited by the
splendour and varieties of her dresses, her superb trimmings, her
sleeves tied with knots of coloured ribbon, her trains of silk, her
beautiful hats, and I could not understand the purpose for which she
took so much pains to array herself."
I think when we read of Miss Crosbie's arrival at Mr. Fairchild's, and
the time she kept them all waiting for supper while she changed her
gown, we shall be reminded of these early recollections of Mrs.
Sherwood's. A year or two later this quaint Madame came again on a
visit to Stanford; and on this occasion, as Mary tells us, she put it
into the little girl's head, for the first time, to wonder whether she
were pretty or no. "No sooner was dinner over," she says, "than I ran
upstairs to a large mirror to make the important inquiry, and at this
mirror I stood a long time, turning round and examining myself with no
small interest." Madame de Peleve further encouraged her vanity by
making her a present of "a gauze cap of a very gay description." It
must have looked odd and out of place perched on the top of the little
girl's "very long hair and very rosy cheeks." Another of Mme. de
Peleve's not very judicious presents was "a shepherdess hat of pale
blue silver tiffany." But as this hat had to be fastened on with
"large, long corking-pins," it proved "a terrible evil" to its wearer;
which, perhaps, was just as well!
By this time dear brother Marten had been sent away to school at
Reading; but little Lucy was growing old enough to be something of a
playmate; and Margaret, the motherless cousin, had been brought again
to Stanford on a long visit. We can fancy what a delightful companion
to these two small ones Mary must have been. She had left off, for the
time, writing stories, but she was never tired of telling them. In
company she was, in those days, very silent and shy, and much at a loss
for words; but they never failed her when telling her stories to her
little companions. Her head, she says, was full of "fairies, wizards,
enchanters, and all the imagery of heathen gods and goddesses which I
could get out of any book in my father's study," and with these she
wove the most wonderful tales, one story often going on, at every
possible interval, for months together. Her lively imagination "filled
every region of the wild woods at Stanford with imaginary people.
Wherever I saw a few ashes in a glade, left by those who burnt sticks
to sell the ashes to assist in the coarse washings in farmhouses, I
fixed a hoard of gipsies and made long stories. If I could discern
fairy rings, which abounded in those woods, they gave me another set of
images; and I had imaginary hermits in every hollow of the rocky sides
of the dingle, and imaginary castles on every height; whilst the church
and churchyard supplied me with more ghosts and apparitions than I
dared to tell of." Mary and her stories must have been better worth
having than a whole library of "fairy-books."
One source from which Mary drew her tales was a collection of old
volumes which her father had bought at a sale and to which her mother
had given up a room over the pantry and storeroom. Mr. Butt made Mary
his librarian; and she revelled in old romances, such as Sir Philip
Sydney's _Arcadia_, and in illustrated books of travel; spending many
hours on a high stool in the bookroom, among "moths, dust, and black
calf-skin," studying these treasures.
One more glimpse must be given of those happy child-days, and we will
have it in Mary's own words: "I grew so rapidly in my childhood, that
at thirteen I had obtained my full height, which is considered above
the usual standard of women. I stooped very much when thus growing. As
my mother always dressed me like a child in a pinafore, I must
certainly have been a very extraordinary sort of personage, and
everyone cried out on seeing me as one that was to be a giantess. As my
only little friend of about my own age was small and delicate, I was
very often thoroughly abashed at my appearance; and therefore never was
I so happy as when I was out of sight of visitors in my own beloved
woods of Stanford. In those sweet woods I had many little embowered
corners, which no one knew but myself; and there, when my daily tasks
were done, I used to fly with a book and enjoy myself in places where I
could hear the cooing of doves, the note of the blackbird, and the rush
of two waterfalls coming from two sides of the valley and meeting
within the range where I might stroll undisturbed by anyone. It must be
noticed that I never made these excursions without carrying a huge
wooden doll with me, which I generally slung with a string round my
waist under my pinafore, as I was thought by the neighbours too big to
like a doll. My sister, as a child, had not good health, and therefore
she could bear neither the exposure nor fatigue I did; hence the reason
wherefore I was so much alone. From this cause, too, she was never
submitted to the same discipline that I was; she was never made so
familiar with the stocks and iron collar, nor the heavy tasks; for
after my brother was gone to school I still was carried on in my Latin
studies, and even before I was twelve I was obliged to translate fifty
lines of Virgil every morning, standing in these same stocks, with the
iron collar pressing on my throat."
When Mary was between twelve and thirteen a great change came in her
life. Her father was presented to the vicarage of Kidderminster in
Staffordshire, where the carpets are made. It was then a very rich
living. It was settled that they should go to Kidderminster to live,
while a curate was to do duty at Stanford and occupy the rectory. In
those days clergymen often held two or even three livings at once in
different parts of the country, taking the stipends themselves, and
putting a curate in charge of whichever parishes they did not choose to
reside in.
Mary was pleased at the idea of a change, as children generally are;
and so was her father, who loved society and the noise and bustle of a
town. But to poor Mrs. Butt, who was a very shy, timid, retiring
person, the idea of exchanging "the glorious groves of Stanford for a
residence in a town, where nothing is seen but dusty houses and dyed
worsted hanging to dry on huge frames in every open space," was
terrible. Mary could well remember how, during that summer, her mother
walked in the woods, crying bitterly and fretting over the coming
change till her health suffered.
Life in the big manufacturing town was much less wild and free than it
had been in the Worcestershire parsonage; but the two little girls
managed to be very happy in their own way. For one thing, they had a
bedroom looking into the street, and a street was a new thing to them,
and they spent every idle moment in staring out of the windows. They
had a cupboard in which they kept their treasures--a dolls' house which
they had brought from Stanford, and all the books they had hoarded up
from childhood; "these, with two white cats, which we had also brought
from Stanford, happily afforded us much amusement." Mary's rage for
dolls was, moreover, at its height, though she more than ever took
pains to hide her darlings, under her pinafore, from the eyes of
Kidderminster.
Most of all, however, they amused themselves, when alone, by talking
together in characters, keeping to the same year after year, till at
length the play was played out. "We were both queens," Mary tells us,
"and we were sisters, and were supposed to live near each other, and we
pretended we had a great many children. In our narratives we allowed
the introduction of fairies, and I used to tell long stories of things
and places and adventures which I feigned I had met with in this my
character of queen. The moment we two set out to walk, we always began
to converse in these characters. My sister used generally to begin
with, 'Well, sister, how do you do to-day? How are the children? Where
have you been?' and before we were a yard from the house we were deep
in talk. Oh, what wonderful tales was I wont to tell of things which I
pretended I had seen, and how many, many happy hours have I and my
sister spent in this way, I being the chief speaker."
Not long after their coming to Kidderminster, Mary's father took her
with him on a visit to a large country house in Shropshire. They drove
all the way in a gig, a man-servant riding behind on horseback. They
reached the house just in time to dress for dinner, at which there was
to be a large party. Mary had to put on her "very best dress, which,"
she tells us, "was a blue silk slip, with a muslin frock over it, a
blue sash, and, oh! sad to say, my silver tiffany hat. I did not dare
but wear it, as it had been sent with me."
A maid had been told off to dress Mary, and "great was the pains which
she took to fix my shepherdess hat on one side, as it was intended to
be worn, and to arrange my hair, which was long and hanging in curls;
but what would I not have given to have got rid of the rustling
tiffany!" Mary describes her consternation when she reached the
drawing-room in this array, and found "a number of great people" there,
but no other child to consort with. When everybody went to walk in the
shrubberies after dinner, and a gentleman offered her his arm, as was
the wont in those days, she was so panic-stricken that she darted up a
bank, through the shrubs and away, and showed herself no more that
evening.
The next thing that happened was that the other little cousin before
mentioned, Henry Sherwood, came to live with the Butts and go to a
day-school in the town. Mary recalls him as she saw him on arriving--a
very small, fair-haired boy, dressed in "a full suit of what used to be
called pepper-and-salt cloth." He soon settled down in his new home, "a
very quiet little personage, very good-tempered, and very much in awe
of his aunt," with a fame among his cousins for his talent for making
paper boxes one within another. His bed was in an attic, next door to
his big cousin Marten's room. Marten had a shelf full of books, which
Henry used to carry off to his own domain and read over and over again.
From these books he first dated an intense love of reading which was
destined to be his chief stand-by in old age. We shall not wonder that
Mary loved to recall her early remembrances of this little school-boy
when we know that, several years later, he became her husband, with
whom she spent a long and happy married life.
Mary has other amusing recollections of this time of her early
girlhood, and tells them in her own charming way; but we must pass on
to her school life, which is bound to interest her readers of to-day,
so many of whom go to school. It was the summer of 1790. Mr. Butt had
been taking his turn of duty at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, being by
this time one of the chaplains to the King. On his way home he stopped
at Reading to visit his friend Dr. Valpy, in whose school Marten had
for a time been educated.
During this visit Dr. Valpy took him to see "a sort of exhibition" got
up by the "young ladies" of M. and Mme. de St. Quentin's school. This
famous school, which was afterwards removed to London, was held then in
the old Abbey at Reading. "This," thought Mr. Butt, "is the very place
for Mary"; and to the Abbey School it was decided that she should go.
Marten was now at Westminster School. When the time came for him to
return after the holidays, Mary had a seat in the chaise, and drove
with him and her father as far as Reading. You will be amused by her
description of her school and schoolmistresses, and of her first
introduction to them.
"The house--or, rather, the Abbey itself--was exceedingly interesting;
and though I know not its exact history, yet I knew every hole and
corner of what remained of the ancient building, which consisted of a
gateway with rooms above, and on each side of it a vast staircase, of
which the balustrades had originally been gilt. Then, too, there were
many little nooks and round closets, and many larger and smaller rooms
and passages, which appeared to be rather more modern; whilst the
gateway itself stood without the garden walls upon the Forbury or open
green, which belonged to the town, and where Dr. Valpy's boys played
after school hours. The best part of the house was encompassed by a
beautiful old-fashioned garden, where the young ladies were allowed to
wander under tall trees in hot summer evenings."
When Mary arrived at the Abbey the holidays were not quite over, and
she was the first of the sixty pupils to present herself. The school
was kept by Mme. de St. Quentin and a Mrs. Latournelle, who were
partners. "Madame," as the girls always called her, was an Englishwoman
by birth, but had married a French refugee whom circumstances had
obliged to become French teacher in the school. Madame was a handsome
woman, with bright eyes and a very dignified presence. Mary tells us
that she danced remarkably well, played and sang and did fine
needlework, and "spoke well and agreeably in English and in French
without fear." Mrs. Latournelle was a funny, old-fashioned body, whose
chief concern was with the housekeeping, tea-making, and other domestic
duties. She had a cork leg, and her dress had never been known to
change its fashion. "Her white muslin handkerchief was always pinned
with the same number of pins; her muslin apron always hung in the same
form; she always wore the same short sleeves, cuffs, and ruffles, with
a breast-bow to answer the bow on her cap, both being flat with two
notched ends."
Mrs. Latournelle received Mary in a wainscotted parlour, hung round
with miniatures and pieces of framed needlework done in chenille,
representing tombs and weeping willows. Mary was to be what in those
days was known as a "parlour-boarder," which meant that she was treated
in part as a grown-up young lady, had more liberty and privileges than
the other girls, and, in fact, was allowed to do very much as she
liked. She thought herself gloriously happy, on coming down to
breakfast next day in the twilight of a winter's morning, to be allowed
to eat hot buttered toast and to draw as near as she liked to the fire;
neither of which things was it lawful to do at home.
Mary was "vastly amused," during the first few days, at seeing her
future school-fellows arrive one after another. The two first to come
were a pair of twin sisters named Martha and Mary Lee, so exactly alike
that they could only be distinguished by a mark which one had on her
forehead under the hair. There were many other big girls, but none
besides herself who were parlour-boarders during that quarter. Mary
soon chose out three to be her special friends; a Miss Poultenham,
Amelia Reinagle (daughter of an artist who in that day was rather
celebrated), and Mary Brown--niece of Mrs. Latournelle.
M. and Mme. de St. Quentin presently returned, and Mary tells us how
shy she felt when "Monsieur" summoned her to undergo a sort of
examination. "Full well I remember the morning when he called me into
his study to feel the pulse of my intellect, as he said, in order that
he might know in what class to place me. All the girls whom he
particularly instructed were standing by, all of them being superior to
me in the knowledge of those things usually taught in schools. Behold
me, then, in imagination, tall as I am now, standing before my master,
and blushing till my blushes made me ashamed to look up. '_Eh bien_,
mademoiselle,' he said, 'have you much knowledge of French?' 'No, sir,'
I answered. 'Are you much acquainted with history?' And he went on from
one thing to another, asking me questions, and always receiving a
negative. At length, smiling, he said: 'Tell me, mademoiselle, then,
what you do know.' I stammered 'Latin--Virgil,' and finished off with a
regular flood of tears. At this he laughed outright, and immediately
set me down in his class and gave me lessons for every day."
The discipline of the Abbey seems to have been very slack, especially
for the big girls. This is how Mary describes it: "The liberty which
the first class had was so great that, if we attended our tutor in his
study for an hour or two every morning, no human being ever took the
trouble to enquire where we spent the rest of the day between our
meals. Thus, whether we gossiped in one turret or another, whether we
lounged about the garden or out of the window above the gateway, no one
so much as said, 'Where have you been, mademoiselle?'"
Mary Butt spent a year at Reading, where she learnt a good deal of
French, and not, it would seem, much of anything else. She left it the
following Christmas with many tears, thinking that her school-days were
over; but a few months later her parents decided to send her back to
the Abbey for another year, and that her sister Lucy should go too.
That was in the autumn of 1792, when the French Revolution was just
beginning. On January 21, 1793, the terrible news came of the murder of
the unhappy King, Louis XVI. All Europe, and England especially, were
horrified at the cruel deed; and at the Abbey, where there was a strong
French Royalist element, feeling ran particularly high. "Monsieur and
Madame went into deep mourning, as did also many of the elder girls.
Multitudes of the French nobility came thronging into Reading,
gathering about the Abbey, and some of them half living within its
walls." Our friend Mary, as a half-fledged young lady, saw a great deal
of these poor refugees, who had lost everything but their lives. They
seem, however, to have shown the true French courage and gaiety under
evil circumstances. There was much singing and playing under the trees;
and they helped the school-girls to get up some little French plays to
act at their breaking-up party. Mary took a part in the character of a
French abbess, but she tells us that "assuredly" her talents never lay
in the acting line, and very honestly adds: "I could never sufficiently
have forgotten myself as to have acted well."
Soon after Mary's finally leaving school her parents decided to put a
curate in charge of the Kidderminster living, and to return to "lovely
Stanford." This was a great relief to poor, shy Mrs. Butt, who had been
like a caged bird in Kidderminster; but the young people were not quite
sure if they liked the change. They had made many friends in the town
and its neighbourhood; and now that Mary was, as we say nowadays, "come
out," she had been taken to various balls and other diversions. They
soon, however, settled down again in the old home; and as there was a
large, delightful, and very friendly family at Stanford Court hard by,
they found plenty of variety and amusement even in the depths of the
country.
The young Butts went across very often to dine at the Court; and on
these occasions their hostess, Lady Winnington, got up little impromptu
dances, which they greatly enjoyed. "Often," Mary writes, "when we
dined at the Court she would send for the miller, who played the
violin, and set us all to dance. My brother was always the partner of
the eldest Miss Winnington, and as neither of them could tell one tune
from another or dance a single step, we generally marvelled how they
got on at all. The steward also, a great, big, and in our opinion most
supremely ugly man, generally fell to my sister's lot. Thus, we did
very well, and enjoyed ourselves in our own way. Sometimes the old
Welsh harper came, and then we had a more set dance, and some of the
ladies'-maids, and one or two of the upper men-servants, and the miller
himself, and Mr. Taylor of the Fall, and the miller's brother Tommy,
were asked, and then things were carried on in a superior style. We
went into a larger room, and there was more change of partners; but as
nothing could have induced the son and heir to ask a stranger, I always
had him, whilst Miss Winnington and my sister sometimes fell to the
share of the miller and his brother, the miller being himself musical
and footing it to the tune better than his partners. The miller's
brother seemed to wheel along rather than dance, throwing himself back
and looking, in his white waistcoat which was kept for these grand
occasions, not unlike a sack of meal set upright on trucks and so
pushed about the room. I am ready to laugh to this hour when I think of
these balls, and I certainly obtained very high celebrity then and
there for being something very superior in the dancing line."
The happy life at Stanford was not destined to last long, for Mr.
Butt's health began to fail, and in the autumn of 1795 he died. Mrs.
Butt took a house at Bridgnorth, and settled there with her two
daughters. Mary had now begun to write in good earnest; and while
living at Bridgnorth two of her tales were published, one called
_Margarita_ and the other _Susan Grey_. Probably very few people now
living have ever seen or read these stories; and if we did come across
them it is to be feared we should think them very dull and long-winded.
But when new they were much admired, particularly _Susan Grey_, which
was one of the earliest tales written to interest rich and educated
people in the poor and ignorant. It was widely read and reprinted many
and many times.
In spite of the pleasure and excitement of authorship, life in the
little house in the sleepy town of Bridgnorth was very dull and cramped
to the two young girls; and they were made much happier, because they
were much busier, when the clergyman of one of the town churches asked
them to undertake the management of his Sunday school. This is what
Sunday school teaching meant at the end of the eighteenth century: "We
attended the school so diligently on the Sunday that the parents
brought the children in crowds, and we were obliged to stop short when
each of us had about thirty-five girls and the old schoolmaster as many
boys. We made bonnets and tippets for our girls; we walked with them to
church; we looked them up in the week days; we were vastly busy; we
were first amused, and next deeply interested."--"Sunday schools," she
goes on to say, "then were comparatively new things, so that our
attentions were more valued then than they would be nowadays."
The next important event in Mary's life was her marriage with her
cousin Henry, by which she became the "Mrs. Sherwood" whose name has
been a household word to generations of children. Henry Sherwood had
had a curious history, and had endured many hardships and adventures in
his youthful days. As a boy of about thirteen he had made a voyage on
a rotten old French coasting-vessel, which was very nearly wrecked; was
run into in the night by an unknown ship; and all but foundered in the
Bay of Biscay. The French Revolution had just begun; and when the brig
touched at Marseilles this young lad saw terrible sights of men hung
from lamp-posts; heard the grisly cry, "A la lanterne! a la lanterne!"
and was even himself seized by some of the mob, though he happily
contrived, in the confusion, to slip away. In Marseilles, too, he first
saw the guillotine; it was carried about the streets in procession
whilst the populace yelled out the "Marseillaise Hymn." Later on in the
Revolution he was seized, as an Englishman, and imprisoned with a
number of others at Abbeville; but, escaping from there, he made a
wonderful journey through France, Switzerland, and Germany with his
father, step-mother, and their five young children; being driven by the
state of affairs from town to town, and wandering further and further
afield in the effort to reach England. At length, after difficulties
and hardships innumerable, they landed at Hull; and Henry made his way
to some of his relations, who took care of him and set him on his legs
again.
Henry Sherwood soon afterwards entered the army, joining the regiment
then known as the 53rd Foot; and about the same time he began to come
to Bridgnorth, where his pretty young cousin, Mary Butt, was growing
more and more attractive. After a while he wrote her a letter, asking
if she would be his wife; and on June 30, 1803, they were married at
Bridgnorth.
Mary's marriage made a great change in her life. She had married into
what used to be called a "marching regiment," which was constantly on
the move from one station to another. After being transferred from
place to place several times within a year, with long, wearisome
journeys both by sea and land, following the regiment as it marched,
the news came that the 53rd was ordered on foreign service, which meant
a longer journey still. It was presently known that the regiment's
destination was the East Indies, or, as we should now call it, India.
This was a great blow to poor Mrs. Sherwood, for by this time she was
the mother of a baby girl, whom she must leave behind in England.
The regiment embarked at Portsmouth. Captain and Mrs. Sherwood had a
miserable little cabin rigged up on deck, made only of canvas, and with
a huge gun filling more than half the space. The vessel in which they
sailed was called the _Devonshire_. It was quite a fleet that set sail,
for besides the vessels needed to convey the troops, there had to be
several armed cruisers in attendance. The war with France was going on,
and there was continual danger of an attack by the enemy. When they had
been more than three months at sea, three strange vessels were sighted,
two of which soon ran up the French colours and began to fire, without
the slightest warning, upon the English vessels. In a moment all was
bustle on board the _Devonshire_, clearing the decks for action. The
women and children were sent down into the hold, where they had to sit
for hours in the dark, some way below watermark, while the shots
whistled through the rigging overhead, the guns roared, the ladders had
been taken away, and none of them could learn a word of what was going
forward on deck, where their husbands and fathers were helping to man
the guns. The fighting continued till late at night, but no serious
damage befell the _Devonshire_. At length the women and children were
hoisted up out of the hold, and "enjoyed some negus and biscuits."
From that time they saw no more of the French. At last the voyage, with
its anxieties and discomforts, was over; the _Devonshire_ sailed into
the Hoogli and anchored in Diamond Harbour, expecting boats to come
down from Calcutta to carry the regiment up there.
It would take too long to tell the story of the Sherwoods' life in
India, though Mrs. Sherwood's account of it is very good reading. Two
or three scenes will give you some notion of how she spent her time.
A certain number of the soldiers of the regiment were allowed to bring
their wives and children out with them. There were no Government
schools then for the regimental children, so that these little people
idled away their time round the barracks, and were as ignorant as the
day they were born. It came into Mrs. Sherwood's head to start a school
for them, and this school she herself taught for four hours every
morning, except in the very hottest weather; and the only help she had
was from a sergeant of the regiment, a kind, good man. Some of the
officers also were very thankful to send their children to school, so
that Mrs. Sherwood soon had as many as fifty boys and girls coming
daily to her bungalow. Very hard work it was teaching them to read and
write and to be gentle, truthful, and obedient. She found the officers'
children generally more troublesome than the soldiers', because they
were more spoilt, or, as she puts it, pampered and indulged. For these
children she wrote many of her books, especially her _Stories on the
Church Catechism_, which can still be bought, and which give a very
interesting picture of the life of a soldier's child in India some
eighty years ago.
Besides her day-school, Mrs. Sherwood collected in her house several
little orphans, the children of poor soldiers' wives who quickly died
in the trying climate of India. She found some of these children being
dreadfully neglected and half starved, so took them home to her and
brought them up with her own children. She gives an amusing description
of her home life in India during the hot season, so terribly trying to
Europeans: "The mode of existence of an English family during the hot
winds in India is so very unlike anything in Europe that I must not
omit to describe it. Every outer door of the house and every window is
closed; all the interior doors and venetians are, however, open, whilst
most of the private apartments are shut in by drop-curtains or screens
of grass, looking like fine wire-work, partially covered with green
silk. The hall, which never has any other than borrowed lights in any
bungalow, is always in the centre of the house, and ours at Cawnpore
had a large room on each side of it, with baths and sleeping-rooms. In
the hot winds I always sat in the hall at Cawnpore. Though I was that
year without a baby of my own, I had my orphan, my little Annie, always
by me, quietly occupying herself when not actually receiving
instruction from me. I had given her a good-sized box, painted green,
with a lock and key; she had a little chair and table.
"She was the neatest of all neat little people, somewhat faddy and
particular, perchance. She was the child, of all others, to live with
an ancient grandmother. Annie's treasures were few, but they were all
contained in her green box. She never wanted occupation; she was either
dressing her doll or finding pretty verses in her Bible, marking the
places with an infinitude of minute pieces of paper. It was a great
delight to me to have this little quiet one by my side.
"In another part of this hall sat Mr. Sherwood during most part of the
morning, either engaged with his accounts, his journal, or his books.
He, of course, did not like the confinement so well as I did, and often
contrived to get out to a neighbour's bungalow in his palanquin during
some part of the long morning. In one of the side-rooms sat Sergeant
Clarke, with his books and accounts. This worthy and most methodical
personage used to fill up his time in copying my manuscripts in a very
neat hand, and in giving lessons in reading and spelling, etc., to
Annie. In the other room was the orphan Sally, with her toys. Beside
her sat her attendant, chewing her paun[A] and enjoying a state of
perfect apathy. Thus did our mornings pass, whilst we sat in what the
lovers of broad daylight would call almost darkness. During these
mornings we heard no sounds but the monotonous click, click of the
punkah,[B] or the melancholy moaning of the burning blast without, with
the splash and dripping of the water thrown over the tatties.[C] At one
o'clock, or perhaps somewhat later, the tiffin [answering to our
luncheon] was always served, a hot dinner, in fact, consisting always
of curry and a variety of vegetables. We often dined at this hour, the
children at a little table in the room, after which we all lay down,
the adults on sofas and the children on the floor, under the punkah in
the hall. At four, or later perhaps, we had coffee brought. We then
bathed and dressed, and at six or thereabouts, the wind generally
falling, the tatties were removed, the doors and windows of the house
were opened, and we either took an airing in carriages or sat in the
veranda; but the evenings and nights of the hot winds brought no
refreshment."
The days spent in that strange hot twilight must have seemed very long
to children, even to those who had forgotten or never known the freedom
of life in England; but Mrs. Sherwood had plenty of ways of filling her
long quiet hours. She wrote a number of little stories about life in
India, which were very much liked in their day and went through many
editions. One of these was called _The Ayah and Lady_, and told about a
native servant, her ignorant notions and strange ways, and how her
mistress tried to do her good. Another was _Lucy and her Dhaye_, the
history of a little English girl and her dark-skinned nurse, who was so
devoted to her that she nearly broke her heart when Lucy went home to
England and she was left behind. But the best of them all was _Little
Henry and his Bearer_, which is one of the most famous stories ever
written for children. The history of little Henry, the neglected orphan
child whom nobody loved save his poor faithful heathen "bearer," or
native servant, is exceedingly pretty and touching.
Mrs. Sherwood was always thinking about children and trying to find out
ways of helping them to be happy and good. A page from her diary will
show how often she must have been grieved and distressed at the spoilt
boys and girls she saw in the houses of the English merchants and Civil
servants at Calcutta and elsewhere.
"I must now proceed," she writes, "to some description of Miss Louisa,
the eldest daughter then in India of our friends, who at that time
might have been about six or seven. She was tall of her age, very
brown, and very pale. She had been entirely reared in India, and was
accustomed from her earliest infancy to be attended by a multitude of
servants, whom she despised thoroughly as being black, although, no
doubt, she preferred their society to her own country-people, as they
ministered with much flattery and servility to her wants. Wherever she
had moved during these first years of her life she had been followed by
her ayah, and probably by one or two bearers, and she was perfectly
aware that if she got into any mischief they would be blamed and not
herself. In the meantime, except in the article of food, every desire
and every caprice and every want had been indulged to satiety. No one
who has not seen it could imagine the profusion of toys which are
scattered about an Indian house wherever the 'babalogue' (children
people) are permitted to range. There may be seen fine polished and
painted toys from Benares, in which all the household utensils of the
country, the fruits, and even the animals, are represented, the last
most ludicrously incorrect. Toys in painted clay from Morshedabad and
Calcutta, representing figures of gods and goddesses, with horses,
camels, elephants, peacocks, and parrots, and now and then a 'tope
walla,' or hat wearer, as they call the English, in full regimentals
and cocked hat, seated on a clumsy, ill-formed thing meant for a horse.
Then add to these English, French, and Dutch toys, which generally lie
pell-mell in every corner where the listless, toy-satiated child may
have thrown or kicked them.
"The quantity of inner and outer garments worn by a little girl in
England would render it extremely fatiguing to change the dress so
often as our little ladies are required to do in India. Miss Louisa's
attire consisted of a single garment, a frock body without sleeves,
attached to a pair of trousers, with rather a short, full skirt
gathered into the body with the trousers, so as to form one whole, the
whole being ruffled with the finest jindelly, a cloth which is not
unlike cambric, every ruffle being plaited in the most delicate manner.
These ruffles are doubled and trebled on the top of the arm, forming
there a substitute for a sleeve; and the same is done around the ankle,
answering the purpose almost of a stocking, or at least concealing its
absence. Fine coloured kid shoes ought to have completed this attire,
but it most often happened that these were kicked away among the
rejected toys.
"How many times in a day the dress of Miss Louisa was renewed, who
shall say? It, however, depended much upon the accidents which might
happen to it; but four times was the usual arrangement, which was once
before breakfast, once after, once again before tiffin, and once again
for the evening airing. The child, being now nearly seven years old,
was permitted to move about the house independently of her ayah; thus,
she was sometimes in the hall, sometimes in the veranda, sometimes in
one room, sometimes in another. In an Indian house in the hot season no
inner door is ever shut, and curtains only are hung in the doorways, so
that this little wild one was in and out and everywhere just as it hit
her fancy. She had never been taught even to know her letters; she had
never been kept to any task; she was a complete slave of idleness,
restlessness, and ennui. 'It is time for Louisa to go to England,' was
quietly remarked by the parents; and no one present controverted the
point."
Children like this must have made the good Mrs. Sherwood very unhappy;
her own little ones--of whom she had three who lived to come home to
England--were very differently brought up. She had also a lovely little
boy named Henry, and a little fair-haired Lucy, who both died in India
before they were two years old.
It would be impossible to end even this short sketch of Mrs. Sherwood's
Indian life without mentioning her friendship with Henry Martyn, that
saintly soul and famous missionary in India and Persia. When the
Sherwoods knew him he was Government chaplain at Dinapore, a great
military station, at which the 53rd Foot then was. Mrs. Sherwood nursed
him through a bad illness, and she and her husband afterwards paid him
a visit in his quarters at Cawnpore, to which place he had been
transferred. He had a school at Cawnpore for little native children;
and worked hard at preaching to the heathen; while all the time doing
his utmost for the soldiers of the various regiments stationed in the
barracks. The Sherwoods heard his wonderful farewell sermon before
starting for Persia; and the news of his death in that far land reached
them not long before they quitted India for England.
After being about twelve years in the East, the 53rd Regiment was
ordered home, and very thankful Captain and Mrs. Sherwood were to bring
the children they still had living safely back to a more healthy
climate. Two of the orphans came with them, so there was quite a party
of little people on board the ship; and when they landed at Liverpool
they must have been a very quaint-looking group, for "we had not a
bonnet in the party; we all wore caps trimmed with lace, white dresses,
and Indian shawls." Can we wonder if, as Mrs. Sherwood goes on to say,
"we were followed wherever we went by hundreds of the residents of
Liverpool"?
The rest of Mrs. Sherwood's long life was spent in England, save for an
occasional visit to France and Switzerland. She and her husband settled
in the west, where she had been born and bred, and of which she was so
fond. She had more children, most of whom died young; and she lived a
very busy, active, useful life, working hard at writing stories and
tracts, visiting the prison at Worcester, and doing whatever good and
useful work lay within her power.
The first part of the _Fairchild Family_ was published in 1818. It was
so popular that, more than twenty years afterwards, she wrote a second
part, which, as you will see, begins at p. 150. As we read we shall
notice little points of difference between it and the first part; but
our friends, Lucy, Emily, and Henry are just as nice and as naughty, as
good and as silly, as they were in the opening chapters of the book.
A few years later, when a very old woman, Mrs. Sherwood wrote a third
part of the _Fairchild Family_, in which she was helped by her
daughter, Mrs. Kelly. But this third part is less entertaining and
interesting than the two which went before it, and is also not entirely
Mrs. Sherwood's own work; so you will not find it printed here.
In 1851 Mrs. Sherwood died at Twickenham, where she had gone to live a
few years previously. In the course of her long life she had seen many
trials and sorrows, but she had had a great deal of happiness. She had
made the very most of all the gifts given her by God. Countless
children have been the happier and the better for what she wrote for
them. And by means of this new edition of a dear old book, with its
pleasant type and charming illustrations, I hope a new generation will
spring up of lovers and admirers of Mrs. Sherwood.
MARY E. PALGRAVE.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Described in _Little Henry and his Bearer_ as "an intoxicating
mixture of opium and sugar."
[B] The huge fan, hanging from the ceiling, by which the air of houses
in India is kept moving.
[C] The "tatta" is a blind, or screen, woven of sweet-smelling grass,
which is kept constantly wet by the water-carriers.
[Illustration]
Contents
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
PART I
THE BIRTHDAY WALK 3
MRS. FAIRCHILD'S STORY 9
ON ENVY 19
STORY OF THE APPLES 25
STORY OF AN UNHAPPY DAY 34
STORY OF AMBITION; OR, THE WISH TO BE GREAT 45
THE ALL-SEEING GOD 59
EMILY'S RECOVERY, AND THE OLD STORY OF MRS. HOWARD 67
SAD STORY OF A DISOBEDIENT CHILD 84
THE TWO BOOKS 87
THE HISTORY OF THE ORPHAN BOY 92
THE HISTORY OF LITTLE HENRI 107
A STORY OF BESETTING SINS 131
A VISIT TO MARY BUSH 143