II.

The next scene that stands out clearly against the background of the past

is that of my father's death-bed. The events which led to his death I

know from my dear mother. He had never lost his fondness for the

profession for which he had been trained, and having many medical

friends, he would now and then accompany them on their hospital rounds,

or share with them the labors of the dissecting room. It chanced that

during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of rapid

consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the

breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen

and inflamed. "I would have that finger off, Wood, if I were you," said

one of the surgeons, a day or two afterwards, on seeing the state of the

wound. But the others laughed at the suggestion, and my father, at first

inclined to submit to the amputation, was persuaded to "leave Nature

alone".

About the middle of August, 1852, he got wet through, riding on the top

of an omnibus, and the wetting resulted in a severe cold, which "settled

on his chest". One of the most eminent doctors of the day, as able as he

was rough in manner, was called to see him. He examined him carefully,

sounded his lungs, and left the room followed by my mother. "Well?" she

asked, scarcely anxious as to the answer, save as it might worry her

husband to be kept idly at home. "You must keep up his spirits", was the

thoughtless answer. "He is in a galloping consumption; you will not have

him with you six weeks longer." The wife staggered back, and fell like a

stone on the floor. But love triumphed over agony, and half an hour later

she was again at her husband's side, never to leave it again for ten

minutes at a time, night or day, till he was lying with closed eyes

asleep in death.

I was lifted on to the bed to "say good-bye to dear Papa" on the day

before his death, and I remember being frightened at his eyes which

looked so large, and his voice which sounded so strange, as he made me

promise always to be "a very good girl to darling Mamma, as Papa was

going right away". I remember insisting that "Papa should kiss Cherry", a

doll given me on my birthday, three days before, by his direction, and

being removed, crying and struggling, from the room. He died on the

following day, October 5th, and I do not think that my elder brother and

I--who were staying at our maternal grandfather's--went to the house

again until the day of the funeral. With the death, my mother broke down,

and when all was over they carried her senseless from the room. I

remember hearing afterwards how, when she recovered her senses, she

passionately insisted on being left alone, and locked herself into her

room for the night; and how on the following morning her mother, at last

persuading her to open the door, started back at the face she saw with

the cry: "Good God! Emily! your hair is white!" It was even so; her hair,

black, glossy and abundant, which, contrasting with her large grey eyes,

had made her face so strangely attractive, had turned grey in that night

of agony, and to me my mother's face is ever framed in exquisite silver

bands of hair as white as the driven unsullied snow.

I have heard that the love between my father and mother was a very

beautiful thing, and it most certainly stamped her character for life. He

was keenly intellectual, and splendidly educated; a mathematician and a

good classical scholar, thoroughly master of French, German, Italian,

Spanish, and Portuguese, with a smattering of Hebrew and Gaelic, the

treasures of ancient and of modern literature were his daily household

delight. Nothing pleased him so well as to sit with his wife, reading

aloud to her while she worked; now translating from some foreign poet,

now rolling forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of Queen Mab.

Student of philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily sceptical;

and a very religious relative has told me that he often drove her from

the room by his light playful mockery of the tenets of the Christian

faith. His mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and near the

end forced a priest into his room, but the priest was promptly ejected by

the wrath of the dying man, and by the almost fierce resolve of the wife

that no messenger of the creed he detested should trouble her darling at

the last.

This scepticism of his was not wholly shared by his wife, who held to the

notion that women should be "religious," while men might philosophise as

they would; but it so deeply influenced her own intellectual life that

she utterly rejected the most irrational dogmas of Christianity, such as

eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement of Christ, the doctrine that

faith is necessary to salvation, the equality of Christ with God, the

infallibility of the Bible; she made morality of life, not orthodoxy of

belief, her measure of "religion"; she was "a Christian", in her own view

of the matter, but it was a Christian of the school of Jowett, of

Colenso, and of Stanley. The latter writer had for her, in after years,

the very strongest fascination, and I am not sure that his "variegated

use of words", so fiercely condemned by Dr. Pusey, did not exactly suit

her own turn of mind, which shrank back intellectually from the crude

dogmas of orthodox Christianity, but clung poetically to the artistic

side of religion, to its art and to its music, to the grandeur of its

glorious fanes, and the solemnity of its stately ritual. She detested the

meretricious show, the tinsel gaudiness, the bowing and genuflecting, the

candles and the draperies, of Romanism, and of its pinchbeck imitator

Ritualism; but I doubt whether she knew any keener pleasure than to sit

in one of the carved stalls of Westminster Abbey, listening to the

polished sweetness of Dean Stanley's exquisite eloquence; or to the

thunder of the organ mingled with the voices of the white-robed

choristers, as the music rose and fell, as it pealed up to the arched

roof and lost itself in the carven fretwork, or died away softly among

the echoes of the chapels in which kings and saints and sages lay

sleeping, enshrining in themselves the glories and the sorrows of the

past.

To return to October, 1852. On the day of the funeral my elder brother

and I were taken back to the house where my father lay dead, and while my

brother went as chief mourner, poor little boy swamped in crape and

miserable exceedingly, I sat in an upstairs room with my mother and her

sisters; and still comes back to me her figure, seated on a sofa, with

fixed white face and dull vacant eyes, counting the minutes till the

funeral procession would have reached Kensal Green, and then following in

mechanical fashion, prayer-book in hand, the service, stage by stage,

until to my unspeakable terror, with the words, dully spoken, "It is all

over", she fell back fainting. And here comes a curious psychological

problem which has often puzzled me. Some weeks later she resolved to go

and see her husband's grave. A relative who had been present at the

funeral volunteered to guide her to the spot, but lost his way in that

wilderness of graves. Another of the small party went off to find one of

the officials and to enquire, and my mother said: "If you will take me to

the chapel where the first part of the service was read, I will find the

grave". To humor her whim, he led her thither, and, looking round for a

moment or two, she started from the chapel, followed the path along which

the corpse had been borne, and was standing by the newly-made grave when

the official arrived to point it out. Her own explanation was that she

had seen all the service; what is certain is, that she had never been to

Kensal Green before, and that she walked steadily to the grave from the

chapel. Whether the spot had been carefully described to her, whether she

had heard others talking of its position or not, we could never

ascertain; she had no remembrance of any such description, and the matter

always remained to us a problem. But after the lapse of years a hundred

little things may have been forgotten which unconsciously served as

guides at the time. She must have been, of course, at that time, in a

state of abnormal nervous excitation, a state of which another proof was

shortly afterwards given. The youngest of our little family was a boy

about three years younger than myself, a very beautiful child, blue-eyed

and golden haired--I have still a lock of his hair, of exquisite pale

golden hue--and the little lad was passionately devoted to his father. He

was always a delicate boy, and had I suppose, therefore, been specially

petted, and he fretted continually for "papa". It is probable that the

consumptive taint had touched him, for he pined steadily away, with no

marked disease, during the winter months. One morning my mother calmly

stated: "Alf is going to die". It was in vain that it was urged on her

that with the spring strength would return to the child. "No", she

persisted. "He was lying asleep in my arms last night, and William came

to me and said that he wanted Alf with him, but that I might keep the

other two." She had in her a strong strain of Celtic superstition, and

thoroughly believed that this "vision"--a most natural dream under the

circumstances--was a direct "warning", and that her husband had come to

her to tell her of her approaching loss. This belief was, in her eyes,

thoroughly justified by the little fellow's death in the following March,

calling to the end for "Papa! papa!" My brother and I were allowed to see

him just before he was placed in his coffin; I can see him still, so

white and beautiful, with a black spot in the middle of the fair waxen

forehead, and I remember the deadly cold which startled me when I was

told to kiss my little brother. It was the first time that I had touched

Death. That black spot made a curious impression on me, and long

afterwards, asking what had caused it, I was told that at the moment

after his death my mother had passionately kissed the baby brow. Pathetic

thought, that the mother's kiss of farewell should have been marked by

the first sign of corruption on the child's face.

And now began my mother's time of struggle and of anxiety. Hitherto,

since her marriage, she had known no money troubles, for her husband was

earning a good income; he was apparently vigorous and well: no thought of

anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed that he left his

wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary distress. It was not so.

I know nothing of the details, but the outcome of all was that nothing

was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready money. The

resolve to which, my mother came was characteristic. Two of her husband's

relatives, Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her son at a

good city school, and to start him in commercial life, using their great

city influence to push him forward. But the young lad's father and mother

had talked of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a

public school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the

"learned professions"--to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the

Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more earnestly

urged by my father than that Harry should receive the best possible

education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last wish. In her

eyes, a city school was not "the best possible education", and the Irish

pride rebelled against the idea of her son not being "a University man".

Many were the lectures poured out on the young widow's head about her

"foolish pride", especially by the female members of the Wood family; and

her persistence in her own way caused a considerable alienation between

herself and them. But Western and William, though half-disapproving,

remained her friends, and lent many a helping hand to her in her first

difficult struggles. After much cogitation, she resolved that the boy

should be educated at Harrow, where the fees are comparatively low to

lads living in the town, and that he should go thence to Cambridge or to

Oxford, as his tastes should direct. A bold scheme for a penniless widow,

but carried out to the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate body a more

resolute mind and will than that of my dear mother.

In a few months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in Richmond

Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow, then, she

betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set herself to

look for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond of long words,

and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day my mother related

with much amusement how he had told her that she was sure to get on if

she worked hard. "Look at me!" he said swelling visibly with importance;

"I was once a poor boy, without a penny of my own, and now I am a

comfortable man, and have my submarine villa to go to every evening".

That "submarine villa" was an object of amusement when we passed it in

our walks for many a long day. "There is Mr. ----'s submarine villa",

some one would say, laughing: and I, too, used to laugh merrily, because

my elders did, though my understanding of the difference between suburban

and submarine was on a par with that of the honest grocer.

My mother had fortunately found a boy, whose parents were glad to place

him in her charge, of about the age of her own son, to educate with him;

and by this means she was able to pay for a tutor, to prepare the two

boys for school. The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of serious

trouble to me, for it stuck out straight behind when we knelt down to

family prayers--conduct which struck me as irreverent and unbecoming, but

which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a year, my mother

found a house which she thought would suit her scheme, namely, to obtain

permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then Head Master of Harrow, to take some

boys into her house, and so gain means of education for her own son. Dr.

Vaughan, who must have been won by the gentle, strong, little woman, from

that time forth became her earnest friend and helper; and to the counsel

and active assistance both of himself and of his wife, was due much of

the success that crowned her toil. He made only one condition in granting

the permission she asked, and that was, that she should also have in her

house one of the masters of the school, so that the boys should not

suffer from the want of a house-tutor. This condition, of course, she

readily accepted, and the arrangement lasted for ten years, until after

her son had left school for Cambridge.

The house she took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and replaced

by a hideous red-brick structure. It was very old and rambling,

rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the top of Harrow

Hill, between the church and the school, and had once been the vicarage

of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it was so far removed

from the part of the village where all his work lay. The drawing-room

opened by an old-fashioned half-window, half-door--which proved a

constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new frock I

always tore it on the bolt as I flew through it--into a large garden

which sloped down one side of the hill, and was filled with the most

delightful old trees, fir and laurel, may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear,

and damson, not to mention currant and gooseberry bushes innumerable, and

large strawberry beds spreading down the sunny slopes. There was not a

tree there that I did not climb, and one, a widespreading Portugal

laurel, was my private country house. I had there my bedroom and my

sitting-rooms, my study, and my larder. The larder was supplied by the

fruit-trees, from which I was free to pick as I would, and in the study I

would sit for hours with some favorite book--Milton's "Paradise Lost" the

chief favorite of all. The birds must often have felt startled, when from

the small swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish tones

the "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers", of Milton's

stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim

the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass in

Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son",

Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of the

churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by an old

wooden fence, over which clambered roses of every shade; never was such a

garden for roses as that of the Old Vicarage. At the end of the terrace

was a little summer-house, and in this a trap-door in the fence, which

swung open and displayed one of the fairest views in England. Sheer from

your feet downwards went the hill, and then far below stretched the

wooded country till your eye reached the towers of Windsor Castle, far

away on the horizon. It was the view at which Byron was never tired of

gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close by--Byron's tomb, as it is

still called--of which he wrote:

"Again I behold where for hours I have pondered,

As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay,

Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wandered,

To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray."

Reader mine, if ever you go to Harrow, ask permission to enter the old

garden, and try the effect of that sudden burst of beauty, as you swing

back the small trap-door at the terrace end.

Into this house we moved on my eighth birthday, and for eleven years it

was "home" to me, left always with regret, returned to always with joy.

Almost immediately afterwards I left my mother for the first time; for

one day, visiting a family who lived close by, I found a stranger sitting

in the drawing-room, a lame lady with, a strong face, which softened

marvellously as she smiled at the child who came dancing in; she called

me to her presently, and took me on her lap and talked to me, and on the

following day our friend came to see my mother, to ask if she would let

me go away and be educated with this lady's niece, coming home for the

holidays regularly, but leaving my education in her hands. At first my

mother would not hear of it, for she and I scarcely ever left each other;

my love for her was an idolatry, hers for me a devotion. [A foolish

little story, about which I was unmercifully teased for years, marked

that absolute idolatry of her, which has not yet faded from my heart. In

tenderest rallying one day of the child who trotted after her everywhere,

content to sit, or stand, or wait, if only she might touch hand or dress

of "mamma," she said: "Little one (the name by which she always called

me), if you cling to mamma in this way, I must really get a string and

tie you to my apron, and how will you like that?" "O mamma darling," came

the fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." And, indeed, the tie of

love between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till

the sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to

slacken in the slightest degree.] But it was urged upon her that the

advantages of education offered were such as no money could purchase for

me; that it would be a disadvantage for me to grow up in a houseful of

boys--and, in truth, I was as good a cricketer and climber as the best of

them--that my mother would soon be obliged to send me to school, unless

she accepted an offer which gave me every advantage of school without its

disadvantages. At last she yielded, and it was decided that Miss Marryat,

on returning home, should take me with her.

Miss Marryat--the favorite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous

novelist--was a maiden lady of large means. She had nursed her brother

through the illness that ended in his death, and had been living with her

mother at Wimbledon Park. On her mother's death she looked round for work

which would make her useful in the world, and finding that one of her

brothers had a large family of girls, she offered to take charge of one

of them, and to educate her thoroughly. Chancing to come to Harrow, my

good fortune threw me in her way, and she took a fancy to me and thought

she would like to teach two little girls rather than one. Hence her offer

to my mother.

Miss Marryat had a perfect genius for teaching, and took in it the

greatest delight. From time to time she added another child to our party,

sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl. At first, with Amy Marryat and myself,

there was a little boy, Walter Powys, son of a clergyman with a large

family, and him she trained for some years, and then sent him on to

school admirably prepared. She chose "her children"--as she loved to call

us--in very definite fashion. Each must be gently born and gently

trained, but in such position that the education freely given should be a

relief and aid to a slender parental purse. It was her delight to seek

out and aid those on whom poverty presses most heavily, when the need for

education for the children weighs on the proud and the poor. "Auntie" we

all called her, for she thought "Miss Marryat" seemed too cold and stiff.

She taught us everything herself except music, and for this she had a

master, practising us in composition, in recitation, in reading aloud

English and French, and later, German, devoting herself to training us in

the soundest, most thorough fashion. No words of mine can tell how much I

owe her, not only of knowledge, bit of that love of knowledge which has

remained with me ever since as a constant spur to study.

Her method of teaching may be of interest to some, who desire to train

children with the least pain, and the most enjoyment to the little ones

themselves. First, we never used a spelling-book--that torment of the

small child--nor an English grammar. But we wrote letters, telling of the

things we had seen in our walks, or told again some story we had read;

these childish compositions she would read over with us, correcting all

faults of spelling, of grammar, of style, of cadence; a clumsy sentence

would be read aloud, that we might hear how unmusical it sounded; an

error in observation or expression pointed out. Then, as the letters

recorded what we had seen the day before, the faculty of observation was

drawn out and trained. "Oh, dear! I have nothing to say!" would come from

a small child, hanging over a slate. "Did you not go out for a walk

yesterday?" Auntie would question. "Yes", would be sighed out; "but

there's nothing to say about it". "Nothing to say! And you walked in the

lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes? You must use your eyes

better to-day." Then there was a very favorite "lesson", which proved an

excellent way of teaching spelling. We used to write out lists of all the

words we could think of, which sounded the same but were differently

spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night," and so on; and great was the

glory of the child who found the largest number. Our French lessons--as

the German later--included reading from the very first. On the day on

which we began German we began reading Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and the

verbs given to us to copy out were those that had occurred in the

reading. We learned much by heart, but always things that in themselves

were worthy to be learned. We were never given the dry questions and

answers which lazy teachers so much affect. We were taught history by one

reading aloud while the others worked--the boys as well as the girls

learning the use of the needle. "It's like a girl to sew," said a little

fellow, indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to run after a

girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned

by painting skeleton maps--an exercise much delighted in by small

fingers--and by putting together puzzle maps, in which countries in the

map of a continent, or counties in the map of a country, were always cut

out in their proper shapes. I liked big empires in those days; there was

a solid satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a large part

of the map was filled up thereby.

The only grammar that we ever learned as grammar was the Latin, and that

not until composition had made us familiar with the use of the rules

therein given. Auntie had a great horror of children learning by rote

things they did not understand, and then fancying they knew them. "What

do you mean by that expression, Annie?" she would ask me. After feeble

attempts to explain, I would answer: "Indeed, Auntie, I know in my own

head, but I can't explain". "Then, indeed, Annie, you do not know in your

own head, or you could explain, so that I might know in my own head." And

so a healthy habit was fostered of clearness of thought and of

expression. The Latin grammar was used because it was more perfect than

the modern grammars, and served as a solid foundation for modern

languages.

Miss Marryat took a beautiful place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in

Dorsetshire, on the borders of Devon, and there she lived for some five

years, a centre of beneficence in the district. She started a

Sunday-school, and a Bible-class after a while for the lads too old for

the school, who clamored for admission to her class in it. She visited

the poor, taking help wherever she went, and sending food from her own

table to the sick. It was characteristic of her that she would never give

"scraps" to the poor, but would have a basin brought in at dinner, and

would cut the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money she rarely,

if ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself to seek

permanent employment for anyone asking aid. Stern in rectitude herself,

and iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her influence, whether she was

feared or loved, was always for good. Of the strictest sect of the

Evangelicals, she was an Evangelical. On the Sunday no books were allowed

save the Bible or the "Sunday at Home"; but she would try to make the day

bright by various little devices; by a walk with her in the garden; by

the singing of hymns, always attractive to children; by telling us

wonderful missionary stories of Moffat and Livingstone, whose adventures

with savages and wild beasts were as exciting as any tale of Mayne

Reid's. We used to learn passages from the Bible and hymns for

repetition; a favorite amusement was a "Bible puzzle", such as a

description of some Bible scene, which was to be recognised by the

description. Then we taught in the Sunday-school, for Auntie would tell

us that it was useless for us to learn if we did not try to help those

who had no one to teach them. The Sunday-school lessons had to be

carefully prepared on the Saturday, for we were always taught that work

given to the poor should be work that cost something to the giver. This

principle, regarded by her as an illustration of the text, "Shall I give

unto the Lord my God that which has cost me nothing?" ran through all her

precept and her practice. When in some public distress we children went

to her crying, and asking whether we could not help the little children

who were starving, her prompt reply was: "What will you give up for

them?" And then she said that if we liked to give up the use of sugar, we

might thus each save 6d. a week to give away. I doubt if a healthier

lesson can be given to children than that of personal self-denial for the

good of others.

Daily, when our lessons were over, we had plenty of fun; long walks and

rides, rides on a lively pony, who found small children most amusing, and

on which the coachman taught us to stick firmly, whatever his

eccentricities of the moment; delightful all-day picnics in the lovely

country round Charmouth, Auntie our merriest playfellow. Never was a

healthier home, physically and mentally, made for young things than in

that quiet village. And then the delight of the holidays! The pride of my

mother at the good report of her darling's progress, and the renewal of

acquaintance with every nook and corner in the dear old house and garden.