We had a town-hall,--a very imposing building of its class, and it was
not five minutes' walk from the square-towered church I mentioned. It
was, I well knew, a focus of some excitement at election times and
during the assizes, also in the spring, when religious meetings were
held there; yet I had never been in it, and seldom near it,--my mother
preferring us to keep as clear of the town proper as possible. Yet I
knew well where it stood, and I had an inkling now and then that music
was to be heard there; furthermore, within my remembrance, Millicent
and Lydia had been taken by Fred to hear Paganini within its
precincts. I was too young to know anything of the triennial festival
that distinguished our city as one of the most musical in England, at
that time almost the only one, indeed, so honored and glorified. I
said, what I must again repeat, that I knew nothing of such a
prospective or past event until the end of the summer in which I
entered my eleventh year.
I was too slight for my health to be complete, but very strong for one
so slight. Neither was I tall, but I had an innate love of grace and
freedom, which governed my motions; for I was extremely active, could
leap, spring, and run with the best, though I always hated walking. I
believe I should have died under any other care than that expanded
over me, for my mother abhorred the forcing system. Had I belonged to
those who advocate excessive early culture, my brain would, I
believe, have burst, so continually was it teeming. But from my
lengthy idleness alternating with moderate action, I had no strain
upon my faculties.
How perfectly I recollect the morning, early in autumn, on which the
festival was first especially suggested to me! It was a very bright
day, but so chilly that we had a fire in the parlor grate, for we were
all disposed to be very comfortable as part of our duty. I had said
all my lessons, and was now sitting at the table writing a small text
copy in a ruled book, with an outside marbled fantastically brown and
blue, which book lay, not upon the cloth, of course, but upon an
inclined plane formed of a great leather case containing about a quire
of open blotting-paper.
My sister Clotilda was over against me at the table, with the light
shaded from her eyes by a green fan screen, studying, as usual, in the
morning hours, a Greek Testament full of very neat little black notes.
I remember her lead-colored gown, her rich washing silk, and her clear
white apron, her crimson muffetees and short, close black mittens, her
glossy hair rolled round her handsome tortoise-shell comb, and the
bunch of rare though quaint ornaments--seals, keys, rings, and
lockets,--that balanced her beautiful English watch. What a treasure
they would have been for a modern chatelaine! my father having
presented her with the newest, and an antique aunt having willed her
the rest. She was very much like an old picture of a young person
sitting there.
For my part, I was usually industrious enough, because I was never
persecuted with long tasks; my attention was never stretched, as it
were, upon a last, so that it was no meritorious achievement if I
could bend it towards all that I undertook, with a species of
elasticity peculiar to the nervous temperament. My mother was also
busy. She sat in her tall chair at the window, her eyes constantly
drawn towards the street, but she never left off working, being deep
in the knitting of an enormous black silk purse for Lydia to carry
when she went to market. Millicent was somewhere out of the room, and
Lydia, having given orders for dinner, had gone out to walk.
I had written about six lines in great trepidation--for writing
usually fevered me a little, it was such an effort--when my great
goose-quill slipped through my fingers, thin as they were, and I made
a desperate plunge into an O. I exclaimed aloud, "Oh, what a blot!"
and my lady Mentor arose and came behind me.
"Worse than a blot, Charles," she said, or something to that effect.
"A blot might not have been your fault, but the page is very badly
written; I shall cut it out, and you had better begin another."
"I shall only blot that, Clo," I answered; and Clo appealed to my
mother.
"It is very strange, is it not, that Charles, who is very attentive
generally, should be so little careful of his writing? He will never
suit the post of all others the most important he _should_ suit."
"What is that?" I inquired so sharply that my mother grew dignified,
and responded gravely,--
"My dear Clotilda, it will displease me very much if Charles does not
take pains in every point, as you are so kind as to instruct him. It
is but little such a young brother can do to show his gratitude."
"Mother!" I cried, and sliding out of my chair, I ran to hers. "I
shall never be able to write,--I mean neatly; Clo may look over me if
she likes, and she will know how hard I try."
"But do you never mean to write, Charles?"
"I shall get to write somehow, I suppose, but I shall never write what
you call a beautiful hand."
My mother took my fingers and laid them along her own, which were
scarcely larger.
"But your hands are very little less than mine; surely they can hold a
pen?"
"Oh, yes, I can hold anything!" And then I laughed and said, "I could
do something with my hands too." I was going to finish, "I could
play;" but Lydia had just turned the corner of the street, and my
mother's eyes were watching her up to the door. So I stood before her
without finishing my explanation. She at length said, kindly, "Well,
now go and write one charming copy, and then we will walk."
I ran back to my table and climbed my chair, Clo having faithfully
fulfilled her word and cut out the offending leaf.
But I had scarcely traced once, "Do not contradict your elders,"
before Lydia came in, flushed and glowing, with a basket upon her arm.
She exhibited the contents to my mother,--who, I suppose, approved
thereof, as she said they might be disposed of in the kitchen,--and
then, with a sort of sigh, began, before she left the room, to remove
her walking dress.
"Oh! it is hopeless; the present price is a guinea."
"I was fearful it would be so, my dear girl," replied my mother, in a
tone of mingled condolence and authority she was fond of assuming. "It
would be neither expedient nor fitting that I should allow you to go,
though I very much wish it; but should we suffer ourselves such an
indulgence, we should have to deprive ourselves of comforts that are
necessary to health, and thus to well being. I should not like dear
Millicent and yourself, young as you are, to go alone to the crowded
seats in the town-hall; and if I went with you, we should be three
guineas out of pocket for a month."
This was true; my mother's jointure was small, and though we lived in
ease, it was by the exercise of an economy rigidly enforced and
minutely developed. It was in my own place, indeed, I learned how
truly happy does comfort render home, and how strictly comfort may be
expressed by love from prudence, by charity from frugality, and by wit
from very slender competence.
"I do not complain, dear mother," Lydia resumed, in a livelier vein;
"I ventured to ask at the office because you gave me leave, and Fred
thought there would be back seats lowered in price, or perhaps a
standing gallery, as there was at the last festival. But it seems the
people in the gallery made so much uproar last time that the committee
have resolved to give it up."
This was getting away from the point, so I put in, "Is the festival to
be soon, then, Lydia?"
"Yes, dear; it is only three weeks to-day to the first performance."
"Will it be very grand?"
"Oh, yes; the finest and most complete we have ever had."
Then Lydia, having quite recovered her cheerfulness, went to the door,
and speedily was no more seen. No one spoke, and I went on with my
copy; but it was hard work for me to do so, for I was in a pricking
pulsation from head to foot. It must have been a physical prescience
of mental excitement, for I had scarcely ever felt so much before. I
was longing, nay, crazy, to finish my page, that I might run out and
find Millicent, who, child as I was, I knew could tell me what I
wanted to hear better than any one of them. My eagerness impeded me,
and I did not conclude it to Clo's genuine satisfaction after all. She
dotted all my i's and crossed my t's, though with a condescending
confession that I had taken pains,--and then I was suffered to go; but
it was walking time, and my mother dressed me herself in her room, so
I could not catch Millicent till we were fairly in the street.