At this period, by the command of my father, I was sent to boarding
school.--Ah! never shall I forget the contrast I experienced. I was an
alien and a stranger;--no one loved, caressed, nor cared for me;--my
actions were all constrained;--I was obliged to sit poring over needle
work, and forbidden to prate;--my body was tortured into forms, my mind
coerced, and talks imposed upon me, grammar and French, mere words, that
conveyed to me no ideas. I loved my guardians with passion--my tastes
were all passions--they tore themselves from my embraces with difficulty.
I sat down, after their departure, and wept--bitter tears--sobbed
convulsively--my griefs were unheeded, and my sensibility ridiculed--I
neither gave nor received pleasure. After the rude stare of curiosity,
ever wounding to my feelings, was gratified, I was left to sob alone.
At length, one young lady, with a fair face and a gentle demeanour,
came and seated herself beside me. She spoke, in a soft voice, words of
sympathy--my desolate heart fluttered at the sound. I looked at her--her
features were mild and sweet; I dried my tears, and determined that she
should be my friend.--My spirits became calmer, and for a short time I
indulged in this relief; but, on enquiry, I found my fair companion had
already a selected favourite, and that their amity was the admiration
of the school.--Proud, jealous, romantic--I could not submit to be the
second in her esteem--I shunned her, and returned her caresses with
coldness.
The only mitigation I now felt to the anguish that had seized my
spirits, was in the hours of business. I was soon distinguished for
attention and capacity; but my governness being with-held, by an infirm
constitution, from the duties of her office, I was consigned, with my
companions, to ignorant, splenetic, teachers, who encouraged not my
emulation, and who sported with the acuteness of my sensations. In the
intervals from school hours I fought and procured books.--These were
often wantonly taken from me, as a punishment for the most trivial
offence; and, when my indignant spirit broke out into murmurs and
remonstrance, I was constrained to learn, by way of penance, chapters in
the Proverbs of Solomon, or verses from the French testament. To revenge
myself, I satirized my tyrants in doggrel rhymes: my writing master also
came in for a share of this little malice; and my productions, wretched
enough, were handed round the school with infinite applause. Sunk in
sullen melancholy, in the hours of play I crept into corners, and
disdained to be amused;--home appeared to me to be the Eden from which
I was driven, and there my heart and thoughts incessantly recurred.
My uncle from time to time addressed to me--with little presents--kind,
pleasant, affectionate notes--and these I treasured up as sacred relics.
A visit of my guardians was a yet more tumultuous pleasure; but it
always left me in increased anguish. Some robberies had been committed
on the road to town.--After parting with my friends, I have laid awake
the whole night, conjuring up in my imagination all the tragic accidents
I had ever heard or read of, and persuading myself some of them must
have happened to these darling objects of my affection.
Thus passed the first twelvemonth of my exile from all I loved; during
which time it was reported, by my school-fellows, that I had never been
seen to smile. After the vacations, I was carried back to my prison with
agonizing reluctance, to which in the second year I became, however,
from habit, better reconciled. I learned music, was praised and encouraged
by my master, and grew fond of it; I contracted friendships, and
regained my vivacity; from a forlorn, unsocial, being, I became, once
more, lively, active, enterprising,--the soul of all amusement, and the
leader of every innocently mischievous frolic. At the close of another
year I left school. I kept up a correspondence for some time with a few
of my young friends, and my effusions were improved and polished by my
paternal uncle.