All this time the education of the children, a favourite theme of discussion and disputation, proceeded in a desultory manner.
The moment nature broke out into anywhat noticeable act, discipline was brought in, and a master was found for the time being, which always proved to be a very short time indeed.
Once, accompanying my father and mother in a very John Gilpin trip, to spend the day at Castle Bellingham, I was so struck with the pretty church on the roadside, that while dinner was preparing I made a sort of sketch of it with the pen and ink and paper generally found lying on inn tables.
My father and mother were astounded, and a future Angelica Kaufmann was predicted in me over our chickens and bacon.
My mother was delighted that my first attempt should have been a
sacerdotal one, and immediately on our return to town a drawing-master was sought for,
| MY INSTRUCTORS. | 37 |
My cherub was really wonderful; my mother said it was miraculous; and so it would have been if I had had any hand in it; but to tell the truth, it owed all its merit to the genius of my master. One day that the black chalk was committed to my unpractised hand, on my mother’s sudden entrance, my cherub’s head ran the risk of being converted into a negro’s. Mr. Martin was mad; and putting a large lump of bread into my hand, saying, “There, Miss, take out the effect of the jaw with this piece of bread.”
Caligraphy and mathematics succeeded to the finer “art.”
One morning when we were at breakfast with my father and mother—that is, my sister and myself—at our own little table, with bread and milk, the servant announced a visitor by the style and title of “Mr. Mark Tully.”
“Stay a moment, James,” said my father to my affrighted mother, qui dans ce mot là reconnaissait notre sang—and anticipated a cousin; while my father, in a coaxing tone, said: “My dear Jenny, this is a poor fellow from Lough Rea; once a flourishing schoolmaster, a great mathematician and copper-plate writer. I think we might make use of him for the children, though he has now taken to another line of life.”
At this moment James introduced a gaunt, ungainly looking man, with a pedlar’s pack in one hand and a short stick in the other.
| 38 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
He looked extremely frightened. My good-natured father rose to meet him with:
“Marcus Tullius Aufidius, my brave fellow, how does the world use you?”
“Thank your honour for axing.”
“Will you take a cup of tea before we drop into shanahos?” said my father.
“Thanks be to your honour, the thimble full, if ye plaze.”
“Here, Sydney,” said my mother, “take the gentleman this cup of tea.”
Replacing the cup and saucer on the table, I took out my silver thimble out of the tidy little “housewife” that hung to my side; I filled it with tea and presented it to the pedlar.
My mother tried to look angry and my father too.
“She is a silly child,” said he, “but she means no harm.”
“Oh, God bless her, Mr. Owenson, she is a fine lively little cratur, and will come to good yet!”
My father at once proposed us as his pupils in the noble art, in which at present I certainly do not excel.
Paper was got—lines were ruled, and Marcus Tullius Aufidius gave me a line of strokes and a line of A’s and B’s to copy.
“Now, Miss, broad strokes down—hair strokes up.”
I not only copied these strokes but I copied his most ridiculous mouth, which he opened and shut to correspond with the ups and downs of his pen.
My little sister tittered, my father and mother, though angry, could
not suppress their smiles; the sus-
| MY INSTRUCTORS. | 39 |
“Och, then, Miss is too cliver for me entirely.” “Well, then,” said my father, “to ease your burden, we will for the present take your Connemara stockings, and bye-and-bye your instructions.”
My mother now hastened to make a bargain. My father at once purchased a pound’s worth of the “Connemara’s,” and Marcus Tullius shouldered his pack, made his scrape, and never after returned, while I, perhaps, lost the chance of becoming as good a mathematician as Voltaire’s Marquise de Chatêlet, or any other poor French philosopheress who assisted to make Newton known in Paris.
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