Mrs. Franklin, a widow lady of very considerable fortune, inhabited an
elegant house on Richmond Hill, kept a number of servants, and had the
most splendid equipage in the whole neighbourhood. She had an only
daughter, to whom she was fondly indulgent, and on whom she determined
to bestow the best education that could possibly be procured for her,
let the expense be what it would.
Jemima was a very amiable child; and if she had been so fortunate as to
have been placed under the care of any one a little more disposed than
her mother was to combat her fancies and want of resolution, she would
not have had to regret the immense sums squandered upon her to no kind
of purpose, nor to wish she could recal (as she often vainly did) the
time she had trifled away in doing nothing.
It must appear very extraordinary that this should have been the unhappy
fate of a little girl, who wished so much to profit by the instruction
procured for her, and had the greatest desire to be an accomplished
woman; but Jemima wished to be accomplished, without having the
_trouble_ of making herself so, and possessed neither the _resolution_
nor _perseverance_ so absolutely necessary to the attainment of the
perfection she aimed at.
She began every thing with eagerness and alacrity; but the most trifling
difficulty which came in her way put a total stop to her progress, and
she immediately persuaded herself that it was not possible she ever
should be able to surmount them.
She had from her infancy been extremely fond of drawing, and desiring to
be instructed in that agreeable art, one of the first masters was
procured for her: she had in a very short time succeeded in copying,
with tolerable correctness, the first things he gave her to do; and the
greatest hopes were entertained of her making a great proficiency in
what she appeared to prefer to every other amusement. The master now
gave her some other drawings to copy, which required a little more
attention and study, and she began to find difficulties in her way,
which she had not foreseen: she tried them twice--they were pretty well,
but not perfect; a few faults still remained, which her master pointed
out to her. Jemima concluded she _never_ should do them better; and as
he insisted that she could not proceed till she had made herself
mistress of the trifles he objected to, she determined to give up all
thoughts of drawing figure, and apply herself entirely to landscape.
She was delighted with this new employment; her master had the sweetest
drawings of trees, cottages, and rivers, that had ever been seen! She
should never be tired of copying such pretty things, and she was sure
she should not meet with half the difficulties which were to be found in
drawing figure.
She made outlines of several trees, and had she but been possessed of
perseverance enough to have perfected herself in that part, before she
attempted to go farther, all would have been easy and pleasant; but
Jemima knew nothing of perseverance or patience, and insisted on having
a finished landscape to do directly; and the master, to shew her how
incapable she was of executing such a thing, indulged her in her fancy:
but when he endeavoured to explain to her the nature of perspective,
light and shadow, and several other rules necessary for her to
understand, Jemima dropped the pencil from her fingers. She had not
perfectly comprehended his meaning, and wanted resolution to question
him, and endeavour to make it clearer, and once more concluded she never
should be able to make any thing of it, and that it would be much more
prudent to turn to some other pursuit.
Accordingly the drawing-master was dismissed; and all the money her
mamma had paid him for his attendance, for quantities of paper, pencils,
chalk, and (which was of much more consequence, and which no sum could
recal) the loss of her own precious time, were thrown away to no
purpose. But Jemima did not mean to stop here; she should do very well
without drawing, she said, and she would give all the time she had
intended to employ that way entirely to music, and had no doubt, but
that by the time she was sixteen she should be quite a proficient; was
very sorry she had so long neglected her piano forte, and requested of
her master that he would bring her some better music than the simple
easy lessons she had been playing, assuring him that she intended to
apply very seriously. But, alas! she had no better success in this than
in her drawing; difficulties obtruded themselves whatever she turned to,
and when she quitted the piano for the harp, and from the harp returned
to the piano, she found herself just in the same predicament.
The music was given up for the French and Italian languages, geography,
and botany, all of which ended in the same way: nothing was to be learnt
without a sufficient stock of perseverance and resolution to surmount
the obstacles which lay in the way; and as the _smallest_ was quite
enough to stop Jemima's progress, it is not to be wondered at (as she
was allowed to have her own way in every thing) that at the age of
sixteen, though what would have been a comfortable independence to many,
had been spent upon her education, that she knew no one thing in the
world.
At twenty she had but too much cause to repent of her folly: her mother,
by lawsuits, and other unforeseen events, lost the greater part of her
fortune, and was obliged to retire into a remote part of the country;
and in that lonely place what a comfort and amusement would she have
found in music or drawing, had she but endeavoured, when she had so good
an opportunity, to perfect herself in either! But she had nothing to
do, no means of employing herself agreeably, but spent her time in
loitering about from one window to another, tired of herself, and tiring
every body who saw her.