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[Illustration: THE STORY TELLING.
"'I like, best of all, to hear about what happened when Grandmamma was
new,' said Fritz."--_See page 7._]
When Grandmamma
Was New
THE STORY OF A VIRGINIA
CHILDHOOD
By
Marion Harland
_ILLUSTRATED_
BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY.
_THIRD THOUSAND_
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_
_Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
_TO_
HORACE AND ERIC
FRITZ, TERHUNE, AND STERLING
This Story
FIRST TOLD TO THEM OVER THE LIBRARY FIRE
IN AUTUMN AND WINTER EVENINGS
_IS MOST LOVINGLY DEDICATED_
SUNNYBANK,
POMPTON, N.J.
Explanatory
It was Fritz who said it first, and when he was three years younger than
he is now.
Somebody asked him what sort of stories he liked best. No doubt he ought
to have said "Bible Stories," such as his mother tells on Sunday
afternoons, and which he does love dearly. But he spoke out what he
really thought and felt at the time of asking, and said, "I like, best
of all, to hear about what happened when Grandmamma was New."
The phrase tickled my fancy, and, thenceforward, I would have no other
title for the sight-draughts made by the boys upon my bank of memory.
When these "vouchers" grew into a volume, no name would serve my turn
except the _mot de famille_ set in circulation by the quaint
five-year-old.
My laddies are well trained. (Good children run in the family.) I
record, pridefully, that the sunny head of the least of the band has
never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was
distinct in the general plea for, "More--to-morrow night?" with which
the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has
not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that
my reminiscences will find such loving interest and attention so rapt in
the larger audience outlying our doors. Yet I dare believe that other
grandparents will read and other children will listen to the real
happenings of the Long Time Ago WHEN THIS GRANDMAMMA WAS NEW.
MARION HARLAND.
SUNNYBANK,
May, 1899.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Tragedy of Rozillah 11
II. A Prize Fight and a Race 28
III. Van Diemen's Land 45
IV. Oiled Calico 63
V. What was done with Musidora 78
VI. The Haunted Room 97
VII. Just for Fun 107
VIII. My First Lie, and what came of it 124
IX. My Pets 144
X. Circumstantial Evidence 164
XI. Frankenstein 182
XII. My Prize Beet 198
XIII. Two Adventures 215
XIV. Miss Nancy's Nerves 232
XV. "Side-blades" and Water-melons 246
XVI. Old Madam Leigh 257
XVII. Out into the World 282
When Grandmamma Was New
[Illustration]
Chapter I
The Tragedy of Rozillah
"Just look at her now, Molly! Isn't she the sweetest thing you ever
saw?"
Molly, that is, Myself, sitting on the door-step, elbows on knees and
shoulders hunched sullenly up to my ears, did not budge or speak.
Before my gloomy eyes was the kitchen yard, a gray and gritty expanse,
with never a tree or bush to shade it except the lilac hedge bounding it
on the garden side, and one sickly peach tree growing at the corner of
"the house." Three hens and one rooster were scratching about the flat
stone at the kitchen door.
On the other three sides of the house were rustling boughs and cool
grass and flower-beds. It suited my humor to sit in the scanty strip of
shadow cast by the eaves, my feet upon the step that had soaked in the
noonday heat, and to be as wretched as a five-year-old could make
herself, with a sharp sense of injury boring like a bit of steel into
her small soul. The room behind me was my mother's--the "chamber" of the
Southern home. A big four-poster, hung with dimity curtains, stood in
the farther corner. The dimity valance, trimmed, like the curtains, with
ball fringe, hid the trundle-bed that was pulled out at night for Mary
'Liza and me to sleep in. At the foot of the bed was my baby brother's
cradle. As Mam' Chloe was walking with him in the garden, it should have
been empty. Whereas, Mary 'Liza was putting her doll-baby to sleep in
it. We said "doll-baby" in those days. There was Musidora, my rag-baby,
who was a beauty when she was new.
She was not old now, but Fate had been unkind to her. Twice I had left
her out-of-doors all night. The first time was when I laid her at the
foot of a particularly tall corn-stalk, telling her that I would return
presently, but could not find her at all when I went back. I was up and
out early next morning and "found her indeed, but it made my heart
bleed," for a field mouse--with six acres of roasting-ears to choose
from--had made his supper on the bran that served my poor Musidora for
brains, nibbling a hole in the exact region of the _medulla oblongata_.
My mother plugged the cranium with raw cotton and stitched up the wound,
and the dear patient was doing better than could be expected, when there
was a thunder-storm and Musidora was on a bench in the summer-house. The
rain lasted all night, and I could not go out again.
One immediate and obvious consequence of this adventure was that there
was nothing left of Musidora's features except her eyebrows, which were
laid on with indelible ink instead of water-colors. She hung, head
downward, in front of the kitchen fire for twelve hours before she was
thoroughly dry. My mother "indicated" eyes, nose, and mouth with
pen-and-ink, but the effect was flat and mournful.
While I sat in the door that evening, putting on Musidora's night-gown,
I overheard Mam' Chloe say to my mother:--
"I declar' to gracious, Miss Ma'y Anna, you ought to buy that chile a
sure-'nough doll-baby while you are in town. It f'yar breaks my heart to
see how much store she sets by that po' wrack of a rag thing she's got
thar."
My mother's reply was so low that I did not catch it, but her tone was
not unpromising. I said nothing to her, or to anybody of what I had
heard. Only, of course, Musidora and I talked it all over. I assured her
that she was going to have a beautiful sister who would love her and
play with her and tell her stories of the wonderful city, and of how
happy we three should be together.
My father and mother went away to Richmond. They took the baby with
them, and Mary 'Liza and I were sent to my Aunt Eliza Carter's to stay
until they returned, when Cousin Molly Belle took us back home and told
my mother before my face that I had been as "good as gold."
"I am very glad to hear it," said my mother, giving me a squeeze and
kiss. "I was afraid she might be troublesome. She is not as steady as
Mary 'Liza, you know. I have something nice in my trunk for each of my
daughters."
She always spoke of us in that way, although Mary 'Liza was her niece,
and an orphan. She was seven now, and the pattern child of the county.
Pretty, too, with a fair skin and shiny braids of golden hair, and
innocent blue eyes, and dimpled arms, and fluffy, kittenish ways, while
I was as lean as a snake, as brown as a chinquapin, and as wild as a
hawk. I was used to hearing myself compared to all three. Mary 'Liza
could read in the New Testament without stopping to spell a word, at
three, and write in a copy-book at five, and do sums on the slate at
six, and at seven was as much company to my mother as if she had been
seventeen. In a word, my cousin was "a comfort." I was often called "a
plague."
Yet, as I can honestly affirm, I had never known, until this black day
when Cousin Molly Belle took me home, what it was to be envious. I was
not exactly fond of my cousin, yet we seldom disagreed openly. She wore
clean frocks and liked to stay indoors and piece bedquilts and knit
stockings and read aloud to my mother. I never willingly spent an hour
in the house when I could get out, and had odd plays of my own which I
kept secret from Mary 'Liza because I was sure she would be shocked, or
laugh at them. I fully recognized the claims of orphanhood to the
buttered side of life, and that a girl who had no father or mother
deserved to be cared for by everybody else.
My parents had arrived late at night, and the trunk was unpacked with
much ceremony the next morning. Under my mother's best new dresses was a
long pasteboard box which she opened, smiling at our expectant faces.
From it she drew the biggest, prettiest doll-baby we had ever seen, in a
blue silk frock with a sash to match. She had real hair, curly and black
as a coal, and round black eyes and a cherry-ripe mouth. I reached out
both hands, and a cry of rapture rushed from my heart to my lips--an
inarticulate gurgle of ineffable happiness.
My mother did not see my gesture. I hope she did not hear the cry. She
laid the doll-baby in Mary 'Liza's arms.
"Mrs. Hutcheson, who was your mother's dearest friend, sent that to you
with her love."
For me there was a trumpery book, with very few pictures, and a good
deal of reading in it--also from Mrs. Hutcheson.
"She thought it might coax you to learn how to read. I was ashamed to
have to say that my little girl does not know her letters yet," said my
much-tried parent. "And your father brought you a Noah's Ark."
I received book and Ark without a word, and marched toward the door, my
heart ready to break.
"What do you say for your presents, Molly?"
I stood stock-still, my eyes on the floor.
My mother quietly and sorrowfully took the painted Ark from my hand.
"When you can say 'thank you,' and stop pouting, you can have it back,"
she said, in gentle severity.
I dashed from the room around the house to the end porch. It was high
enough for me to stand upright under it and the sides were screened by a
climbing sweetbrier. I had often played Daniel in the lion's den there,
assisted by a caste of small colored children. They were the lions, I,
with the choice of parts, electing invariably to play the persecuted
and finally triumphant biped. The fury of forty wild beasts was in my
heart, as I pushed aside the prickly branches and crept into my lair.
The den was paved with bricks, loosely laid. With a pointed stick I
pried one up, and scooped out with my hands a grave deep enough to hold
the hateful book with the few pictures and the much reading. I thrust it
in without benefit of clergy, hustled the earth back upon it, pounded
the brick into place, and lay flat down upon the dishonored tomb.
Mam' Chloe found me there at dinner-time, fast asleep. She dragged me
back to consciousness and the open air by the heels. Not in wanton
cruelty, but she was a large woman, and could get at me in no other way.
While she washed and made me decent in clean frock, apron, and
pantalettes, she scolded me for my "low-lived, onladylike ways," and
warned me of her solemn intention to "tell my mother on me," the next
time such a disgraceful thing happened. I did not mind the lecture. I
knew Mam' Chloe, and she (Heaven rest her white, faithful soul in the
Kingdom where the bond are free!) knew me, I verily believe, better than
the mother that bore me.
Toilet and tirade ended, she slid me, as she might a proscribed book,
through a crack in the side-door into the dining room, where Uncle Ike,
her husband, was in waiting. He, in turn, smuggled me behind my mother's
back to the side-table, there being no room for us children at the main
board that day.
None of the dozen grown-up diners noticed me, or that Mary 'Liza,
sitting prim and dainty on her side of our table, had her doll by her in
another chair, and interrupted her meal, once in a while, to caress her
or to re-arrange her curls and skirts. I affected not to see the
pantomime, which I chose to assume was enacted for my further
exasperation. I was apparently as indifferent to Uncle Ike's shameless
partiality in loading my plate with choice tidbits, such as a gizzard, a
merry-thought, or a cheese-cake, while Mary 'Liza had to ask twice for
what she wanted. What was not tasteless was bitter to my palate. I
wondered, dully, why the sight of the doll-baby and the fuss her owner
made over her, turned me sick. As soon as I could get away, I slipped
down, and out at the friendly side-door, and went to find Musidora.
There was a new bond of union between us. She had no beautiful sister, I
no beautiful daughter. Sitting down upon the hot step, before the
kitchen yard, I hugged her hard and cried a little over her, in a brief,
stormy way. The tears hurt me, as they came, and did not ease the hot
ache in my chest or the lump in my throat.
At this juncture, when my misery was at its height, I heard Mary 'Liza
in the chamber behind me, cooing to, and hushing her doll-baby, with
tones and words copied faithfully from my mother's talk over my
brother's cradle.
"Wouldn't you like to rock her a little while?" she called presently. "I
wouldn't mind if you'd promise not to touch her. Sometimes your hands
are not clean, you know."
I set my jaws savagely outside of my leaping tongue, not moving or
looking up when I felt her standing close by me. Musidora had dropped
from my lap, and lay, face downward, on the step. Mary 'Liza picked her
up, and brushed the dust from her inexpressive visage.
"Poor thing!" purred she. "I hope nothing will ever happen to Rozillah.
Isn't that a _love_-el-ly? I made it out of my own head from Rosa and
Zillah, two _love_-el-ly girls I read of in a book."
"I think it is a nasty name," was my deliberate reply.
She recoiled with a fine horror which stung me like a nettle.
"Oh, Molly! what a word for a little lady to use!"
I looked up at her for the first time, my eyes burning in dry sockets.
"I think your doll-baby is nasty, and Rozillah is a _nigger_ name! So
there!"
I could command no worse language, for I knew none.
Mary 'Liza looked shocked and terrified. She glanced right and left and
upward nervously, as fearing the punishment of heaven upon me.
"I am afraid that you are in a very bad humor," she faltered, her
self-possession forsaking her for a moment. "I'd better leave you."
She had gone a dozen paces when she glanced over her shoulder to say, in
her most grown-up and judicial manner:--
"I hope you will not make any noise and wake Rozillah up."
I rose and went straight to the cradle as soon as my cousin was out of
sight. Cold, deadly fury possessed and filled me, casting out fear of
consequences and routing the weakling conscience engendered and
nourished by parental counsel. I plucked Rozillah from her downy bed and
bore her into the air, cuffing her polished red cheeks soundly on the
way. Then I stripped off her gay raiment and knotted the ribbon sash
about her smooth neck. I had never tied a knot before, but this held, as
did the loop I cast over a projecting branch of the sickly
peach-sapling. Naked and forlorn, Rozillah dangled a foot and more from
the ground. I fetched my father's riding-whip from the hall table, and
the last feeble check upon my fury was released.
The next I knew a pair of cool, white arms closed about me and the whip
together, and Cousin Molly Belle's voice, half-laughing, half-horrified,
cried through the roaring in my ears:--
"Dear little Namesake! what has got into you?"
All at once, red mists parted and rolled away from my eyes, and I became
conscious that Mary 'Liza was jumping up and down and screaming
piteously, that everybody was on the spot--my father and mother and all
the dinner company, and Mam' Chloe with the baby in her arms, and a ring
of my small black servitors on the outside of the group; also that all
eyes were focussed on me and what was left of Rozillah.
The lash had drawn sawdust at every blow. One arm and both legs were
torn off and weltered in the scattered stuffing beneath; the crop of
black curls was tangled in the topmost limb of the sapling. The blue
silk gown would never fit the pliant waist again. Rozillah was beyond
the possibility of reconstruction.
I threw my arms around Cousin Molly Belle's neck, and burst into a
torrent of childish tears.
I think I must have been whipped for that afternoon's work. I ought to
have been, and Solomon, as a disciplinarian, was in high repute in the
family connection. I am sure that I was put forthwith to bed and left
alone for an eternity without even Musidora to bear me company. I had an
indefinite impression that they feared the effect of association with
such a wicked child upon her morals and manners.
I recollect that my mother brought me the bread and milk which was all
the supper I was to have, and talked me tenderly into tears.
But most vividly do I recall the apparition which stole into my solitude
after supper--which I had scented longingly from afar. A wraith all in
white--gown and neck and arms and face, the masses of fluffy hair making
this last more wraith-like. It sank to the floor beside my low bed, and
gathered me, miserable culprit, in a cuddling embrace, and bade me "tell
Cousin all about it--the whole _truly truth_."
I could always talk to her, and I began at the beginning and went
straight and steadfastly through to the nauseous end.
I did not cry while I talked, and when struck by her silence I raised a
timid hand to her dear cheek and found it wet, I was surprised.
"Why, Cousin Molly Belle!" I stammered. "Are you so angry with me as
_that_?"
"Angry? yes, Namesake, but not with you, poor little sinner! You and I
are always getting into scrapes--aren't we? Maybe that is why I am going
to ask your mother to let you sleep with me to-night."
Which delicious cup of happiness consoled the outgoing of the first
tragical day of my life.
[Illustration]