old Madame Michaud and her husband both attended us constantly, and we
danced to their direction in our large play-room (_lucus a non
lucendo_), till we had learned not only all the dances in use in England
in that ante-polka epoch, but almost every national dance in Europe, the
Minuet, the Gavotte, the Cachucha, the Bolero, the Mazurka, and the
Tarantella. To see the stout old lady in her heavy green velvet dress,
with furbelow a foot deep of sable, going through the latter cheerful
performance for our ensample, was a sight not to be forgotten. Beside
the dancing we had “calisthenic” lessons every week from a “Capitaine”
Somebody, who put us through manifold exercises with poles and
dumbbells. How much better a few good country scrambles would have been
than all these calisthenics it is needless to say, but our dismal walks
were confined to parading the esplanade and neighbouring terraces. Our
parties never exceeded six, a governess being one of the number, and we
looked down from an immeasurable height of superiority on the
processions of twenty and thirty girls belonging to other schools. The
governess who accompanied us had enough to do with her small party, for
it was her duty to utilise these brief hours of bodily exercise by
hearing us repeat our French, Italian or German verbs, according to her
own nationality.
Next to Music and Dancing and Deportment, came Drawing, but that was not
a sufficiently _voyant_ accomplishment, and no great attention was paid
to it; the instruction also being of a second-rate kind, except that it
included lessons in perspective which have been useful to me ever since.
Then followed Modern Languages. No Greek or Latin were heard of at the
school, but French, Italian and German were chattered all day long, our
tongues being only set at liberty at six o’clock to speak English.
_Such_ French, such Italian, and such German as we actually spoke may be
more easily imagined than described. We had bad “Marks” for speaking
wrong languages, _e.g._, French when we bound to speak Italian or
German, and a dreadful mark for bad French, which was transferred from
one to another all day long, and was a fertile source of tears and
quarrels, involving as it did a heavy lesson out of Noel et Chapsal’s
Grammar on the last holder at night. We also read in each language every
day to the French, Italian and German ladies, recited lessons to them,
and wrote exercises for the respective masters who attended every week.
One of these foreign masters, by the way, was the patriot Berchet; a
sad, grim-looking man of whom I am afraid we rather made fun; and on one
occasion, when he had gone back to Italy, a compatriot, whom we were
told was a very great personage indeed, took his classes to prevent them
from being transferred to any other of the Brighton teachers of Italian.
If my memory have not played me a trick, this illustrious substitute for
Berchet was Manzoni, the author of the _Promessi Sposi_; a
distinguished-looking middle-aged man, who won all our hearts by
pronouncing everything we did admirable, even, I think, on the occasion
when one young lady freely translated Tasso,—
“Fama e terre acquistasse,”
into French as follows:—
“Il acquit la femme et la terre!”
Naturally after (a very long way after) foreign languages came the study
of English. We had a writing and arithmetic master (whom we unanimously
abhorred and despised, though one and all of us grievously needed his
instructions) and an “English master,” who taught us to write “themes,”
and to whom I, for one, feel that I owe, perhaps, more than to any other
teacher in that school, few as were the hours which we were permitted to
waste on so insignificant an art as composition in our native tongue!
Beyond all this, our English studies embraced one long, awful lesson
each week to be repeated to the schoolmistress herself by a class, in
history one week, in geography the week following. Our first class, I
remember, had once to commit to memory—Heaven alone knows how—no less
than thirteen pages of Woodhouselee’s _Universal History_!
Lastly, as I have said, in point of importance, came our religious
instruction. Our well-meaning schoolmistresses thought it was obligatory
on them to teach us something of the kind, but, being very obviously
altogether worldly women themselves, they were puzzled how to carry out
their intentions. They marched us to church every Sunday when it did not
rain, and they made us on Sunday mornings repeat the Collect and
Catechism; but beyond these exercises of body and mind, it was hard for
them to see what to do for our spiritual welfare. One Ash Wednesday, I
remember, they provided us with a dish of salt-fish, and when this was
removed to make room for the roast mutton, they addressed us in a short
discourse, setting forth the merits of fasting, and ending by the remark
that they left us free to take meat or not as we pleased, but that they
hoped we should fast; “it would be good for our souls AND OUR FIGURES!”
Each morning we were bound publicly to repeat a text out of certain
little books, called _Daily Bread_, left in our bedrooms, and always
scanned in frantic haste while “doing-up” our hair at the glass, or
gabbled aloud by one damsel so occupied while her room-fellow (there
were never more than two in each bed-chamber) was splashing about behind
the screen in her bath. Down, when the prayer-bell rang, both were
obliged to hurry and breathlessly to await the chance of being called on
first to repeat the text of the day, the penalty for oblivion being the
loss of a “card.” Then came a chapter of the Bible, read verse by verse
amongst us, and then our books were shut and a solemn question was
asked. On one occasion I remember it was: “What have you just been
reading, Miss S——?” Miss S—— (now a lady of high rank and fashion, whose
small wits had been woolgathering) peeped surreptitiously into her Bible
again, and then responded with just confidence, “The First Epistle,
Ma’am, of _General Peter_.”
It is almost needless to add, in concluding these reminiscences, that
the heterogeneous studies pursued in this helter-skelter fashion were of
the smallest possible utility in later life; each acquirement being of
the shallowest and most imperfect kind, and all real education worthy of
the name having to be begun on our return home, after we had been
pronounced “finished.” Meanwhile the strain on our mental powers of
getting through daily, for six months at a time, this mass of
ill-arranged and miscellaneous lessons, was extremely great and trying.
One droll reminiscence must not be forgotten. The pupils at Miss
Runciman’s and Miss Roberts’ were all supposed to have obtained the
fullest instruction in Science by attending a course of Nine Lectures
delivered by a gentleman named Walker in a public room in Brighton. The
course comprised one Lecture on Electricity, another on Galvanism,
another on Optics, others I think, on Hydrostatics, Mechanics, and
Pneumatics, and finally three, which gave me infinite satisfaction, on
Astronomy.
If true education be the instilling into the mind, not so much
Knowledge, as the desire for Knowledge, mine at school certainly proved
a notable failure. I was brought home (no girl could travel in those
days alone) from Brighton by a coach called the _Red Rover_, which
performed, as a species of miracle, in one day the journey to Bristol,
from whence I embarked for Ireland. My convoy-brother naturally mounted
the box, and left me to enjoy the interior all day by myself; and the
reflections of those solitary hours of first emancipation remain with me
as lively as if they had taken place yesterday. “What a delightful thing
it is,” so ran my thoughts “to have done with study! Now I may really
enjoy myself! I know as much as any girl in our school, and since it is
the best school in England, I _must_ know all that it can ever be
necessary for a lady to know. I will not trouble my head ever again with
learning anything; but read novels and amuse myself for the rest of my
life.”
This noble resolve lasted I fancy a few months, and then, depth below
depth of my ignorance revealed itself very unpleasantly! I tried to
supply first one deficiency and then another, till after a year or
two, I began to educate myself in earnest. The reader need not be
troubled with a long story. I spent four years in the study of
History—constructing while I did so some Tables of Royal Successions
on a plan of my own which enabled me to see at a glance the descent,
succession and date of each reigning sovereign of every country,
ancient and modern, possessing any History of which I could find a
trace. These Tables I still have by me, and they certainly testify to
considerable industry. Then the parson of our parish, who had been a
tutor in Dublin College, came up three times a week for several years,
and taught me a little Greek (enough to read the Gospels and to
stumble through Plato’s _Krito_), and rather more geometry, to which
science I took an immense fancy, and in which he carried me over
Euclid and Conic Sections, and through two most delightful books of
Archimedes’ spherics. I tried Algebra, but had as much disinclination
for that form of mental labour as I had enjoyment in the reasoning
required by Geometry. My tutor told me he was able to teach me in one
lesson as many propositions as he habitually taught the undergraduates
of Dublin College in two. I have ever since strongly recommended this
study to women as specially fitted to counteract our habits of hasty
judgment and slovenly statement, and to impress upon us the nature of
real demonstration.
I also read at this time, by myself, as many of the great books of the
world as I could reach; making it a rule always (whether bored or not)
to go on to the end of each, and also following generally Gibbon’s
advice, viz., to rehearse in one’s mind in a walk before beginning a
great book all that one knows of the subject, and then, having finished
it, to take another walk, and register how much has been added to our
store of ideas. In these ways I read all the _Faery Queen_, all Milton’s
poetry, and the _Divina Commedia_ and _Gerusalemme Liberata_ in the
originals. Also (in translations) I read through the Iliad, Odyssey,
Æneid, Pharsalia, and all or nearly all, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, &c. There was a fairly
good library at Newbridge, and I could also go when I pleased, and read
in Archbishop Marsh’s old library in Dublin, where there were splendid
old books, though none I think more recent than a hundred and fifty
years before my time. My mother possessed a small collection of
classics—Dryden, Pope, Milton, Horace, &c., which she gave me, and I
bought for myself such other books as I needed out of my liberal
pin-money. Happily, I had at that time a really good memory for
literature, being able to carry away almost the words of passages which
much interested me in prose or verse, and to bring them into use when
required, though I had, oddly enough, at the same period so imperfect a
recollection of persons and daily events that, being very anxious to do
justice to our servants, I was obliged to keep a book of memoranda of
the characters and circumstances of all who left us, that I might give
accurate and truthful recommendations.
By degrees these discursive studies—I took up various hobbies from time
to time—Astronomy, Architecture, Heraldry, and many others—centred more
and more on the answers which have been made through the ages by
philosophers and prophets to the great questions of the human soul. I
read such translations as were accessible in those pre-Müller days, of
Eastern Sacred books; Anquetil du Perron’s _Zend Avesta_ (twice); and
Sir William Jones’s _Institutes of Menu_; and all I could learn about
the Greek and Alexandrian philosophers from Diogenes Laertius and the
old translators (Taylor, of Norwich, and others) and a large
Biographical Dictionary which we had in our library. Having always a
passion for Synopses, I constructed, somewhere about 1840, a Table, big
enough to cover a sheet of double-elephant paper, wherein the principal
Greek philosophers were ranged,—their lives, ethics, cosmogonies and
special doctrines,—in separate columns. After this I made a similar
Table of the early Gnostics and other heresiarchs, with the aid of
Mosheim, Sozomen, and Eusebius.
Does the reader smile to find these studies recorded as the principal
concern of the life of a young lady from 16 to 20, and in fact to 35
years of age? It was even so! They _were_ (beside Religion, of which I
shall speak elsewhere) my supreme interest. As I have said in the
beginning, I had neither cares of love, or cares of money to occupy my
mind or my heart. My parents wished me to go a little into society when
I was about 18, and I was, for the moment, pleased and interested in the
few balls and drawing-rooms (in Dublin) to which my father and
afterwards my uncle, General George Cobbe, conducted me. But I was
rather bored than amused by my dancing partners, and my dear mother,
already in declining years and completely an invalid, could never
accompany me, and I pined for her motherly presence and guidance, the
loss of which was only half compensated for by her comments on the long
reports of all I had seen and said and done, as I sat on her bed, on my
return home. By degrees also, my thoughts came to be so gravely employed
by efforts to find my way to religious truth, that the whole glamour of
social pleasures disappeared and became a weariness; and by the time I
was 19 I begged to be allowed to stay at home and only to receive our
own guests, and attend the occasional dinners in our neighbourhood. With
some regret my parents yielded the point, and except for a visit every
two or three years to London for a few weeks of sightseeing, and one or
two trips in Ireland to houses of our relations, my life, for a long
time, was perfectly secluded. I have found some verses in which I
described it.
“I live! I live! and never to man
More joy in life was given,
Or power to make, as I can make,
Of this bright world a heaven.
“My mind is free; my limbs are clad
With strength which few may know,
And every eye smiles lovingly;
On earth I have no foe.
“With pure and peaceful pleasures blessed
Speed my calm and studious days,
While the noblest works of mightiest minds
Lie open to my gaze.”
In one of our summer excursions I remember my father and one of my
brothers and I lionized Winchester, and came upon an exquisite chapel,
which was at that time, and perhaps still is, a sort of sanctuary of
books, in the midst of a lovely, silent cloister. To describe the
longing I felt then, and long after, to spend all my life studying there
in peace and undisturbed, “hiving learning with each studious
year,”—would be impossible!
I think there is a great, and it must be said lamentable, difference
between the genuine passion for study such as many men and women in my
time and before it experienced, and the hurried anxious _gobbling up_ of
knowledge which has been introduced by competitive examinations, and the
eternal necessity for _getting something else beside knowledge_;
something to be represented by M.A. or B.Sch., or, perhaps, by £ s. d.!
When I was young there were no honours, no rewards of any kind for a
woman’s learning; and as there were no examinations, there was no hurry
or anxiety. There was only healthy thirst for knowledge of one kind or
another, and of one kind after another. When I came across a reference
to a matter which I did not understand, it was not then necessary, as it
seems to be to young students now, to hasten over it, leaving the
unknown name, or event, or doctrine, like an enemy’s fortress on the
road of an advancing army. I stopped and sat down before it, perhaps for
days and weeks, but I conquered it at last, and then went on my way
strengthened by the victory. Recently, I have actually heard of students
at a college for ladies being advised by their “coach” to _skip a number
of propositions in Euclid_, as it was certain they would not be examined
in them! One might as well help a climber by taking rungs out of his
ladder! I can make no sort of pretensions to have acquired, even in my
best days, anything like the instruction which the young students of
Girton and Newnham and Lady Margaret Hall are so fortunate as to
possess; and much I envy their opportunities for obtaining accurate
scholarship. But I know not whether the method they follow can, on the
whole, convey as much of the pure delight in learning as did my solitary
early studies. When the summer morning sun rose over the trees and shone
as it often did into my bedroom finding me still over my books from the
evening before, and when I then sauntered out to take a sleep on one of
the garden seats in the shrubbery, the sense of having learned
something, or cleared up some hitherto doubted point, or added a store
of fresh ideas to my mental riches, was one of purest satisfaction.
As to writing as well as reading, I had very early a great love of the
art and frequently wrote small essays and stories, working my way
towards something of good style. Our English master at school on seeing
my first exercise (on Roman History, I think it was), had asked Miss
Runciman whether she were sure I had written it unaided, and observed
that the turn of the sentences was not girl-like, and that he “thought I
should grow up to be a fine writer.” My schoolmistress laughed, of
course, at the suggestion, and I fancy she thought less of poor Mr.
Turnbull for his absurd judgment. But as men and women who are to be
good musicians love their pianos and violins as children, so I early
began to love that noble instrument, the English Language, and in my
small way to study how to play upon it. At one time when quite young I
wrote several imitations of the style of Gibbon and other authors, just
as an exercise. Eventually without of course copying anybody in
particular, I fell into what I must suppose to be a style of my own,
since those familiar with it easily detect passages of my writing
wherever they come across them. I was at a later time much interested in
seeing many of my articles translated into French (chiefly in the French
Protestant periodicals) and to note how little it is possible to render
the real feeling of such words as those with which _our_ tongue supplies
us by those of that language. At a still later date, when I edited the
_Zoophile_, I was perpetually disappointed by the failures of the best
translators I could engage, to render my meaning. Among the things for
which to be thankful in life, I think we, English, ought to assign no
small place to our inheritance of that grand legacy of our forefathers,
the English Language.
While these studies were going on, from the time I left school in 1838
till I left Newbridge in 1857, it may be noted that I had the not
inconsiderable charge of keeping house for my father. My mother at once
put the whole responsibility of the matter in my hands, refusing even to
be told beforehand what I had ordered for the rather formal dinner
parties of those days, and I accepted the task with pleasure, both
because I could thus relieve her, and also because then and ever since I
have really liked housekeeping. I love a well-ordered house and table,
rooms pleasantly arranged and lighted, and decorated with flowers,
hospitable attentions to guests, and all the other pleasant cares of the
mistress of a family. In the midst of my studies I always went every
morning regularly to my housekeeper’s room and wrote out a careful
_menu_ for the upstairs and downstairs meals. I visited the larders and
the fine old kitchen frequently, and paid the servants’ wages on every
quarter day; and once a year went over my lists of everything in the
charge of either the men or women servants. In particular I took very
special care of the china, which happened to be magnificent; and hereby
hangs the memory of a droll incident with which I may close this
chapter.
A certain dignified old lady, the Hon. Mrs. X., had paid a visit to
Newbridge with her daughters, and in return she invited one of my
brothers and myself to spend some days at her “show” place in ——. While
stopping there I talked with the enthusiasm of my age to her very
charming young daughters of the pleasures of study, urging them
strenuously to learn Greek and Mathematics. Mrs. X., overhearing me,
intervened in the conversation, and said somewhat tartly, “I do not at
all agree with you, Miss Cobbe! I think the duty of a lady is to attend
to her house, and to her husband and children. I beg you will not incite
my girls to take up your studies.”
Of course I bowed to the decree, and soon after began admiring some of
the china about the room. “There is,” said Mrs. X., “some very fine old
china belonging to this house. There is one dessert-service which is
said to have cost £800 forty or fifty years ago. Would you like to see
it?”
Having gratefully accepted the invitation, I followed my hostess to the
basement of the house, and there, for the first time in my life, I
recognised that condition of disorder and slatternliness which I had
heard described as characteristic of Irish houses. At last we reached an
underground china closet, and after some delay and reluctance on the
part of the servant, a key was found and the door opened. There, on the
shelves and the floor, lay piled, higgledy-piggledy, dishes and plates
of exquisite china mixed up with the commonest earthenware jugs, basins,
cups, and willow-pattern kitchen dishes; and the great dessert-service
among the rest—_with the dessert of the previous summer rotting on the
plates_! Yes! there was no mistake. Some of the superb plates handed to
me by the servant for examination by the light of the window, had on
them peach and plum-stones and grape-stalks, obviously left as they had
been taken from the table in the dining-room many months before! Poor
Mrs. X. muttered some expressions of dismay and reproach to her
servants, which of course I did not seem to hear, but I had not the
strength of mind to resist saying: “Indeed this is a splendid service;
_Style de l’Empire_ I should call it. We have nothing like it, but when
next you do us the pleasure to come to Newbridge I shall like to show
you our Indian and Worcester services. Do you know I always take up all
the plates and dishes myself when they have been washed the day after a
party, and put them on their proper shelves with my own hands,—_though I
do know a little Greek and geometry_, Mrs. X.!”
CHAPTER
IV.
_RELIGION._
I do not think that any one not being a fanatic, can regret having been
brought up as an Evangelical Christian. I do not include Calvinistic
Christianity in this remark; for it must surely cloud all the years of
mortal life to have received the first impressions of Time and Eternity
through that dreadful, discoloured glass whereby the “Sun is turned into
darkness and the moon into blood.” I speak of the mild, devout,
philanthropic Arminianism of the Clapham School, which prevailed amongst
pious people in England and Ireland from the beginning of the century
till the rise of the Oxford movement, and of which William Wilberforce
and Lord Shaftesbury were successively representatives. To this school
my parents belonged. The conversion of my father’s grandmother by Lady
Huntingdon, of which I have spoken, had, no doubt, directed his
attention in early life to religion, but he was himself no Methodist, or
Quietist, but a typical Churchman as Churchmen were in the first half of
the century. All our relatives far and near, so far as I have ever
heard, were the same. We had five archbishops and a bishop among our
near kindred,—Cobbe, Beresfords, and Trenchs, great-grandfather, uncle,
and cousins,—and (as I have narrated) my father’s ablest brother, my
god-father, was a clergyman. I was the first heretic ever known amongst
us.