sense.] My married sister added to the number by one little anonymous
high church story, called Chollerton.
From the date of their marriage up to 1827, when my mother went
to America, my father's affairs had always been going down in the
world. She had loved society, affecting a somewhat liberal role
and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from
the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles.
An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from
the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate,
or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to
the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality
of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had
been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that
archduchesses were sweet. But with her politics were always an affair
of the heart,--as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning
from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in
every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so
thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she
generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it
must be acknowledged that she was emotional. I can remember now her
books, and can see her at her pursuits. The poets she loved best
were Dante and Spenser. But she raved also of him of whom all such
ladies were raving then, and rejoiced in the popularity and wept
over the persecution of Lord Byron. She was among those who seized
with avidity on the novels, as they came out, of the then unknown
Scott, and who could still talk of the triumphs of Miss Edgeworth.
With the literature of the day she was familiar, and with the poets
of the past. Of other reading I do not think she had mastered much.
Her life, I take it, though latterly clouded by many troubles, was
easy, luxurious, and idle, till my father's affairs and her own
aspirations sent her to America. She had dear friends among literary
people, of whom I remember Mathias, Henry Milman, and Miss Landon;
but till long after middle life she never herself wrote a line for
publication.
In 1827 she went to America, having been partly instigated by the
social and communistic ideas of a lady whom I well remember,--a
certain Miss Wright,--who was, I think, the first of the American
female lecturers. Her chief desire, however, was to establish
my brother Henry; and perhaps joined with that was the additional
object of breaking up her English home without pleading broken
fortunes to all the world. At Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio,
she built a bazaar, and I fancy lost all the money which may have
been embarked in that speculation. It could not have been much, and
I think that others also must have suffered. But she looked about
her, at her American cousins, and resolved to write a book about
them. This book she brought back with her in 1831, and published
it early in 1832. When she did this she was already fifty. When
doing this she was aware that unless she could so succeed in making
money, there was no money for any of the family. She had never before
earned a shilling. She almost immediately received a considerable
sum from the publishers,--if I remember rightly, amounting to two
sums of (pounds)400 each within a few months; and from that moment till
nearly the time of her death, at any rate for more than twenty
years, she was in the receipt of a considerable income from her
writings. It was a late age at which to begin such a career.
The Domestic Manners of the Americans was the first of a series
of books of travels, of which it was probably the best, and was
certainly the best known. It will not be too much to say of it that
it had a material effect upon the manners of the Americans of the
day, and that that effect has been fully appreciated by them. No
observer was certainly ever less qualified to judge of the prospects
or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been
worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation
was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women
do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes,
it ought to be ugly to all eyes,--and if ugly, it must be bad.
What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they
put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters?
The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar,--and she
told them so. Those communistic and social ideas, which had been so
pretty in a drawing-room, were scattered to the winds. Her volumes
were very bitter; but they were very clever, and they saved the
family from ruin.
Book followed book immediately,--first two novels, and then a book
on Belgium and Western Germany. She refurnished the house which
I have called Orley Farm, and surrounded us again with moderate
comforts. Of the mixture of joviality and industry which formed
her character, it is almost impossible to speak with exaggeration.
The industry was a thing apart, kept to herself. It was not necessary
that any one who lived with her should see it. She was at her table
at four in the morning, and had finished her work before the world
had begun to be aroused. But the joviality was all for others.
She could dance with other people's legs, eat and drink with other
people's palates, be proud with the lustre of other people's finery.
Every mother can do that for her own daughters; but she could do it
for any girl whose look, and voice, and manners pleased her. Even
when she was at work, the laughter of those she loved was a pleasure
to her. She had much, very much, to suffer. Work sometimes came
hard to her, so much being required,--for she was extravagant, and
liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known she
was the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy.
We continued this renewed life at Harrow for nearly two years,
during which I was still at the school, and at the end of which
I was nearly nineteen. Then there came a great catastrophe. My
father, who, when he was well, lived a sad life among his monks and
nuns, still kept a horse and gig. One day in March, 1834, just as
it had been decided that I should leave the school then, instead
of remaining, as had been intended, till midsummer, I was summoned
very early in the morning, to drive him up to London. He had been
ill, and must still have been very ill indeed when he submitted to
be driven by any one. It was not till we had started that he told
me that I was to put him on board the Ostend boat. This I did,
driving him through the city down to the docks. It was not within
his nature to be communicative, and to the last he never told me
why he was going to Ostend. Something of a general flitting abroad
I had heard before, but why he should have flown first, and flown
so suddenly, I did not in the least know till I returned. When I got
back with the gig, the house and furniture were all in the charge
of the sheriff's officers.
The gardener who had been with us in former days stopped me as I
drove up the road, and with gestures, signs, and whispered words,
gave me to understand that the whole affair--horse, gig, and
barness--would be made prize of if I went but a few yards farther.