RICHARD'S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.
[Sidenote: _Richard Burton's Early Life._]
I was born at 9.30 p.m., 19th March (Feast of St. Joseph in the
calendar), 1821, at Barham House, Herts, and suppose I was baptized
in due course at the parish church. My birth took place in the same
year as, but the day before, the grand event of George IV. visiting
the Opera for the first time after the Coronation, March 20th. I was
the eldest of three children. The second was Maria Catherine Eliza,
who married Henry, afterwards General Sir Henry Stisted, a very
distinguished officer, who died, leaving only two daughters, one of
whom, Georgina Martha, survives. Third, Edward Joseph Netterville, late
Captain in the 37th Regiment, unmarried.
The first thing I remember, and it is always interesting to record a
child's first memories, was being brought down after dinner at Barham
House to eat white currants, seated upon the knee of a tall man with
yellow hair and blue eyes; but whether the memory is composed of a
miniature of my grandfather, and whether the white frock and blue sash
with bows come from a miniature of myself and not from life, I can
never make up my mind.
Barham House was a country place bought by my grandfather, Richard
Baker, who determined to make me his heir because I had red hair, an
unusual thing in the Burton family. The hair soon changed to black,
which seems to justify the following remarks by Alfred Bate Richards in
the pamphlet alluded to. They are as follows:--
"Richard Burton's talents for mixing with and assimilating natives of
all countries, but especially Oriental characters, and of becoming as
one of themselves without any one doubting or suspecting his origin;
his perfect knowledge of their languages, manners, customs, habits,
and religion; and last, but not least, his being gifted by nature
with an Arab head and face, favoured this his first enterprise"
(the pilgrimage to Mecca). "One can learn from that versatile
poet-traveller, the excellent Théophile Gautier, why Richard Burton
is an Arab in appearance; and account for that incurable restlessness
that is unable to wrest from fortune a spot on earth wherein to repose
when weary of wandering like the desert sands.
"'There is a reason,' says Gautier, who had studied the Andalusian
and the Moor, 'for the fantasy of nature which causes an Arab to be
born in Paris, or a Greek in Auvergne; the mysterious voice of blood
which is silent for generations, or only utters a confused murmur,
speaks at rare intervals a more intelligible language. In the general
confusion race claims its own, and some forgotten ancestor asserts
his rights. Who knows what alien drops are mingled with our blood?
The great migrations from the table-lands of India, the descents of
the Northern races, the Roman and Arab invasions, have all left their
marks. Instincts which seem _bizarre_ spring from these confused
recollections, these hints of distant country. The vague desire of
this primitive Fatherland moves such minds as retain the more vivid
memories of the past. Hence the wild unrest that wakens in certain
spirits the need of flight, such as the cranes and the swallows feel
when kept in bondage--the impulses that make a man leave his luxurious
life to bury himself in the Steppes, the Desert, the Pampas, the
Sahara. He goes to seek his brothers. It would be easy to point out
the intellectual Fatherland of our greatest minds. Lamartine, De
Musset, and De Vigny are English; Delacroix is an Anglo-Indian; Victor
Hugo a Spaniard; Ingres belongs to the Italy of Florence and Rome.'
"Richard Burton has also some peculiarities which oblige one to
suspect a drop of Oriental, perhaps gipsy, blood. By gipsy we must
understand the pure Eastern."
My mother had a wild half-brother--Richard Baker, junior, a
barrister-at-law, who refused a judgeship in Australia, and died a
soap-boiler. To him she was madly attached, and delayed the signing of
my grandfather's will as much as possible to the prejudice of her own
babe. My grandfather Baker drove in his carriage to see Messrs. Dendy,
his lawyers, with the object of signing the will, and dropped dead, on
getting out of the carriage, of ossification of the heart; and, the
document being unsigned, the property was divided. It would now be
worth half a million of money.
When I was sent out to India as a cadet, in 1842, I ran down to see
the old house for the last time, and started off in a sailing ship
round the Cape for Bombay, in a frame of mind to lead any forlorn hope
wherever it might be. Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, under
similar circumstances threw himself under a tree, and formed the fine
resolution to come back and buy the old place; but _he_ belonged to
the eighteenth century. The nineteenth is far more cosmopolitan. I
always acted upon the saying, _Omne solum_ _forti patria_, or, as I
translated it, "For every region is a strong man's home."
Meantime my father had been obliged to go on half-pay by the Duke of
Wellington for having refused to appear as a witness against Queen
Caroline. He had been town mayor at Genoa when she lived there, and her
kindness to the officers had greatly prepossessed them in her favour;
so, when ordered by the War Office to turn Judas, he flatly refused. A
great loss to himself, as Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of
India, was about to take him as aide-de-camp, and to his family, as
he lost all connection with the army, and lived entirely abroad, and,
eventually coming back, died with his wife at Bath in 1857. However, he
behaved like a gentleman, and none of his family ever murmured at the
step, though I began life as an East Indian cadet, and my brother in a
marching regiment, whilst our cousins were in the Guards and the Rifles
and other crack corps of the army.
[Sidenote: _At Tours._]
The family went abroad when I was a few months old, and settled at
Tours, the charming capital of Touraine, which then contained some two
hundred English families (now reduced to a score or so), attracted
by the beauty of the place, the healthy climate, the economy of
living, the facilities of education, and the friendly feeling of the
French inhabitants, who, despite Waterloo, associated freely with the
strangers.
They had a chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Way (whose son afterwards entered the
Indian army; I met him in India, and he died young); their schoolmaster
was Mr. Clough, who bolted from his debts, and then Mr. Gilchrist, who,
like the Rev. Edward Irving, Carlisle's friend (whom the butcher once
asked if he couldn't assist him), caned his pupils to the utmost. The
celebrated Dr. Brettoneau took charge of the invalids. They had their
duellist, the Honourable Martin Hawke, their hounds that hunted the
Forest of Amboise, and a select colony of Irishmen, Messrs. Hume and
others, who added immensely to the fun and frolic of the place.
At that period a host of these little colonies were scattered over the
Continent nearest England; in fact, an oasis of Anglo-Saxondom in a
desert of continentalism, somewhat like the society of English country
towns as it was in 1800, not as it is now, where society is confined to
the parson, dentist, surgeon, general practitioners, the bankers, and
the lawyers. And in those days it had this advantage, that there were
no snobs, and one seldom noticed the _aigre discorde_, the _maladie
chronique des ménages bourgeoises_. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Grundy, the
difference of the foreign colonies was that the _weight_ of English
respectability appeared to be taken off them, though their lives were
respectable and respected. The Mrs. Gamps and Mrs. Grundys were not so
rampant. The English of these little colonies were intensely patriotic,
and cared comparatively little for party politics. They stuck to their
own Church because it _was_ their Church, and they knew as much about
the Catholics at their very door, as the average Englishman does of the
Hindú. Moreover, they honestly called themselves Protestants in those
days, and the French called themselves Catholics. There was no quibble
about "their being Anglo-Catholics, and the others Roman-Catholics."
They subscribed liberally to the Church, and did not disdain to act
as churchwardens. They kept a sharp look-out upon the parson, and one
of your Modern High Church Protestants or Puseyites or Ritualists
would have got the sack after the first sermon. They were intensely
national. Any Englishman in those days who refused to fight a duel
with a Frenchman was sent to Coventry, and bullied out of the place.
English girls who flirted with foreigners, were looked upon very much
as white women who permit the addresses of a nigger, are looked upon
by those English who have lived in black countries. White women who do
these things lose caste. Beauséjour, the château taken by the family,
was inhabited by the Maréchale de Menon in 1778, and eventually became
the property of her _homme d'affaires_, Monsieur Froguet. The dear old
place stands on the right bank of the Loire, halfway up the heights
that bound the stream, commanding a splendid view, and fronted by a
French garden and vineyards now uprooted. In 1875 I paid it a last
visit, and found a friend from Brazil, a Madame Izarié, widow of my
friend the French Consul of Bahía, who had come to die in the house of
his sister, Madame Froguet.
Tours was in those days (1820-30) the most mediæval City in France.
The western half of the city, divided from the eastern by the Rue
Royale, contained a number of old turreted houses of freestone, which
might have belonged to the fifteenth century. There also was the tomb
of the Venerable St. Martin in a crypt, where lamps are ever burning,
and where the destroyed cathedral has not yet been rebuilt. The
eastern city contained the grand Cathedral of St. Garcien, with its
domed towers, and the Archévêché or Archbishop's palace with beautiful
gardens. Both are still kept in the best order. In forty-five years the
city has grown enormously. The southern suburbs, where the Mall and
Ramparts used to be, has become Boulevards Heurteloup and Béranger;
and "Places," such as that of the Palais de Justice, where cabbage
gardens fenced with paling and thorn hedges once showed a few pauper
cottages defended by the fortifications, are now Crescents and Kiosks
for loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway
station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once
crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges
and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand,
are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by
stone dykes.
I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but
with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are
vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden
Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain.
You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for _is_ elegance, _is_
good taste, _is_ new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre,
the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no
sign. This was, as may be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We
young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour,
eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the
box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing
with the dogs--three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by
the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park,
named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter
of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of
beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and
after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her
to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up
the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one--a horse
of Mecklenburg breed--was as tame as an Arab. The first story Aunt
Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling
sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature
speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of
thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little
cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning
should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and
so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.
I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so
began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our
father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the _Forêt d'Amboise_, where
is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French
Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III.,
at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty
entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at
Damascus, often expressed his obligations to the English, and warmly
welcomed any English face. On one occasion I took a near relation of
Lord Londonderry's to see him, and he was quite overcome.) My father
was periodically brought home hurt by running against a tree. Sport was
so much in vogue then as to come between the parson and his sermon.
[Sidenote: _His First School._]
This pleasant life came to a close one day. We were three: I was six,
Maria four, and Edward three. One morning saw the hateful school-books
fastened with a little strap, and we boys and our little bundle were
conveyed in a small carriage to the town, where we were introduced
into a room with a number of English and French boys, who were sitting
opposite hacked and ink-spotted desks, looking as demure as they could,
though every now and then they broke out into wicked grins and nudges.
A lame Irish schoolmaster (Clough) smiled most graciously at us as
long as our father was in the room, but was not half so pleasant when
we were left alone. We wondered "what we were doing in that _Galère_,"
especially as we were sent there day after day, and presently we learnt
the dread truth that we were at school at the ripe ages of six and
three. Presently it was found that the house was at an inconvenient
distance from school, and the family transferred itself to the Rue de
l'Archévêché, a very nice house in the north-eastern corner of what is
still the best street in the town (Rue Royale being mostly commercial).
It is close to the Place and the Archbishop's palace, which delighted
us, with small deer feeding about the dwarf lawn.
Presently Mr. Clough ran away, leaving his sister to follow as best she
could, and we were transferred to the care of Mr. John Gilchrist, a
Scotch pedagogue of the old brutal school, who took an especial delight
in caning the boys, especially with a rattan or ferula across the palm
of the hand; but we were not long in discovering a remedy, by splitting
the end of the cane and inserting a bit of hair. We took lessons in
drawing, dancing, French, and music, in which each child showed its
individuality. Maria loved all four; Edward took to French and music
and hated drawing; I took to French and drawing, and hated music and
dancing. My brother and I took to the study of Arms, by nature, as soon
as we could walk, at first with popguns and spring pistols and tin and
wooden sabres, and I can quite well remember longing to kill the porter
at five years old, because he laughed at our _sabres de bois_ and
_pistolets de paille_.
I was a boy of three ideas. Usually if a child is forbidden to eat
the sugar or to lap up the cream he simply either obeys or does the
contrary; but I used to place myself before the sugar and cream and
carefully study the question, "Have I the courage not to touch them?"
When I was quite sure of myself that I had the courage I instantly
rewarded resolution by emptying one or both. Moreover, like most
boys of strong imagination and acute feeling, I was a resolute and
unblushing liar; I used to ridicule the idea of my honour being any
way attached to telling the truth, I considered it an impertinence the
being questioned, I never could understand what moral turpitude there
could be in a lie, _unless it was told for fear of the consequences_ of
telling the truth, or one that would attach blame to another person.
That feeling continued for many a year, and at last, as very often
happens, as soon as I realized that a lie was contemptible, it ran into
quite the other extreme, a disagreeable habit of scrupulously telling
the truth whether it was timely or not.[1]
The school was mostly manned by English boys, sprinkled with French,
and the mixture of the two formed an ungodly article, and the Italian
proverb--
"Un Inglese Italianato
È un Diavolo incarnato"
may be applied with quite as much truth to English boys brought up
in France. To succeed in English life, boys must be brought up in a
particular groove. First the preparatory school, then Eton and Oxford,
with an occasional excursion to France, Italy, and Germany, to learn
languages, not of Stratford-atte-Bowe, and to find out that England is
not the whole world. I never met any of my Tours schoolfellows save
one--Blayden Edward Hawke, who became a Commander in the Navy, and died
in 1877.
We boys became perfect devilets, and played every kind of trick despite
the rattan. Fighting the French gutter-boys with sticks and stones,
fists, and snowballs was a favourite amusement, and many a donkey-lad
went home with ensanguined nose, whilst occasionally we got the worst
of it from some big brother. The next favourite game was playing
truant, passing the day in utter happiness, fancying ourselves Robinson
Crusoes, and wandering about the strip of wood (long since doomed to
fuel) at the top of the Tranchée. Our father and mother went much into
the society of the place, which was gay and pleasant, and we children
were left more or less to the servants. We boys beat all our bonnes,
generally by running at their petticoats and upsetting them. There was
one particular case when a new nurse arrived, a huge Norman girl, who
at first imposed upon this turbulent nursery by her breadth of shoulder
and the general rigour of her presence. One unlucky day we walked to
the Faubourg at the south-east of the town, the only part of old Tours
now remaining; the old women sat spinning and knitting at their cottage
doors, and remarked loud enough for us boys to hear, "Ah ça! ces
petits gamins! Voilà une honnête bonne qui ne leur laissera pas faire
des farces!" Whereupon Euphrosyne became as proud as a peacock, and
insisted upon a stricter discipline than we were used to. That forest
walk ended badly. A jerk of the arm on her part brought on a general
attack from the brood; the poor bonne measured her length upon the
ground, and we jumped upon her. The party returned, she with red eyes,
torn cap, and downcast looks, and we hooting and jeering loudly, and
calling the old women "Les Mères Pomponnes," who screamed predictions
that we should come to the guillotine.
Our father and mother had not much idea of managing their children; it
was like the old tale of the hen who hatched ducklings. By way of a
wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother
took us past Madame Fisterre's windows, and bade us look at all the
good things in the window, during which we fixed our ardent affections
upon a tray of apple-puffs; then she said, "Now, my dears, let us go
away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves." Upon
this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon our
moralizing mother, broke the windows with our fists, clawed out the
tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor mother a sadder and a
wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood's proceedings.
Talking of the guillotine, the schoolmaster unwisely allowed the boys,
by way of a school-treat, to see the execution of a woman who killed
her small family by poisoning, on condition that they would look away
when the knife descended; but of course that was just the time (with
such an injunction) when every small neck was craned and eyes strained
to look, and the result was that the whole school played at guillotine
for a week, happily without serious accidents.[2]
[Sidenote: _Trips._]
The residence at Tours was interrupted by occasional trips, summering
in other places, especially at St. Malo. The seaport then thoroughly
deserved the slighting notice, to which it was subjected by Captain
Marryat, and the house in the Faubourg was long remembered from its
tall avenue of old yew trees, which afforded abundant bird's-nesting.
At Dieppe the gallops on the sands were very much enjoyed, for we were
put on horseback as soon as we could straddle. Many a fall was of
course the result, and not a few broken heads, whilst the rival French
boys were painfully impressed by the dignity of spurs and horsewhips.
[Sidenote: _Grandmamma Baker._]
At times relations came over to visit us, especially Grandmamma Baker
(Grandmamma Baker was a very peculiar character). Her arrival was a
signal for presents and used to be greeted with tremendous shouts of
delight, but the end of a week always brought on a quarrel. Our mother
was rather thin and delicate, but our grandmother was a thorough old
Macgregor, of the Helen or the Rob Roy type, and was as quick to resent
an affront as any of her clan. Her miniature shows that she was an
extremely handsome woman, who retained her good looks to the last. When
her stepson, Richard Baker, jun., inherited his money, £80,000, he went
to Paris and fell into the hands of the celebrated Baron de Thierry.
This French friend persuaded him to embark in the pleasant little
speculation of building a bazaar. By the time the walls began to grow
above ground the Englishman had finished £60,000, and, seeing that a
million would hardly finish the work, he sold off his four greys and
fled Paris post-haste in a post-chaise. The Baron Thierry followed him
to London, and, bold as brass, presented himself as an injured creditor
at grandmamma's pretty little house in Park Lane. The old lady replied
by summoning her servants and having him literally kicked downstairs in
true Highland fashion. That Baron's end is well known in history. He
made himself king of one of the Cannibal Islands in the South Sea, and
ended by being eaten by his ungrateful subjects.
Grandmamma Baker was determined to learn French, and, accordingly,
secured a professor. The children's great delight was to ambuscade
themselves, and to listen with joy to the lessons. "What is the sun?"
"Le soleil, madame!" "La solelle." "Non, madame. Le so--leil." "Oh,
pooh! La solelle." After about six repetitions of the same, roars
of laughter issued from the curtains--we of course speaking French
like English, upon which the old lady would jump up and catch hold of
the nearest delinquent and administer condign punishment. She had a
peculiar knack of starting the offender, compelling him to describe a
circle of which she was the centre, whilst, holding with the left hand,
she administered smacks and cuffs with the right; but, as every mode
of attack has its own defence, it was soon found out that the proper
corrective was to throw one's self on one's back, and give vigorous
kicks with both legs. It need hardly be said that Grandmamma predicted
that Jack Ketch would make acquaintance with the younger scions of her
race, and that she never arrived at speaking French like a Parisian.
[Sidenote: _Grandmamma Burton._]
Grandmamma Burton was also peculiar in her way. Her portrait shows the
regular Bourbon traits, the pear-shaped face and head which culminates
in Louis Philippe's. Although the wife of a country clergyman, she
never seemed to have attained the meekness of feeling associated with
that peaceful calling. The same thing is told of her as was told
of the Edgeworth family. On one occasion during the absence of her
husband, the house at Tuam was broken into by thieves, probably some
of her petted tenantry. She lit a candle and went upstairs to fetch
some gunpowder, loaded her pistols, and ran down to the hall, when
the robbers decamped. She asked the raw Irish servant girl who had
accompanied her what had become of the light, and the answer was that
it was standing on the barrel of "black salt" upstairs; thereupon
Grandmamma Burton had the pluck to walk up to the garret and expose
herself to the risk of being blown to smithereens. When my father
returned from service in Sicily, at the end of the year, he found the
estate in a terrible condition, and obtained his mother's leave to take
the matter in hand. He invited all the tenants to dinner, and when
speech time came on, after being duly blarneyed by all present, he made
a little address, dwelling with some vigour upon the necessity of being
for the future more regular with the "rint." Faces fell, and the only
result was, that when the rent came to be collected, he was fired at
so frequently (showing that this state of things had been going on for
some sixty or seventy years), that, not wishing to lead the life of the
"Galway woodcock," he gave up the game, and allowed matters to take
their own course.
[Sidenote: _Aunt G._]
Another frequent visitor was popularly known as "Aunt G."--Georgina
Baker, the younger of the three sisters, who was then in the heyday
of youth and high spirits. An extremely handsome girl, with blue eyes
and dark hair and fine tall figure, she was the life of the house as
long as her visits lasted. Her share of the property being £30,000, she
had of course a number of offers from English as well as foreigners.
On the latter she soon learned to look shy, having heard that one of
her rejected suitors had exclaimed to his friend, "Quelle dommage,
avec cette petite ferme à vendre," the wished-for farm, adjoining his
property, happening then to be in the market. Heiresses are not always
fortunate, and she went on refusing suitor after suitor, till ripe
middle age, when she married Robert Bagshaw, Esq., M.P. for Harwich.
She wanted to adopt me, intending to accompany me to Oxford and leave
me her property, but this project had no stay in it. At the time she
was at Tours, Aunt G. had a kind of "fad" that she would marry one
of her brother-in-law Burton's brothers. Her eldest sister Sarah had
married my uncle Burton, elder brother of my father, who, sorely
against his wish, which pointed to the Church, had been compelled by
the failure of the "rint" to become an army surgeon--the same who had
the disappointment at St. Helena.
At last it became apparent that Tours was no longer a place for us
who were approaching the ticklish time of teens. All Anglo-French
boys generally were remarkable young ruffians, who, at ten years of
age, cocked their hats and loved the ladies. Instead of fighting and
fagging, they broke the fine old worked glass church windows, purloined
their fathers' guns to shoot at the monuments in the churchyards, and
even the shops and bazaars were not safe from their impudent raids.
The ringleader of the gang was a certain Alek G----, the son of a
Scotchmen of good family, who was afterwards connected with or was the
leading spirit of a transaction, which gave a tablet and an inscription
to Printing House Square. Alek was very handsome, and his two sisters
were as good looking as himself. He died sadly enough at a hospital
in Paris. Political matters, too, began to look queer. The revolution
which hurled Charles X. from the throne, produced no outrages in quiet
Tours, beyond large gatherings of the people with an immense amount
of noise, especially of "_Vive la Chatte!_" (for La Charte), the good
_commères_ turning round and asking one another whom the Cat might be
that the people wished it so long a life; but when Casimir Périer had
passed through the town, and "the three glorious days of July" had
excited the multitude, things began to look black, and cries of "_À
bas les Anglais!_" were not uncommon. An Englishmen was threatened
with prison because the horse he was driving accidentally knocked
down an old woman, and a French officer of the line, who was fond of
associating with English girls, was grossly insulted and killed in a
dastardly duel by a pastrycook.
[Sidenote: _They leave Tours._]
At last, after a long deliberation, the family resolved to leave Tours.
Travelling in those days, especially for a large family, was a severe
infliction. The old travelling carriages, which had grown shabby in
the coach-house, had to be taken out and furbished up, and all the
queer receptacles, imperial, boot, sword-case, and plate-chest, to be
stuffed with miscellaneous luggage. After the usual sale by auction, my
father took his departure, perhaps mostly regretted by a little knot
of Italian exiles, whom he liked on account of his young years spent
in Sicily, and whose society not improbably suggested his ultimate
return to Italy. Then began the journey along the interminable avenues
of the old French roads, lined with parallel rows of poplars, which
met at a vanishing point of the far distance. I found exactly the same
thing, when travelling through Lower Canada in 1860. Mighty dull work
it was, whilst the French postilion in his seven-league boots jogged
along with his horses at the rate of five miles an hour, never dreaming
of increasing the rate, till he approached some horridly paved town,
when he cracked his whip, like a succession of pistol shots, to the awe
and delight of all the sabots. Very slow hours they were, especially as
the night wore on, and the road, gleaming white between its two dark
edges, looked of endless length. And when at last the inn was reached,
it proved very unlike the inn of the present day. A hard bargain had
to be driven with a rapacious landlady, who, if you objected to her
charges, openly roared at you with arms akimbo, "that if you were not
rich enough to travel, you ought to stay at home." Then the beds had to
be inspected, the damp sheets to be aired, and the warming-pans to be
ordered, and, as dinner had always to be prepared after arrival, it was
not unusual to sit hungry for a couple of hours.
The fatigues of the journey seriously affected my mother's health,
and she lost no time in falling very ill at Chartres. Then Grandmamma
Baker was sent for to act _garde-malade_, and to awe the children, who
were wild with delight at escaping school and masters, with the weight
of her sturdy Scotch arm. The family passed through Paris, where the
signs of fighting, bullets in the walls, and burnt houses, had not been
wholly obliterated, and were fortunate enough to escape the cholera,
which then for the first time attacked Europe in its very worst form.
Grandmamma Baker was very nearly as bad, for she almost poisoned her
beloved grandchildren, by stuffing our noses and mouths full of the
strongest camphor whenever we happened to pass through a town. The
cold plunge into English life was broken by loitering on the sands of
Dieppe. A wonderful old ramshackle place it was in those days, holding
a kind of intermediate place between the dulness of Calais and the
liveliness of "Boolone," as the denizens called it. It wanted the fine
hotels and the _Établissement_, which grew up under the Second Empire,
but there was during the summer a pleasant, natural kind of life,
living almost exclusively upon the sands and dipping in the water,
galloping about on little ponies, and watching the queer costumes of
the bathers, and discussing the new-comers. Though railways were not
dreamt of, many Parisians used to affect the place, and part of the
French nature seems to be, to rush into the sea as soon as they see it.
[1] N.B.--From that he became a man wholly truthful, wholly
incorruptible, who never lost his "dignity," a man whose honour and
integrity from the cradle to the grave was unimpeachable.--I. B.
[2] N.B.--This kind of _indulgence_ should never be allowed by parents
or tutors. During our eighteen years in Austria, there were some
parents up the Slav district who allowed their two eldest children, boy
and girl, six and seven, to see the pigs killed for a treat. They saw
everything, to the hanging up of the pigs ready for buying. Next day
the mother went down to the Trieste market, father to work, and the
children were left in charge of the cottage. When the parents got near
the cottage in late afternoon, the two children ran out and said, "We
have had such fun, mamma; we have played all day at killing pigs, and
we have done baby beautifully, and he squealed at first just like a
real pig." The horrified parents rushed in, and found truly that baby
was beautifully done, hanging up by the legs, his poor little stomach
kept open by a bit of wood just like a real pig, and had been dead for
hours.--I. B.