The Theosophical Society,
The Writings of Annie Besant
Annie
Besant
(1847
-1933)
Annie
Besant’s Autobiography
From a photograph by H.S.
Mendelssohn, 27, Cathcart Road, South Kensington, London
ANNIE BESANT
1885
PREFACE
It is a
difficult thing to tell the story of a life, and yet more difficult when that
life is one's own. At the best, the telling has a savour of vanity, and the
only excuse for the proceeding is that the life, being an average one, reflects
many others, and in troublous times like ours may give the experience of many
rather than of one. And so the autobiographer does his work because he thinks
that, at the cost of some unpleasantness to himself, he may throw light on some
of the typical problems that are vexing the souls of his contemporaries, and
perchance may stretch out a helping hand to some brother who is struggling in
the darkness, and so bring him cheer when despair has him in its grip. Since
all of us, men and women of this restless and eager generation—surrounded by
forces we dimly see but cannot as yet understand, discontented with old ideas
and half afraid of new, greedy for the material results of the knowledge
brought us by Science but looking askance at her agnosticism as regards the
soul, fearful of superstition but still more fearful of atheism, turning from
the husks of outgrown creeds but filled with desperate hunger for spiritual
ideals--since all of us have the same anxieties, the same griefs, the same
yearning hopes, the same passionate desire for knowledge, it may well be that
the story of one may help all, and that the tale of one should that went out
alone into the darkness and on the other side found light, that struggled
through the Storm and on the other side found Peace, may bring some ray of
light and of peace into the darkness and the storm of other lives.
Annie Besant
Park, LondonAugust, 1893.
CONTENTS
II. EARLY
CHILDHOOD
III. GIRLHOOD
IV. MARRIAGE
V. THE STORM OF DOUBT
VI. CHARLES
BRADLAUGH
VII. ATHEISM AS
I KNEW AND TAUGHT IT
VIII. AT WORK
IX. THE KNOWLTON
PAMPHLET
X. AT WAR ALL ROUND
XI. MR. BRADLAUGH'S
STRUGGLE
XII. STILL
FIGHTING
XIII. SOCIALISM
XIV. THROUGH
STORM TO PEACE
LIST
OF BOOKS QUOTED
INDEX
"OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE INTO
THE HERE."
On October 1, 1847, I am credibly
informed, my baby eyes opened to the light(?) of a London afternoon at 5.39.
A friendly astrologer has
drawn for me the following chart, showing the position of the planets at this,
to me fateful, moment; but I know nothing of astrology, so feel no wiser as I
gaze upon my horoscope.
Keeping in view the way
in which sun, moon, and planets influence the physical condition of the earth,
there is nothing incongruous with the orderly course of nature in the view that
they also influence the physical bodies of men, these being part of the
physical earth, and largely moulded by its conditions. Any one who knows the
characteristics ascribed to those who are born under the several signs of the
Zodiac, may very easily pick out the different types among his own
acquaintances, and he may then get them to go to some astrologer and find out
under what signs they were severally born. He will very quickly discover that
two men of completely opposed types are not born under the same sign, and the
invariability of the concurrence will convince him that law, and not chance, is
at work. We are born into earthly life under certain conditions, just as we
were physically affected by them pre-natally, and these will have their bearing
on our subsequent physical evolution. At the most, astrology, as it is now
practised, can only calculate the interaction between these physical conditions
at any given moment, and the conditions brought to them by a given person whose
general constitution and natal condition are known. It cannot say what the
person will do, nor what will happen to him, but only what will be the physical
district, so to speak, in which he will find himself, and the impulses that
will play upon him from external nature and from his own body. Even on those
matters modern astrology is not quite reliable—judging from the many blunders
made—or else its professors are very badly instructed; but that there is a real
science of astrology I have no doubt, and there are some men who are past
masters in it.
It has always been
somewhat of a grievance to me that I was born in London, "within the sound
of Bow Bells," when three-quarters of my blood and all my heart are Irish.
My dear mother was of purest Irish descent, and my father was Irish on his
mother's side, though belonging to the Devonshire Woods on his father's. The
Woods were yeomen of the sturdy English type, farming their own land in honest,
independent fashion. Of late years they seem to have developed more in the
direction of brains, from the time, in fact, that Matthew Wood became Mayor of
London town, fought Queen Caroline's battles against her most religious and
gracious royal husband, aided the Duke of Kent with no niggard hand, and
received a baronetcy for his services from the Duke of Kent's royal daughter.
Since then they have given England a Lord Chancellor in the person of the
gentle-hearted and pure-living Lord Hatherley, while others have distinguished
themselves in various ways in the service of their country. But I feel
playfully inclined to grudge the English blood they put into my father's veins,
with his Irish mother, his Galway birth, and his Trinity College, Dublin, education.
For the Irish tongue is musical in my ear, and the Irish nature dear to my
heart. Only in Ireland is it that if you stop to ask a worn-out ragged woman
the way to some old monument, she will say: "Sure, then, my darlin', it's
just up the hill and round the corner, and then any one will tell you the way.
And it's there you'll see the place where the blessed Saint Patrick set his
foot, and his blessing be on yer." Old women as poor as she in other
nations would never be as bright and as friendly and as garrulous. And where,
out of Ireland, will you see a whole town crowd into a station to say good-bye
to half a dozen emigrants, till the platform is a heaving mass of men and
women, struggling, climbing over each other for a last kiss, crying, keening, laughing,
all in a breath, till all the air is throbbing and there's a lump in your
throat and tears in your eyes as the train steams out? Where, out of Ireland,
will you be bumping along the streets on an outside car, beside a taciturn
Jarvey, who, on suddenly discovering that you are shadowed by
"Castle" spies, becomes loquaciously friendly, and points out
everything that he thinks will interest you? Blessings on the quick tongues and
warm hearts, on the people so easy to lead, so hard to drive. And blessings on
the ancient land once inhabited by mighty men of wisdom, that in later times
became the Island of Saints, and shall once again be the Island of Sages, when
the Wheel turns round.
My maternal grandfather
was a typical Irishman, much admired by me and somewhat feared also, in the
childish days. He belonged to a decayed Irish family, the Maurices, and in a
gay youth, with a beautiful wife as light-hearted as himself, he had merrily
run through what remained to him in the way of fortune. In his old age, with
abundant snow-white hair, he still showed the hot Irish blood on the lightest
provocation, stormily angry for a moment and easily appeased. My mother was the
second daughter in a large family, in a family that grew more numerous as
pounds grew fewer, and she was adopted by a maiden aunt, a quaint memory of
whom came through my mother's childhood into mine, and had its moulding effect
on both our characters. This maiden aunt was, as are most Irish folk of decayed
families, very proud of her family tree with its roots in the inevitable
"kings." Her particular kings were the "seven kings of
France"—the "Milesian kings"—and the tree grew up a parchment,
in all its impressive majesty, over the mantelpiece of their descendant's
modest drawing-room. This heraldic monster was regarded with deep respect by
child Emily, a respect in no wise deserved, I venture to suppose, by the
disreputable royalties of whom she was a fortunately distant twig. Chased out
of France, doubtless for cause shown, they had come over the sea to Ireland,
and there continued their reckless plundering lives. But so strangely turns the
wheel of time that these ill-doing and barbarous scamps became a kind of moral
thermometer in the home of the gentle Irish lady in the early half of the present
century. For my mother has told me that when she had committed some act of
childish naughtiness, her aunt would say, looking gravely over her spectacles
at the small culprit, "Emily, your conduct is unworthy of the descendant
of the seven kings of France." And Emily, with her sweet grey Irish eyes
and her curling masses of raven black hair, would cry in penitent shame over
her unworthiness, with some vague idea that those royal, and to her very real,
ancestors would despise her small, sweet, rosebud self, so wholly unworthy of
their disreputable majesties.
Thus those shadowy forms
influenced her in childhood, and exercised over her a power that made her
shrink from aught that was unworthy, petty or mean. To her the lightest breath
of dishonour was to be avoided at any cost of pain, and she wrought into me,
her only daughter, that same proud and passionate horror at any taint of shame
or merited disgrace. To the world always a brave front was to be kept, and a
stainless reputation, for suffering might be borne but dishonour never. A
gentlewoman might starve, but she must not run in debt; she might break her
heart, but it must be with a smile on her face. I have often thought that the
training in this reticence and pride of honour was a strange preparation for my
stormy, public, much attacked and slandered life; and certain it is that this
inwrought shrinking from all criticism that touched personal purity and
personal honour added a keenness of suffering to the fronting of public odium
that none can appreciate who has not been trained in some similar school of
dignified self-respect. And yet perhaps there was another result from it that
in value outweighed the added pain: it was the stubbornly resistant feeling
that rose and inwardly asserted its own purity in face of foulest lie, and
turning scornful face against the foe, too proud either to justify itself or to
defend, said to itself in its own heart, when condemnation was loudest: "I
am not what you think me, and your verdict does not change my own self. You
cannot make me vile whatever you think of me, and I will never, in my own eyes,
be that which you deem me to be now." And the very pride became a shield
against degradation, for, however lost my public reputation, I could never bear
to become sullied in my own sight—and that is a thing not without its use to a
woman cut off, as I was at one time, from home, and friends, and Society. So
peace to the maiden aunt's ashes, and to those of her absurd kings, for I owe
them something after all. And I keep grateful memory of that unknown
grand-aunt, for what she did in training my dear mother, the tenderest,
sweetest, proudest, purest of women. It is well to be able to look back to a
mother who served as ideal of all that was noblest and dearest during childhood
and girlhood, whose face made the beauty of home, and whose love was both sun
and shield. No other experience in life could quite make up for missing the
perfect tie between mother and child—a tie that in our case never relaxed and
never weakened. Though her grief at my change of faith and consequent social
ostracism did much to hasten her death-hour, it never brought a cloud between
our hearts; though her pleading was the hardest of all to face in later days,
and brought the bitterest agony, it made no gulf between us, it cast no chill
upon our mutual love. And I look back at her to-day with the same loving
gratitude as ever encircled her to me in her earthly life. I have never met a
woman more selflessly devoted to those she loved, more passionately contemptuous
of all that was mean or base, more keenly sensitive on every question of
honour, more iron in will, more sweet in tenderness, than the mother who made
my girlhood sunny as dreamland, who guarded me, until my marriage, from every
touch of pain that she could ward off or bear for me, who suffered more in
every trouble that touched me in later life than I did myself, and who died in
the little house I had taken for our new home in Norwood, worn out, ere old age
touched her, by sorrow, poverty, and pain, in May, 1874.
My earliest personal
recollections are of a house and garden that we lived in when I was three and
four years of age, situated in Grove Road, St. John's Wood. I can remember my
mother hovering round the dinner-table to see that all was bright for the
home-coming husband; my brother—two years older than myself—and I watching
"for papa"; the loving welcome, the game of romps that always
preceded the dinner of the elder folks. I can remember on the 1st of October,
1851, jumping up in my little cot, and shouting out triumphantly: "Papa!
mamma! I am four years old!" and the grave demand of my brother, conscious
of superior age, at dinner-time: "May not Annie have a knife to-day, as
she is four years old?"
It was a sore grievance
during that same year, 1851, that I was not judged old enough to go to the
Great Exhibition, and I have a faint memory of my brother consolingly bringing
me home one of those folding pictured strips that are sold in the streets, on
which were imaged glories that I longed only the more to see. Far-away, dusky,
trivial memories, these. What a pity it is that a baby cannot notice, cannot
observe, cannot remember, and so throw light on the fashion of the dawning of
the external world on the human consciousness. If only we could remember how
things looked when they were first imaged on the retinae; what we felt when
first we became conscious of the outer world; what the feeling was as faces of
father and mother grew out of the surrounding chaos and became familiar things,
greeted with a smile, lost with a cry; if only memory would not become a mist
when in later years we strive to throw our glances backward into the darkness
of our infancy, what lessons we might learn to help our stumbling psychology,
how many questions might be solved whose answers we are groping for in the West
in vain.
The next scene that
stands out clearly against the background of the past is that of my father's
death-bed. The events which led to his death I know from my dear mother. He had
never lost his fondness for the profession for which he had been trained, and
having many medical friends, he would now and then accompany them on their
hospital rounds, or share with them the labours of the dissecting-room. It
chanced that during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of
rapid consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the
breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen and
inflamed. "I would have that finger off, Wood, if I were you," said
one of the surgeons, a day or two afterwards, on seeing the state of the wound.
But the others laughed at the suggestion, and my father, at first inclined to
submit to the amputation, was persuaded to "leave Nature alone."
About the middle of
August, 1852, he got wet through, riding on the top of an omnibus, and the
wetting resulted in a severe cold, which "settled on his chest." One
of the most eminent doctors of the day, as able as he was rough in manner, was
called to see him. He examined him carefully, sounded his lungs, and left the
room followed by my mother. "Well?" she asked, scarcely anxious as to
the answer, save as it might worry her husband to be kept idly at home.
"You must keep up his spirits," was the thoughtless answer. "He
is in a galloping consumption; you will not have him with you six weeks
longer." The wife staggered back, and fell like a stone on the floor. But
love triumphed over agony, and half an hour later she was again at her
husband's side, never to leave it again for ten minutes at a time, night or
day, till he was lying with closed eyes asleep in death.
I was lifted on to the
bed to "say good-bye to dear papa" on the day before his death, and I
remember being frightened at his eyes which looked so large, and his voice
which sounded so strange, as he made me promise always to be "a very good
girl to darling mamma, as papa was going right away." I remember insisting
that "papa should kiss Cherry," a doll given me on my birthday, three
days before, by his direction, and being removed, crying and struggling, from
the room. He died on the following day, October 5th, and I do not think that my
elder brother and I—who were staying at our maternal grandfather's—went to the
house again until the day of the funeral. With the death, my mother broke down,
and when all was over they carried her senseless from the room. I remember
hearing afterwards how, when she recovered her senses, she passionately
insisted on being left alone, and locked herself into her room for the night;
and how on the following morning her mother, at last persuading her to open the
door, started back at the face she saw with the cry: "Good God, Emily!
your hair is white!" It was even so; her hair, black, glossy and abundant,
which, contrasting with her large grey eyes, had made her face so strangely
attractive, had turned grey in that night of agony, and to me my mother's face
is ever framed in exquisite silver bands of hair as white as the driven
unsullied snow.
I have heard that the
love between my father and mother was a very beautiful thing, and it most
certainly stamped her character for life. He was keenly intellectual and
splendidly educated; a mathematician and a good classical scholar, thoroughly
master of French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with a smattering
of Hebrew and Gaelic, the treasures of ancient and of modern literature were
his daily household delight. Nothing pleased him so well as to sit with his
wife, reading aloud to her while she worked; now translating from some foreign
poet, now rolling forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of "Queen
Mab." Student of philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily
sceptical; and a very religious relative has told me that he often drove her
from the room by his light, playful mockery of the tenets of the Christian
faith. His mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and near the end
forced a priest into his room, but the priest was promptly ejected by the wrath
of the dying man, and by the almost fierce resolve of the wife that no
messenger of the creed he detested should trouble her darling at the last.
Deeply read in
philosophy, he had outgrown the orthodox beliefs of his day, and his wife, who
loved him too much to criticise, was wont to reconcile her own piety and his
scepticism by holding that "women ought to be religious," while men
had a right to read everything and think as they would, provided that they were
upright and honourable in their lives. But the result of his liberal and
unorthodox thought was to insensibly modify and partially rationalise her own
beliefs, and she put on one side as errors the doctrines of eternal punishment,
the vicarious atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, the equality of the
Son with the Father in the Trinity, and other orthodox beliefs, and rejoiced in
her later years in the writings of such men as Jowett, Colenso, and Stanley.
The last named, indeed, was her ideal Christian gentleman, suave, polished,
broad-minded, devout in a stately way. The baldness of a typical Evangelical
service outraged her taste as much as the crudity of Evangelical dogmas
outraged her intellect; she liked to feel herself a Christian in a dignified
and artistic manner, and to be surrounded by solemn music and splendid
architecture when she "attended Divine service." Familiarity with
celestial personages was detestable to her, and she did her duty of saluting
them in a courtly and reverent fashion. Westminster Abbey was her favourite
church, with its dim light and shadowy distances; there in a carven stall, with
choristers chanting in solemn rhythm, with the many-coloured glories of the
painted windows repeating themselves on upspringing arch and clustering
pillars, with the rich harmonies of the pealing organ throbbing up against
screen and monument, with the ashes of the mighty dead around, and all the
stately memories of the past inwrought into the very masonry, there Religion
appeared to her to be intellectually dignified and emotionally satisfactory.
To me, who took my
religion in strenuous fashion, this dainty and well-bred piety seemed perilously
like Laodicean lukewarmness, while my headlong vigour of conviction and
practice often jarred on her as alien from the delicate balance and absence of
extremes that should characterise the gentlewoman. She was of the old régime;
I of the stuff from which fanatics are made: and I have often thought, in
looking back, that she must have had on her lips many a time unspoken a phrase
that dropped from them when she lay a-dying: "My little one, you have
never made me sad or sorry except for your own sake; you have always been too
religious." And then she murmured to herself: "Yes, it has been
darling Annie's only fault; she has always been too religious." Methinks
that, as the world judges, the dying voice spake truly, and the dying eyes saw
with a real insight. For though I was then kneeling beside her bed, heretic and
outcast, the heart of me was religious in its very fervour of repudiation of a
religion, and in its rebellious uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason
and did not satisfy the soul. I went out into the darkness alone, not because
religion was too good for me, but because it was not good enough; it was too
meagre, too commonplace, too little exacting, too bound up with earthly
interests, too calculating in its accommodations to social conventionalities.
The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured me, as it nearly did, would have
sent me on some mission of danger and sacrifice and utilised me as a martyr;
the Church established by law transformed me into an unbeliever and an
antagonist.
For as a child I was
mystical and imaginative religious to the very finger-tips, and with a certain
faculty for seeing visions and dreaming dreams. This faculty is not uncommon
with the Keltic races, and makes them seem "superstitious" to more solidly-built
peoples. Thus, on the day of my father's funeral, my mother sat with vacant
eyes and fixed pallid face—the picture comes back to me yet, it so impressed my
childish imagination—following the funeral service, stage after stage, and
suddenly, with the words, "It is all over!" fell back fainting. She
said afterwards that she had followed the hearse, had attended the service, had
walked behind the coffin to the grave. Certain it is that a few weeks later she
determined to go to the Kensal Green Cemetery, where the body of her husband
had been laid, and went thither with a relative; he failed to find the grave,
and while another of the party went in search of an official to identify the
spot, my mother said, "If you will take me to the chapel where the first
part of the service was read, I will find the grave." The idea seemed to
her friend, of course, to be absurd; but he would not cross the newly-made
widow, so took her to the chapel. She looked round, left the chapel door, and
followed the path along which the corpse had been borne till she reached the
grave, where she was quietly standing when the caretaker arrived to point it
out. The grave is at some distance from the chapel, and is not on one of the
main roads; it had nothing on it to mark it, save the wooden peg with the
number, and this would be no help to identification at a distance since all the
graves are thus marked, and at a little way off these pegs are not visible. How
she found the grave remained a mystery in the family, as no one believed her straightforward
story that she had been present at the funeral. With my present knowledge the
matter is simple enough, for I now know that the consciousness can leave the
body, take part in events going on at a distance, and, returning, impress on
the physical brain what it has experienced. The very fact that she asked to be
taken to the chapel is significant, showing that she was picking up a memory of
a previous going from that spot to the grave; she could only find the grave if
she started from the place from which she had started before. Another
proof of this ultra-physical capacity was given a few months later, when her
infant son, who had been pining himself ill for "papa," was lying one
night in her arms. On the next morning she said to her sister: "Alf is
going to die." The child had no definite disease, but was wasting away,
and it was argued to her that the returning spring would restore the health
lost during the winter. "No," was her answer. "He was lying
asleep in my arms last night, and William" (her husband) "came to me
and said that he wanted Alf with him, but that I might keep the other
two." In vain she was assured that she had been dreaming, that it was
quite natural that she should dream about her husband, and that her anxiety for
the child had given the dream its shape. Nothing would persuade her that she
had not seen her husband, or that the information he had given her was not
true. So it was no matter of surprise to her when in the following March her
arms were empty, and a waxen form lay lifeless in the baby's cot.
My brother and I were
allowed to see him just before he was placed in his coffin; I can see him
still, so white and beautiful, with a black spot in the middle of the fair,
waxen forehead, and I remember the deadly cold which startled me when I was
told to kiss my little brother. It was the first time that I had touched Death.
That black spot made a curious impression on me, and long afterwards, asking
what had caused it, I was told that at the moment after his death my mother had
passionately kissed the baby brow. Pathetic thought, that the mother's kiss of
farewell should have been marked by the first sign of corruption on the child's
face!
I do not mention these
stories because they are in any fashion remarkable or out of the way, but only
to show that the sensitiveness to impressions other than physical ones, that
was a marked feature in my own childhood, was present also in the family to
which I belonged. For the physical nature is inherited from parents, and
sensitiveness to psychic impressions is a property of the physical body; in our
family, as in so many Irish ones, belief in "ghosts" of all
descriptions was general, and my mother has told me of the banshee that she had
heard wailing when the death-hour of one of the family was near. To me in my
childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls
were as really children as I was myself a child. Punch and Judy were living
entities, and the tragedy in which they bore part cost me many an agony of tears;
to this day I can remember running away when I heard the squawk of the coming
Punch, and burying my head in the pillows that I might shut out the sound of
the blows and the cry of the ill-used baby. All the objects about me were to me
alive, the flowers that I kissed as much as the kitten I petted, and I used to
have a splendid time "making believe" and living out all sorts of
lovely stories among my treasured and so-called inanimate playthings. But there
was a more serious side to this dreamful fancy when it joined hands with
religion.
EARLY CHILDHOOD.
And now began my mother's
time of struggle and of anxiety. Hitherto, since her marriage, she had known no
money troubles, for her husband was earning a good income; he was apparently vigorous
and well: no thought of anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed
that he left his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary distress. It
was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the outcome of all was that
nothing was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready money. The
resolve to which my mother came was characteristic. Two of her husband's
relatives, Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her son at a good
city school, and to start him in commercial life, using their great city
influence to push him forward. But the young lad's father and mother had talked
of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public school,
and then to the University, and was to enter one of the "learned professions"—to
take orders, the mother wished; to go to the Bar, the father hoped. On his
death-bed there was nothing more earnestly urged by my father than that Harry
should receive the best possible education, and the widow was resolute to
fulfil that last wish. In her eyes, a city school was not "the best
possible education," and the Irish pride rebelled against the idea of her
son not being "a University man." Many were the lectures poured out
on the young widow's head about her "foolish pride," especially by
the female members of the Wood family; and her persistence in her own way
caused a considerable alienation between herself and them. But Western and
William, though half-disapproving, remained her friends, and lent many a
helping hand to her in her first difficult struggles. After much cogitation,
she resolved that the boy should be educated at Harrow, where the fees are
comparatively low to lads living in the town, and that he should go thence to
Cambridge or to Oxford, as his tastes should direct. A bold scheme for a
penniless widow, but carried out to the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate
body a more resolute mind and will than that of my dear mother.
In a few months'
time—during which we lived, poorly enough, in Richmond Terrace, Clapham, close
to her father and mother—to Harrow, then, she betook herself, into lodgings
over a grocer's shop, and set herself to look for a house. This grocer was a
very pompous man, fond of long words, and patronised the young widow
exceedingly, and one day my mother related with much amusement how he had told
her that she was sure to get on if she worked hard. "Look at me!" he
said, swelling visibly with importance; "I was once a poor boy, without a
penny of my own, and now I am a comfortable man, and have my submarine villa to
go to every evening." That "submarine villa" was an object of
amusement when we passed it in our walks for many a long day.
"There is Mr. —'s
submarine villa," some one would say, laughing: and I, too, used to laugh
merrily, because my elders did, though my understanding of the difference
between suburban and submarine was on a par with that of the honest grocer.
My mother had fortunately
found a boy, whose parents were glad to place him in her charge, of about the
age of her own son, to educate with him; and by this means she was able to pay
for a tutor, to prepare the two boys for school. The tutor had a cork leg,
which was a source of serious trouble to me, for it stuck out straight behind
when we knelt down to family prayers—conduct which struck me as irreverent and
unbecoming, but which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a year my
mother found a house which she thought would suit her scheme, namely, to obtain
permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then head-master of Harrow, to take some boys
into her house, and so gain means of education for her own son. Dr. Vaughan,
who must have been won by the gentle, strong, little woman, from that time
forth became her earnest friend and helper; and to the counsel and active
assistance both of himself and of his wife, was due much of the success that
crowned her toil. He made only one condition in granting the permission she
asked, and that was, that she should also have in her house one of the masters
of the school, so that the boys should not suffer from the want of a
house-tutor. This condition, of course, she readily accepted, and the
arrangement lasted for ten years, until after her son had left school for
Cambridge.
The house she took is
now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and replaced by a hideous red-brick
structure. It was very old and rambling, rose-covered in front, ivy-covered
behind; it stood on the top of Harrow Hill, between the church and the school,
and had once been the vicarage of the parish, but the vicar had left it because
it was so far removed from the part of the village where all his work lay. The
drawing-room opened by an old-fashioned half-window, half-door—which proved a
constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new frock I always tore
it on the bolt as I flew through—into a large garden which sloped down one side
of the hill, and was filled with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel,
may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant and
gooseberry bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading down the
sunny slopes. There was not a tree there that I did not climb, and one, a
widespreading Portugal laurel, was my private country house. I had there my
bedroom and my sitting-rooms, my study, and my larder. The larder was supplied
by the fruit-trees, from which I was free to pick as I would, and in the study
I would sit for hours with some favourite book—Milton's "Paradise
Lost" the chief favourite of all. The birds must often have felt startled,
when from the small swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish
tones the "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of
Milton's stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim
the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass in
Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son,"
Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of the
churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by an old wooden
fence, over which clambered roses of every shade; never was such a garden for
roses as that of the Old Vicarage. At the end of the terrace was a little
summer-house, and in this a trap-door in the fence, which swung open and
displayed one of the fairest views in England. Sheer from your feet downwards
went the hill, and then far below stretched the wooded country till your eye
reached the towers of Windsor Castle, far away on the horizon. It was the view
at which Byron was never tired of gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close
by—Byron's tomb, as it is still called—of which he wrote:—
"Again I behold
where for hours I have pondered,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay,
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wandered,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray."
Reader mine, if ever you
go to Harrow, ask permission to enter the old garden, and try the effect of
that sudden burst of beauty, as you swing back the small trap-door at the
terrace end.
Into this house we moved
on my eighth birthday, and for eleven years it was "home" to me, left
always with regret, returned to always with joy.
Almost immediately
afterwards I left my mother for the first time; for one day, visiting a family
who lived close by, I found a stranger sitting in the drawing-room, a lame lady
with a strong face, which softened marvellously as she smiled at the child who
came dancing in; she called me to her presently, and took me on her lap and
talked to me, and on the following day our friend came to see my mother, to ask
if she would let me go away and be educated with this lady's niece, coming home
for the holidays regularly, but leaving my education in her hands. At first my
mother would not hear of it, for she and I scarcely ever left each other; my
love for her was an idolatry, hers for me a devotion. (A foolish little story,
about which I was unmercifully teased for years, marked that absolute idolatry
of her, which has not yet faded from my heart. In tenderest rallying one day of
the child who trotted after her everywhere, content to sit, or stand, or wait,
if only she might touch hand or dress of "mamma," she said:
"Little one" (the name by which she always called me), "if you
cling to mamma in this way, I must really get a string and tie you to my apron,
and how will you like that?" "O mamma, darling," came the
fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." And, indeed, the tie of
love between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till the
sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to slacken in the
slightest degree.) But it was urged upon her that the advantages of education
offered were such as no money could purchase for me; that it would be a
disadvantage for me to grow up in a houseful of boys—and, in truth, I was as
good a cricketer and climber as the best of them—that my mother would soon be
obliged to send me to school, unless she accepted an offer which gave me every
advantage of school without its disadvantages. At last she yielded, and it was
decided that Miss Marryat, on returning home, should take me with her.
Miss Marryat—the
favourite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous novelist—was a maiden lady of
large means. She had nursed her brother through the illness that ended in his
death, and had been living with her mother at Wimbledon Park. On her mother's
death she looked round for work which would make her useful in the world, and
finding that one of her brothers had a large family of girls, she offered to
take charge of one of them, and to educate her thoroughly. Chancing to come to
Harrow, my good fortune threw me in her way, and she took a fancy to me and
thought she would like to teach two little girls rather than one. Hence her
offer to my mother.
Miss Marryat had a
perfect genius for teaching, and took in it the greatest delight. From time to
time she added another child to our party, sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl.
At first, with Amy Marryat and myself, there was a little boy, Walter Powys,
son of a clergyman with a large family, and him she trained for some years, and
then sent him on to school admirably prepared. She chose "her
children"—as she loved to call us—in very definite fashion. Each must be
gently born and gently trained, but in such position that the education freely
given should be a relief and aid to a slender parental purse. It was her
delight to seek out and aid those on whom poverty presses most heavily, when
the need for education for the children weighs on the proud and the poor.
"Auntie" we all called her, for she thought "Miss Marryat"
seemed too cold and stiff. She taught us everything herself except music, and
for this she had a master, practising us in composition, in recitation, in
reading aloud English and French, and later, German, devoting herself to
training us in the soundest, most thorough fashion. No words of mine can tell
how much I owe her, not only of knowledge, but of that love of knowledge which
has remained with me ever since as a constant spur to study.
Her method of teaching
may be of interest to some, who desire to train children with least pain, and
the most enjoyment to the little ones themselves. First, we never used a
spelling-book—that torment of the small child—nor an English grammar. But we
wrote letters, telling of the things we had seen in our walks, or told again
some story we had read; these childish compositions she would read over with
us, correcting all faults of spelling, of grammar, of style, of cadence; a
clumsy sentence would be read aloud, that we might hear how unmusical it
sounded, an error in observation or expression pointed out. Then, as the
letters recorded what we had seen the day before, the faculty of observation
was drawn out and trained. "Oh, dear! I have nothing to say!" would
come from a small child, hanging over a slate. "Did you not go out for a
walk yesterday?" Auntie would question. "Yes," would be sighed
out; "but there's nothing to say about it." "Nothing to say! And
you walked in the lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes? You must
use your eyes better to-day." Then there was a very favourite
"lesson," which proved an excellent way of teaching spelling. We used
to write out lists of all the words we could think of which sounded the same
but were differently spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight,
night," and so on, and great was the glory of the child who found the
largest number. Our French lessons—as the German later—included reading from
the very first. On the day on which we began German we began reading Schiller's
"Wilhelm Tell," and the verbs given to us to copy out were those that
had occurred in the reading. We learned much by heart, but always things that
in themselves were worthy to be learned. We were never given the dry questions
and answers which lazy teachers so much affect. We were taught history by one
reading aloud while the others worked—the boys as well as the girls learning
the use of the needle. "It's like a girl to sew," said a little
fellow, indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to run after a
girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned by
painting skeleton maps—an exercise much delighted in by small fingers—and by
putting together puzzle maps, in which countries in the map of a continent, or
counties in the map of a country, were always cut out in their proper shapes. I
liked big empires in those days; there was a solid satisfaction in putting down
Russia, and seeing what a large part of the map was filled up thereby.
The only grammar that we
ever learned as grammar was the Latin, and that not until composition had made
us familiar with the use of the rules therein given. Auntie had a great horror
of children learning by rote things they did not understand, and then fancying
they knew them. "What do you mean by that expression, Annie?" she
would ask me. After feeble attempts to explain, I would answer: "Indeed,
Auntie, I know in my own head, but I can't explain." "Then, indeed,
Annie, you do not know in your own head, or you could explain, so that I might
know in my own head." And so a healthy habit was fostered of clearness of
thought and of expression. The Latin grammar was used because it was more
perfect than the modern grammars, and served as a solid foundation for modern
languages.
Miss Marryat took a
beautiful place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, on the borders of
Devon, and there she lived for some five years, a centre of beneficence in the
district. She started a Sunday School, and a Bible Class after awhile for the
lads too old for the school, who clamoured for admission to her class in it.
She visited the poor, taking help wherever she went, and sending food from her
own table to the sick. It was characteristic of her that she would never give
"scraps" to the poor, but would have a basin brought in at dinner,
and would cut the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money she rarely,
if ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself to seek
permanent employment for any one seeking aid. Stern in rectitude herself, and
iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her influence, whether she was feared or
loved, was always for good. Of the strictest sect of the Evangelicals, she was
an Evangelical. On the Sunday no books were allowed save the Bible or the
"Sunday at Home"; but she would try to make the day bright by various
little devices; by a walk with her in the garden; by the singing of hymns,
always attractive to children; by telling us wonderful missionary stories of
Moffat and Livingstone, whose adventures with savages and wild beasts were as
exciting as any tale of Mayne Reid's. We used to learn passages from the Bible
and hymns for repetition; a favourite amusement was a "Bible puzzle,"
such as a description of some Bible scene, which was to be recognised by the
description. Then we taught in the Sunday School, for Auntie would tell us that
it was useless for us to learn if we did not try to help those who had no one
to teach them. The Sunday-school lessons had to be carefully prepared on the
Saturday, for we were always taught that work given to the poor should be work
that cost something to the giver. This principle, regarded by her as an
illustration of the text, "Shall I give unto the Lord my God that which
has cost me nothing?" ran through all her precept and her practice. When
in some public distress we children went to her crying, and asking whether we could
not help the little children who were starving, her prompt reply was,
"What will you give up for them?" And then she said that if we liked
to give up the use of sugar, we might thus each save sixpence a week to give
away. I doubt if a healthier lesson can be given to children than that of
personal self-denial for the good of others.
Daily, when our lessons
were over, we had plenty of fun; long walks and rides, rides on a lovely pony, who
found small children most amusing, and on which the coachman taught us to stick
firmly, whatever his eccentricities of the moment; delightful all-day picnics
in the lovely country round Charmouth, Auntie our merriest playfellow. Never
was a healthier home, physically and mentally, made for young things than in
that quiet village. And then the delight of the holidays! The pride of my
mother at the good report of her darling's progress, and the renewal of
acquaintance with every nook and corner in the dear old house and garden.
The dreamy tendency in
the child, that on its worldly side is fancy, imagination, on its religious
side is the germ of mysticism, and I believe it to be far more common than many
people think. But the remorseless materialism of the day—not the philosophic
materialism of the few, but the religious materialism of the many—crushes out
all the delicate buddings forth of the childish thought, and bandages the eyes
that might otherwise see. At first the child does not distinguish between what
it "sees" and what it "fancies"; the one is as real, as
objective, to it as the other, and it will talk to and play with its
dream-comrades as merrily as with children like itself. As a child, I myself
very much preferred the former, and never knew what it was to be lonely. But
clumsy grown-ups come along and tramp right through the dream-garden, and crush
the dream-flowers, and push the dream-children aside, and then say, in their
loud, harsh voices—not soft and singable like the dream-voices—"You must
not tell such naughty stories, Miss Annie; you give me the shivers, and your
mamma will be very vexed with you." But this tendency in me was too strong
to be stifled, and it found its food in the fairy tales I loved, and in the
religious allegories that I found yet more entrancing. How or when I learned to
read, I do not know, for I cannot remember the time when a book was not a
delight. At five years of age I must have read easily, for I remember being
often unswathed from a delightful curtain, in which I used to roll myself with
a book, and told to "go and play," while I was still a
five-years'-old dot. And I had a habit of losing myself so completely in the
book that my name might be called in the room where I was, and I never hear it,
so that I used to be blamed for wilfully hiding myself, when I had simply been
away in fairyland, or lying trembling beneath some friendly cabbage-leaf as a
giant went by.
I was between seven and
eight years of age when I first came across some children's allegories of a religious
kind, and a very little later came "Pilgrim's Progress," and Milton's
"Paradise Lost." Thenceforth my busy fancies carried me ever into the
fascinating world where boy-soldiers kept some outpost for their absent Prince,
bearing a shield with his sign of a red cross on it; where devils shaped as
dragons came swooping down on the pilgrim, but were driven away defeated after
hard struggle; where angels came and talked with little children, and gave them
some talisman which warned them of coming danger, and lost its light if they
were leaving the right path. What a dull, tire-some world it was that I had to
live in, I used to think to myself, when I was told to be a good child, and not
to lose my temper, and to be tidy, and not mess my pinafore at dinner. How much
easier to be a Christian if one could have a red-cross shield and a white
banner, and have a real devil to fight with, and a beautiful Divine Prince to
smile at you when the battle was over. How much more exciting to struggle with
a winged and clawed dragon, that you knew meant mischief, than to look after
your temper, that you never remembered you ought to keep until you had lost it.
If I had been Eve in the garden, that old serpent would never have got the
better of me; but how was a little girl to know that she might not pick out the
rosiest, prettiest apple from a tree that had no serpent to show it was a
forbidden one? And as I grew older the dreams and fancies grew less fantastic,
but more tinged with real enthusiasm. I read tales of the early Christian
martyrs, and passionately regretted I was born so late when no suffering for
religion was practicable; I would spend many an hour in daydreams, in which I
stood before Roman judges, before Dominican Inquisitors, was flung to lions,
tortured on the rack, burned at the stake; one day I saw myself preaching some
great new faith to a vast crowd of people, and they listened and were
converted, and I became a great religious leader. But always, with a shock, I
was brought back to earth, where there were no heroic deeds to do, no lions to
face, no judges to defy, but only some dull duty to be performed. And I used to
fret that I was born so late, when all the grand things had been done, and when
there was no chance of preaching and suffering for a new religion.
From the age of eight my
education accented the religious side of my character. Under Miss Marryat's
training my religious feeling received a strongly Evangelical bent, but it was
a subject of some distress to me that I could never look back to an hour of
"conversion"; when others gave their experiences, and spoke of the
sudden change they had felt, I used to be sadly conscious that no such change
had occurred in me, and I felt that my dreamy longings were very poor things
compared with the vigorous "sense of sin" spoken of by the preachers,
and used dolefully to wonder if I were "saved." Then I had an uneasy
sense that I was often praised for my piety when emulation and vanity were more
to the front than religion; as when I learned by heart the Epistle of James,
far more to distinguish myself for my good memory than from any love of the
text itself; the sonorous cadences of many parts of the Old and New Testaments
pleased my ear, and I took a dreamy pleasure in repeating them aloud, just as I
would recite for my own amusement hundreds of lines of Milton's "Paradise
Lost," as I sat swinging on some branch of a tree, lying back often on
some swaying bough and gazing into the unfathomable blue of the sky, till I
lost myself in an ecstasy of sound and colour, half chanting the melodious
sentences and peopling all the blue with misty forms. This facility of learning
by heart, and the habit of dreamy recitation, made me very familiar with the
Bible and very apt with its phrases. This stood me in good stead at the
prayer-meetings dear to the Evangelical, in which we all took part; in turn we
were called on to pray aloud—a terrible ordeal to me, for I was painfully shy
when attention was called to me; I used to suffer agonies while I waited for
the dreaded words, "Now, Annie dear, will you speak to our Lord." But
when my trembling lips had forced themselves into speech, all the nervousness
used to vanish and I was swept away by an enthusiasm that readily clothed
itself in balanced sentences, and alack! at the end, I too often hoped that God
and Auntie had noticed that I prayed very nicely—a vanity certainly not
intended to be fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the somewhat
Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little morbid, especially as
I always fretted silently after my mother. I remember she was surprised on one
of my home-comings, when Miss Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want
in my character, for at home I was ever the blithest of children, despite my
love of solitude; but away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern
religion cast somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell
never came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in
"Paradise Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned
and hoofed horror, but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always hoped
that Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end. The things that really
frightened me were vague, misty presences that I felt were near, but could not
see; they were so real that I knew just where they were in the room, and the
peculiar terror they excited lay largely in the feeling that I was just going
to see them. If by chance I came across a ghost story it haunted me for months,
for I saw whatever unpleasant spectre was described; and there was one horrid
old woman in a tale by Sir Walter Scott, who glided up to the foot of your bed
and sprang on it in some eerie fashion and glared at you, and who made my going
to bed a terror to me for many weeks. I can still recall the feeling so vividly
that it almost frightens me now!
GIRLHOOD.
In the spring of 1861
Miss Marryat announced her intention of going abroad, and asked my dear mother
to let me accompany her. A little nephew whom she had adopted was suffering
from cataract, and she desired to place him under the care of the famous
Düsseldorf oculist. Amy Marryat had been recalled home soon after the death of
her mother, who had died in giving birth to the child adopted by Miss Marryat,
and named at her desire after her favourite brother Frederick (Captain
Marryat). Her place had been taken by a girl a few months older than myself,
Emma Mann, one of the daughters of a clergyman, who had married Miss Stanley,
closely related, indeed, if I remember rightly, a sister of the Miss Mary
Stanley who did such noble work in nursing in the Crimea.
For some months we had
been diligently studying German, for Miss Marryat thought it wise that we
should know a language fairly well before we visited the country of which it
was the native tongue. We had been trained also to talk French daily during
dinner, so we were not quite "helpless foreigners" when we steamed
away from St. Catherine's Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in
Antwerp, amid what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues. Alas for
our carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously! We were lost in that
swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not understand a word! But Miss
Marryat was quite equal to the occasion, being by no means new to travelling,
and her French stood the test triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel.
On the morrow we started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town which
lies on the borders of the exquisite scenery of which the Siebengebirge and Rolandseck
serve as the magic portal. Our experiences in Bonn were not wholly
satisfactory. Dear Auntie was a maiden lady, looking on all young men as wolves
to be kept far from her growing lambs. Bonn was a university town, and there
was a mania just then prevailing there for all things English. Emma was a
plump, rosy, fair-haired typical English maiden, full of frolic and harmless
fun; I a very slight, pale, black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and
extreme pensiveness. In the boarding-house to which we went at first—the
"Château du Rhin," a beautiful place overhanging the broad, blue
Rhine—there chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of Hamilton,
the Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor. They had the whole
drawing-room floor: we a sitting-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above.
The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did not like her "children" to
be on speaking terms with any of the "male sect."
Here was a fine source of
amusement. They would make their horses caracole on the gravel in front of our
window; they would be just starting for their ride as we went for walk or
drive, and would salute us with doffed hat and low bow; they would waylay us on
our way downstairs with demure "Good morning"; they would go to church
and post themselves so that they could survey our pew, and Lord Charles—who
possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of the scalp—would wriggle
his hair up and down till we were choking with laughter, to our own imminent
risk. After a month of this Auntie was literally driven out of the pretty
château, and took refuge in a girls' school, much to our disgust; but still she
was not allowed to be at rest. Mischievous students would pursue us wherever we
went; sentimental Germans, with gashed cheeks, would whisper complimentary
phrases as we passed; mere boyish nonsense of most harmless kind, but the
rather stern English lady thought it "not proper," and after three
months of Bonn we were sent home for the holidays, somewhat in disgrace. But we
had some lovely excursions during those months; such clambering up mountains,
such rows on the swift-flowing Rhine, such wanderings in exquisite valleys. I
have a long picture-gallery to retire into when I want to think of something
fair, in recalling the moon as it silvered the Rhine at the foot of
Drachenfels, or the soft, mist-veiled island where dwelt the lady who is
consecrated for ever by Roland's love.
A couple of months later
we rejoined Miss Marryat in Paris, where we spent seven happy, workful months.
On Wednesdays and Saturdays we were free from lessons, and many a long
afternoon was passed in the galleries of the Louvre, till we became familiar
with the masterpieces of art gathered there from all lands. I doubt if there
was a beautiful church in Paris that we did not visit during those weekly
wanderings; that of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois was my favourite—the church
whose bell gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew—for it contained
such marvellous stained glass, deepest, purest glory of colour that I had ever
seen. The solemn beauty of Notre Dame, the somewhat gaudy magnificence of La
Sainte Chapelle, the stateliness of La Madeleine, the impressive gloom of St.
Roch, were all familiar to us. Other delights were found in mingling with the
bright crowds which passed along the Champs Elysees and sauntered in the Bois
de Boulogne, in strolling in the garden of the Tuileries, in climbing to the
top of every monument whence view of Paris could be gained. The Empire was then
in its heyday of glitter, and we much enjoyed seeing the brilliant escort of
the imperial carriage, with plumes and gold and silver dancing and glistening
in the sunlight, while in the carriage sat the exquisitely lovely empress, with
the little boy beside her, touching his cap shyly, but with something of her
own grace, in answer to a greeting—the boy who was thought to be born to an
imperial crown, but whose brief career was to find an ending from the spears of
savages in a quarrel in which he had no concern.
In the spring of 1862 it
chanced that the Bishop of Ohio visited Paris, and Mr. Forbes, then English
chaplain at the Church of the Rue d'Aguesseau, arranged to have a confirmation.
As said above, I was under deep "religious impressions," and, in
fact, with the exception of that little aberration in Germany, I was decidedly
a pious girl. I looked on theatres (never having been to one) as traps set by
Satan for the destruction of foolish souls; I was quite determined never to go
to a ball, and was prepared to "suffer for conscience' sake "—little
prig that I was—if I was desired to go to one. I was consequently quite
prepared to take upon myself the vows made in my name at my baptism, and to
renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, with a heartiness and sincerity only
equalled by my profound ignorance of the things I so readily resigned. That
confirmation was to me a very solemn matter; the careful preparation, the
prolonged prayers, the wondering awe as to the "seven-fold gifts of the
Spirit," which were to be given by "the laying on of hands," all
tended to excitement. I could scarcely control myself as I knelt at the altar
rails, and felt as though the gentle touch of the aged bishop, which fluttered
for an instant on my bowed head, were the very touch of the wing of that
"Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove," whose presence had been so earnestly
invoked. Is there anything easier, I wonder, than to make a young and sensitive
girl "intensely religious"? This stay in Paris roused into activity
an aspect of my religious nature that had hitherto been latent. I discovered
the sensuous enjoyment that lay in introducing colour and fragrance and pomp
into religious services, so that the gratification of the aesthetic emotions
became dignified with the garb of piety. The picture-galleries of the Louvre,
crowded with Madonnas and saints, the Roman Catholic churches with their
incense-laden air and exquisite music, brought a new joy into my life, a more
vivid colour to my dreams. Insensibly, the colder, cruder Evangelicalism that I
had never thoroughly assimilated, grew warmer and more brilliant, and the ideal
Divine Prince of my childhood took on the more pathetic lineaments of the Man
of Sorrows, the deeper attractiveness of the suffering Saviour of Men. Keble's
"Christian Year" took the place of "Paradise Lost," and as
my girlhood began to bud towards womanhood, all its deeper currents set in the
direction of religious devotion. My mother did not allow me to read love
stories, and my daydreams of the future were scarcely touched by any of the
ordinary hopes and fears of a girl lifting her eyes towards the world she is
shortly to enter. They were filled with broodings over the days when
girl-martyrs were blessed with visions of the King of Martyrs, when sweet St.
Agnes saw her celestial Bridegroom, and angels stooped to whisper melodies in
St. Cecilia's raptured ear. "Why then and not now?" my heart would
question, and I would lose myself in these fancies, never happier than when
alone.
The summer of 1862 was
spent with Miss Marryat at Sidmouth, and, wise woman that she was, she now
carefully directed our studies with a view to our coming enfranchisement from
the "schoolroom." More and more were we trained to work alone; our
leading-strings were slackened, so that we never felt them save when we
blundered; and I remember that when I once complained, in loving fashion, that
she was "teaching me so little," she told me that I was getting old
enough to be trusted to work by myself, and that I must not expect to
"have Auntie for a crutch all through life." And I venture to say
that this gentle withdrawal of constant supervision and teaching was one of the
wisest and kindest things that this noble-hearted woman ever did for us. It is
the usual custom to keep girls in the schoolroom until they "come
out"; then, suddenly, they are left to their own devices, and, bewildered
by their unaccustomed freedom, they waste time that might be priceless for
their intellectual growth. Lately, the opening of universities to women has
removed this danger for the more ambitious; but at the time of which I am
writing no one dreamed of the changes soon to be made in the direction of the
"higher education of women."
During the winter of
1862-63 Miss Marryat was in London, and for a few months I remained there with
her, attending the admirable French classes of M. Roche. In the spring I
returned home to Harrow, going up each week to the classes; and when these were
over, Auntie told me that she thought all she could usefully do was done, and
that it was time that I should try my wings alone. So well, however, had she
succeeded in her aims, that my emancipation from the schoolroom was but the
starting-point of more eager study, though now the study turned into the lines
of thought towards which my personal tendencies most attracted me. German I
continued to read with a master, and music, under the marvellously able
teaching of Mr. John Farmer, musical director of Harrow School, took up much of
my time. My dear mother had a passion for music, and Beethoven and Bach were her
favourite composers. There was scarcely a sonata of Beethoven's that I did not
learn, scarcely a fugue of Bach's that I did not master. Mendelssohn's
"Lieder" gave a lighter recreation, and many a happy evening did we
spend, my mother and I, over the stately strains of the blind Titan, and the
sweet melodies of the German wordless orator. Musical "At Homes,"
too, were favourite amusements at Harrow, and at these my facile fingers made
me a welcome guest.
Thus set free from the
schoolroom at 16½, an only daughter, I could do with my time as I would, save
for the couple of hours a day given to music, for the satisfaction of my
mother. From then till I became engaged, just before I was 19, my life flowed
on smoothly, one current visible to all and dancing in the sunlight, the other
running underground, but full and deep and strong. As regards my outer life, no
girl had a brighter, happier life than mine; studying all the mornings and most
of the afternoons in my own way, and spending the latter part of the day in
games and walks and rides—varied with parties at which I was one of the
merriest of guests. I practised archery so zealously that I carried up
triumphantly as prize for the best score the first ring I ever possessed, while
croquet found me a most eager devotee. My darling mother certainly
"spoiled" me, so far as were concerned all the small roughnesses of
life. She never allowed a trouble of any kind to touch me, and cared only that
all worries should fall on her, all joys on me. I know now what I never dreamed
then, that her life was one of serious anxiety. The heavy burden of my
brother's school and college life pressed on her constantly, and her need of
money was often serious. A lawyer whom she trusted absolutely cheated her
systematically, using for his own purposes the remittances she made for payment
of liabilities, thus keeping upon her a constant drain. Yet for me all that was
wanted was ever there. Was it a ball to which we were going? I need never think
of what I would wear till the time for dressing arrived, and there laid out
ready for me was all I wanted, every detail complete from top to toe. No hand
but hers must dress my hair, which, loosed, fell in dense curly masses nearly
to my knees; no hand but hers must fasten dress and deck with flowers, and if I
sometimes would coaxingly ask if I might not help by sewing in laces, or by
doing some trifle in aid, she would kiss me and bid me run to my books or my
play, telling me that her only pleasure in life was caring for her
"treasure." Alas! how lightly we take the self-denying labour that
makes life so easy, ere yet we have known what life means when the protecting
motherwing is withdrawn. So guarded and shielded had been my childhood and
youth from every touch of pain and anxiety that love could bear for me, that I
never dreamed that life might be a heavy burden, save as I saw it in the poor I
was sent to help; all the joy of those happy years I took, not ungratefully I
hope, but certainly with as glad unconsciousness of anything rare in it as I
took the sunlight. Passionate love, indeed, I gave to my darling, but I never
knew all I owed her till I passed out of her tender guardianship, till I left
my mother's home. Is such training wise? I am not sure. It makes the ordinary
roughnesses of life come with so stunning a shock, when one goes out into the
world, that one is apt to question whether some earlier initiation into life's
sterner mysteries would not be wiser for the young. Yet it is a fair thing to
have that joyous youth to look back upon, and at least it is a treasury of
memory that no thief can steal in the struggles of later life.
"Sunshine" they called me in those bright days of merry play and
earnest study. But that study showed the bent of my thought and linked itself
to the hidden life; for the Fathers of the early Christian Church now became my
chief companions, and I pored over the Shepherd of Hernias, the Epistles of
Polycarp, Barnabas, Ignatius, and Clement, the commentaries of Chrysostom, the
confessions of Augustine. With these I studied the writings of Pusey, Liddon,
and Keble, with many another smaller light, joying in the great conception of a
Catholic Church, lasting through the centuries, built on the foundations of
apostles and of martyrs, stretching from the days of Christ Himself down to our
own—"One Lord, one Faith one Baptism," and I myself a child of that
Holy Church. The hidden life grew stronger, constantly fed by these streams of
study; weekly communion became the centre round which my devotional life revolved,
with its ecstatic meditation, its growing intensity of conscious contact with
the Divine; I fasted, according to the ordinances of the Church; occasionally
flagellated myself to see if I could bear physical pain, should I be fortunate
enough ever to tread the pathway trodden by the saints; and ever the Christ was
the figure round which clustered all my hopes and longings, till I often felt
that the very passion of, my devotion would draw Him down from His throne in
heaven, present visibly in form as I felt Him invisibly in spirit. To serve Him
through His Church became more and more a definite ideal in my life, and my
thoughts began to turn towards some kind of "religious life," in
which I might prove my love by sacrifice and turn my passionate gratitude into
active service.
Looking back to-day over
my life, I see that its keynote—through all the blunders, and the blind
mistakes, and clumsy follies—has been this longing for sacrifice to something
felt as greater than the self. It has been so strong and so persistent that I
recognise it now as a tendency brought over from a previous life and dominating
the present one; and this is shown by the fact that to follow it is not the act
of a deliberate and conscious will, forcing self into submission and giving up
with pain something the heart desires, but the following it is a joyous
springing forward along the easiest path, the "sacrifice" being the
supremely attractive thing, not to make which would be to deny the deepest
longings of the soul, and to feel oneself polluted and dishonoured. And it is
here that the misjudgment comes in of many generous hearts who have spoken
sometimes lately so strongly in my praise. For the efforts to serve have not
been painful acts of self-denial, but the yielding to an overmastering desire.
We do not praise the mother who, impelled by her protecting love, feeds her
crying infant and stills its wailings at her breast; rather should we blame her
if she turned aside from its weeping to play with some toy. And so with all
those whose ears are opened to the wailings of the great orphan Humanity; they
are less to be praised for helping than they would be to be blamed if they
stood aside. I now know that it is those wailings that have stirred my heart
through life, and that I brought with me the ears open to hear them from
previous lives of service paid to men. It was those lives that drew for the
child the alluring pictures of martyrdom, breathed into the girl the passion of
devotion, sent the woman out to face scoff and odium, and drove her finally
into the Theosophy that rationalises sacrifice, while opening up possibilities
of service beside which all other hopes grow pale.
The Easter of 1866 was a
memorable date in my life. I was introduced to the clergyman I married, and I
met and conquered my first religious doubt. A little mission church had been
opened the preceding Christmas in a very poor district of Clapham. My
grandfather's house was near at hand, in Albert Square, and a favourite aunt
and myself devoted ourselves a good deal to this little church, as enthusiastic
girls and women will. At Easter we decorated it with spring flowers, with dewy
primroses and fragrant violets, and with the yellow bells of the wild daffodil,
to the huge delight of the poor who crowded in, and of the little London
children who had, many of them, never seen a flower. Here I met the Rev. Frank
Besant, a young Cambridge man, who had just taken orders, and was serving the
little mission church as deacon; strange that at the same time I should meet
the man I was to marry, and the doubts which were to break the marriage tie.
For in the Holy Week preceding that Easter Eve, I had been—as English and Roman
Catholics are wont to do—trying to throw the mind back to the time when the
commemorated events occurred, and to follow, step by step, the last days of the
Son of Man, living, as it were, through those last hours, so that I might be
ready to kneel before the cross on Good Friday, to stand beside the sepulchre
on Easter Day. In order to facilitate the realisation of those last sacred days
of God incarnate on earth, working out man's salvation, I resolved to write a
brief history of that week, compiled from the Four Gospels, meaning them to try
and realise each day the occurrences that had happened on the corresponding
date in A.D. 33, and so to follow those "blessed feet" step by step,
till they were
"... nailed for our
advantage to the bitter cross."
With the fearlessness
which springs from ignorance I sat down to my task. My method was as follows:—
|
MATTHEW. |
MARK. |
LUKE. |
JOHN. |
|
PALM SUNDAY. |
PALM SUNDAY. |
PALM SUNDAY. |
PALM SUNDAY. |
|
Rode into |
Rode into |
Rode into |
Rode into |
|
MONDAY. |
MONDAY. |
MONDAY. |
MONDAY. |
|
Cursed the fig-tree. Taught
in the |
Cursed the fig-tree.
Purified the |
Like Matthew. |
—— |
|
TUESDAY. |
TUESDAY. |
TUESDAY. |
TUESDAY. |
|
All chaps, xxi. 20,
xxii-xxv., spoken on Tuesday, for xxvi. 2 gives
Passover as "after two days." |
Saw fig-tree withered up.
Then discourses. |
Discourses. No date shown. |
—— |
|
WEDNESDAY. |
WEDNESDAY. |
WEDNESDAY. |
WEDNESDAY. |
|
Blank. (Possibly remained in |
|||
|
THURSDAY. |
THURSDAY. |
THURSDAY. |
THURSDAY. |
|
Preparation of Passover.
Eating of Passover, and institution of the Holy Eucharist. |
Same as Matt. |
Same as Matt. |
Discourses with disciples,
but before the Passover. Washes the disciples' feet. Nothing said of
Holy Eucharist, nor of agony in |
|
FRIDAY. |
FRIDAY. |
FRIDAY. |
FRIDAY. |
|
Led to Pilate. Judas hangs himself.
Tried. Condemned to death. Scourged and mocked. Led to crucifixion. Darkness
from 12 to 3. Died at 3. |
As Matthew, but hour of
crucifixion given, |
Led to Pilate. Sent to
Herod. Sent back to Pilate. Rest as in Matthew; but one malefactor repents. |
Taken to Pilate. Jews would
not enter, that they might eat the Passover. Scourged by Pilate before
condemnation, and mocked. Shown by Pilate to Jews at 12. |
I became uneasy as I proceeded
with my task, for discrepancies leaped at me from my four columns; the
uneasiness grew as the contradictions increased, until I saw with a shock of
horror that my "harmony" was a discord, and a doubt of the veracity
of the story sprang up like a serpent hissing in my face. It was struck down in
a moment, for to me to doubt was sin, and to have doubted on the very eve of
the Passion was an added crime. Quickly I assured myself that these apparent
contradictions were necessary as tests of faith, and I forced myself to repeat
Tertullian's famous "Credo quia impossible," till, from a wooden
recital, it became a triumphant affirmation. I reminded myself that St. Peter
had said of the Pauline Epistles that in them were "some things hard to be
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest ... unto their own
destruction." I shudderingly recognised that I must be very unlearned and
unstable to find discord among the Holy Evangelists, and imposed on myself an
extra fast as penance for my ignorance and lack of firmness in the faith. For
my mental position was one to which doubt was one of the worst of sins. I knew
that there were people like Colenso, who questioned the infallibility of the
Bible, but I remembered how the Apostle John had fled from the Baths when
Cerinthus entered them, lest the roof should fall on the heretic, and crush any
one in his neighbourhood, and I looked on all heretics with holy horror. Pusey
had indoctrinated me with his stern hatred of all heresy, and I was content to
rest with him on that faith, "which must be old because it is eternal, and
must be unchangeable because it is true." I would not even read the works
of my mothers favourite Stanley, because he was "unsound," and
because Pusey had condemned his "variegated use of words which destroys
all definiteness of meaning"—a clever and pointed description, be it said
in passing, of the Dean's exquisite phrases, capable of so many readings. It
can then be imagined with what a stab of pain this first doubt struck me, and with
what haste I smothered it up, buried it, and smoothed the turf over its grave. But
it had been there, and it left its mark.
MARRIAGE.
The last year of my
girlish freedom was drawing to its close; how shall I hope to make commonsense
readers understand how I became betrothed maiden ere yet nineteen, girl-wife
when twenty years had struck? Looking back over twenty-five years, I feel a
profound pity for the girl standing at that critical point of life, so utterly,
hopelessly ignorant of all that marriage meant, so filled with impossible
dreams, so unfitted for the rôle of wife. As I have said, my day-dreams
held little place for love, partly from the absence of love novels from my
reading, partly from the mystic fancies that twined themselves round the figure
of the Christ. Catholic books of devotion—English or Roman, it matters not, for
to a large extent they are translations of the same hymns and prayers—are
exceedingly glowing in their language, and the dawning feelings of womanhood
unconsciously lend to them a passionate fervour. I longed to spend my time in
worshipping Jesus, and was, as far as my inner life was concerned, absorbed in
that passionate love of "the Saviour" which, among emotional
Catholics, really is the human passion of love transferred to an ideal—for
women to Jesus, for men to the Virgin Mary. In order to show that I am not here
exaggerating, I subjoin a few of the prayers in which I found daily delight,
and I do this in order to show how an emotional girl may be attracted by these
so-called devotional exercises:—
"O crucified Love,
raise in me fresh ardours of love and consolation, that it may henceforth be
the greatest torment I can endure ever to offend Thee; that it may be my
greatest delight to please Thee."