Chapter V: Southgate (3)

Palazzo Parisani was at once thrown into the utmost confusion, and all its inmates occupied themselves in preparing for immediate departure. Owing to the great number of things to be stowed away, it was, however, utterly impossible that they should leave before the next morning. Italima's state of anguish baffles description, for Francis was her idol. In the afternoon my sister, hoping to give her quiet, persuaded her to go out for an hour and walk in the gardens of the Villa Medici, where she would not be likely to meet any one she knew. In the long arcaded bay-walks of the villa she saw a familiar figure approaching. It was the "Family Spy." He came up to her, and, to her amazement, he began to address her--he, the silent follower of so many years! He said, "The time has now come at which I can serve you, therefore I speak. This morning you received a letter." Italima started. "You are surprised that I know you have the letter, and yet I am going to tell you all that was in that letter," and he repeated it word for word. He continued--"I not only know all that was in your letter and the distress in which it has placed you, but I know all the circumstances under which that letter was written, and I know all that has happened to your sons since: I know all about your sons. Your son Francis was taken ill on such a day: he saw such and such doctors: he is already much better: there is no danger: you may be quite easy about him. Your son William is not in danger, but he is really much the more ill of the two. Dr. Fergusson has seen him, and a foreign winter is prescribed. It will not do for you to go to England yourself, but yet he is not well enough to travel alone. You have an old servant, Félix, who came to you in such a year, and who has been with you ever since. You must send him to fetch William, and here is a paper on which I have written down all the trains and steamers they are to travel by, both in going and returning." So saying, and having given the paper to Italima and bowing very low, the Family Spy retired. Italima went home. She acted entirely on the advice she had received. She unpacked her things and remained in her palazzo at Rome. She sent Félix, as the Spy had directed: he travelled according to the written programme, and in a fortnight he returned to Rome bringing William back with him. The Spy never spoke to any member of the family again.

It is anticipating, but I may mention here that when we went to Rome in 1857, I wondered if we should see the Family Spy. I spoke of it to my mother. As we passed through the Porta del Popolo, he was the first person who met us. I saw him very often that winter, and again when I was at Paris with my sister in October 1858. That winter my sister often saw him at Rome. The next year was marked by our great family misfortunes. My sister always expected that somehow or other he would come to the rescue of the lost fortunes, but he never did. Some time after she heard that he had died very suddenly about that time.

When I returned to my mother in the summer of 1852, she was at Eastbourne with Charlotte Leycester and very ill. It was the earliest phase of the strange hysteria with which I was afterwards so familiar--sudden flushings with a deathly chill over her face, and giddiness, sometimes followed by unconsciousness, occasionally by a complete apparent suspension of life, a death-like trance without breath or pulsation, lasting for hours, or even for many days together. It is a very rare illness, but it is known to doctors, and I believe it is called "Waking coma." In this summer I first began the anxious watchings of first symptoms--the swelling of my mother's fingers around her rings, and then by a kiss searched if the alarming chill had already taken possession of her face. Happily, the heavenly state of mind in which she always lived took away from her the terror of these illnesses; the visions which beset her waking and sleeping were of all things good and beautiful: the actual trances themselves were to her a translation into heavenly places and to the companionship of the blessed, and, for those who looked upon her, a transfiguration.

When my mother was able to move, it was decided that she must try foreign air, which then and often afterwards completely restored her to health for the time. It was settled that we should go to Heidelberg, and as her cousin Charlotte Leycester was to travel with her, I was able to precede her for a few days in the old Belgian towns, which, as I was then in the first enthusiasm about foreign travel, I looked upon as absolutely entrancing.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_St. Omer, July 15, 1852._--I shall never feel the day is properly
over till it has been shared with my own dear mother. I have only
left you a few hours, and yet, at an expense of one pound, how
great is the change!... We embarked at Dover at one, with a
cloudless sky and rippling waves, and an Irish lady near me was
most amusing, telling anecdotes first in French to her neighbour
on the other side and then in English to me. But half-way across
the Channel the thickest of fogs came on, we made no way, and cries
and whistles were kept up without cessation. Then it grew rough,
the Irish lady's jokes became less vivacious, and at last she
followed almost all the other passengers to the side of the vessel.
At five o'clock sea and fog subsided and we went on, but then the
tide had gone from the harbour, and when we were a mile and a half
from Calais, all the passengers were transferred to open boats. As
we were rowed in under the long pier, the beautiful fishing-nets
were being drawn up out of the calm waters, and the old French
faces with the high white caps and large gold earrings were looking
down as last year.... The railway journey was delicious through the
rich flat country, and the churches here, of the two missionary
saints, Bertin and Omer, are most interesting."

"_Bruges, July 17._--The heat is so intense that I am more inclined
to watch the perfectly motionless branches of the acacia under the
window than to do my duty by the sights. The old town and its
people all seem lulled to sleep by the oppression. Yet the Dyver
Canal is delightful, with its strange old towers and its poplar
trees, and the market on its bank filled with Dutch fishwives in
bright costumes.... My straw hat attracts much attention. 'Voilà le
costume anglais,' I hear the people say.... The _table d'hôte_ was
very amusing, musicians playing the while on harp, guitar, and
flute. To-night there is to be a procession which has had no equal
for a hundred years.

"This morning I went to the Béguinage, a little village with walls
of its own in the middle of the town. The sweet-faced Béguine nuns
in long white veils were chanting the service in the church, ranged
in the stalls of the choir. They wore long trains, which they took
up when they came out of church. A priest was there, but the abbess
seemed to take his part in officiating.[76] ... The streets are
beautifully decorated for the procession, planted with living
fir-trees, half the height of the houses, which, as they are very
narrow, gives the effect of an avenue; but, behind, the houses are
hung with flags and tapestry. In some streets altars are raised,
surrounded with orange-trees and flowers.

"10 P.M.--The ceremonial was to celebrate 'the jubilee of the
Carmelite tonsure.' ... The streets were all hung with flowers and
tapestry, and garlands made a flower canopy across them, beneath
which streamed crowds of peasants from every town in Belgium. Each
pine-tree was a huge Christmas-tree with thousands of wax-lights
blazing in the motionless air. Many hundreds of clergy formed the
procession, and Capuchins and Carmelites and Franciscans, many with
bare feet and flowing beards. There were also hundreds of
torch-bearers and children swaying censers. Then came troops of
young girls, 'brides of Christ,' in white, with garlands: then a
beautiful little boy as St. John leading his lamb by a string;
then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph--Mary crowned with a veil covered
with golden stars, and endless winged cherubs in attendance; then
abbots and canons; and lastly, under a crimson canopy, in a violet
robe, the Bishop bearing the Host.

"The scene in the Grande Place was magnificent. Along the base of
the _halles_ burning torches rolled up their smoke around the
belfry and the brilliant banners, and the sea of faces was
motionless in expectation. It was a tremendous moment when the
immense mass of clergy had sung a hymn around the altar in the
square, and the Bishop took off his mitre and knelt upon the rushes
before the Sacrament. Then, as he lifted the Host in his hands, the
music ceased, and the whole multitude of people fell almost
prostrate in silent prayer."

After visiting Ghent, Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, I joined my mother and her companions at Brussels, and we proceeded by the Rhine and Frankfort to Heidelberg, where we found a charming apartment almost at the castle gate, at the back of a baker's shop, with a little oleander-fringed garden high on the hill-top, overlooking the town and river. Two sisters and their cousin waited upon us. The castle gardens were like our own, and delicious in their shade and freshness and the scent of their roses and lilacs; and the courtyards and towers were full of inexhaustible interest. We were never weary here of studying the history of the English Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and finding out her connection with the different parts of the castle, and her little garden with its triumphal arch was our favourite resort. We seldom went down into the town except on Sundays, when the famous Dr. Schenkel preached in St. Peter's Church at the foot of our hill. In the evenings we used to walk along the edge of the hills, through flower-fringed lanes, to the clear springs of Wolfsbrunnen, where there was a sort of nursery of trout (_florellen_). The students shared the gardens with us, with their ridiculous dress and faces scarred for life in the silly duels at the Hirsch Gasse, which they looked upon as a distinction, and which generally arose from quarrels about giving way to each other in the street. They often, consequently, spent six hours a day in practising the sword-exercise, to the ruin of their studies. When we were at Heidelberg, all the clothes in the place used to be sent to be washed in the village of Spiegelhausen, because there the water was softer, and when its hills were covered with the linen of the whole town they produced the oddest effect. A large Heidelberg family considered it a great point of honour to have linen enough to last them six months, so as only to send it to be washed twice in the year, when it went in a great waggon to Spiegelhausen. A young lady always endeavoured to have this quantity at her marriage.

Lodging in the castle itself was M. Meyer,[77] afterwards a kind of secretary to the Empress Augusta of Germany, a most singular man, who was then employed upon an enormous poem, which he believed would throw Dante into the shade, though it has passed quite unnoticed. He delighted to read us some of its endless cantos in the castle gardens, and we tried to look as if we understood and appreciated. But he was really very kind to us, and was a most amusing companion in the long walks which he took us--to the Angel's Meadow, a small green space in the forests high on the mountains beyond the river, and elsewhere. I shared his admiration for Mrs. Hamilton (_née_ Margaret Dillon, the maid of honour), who was at that time in the zenith of her beauty and attractiveness, and was living at Heidelberg with her husband and children.

We spent a day at Schwetzingen, where at that time was living the Grand Duchess Stephanie, the daughter of the Comte de Beauharnais and great-niece of the Empress Josephine, who had been adopted by Napoleon, and married against her will (1806) to the Prince of Baden. My aunt, Mrs. Stanley, was very intimate with her, and had much that was interesting to tell of her many trials.

It was during the latter part of our sojourn at Heidelberg that the Stanleys (Aunt Kitty, Arthur, and Mary), with Emmie Penrhyn, came to stay with us on their way to spend the winter at Rome, a journey which at that time was looked upon as a great family event. With them I went to Spires and its beautiful cathedral, and on the anniversary of my adoption we all went over to Mannheim, and dined at the hotel where, seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her for ever as if I were her own child, and never to see my own parents, as such, any more. I dwell upon this because one of the strangest coincidences of my life--almost too strange for credence--happened that day at Mannheim.

When we returned to the station in the evening, we had a long time to wait for the train. On the platform was a poor woman, crying very bitterly, with a little child in her arms. Emmie Penrhyn, who was tender-hearted, went up to her, and said she was afraid she was in some great trouble. "Yes," she said, "it is about my little child. My little child, who is only fourteen months old, is going away from me for ever in the train which is coming. It is going away to be adopted by its aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything to do with it any more."

It was of an adoption under _exactly_ the same circumstances that we had been to Mannheim to keep the seventeenth anniversary!

After parting with the Stanleys, we left Heidelberg on the 26th of August and made a little tour.

_To_ MRS. ALEXANDER.

"_Coblentz, Sept. 1._--Here we are again at Coblentz, in a room
looking on the friendly Rhine, with Ehrenbreitstein all new and
yellow on the other side the water, and the older houses of the
town below us.

"Our little tour has been most successful. We went first to Baden,
and spent the afternoon in driving up through the forest to the
Alte Schloss, coming down in a splendid sunset--the golden Rhine
gleaming in a red valley through the dark pines. The next morning,
as I was being shown over the Neue Schloss, I asked about the Grand
Duchess Stephanie and the Princess Wasa, when the guide rushed to a
window and said, 'Come quick, for the princesses are riding out of
the courtyard upon their asses, as they do every morning before
breakfast;' but I saw little more than their shadows flit across
the court as their donkeys clattered through the gate. I was shown
the circular opening through which prisoners bound in a chain used
to be let down into the _oubliettes_ and their subterranean
judgment-hall, and the place where they had to give the _baiser de
la Vierge_, when they fell through a trap-door upon wheels set
round with knives which cut them to pieces.

"Next day we went to Strasbourg--so hot it was!--and then to Metz,
where the cathedral is poor outside, but most glorious within--a
vista of solid round pillars terminating in a blaze of stained
glass. In one of the towers is 'Groggy,' a real dragon, dried.

"A diligence took us to Sierck on the Moselle, where we had a long
time to wait, and mother sate and drew whilst I rambled about. It
was evening before the churches of Treves appeared above the
river-bank. We stayed at the charming Rothes Haus, with the little
cross opposite commemorating the fiery vision of Constantine, which
is supposed to have taken place there. Treves has a wonderful round
of sights--the Roman baths, a beautiful ruin with tall brick
arches, brilliant still in colour: thence up the vine-clad hill to
where a gap between two ruined walls forms the entrance of the
amphitheatre: back by the Porta Nigra, noblest of Roman gateways,
with the hermitage whither S. Simeon was brought from Syracuse by
Archbishop Poppo, and where he spent the rest of his life: finally
to the cathedral, and the Liebfrauenkirche with lovely cloisters
filled with flowers.

"We made great friends with the old sacristan at the cathedral, who
gave us an extraordinary account of the last exhibition of its
great relic, the 'Heilige Rock,' or seamless coat of the Saviour,
when 30,000 persons passed through the church every day, weeping
and sobbing, singing and praying as they went. The coat is only
exhibited every twenty-five years, and awaits its next resurrection
entombed in a treble coffin before the high altar. It has certainly
done great things for Treves, as the cathedral has been restored, a
capital hospital built, and all the fortunes of the citizens made
by its exhibition. The sacristan was delighted to find that I also
was a 'Romische Burgher,' but hoped that in a few years I should
'want some more cloth putting into my coat.'"

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Namur, Sept. 2._--Here I am, alone and dreary in the world once
more.... It always seems as if I could have done a great deal more
for you, and been more gentle and loving when I am gone, but I am
sure my own darling mother will never really have thought me
wanting in gratitude to her."

* * * * *

"_Braine le Comte, Sept. 3._--I believe no one has such misfortunes
as I have. I was at the Namur station at six this morning, and
here by eight. Then the guard suggested my going into the
waiting-room, as there was half-an-hour to wait before the train
came up for Calais, for which I had a through ticket. I had no
summons to the train: it came up on the opposite side of the
station (concealed by another train) in five minutes, and I was
left behind, and there is no train again till past seven o'clock
this evening, and then only to Lille!--eleven hours to wait!"

"_Southgate, Sept. 4._--As the dreary hours at Braine le Comte
waned, two English families arrived from Namur, and with two
ladies, 'Alice and Sybil,' and the boys of Sybil, I sallied out to
see Braine le Comte, and then into the forest to pick bilberries
for the luncheon which I had no money to buy. Then I arrived in the
night at Lille, and being unable to find a hotel in the dark, and
indeed having no money to pay for going to one, wandered about till
at length I collapsed altogether on the doorstep of one of the
houses. Here I was found by some of the old market-women when they
arrived for the opening of the market at dawn, and they took me
into the _halles_, and made me share their early breakfast. This
was a kind of black broth in a huge wooden bowl, into which we all
dipped a great spoon in turns, but it was most welcome, and the old
women were very kind to me."

It was a great pleasure this autumn to pay a little visit to my mother's old friend Miss Clinton, whose frequent visits to Lime had counted as some of the happiest days of my childhood. She was essentially what the French call "_bonne à vivre_," so good-humoured and cheerful, and so indulgent to the faults of others. The crystal stream of her common-sense had always seemed to stir up the stagnant quagmire of religious inanities which the Maurice sisters had surrounded us with at Hurstmonceaux.

"_Cokenach, Oct. 3._--I was so glad to come here for two days. The
dear old Stoke carriage with Lou Clinton[78] in it met me at
Royston. She took me first to see the antiquities--Lady Rohesia's
chapel and Roysie's Cave, which gave the place its name, and a
house where James I. stayed when he came hunting, in which his
bedroom is preserved with its old furniture: in the garden is the
first mulberry-tree planted in England. We reached Cokenach by the
field roads.

"I was taken up at once to Lady Louisa,[79] who sate, as years ago,
in her large chair by the blazing firelogs, with all her baskets of
papers round her, and her table covered with things."

As it was considered a settled point that I was to take Orders when I was grown up (a point on which no single member of the family allowed any discussion or difference of opinion), and that I was then to have the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux, in the gift of my brother Francis, my whole education up to this time had been with that intention. My mother, therefore, was quite enchanted when my admiration of the Béguinages which I had seen in Belgium led me, in the autumn of 1852, to devote every spare moment to a sort of missionary work in the low wretched districts of Southgate. I had read in St. Vincent de Paul: "L'action bonne et parfaite est le véritable caractère de l'amour de Dieu ... c'est l'amour _effectif_ qu'il faut à Dieu," and I determined to try to act upon it.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Sept. 29, 1852._--I have now regularly entered on my parochial
duties. There is a long strip of cottages in the village, yet out
of Southgate parish, and which the clergyman of their own parish
will have nothing to do with, as those of the inhabitants who go to
church go to Southgate, so that he gets no marriage fees. The
people would have been dreadfully neglected if Mrs. Bradley had not
taken care of them, and as it is, they are in a very bad state,
most of the men drunkards, and their wives and children starving.
As the houses look out upon an open drain, they teem with illness
for which there is no remedy. The children spend their days in
making mud-pies upon the road.... I have now got all these cottages
as my peculiar province.

"Most of the people cannot, or fancy they cannot, go to church, so
I offered to have a sort of 'cottage reading' every Tuesday in the
house of one of the better people--a Mrs. Perry. I was rather
alarmed, though glad, to see how many came.... I tried to make the
reading as interesting and easy as I could, and afterwards ventured
upon a little 'discourse.'

"It was strange to find this really heathen colony--for they know
_nothing_--close by, and I am glad to have a foretaste of what my
life's work will be like."

"_Southgate, October 12._--Mr. Bradley is in nothing so
extraordinary as in the education of his children. All the moral
lessons to his little daughter Jesse are taken from reminiscences
of his 'poor dear first wife,' who never existed. I am used to it
now, but was amazed when I first heard little Jesse ask something
about 'your poor dear first wife, papa,' and he took out a
handkerchief and covered over both their heads that no one might
see them cry, which the little girl did abundantly over the
touching story told her. Little Charlie's education was carried on
in a similar way, only the model held up to him was a son of Mrs.
Bradley's by an imaginary first husband, who 'died and is buried in
Oxfordshire.' Little Moses's mamma, 'Mrs. Jochebed Amram,' is also
held up as an effective example of Christian piety and patience,
but Moses himself never touches their feelings at all. I must send
you one of the allegories which I have heard Bradley tell his
children; it is such a characteristic specimen:--

"'Now I will tell you a story about Hare. When Hare was a little
child he lived at Rome: you know what we call it?--("Oh yes, papa,
Babylon.")--Well, he lived at Babylon, and he was a very good
little boy then, but he used to walk about dressed in scarlet, for
they all wore scarlet there. One day a man was seen in the streets,
very beautiful, a stranger with silver wings. And he said, "Are you
little Hare, and would you like to go with me and learn how to be
good?" for he was an angel. And little Hare said, "Oh yes, that is
what I always like to be and try to be, and I shall like very much
to go."

"'So the angel took little Hare up and carried him away on his
back: and his poor mother went up and down the streets of Babylon
crying and wringing her hands, for she did not know where her dear
boy was gone.

"'But the angel carried Hare to the Happy Island, where all manner
of little children were living--Ada and Angelina, and numbers of
others. All these little children came to Hare and asked why he
came there in his scarlet dress without getting it washed, because
they all wore white robes, and they told him he must get his robes
washed too. But he said he liked his scarlet clothes, and did not
wish to have white robes like theirs, and he was very sullen and
angry.

"'So then the angel and the children left him alone and took no
notice of him. But after a time he observed that all the other
children had little wings while he had none, and he felt sorry when
the great angel passed by every day and took no notice of him, and
at last he said, "How sorry I am to have spoken as I did, and how
much I should like to have my robes washed and made white like
those of the Happy Island children."

"'And the instant he said these words, his scarlet dress fell off,
and he had beautiful white robes given him, and he felt a strange
sensation in his shoulders, for little wings were growing there.
And all the little children came up and kissed him, and cried,
"Hosanna! hosanna! he is good; and he has got little wings like
us."

"'So Hare lived on in the island, till, one day, the angel said,
"Have you ever thought what your poor mother is doing now, and
would you not like to go back to her?" And Hare said, "But can I
always be good and have white robes and wings if I go back to
Babylon?" And the angel said, "No, but you can try," and he took
Hare on his back and flew off and off till he came to Babylon,
where he set Hare down in the streets: and all the people looked at
him, and when they saw his white robes and his wings, they said,
"Why, there is a little angel come!"

"'And Hare went to his mother when she was asleep, and when she
awoke she thought it was a dream, but he said, "No, mother, it is
no dream. I have been in the Happy Island all this time, and I have
come back good." Then his mother, when she saw his wings, said,
"Oh, go on being good, and then your wings will grow larger and
larger, till at last you will not only be able to go back yourself
to the Happy Isle, but to take me with you." And Hare wished to do
this, but nevertheless Babylon is a bad place, and as he went out
in the streets his dress became soiled with their mud, and he
mingled and played with its children till his wings grew smaller
and smaller, and at last they fell off altogether.

"'Still, if you were to examine Hare on the bare shoulders when he
is undressed, you would see the stumps where the wings were.'"

On the 17th of November I went up to London for the funeral of the Duke of Wellington on the following day. Very late at night Arthur Stanley arrived, having travelled day and night from Rome on purpose. We had to set off at four o'clock next morning to reach our reserved seats in St. Paul's, though I do not think the service began till twelve. We were four hours in the long chain of carriages wending at a foot's pace towards St. Paul's. A number of curious cases of robbery occurred then. I remember one, of an old gentleman in a carriage before us, who was leaning out of the carriage window with a pair of gold spectacles on his nose. A well-dressed man approached him between the two lines of carriages and said, "Sir, don't you know that you're very imprudent in leaning out of the carriage window on this occasion with such a very valuable pair of gold spectacles upon your nose? An _ill-disposed_ person might come up and whip off your spectacles like _this_"--and, suiting the action to the word, he whipped them off, and escaped between the opposite line of carriages, leaving the old gentleman without any chance of redress.

The ceremony in St. Paul's was sublime beyond any power of words to describe. I recollect as one of the most striking features the figure of Dean Milman--bent almost double, with silver hair--who had been present at the funeral of Nelson in 1806, when he "heard, or seemed to hear, the low wail of the sailors who encircled their Admiral." My mother saw the procession from the Bunsens' house at Carlton Terrace.

In the winter of 1852-53 I passed through one of those phases of religious conviction which ultra-Evangelicals would call a "conversion"--an awakening at a distinct time which I can remember (January 11) of the strongest feeling of repentance for past sin and desire for improvement. "O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire," are words of St. Augustine which expressed my whole feeling at the time. I have no doubt that this feeling--exaggerated and violent as it was--was perfectly sincere at the time, and possibly in some way may have had a wholesome influence on my life. But I am quite sure that in other ways it had a very _unwholesome_ influence, and that the habit of self-introspection and self-examination which I then felt a duty, and which many clergymen inculcate, is most injurious, as destroying simplicity of character, by leading an individual to dwell upon himself and his own doings, and thus causing him to invest that self and those doings with a most undue importance. I have always in later years, where I have had any influence, done all I could to discourage and repress these sudden religious "awakenings," producing unnatural mental sufferings at the time, and usually lapsing into an undesirable rebound. With an imaginary reality of conviction, young people are often led into hypocrisy, from a sense of the meritoriousness of that very hypocrisy itself in the eyes of many. I am quite sure that a simple Christian life of active benevolence and exertion for others, of bearing and forbearing, is the wholesome state--a life which is freed from all thoughts of self-introspection, and from all frantic efforts (_really_ leading aside from simple faith in a Saviour) after self-salvation. I dwell upon this here for a moment, though I dislike to do so, because no narrative of my life could be true without it.

The last nine months of my stay at Southgate were less pleasant than the preceding ones, as Mr. Bradley had ceased to like me, and, though he fully did his duty by me in work-time, plainly showed, out of working hours, that he would be very glad when the time came for our final separation. This change arose entirely from my resistance, backed up by Dr. Vaughan at Harrow, to many of his absurd punishments. I was now nearly nineteen, and I offered to bear any amount of _rational_ punishment he chose, but utterly refused to wear my coat inside out, and to run with a tin kettle tied to my coattail through the village, &c., which were the punishments he liked to impose.

But our final dispute came about in this way:--

My Latin prose was always the greatest stumbling-block in my work, and I was most trying, and inveterately careless over it, making the same mistake over and over again. At last Bradley decreed publicly, that for each of my commonest blunders, one of my companions should--kiss me! They thought it great fun, but I declared I would not submit. The decree had a good effect so far, that, for a very long time--a most unusually long time, the mistakes were evaded. At last, after about three weeks, a morning came when one of the mistakes occurred again. The fellow appointed to kiss me for this mistake was a big Scotchman named Buchan. Immediately the whole room was in motion, and Buchan in hot pursuit. I barricaded the way with chairs, jumped on the table, splashing right and left from all the inkstands, but eventually I was caught and--kissed.

In a blind fury, scarcely knowing what I did, I knocked Buchan's head against the sharp edge of the bookcase, and, seizing a great Liddell and Scott Lexicon, rushed upon Bradley, who was seated unsuspecting in a low chair by the fire, and, taking him unawares, banged him on the bald scalp with the lexicon till I could bang no longer. Bradley, after this, naturally said I must leave. I instantly fled over hedge and ditch fourteen miles to Harrow, and took refuge with the Vaughans, and after a day or two, Dr. Vaughan, by representing the fatal injury it would do me to be left tutorless just when I was going up to Oxford, persuaded Bradley to take me back and teach me as before. But this he consented to do only on condition that he was never expected to speak to me out of work-time, and he never did. My Southgate life henceforth was full of (in many ways well-deserved) petty hardships, though they were made endurable, because the time in which they had to be endured became every day more limited.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Southgate, Feb. 6, 1853._--Bradley of course keeps aloof, but is
not unkind to me, and it seems nothing to come back here, with
Oxford as a bright guiding-star.... I now work all day as if it
were the last day of preparation, and Walker and I question each
other in the evening."

"_Feb. 12._--I have been in my Southgate district all afternoon.
The wretchedness and degradation of the people is such as only
sight can give an idea of. In the last house in the upper alley
live the Gudgeons, where two children were born a few days ago, and
died a few hours after. I found Mrs. Gudgeon downstairs, for she
had brought the thing she called a bed there, because, she said, if
she was upstairs the children banging the doors maddened her. Two
dirty shaggy children, never washed or combed since their mother
was taken ill, were tugging at her; the eldest daughter, in
tattered clothes and with dishevelled hair, was washing some rags,
the fumes of which filled the room, while the floor was deep in
dirt. Since the mother has been ill she has had the only blanket
the family possess, so that she says the children howl with cold
all night."

"_Feb. 13._--To-day I found six of the Gudgeon children sitting on
three-legged stools, huddled round a miserable fire, the door
locked to prevent their running out into the snow. The mother said
'the Almighty knew what was good when He took the two babies; He
knew I couldn't tell what in the world I was to do with
them--though they were pretty babies, they were, every bit like
little waxwork dolls. I sent for the doctor, but it was a cold
night, and I was a poor woman, so he wouldn't come; if he had come,
I should have known they wouldn't live, and should have had them
baptized, and then I should have been happier about them.' I asked
where the family all contrived to sleep. 'Why, sir,' she said, 'you
know we have but two beds, and I sleep in the middle of one with
Martha on one side and Polly on the other, and Lisa has her head
out at the bottom, and sleeps at our feet; and father sleeps in the
little bed, with Emma on one side and Tom on the other, and Georgie
he lies at their feet, and Lu she lies with her grandmother.'"

"In another cottage I found that a good woman, Mrs. Caius, had just
taken in a dwarf child who had been much ill-treated by the woman
that took care of it. It had been dashed to and fro with
convulsions for three hours, and now its limbs were quite rigid and
stiff. It had not been stripped or washed for days, and its face
was so begrimed with dirt that the features were scarcely
discernible."

"_February 19._--Aunt Kitty has done a most kind act in securing
Mr. Jowett's protection for me at Oxford. I have had a kind note
from him, in which his using my Christian name at once is very
reassuring, though the fact that the seventeenth word he ever
addressed to me is a Latin one looks rather formidable for future
conversations."

Unfortunately, when I was just prepared to go up to Oxford for "Matriculation," I caught a violent chill while learning to skate, and, just when I should have started, became most seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs. As soon as I was able to be moved, I went to the Vaughans at Harrow, where I soon recovered under kind care and nursing. I always feel that I owe much in every way to the kindness and hospitality of my cousin Kate during these years of my life. As the authorities at the University were induced to give me a private examination later, in place of the one I had missed, I only remained at Southgate for a few days more.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_March 13._--My mother will like a letter on my nineteenth
birthday--so very old the _word_ makes it seem, and yet I feel just
as if I were the dear mother's little child still; only now every
year I may hope to be more of a comfort to her.

"Yesterday afternoon I went with Papillon to take leave of the
(Epping) Forest. It was a perfect day; such picturesque lights and
shades on the Edmonton levels. We went through Chingford
churchyard, and then through the muddy forest to the old Hunting
Lodge, which I had never reached before, and felt to be the one
thing I _must_ see. It is a small, gabled, weather-beaten house,
near a group of magnificent oaks on a hill-top. Inside is the
staircase up which Elizabeth _rode_ to dinner in her first ecstasy
over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Afterwards, I suppose
because she found it easy, she had a block put at the top from
which she mounted to ride down again. To prove the tradition, a
pony is now kept in the house, on which you may ride up and down
the stairs in safety. The lodge is still inhabited by one of the
oldest families of forest-rangers, who have been there for
centuries: in a room upstairs are the portraits of their ancestors,
and one bedroom is surrounded with tapestry which they declare was
wrought by the Queen's own needle.

"And to-morrow I am going to Oxford--how exciting!"