The Retrospect

Santa Claus is still much alive, so I need not describe his doings. I only hope the children of to-day enjoy shivering awake for half the night and making themselves ill with the edible contents of their stockings before daylight as much as we did. As for the delicious lurid function, snapdragon, is it obsolete in England yet? It does not come, like Santa Claus, into the scheme of child entertainment in Australia. There would be a difficulty in finding the requisite depth of darkness on Christmas evenings here. Besides, a supper of raw raisins cannot be good for the infant stomachs. I would not give it to my own children, but still I am glad that the mothers of old were in some things less faddy than we are. One of the treasures of my collection is the weird scene of the magic bowl and the spectral faces around it – the delightful terror of the little girls, the heroic courage of the little boys who seized for them the blazing morsels they dared not touch themselves. A tender memory of that boy to whom I inclined, who shot himself (by cocking a stiff-jointed gun with foot instead of finger), pictures him gallantly fighting the flames on my behalf.

The Waits, I believe, are heard in the streets of England still. But not, I fancy, on country road and garden paths, guests of the domestic hearth at midnight, a nondescript rabble under no ecclesiastical control, making their own fun, as they then did. Blue-nosed, beery, hilarious, in woollen mitts and comforters, drinking good luck to a dozen hosts in turn and thinking of nothing but how they were enjoying themselves, they are not quite adequately represented to us older folk by the better-drilled but unspontaneous choir-boy. He is like the Christmas card for which we have exchanged the valentine – a shadow replacing the substance, to our thinking.

The choir of the old times was the congregation, led by the clerk in the three-decker. We went to service on Christmas morning, as in duty bound, and sang "Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow," whether we had singing voices or not, and were likewise audible and hearty with the responses, as believing them our own; and when we came out – good, unsophisticated Christians, exchanging our "Happy Christmas" with everybody we met – the church was content to let us go for the remainder of the day. We went home to our immense dinner (with dessert that lasted through the afternoon), our festive tea, crowned with the Christmas cake, our blindman's buff and turn-the-trencher and drop-the-handkerchief in the cleared drawing-room, our snapdragons, our punch-bowl, our adventures under the mistletoe.

The drawing-room, when not cleared, could not be closed to family use, like the majority of the middle-class parlours of the past (I might almost say of the present also), being the highway to the front door, to the garden-playground, and to the music-room, which was the sitting-room. Its four doors were constantly opening and shutting, and it must have been a cave of the winds in winter, although I do not remember it. Strips of crumb-cloth marked the crossing footpaths, warning us to keep off the grass —i. e. the geometrical-patterned green and crimson carpet; they were taken up whenever it was surmised that "people might be coming," according to that curiously petty but intense concern for a genteel (however false) appearance, which was one of the things I had, mistakenly but naturally, taken for granted that England had grown out of long ago. The room was still the reception-room for callers and company, and all my mother's artistic skill, which only distinguished itself the more for having so little money at the back of it, had been expended upon its adornment.

When I think how that artistic skill was exercised, I have a foolish impulse to shudder and to smile. When I think again, I have to ask myself, "Why should I?" Further reflection convinces me that its manifestations were admirable. To say the least, they were not necessarily in bad taste then, although they would and ought to be so now. But there is far more than that to say. The handicraft of the women of the mid-Victorian era had the precious quality of finish and thoroughness, than which there is none more worthy. Careful, delicate, faithful work, no matter on what article expended, was the note of excellence, and the longer I live the more I respect and love it. Such fancy-work proper as adorned this old parlour of ours I do not wish to see reproduced, but it was appropriate to its day and a credit to her who was responsible for it.

She had a sort of settee-sofa under the window on the garden side. It was covered with many squares of finest "wool-work," joined together. There was a different design – vase of flowers, basket of flowers, wreath, bouquet – in each square, although material and ground colour were the same; and the number of them represented so many girl friends who had combined to work them and present her with the sofa on her marriage. It certainly was a graceful idea, cleverly carried out. And wool-work was really very fascinating. With a piece of canvas, a bundle of neatly-sorted Berlin wools, and a coloured pattern of flowers of every hue – the more intricate the better – I was quite happy. I also liked working out peacocks and other weird devices into antimacassars, with crochet needle and white cotton, although not so well. I must have made miles of "open-work" (the modern broderie Anglaise, only better) for underclothes, first and last. Once I made a bead basket to hang by glittering bead chains between draped netted-and-darned window-curtains. I knitted rag rugs and silk purses, and sections of a great quilt for a spare bed. I did elaborate geometrical patchwork for other quilts, and fine marking of names (learned from my baby sampler) on linen with engrained red cotton; and watchguards in black silk and gorgeous slippers and winter mitts and comforters for father; and mats for lamps and vases, and so on and so on.

But mother was really an artist, because she did not follow patterns, but designed things herself. When she needed curtain cornices for the tops of those windows, and could not afford the gilded, fender-like affairs that were correct and desirable, she nailed deal boards together, covered them with leather, and then with a design of leather flowers or grapes with vine-leaves, which, when varnished, imposed upon the spectator as a carving in wood. Now we would prefer the honest deal, no doubt – I would, at any rate – but then there was not a person of taste who would have done so. She made open wood-carving of leather-work applied to stout cardboard, cutting away the latter from the interstices of the pattern embossed. In the treatment of a pair of flower-holders that used to stand on a table under the mirror between the garden window and the garden door, she substituted a scarlet coating made of sealing-wax for the dark wood-stain; her leather-work then called itself coral. As for her wax flowers, they were truly beautiful. She was not content to make up the boxfuls of petals prepared by the trade, but must needs copy flowers out of the field and garden. I do not know how she found time for all she did, but she seemed to do everything, and always to do it right. My faith in her ingenuity and resourcefulness was as my faith in the omnipotence of God.

It was in that drawing-room of her adornment that we held festival on the afternoon of our famous wedding-day. It rained, and the amusement for the guests – after the great breakfast in the music-room and the departure of bride and bridegroom – was to practise archery upon a target in the wet garden from the shelter of the house. The arrows from door and window went wide over the garden walls, and the scared face of the rector popped up in alarm at intervals as they hurtled into his domain. It was the son of our old neighbours at T – (the House of the Doll), who, unknown to any of us at the time, pointed a moral for the incautious parent who deposits with his (or her) infant offspring evidence upon which they will some day rise up to judge him. H. was a very smart young fellow, according to the notions of the time, and he forgathered with a pretty cousin of ours, daughter of my father's eldest brother, with whom my father was at feud over a lawsuit and not on speaking terms. Her parents forbade the match, and she came to mine – the hostile camp – for succour. Enthusiastically we took up her cause, and, having given her all facilities for courtship, gave her the finest wedding that could be compassed from our house. Not only that, but drove her many miles behind white-favoured postilions to the church of her own parish, possibly to "cheek" her family, who naturally held aloof, although it was rumoured that they watched the passing of the bridal carriages from some secret ambush. Of course, we young ones never doubted for a moment that they were wholly malignant and in the wrong; we were as sure as we were of night and day that our father and mother could not possibly make mistakes.

While the happy pair were honeymooning, we assisted Mrs H., the bridegroom's mother, to prepare for them what we thought an ideal home in L – , a house so towny and stylish, compared with the farm homesteads in which we had been reared, that we were lost in our sense of the occupants' luck and bliss. I had been their little bridesmaid, and I now became their frequent visitor; I suppose their attentions to me were a return for our ill-omened hospitality to them. I used to sit on a stool in the firelit dusk, totally disregarded, while, on the other side of the hearth, H. nursed Cousin E. upon his knee and they whispered together. Later on, I sat on the same stool to nurse the baby, E. hanging over me to gloat upon him and assure herself that he was safe in my arms.

The other day I saw that house again, and, looking up at the windows, looked through them upon those past scenes with, oh! such different eyes. According to precedent, H. proved himself, very early in the day, to be the bad lot his wife's people had suspected. The first baby was the last, because there was not time for more. The young father lived beyond his means for a year or two, neglected his business, took to drink, went under, and left the young mother and child to the charity of the relatives who had probably foreseen how it would be. And now that I am older than they were I think of my parents' part in the matter, once so unquestioningly endorsed, and I shake my head. So will my children shake their heads over remembered acts of mine which, at the doing, were even as the decrees of Providence. Doubtless they have done so many a time.

In my flying visits to D – I was drawn again and again to the neighbourhood of that old house. Any walk that I took for the sake of a walk led past it, and I stopped at the two gates every time, because I could not help it. The second gate, opening into the field that was part of the premises, had its separate associations. Here roamed Taffy, when he chose to keep in bounds, a white pony given to my eldest brother by his grandfather, but for his long lifetime the useful servant and beloved friend of the whole family; a dear, sweet-natured humorous creature, human in his affections and intelligence. Taffy walked about the domestic domain like a dog; he undid every fastening of every gate that attempted to confine his rambles. He used to come to the schoolroom window when we were at lessons and watch his chance to grab a mouthful of hair. When mother and I made our journeys together to see her parents, some fifteen miles off, we used to stop at a halfway inn to get a basinful of porter for Taffy, who loved it and drank it down like a Christian; he would not pass that inn without it. When thirsty at home he sought the pump in the stableyard, took the handle in his teeth and rattled it up and down, and as soon as water trickled from the spout applied his mouth thereto. When I have told this story to my present family, who never knew Taffy, tolerant and superior smiles have accused me of drawing the long bow; so I was pleased when a sister of mine, lately arrived from England after a thirty years' separation from me, was happily inspired to say at table before them all (we were speaking of old times), "Oh, do you remember Taffy and the pump?" proceeding to tell the tale again exactly as I had told it. Thus Taffy and I got tardy justice done us.

Here, too, in a memorable year, Wombwell's Menagerie established itself. It was the half of the business which the original Wombwell had left divided between a son and daughter, and the latter was the proprietress and travelling with it. My father let his field to her for the few days that must have been Winnold Fair days (St Wynewall originally – a fair held here annually at the beginning of March, literally from time immemorial, as, according to a deed of the reign of Edward the Confessor, it was flourishing in his day, and there are no records to tell how long before that); for I recall the state of the temperature. Which reminds me of an old Norfolk rhyme much in use amongst us, to indicate what might be expected in the way of weather at the season of the Fair:

"First come David, then come Chad,Then come 'Winnle' as if he was mad."

So Mrs Edwards (I think that was her name) brought her Wombwell's Menagerie to our field. The numerous Black Marias of the caravan filed into the gate before our popping eyes, the elephant walking as one has heard of the lady doing in the sedan chair that had the bottom out; we could only see his monstrous feet and ankles underneath the house that he carried around him, and those massive members were partly swathed in bandages, because, we were told, the poor thing suffered from chilblains. The vehicles were formed into a hollow square, the arena roofed over (it was deliciously warm to go into out of the cold open air), and the grass floor thickly bedded in clean straw, from which we sifted treasure-trove of nuts and lost articles when the show was gone. The shutters were taken from the cages on the inner side, the entrance steps put down, and all was ready for business. There was a band, of course.

The contract gave our household the privilege of free access. I need not say that it was utilised to the utmost. We had special holidays on purpose. But the cream of those exciting days was Sunday, when there was no show and no public, and we were admitted to the bosom of the family, to see how it lived behind the scenes. In the afternoon of that day my mother went into the field to show a little neighbourly attention to the proprietress, taking me with her. It was one of the most interesting calls I ever made. We found Mrs Edwards a very superior lady, who did not travel with the show except now and then, to amuse herself while her children were away at school (her daughter, I think she said, was "finishing abroad"); she had her good house somewhere, like other ladies. She was in silk attire, very stylish, and her private van was a thing of luxury indeed; also she entertained us delightfully. We strolled about the empty arena, and fraternised with the animals. Many of them were let out for exercise; others we were allowed to fondle and converse with. The little gazelle on its slim legs raced round and round in front of the cages, mocking the futile leer and pounce of the great cats that would have intercepted it had circumstances allowed; the monkeys tweaked our ears and pulled the trimming off our hats; the great elephant swayed about like a moving mountain, and condescended to take our buns when we mustered courage to present them. Unforgettable Sunday afternoon! Almost worthy to be ranked with the splendid day at Port Said. The memory of it was in my mind when, on my second Sunday afternoon in England, I was behind the scenes in the "Zoo" at Regent's Park, dear little birds and beasties climbing over me and showing off their pretty tricks to me for love and not for money.

But, ah, the nights! The dark nights up in that attic bedroom, when the wintry wind bore the heart-thrilling plaints of homesick lions and tigers – so awfully close to one! Oh, suppose they should get out! I have never been conspicuously strong-minded when alone in the dark – I have too much imagination – and I used to burrow deep down in the bedclothes to shut out those appallingly suggestive sounds.

Time seems to deal tenderly with everything in England, and the two old gates were the very same old gates, apparently. Approaching them through the town, I passed the same old shops, with the same old names on some of them. Next door, across Priory Lane, the same family of doctors still lived, father and son in contiguous establishments; only the son of old was now the father, and there was a new son. The daughters of the parent house, young ladies of the old days, I found living still, to remember and to entertain me; one of them, a widow approaching her ninetieth year, was the most charmingly nimble-minded and witty person of her age that I ever met. Her intellectual audacity impressed me as one of the most striking incidents of my return to her little town. She had lived there always, and was yet unsubdued by the stodgy atmosphere – as awake to the humour of the ways of a little English town (in which, as she expressed it, "twopence-ha'penny would not speak to twopence") as I was. She was handsome too – altogether a dear.

Just opposite her old home, at the beginning (or end) of the street, swung an inn signboard the sight of which was more delightful to me than all the priceless canvases that I had been privileged to make acquaintance with at Grosvenor House a few days previously. This was the Rampant Horse of olden times – the very same red horse pawing space, his colour faded out, but his familiar lineaments intact; and it was a part of my phenomenal luck at that time to see it just when I did, for the next time I passed that way the sign had been taken down, doubtless to be "restored." I am convinced that it had not been touched in the half-century that I had been away, but just waiting there to greet me.

On the other side of my old home, along the London Road, I walked in the Past every step of the way. There was the same old workhouse, which we used to visit after church on Christmas mornings to see the paupers wolfing their roast beef and plum pudding, beside it the Court House, full of memories of concert nights and entertainments – particularly of a demonstration by a girl clairvoyant, who, while "under the influence," informed a member of our party that her son was lying dangerously ill at his tutor's house in Heidelberg; which was afterwards proved to be the case, although this was the first she heard of it. D – has a Town Hall now, a Jubilee Town Hall, but in my day the Court House seems to have been the place for public functions; and I have an acute remembrance of sitting through an evening on a ledge but a few inches wide, being crowded off the benches and too proud to ask for a lap. My back aches and the calves of my legs curl up now when it comes across me.

Further on, C – Hall by the roadside – unchanged, except that I found it temporarily tenantless. My little girl-contemporaries who used to live there wore white pants to the feet, frilled around the ankles, under their short skirts, like Miss Kenwigs. Where, I wondered, as I looked at the blank windows, where were they now? Across the road, in front of the hall, lay the park-like lands belonging to it, the beautiful turf only matched by the beautiful trees – all as it used to be. There I saw myself, a little thing in a new pink frock, dancing about with my mother and a crowd of busy ladies amongst long plank tables, at which the poor folk of the town and for miles around were being feasted on roast beef and plum pudding, while brass bands brayed and flags fluttered in the sun. The occasion was the Celebration of Peace after the Crimean War.

Then the village of D – , object of so many walks in the governess days – I tramped thither one fresh and sunny morning when I wanted a good constitutional, and, as usual when I found the door open, I entered the church. The clergyman, in a rapid gabble, was reciting the daily service; he had one daily – in the very middle of the working morning, in a parish containing only those who were bound to be hard at it earning their living and attending to the needs of families. When, oh! when will parsons learn common-sense? It was a relief to see that these parishioners were not seduced from the path of duty by his well-intentioned invitation. The whole congregation was embodied in one extremely old man, whose infirmities had long disqualified him for the work of life. For him, I thought, it would have been enough at this hour to leave the place open, to comfort him, when he liked to wander in, with its divine suggestions. He could not have followed the breathless patter of words with his deaf ears.

However, perhaps this is not my business.

CHAPTER VI

EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS

I went on from D – into the deeper and more beautiful recesses of my native county, the localities associated with my earliest years, the most sacred places of them all. It was early in July, when the rhododendrons, so thick in the woods, had done their flowering, but the trees were in full perfection, and the honeysuckles of the hedges scented the highways.

Two large families of cousins had grown up thereabouts, and some were still clinging to their native soil. All had been unknown to me from the time of our paternal grandfather's death, in 1856, which precipitated the estranging lawsuit – all, that is to say, excepting E., who married from our house. As children we used to shoot veiled glances at each other in church, but that was all the intercourse permitted to us. However, in later years, when we had sense of our own to judge the merits of this old quarrel, one and another of my cousins claimed acquaintance with me through my publishers, and I came to England with several long-standing invitations from them to visit them when I could. M.G., a widow a few years older than myself, was one who had never deserted Norfolk, and whose charming home was in the very heart of my own country, within a drive of all the places I most desired to see again. An "abbey," it was called, a farmhouse now, divorced from its lands, one of those beautiful English dwellings, several hundreds of years old, that I was always adoringly and enviously in love with; and attached to it were the ruins of a religious house, which the county directory informed me was founded for Cistercians in 1251, and granted at the Dissolution to the family whose present representative, of the same name, owns it still, my cousin's friend and landlord. From the old garden, out of the stupendous trees (are there trees in England to rival Norfolk trees?), rose fragments of the walls of that old abbey, broken arches and windows with some stone tracery left in them; and there were damp depressions in which lumps of carved stone were jumbled up with weeds and ragged bushes, the crypts which Time had filled, but not wholly filled, with the rain-washings of centuries. Imagine my joy in such surroundings! And within the comparatively modern but still antique (it looked to me Elizabethan) residence, nothing to clash with the grey stone walls and mullioned and labelled windows, all simple dignity, frugal refinement, warmth, ease, comfort. It was a delight to me merely to walk up and down the stairs, wide and shallow and solid, echoing the footfalls of generations of gentlefolk at every step; especially when at the top lay the cosiest of beds and at the bottom the cheeriest of quiet firesides.

Although it was July we had a fire all the time – the little touch that made us kin, my cousin and me. The old prejudice against lighting a fire after spring cleaning or before a certain fixed date in autumn, coincident with the exchange of lace window-curtains for stuff ones, or some such annual domestic rite, had not died out in rural England since I had been away; but here – as soon as I walked in out of the rain on the afternoon of my arrival – the sight of a ruddy blaze, and a well-furnished tea-table beside it, told me that in this remote village I had struck an enlightened woman.

It was so remote a village that there was no way of getting to it from D – but by driving the whole eight miles. M. sent the landlord of her local inn, her accustomed coachman, an intelligent man whose ancestors had been in service with mine, to fetch me; and he entertained me on the way with the history of the old families whose homes we passed and with whom my family had had more or less intimate relations in the years before he was born, as that history had been enacted within his lifetime and during the later part of mine. The soft grey rain came straight down, and we were both coated and mackintoshed to the eyes. I had to peer from under the edge of my dripping umbrella at the well-known gateways (the lodges more modernised than the mansions they belonged to, so far as I could see the latter through their splendid woods and avenues), the familiar farms and villages, with their fine old churches, all the dear, historic landscape; but, wet as it was, I had to struggle not to make it wetter – and my handkerchief hopelessly buried under my wraps. I tell you, dear sympathetic elderly reader, the memories that flocked along that road to greet me were all but overwhelming. It was, for peculiar and precious charm, the drive of my life – to date; only the one I had next day surpassed it.