Something like a journal of the proceedings at the Evergreens may be
interesting to those foreign readers of PUNCH who want to know the
customs of an English gentleman's family and household. There's plenty
of time to keep the Journal. Piano-strumming begins at six o'clock in
the morning; it lasts till breakfast, with but a minute's intermission,
when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practises in place of
her sister Miss Maria.
In fact, the confounded instrument never stops when the young ladies are
at their lessons, Miss Wirt hammers away at those stunning variations,
and keeps her magnificent finger in exercise.
I asked this great creature in what other branches of education she
instructed her pupils? 'The modern languages,' says she modestly:
'French, German, Spanish, and Italian, Latin and the rudiments of Greek
if desired. English of course; the practice of Elocution, Geography,
and Astronomy, and the Use of the Globes, Algebra (but only as far as
quadratic equations); for a poor ignorant female, you know, Mr. Snob,
cannot be expected to know everything. Ancient and Modern History
no young woman can be without; and of these I make my beloved pupils
PERFECT MISTRESSES. Botany, Geology, and Mineralogy, I consider as
amusements. And with these I assure you we manage to pass the days at
the Evergreens not unpleasantly.'
Only these, thought I--what an education! But I looked in one of Miss
Ponto's manuscript song-books and found five faults of French in four
words; and in a waggish mood asking Miss Wirt whether Dante Algiery was
so called because he was born at Algiers, received a smiling answer in
the affirmative, which made me rather doubt about the accuracy of Miss
Wirt's knowledge.
When the above little morning occupations are concluded, these
unfortunate young women perform what they call Calisthenic Exercises
in the garden. I saw them to-day, without any crinoline, pulling the
garden-roller.
Dear Mrs. Ponto was in the garden too, and as limp as her daughters; in
a faded bandeau of hair, in a battered bonnet, in a holland pinafore,
in pattens, on a broken chair, snipping leaves off a vine. Mrs. Ponto
measures many yards about in an evening. Ye heavens! what a guy she is
in that skeleton morning-costume!
Besides Stripes, they keep a boy called Thomas or Tummus. Tummus works
in the garden or about the pigsty and stable; Thomas wears a page's
costume of eruptive buttons.
When anybody calls, and Stripes is out of the way, Tummus flings
himself like mad into Thomas's clothes, and comes out metamorphosed
like Harlequin in the pantomime. To-day, as Mrs. P. was cutting the
grapevine, as the young ladies were at the roller, down comes Tummus
like a roaring whirlwind, with 'Missus, Missus, there's company
coomin'!' Away skurry the young ladies from the roller, down comes Mrs.
P. from the old chair, off flies Tummus to change his clothes, and in
an incredibly short space of time Sir John Hawbuck, my Lady Hawbuck,
and Master Hugh Hawbuck are introduced into the garden with brazen
effrontery by Thomas, who says, 'Please Sir Jan and my Lady to walk this
year way: I KNOW Missus is in the rose-garden.'
And there, sure enough, she was!
In a pretty little garden bonnet, with beautiful curling ringlets, with
the smartest of aprons and the freshest of pearl-coloured gloves, this
amazing woman was in the arms of her dearest Lady Hawbuck. 'Dearest Lady
Hawbuck, how good of you! Always among my flowers! can't live away from
them!'
'Sweets to the sweet! hum--a-ha--haw!' says Sir John Hawbuck, who piques
himself on his gallantry, and says nothing without 'a-hum--a-ha--a-haw!'
'Whereth yaw pinnafaw?' cries Master Hugh. 'WE thaw you in it, over the
wall, didn't we, Pa?'
'Hum--a-ha--a-haw!' burst out Sir John, dreadfully alarmed. 'Where's
Ponto? Why wasn't he at Quarter Sessions? How are his birds this year,
Mrs. Ponto--have those Carabas pheasants done any harm to your wheat?
a-hum--a-ha--a-haw!' and all this while he was making the most ferocious
and desperate signals to his youthful heir.
'Well, she WATH in her pinnafaw, wathn't she, Ma?' says Hugh, quite
unabashed; which question Lady Hawbuck turned away with a sudden query
regarding her dear darling daughters, and the ENFANT TERRIBLE was
removed by his father.
'I hope you weren't disturbed by the music?' Ponto says. 'My girls,
you know, practise four hours a day, you know--must do it, you
know--absolutely necessary. As for me, you know I'm an early man, and in
my farm every morning at five--no, no laziness for ME.'
The facts are these. Ponto goes to sleep directly after dinner on
entering the drawing-room, and wakes up when the ladies leave off
practice at ten. From seven till ten, from ten till five, is a very fair
allowance of slumber for a man who says he's NOT a lazy man. It is my
private opinion that when Ponto retires to what is called his 'Study,'
he sleeps too. He locks himself up there daily two hours with the
newspaper.
I saw the HAWBUCK scene out of the Study, which commands the garden.
It's a curious object, that Study. Ponto's library mostly consists of
boots. He and Stripes have important interviews here of mornings,
when the potatoes are discussed, or the fate of the calf ordained, or
sentence passed on the pig, &c.. All the Major's bills are docketed on
the Study table and displayed like a lawyer's briefs. Here, too, lie
displayed his hooks, knives, and other gardening irons, his whistles,
and strings of spare buttons. He has a drawer of endless brown paper for
parcels, and another containing a prodigious and never-failing supply of
string. What a man can want with so many gig-whips I can never conceive.
These, and fishing-rods, and landing-nets, and spurs, and boot-trees,
and balls for horses, and surgical implements for the same, and
favourite pots of shiny blacking, with which he paints his own shoes
in the most elegant manner, and buckskin gloves stretched out on their
trees, and his gorget, sash, and sabre of the Horse Marines, with his
boot-hooks underneath in atrophy; and the family medicine-chest, and
in a corner the very rod with which he used to whip his son, Wellesley
Ponto, when a boy (Wellesley never entered the 'Study' but for that
awful purpose)--all these, with 'Mogg's Road Book,' the GARDENERS'
CHRONICLE, and a backgammon-board, form the Major's library. Under the
trophy there's a picture of Mrs. Ponto, in a light blue dress and train,
and no waist, when she was first married; a fox's brush lies over the
frame, and serves to keep the dust off that work of art.
'My library's small, says Ponto, with the most amazing impudence, 'but
well selected, my boy--well selected. I have been reading the “History
of England” all the morning.'