My father now always spent his Sundays at home with us, and as much of his other days as his commercial, convivial, and dramatic avocations would allow.
My mother seldom went to church, but my father, from the time we could toddle, took us to church himself, where our endurance of hanging legs and cold feet was recompensed by the divine music for which the two cathedrals were and are still celebrated.
He shared all my mother’s anxiety about the education of his two little girls, which was, however, only fitfully carried on.
My mother had in her mind the recollection of a model child who had
lived fifty years before, a traditional piece of Shropshire perfection. She was the
daughter of the good Sir Rowland Hill, of Hawkesley, near Shrewsbury,
of whose family my mother was proud to be a humble branch. This child had read the Bible
twice through before she was five years old, and knitted all the stockings worn by the
coachmen!
| MY EDUCATION. | 29 |
My sister Olivia, who was given over to the tuition of Molly, was not much more apt. Neither my father nor my mother took into account, or seemed aware that our education was going on under an influence stronger than any book learning could exercise—the education of circumstances. Every incident as it arose developed a faculty; it excited an imitation. There was a great power of mimicry in both myself and my sister. For myself, I figured away in all the trades and occupations that came within my scope. I imitated Jemmy McCrackem, my father’s hairdresser, to the life, and opened a shop which I furnished with my father’s theatrical wigs, and opened it in the only window that looked into the street. I wrote over this window an advertisement that ran thus:—
This was the invariable form of inscription over the doors of old Irish coiffeurs.
I could go through the whole process of hair dressing (which was then a most arduous one), from the first papillotes to the last puff of the powder machine.
I became a chimney-sweep from my observation of a den of little imps who inhabited a cellar on the opposite side of the way.
A propos to the chimney sweeps, my mother sent
| 30 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
It happened one day the chimney of our schoolroom took fire. Every one screamed, but no one offered a remedy. I had seen a fire in our own chimney put out by the cleverness of my little neighbours the sweeps. I flew across and called on them to follow me. I found them assembled at their dinner, sitting on a bag of soot. They seized their scrapes and brushes and all followed me to the rescue. The burning soot was soon dragged down; fumes, and flames, and soot, and smut filled the atmosphere of Mrs. Gaime’s neat schoolroom.
The little boys had probably saved lives and property, but the schoolmistress angrily asked “who had sent them?” They pointed to me and said:
“Little Miss, there.”
“Then let little Miss pay you!” said she, and seizing me by the shoulder, she hurled me down the door-steps, saying:
“Go home, you mischievous monkey!”
The injustice of this to myself, and the black band I commanded, but above all the epithet, for a monkey has been ever my favourite aversion!
I ran up the court to our house, crying bitterly, and followed by my clients.
My father and mother, who were standing at the window, saw us pass, and rushed to the door, as did, of course, the servants.
I was scarcely to be recognised, and when appealed
| MY EDUCATION. | 31 |
“Well, plaise your honour, Mr. Owenson, little Miss here called us to put out Mother Gaime’s chimney, who said she would not give us nothing, but that Miss might pay us!”
My father endeavoured to command his gravity, though my mother could not command her anger, and he said:
“Well, Sydney, I suppose you have wherewithal to recompense these young gentlemen for their allegiance to your command?”
I could only sob out:
“Papa, you have two and eightpence of mine, give it to them all.”
My father took out an English half-crown, and said:
“There, gentlemen, is sixpence a-piece for you.”
The little sweeps then threw up their caps, with the “cry” of the street (which had its “aboo” as well as the Fitzgeralds and O’Donnels). “Long life to yer honour—success—all happiness and nothing but pure love!” and this sooty troupe galloped away, while I was handed over to Molly to be punished and purified, as justice or mercy might prevail, according to my merits. From that moment these wretched little victims of the cruel social economy of the day became the objects of my especial compassion and protection. I very early wrote in their behalf, and I was the first who applied the ramoneur to an Irish chimney in my own house.
| 32 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
Though my mother could never teach me to read, she taught me hymns and poetry by rote, which incited me to write rhymes on my own account. I had many favourites among cats, dogs and birds, my mother’s reprobation and the servants’ nuisance; but I turned them all to account and wove them into stories, to which I tried to give as much personal interest as old Mother Hubbard bestowed on her dog.
The head favourite of my menagerie was a magnificent and very intelligent cat, “Ginger,” by name, from the colour of her coat, which though almost orange was very much admired. She was the last of a race of cats sacred in the traditions of the Music Hall. Pat Brennan,
“The sad historian of the ruined towers,” |
Ginger was as much the object of my idolatry as if she had had a
temple and I had been a worshipper in
| MY EDUCATION. | 33 |
I made her up a nice little cell, under the beaufet, as side-boards were then called in Ireland—a sort of alcove cut out of the wall of our parlour where the best glass and the family “bit of plate”—a silver tankard—with the crest of the Hills upon it (a dove with an olive branch in its mouth), which commanded great respect in our family.
Ginger’s sly attempt to hide herself from my mother, to whom she had that antipathy which animals so often betray to particular individuals, were a source of great amusement to my little sister and myself; but when she chose the retreat of the beaufet as the scene of her accouchement, our fear lest it should come to my mother’s knowledge, was as great as if we had been concealing a moral turpitude.
It was a good and pious custom of my mother’s to hear us our
prayers every night; when Molly tapped at the parlour
door at nine o’clock, we knelt at my mother’s feet, our four little hands
clasped in her’s, and our eyes turned to her with looks of love, as they repeated
that simple and beautiful invocation, the Lord’s Prayer; to this was always added the
supplication, “Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee;” after which we were
accustomed to recite a prayer of our affectionate suggestion, calling a blessing on the
heads of all we knew and loved, which ran thus, “God bless papa, mamma, my dear
sister, and Molly, and Betty, and
Joe, and James, and all our good
friends.” One night, however, before my mother could pronounce
| 34 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
“May I not say, ‘Bless Ginger?’ I asked humbly.”
“Certainly not,” said my mother emphatically.
“Why, mamma?”
“Because Ginger is not a Christian.”
“Why is not Ginger a Christian?”
“Why? because Ginger is only an animal.”
“Am I a Christian, mamma, or an animal?”
“I will not answer any more foolish questions tonight. Molly, take these children to bed, and do teach Sydney not to ask those silly questions.”
So we were sent off in disgrace, but not before I had given Ginger a wink, whose bright eyes acknowledged the salute through the half-open door.
The result of this was that I tried my hand at a poem.
The jingle of rhyme was familiar to my ear through my mother’s constant recitation of verses, from the sublime Universal Prayer of Pope to the nursery rhyme of Little Jack Horner; whilst my father’s dramatic citations, which had descended even to the servants, had furnished me with the tags of plays from Shakespeare to O’Keefe; so that “I lisped in numbers” though the numbers never came. Here is my first attempt:
| MY EDUCATION. | 35 |
|
“My dear pussy cat,
Were I a mouse or rat,
Sure I never would run off from you,
You’re so funny and gay,
With your tail when you play,
And no song is so sweet as your “mew;”
But pray keep in your press,
And don’t make a mess,
When you share with your kittens our posset;
For mamma can’t abide you,
And I cannot hide you,
Except you keep close in your closet!
|
I tagged these doggrels together while lying awake half the night, and as soon as I could get a hearing in the morning I recited them to the kitchen, and no elocution ever pronounced in that kitchen (although it was dedicated to Melpomene, whose image shone on an orchestra that had been converted into a dresser, the whole apartment being the remains of the fantastic Ridotto, though now being converted to culinary purposes in the same floor as our dining-room), no elocution had ever excited more applause. James undertook to write it down, and Molly corrected the press. It was served up at breakfast to my father, and it not only procured me his rapturous praise but my mother’s forgiveness.
My father took me to Moira House; made me recite my poem, to which he had taught me to add appropriate emphasis and action, to which my own tendency to grimace added considerable comicality. The Countess of Moira laughed heartily at the “infant Muse” as my father called me, and ordered the housekeeper to send up a large plate of bread and jam, the earliest recompense of my literary labours.
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
