It was the sunshine really that first called her into conscious
existence, the blessed heat and light; up to the moment that she
recognised these with a certain acknowledgment of them, and consequently
of things in general outside herself, she had been as unconscious as a
white grub without legs. But that moment roused her, calling forth from
her senses their first response in the thrill of warmth and well-being
to which she awoke, and quickening her intellect at the same time with
the stimulating effort to discover from whence her comfort came. She
could remember no circumstance in connection with this earliest
awakening. All she knew of it was the feeling of warmth and brightness,
which she said recurred to her at odd times ever afterwards, and could
be recalled at will.
Some may see in this first awakening a foreshadowing of the fact that
she was born to be a child of light, and to live in it; and certainly
it was always light for which she craved, the actual light of day,
however; but nothing she yearned for ever came to her in the form she
thought of, and thus, when she asked for sunshine it was grudgingly
given, fate often forcing her into dark dwellings; but all the time
that light which illumines the spirit was being bestowed upon her in
limitless measure.
The next step in her awakening was to a kind of self-consciousness.
She was lying on her nurse's lap out of doors, looking up at the sky,
and some one was saying, "Oh, you pretty thing!" But it was long years
before she connected the phrase with herself, although she smiled in
response to the voice that uttered it. Then she found herself on her
feet in a garden, moving very carefully for fear of falling; and
everything about her was gigantic, from Jane Nettles, the nurse, at
whose skirt she tugged when she wanted to attract attention, to the
brown wallflower and the purple larkspur which she could not reach to
pull. There was a thin hedge at the end of the garden, through which
she looked out on a path across a field, and a thick hedge on her
left, in which a thrush had built a nest at an immense height above
her head. Jane lifted her up to look into the nest, and there was
nothing in it; then Jane lifted her up again, and, oh! there was a
blue egg there; and Jane lifted her up a third time, and the egg had
brown spots on it. The mystery of the egg awed her. She did not ask
herself how it came to be there, but she felt a solemn wonder in the
fact, and the colour caused a sensation of pleasure, a positive
thrill, to run through her. This was her first recognition of beauty,
and it was to the beauty of colour, not of form, that her senses
awoke! Through life she had a keen joy and nice discrimination in
colours, and seemed to herself to have always known their names.
But those spots on the egg. She was positive that they had come
between her first and second peep, which shows how defective her
faculty of observation, which became so exact under cultivation, was
to begin with. Beth also betrayed other traits with regard to the
spots, which she carried through life--the trick of being most
positive when she was quite in the wrong, for one; and want of faith
in other people, for another.
Jane said: "Did you see the spots that time, dearie?"
"Spots just comed," Beth declared.
"No, dearie, spots always there," Jane answered.
"Spots _comed_," Beth maintained.
"No, dearie. Spots always there, only you didn't see them."
"Spots comed _now_!" Beth stamped, and then, because Jane shook her
head, she sat down suddenly on the gravel, and sent up a howl which
brought her father out. He chucked Jane under the chin. Jane giggled,
then made a sign; and there was Mrs. Caldwell looking from one to the
other.
To Beth's recollection it seemed as if she had rapidly acquired the
experiences of this first period. Each incident that she remembered is
apparently trifling in itself, but who can say of what significance as
an indication? In those first few years, had there been any there with
intelligence to interpret, they probably would have found foreshadowings
of all she might be, and do, and suffer; and that would have been the
time to teach her. To me, therefore, these earliest impressions are more
interesting than much that occurred to her in after life, and I have
carefully collected them in the hope of finding some clue in them to
what followed. In several instances it seems to me that the impression
left by some chance observation or incident on her baby mind, made it
possible for her to do many things in after life which she certainly
never would have done but for those early influences. It would be
affectation, therefore, to apologise for such detail. Nothing can be
trivial or insignificant that tends to throw light on the mysterious
growth of our moral and intellectual being. Many a cramped soul that
struggles on in after years, vainly endeavouring to rise on a broken
wing, might, had the importance of such seeming trifles in its
development been recognised, have won its way upward from the first,
untrammelled and uninjured. It was a Jesuit, was it not, who said: "Give
me the child until it is six years old; after that you can do as you
like with it." That is the time to make an indelible impression of
principles upon the mind. In the first period of life, character is a
blossom that should be carefully touched; in the second the petals
fall, and the fruit sets; it is hard and acrid then until the third
period, when, if things go well, it will ripen on the bough, and be
sweet and wholesome--if ill, it will drop off immediately, and rot upon
the ground.
Beth was a combative child, always at war with Jane. There was a great
battle fought about a big black velvet bonnet that Beth wanted to wear
one day. Beth screamed and kicked and scratched and bit, and finally
went out in the bonnet triumphantly, and found herself standing alone
on the edge of a great green world dotted with yellow gorse. A hot,
wide dusty road stretched miles away in front of her; and at an
infinite distance overhead was the blue sky flecked with clouds so
white and dazzling that her eyes ached when she looked at them. She
had stopped a moment to cry, "Wait for me!" Jane walked on, however,
taking no notice, and Beth struggled after her, whimpering, out of
breath, choked with dust, scorched with heat, parched with thirst,
tired to death--how she suffered! A heartless lark sang overhead,
regardless of her misery: and she never afterwards heard a lark
without recalling the long white road, the heat, and dust, and
fatigue. She tore off the velvet bonnet, and threw it away, then began
another despairing "Wait for me!" But in the midst of the cry she saw
some little yellow flowers growing in the grass at the roadside, and
plumped down then and there inconsequently to gather them. By that
time Jane was out of sight; and at the moment Beth became aware of the
fact, she also perceived an appalling expanse of bright blue sky above
her, and sat, gazing upwards, paralysed with terror. This was her
first experience of loneliness, her first terrified sensation of
immensity.
Then the snowdrops and crocuses were out, and the sky grew black, and
she sat on the nursery floor and looked up at it in solemn wonder.
Flakes of snow began to fall, a few at first, then thicker and
thicker, till the air was full of them, and Jane said, "The Scotch are
picking their geese," and immediately Beth saw the Scotch sitting in
some vague scene, picking geese in frenzied haste, and throwing great
handfuls of feathers up in the air; which was probably the first
independent flight of her imagination.
It is astonishing how little consciousness of time there is in these
reminiscences. The seasons are all confounded, and it is as if things
had happened not in succession but abreast. There was snow on the
ground when her brother Jim was with her in the wash-house, making
horse-hair snares to catch birds. They made running loops of the
horse-hair, and tied them on to sticks, then went out and stuck them
in the ground in the garden outside the wash-house window, sprinkled
crumbs of bread, and crept carefully back to watch. First came a
robin with noiseless flight, and lit on the ground with its head on
one side; but the children were too eager, and in their excitement
they made a noise, and the robin flew away. Next came a sparrow, saw
the children, saw the crumbs, and, with the habitual self-possession
of his race, stretched in his head between the sticks, picked out the
largest piece of bread, and carried it off in triumph. Immediately
afterwards a blackbird flew down, and hopped in among the snares
unconsciously. In a moment he was caught, and, with a wild shout of
joy, the children rushed out to secure their prize; but when they
reached the spot the blackbird had burst his bonds and escaped. Then
Beth threw a chunk of wood at her brother, and cut his head open. His
cries brought out the household, and Beth was well shaken--she was
always being shaken at this time--and marched off promptly to papa's
dressing-room, and made to sit on a little chair in the middle of the
floor, where she amused herself by singing at the top of her voice--
"All around Sebastopol,
All around the ocean,
Every time a gun goes off,
Down falls a Russian."
She wondered why her father and mother were laughing when they came to
release her. Before they appeared, however, brother Jim, her victim,
had come to the door with his head tied up, and peeped in; and she
knew that they were friends again, because he shot ripe gooseberries
at her across the floor as if they had been marbles. There is a
discrepancy here, seeing that snow and ripe gooseberries are not in
season at the same time. It is likely, however, that she broke her
brother's head more than once, and the occasions became confounded in
her recollection.
When the children went to bathe off the beach, Beth would not let Jane
dip her if kicking, scratching, and screaming could prevent it. There
used to be terrible scenes between them, until at last one day
somebody else's old Scotch nurse interfered, and persuaded Beth to go
into the water with her and consent to be dipped three times. Beth
went like a lamb--instead of having to be dragged in and pushed under,
given no time to recover her breath between each dip, half choked with
sand and salt water, and finally dragged out, exhausted by the
struggle, and certainly suffering more than she had benefited by the
immersion. The cold water came up about her and took her breath away
as the old Scotch nurse led her in, and Beth clung to her hand and
panted "Wait!" as she nerved herself for the dip. Nurse had promised
to wait until Beth was ready, and it was Beth's faith in her promise
that gave her courage to go bravely through the ordeal. The old Scotch
nurse never deceived her as Jane had done, and so Beth learnt that
there are people in the world you can depend on.
There was one painful circumstance in connection with those battles on
the beach. Beth was such a tiny girl, they did not think it necessary
to give her a bathing dress, and consequently she was marched into the
water with nothing on; and the agony of shame she suffered is
indescribable. But the worst of it was, the shame wore off. Jim teased
her about it and called her "a little girl," a dreadful term of
reproach in those days, when the boys were taught to consider
themselves superior beings. Beth flew at him, and fought him for it,
but was beaten; and then she took off her things in the nursery, and
scampered up and down before them all, with nothing on, just to show
how little she cared.
It is astonishing how small a part Beth's family play in these
childish recollections. Her father took very little notice of the
children. He was out of health and irritable, and only tried to save
himself annoyance; not to disturb him was the object of everybody's
life. Probably he only appeared on the scene when Beth was naughty,
and the recollection, being painful, was quickly banished. She
remembered him coming downstairs when she was standing in the hall one
day, when her mother was away from home. He had a letter in his hand,
and asked her if she would send her love to mamma. Her heart bounded;
it seemed to her such a tremendous thing to be asked; and she was
dying to send her love; but such an agony of shyness came upon her,
she could not utter a word. She had a little hymn-book in her hand,
however, which she held out to her father. No, that would not do. He
could not send the book, only her love. Didn't she love mamma? Didn't
she! But not a word would come.
All through life she was afflicted with that inability to speak at
critical times. Dumb always was she apt to be when her affections were
concerned, except occasionally, in moments of strong excitement; and
in anger, when she was driven to bay. The intensity of her feelings
would probably have made her dumb in any case in moments of emotion;
but doubtless the hardness of those about her at this impressionable
period strengthened the defect. It is impossible to escape from the
hampering influences of our infancy. Among Beth's many recollections
of these days, there was not one of a caress given or received, or of
any expression of tenderness; and so she never became familiar with
the exquisite language of love, and was long in learning that it is
not a thing to be ashamed of and concealed.
Later that day, with a mighty effort, she summoned up courage enough
to go down to her father. She was determined to send the message to
mamma; but when it came to the point, she was again unable to utter a
word on the subject. Her mother had gone to stay with her relations in
England. Beth found her father in the dining-room, and several other
people were present. He was standing by the sideboard, mixing
whisky-and-water, so, instead of sending her love to mamma, Beth
exclaimed, confidently and pleasantly, "If you drink whisky, you'll be
drunk again."
A smart slap rewarded this sally. Beth turned pale and recoiled. It
was her first taste of human injustice. To drink and to be drunk was
to her merely the natural sequence of cause and effect, and she could
not conceive why she should be slapped and turned out of the room so
promptly for uttering such a simple truth.
Beth was present at many discussions between her father and mother,
and took much interest in them, all the more perhaps, because most of
what was said was a mystery to her. She wondered why any mention of
the "moon-faced Bessie" disturbed her mother's countenance. Jane
Nettles, too--when her mother was out, her father used to come and
talk to Jane, and they laughed a good deal. He admired Jane's white
teeth, and the children used to make Jane show them her teeth after
that.
"Papa says Jane's got nice white teeth," Beth said to her mother one
day, and she never forgot the glance which Mrs. Caldwell threw at her
husband. His eyes fell before it.
"What! even the servants, Henry!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, and then
she left the room. Beth learned what it all meant in after years, the
career of one of her brothers furnishing the clue. Like father, like
son.
It was after this that Mrs. Caldwell went to visit her relations in
England, accompanied by two of the children. It was in the summer, and
Jane took Beth to the Castle Hill that morning to see the steamer,
with her mother on board, go by. The sea was iridescent, like molten
silver, the sky was high and cloudless, and where sea and sky met and
mingled on the horizon it was impossible to determine. Numbers of
steamers passed far out. They looked quite small, and Beth did not
think there was room in any of them for her mother and brother and
sister. They did not, therefore, interest her much, nor did the
policeman who came and talked to Jane. But the Castle Hill, and the
little winding path up which she had come, the green of the grass, the
brambles, the ferns, the ruined masonry against which she leant, the
union of sea and sky and shore, the light, the colour, absorbed her,
and drew her out of herself. Her soul expanded, it spread its wings,
it stretched out spiritual arms to meet and clasp the beloved nature
of which it felt itself to be a part. It was her earliest recognition
of their kinship, a glimpse of greatness, a moment of ecstasy never to
be forgotten, the first stirring in herself of the creative faculty,
for in her joy she burst out into a little song--
"Far on the borders of the Arcane."
It was as if the pleasure played upon her, using her as a passive
instrument by which it attained to audible expression. For how should
a child know a word like Arcane? It came to her as things do which we
have known and forgotten--the whole song did in fact; but she held it
as a possession sacred to herself, and never recorded it, or told more
than that one line, although it stayed with her, lingered on her lips,
and in her heart, for the rest of her life. It was a great moment for
Beth, the moment when her further faculty first awoke. On looking back
to it in after years, she fancied she found in it confirmation of an
opinion which she afterwards formed. Genius to her was yet only
another word for soul. She could not believe that we all have souls,
or that they are at all equally developed even in those who have
obtained them. She was a child under six at this time, Jane Nettles
was a woman between twenty and thirty, and the policeman--she could
not say what age he was; but she was the only one of the three that
throbbed responsive to the beauty of the wonderful scene before them,
or felt her being flooded with the glory of the hour.
Meanwhile, what her parents would have called her education had begun.
She went with Mildred, her elder sister, to a day school. They used to
run down the street together without a nurse, and the sense of freedom
was delicious to Beth. They had to pass the market where the great
mealy specimen potatoes were displayed, and Mary Lynch's shop--she was
the vegetable woman, who used to talk to Mrs. Caldwell about the
children when they went there, and one or the other always called them
"poor little bodies," upon which they commented afterwards among
themselves. Mary Lynch was a large red-faced woman, and when the
children wanted to describe a stout person they always said, "As fat
as Mary Lynch." One house which Beth had to pass on her way to school
made a strong impression on her imagination. It was a gloomy abode
with a broad doorstep and deep portico, broken windows, and a
mud-splashed door, from beneath which she always expected to see a
slender stream of blood slowly trickling. For a man called Macgregor
had murdered his wife there--beaten her brains out with a poker. Beth
never heard the name Macgregor in after life without a shiver of
dislike. Much of her time at school was spent in solitary confinement
for breaches of the peace. With a face as impassive as a monkey's she
would do the most mischievous things, and was always experimenting in
naughty tricks, as on one occasion when Miss Deeble left the
schoolroom for a minute, but had to come hurrying back, recalled by
wild shrieks; and found that Beth had managed in that minute to tip up
a form with four children on it, throw their books out of the window,
and sprinkle ink all over the floor. Miss Deeble marched her
downstairs to an empty kitchen, and left her sitting on a stool in the
middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in
the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows
instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution.
When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the
bellows, and there despatch him. She had no horror of any creature in
her childhood, but as she matured, her whole temperament changed in
this respect, and when she met a beetle on the stairs she would turn
and fly rather than pass it, and she would feel nauseated, and shiver
with disgust for hours after if she thought of it. She knew the exact
moment that this horror came upon her; it happened when she was ten
years old. She found a beetle one day lying on its back, and thinking
it was dead, she took it up, and was swinging it by its antennae when
the creature suddenly wriggled itself round, and twined its prickly
legs about her finger, giving her a start from which she never
recovered.
Beth probably got as far as A B ab, while she was at Miss Deeble's;
but if she were backward with her book, her other faculties began to
be acute. It was down in that empty kitchen that she first felt the
enchantment of music. Some one suddenly played the piano overhead and
Beth listened spell-bound. Again and again the player played, and
always the same thing, practising it. Beth knew every note. Long
afterwards she was trying some waltzes of Chopin's, and came upon one
with which she was quite familiar. She knew that she had heard it all,
over and over again, but could not think when or where. Presently,
however, as she played it, she perceived a smell of black-beetles, and
instantly she was back in that disused kitchen of Miss Deeble's,
listening to the practising overhead.
All Beth's senses were acute, and from the first her memory helped
itself by the involuntary association of incongruous ideas. Many
people's recollections are stimulated by the sense of smell, but it is
a rarer thing for the sense of taste to be associated with the past in
the same way, as it was in Beth's case. There were many circumstances
which were recalled by the taste of the food she had been eating at
the time they occurred. The children often dined in the garden in
those early days, and once a piece of apple-dumpling Beth was eating
slid off her plate on to the gravelled walk. Some one picked it up,
and put it on her plate again, all covered with stones and grit, and
the sight of hot apple-dumpling made her think of gravel ever
afterwards, and filled her with disgust; so that she could not eat it.
She had a great aversion to bread and butter too for a long time, but
that she got over. It would have been too great an inconvenience to
have a child dislike its staple food, and in all probability she was
forced to conquer her aversion, and afterwards she grew to like bread
and butter; but still, if by any chance the circumstances which caused
her dislike to it recurred to her when she was eating a piece, she was
obliged to stop. The incident which set up the association happened
one evening when her father and mother were out. Beth was alone in the
dining-room eating bread and butter, and Towie, the cat, came into the
room with a mouse in her mouth. The mouse was alive, and Towie let it
run a little way, and then pounced down upon it, then gave it a pat to
make it run again. Beth, lying on her stomach on the floor, watching
these proceedings, naturally also became a cat with a mouse. At last
Towie began to eat her mouse, beginning with its head, which it
crushed. Beth, eating her bread and butter in imitation, saw the white
brains, but felt no disgust at the moment. The next time she had bread
and butter, however, she thought of the mouse's brains and felt sick;
and always afterwards the same association of ideas was liable to
recur to her with the same result.
But even the description of anything horrifying affected her in this
way. One day when she was growing up her mother told her at dinner
that she had been on the pier that morning and had seen the body of a
man, all discoloured and swollen from being in the water a long time,
towed into the harbour by a fishing boat. Beth listened and asked
questions, as she always did on these occasions, with the deepest
interest. She was taking soup strongly flavoured with catsup at the
moment, and the story in no way interfered with her appetite; but the
next time she tried catsup, and ever afterwards, she perceived that
swollen, discoloured corpse, and immediately felt nauseated. It is
curious that all these associations of ideas are disagreeable. She had
not a single pleasant one in connection with food.