Van Diemen's Land
[Illustration]
I learned to read that winter. How nobody knew, and I least of all.
Looking backward, I seem to have gone to sleep one night, an ignoramus,
and awakened next morning knowing letters, yet never having learned.
Cousin Molly Belle's solution of the puzzle submitted to her by my
mystified mother was characteristic:--
"It is the fable of Munchausen's frozen horn over again. All the
learning you have been pumping into the poor child for two years has
thawed out. I always told you that she had brains if you would wait
until they woke up."
I might speak of that enchanted season as my birth-winter. My mental
awakening was into another world, so much wider and fuller than that
with which I had been well content up to this time, that life was a
continual ecstasy. I discovered, early in December, that, as Mr. Wegg
was to immortalize himself by saying a quarter-century later--"all print
was open" to me. By the middle of February I had gone three times
through the inimitable classic, _Cobwebs-to-catch-Flies_, and read at
least six other books through twice, besides being up to my eyes and
over the head of my understanding in _Sandford and Merton_, that most
fascinating of prosy impossibilities. Beside the classic I have named,
and _Rosamond_, _Harry and Lucy_, Berquin's _Children's Friend_, Mrs.
Sherwood's _Little Henry and His Bearer_ and _Fairchild Family_, _Anna
Ross_ and _Helen Maurice_, we had no books that were written expressly
for children. No prepared pap being at hand, we expressed real
nourishment for the mind--relishful juices that made intellectual bone
and muscle--from the strong meat upon which our elders fed.
Did we comprehend all, or one-third of what we read, or heard read?
Less, probably, than one-sixth, but we got far more than would seem
credible to one who has been led up a graciously inclined plane of
learning. Our manner of receiving and digesting mind-food was very much
like Bud's way of testing unknown substances that might be edible. We
rejected what hurt our teeth. What we got we kept.
The current of my outer life was quiet to apparent dulness. After
breakfast Mary 'Liza and I had our lessons with my mother in "the
chamber." In another year we would have a governess, but the mothers of
that time always taught their children to read and write, to spell and
cipher through Emerson's _First Arithmetic_. I have known several who
never sent their boys and girls to school, even preparing the lads for
college. We had our reading, beginning with a chapter in the Bible,
then, our spelling and writing, and sums. After these, my mother read
aloud from Grimshaw's _History of England_, simplifying the language
when she considered it necessary, which was not often, while Mary 'Liza
made up the first set of chemises (in the vernacular "shimmys,") she had
undertaken for herself, and I knit twenty rounds on a stocking. My
mother put in a "mark" of black silk every morning from which I could
count the rounds upward. Mary 'Liza had knit a dozen pairs in all. In
the tops of six, she had knit in openwork her initials "M. E. B." I had
no ambitions in that direction. My views on the subject of ornamental
initials and sampler autographs were put into pregnant English at a
subsequent date by the elder Weller. He professed to have received at
second-hand from the charity-boy, set to con the alphabet, what the
retired stage-driver applied to matrimony--to wit, that it was not worth
while to go through so much to get so little. Knitting delighted not me,
nor stitching either.
Lessons and work over, the day began for me in joyful earnest. The rest
of the morning and all the evening were mine to use, or abuse, as I
liked. We applied "evening" to the hours between the three o'clock
dinner and bedtime. We may have caught the phrase from our Bible
readings. The morning and the evening were the day.
Early in the fall I had begged permission from my mother to utilize a
deserted chicken-house as a play-room. It was long and narrow; one side
was barred with upright slats that admitted light and air to the former
inmates; one end was taken up by the door; the other and the back were
solid boards, the house having been built in the angle of a fence. My
mother had the interior cleaned and whitewashed. I think she was glad to
provide a decent "den" for me nearer home than the Old Orchard and the
more distant woods, and she was losing hold of her hope of making me
into a pattern daughter. It gives me a twinge to recollect how
thanklessly I accepted what must have been an act of self-denial on her
part, perhaps even a compromise with conscience. Mam' Chloe--by my
mother's orders, as I know now--hunted up some breadths of faded carpet
in the garret, Uncle Ike beat the dust out of them, then nailed them up
along the slatted side to keep the wind away. These I called my "arras,"
having picked up the word from hearing my father read Shakespeare aloud
at night after we were in the trundle-bed. Other breadths covered the
rough flooring, and I had a castle of which I was the undisputed
mistress--a court where I reigned, a queen.
Enthroned in a backless chair, I was, by turns, Mrs. Burwell (my own
mother), Helen Maurice's Aunt Felix, Rosamond's mother, Rebecca, the
Lady Rowena (my father began _Ivanhoe_ in January), Mrs. Fairchild,
Deborah, Mrs. Murray of _Anna Ross_, Naomi, and Ophelia. Once, I "did"
Job by wrapping a meal-sack--for sackcloth--about me, and, sitting upon
the ground, throwing ashes over my head and into the air, the while
four colored boys, previously instructed, burst in one by one, with news
of the mischief wrought by Sabean, lightning, Chaldean, and cyclone. A
dramatization of Queen Esther, upon which I had set my heart, was, at
last, given up because I could not be King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther at
one and the same time.
When the castle was too bleak for even child-comfort, Aunt 'Ritta, the
cook, let us heat bricks in the kitchen fire, and showed us how to wrap
them in rags to keep in the warmth. Clad in my red cloak, a wadded hood
of the same color tied over my ears, and my feet upon a swathed brick, I
was in no danger of taking cold.
Mary 'Liza put her neat little nose in at the door one raw day when she
was walking for exercise, and wondered, gently, "how I could stand it."
"I am afraid the smell would give me a headache, and the cold would give
me a sore throat," she said still gently.
I never had either from the time the leaves fell until they came again.
Except when, about once a month, some matron from a near or distant
plantation brought one or more of her children with her when she drove
over to "spend the day" with my mother, I had no white playfellow near
my own age. Mary 'Liza "was not fond of playing," although she would do
it when we had company who could be entertained in no other way. As a
rule, when not engaged with lessons and chemises, she took care in a
matronly way of Dorinda, Rozillah's successor, and "behaved."
On the Sundays when we did not go to church because the weather was bad,
or there was no preaching within twenty miles of us, or my mother was
not well, or the roads were impassable with mire or frost, Mary 'Liza
and I learned two questions in the Shorter Catechism, and she learned
the references as well. We also committed a hymn to memory, and five
verses of a psalm. Beyond this, no religious exercise was binding upon
us, and there was a great deal of the day to be got rid of. Mary 'Liza
read the memoirs of _Mary Lothrop_ and _Nathan W. Dickerman_, seated
upright on her cricket at one corner of the chamber fireplace, and in
the evening, if the day were pleasant, took her Bible to Mam' Chloe's
room or even as far as "the quarters," and read aloud to the servants
whole chapters out of Jeremiah and Paul's Epistles. They used to predict
that she would marry a preacher (which, by the way, she did in the
fulness of time, a red-headed widower preacher, with five boys).
I liked to go to church, because I saw there people dressed in their
prettiest clothes, and they sang hymns. Prayers and sermon were
attendant and unavoidable evils. My legs went to sleep, and a big girl
"going on six" was too old to follow suit. We read none but good books
on Sunday. _Little Henry and His Bearer_, _Anna Ross_, and _Helen
Maurice_ were allowed; the memoirs I have named were advised. The
_Fairchild Family_ "partook too much of the nature of fiction to be
quite suitable for Sabbath reading." So Rev. Cornelius Lee, our pastor,
had decided when the doubtful volume was submitted to him. After that,
it was locked up Saturday night, along with _Sandford and Merton_ and
Miss Edgeworth's _Moral Tales_.
I minded the deprivation less after I converted the playhouse into a
family chapel, and held services there on stay-at-home Sundays. My
audience comprised all the small negroes on the place,--about twenty in
number,--and they were willing attendants. A barrel was set, the whole
head up, at the upper end of the room; upon this was my chair. I sat in
it during the singing, and mounted upon it while reading and exhorting.
Subtle reverence, which I could not analyze, held me back from "offering
prayer." What we were doing was only "making believe" after all, and
belief in the All-seeing Eye, the All-hearing Ear, the Judge of idle
words and blasphemous thoughts, was as old as my knowledge of my own
being. But sing we could and did, and I read from the Scriptures of the
Old and the New Testaments, usually from the narrative portions, with a
psalm or two to "beat the upward flame" in our hearts.
And then I would preach a sermon.
Our chapel had been in good running order for over two months, when on a
certain drizzly Sunday early in March, I arose discreetly upon my
ticklish pulpit to announce through my nose, "We will commence our
services by singing the three-hundredth-and-thirty-third hymn--'Come
thou Fount of every blessing.'"
As mine was the only hymn-book in the assembly, the mention of the
number was a bit of supererogatory business. The omission of the formula
would have been a breach of chapel etiquette. I raised the tune, and
every other pair of lungs there joined in without fear of criticism or
favor of his neighbors' ears. Some of the duller and lesser children
smothered or decapitated a word here and there in the main body of the
hymn. All knew the chorus, and it shook the unceiled roof:--
"Away, away, away to glory!
My name's written on the throne.
My home's in yonder worl' o' glory,
Where my Redeemer reigns alone."
Warmed by the vigorous preliminary, I read the sixth chapter of
Revelation, still through my nose, catching my breath audibly at the end
of each clause. This oratorical touch was copied with ludicrous accuracy
from Rev. Wesley Greene, a circuit-rider who had conducted an
"arbor-meeting" at Fine Creek meeting-house last summer. Our negroes
were all Baptists, and considered themselves remiss, as devout hearers
of aught that partook of the nature of a religious service, if they did
not respond at intervals with groans and pious ejaculations. Their
children, as gravely imitative as juvenile Simiae, came up nobly to their
parts in our exercises.
The acknowledged leader in the responses, and my Grand Vizier in the
ordering of my small kingdom, my stage-manager and lieutenant-general,
was a girl of twelve, Mariposa by name. She received the fanciful title
from a young visitor to the plantation who had studied Spanish.
"Mariposa" meant butterfly, she told the baby's mother, who gratefully
accepted the compliment to her newly born daughter. The mother and her
mates called her "Mary Posy." The mistress, who was fond of the madcap
sponsor, retained the original pronunciation.
Mariposa was as black as tar, and to-day was clothed in a yellow
homespun frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags
that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a
gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the
aforementioned _antennae_, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried
on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple,
and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby
was disposed decorously across her knees on this occasion, and she was
one of the five auditors who had brought along their own crickets or
chairs. She had confiscated some older woman's splint-bottomed
rocking-chair and lugged it to the very front, as she had a right to do.
I had heard Mam' Chloe say of one of Rev. Wesley Greene's sermons, "I
tell you, Miss Ma'y, the Sperrit struck him that day, an' he jes'
_r'arred_!"
Something struck my worthy lieutenant during my reading of the white,
red, black, and pale horses of the Apocalypse and their awesome riders,
and the others following her lead, my voice was drowned by the
"Hum-_hums_!" and "Glorys!" and "Hallelujahs!" and "Bless de Lords!"
arising from all sides.
"It isn't polite for folks in the seats to talk louder than the
preacher," I had to admonish them in my natural voice and manner. "I
hope you won't be so noisy while I'm preaching."
Nevertheless, when I gave out my text, the struck Mariposa, rolling
from side to side with the motion of a "weaving" horse on her
rocking-chair--that squeaked dismally--was so wrought upon by the ring
of unknown and high-sounding syllables as to set up a dreary drone like
the hum of an exaggerated bumblebee, and to keep it up. This did not
disconcert me. I had expected to stir the imagination of my hearers, for
my own was aglow.
Mary 'Liza, in reciting her geography lesson on Friday, had several
times spoken of "Van Diemen's Land." Without the remotest conception of
where or what it was--whether continent, or island, or town--I fastened,
in fancy, upon her words, and constructed a hypothesis relative to the
mysterious locality. Why I should have strung it upon the same strand of
condemnation and doom with Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, Capernaum
and Chorazin, I may have known then. I have no idea now why this was
done, or the derivation of the inclusive curse.
Van Diemen's Land, thus damned, fell naturally into line with the "Come
and see!" of the "living creatures," and the "Death and Hell," and the
prophecy of killing with sword and with famine and the wild beasts of
the field. I was in a quiver of excitement that made my head and heart
hot, and my feet and hands cold, as I fairly shouted my text:--
"For oh! Van Diemen's Land shall be no more!"
Mariposa's rhythmic hum was broken into irregular bars by groans and
gruntings and sighings--all, I was gratified to note, modulated to the
standard of civility I had indicated. I had made a hortatory hit, and it
was encored. I spread wide my hands, in one of which was the New
Testament, and reiterated the text with greater unction and volume:--
"For, oh, my brethren! Van Diemen's Land shall be no more!"
The chair careened under my ill-advised energy; the barrel toppled
forward, and I shot, like a rocket, clear over Mariposa's head, breaking
my fall somewhat upon another girl and baby, and landing in the middle
of the congregation, with my nose against one of the swathed bricks.
I seldom cried when hurt, Cousin Molly Belle having told me long ago
that a brave soldier made no noise when his head was shot off. But I
screamed lustily now in the belief that my nose was broken and I
bleeding to death. The deluge of gore was frightful to inexperienced
eyes.
My father's voice, kindly authoritative, bidding me "be still!" hushed
my roaring. As tears and blood were stanched, I saw his face bending
over me, full of concern that yet fought with amusement I did not
comprehend. I could not doubt that he pitied me, when he carried me,
bloody and dirty as I was, into the chamber, and stood by while my
mother and Mam' Chloe set me to rights. The shock of the fall and the
fright left me sick and trembling. The trundle-bed was drawn out to half
its width and I was laid upon it, wrapped in my little dressing-gown, a
bottle of camphor in my nerveless hand.
"I am afraid you were playing on Sunday," said my mother, more in sorrow
than in anger.
"Indeed, and indeed, mother, I was not playing!" I broke forth,
earnestly, my swollen nose making the pious twang involuntary and full
of unction. "I was _preaching_!"
My father walked to the fireplace to hide the laugh he could no longer
suppress.
"It is true, my dear!" my over-quick ears caught his remark as she
followed him. "I heard the singing, and went to see what was going on."
His voice sank into a low, rapid recitation, and I lost the rest until
it rose upon another laugh.
"She and Van Diemen's Land went down together!"