EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.
I WAS born in England about the year 1728 as nearly as I can find out.
My mother was first cousin to Lady Leighton, and married a gentleman of
her own name, who for love of her, forsook his native county and bought
a small estate not far from the Scottish border in Northumberland.
My mother had twins about the time that Lady Leighton died, and as only
one of the babes lived, she was easily persuaded to give the vacant
place to the little motherless Amabel, the daughter of her nearest and
dearest friend.
Sir Julius loved his beautiful young wife, and after she was taken
away, he could at first hardly endure the sight of her child. He had
been left with a large fortune and an unencumbered estate by his
father, who had been a prudent gentleman and a great man of business.
But Sir Julius was as I fancy very unlike the old gentlemen in every
respect. He liked living in London better than in Northumberland, and
spending money better than saving it. Moreover he was a hot Jacobite
and soon got into trouble with the existing Government by engaging in
some of the numerous plots of the time.
It was in the same year that my father was killed by a fall from
his horse while helping to rescue some poor creatures from a sudden
inundation. It became needful for Sir Julius to go abroad and leave
his affairs in the hands of certain family connections less loyal or
more prudent than himself. Nothing would serve but he must take his
daughter with him, and as my mother had lost her only ties to life in
England, she was easily persuaded to go along. Sir Julius lived for a
year or two in the neighborhood of Toulon on a small estate owned by
the Marquis de Crequi, who was some sort of a relation. Then my mother
died, and Sir Julius placed us two little children in the Abbey of St.
Jean de Crequi, which was at that time in a somewhat more prosperous
condition than I remember it afterward.
Sir Julius entered some foreign service for a while, and then his peace
was made at home and he returned to England, where he married a very
rich wife and had two or three children. But he allowed his daughter
and myself, her foster-sister, to remain at the convent till we were
all but grown up, remitting with more or less regularity money to pay
for our board and education. Why he did so I don't pretend to know
unless as I think probable he was as much afraid of his second wife as
he was afterward of his third. Of course, I remember nothing of all
this nor did I learn much of it till after our return to England.
As I said, my first distinct recollection is of tumbling into the
fountain well and being fished out by mother Prudentia. But I used
to have dim and fleeting visions of a very different home—of an old
timbered house and a great apple orchard loaded with fruit, and a
tall, bluff man holding me up to gather a golden mellow apple with my
own hands. As to our journey and the events of our short residence in
France, my mind is all a blank. I seem to myself to have waked up in
the old abbey at a time when I was old enough to climb up the great
stairway on my hands and knees and sometimes to be carried in arms,
though I think that privilege oftener belonged to Amabel who was rather
a delicate child, while I was as strong as a little donkey.
We were very happy together, Amabel and I. No difference was made
between us in any respect that I remember. We learned the same things,
dressed in the same way, and slept in the same kind of little white
covered beds in our own corner of the dormitory. There were three or
four other pupils, but they were all but one, very much older than
ourselves—quite young ladies in fact.
Dénice was our only playmate. I don't know what her other name was or
whether she had any, but I have fancied since that she might have been
a daughter of some unhappy Protestant family, torn from her parents by
the cruel hand of persecutors and shut up at St. Jean to be made a good
Catholic. Such things were common enough in those days. She was a thin
dark child, shy and shrinking in her manners with her elders, but a
capital playfellow and the best of story tellers. She was three or four
years older than Amabel and myself, and had great influence over us,
which she always used for good. A better child never breathed, and her
early death was my first real grief.
Our household consisted, beside the pupils whom I have mentioned, of
about eighteen members in all—
First of course came the Abbess. She was a middle-aged lady when I
first knew her, and very handsome but worn with cares, fasts, and
vigils, and so bent she looked much beyond her real age. I have nothing
but good to say of her. I think it likely from what I now remember
that she was not without a tinge of that spiritual pride which is
nurtured by nothing more than by the voluntary humiliations required
by the Roman church within all religious persons so-called. But as a
ruler of her family, nobody could be more just, firm, and kind. She
allowed herself no indulgences that were not shared by the rest of the
community, and as I believe often denied herself absolutely necessary
food and clothing to add to the comfort of the old and feeble members
of the household. She was an excellent manager, overseeing everything,
yet not like many notable women wasting her time in doing work which
belonged to other people. While I believe she knew to a single olive
and a single ounce of wool everything which her fields produced, she
did not interfere vexatiously with the sisters who had charge of
these things, but allowed them to manage in their own way. We little
ones went to her for an hour every day to receive a special religious
instruction, and she used to make these hours very pleasant, dismissing
us usually with a bit of cake or fruit or some other little treat. We
children at least adored her.
Next came the Mother Assistant, who was Mother Superior's right hand in
all that pertained to the management of the house and farm, though I do
not think there was much sympathy between them in other things. Mother
Assistant was a narrow-minded woman, to whom the framework of religion
was everything. She had a particular and fanatical devotion to the
Saints, which was not, or so I think, the case with Mother Superior.
I have an idea that she was annoyed at the state of ostracism, so
to speak, in which we lived, and that she would not have been sorry
to return to the old ways, and make, peace with the Church and the
archbishop; but, of course, this is only an impression, such as young
folks often pick up concerning their elders. She was not fond of
children, and I don't think there was any love lost between us.
Then came several other officers.
The Mother Sacristine, who had the whole charge of the Church, the
vestments, etc. And many a weary hour did the good mother spend in
darning rent hangings and moth-eaten altar cloths (for these little
pests have no more respect for the ante-pendium of an altar than for
an old laborer's Sunday coat), and trying to furbish up the once rich
vestments which would never look anything but faded and shabby after
all her pains.
The Mother Bursar had charge of the purse and the money, when there was
any. She had, as I think, only one serious worry in life, and that was,
that fast as she might, she would always look fat and jolly, her cheeks
and chin would always be rosy, and her face break into dimples whenever
she smiled, which was very often. As to the perennial want of money,
she regarded that, not as a worry, but as a cross, which is a very
different matter.
Mother Prudentia was mistress of the novices, and of us young ones as
well. She was a good woman, according to her lights, as the abbess
herself, very fond of young people, and rather too much given to
indulging them, if anything. Certainly, we children had very easy times
with her. She was a born gossip, and loved nothing better than to
gather us round her and tell us tales by the hour, of Mother Angelique,
her work and her trials, of the Mother Perpetua, who instituted the
reform, of endless saints and martyrs, of various mothers and sisters
whom she had known, and sometimes, also, of giants, dwarfs, fairies,
and the like. We had a certain feeling that these latter tales were a
kind of contraband goods, and I fear we did not like them the less on
that account.
Our sisters were, I suppose, much like any other collection of ladies
of the same age and breeding, except that the sense of living under
the ban of persecution and suffering for the truth's sake gave a kind
of elevation to their characters not always found in convents. Mother
Prudentia once told me that, at a visitation made by the Bishop or some
other great functionary, the nuns then in the convent had been offered
the choice of entering any other religious house they pleased; but not
a single one had availed herself of the permission.
The good ladies kept their hours very strictly, revered the
constitutions and rules of their order as much as the Scripture itself,
or perhaps a little more, considering that they knew a good deal more
about them, sang endless litanies and read all the books they had.
In their hours of labor they worked in the garden and orchard, made
beautiful cakes and sweetmeats (I only wish I had Sister Lazarus'
receipt book), and were especially famous for their candied fruits,
very few of which were ever tasted within the convent walls.
They did a great deal of embroidery and made lovely lace with the
needle. Mother Angelique had disapproved of fancy-work, but the
lace and embroidery were too important as sources of revenue to be
disregarded. Now and then a sister disappeared for a few days, and then
it was understood that she was in retreat,—that is, she shut herself
up for a special season of fasting and prayer. The rules of convents
are such that one may live in a religious house as a pupil for years
and yet know very little of the interior workings of the family; but
we were so few in number, and so poor withal, that we were thrown very
much together.
The three elder pupils mostly kept by themselves, and we saw very
little of any of them except Desireè. She would sometimes condescend to
play with us, and usually ended by leading us into some scrape. She was
the only one destined by her friends for the veil, and certainly she
had the least vocation for a religious life. Marguerite and Athenais
were grave, serious-minded girls, and would, I think, gladly have
remained in the house; but their friends had different views for them,
and they were taken away to be married.
I have said the house was a large one, and had once been very
magnificent. There were two long rows of cells for the nuns, who
formerly numbered fifty or sixty. There was a range of superb
apartments formerly allotted to the abbess, but they were shut up and
disused. The house was built around two courts, which were connected
by a tall Gothic arch. The court, about which were the offices and the
rooms in which we lived, was paved with fine slabs of marble, many of
which, in my time, were cracked, broken, and displaced.
The fountain, in which I took my involuntary bath, stood in the centre,
and was, as I remembered it, a very curious piece of workmanship. It
was a great round basin, supported on a short stem, and was covered
on the outside with sculpture. The figures were worn with time and
weather; but one could easily trace cupids, dancing girls, and figures
with goats' feet, all intermixed with garlands of leaves and flowers.
The basin was always filled with clear cool water, which had its
source somewhere in the hills back of the house, and which ran out of
a conduit pipe into a paved channel, and so into the mountain stream
which watered our garden.
On one side of the court was the church and a chapel, which last was
mostly used nowadays, the sacristy and other apartments belonging
thereto. Joining the church at right angles were the refectory and
parlors and the rooms used by the present abbess, or Superior, as
she preferred to be called, and other apartments, whose use, if they
had any, I knew not, for I never saw them opened in my time. On the
third side were the different offices and various storerooms for wood,
charcoal, etc., as well as for the products of the farm. Above these
were the ranges of cells, most of which stood empty, except for some
small remains of furniture.
The outer court was, as I have said, the cemetery for the sisters,
though I hardly think they could all have been buried there. It was
marked by no stones except the marble cross in the centre, and the
grass grew with rank luxuriance over the sunken mounds which marked the
resting-places of the dead. Around this court, also, ran a range of
cloisters, all paved with marble and adorned with carving of beautiful
design. But here, also, the pavement was broken and the ornaments
falling to decay. Here, as I have said, were situated the private
apartments of the old abbesses, and others which were used for guest
chambers under the old regime, but which were now always shut up and
locked. How we used to wish we could see these rooms, which we thought
must be very magnificent!
In one corner of this court was a very deep and disused well, into
which we used to look with wonder and awe. When the sun was in the
right direction it was possible, by gazing intently, to discern, about
half way down, the remains of a very rude and narrow spiral stairway,
which went winding down into the darkness. We used to drop little
pebbles into this well, and listen, with breathless expectation,
for the hollow resounding splash in the unseen waters below. Mother
Prudentia used to say that this place was not really a well, but a
disused entrance to certain very deep and extensive caverns below the
house.
Only two sides of this court were surrounded with buildings. The others
were formed by the walls which separated it from the inner court on
one side and the gardens on the other. The cloisters, however, ran all
around, and were famous places to play in on wet days.
The garden was beautiful. It lay on a sunny slope facing the south,
and was well sheltered from the cruel winds which sometimes visit that
part of the country. I never saw elsewhere such banks of violets and
thickets of roses and jasmine. There were old, old orange trees, all
gnarled and rough, but bearing the sweetest of thin-skinned fruit.
There were tuberoses and great bushes of lavender and rosemary, and
more flowers than I can remember, and caper plants growing in the
old ruined brickwork, fragments of which peeped everywhere, and gay
Lent lilies, and clumps of tall white ones, which we used to consider
specially sacred to the Virgin. Oh, I cannot pretend to enumerate the
charms of that garden.
There was a fish-pond, which we little ones were forbidden to approach,
and a lovely little brook full of minnows and other interesting
creatures, where we used to get into disgrace by dabbling and wetting
our feet and our pinafores. Here were our own gardens, where we each
had a currant bush, and where we raised flowers and salads, and now
and then a melon. Happy she whose salad or melon was considered good
enough for the Reverend Mother's table. I don't believe the dear lady
was very fond of melons, but she used to accept them graciously, and
ceremoniously ask our permission, which of course we always gave, to
divide the treat with the other mothers and sisters.
I must not forget the potage, or herb garden, where grew salads and
pulse of many sorts, endive and parsley, sweet herbs and garlic, beside
such grand cucumbers, great gourds and melons, and such scarlet love
apples as one never sees in England. I don't wonder that the children
of Israel hankered after such things in the midst of the desert. I
should like to see a roasted gourd myself once more. Here was a great
range of bee-hives, which were the special care of Sister Baptista.
Beyond the garden were the olive orchard and the fields belonging to
the house, where we were never allowed to go by ourselves. Here were
pastured our three cows, whose produce made a good part of our living.
Just outside the pasture lived an old laboring man, who, with his wife
and his lame son, did all the work of the farm which was too hard for
the sisters. We were, for some reason or other, dreadfully afraid of
this old man, though he never did anything worse than make faces at us,
which I don't think he could help, and laugh a queer shrill laugh when
we ran away from him.
Beyond these fields was a valley, through which ran a stream, usually
nearly dry in summer, though it was a hoarse roaring torrent in winter.
Beyond this rose high rather barren hills.
On the other side of the house was a narrow court, also paved, where
we never set foot, and a high wall spiked on the top. The house had no
windows on the lower floor on this side, but there were several on the
floor above.
One of these was accessible to us, being in a sort of disused
oratory—or so I judge from what furniture remained to it—and was a
great resort of Amabel's and mine. From it see could see the land,
which fell off very rapidly, and, beyond, the blue sea dotted with
sails. Amabel used to point southward, and say that we had come across
the sea, and that our home was "over there." Of course, she was
mistaken, for the land on the other side was Africa, as I now know,
where the poor blackamoors come from; but we used to like to look at it
and fancy sometimes that we saw a little bit of England.
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