And then he made a
little speech, with one hand on the table; I think it was thanking
the jeunesse dorée for their applause, and they again clapped and
laughed; but here my memory fails me, and everything grows
very vague and like a dream.
little speech, with one hand on the table; I think it was thanking
the jeunesse dorée for their applause, and they again clapped and
laughed; but here my memory fails me, and everything grows
very vague and like a dream.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
»
Scattered through the book are wise comments on the mysteries
of life, worthy of Thackeray's daughter, who was too much of a
woman and of an artist ever to change her broad morality into the
moralizing spirit.
"To hate the Devil and all his works is one thing; but to-day, who is the
Devil and which are his works is another. "
"Dolly was true to herself; and in those days she used to think that all
her life she would be always true, and always say all she felt. As life grows
long, and people living on together through time and sorrow and experience
realize more and more the complexities of their own hearts, and sympathize
more and more with the failings and sorrows of others, they are apt to ask
themselves with dismay, if it is a reality of life to be less and less uncompro-
mising as complexities increase, less true to themselves as they are more true
to others. "
In 1873 and 1874 Miss Thackeray also published a number of short
stories and sketches: Toilers and Spinsters,' 'Bluebeard's Keys,'
etc. In 1875 appeared a novel, 'Miss Angel,' of which the heroine
is Angelica Kaufmann. In the same year she edited 'The Orphan
of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments, and Drawings,' by her
father. Her life of Madame de Sévigné, in the 'Foreign Classics for
English Readers' series, appeared in 1881; and in the same year
she published another novel, 'Miss Williamson's Divagations. ' Later,
## p. 12275 (#321) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12275
'Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs' was published. This book
of personal reminiscences is delightful, for the glimpses it affords the
reader of the Thackeray household, and of the rare guests who gath-
ered there from time to time. One of the prettiest pictures is that
of a child's party at Dickens's house: of the little Misses Thackeray
in plaid sashes and bronze shoes, of Dickens's little daughters in
white sashes and white shoes; of the supper table presided over by
Mr. and Mrs. Dickens; of the innumerable small boys who swarmed
on the staircase, and who gave three cheers for Thackeray when he
appeared in the hall to take his little girls home. There is a humor-
ous picture of Charlotte Bronté dining with Thackeray and his fam-
ily: a number of his intimate friends were invited to meet her
afterwards, and hopes of brilliant conversation ran high; but the
little shy author took refuge with the family governess, an awful
gloom like a London fog settled upon the company, and Thackeray
in despair went off to his club.
In her 'Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning,' Mrs. Ritchie
has given to the world pictures of these great men drawn by the
hand of a loving and understanding friend. Like her other books, it
is instinct with the charm of her sympathy. Her true, pure, and
sweet spirit has left a precious imprint upon the world of letters and
of society. She is loved and will be long remembered, not as Thack-
eray's daughter alone, but for her own inherent qualities of true
greatness.
MY WITCH'S-CALDRON
From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. ' Copyright 1894, by Harper
& Brothers
I
REMEMBER a visit from another hero of those times. We were
walking across Kensington Square early one morning when
we heard some one hurrying after us and calling, "Thack-
eray, Thackeray! " This was also one of Byron's friends,-a
bright-eyed, active old man; with long wavy white hair and a
picturesque cloak flung over one shoulder. I can see him still,
as he crossed the corner of the square and followed us with a
light, rapid step. My father, stopping short, turned back to meet
him; greeting him kindly, and bringing him home with us to
the old brown house at the corner where we were then living.
There was a sort of eagerness and vividness of manner about
the stranger which was very impressive. You could not help
watching him and his cloak, which kept slipping from its place,
## p. 12276 (#322) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
and which he caught at again and again. We wondered at his
romantic foreign looks, and his gayety and bright eager way.
Afterwards we were told that this was Leigh Hunt. We knew
his name very well; for on the drawing-room table, in company
with various Ruskins and Punches, lay a pretty shining book
called 'A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla,'- from which, in
that dilettante childish fashion which is half play, half impatience
and search for something else, we had contrived to extract our
own allowance of honey. It was still an event to see a real
author in those days, specially an author with a long cloak flung
over his shoulder; though for the matter of that, it is still and
always will be an event to see the faces and hear the voices
of those whose thoughts have added something delightful to our
lives. Not very long afterwards came a different visitor, still
belonging to that same company of people.
I had thrown open
the dining-room door and come in, looking for something; and
then I stopped short, for the room was not empty. A striking
and somewhat alarming-looking person stood alone by the fire-
place with folded arms,—a dark, impressive-looking man, not tall,
but broad and brown and weather-beaten,-gazing with a sort of
scowl at his own reflection in the glass. As I entered he turned
slowly, and looked at me over his shoulder. This time it was
Trelawny, Byron's biographer and companion, who had come to
see my father. He frowned, walked deliberately and slowly from
the room, and I saw him no more.
All these people now
seem almost like figures out of a fairy tale. One could almost
as well imagine Sindbad, or Prince Charming, or the Seven
Champions of Christendom, dropping in for an hour's chat. But
each generation, however matter-of-fact it may be, sets up fairy
figures in turn to wonder at and delight in. I had not then
read any of the books which have since appeared; though I had
heard my elders talking, and I knew from hearsay something of
the strange, pathetic, irrational histories of these bygone wan-
derers, searching the world for the Golden Fleece and the En-
chanted Gardens. These were the only members of that special,
impracticable, romantic crew of Argonauts I ever saw; though I
have read and re-read their histories and diaries so that I seem
to know them all, and can almost hear their voices.
One of the most notable persons who ever came into our old
bow-windowed drawing-room in Young Street is a guest never to
be forgotten by me, a tiny, delicate little person, whose small
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12277
hand nevertheless grasped a mighty lever which set all the liter-
ary world of that day vibrating. I can still see the scene quite
plainly! the hot summer evening, the open windows, the carriage
driving to the door as we all sat silent and expectant; my father,
who rarely waited, waiting with us; our governess and my sister
and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event.
We saw
the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the active, well-knit figure
of young Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Bronté to
see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down
the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests; and then,
after a moment's delay, the door opens wide and the two gentle-
men come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious little lady, pale, with
fair, straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over
thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of
faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in serious-
ness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This, then, is
the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all Lon-
don talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father
wrote the books-the wonderful books. To say that we little
girls had been given 'Jane Eyre' to read, scarcely represents the
facts of the case; to say that we had taken it without leave, read
bits here and read bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-
of and hitherto unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places,
all utterly absorbing and at the same time absolutely unintelligi-
ble to us, would more accurately describe our states of mind on
that summer's evening as we look at Jane Eyre—the great Jane
Eyre the tiny little lady. The moment is so breathless that
dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we
all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though
she may be, Miss Bronté can barely reach his elbow. My own
personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern,
especially to forward little girls who wish to chatter. Mr. George
Smith has since told me how she afterwards remarked upon my
father's wonderful forbearance and gentleness with our uncalled-
for incursions into the conversation. She sat gazing at him with
kindling eyes of interest, lighting up with a sort of illumination
every now and then as she answered him. I can see her bending
forward over the table, not eating, but listening to what he said
as he carved the dish before him.
――――
I think it must have been on this very occasion that my
father invited some of his friends in the evening to meet Miss
## p. 12278 (#324) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
Bronté, for everybody was interested and anxious to see her.
Mrs. Crowe, the reciter of ghost stories, was there. Mrs. Brook-
field, Mrs. Carlyle - Mr. Carlyle himself was present, so I am
told, railing at the appearance of cockneys upon Scotch mountain-
sides; there were also too many Americans for his taste; "but
the Americans were as God compared to the cockneys," says the
philosopher. Besides the Carlyles, there were Mrs. Elliott and
Miss Perry, Mrs. Procter and her daughter, most of my father's
habitual friends and companions. In the recent life of Lord
Houghton, I was amused to see a note quoted in which Lord
Houghton also was convened. Would that he had been present!
-perhaps the party would have gone off better. It was a
gloomy and a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant
conversation which never began at all. Miss Bronté retired to
the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then
to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very
dark; the lamp began to smoke a little; the conversation grew
dimmer and more dim; the ladies sat round still expectant; my
father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to
be able to cope with it at all.
Mrs. Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near
the corner in which Miss Bronté was sitting, leaned forward with
a little commonplace, since brilliance was not to be the order
of the evening. "Do you like London, Miss Bronté ? " she said.
Another silence; a pause; then Miss Bronté answers "Yes" and
"No," very gravely. My sister and I were much too young to
be bored in those days: alarmed, impressed, we might be, but not
yet bored.
A party was a party, a lioness was a lioness; and
shall I confess it? - at that time an extra dish of biscuits was
enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the
occasion — tea spread in the dining-room, ladies in the drawing-
room. We roamed about inconveniently, no doubt, and excitedly;
and in one of my excursions crossing the hall, towards the close
of the entertainment, I was surprised to see my father opening
the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips,
walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind
him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies
asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he
was coming back. I was puzzled at the time; nor was it all
made clear to me till long years afterwards, when one day Mrs.
Procter asked me if I knew what had happened once when my
## p. 12279 (#325) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12279
father had invited a party to meet Jane Eyre at his house. It
was one of the dullest evenings she had ever spent in her life,
she said. And then with a good deal of humor she described
the situation: the ladies who had all come expecting so much
delightful conversation; and how as the evening went on, the
gloom and the constraint increased; and how finally, after the de-
parture of the more important guests, overwhelmed by the situ-
ation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and
gone off to his club. The ladies waited, wondered, and finally
departed also; and as we were going up to bed with our candles,
after everybody was gone, I remember two pretty Miss L—s,
in shiny silk dresses, arriving, full of expectation.
We
still said we thought our father would soon be back; but the
Miss Ls declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and
drove away again almost immediately.
―
I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the
great honest eyes; an impetuous honesty seemed to me to char-
acterize the woman.
I fancied an austere little Joan of
Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy
morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty
and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and
truth seemed to be with her always. Such in our brief interview
she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life, so noble, so
lonely, of that passion for truth,—of those nights and nights of
eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, and
prayer; as one reads of the necessarily incomplete though most
touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this
one little frame, of this one among the myriads of souls that
have lived and died on this great earth,- this great earth! this
little speck in the infinite universe of God,-with what wonder
do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when
that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! .
I am suddenly conscious as I write that my experiences are
very partial; but a witch's-caldron must needs after all contain
heterogeneous scraps, and mine, alas! can be no exception to the
rest. It produces nothing more valuable than odds and ends,
happily harmless enough; neither sweltered venom nor fillet of
finny snake, but the back of one great man's head, the hat and
umbrella of another. The first time I ever saw Mr. Gladstone,
I only saw the soles of his boots. A friend had taken me into
the ventilator of the House of Commons, where we listened to a
·
·
•
1
1
1
## p. 12280 (#326) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
noble speech, and watched the two shadows on the grating over-
head, of the feet of the messenger of glad tidings. One special
back I cannot refrain from writing down, in a dark-blue frock
coat and strapped trousers, walking leisurely before us up Picca-
dilly. The sun is shining, and an odd sort of brass buckle which
fastens an old-fashioned stock flashes like a star. "Do look! "
I say: "who is that old gentleman? " "That old gentleman!
Why, that is the Duke of Wellington," said my father. On
another occasion I remember some one coming up to us and
beginning to talk very charmingly, and among other things
describing some new lord mayor who had been in state to a
theatrical performance, by which it seemed he had been much
affected. "I cried, I do assure you," the lord mayor had said;
"and as for the lady mayoress, she cry too:" and the gentle-
man smiled, and told the little story so dryly and drolly that
my sister and I couldn't help laughing; and we went on repeat-
ing to one another afterwards, "As for the lady mayoress, she cry
too. " And then as usual, we asked who was that.
«Don't you
know Lord Palmerston by sight? " said my father.
Another miscellaneous apparition out of my caldron rises be-
fore me as I write. On a certain day we went to call at Mrs.
Procter's with our father. We found an old man standing in
the middle of the room, taking leave of his hostess, nodding his
head: he was a little like a Chinese mandarin with an ivory
face. His expression never changed, but seemed quite fixed.
He knew my father, and spoke to him and to us too, still in this
odd, fixed way. Then he looked at my sister. "My little girl,”
he said to her, "will you come and live with me? You shall be
as happy as the day is long; you shall have a white pony to ride,
and feed upon red-currant jelly. " This prospect was so alarming
and unexpected that the poor little girl suddenly blushed up and
burst into tears. The old man was Mr. Samuel Rogers; but
happily he did not see her cry, for he was already on his way to
the door.
My father used to write in his study at the back of the house
in Young Street. The vine shaded his two windows, which looked
out upon the bit of garden, and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish
jasmines, of which the yellow flowers scented our old brick walls.
I can remember the tortoise belonging to the boys next door
crawling along the top of the wall where they had set it, and
making its way between the jasmine sprigs. Jasmines won't
## p. 12281 (#327) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12281
grow now any more, as they did then, in the gardens of Ken-
sington, nor will medlars and vine-trees take root and spread
their green branches: only herbs and bulbs, such as lilies and
Solomon's-seals, seem to flourish; though I have a faint hope.
that all the things people put in will come. up all right some
centuries hence, when London is resting and at peace, and has
turned into the grass-grown ruin one so often hears described.
Our garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man
came to mow the grass), but it was full of sweet things. There
were verbenas- red, blue, and scented; and there were lovely
stacks of flags, blades of green with purple heads between, and
bunches of London-pride growing luxuriantly; and there were
some blush-roses at the end of the garden, which were not al-
ways quite eaten up by the caterpillars. Lady Duff Gordon came
to stay with us once (it was on that occasion, I think, that the
grass was mowed); and she afterwards sent us some doves, which
used to hang high up in a wicker cage from the windows of the
school-room.
The top school-room was over my father's bedroom, and the
bedroom was over the study where he used to write. I liked
the top school-room the best of all the rooms in the dear old
house: the sky was in it, and the evening bells used to ring into
it across the garden, and seemed to come in dancing and clang-
ing with the sunset; and the floor sloped so that if you put
down a ball, it would roll in a leisurely way right across the
room of its own accord. And then there was a mystery,—a
small trap-door between the windows which we never could open.
Where did not that trap-door lead to? It was the gateway of
paradise, of many paradises, to us. We kept our dolls, our bricks,
our books, our baby-houses, in the top room, and most of our
stupid little fancies. My little sister had a menagerie of snails
and flies in the sunny window-sill: these latter, chiefly invalids
rescued out of milk-jugs, lay upon rose-leaves in various little
pots and receptacles. She was very fond of animals, and so was
my father - at least, he always liked our animals. Now, looking
back, I am full of wonder at the number of cats we were allowed
to keep, though De la Pluche the butler, and Gray the house-
keeper, waged war against them. The cats used to come to us
from the garden; for then, as now, the open spaces of Kensing-
ton abounded in fauna. My sister used to adopt and christen
them all in turn by the names of her favorite heroes: she had
## p. 12282 (#328) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
Nicholas Nickleby, a huge gray tabby, and Martin Chuzzlewit,
and a poor little half-starved Barnaby Rudge, and many others.
Their saucers used to be placed in a row on the little terrace at
the back of my father's study, under the vine where the sour
green grapes grew - not at all out of reach; and at the farther
end of which was an empty greenhouse ornamented by the busts
of my father as a boy and of a relation in a military cloak.
One of my friends—she never lived to be an old woman
used to laugh and say that she had reached the time of life when
she loved to see even the people her parents had particularly dis-
liked, just for the sake of old times. I don't know how I should
feel if I were to meet one agreeable, cordial gentleman, who used
to come on horseback, and invite us to all sorts of dazzling
treats and entertainments,—which, to our great disappointment,
my father invariably refused, saying, "No, I don't like him; I
don't want to have anything to do with him. " The wretched
man fully justified these objections by getting himself transported
long after for a protracted course of peculiarly deliberate and
cold-blooded fraud. On one occasion, a friend told me, he was
talking to my father, and mentioning some one in good repute
at the time, and my father incidentally spoke as if he knew
of a murder that person had committed. "You know it, then! "
said the other man. "Who could have told you? " My father
had never been told, but he had known it all along, he said; and
indeed he sometimes spoke of this curious feeling he had about
people at times, as if uncomfortable facts in their past history
were actually revealed to him. At the same time I do not think
anybody had a greater enjoyment than he in other people's good-
ness and well-doing: he used to be proud of a boy's prizes at
school, he used to be proud of a woman's sweet voice or of her
success in housekeeping. He had a friend in the Victoria Road
hard by, whose delightful household ways he used to describe;
and I can still hear the lady he called Jingleby warbling "O du
schöne Müllerin," to his great delight.
Any generous thing or word seemed like something happen-
ing to himself. I can remember, when 'David Copperfield' came
out, hearing him saying in his emphatic way to my grandmother,
that "little Em'ly's letter to old Peggotty was a masterpiece. "
I wondered to hear him at the time, for that was not at all
the part I cared for most; nor, indeed, could I imagine how
little Em ly ever was so stupid as to run away from Peggotty's
## p. 12283 (#329) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12283
enchanted house-boat. But we each and all enjoyed in turn our
share of those thin green books full of delicious things; and how
glad we were when they came to our hands at last, after our
elders and our governess and our butler had all read them in
turn!
It is curious to me now to remember, considering how little
we met and what a long way off they lived, what an important
part the Dickens household played in our childhood. But the
Dickens books were as much a part of our home as our own
father's.
est.
Certainly the Dickens children's-parties were shining facts in
our early London days; nothing came in the least near them.
There were other parties, and they were very nice, but nothing
to compare to these: not nearly so light, not nearly so shining,
not nearly so going round and round. Perhaps so dear K. P.
suggests it was not all as brilliantly wonderful as I imagined
it; but most assuredly the spirit of mirth and kindly jollity was
a reality to every one present, and the master of the house had
that wondrous fairy gift of leadership. I know not what to call
that power by which he inspired every one with spirit and inter-
One special party I remember, which seemed to me to go
on for years, with its kind, gay hospitality, its music, its streams
of children passing and repassing. We were a little shy coming
in alone, in all the consciousness of new shoes and ribbons; but
Mrs. Dickens called us to sit beside her till the long sweeping
dance was over, and talked to us as if we were grown up,- which
is always flattering to little girls. Then Miss Hogarth found us
partners; and we too formed part of the throng. I remember
watching the white satin shoes and long flowing white sashes of
the little Dickens girls, who were just about our own age, but
how much more graceful and beautifully dressed! Our sashes.
were bright plaids of red and blue, (tributes from one of our
father's Scotch admirers; - is it ungrateful to confess now, after
all these years, that we could not bear them? ) our shoes were
only bronze. Shall I own to this passing shadow amid all that
radiance? But when people are once dancing, they are all equal
again, and happy.
Somehow after the music we all floated into a long supper-
room, and I found myself sitting near the head of the table by
Mr. Dickens, with another little girl much younger than myself;
she wore a necklace, and pretty little sausage curls all round her
――――
## p. 12284 (#330) ##########################################
12284
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
head. Mr. Dickens was very kind to the little girl, and presently
I heard him persuading her to sing, and he put his arm round.
her to encourage her; and then, wonderful to say, the little girl
stood up (she was little Miss Hullah) and began very shyly,
trembling and blushing at first, but as she blushed and trembled
she sang more and more sweetly; and then all the jeunesse dorée,
consisting of the little Dickens boys and their friends, ranged
along the supper table, clapped and clapped, and Mr. Dickens
clapped too, smiling and applauding her.
And then he made a
little speech, with one hand on the table; I think it was thanking
the jeunesse dorée for their applause, and they again clapped and
laughed; but here my memory fails me, and everything grows
very vague and like a dream.
Only this much I do remember very clearly: that we had
danced and supped and danced again, and that we
were all
standing in a hall lighted and hung with bunches of Christmas
green, and as I have said, everything seemed altogether mag-
nificent and important; more magnificent and important every
minute, for as the evening went on, more and more people kept
arriving. The hall was crowded, and the broad staircase was
lined with little boys-thousands of little boys-whose heads
and legs and arms were waving about together. They were
making a great noise, and talking and shouting; and the eldest
son of the house seemed to be marshaling them. Presently their
noise became a cheer, and then another; and we looked up and
saw that our own father had come to fetch us, and that his
white head was there above the others: then came a third final
ringing cheer, and some one went up to him—it was Mr. Dick-
ens himself—who laughed and said quickly, "That is for you! "
and my father looked up,- surprised, pleased, touched,— settled
his spectacles, and nodded gravely to the little boys.
――
BRICKS AND IVY
From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers
A
QUARTER of a century ago, the shabby tide of progress had
not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady Sarah Fran-
cis's brown house was standing, with its many windows daz-
zling, as the sun traveled across the old-fashioned house-tops to
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12285
set into a distant sea of tenements and echoing life. The roar
did not reach the old house. The children could listen to the
cawing of the rooks, to the echo of the hours, as they struck on
from one day to another, vibrating from the old brown tower of
the church. At night the strokes seemed to ring more slowly
than in the day. Little Dolly Vanborough, Lady Sarah's niece,
thought each special hour had its voice. The church clock is
silent now, but the rooks caw on undisturbed from one spring
to another in the old Kensington suburb. There are tranquil
corners still, and sunny silent nooks, and ivy wreaths growing
in the western sun; and jasmines and vine-trees, planted by a
former generation, spreading along the old garden walls. But
every year the shabby stream of progress rises and ingulfs
one relic or another, carrying off many and many a landmark
and memory. Last year only the old church was standing, in
its iron cage, at the junction of the thoroughfares. It was the
Church of England itself to Dolly and George Vanborough, in
those early church-going days of theirs. There was the old
painting of the lion and the unicorn hanging from the gallery;
the light streaming through the brown saints over the commun-
ion table. In after life the children may have seen other saints
more glorious in crimson and in purple, nobler piles and arches;
but none of them have ever seemed so near to heaven as the
old Queen Anne building, and the wooden pew with its high
stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding, where
they used to kneel on either side of their aunt, watching with
awe-stricken faces the tears as they came falling from the wid-
ow's sad eyes.
Lady Sarah could scarcely have told you the meaning of those
tears as they fell: old love and life partings, sorrows and past
mercies, all came returning to her with the familiar words of the
prayers. The tears fell bright and awe-stricken as she thought
of the present, of distances immeasurable, of life and its incon-
ceivable mystery; and then her heart would warm with hope
perhaps of what might be to come, of the overwhelming possi-
bilities how many of them to her lay in the warm clasp of
the child's hand that came pushing into hers! For her, as for
the children, heaven's state was in the old wooden pew. Then
the sing-song of the hymn would flood the old church with its
homely cadence.
―
## p. 12286 (#332) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
"Prepare your glad voices;
Let Hisreal rejoice,"
sang the little charity children; poor little Israelites, with blue
stockings, and funny woolen knobs to their fustian caps, rejoi-
cing, though their pastures were not green as yet, nor was their
land overflowing with milk and honey. However, they sang
praises for others, as all people do at times; thanks be to the
merciful dispensation that allows us to weep, to work, to be
comforted, and to rejoice, with one another's hearts, consciously
or unconsciously, as long as life exists.
Every lane and corner and archway had a childish story for
Dolly and her brother; for Dolly most especially, because girls
cling more to the inanimate aspects of life than boys do. For
Dolly the hawthorn bleeds as it is laid low, and is transformed
year after year into iron railings and areas; for particulars of
which you are requested to apply to the railway company, and to
Mr. Taylor, the house-agent.
In those days the lanes spread to Fulham, white with blossom
in spring, or golden with the yellow London sunsets that blazed
beyond the cabbage fields. In those days there were gardens and
trees and great walls along the high-road that came from Lon-
don, passing through the old white turnpike. There were high
brown walls along Kensington Gardens, reaching to the Palace
Gate; elms spread their shade, and birds chirruped, and children
played behind them.
Dolly Vanborough and her brother had many a game there,
and knew every corner and haunt of this sylvan world of child-
ren and ducks and nurse-maids. They had knocked their noses
against the old sun-dial many and many a time. Sometimes now,
as she comes walking along the straight avenues, Dolly thinks
she can hear the echo of their own childish voices whooping
and calling to one another as they used to do. How often they
had played with their big cousin, Robert Henley, and the little
Morgans, round about the stately orange-house, and made believe
to be statues in the niches!
"I am Apollo," cries George Vanborough, throwing himself
into an attitude.
"Apollo! " cries Robert, exploding with schoolboy wit; "an
Apollo-guy, you mean. "
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
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So.
Dolly does not understand why the Morgan boys laugh, and
George blushes up furiously. When they are tired of jumping
about in the sun, the statues straggle homeward, accompanied
by Dolly's French governess, who has been reading a novel on a
bench close by. They pass along the front of the old Palace,
that stands blinking its sleepy windows across elmy vistas, or
into tranquil courts where sentries go pacing. Robert has his
grandmother living in the Palace, and he strides off across the
court to her apartments. The children think she is a witch and
always on the watch for them, though they do not tell Robert
The Morgans turn up Old Street, and George and Dolly
escort them so far on their way home. It is a shabby brown
street, with shops at one end, and old-fashioned houses, stone-
stepped, bow-windowed, at the other Dear Old Street! where
an echo still lingers of the quaint and stately music of the past,
of which the voice comes to us like a song of Mozart sounding
above the dreamy flutterings of a Wagner of the present! Little
Zoë Morgan would linger to peep at the parrot that lived next
door in the area, with the little page-boy, who always winked at
them as they went by; little Cassie would glance wistfully at a
certain shop-front where various medals and crosses were exposed
for sale. There were even in those days convents and Catholics
established at Kensington, and this little repository had been
opened for their use.
When they have seen the little Morgans safe into their old
brown house, very often it is John Morgan who comes to the
door to admit them (John is the eldest son, the curate, the tutor,
the mainstay of the straggling establishment),- Dolly and her
brother trudge home through the Square, followed by Made-
moiselle, still lost in her novel. The lilacs are flowering behind.
the rusty rails. The children know every flagstone and window;
they turn up a little shabby passage of narrow doorways and
wide-eaved roofs, and so get out into the high-road again. They
look up with friendly recognition at the little boy and girl, in
their quaint Dutch garb, standing on their pedestals above the
crowd as it passes the Vestry-hall; then they turn down a sun-
shiny spring lane, where ivy is growing, and brown bricks are
twinkling in the western sunshine; and they ring at a gateway
where an iron bell is swung. The house is called Church House,
and all its windows look upon gardens, along which the sunshine
comes flowing. The light used to fill Dolly's slanting wooden
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
school-room at the top of the house. When the bells were ring-
ing, and the sun flood came in and made shadows on the wall, it
used to seem to her like a chapel full of music.
George wanted to make an altar one day, and to light Lady
Sarah's toilet candles, and to burn the sandalwood matches; but
Dolly, who was a little Puritan, blew the matches out and car-
ried the candles back to their places.
"I shall go over to the Morgans," said George, "since you
are so disagreeable. " Whether Dolly was agreeable or not, this
was what George was pretty sure to do.
DUTCH TILES
From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers
HERE are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's
gallery, drifting and following each other like the images of
a dissolving view. There are voices and faces changing;
people whom she hardly knows to be the same, appearing and
disappearing. Looking back nowadays through a score or two of
years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and reflecting one
another, many strange places and persons in juxtaposition. She
can hear, as we all can, a great clamor of words and of laughter,
cries of pain and of sorrow and anger, through all of which sound
the sacred voices that will utter to her through life—and beyond
life, she humbly prays.
Dorothea's pictures are but mist and fancy-work; not made of
paint and canvas, as is that one which hangs over the fireplace
in the wainscot dining-room at Church House in Kensington,
where my heroine passed so much of her life. It is supposed
by some to be a Van der Helst. It represents a golden-brown
grandmother, with a coiffe and a ruffle and a grand chain round
her neck, and a ring on her forefinger, and a double-winged
house in the background. This placid-faced Dutchwoman, exist-
ing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face
of the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants
have changed their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles,
forgotten the story of their early origin; but there is still a
something that tells of it,-in Dolly's slow quaint grace and
crumpled bronze hair, in her brother George's black brows, in
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12289
their aunt Lady Sarah Francis's round brown eyes and big ears,
to say nothing of her store of blue Dutch china. Tall blue pots,
with dragon handles, are ranged in rows upon the chimney-board
under the picture. On either side of the flame below are blue
tiles, that Lady Sarah's husband brought over from The Hague
the year before he died. Abraham, Jonah, Noah, Balaam tum-
bling off his blue ass,-the whole sacred history is there, lighted
up by the flaring flame of the logs.
When first George and Dolly came to live in the old house,
then it was the pictures came to life. The ass began to call out
"Balaam! Balaam! " the animals to walk two by two (all blue)
into the ark. Jonah's whale swallowed and disgorged him night
after night, as George and Dolly sat at their aunt's knee listen-
ing to her stories in the dusk of the "children's hour"; and the
vivid life that childhood strikes even into inanimate things awak-
ened the widow's dull heart and the silent house in the old by-
lane in Kensington.
The lady over the fireplace had married in King Charles's
reign: she was Dorothea Vanborough, and the first Countess of
Churchtown. Other countesses followed in due course, of whom
one or two were engraved in the passage overhead; the last was
a miniature in Lady Sarah's own room, her mother and my
heroine's grandmother,—a beautiful person, who had grievously
offended by taking a second husband soon after her lord's demise
in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the
Vanborough family, a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, .
a descendant of the lady over the chimney-piece. He was after-
ward killed in the Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her
mother's marriage, and once said she would never forgive it.
It was herself that she never forgave for her own unforgiveness.
She was a generous-hearted woman; fantastic, impressionable, re-
served. When her mother died soon after Colonel Vanborough,
it was to her own home that Lady Sarah brought her little half-
brother, now left friendless, and justly ignored by the 'Peerage,'
where the elder sister's own life was concisely detailed as
«dau.
John Vanborough, last Earl of Churchtown, b. 1790, m. 1807, to
Darby Francis, Esq. of Church House, Kensington. "
Young Stanham Vanborough found but a cold welcome from
Mr. Francis; but much faithful care and affection, lavished, not
without remorse, by the sister who had been so long estranged.
The boy grew up in time, and went out into the world, and
XXI-769
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12290
became a soldier as his father had been. He was a simple,
straightforward youth, very fond of his sister and loath to leave
her, but very glad to be his own master at last. He married in
India the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet; a pretty young lady,
who had come out to keep her brother's house. Her name was
Philippa Henley, and her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair
and two pearly rows of teeth. The marriage was not so happy
as it might have been: trouble came, children died; the poor
parents, in fear and trembling, sent their one little boy home to
Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three years later,
their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young traveler
by land and by sea, coming from the distant Indian station where
she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old
by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open wide,
and the lonely woman on her threshold looking out for them.
Mr. Francis was dead, and it was an empty house by this time,
out of which a whole home had passed away. Lady Sarah's
troubles were over, leaving little behind; the silence of mid-life
had succeeded to the loving turmoils and jealousies and anxieties
of earlier days; only some memories remained, of which the very
tears and words seemed wanting now and then,-although other
people may have thought that if words failed the widow, the
silent deeds were there that should belong to all past affection.
One of the first things Dolly remembers is a landing-place
one bitter east-winded morning, with the white blast blowing
dry and fierce from the land, and swirling out to sea through
the leafless forest of shipping; the squalid houses fast closed and
double-locked upon their sleeping inmates; the sudden storms of
dust and wind; the distant clanking of some awakening peal; and
the bewildered ayah, in her rings and bangles, squatting on the
ground and veiling her face in white muslin.
By the side of the ayah stands my heroine, a little puppy-like
girl, staring as Indian children stare, at the strange dismal shores.
upon which they are cast; staring at the lady in the gray cloak
who had come on board, with her papa's face, and caught her in
her arms, and who is her Aunt Sarah; at the big boy of seven
in the red mittens, whose photograph her papa had shown her in
the veranda, and who is her brother George; at the luggage as
it comes bumping and stumbling off the big ship; at the passen-
gers departing. The stout little gentleman who used to take her
to see the chickens, pats Dolly on the head, and says he shall
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12291
come and see her; the friendly sailor who carried her on shore
shakes hands, and then the clouds close in, and the sounds and
the faces disappear.
Presently into Dolly's gallery come pleasanter visions of the
old house at Kensington, to which Lady Sarah took her straight
away; with its brick wall and ivy creepers and many-paned win-
dows, and the stone balls at either side of the door,- on one of
which a little dark-eyed girl is sitting, expecting them.
"Who is dat? " says little three-year-old Dolly, running up
and pulling the child's pinafore, to make sure that she is real.
Children believe in many things: in fairies, and sudden dis-
appearances; they would not think it very strange if they were
to see people turn to fountains and dragons in the course of
conversation.
"That is a nice little girl like you," said Lady Sarah kindly.
"A nice little girl lite me? " said Dolly.
"Go away," says the little strange girl, hiding her face in her
hands.
"Have you come to play wiss me? My name is Dollicia-
vanble," continues Dolly, who is not shy, and quite used to the
world, having traveled so far.
"Is that your name? What a funny name! " says the little
girl, looking up. "My name is Rhoda, but they call me Dody
at our house. I's four years old. "
Dolly was three years old, but she could not speak quite plain.
She took the little girl's hand and stood by the ayah, watching
the people passing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked,
Lady Sarah directing and giving people money, George stumping
about in everybody's way, and then, somehow, everything and
everybody seem going up and down stairs, and in confusion;
she is very tired and sleepy, and forgets all the rest.
It is not
Next day Dolly wakes up crying for her mamma.
the ship any more. Everything is quite still, and her crib does
not rock up and down. "I sought she would be here," said poor
little Dolly, in a croaking, waking voice, sitting up with crum-
pled curls and bright warm cheeks. It is not her mamma, but
Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and tries to com-
fort her; while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on the
floor, jumps up and dances in her flowing white garment, and
snaps her black fingers, and George brings three tops to spin all
## p. 12292 (#338) ##########################################
12292
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
at once. Dolly is interested, and ceases crying; and begins to
smile and to show all her little white teeth.
Lady Sarah rarely smiled. She used to frown so as not to
show what she felt. But Dolly from the first day had seemed
to understand her; she was never afraid of her, and she used to
jump on her knee and make her welcome to the nursery.
"Is you very pretty? " said little Dolly one day, looking at
the grim face with the long nose and pinched lips. "I think
you is a very ugly aunt. " And she smiled up in the ugly aunt's
face.
"O Dolly! how naughty! " said Rhoda, who happened to be
in Dolly's nursery.
Rhoda was a little waif protégée of Lady Sarah's. She came
from the curate's home close by, and was often sent in to play
with Dolly, who would be lonely, her aunt thought, without a
companion of her own age. Rhoda was Mr. Morgan's niece, and
a timid little thing: she was very much afraid at first of Dolly;
so she was of the ayah, with her brown face and ear-rings and
monkey hands: but soon the ayah went back to India with silver
pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor child-
bereft parents, and a pair of Dolly's shoes as a remembrance,
and a couple of dolls for herself as a token of good-will from
her young mistress. They were for her brothers, Nun Comee
said; but it was supposed that she intended to worship them on
her return to her native land.
The ayah being gone, little Rhoda soon ceased to be afraid of
Dolly; the kind, merry, helpful little playmate, who remained be-
hind, frisking along the passages and up and down the landing-
places of Church House. She was much nicer, Rhoda thought,
than her own real cousins, the Morgans in Old Street.
As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from
early spring into summer-time. By degrees they reach above
the table, and over and beyond the garden-roller. They are
chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls seem to inclose sun-
shine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great
Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found.
shining among the leaves and dry grasses; of the pond where
the ducks are flapping and diving; of the house which was little
Rhoda's home. This was the great bare house in Old Street,
with plenty of noise, dried herbs, content, children without end,
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12293
There was also cold stalled ox on
and thick bread-and-butter.
Sundays at one.
In those days life was a simple matter to the children: their
days and their legs lengthened together; they loved, they learned,
and they looked for a time that was never to be,- when their
father and mother should come home and live with them again,
and everybody was to be happy. As yet the children thought
they were only expecting happiness.
George went to school at Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, and
came home for the holidays. Dolly had a governess too; and she
used to do her lessons with little Rhoda in the slanting school-
room at the top of Church House. The little girls did a great
many sums, and learned some French, and read 'Little Arthur's
History of England' to everybody's satisfaction.
Kind Lady Sarah wrote careful records of the children's
progress to her brother, who had sent them to the faithful old
sister at home. He heard of the two growing up with good.
care and much love in the sunshine that streamed upon the old
garden; playing together on the terrace that he remembered so
well; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in the
shade of the white holly-tree. George was a quaint, clever boy,
Sarah wrote; Dolly was not so quick, but happy and obedient,
and growing up like a little spring flower among the silent old
bricks.
Lady Sarah also kept up a desultory correspondence with
Philippa, her sister-in-law. Mrs. Vanborough sent many minute
directions about the children: Dolly was to dine off cold meat for
her complexion's sake, and she wished her to have her hair
crimped; and George was to wear kid gloves and write a better
hand; and she hoped they were very good, and that they some-
times saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their uncle, Sir
Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite, Yorkshire; and
she and dear papa often and often longed for their darlings.
Then came presents: a spangled dress for Lady Sarah, and silver
ornaments for Dolly, and an Indian sword for George with
which he nearly cut off Rhoda's head.
## p. 12294 (#340) ##########################################
12294
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
MY FATHER'S MOTHER
From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. Copyright 1894, by Harper
& Brothers
ON
NE's early life is certainly a great deal more amusing to look
back to than it used to be when it was going on. For one
thing, it isn't nearly so long now as it was then; and re-
membered events come cheerfully scurrying up one after another,
while the intervening periods are no longer the portentous cycles
they once were. And another thing to consider is, that the peo-
ple walking in and out of the bygone mansions of life were not,
to our newly opened eyes, the interesting personages many of
them have since become: then they were men walking as trees
before us, without names or histories; now some of the very
names mean for us the history of our time. Very young people's
eyes are certainly of more importance to them than their ears,
and they all see the persons they are destined to spend their
lives with, long before the figures begin to talk and to explain
themselves.
My grandmother had a little society of her own at Paris, in
the midst of which she seemed to reign from dignity and kind-
ness of heart; her friends, it must be confessed, have not as yet
become historic, but she herself was well worthy of a record.
Grandmothers in books and memoirs are mostly alike, stately,
old-fashioned, kindly, and critical. Mine was no exception to the
general rule.
She had been one of the most beautiful women
of her time; she was very tall, with a queenly head and carriage;
she always moved in a dignified way. She had an odd taste in
dress, I remember, and used to walk out in a red merino cloak
trimmed with ermine, which gave her the air of a retired empress
wearing out her robes. She was a woman of strong feeling,
somewhat imperious, with a passionate love for little children,
and with extraordinary sympathy and enthusiasm for any one in
trouble or in disgrace. How benevolently she used to look round
the room at her many protégés, with her beautiful gray eyes!
Her friends as a rule were shorter than she was, and brisker,
less serious and emotional. They adopted her views upon poli-
tics, religion, and homœopathy, or at all events did not venture to
contradict them. But they certainly could not reach her heights,
and her almost romantic passion of feeling.
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## p. 12295 (#341) ##########################################
12295
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
(1860-)
T
HE writings of Charles G. D. Roberts are distinguished by
an imaginative quality, which in its most perfect expres-
sion elevates them to a high plane of originality; and even
in its fainter manifestations lends charm to them. This quality is
instinct in both his prose and his verse; like a subtle fragrance it
attracts and eludes the reader, who will return to his poems and his
stories when works of more palpable excellence are forgotten. He
is an exquisite poet of the minor order; his limitations are well de-
fined, but within them he is complete and
satisfying. The writer of 'An Epitaph for
a Husbandman' and 'The Deserted City'
has not the range of the earth and sky;
but the fields which are his he has made
beautiful.
He is still a young man, so judgment of
his work must take account of the unknown
element of the future.
Scattered through the book are wise comments on the mysteries
of life, worthy of Thackeray's daughter, who was too much of a
woman and of an artist ever to change her broad morality into the
moralizing spirit.
"To hate the Devil and all his works is one thing; but to-day, who is the
Devil and which are his works is another. "
"Dolly was true to herself; and in those days she used to think that all
her life she would be always true, and always say all she felt. As life grows
long, and people living on together through time and sorrow and experience
realize more and more the complexities of their own hearts, and sympathize
more and more with the failings and sorrows of others, they are apt to ask
themselves with dismay, if it is a reality of life to be less and less uncompro-
mising as complexities increase, less true to themselves as they are more true
to others. "
In 1873 and 1874 Miss Thackeray also published a number of short
stories and sketches: Toilers and Spinsters,' 'Bluebeard's Keys,'
etc. In 1875 appeared a novel, 'Miss Angel,' of which the heroine
is Angelica Kaufmann. In the same year she edited 'The Orphan
of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments, and Drawings,' by her
father. Her life of Madame de Sévigné, in the 'Foreign Classics for
English Readers' series, appeared in 1881; and in the same year
she published another novel, 'Miss Williamson's Divagations. ' Later,
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12275
'Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs' was published. This book
of personal reminiscences is delightful, for the glimpses it affords the
reader of the Thackeray household, and of the rare guests who gath-
ered there from time to time. One of the prettiest pictures is that
of a child's party at Dickens's house: of the little Misses Thackeray
in plaid sashes and bronze shoes, of Dickens's little daughters in
white sashes and white shoes; of the supper table presided over by
Mr. and Mrs. Dickens; of the innumerable small boys who swarmed
on the staircase, and who gave three cheers for Thackeray when he
appeared in the hall to take his little girls home. There is a humor-
ous picture of Charlotte Bronté dining with Thackeray and his fam-
ily: a number of his intimate friends were invited to meet her
afterwards, and hopes of brilliant conversation ran high; but the
little shy author took refuge with the family governess, an awful
gloom like a London fog settled upon the company, and Thackeray
in despair went off to his club.
In her 'Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning,' Mrs. Ritchie
has given to the world pictures of these great men drawn by the
hand of a loving and understanding friend. Like her other books, it
is instinct with the charm of her sympathy. Her true, pure, and
sweet spirit has left a precious imprint upon the world of letters and
of society. She is loved and will be long remembered, not as Thack-
eray's daughter alone, but for her own inherent qualities of true
greatness.
MY WITCH'S-CALDRON
From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. ' Copyright 1894, by Harper
& Brothers
I
REMEMBER a visit from another hero of those times. We were
walking across Kensington Square early one morning when
we heard some one hurrying after us and calling, "Thack-
eray, Thackeray! " This was also one of Byron's friends,-a
bright-eyed, active old man; with long wavy white hair and a
picturesque cloak flung over one shoulder. I can see him still,
as he crossed the corner of the square and followed us with a
light, rapid step. My father, stopping short, turned back to meet
him; greeting him kindly, and bringing him home with us to
the old brown house at the corner where we were then living.
There was a sort of eagerness and vividness of manner about
the stranger which was very impressive. You could not help
watching him and his cloak, which kept slipping from its place,
## p. 12276 (#322) ##########################################
12276
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
and which he caught at again and again. We wondered at his
romantic foreign looks, and his gayety and bright eager way.
Afterwards we were told that this was Leigh Hunt. We knew
his name very well; for on the drawing-room table, in company
with various Ruskins and Punches, lay a pretty shining book
called 'A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla,'- from which, in
that dilettante childish fashion which is half play, half impatience
and search for something else, we had contrived to extract our
own allowance of honey. It was still an event to see a real
author in those days, specially an author with a long cloak flung
over his shoulder; though for the matter of that, it is still and
always will be an event to see the faces and hear the voices
of those whose thoughts have added something delightful to our
lives. Not very long afterwards came a different visitor, still
belonging to that same company of people.
I had thrown open
the dining-room door and come in, looking for something; and
then I stopped short, for the room was not empty. A striking
and somewhat alarming-looking person stood alone by the fire-
place with folded arms,—a dark, impressive-looking man, not tall,
but broad and brown and weather-beaten,-gazing with a sort of
scowl at his own reflection in the glass. As I entered he turned
slowly, and looked at me over his shoulder. This time it was
Trelawny, Byron's biographer and companion, who had come to
see my father. He frowned, walked deliberately and slowly from
the room, and I saw him no more.
All these people now
seem almost like figures out of a fairy tale. One could almost
as well imagine Sindbad, or Prince Charming, or the Seven
Champions of Christendom, dropping in for an hour's chat. But
each generation, however matter-of-fact it may be, sets up fairy
figures in turn to wonder at and delight in. I had not then
read any of the books which have since appeared; though I had
heard my elders talking, and I knew from hearsay something of
the strange, pathetic, irrational histories of these bygone wan-
derers, searching the world for the Golden Fleece and the En-
chanted Gardens. These were the only members of that special,
impracticable, romantic crew of Argonauts I ever saw; though I
have read and re-read their histories and diaries so that I seem
to know them all, and can almost hear their voices.
One of the most notable persons who ever came into our old
bow-windowed drawing-room in Young Street is a guest never to
be forgotten by me, a tiny, delicate little person, whose small
## p. 12277 (#323) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12277
hand nevertheless grasped a mighty lever which set all the liter-
ary world of that day vibrating. I can still see the scene quite
plainly! the hot summer evening, the open windows, the carriage
driving to the door as we all sat silent and expectant; my father,
who rarely waited, waiting with us; our governess and my sister
and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event.
We saw
the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the active, well-knit figure
of young Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Bronté to
see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down
the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests; and then,
after a moment's delay, the door opens wide and the two gentle-
men come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious little lady, pale, with
fair, straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over
thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of
faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in serious-
ness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This, then, is
the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all Lon-
don talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father
wrote the books-the wonderful books. To say that we little
girls had been given 'Jane Eyre' to read, scarcely represents the
facts of the case; to say that we had taken it without leave, read
bits here and read bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-
of and hitherto unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places,
all utterly absorbing and at the same time absolutely unintelligi-
ble to us, would more accurately describe our states of mind on
that summer's evening as we look at Jane Eyre—the great Jane
Eyre the tiny little lady. The moment is so breathless that
dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we
all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though
she may be, Miss Bronté can barely reach his elbow. My own
personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern,
especially to forward little girls who wish to chatter. Mr. George
Smith has since told me how she afterwards remarked upon my
father's wonderful forbearance and gentleness with our uncalled-
for incursions into the conversation. She sat gazing at him with
kindling eyes of interest, lighting up with a sort of illumination
every now and then as she answered him. I can see her bending
forward over the table, not eating, but listening to what he said
as he carved the dish before him.
――――
I think it must have been on this very occasion that my
father invited some of his friends in the evening to meet Miss
## p. 12278 (#324) ##########################################
12278
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
Bronté, for everybody was interested and anxious to see her.
Mrs. Crowe, the reciter of ghost stories, was there. Mrs. Brook-
field, Mrs. Carlyle - Mr. Carlyle himself was present, so I am
told, railing at the appearance of cockneys upon Scotch mountain-
sides; there were also too many Americans for his taste; "but
the Americans were as God compared to the cockneys," says the
philosopher. Besides the Carlyles, there were Mrs. Elliott and
Miss Perry, Mrs. Procter and her daughter, most of my father's
habitual friends and companions. In the recent life of Lord
Houghton, I was amused to see a note quoted in which Lord
Houghton also was convened. Would that he had been present!
-perhaps the party would have gone off better. It was a
gloomy and a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant
conversation which never began at all. Miss Bronté retired to
the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then
to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very
dark; the lamp began to smoke a little; the conversation grew
dimmer and more dim; the ladies sat round still expectant; my
father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to
be able to cope with it at all.
Mrs. Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near
the corner in which Miss Bronté was sitting, leaned forward with
a little commonplace, since brilliance was not to be the order
of the evening. "Do you like London, Miss Bronté ? " she said.
Another silence; a pause; then Miss Bronté answers "Yes" and
"No," very gravely. My sister and I were much too young to
be bored in those days: alarmed, impressed, we might be, but not
yet bored.
A party was a party, a lioness was a lioness; and
shall I confess it? - at that time an extra dish of biscuits was
enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the
occasion — tea spread in the dining-room, ladies in the drawing-
room. We roamed about inconveniently, no doubt, and excitedly;
and in one of my excursions crossing the hall, towards the close
of the entertainment, I was surprised to see my father opening
the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips,
walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind
him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies
asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he
was coming back. I was puzzled at the time; nor was it all
made clear to me till long years afterwards, when one day Mrs.
Procter asked me if I knew what had happened once when my
## p. 12279 (#325) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12279
father had invited a party to meet Jane Eyre at his house. It
was one of the dullest evenings she had ever spent in her life,
she said. And then with a good deal of humor she described
the situation: the ladies who had all come expecting so much
delightful conversation; and how as the evening went on, the
gloom and the constraint increased; and how finally, after the de-
parture of the more important guests, overwhelmed by the situ-
ation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and
gone off to his club. The ladies waited, wondered, and finally
departed also; and as we were going up to bed with our candles,
after everybody was gone, I remember two pretty Miss L—s,
in shiny silk dresses, arriving, full of expectation.
We
still said we thought our father would soon be back; but the
Miss Ls declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and
drove away again almost immediately.
―
I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the
great honest eyes; an impetuous honesty seemed to me to char-
acterize the woman.
I fancied an austere little Joan of
Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy
morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty
and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and
truth seemed to be with her always. Such in our brief interview
she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life, so noble, so
lonely, of that passion for truth,—of those nights and nights of
eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, and
prayer; as one reads of the necessarily incomplete though most
touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this
one little frame, of this one among the myriads of souls that
have lived and died on this great earth,- this great earth! this
little speck in the infinite universe of God,-with what wonder
do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when
that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! .
I am suddenly conscious as I write that my experiences are
very partial; but a witch's-caldron must needs after all contain
heterogeneous scraps, and mine, alas! can be no exception to the
rest. It produces nothing more valuable than odds and ends,
happily harmless enough; neither sweltered venom nor fillet of
finny snake, but the back of one great man's head, the hat and
umbrella of another. The first time I ever saw Mr. Gladstone,
I only saw the soles of his boots. A friend had taken me into
the ventilator of the House of Commons, where we listened to a
·
·
•
1
1
1
## p. 12280 (#326) ##########################################
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
noble speech, and watched the two shadows on the grating over-
head, of the feet of the messenger of glad tidings. One special
back I cannot refrain from writing down, in a dark-blue frock
coat and strapped trousers, walking leisurely before us up Picca-
dilly. The sun is shining, and an odd sort of brass buckle which
fastens an old-fashioned stock flashes like a star. "Do look! "
I say: "who is that old gentleman? " "That old gentleman!
Why, that is the Duke of Wellington," said my father. On
another occasion I remember some one coming up to us and
beginning to talk very charmingly, and among other things
describing some new lord mayor who had been in state to a
theatrical performance, by which it seemed he had been much
affected. "I cried, I do assure you," the lord mayor had said;
"and as for the lady mayoress, she cry too:" and the gentle-
man smiled, and told the little story so dryly and drolly that
my sister and I couldn't help laughing; and we went on repeat-
ing to one another afterwards, "As for the lady mayoress, she cry
too. " And then as usual, we asked who was that.
«Don't you
know Lord Palmerston by sight? " said my father.
Another miscellaneous apparition out of my caldron rises be-
fore me as I write. On a certain day we went to call at Mrs.
Procter's with our father. We found an old man standing in
the middle of the room, taking leave of his hostess, nodding his
head: he was a little like a Chinese mandarin with an ivory
face. His expression never changed, but seemed quite fixed.
He knew my father, and spoke to him and to us too, still in this
odd, fixed way. Then he looked at my sister. "My little girl,”
he said to her, "will you come and live with me? You shall be
as happy as the day is long; you shall have a white pony to ride,
and feed upon red-currant jelly. " This prospect was so alarming
and unexpected that the poor little girl suddenly blushed up and
burst into tears. The old man was Mr. Samuel Rogers; but
happily he did not see her cry, for he was already on his way to
the door.
My father used to write in his study at the back of the house
in Young Street. The vine shaded his two windows, which looked
out upon the bit of garden, and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish
jasmines, of which the yellow flowers scented our old brick walls.
I can remember the tortoise belonging to the boys next door
crawling along the top of the wall where they had set it, and
making its way between the jasmine sprigs. Jasmines won't
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12281
grow now any more, as they did then, in the gardens of Ken-
sington, nor will medlars and vine-trees take root and spread
their green branches: only herbs and bulbs, such as lilies and
Solomon's-seals, seem to flourish; though I have a faint hope.
that all the things people put in will come. up all right some
centuries hence, when London is resting and at peace, and has
turned into the grass-grown ruin one so often hears described.
Our garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man
came to mow the grass), but it was full of sweet things. There
were verbenas- red, blue, and scented; and there were lovely
stacks of flags, blades of green with purple heads between, and
bunches of London-pride growing luxuriantly; and there were
some blush-roses at the end of the garden, which were not al-
ways quite eaten up by the caterpillars. Lady Duff Gordon came
to stay with us once (it was on that occasion, I think, that the
grass was mowed); and she afterwards sent us some doves, which
used to hang high up in a wicker cage from the windows of the
school-room.
The top school-room was over my father's bedroom, and the
bedroom was over the study where he used to write. I liked
the top school-room the best of all the rooms in the dear old
house: the sky was in it, and the evening bells used to ring into
it across the garden, and seemed to come in dancing and clang-
ing with the sunset; and the floor sloped so that if you put
down a ball, it would roll in a leisurely way right across the
room of its own accord. And then there was a mystery,—a
small trap-door between the windows which we never could open.
Where did not that trap-door lead to? It was the gateway of
paradise, of many paradises, to us. We kept our dolls, our bricks,
our books, our baby-houses, in the top room, and most of our
stupid little fancies. My little sister had a menagerie of snails
and flies in the sunny window-sill: these latter, chiefly invalids
rescued out of milk-jugs, lay upon rose-leaves in various little
pots and receptacles. She was very fond of animals, and so was
my father - at least, he always liked our animals. Now, looking
back, I am full of wonder at the number of cats we were allowed
to keep, though De la Pluche the butler, and Gray the house-
keeper, waged war against them. The cats used to come to us
from the garden; for then, as now, the open spaces of Kensing-
ton abounded in fauna. My sister used to adopt and christen
them all in turn by the names of her favorite heroes: she had
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
Nicholas Nickleby, a huge gray tabby, and Martin Chuzzlewit,
and a poor little half-starved Barnaby Rudge, and many others.
Their saucers used to be placed in a row on the little terrace at
the back of my father's study, under the vine where the sour
green grapes grew - not at all out of reach; and at the farther
end of which was an empty greenhouse ornamented by the busts
of my father as a boy and of a relation in a military cloak.
One of my friends—she never lived to be an old woman
used to laugh and say that she had reached the time of life when
she loved to see even the people her parents had particularly dis-
liked, just for the sake of old times. I don't know how I should
feel if I were to meet one agreeable, cordial gentleman, who used
to come on horseback, and invite us to all sorts of dazzling
treats and entertainments,—which, to our great disappointment,
my father invariably refused, saying, "No, I don't like him; I
don't want to have anything to do with him. " The wretched
man fully justified these objections by getting himself transported
long after for a protracted course of peculiarly deliberate and
cold-blooded fraud. On one occasion, a friend told me, he was
talking to my father, and mentioning some one in good repute
at the time, and my father incidentally spoke as if he knew
of a murder that person had committed. "You know it, then! "
said the other man. "Who could have told you? " My father
had never been told, but he had known it all along, he said; and
indeed he sometimes spoke of this curious feeling he had about
people at times, as if uncomfortable facts in their past history
were actually revealed to him. At the same time I do not think
anybody had a greater enjoyment than he in other people's good-
ness and well-doing: he used to be proud of a boy's prizes at
school, he used to be proud of a woman's sweet voice or of her
success in housekeeping. He had a friend in the Victoria Road
hard by, whose delightful household ways he used to describe;
and I can still hear the lady he called Jingleby warbling "O du
schöne Müllerin," to his great delight.
Any generous thing or word seemed like something happen-
ing to himself. I can remember, when 'David Copperfield' came
out, hearing him saying in his emphatic way to my grandmother,
that "little Em'ly's letter to old Peggotty was a masterpiece. "
I wondered to hear him at the time, for that was not at all
the part I cared for most; nor, indeed, could I imagine how
little Em ly ever was so stupid as to run away from Peggotty's
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ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12283
enchanted house-boat. But we each and all enjoyed in turn our
share of those thin green books full of delicious things; and how
glad we were when they came to our hands at last, after our
elders and our governess and our butler had all read them in
turn!
It is curious to me now to remember, considering how little
we met and what a long way off they lived, what an important
part the Dickens household played in our childhood. But the
Dickens books were as much a part of our home as our own
father's.
est.
Certainly the Dickens children's-parties were shining facts in
our early London days; nothing came in the least near them.
There were other parties, and they were very nice, but nothing
to compare to these: not nearly so light, not nearly so shining,
not nearly so going round and round. Perhaps so dear K. P.
suggests it was not all as brilliantly wonderful as I imagined
it; but most assuredly the spirit of mirth and kindly jollity was
a reality to every one present, and the master of the house had
that wondrous fairy gift of leadership. I know not what to call
that power by which he inspired every one with spirit and inter-
One special party I remember, which seemed to me to go
on for years, with its kind, gay hospitality, its music, its streams
of children passing and repassing. We were a little shy coming
in alone, in all the consciousness of new shoes and ribbons; but
Mrs. Dickens called us to sit beside her till the long sweeping
dance was over, and talked to us as if we were grown up,- which
is always flattering to little girls. Then Miss Hogarth found us
partners; and we too formed part of the throng. I remember
watching the white satin shoes and long flowing white sashes of
the little Dickens girls, who were just about our own age, but
how much more graceful and beautifully dressed! Our sashes.
were bright plaids of red and blue, (tributes from one of our
father's Scotch admirers; - is it ungrateful to confess now, after
all these years, that we could not bear them? ) our shoes were
only bronze. Shall I own to this passing shadow amid all that
radiance? But when people are once dancing, they are all equal
again, and happy.
Somehow after the music we all floated into a long supper-
room, and I found myself sitting near the head of the table by
Mr. Dickens, with another little girl much younger than myself;
she wore a necklace, and pretty little sausage curls all round her
――――
## p. 12284 (#330) ##########################################
12284
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
head. Mr. Dickens was very kind to the little girl, and presently
I heard him persuading her to sing, and he put his arm round.
her to encourage her; and then, wonderful to say, the little girl
stood up (she was little Miss Hullah) and began very shyly,
trembling and blushing at first, but as she blushed and trembled
she sang more and more sweetly; and then all the jeunesse dorée,
consisting of the little Dickens boys and their friends, ranged
along the supper table, clapped and clapped, and Mr. Dickens
clapped too, smiling and applauding her.
And then he made a
little speech, with one hand on the table; I think it was thanking
the jeunesse dorée for their applause, and they again clapped and
laughed; but here my memory fails me, and everything grows
very vague and like a dream.
Only this much I do remember very clearly: that we had
danced and supped and danced again, and that we
were all
standing in a hall lighted and hung with bunches of Christmas
green, and as I have said, everything seemed altogether mag-
nificent and important; more magnificent and important every
minute, for as the evening went on, more and more people kept
arriving. The hall was crowded, and the broad staircase was
lined with little boys-thousands of little boys-whose heads
and legs and arms were waving about together. They were
making a great noise, and talking and shouting; and the eldest
son of the house seemed to be marshaling them. Presently their
noise became a cheer, and then another; and we looked up and
saw that our own father had come to fetch us, and that his
white head was there above the others: then came a third final
ringing cheer, and some one went up to him—it was Mr. Dick-
ens himself—who laughed and said quickly, "That is for you! "
and my father looked up,- surprised, pleased, touched,— settled
his spectacles, and nodded gravely to the little boys.
――
BRICKS AND IVY
From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers
A
QUARTER of a century ago, the shabby tide of progress had
not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady Sarah Fran-
cis's brown house was standing, with its many windows daz-
zling, as the sun traveled across the old-fashioned house-tops to
## p. 12285 (#331) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12285
set into a distant sea of tenements and echoing life. The roar
did not reach the old house. The children could listen to the
cawing of the rooks, to the echo of the hours, as they struck on
from one day to another, vibrating from the old brown tower of
the church. At night the strokes seemed to ring more slowly
than in the day. Little Dolly Vanborough, Lady Sarah's niece,
thought each special hour had its voice. The church clock is
silent now, but the rooks caw on undisturbed from one spring
to another in the old Kensington suburb. There are tranquil
corners still, and sunny silent nooks, and ivy wreaths growing
in the western sun; and jasmines and vine-trees, planted by a
former generation, spreading along the old garden walls. But
every year the shabby stream of progress rises and ingulfs
one relic or another, carrying off many and many a landmark
and memory. Last year only the old church was standing, in
its iron cage, at the junction of the thoroughfares. It was the
Church of England itself to Dolly and George Vanborough, in
those early church-going days of theirs. There was the old
painting of the lion and the unicorn hanging from the gallery;
the light streaming through the brown saints over the commun-
ion table. In after life the children may have seen other saints
more glorious in crimson and in purple, nobler piles and arches;
but none of them have ever seemed so near to heaven as the
old Queen Anne building, and the wooden pew with its high
stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding, where
they used to kneel on either side of their aunt, watching with
awe-stricken faces the tears as they came falling from the wid-
ow's sad eyes.
Lady Sarah could scarcely have told you the meaning of those
tears as they fell: old love and life partings, sorrows and past
mercies, all came returning to her with the familiar words of the
prayers. The tears fell bright and awe-stricken as she thought
of the present, of distances immeasurable, of life and its incon-
ceivable mystery; and then her heart would warm with hope
perhaps of what might be to come, of the overwhelming possi-
bilities how many of them to her lay in the warm clasp of
the child's hand that came pushing into hers! For her, as for
the children, heaven's state was in the old wooden pew. Then
the sing-song of the hymn would flood the old church with its
homely cadence.
―
## p. 12286 (#332) ##########################################
12286
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
"Prepare your glad voices;
Let Hisreal rejoice,"
sang the little charity children; poor little Israelites, with blue
stockings, and funny woolen knobs to their fustian caps, rejoi-
cing, though their pastures were not green as yet, nor was their
land overflowing with milk and honey. However, they sang
praises for others, as all people do at times; thanks be to the
merciful dispensation that allows us to weep, to work, to be
comforted, and to rejoice, with one another's hearts, consciously
or unconsciously, as long as life exists.
Every lane and corner and archway had a childish story for
Dolly and her brother; for Dolly most especially, because girls
cling more to the inanimate aspects of life than boys do. For
Dolly the hawthorn bleeds as it is laid low, and is transformed
year after year into iron railings and areas; for particulars of
which you are requested to apply to the railway company, and to
Mr. Taylor, the house-agent.
In those days the lanes spread to Fulham, white with blossom
in spring, or golden with the yellow London sunsets that blazed
beyond the cabbage fields. In those days there were gardens and
trees and great walls along the high-road that came from Lon-
don, passing through the old white turnpike. There were high
brown walls along Kensington Gardens, reaching to the Palace
Gate; elms spread their shade, and birds chirruped, and children
played behind them.
Dolly Vanborough and her brother had many a game there,
and knew every corner and haunt of this sylvan world of child-
ren and ducks and nurse-maids. They had knocked their noses
against the old sun-dial many and many a time. Sometimes now,
as she comes walking along the straight avenues, Dolly thinks
she can hear the echo of their own childish voices whooping
and calling to one another as they used to do. How often they
had played with their big cousin, Robert Henley, and the little
Morgans, round about the stately orange-house, and made believe
to be statues in the niches!
"I am Apollo," cries George Vanborough, throwing himself
into an attitude.
"Apollo! " cries Robert, exploding with schoolboy wit; "an
Apollo-guy, you mean. "
## p. 12287 (#333) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12287
So.
Dolly does not understand why the Morgan boys laugh, and
George blushes up furiously. When they are tired of jumping
about in the sun, the statues straggle homeward, accompanied
by Dolly's French governess, who has been reading a novel on a
bench close by. They pass along the front of the old Palace,
that stands blinking its sleepy windows across elmy vistas, or
into tranquil courts where sentries go pacing. Robert has his
grandmother living in the Palace, and he strides off across the
court to her apartments. The children think she is a witch and
always on the watch for them, though they do not tell Robert
The Morgans turn up Old Street, and George and Dolly
escort them so far on their way home. It is a shabby brown
street, with shops at one end, and old-fashioned houses, stone-
stepped, bow-windowed, at the other Dear Old Street! where
an echo still lingers of the quaint and stately music of the past,
of which the voice comes to us like a song of Mozart sounding
above the dreamy flutterings of a Wagner of the present! Little
Zoë Morgan would linger to peep at the parrot that lived next
door in the area, with the little page-boy, who always winked at
them as they went by; little Cassie would glance wistfully at a
certain shop-front where various medals and crosses were exposed
for sale. There were even in those days convents and Catholics
established at Kensington, and this little repository had been
opened for their use.
When they have seen the little Morgans safe into their old
brown house, very often it is John Morgan who comes to the
door to admit them (John is the eldest son, the curate, the tutor,
the mainstay of the straggling establishment),- Dolly and her
brother trudge home through the Square, followed by Made-
moiselle, still lost in her novel. The lilacs are flowering behind.
the rusty rails. The children know every flagstone and window;
they turn up a little shabby passage of narrow doorways and
wide-eaved roofs, and so get out into the high-road again. They
look up with friendly recognition at the little boy and girl, in
their quaint Dutch garb, standing on their pedestals above the
crowd as it passes the Vestry-hall; then they turn down a sun-
shiny spring lane, where ivy is growing, and brown bricks are
twinkling in the western sunshine; and they ring at a gateway
where an iron bell is swung. The house is called Church House,
and all its windows look upon gardens, along which the sunshine
comes flowing. The light used to fill Dolly's slanting wooden
-
## p. 12288 (#334) ##########################################
12288
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
school-room at the top of the house. When the bells were ring-
ing, and the sun flood came in and made shadows on the wall, it
used to seem to her like a chapel full of music.
George wanted to make an altar one day, and to light Lady
Sarah's toilet candles, and to burn the sandalwood matches; but
Dolly, who was a little Puritan, blew the matches out and car-
ried the candles back to their places.
"I shall go over to the Morgans," said George, "since you
are so disagreeable. " Whether Dolly was agreeable or not, this
was what George was pretty sure to do.
DUTCH TILES
From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers
HERE are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's
gallery, drifting and following each other like the images of
a dissolving view. There are voices and faces changing;
people whom she hardly knows to be the same, appearing and
disappearing. Looking back nowadays through a score or two of
years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and reflecting one
another, many strange places and persons in juxtaposition. She
can hear, as we all can, a great clamor of words and of laughter,
cries of pain and of sorrow and anger, through all of which sound
the sacred voices that will utter to her through life—and beyond
life, she humbly prays.
Dorothea's pictures are but mist and fancy-work; not made of
paint and canvas, as is that one which hangs over the fireplace
in the wainscot dining-room at Church House in Kensington,
where my heroine passed so much of her life. It is supposed
by some to be a Van der Helst. It represents a golden-brown
grandmother, with a coiffe and a ruffle and a grand chain round
her neck, and a ring on her forefinger, and a double-winged
house in the background. This placid-faced Dutchwoman, exist-
ing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face
of the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants
have changed their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles,
forgotten the story of their early origin; but there is still a
something that tells of it,-in Dolly's slow quaint grace and
crumpled bronze hair, in her brother George's black brows, in
## p. 12289 (#335) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12289
their aunt Lady Sarah Francis's round brown eyes and big ears,
to say nothing of her store of blue Dutch china. Tall blue pots,
with dragon handles, are ranged in rows upon the chimney-board
under the picture. On either side of the flame below are blue
tiles, that Lady Sarah's husband brought over from The Hague
the year before he died. Abraham, Jonah, Noah, Balaam tum-
bling off his blue ass,-the whole sacred history is there, lighted
up by the flaring flame of the logs.
When first George and Dolly came to live in the old house,
then it was the pictures came to life. The ass began to call out
"Balaam! Balaam! " the animals to walk two by two (all blue)
into the ark. Jonah's whale swallowed and disgorged him night
after night, as George and Dolly sat at their aunt's knee listen-
ing to her stories in the dusk of the "children's hour"; and the
vivid life that childhood strikes even into inanimate things awak-
ened the widow's dull heart and the silent house in the old by-
lane in Kensington.
The lady over the fireplace had married in King Charles's
reign: she was Dorothea Vanborough, and the first Countess of
Churchtown. Other countesses followed in due course, of whom
one or two were engraved in the passage overhead; the last was
a miniature in Lady Sarah's own room, her mother and my
heroine's grandmother,—a beautiful person, who had grievously
offended by taking a second husband soon after her lord's demise
in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the
Vanborough family, a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, .
a descendant of the lady over the chimney-piece. He was after-
ward killed in the Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her
mother's marriage, and once said she would never forgive it.
It was herself that she never forgave for her own unforgiveness.
She was a generous-hearted woman; fantastic, impressionable, re-
served. When her mother died soon after Colonel Vanborough,
it was to her own home that Lady Sarah brought her little half-
brother, now left friendless, and justly ignored by the 'Peerage,'
where the elder sister's own life was concisely detailed as
«dau.
John Vanborough, last Earl of Churchtown, b. 1790, m. 1807, to
Darby Francis, Esq. of Church House, Kensington. "
Young Stanham Vanborough found but a cold welcome from
Mr. Francis; but much faithful care and affection, lavished, not
without remorse, by the sister who had been so long estranged.
The boy grew up in time, and went out into the world, and
XXI-769
―
## p. 12290 (#336) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12290
became a soldier as his father had been. He was a simple,
straightforward youth, very fond of his sister and loath to leave
her, but very glad to be his own master at last. He married in
India the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet; a pretty young lady,
who had come out to keep her brother's house. Her name was
Philippa Henley, and her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair
and two pearly rows of teeth. The marriage was not so happy
as it might have been: trouble came, children died; the poor
parents, in fear and trembling, sent their one little boy home to
Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three years later,
their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young traveler
by land and by sea, coming from the distant Indian station where
she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old
by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open wide,
and the lonely woman on her threshold looking out for them.
Mr. Francis was dead, and it was an empty house by this time,
out of which a whole home had passed away. Lady Sarah's
troubles were over, leaving little behind; the silence of mid-life
had succeeded to the loving turmoils and jealousies and anxieties
of earlier days; only some memories remained, of which the very
tears and words seemed wanting now and then,-although other
people may have thought that if words failed the widow, the
silent deeds were there that should belong to all past affection.
One of the first things Dolly remembers is a landing-place
one bitter east-winded morning, with the white blast blowing
dry and fierce from the land, and swirling out to sea through
the leafless forest of shipping; the squalid houses fast closed and
double-locked upon their sleeping inmates; the sudden storms of
dust and wind; the distant clanking of some awakening peal; and
the bewildered ayah, in her rings and bangles, squatting on the
ground and veiling her face in white muslin.
By the side of the ayah stands my heroine, a little puppy-like
girl, staring as Indian children stare, at the strange dismal shores.
upon which they are cast; staring at the lady in the gray cloak
who had come on board, with her papa's face, and caught her in
her arms, and who is her Aunt Sarah; at the big boy of seven
in the red mittens, whose photograph her papa had shown her in
the veranda, and who is her brother George; at the luggage as
it comes bumping and stumbling off the big ship; at the passen-
gers departing. The stout little gentleman who used to take her
to see the chickens, pats Dolly on the head, and says he shall
## p. 12291 (#337) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12291
come and see her; the friendly sailor who carried her on shore
shakes hands, and then the clouds close in, and the sounds and
the faces disappear.
Presently into Dolly's gallery come pleasanter visions of the
old house at Kensington, to which Lady Sarah took her straight
away; with its brick wall and ivy creepers and many-paned win-
dows, and the stone balls at either side of the door,- on one of
which a little dark-eyed girl is sitting, expecting them.
"Who is dat? " says little three-year-old Dolly, running up
and pulling the child's pinafore, to make sure that she is real.
Children believe in many things: in fairies, and sudden dis-
appearances; they would not think it very strange if they were
to see people turn to fountains and dragons in the course of
conversation.
"That is a nice little girl like you," said Lady Sarah kindly.
"A nice little girl lite me? " said Dolly.
"Go away," says the little strange girl, hiding her face in her
hands.
"Have you come to play wiss me? My name is Dollicia-
vanble," continues Dolly, who is not shy, and quite used to the
world, having traveled so far.
"Is that your name? What a funny name! " says the little
girl, looking up. "My name is Rhoda, but they call me Dody
at our house. I's four years old. "
Dolly was three years old, but she could not speak quite plain.
She took the little girl's hand and stood by the ayah, watching
the people passing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked,
Lady Sarah directing and giving people money, George stumping
about in everybody's way, and then, somehow, everything and
everybody seem going up and down stairs, and in confusion;
she is very tired and sleepy, and forgets all the rest.
It is not
Next day Dolly wakes up crying for her mamma.
the ship any more. Everything is quite still, and her crib does
not rock up and down. "I sought she would be here," said poor
little Dolly, in a croaking, waking voice, sitting up with crum-
pled curls and bright warm cheeks. It is not her mamma, but
Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and tries to com-
fort her; while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on the
floor, jumps up and dances in her flowing white garment, and
snaps her black fingers, and George brings three tops to spin all
## p. 12292 (#338) ##########################################
12292
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
at once. Dolly is interested, and ceases crying; and begins to
smile and to show all her little white teeth.
Lady Sarah rarely smiled. She used to frown so as not to
show what she felt. But Dolly from the first day had seemed
to understand her; she was never afraid of her, and she used to
jump on her knee and make her welcome to the nursery.
"Is you very pretty? " said little Dolly one day, looking at
the grim face with the long nose and pinched lips. "I think
you is a very ugly aunt. " And she smiled up in the ugly aunt's
face.
"O Dolly! how naughty! " said Rhoda, who happened to be
in Dolly's nursery.
Rhoda was a little waif protégée of Lady Sarah's. She came
from the curate's home close by, and was often sent in to play
with Dolly, who would be lonely, her aunt thought, without a
companion of her own age. Rhoda was Mr. Morgan's niece, and
a timid little thing: she was very much afraid at first of Dolly;
so she was of the ayah, with her brown face and ear-rings and
monkey hands: but soon the ayah went back to India with silver
pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor child-
bereft parents, and a pair of Dolly's shoes as a remembrance,
and a couple of dolls for herself as a token of good-will from
her young mistress. They were for her brothers, Nun Comee
said; but it was supposed that she intended to worship them on
her return to her native land.
The ayah being gone, little Rhoda soon ceased to be afraid of
Dolly; the kind, merry, helpful little playmate, who remained be-
hind, frisking along the passages and up and down the landing-
places of Church House. She was much nicer, Rhoda thought,
than her own real cousins, the Morgans in Old Street.
As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from
early spring into summer-time. By degrees they reach above
the table, and over and beyond the garden-roller. They are
chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls seem to inclose sun-
shine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great
Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found.
shining among the leaves and dry grasses; of the pond where
the ducks are flapping and diving; of the house which was little
Rhoda's home. This was the great bare house in Old Street,
with plenty of noise, dried herbs, content, children without end,
## p. 12293 (#339) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12293
There was also cold stalled ox on
and thick bread-and-butter.
Sundays at one.
In those days life was a simple matter to the children: their
days and their legs lengthened together; they loved, they learned,
and they looked for a time that was never to be,- when their
father and mother should come home and live with them again,
and everybody was to be happy. As yet the children thought
they were only expecting happiness.
George went to school at Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, and
came home for the holidays. Dolly had a governess too; and she
used to do her lessons with little Rhoda in the slanting school-
room at the top of Church House. The little girls did a great
many sums, and learned some French, and read 'Little Arthur's
History of England' to everybody's satisfaction.
Kind Lady Sarah wrote careful records of the children's
progress to her brother, who had sent them to the faithful old
sister at home. He heard of the two growing up with good.
care and much love in the sunshine that streamed upon the old
garden; playing together on the terrace that he remembered so
well; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in the
shade of the white holly-tree. George was a quaint, clever boy,
Sarah wrote; Dolly was not so quick, but happy and obedient,
and growing up like a little spring flower among the silent old
bricks.
Lady Sarah also kept up a desultory correspondence with
Philippa, her sister-in-law. Mrs. Vanborough sent many minute
directions about the children: Dolly was to dine off cold meat for
her complexion's sake, and she wished her to have her hair
crimped; and George was to wear kid gloves and write a better
hand; and she hoped they were very good, and that they some-
times saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their uncle, Sir
Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite, Yorkshire; and
she and dear papa often and often longed for their darlings.
Then came presents: a spangled dress for Lady Sarah, and silver
ornaments for Dolly, and an Indian sword for George with
which he nearly cut off Rhoda's head.
## p. 12294 (#340) ##########################################
12294
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
MY FATHER'S MOTHER
From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. Copyright 1894, by Harper
& Brothers
ON
NE's early life is certainly a great deal more amusing to look
back to than it used to be when it was going on. For one
thing, it isn't nearly so long now as it was then; and re-
membered events come cheerfully scurrying up one after another,
while the intervening periods are no longer the portentous cycles
they once were. And another thing to consider is, that the peo-
ple walking in and out of the bygone mansions of life were not,
to our newly opened eyes, the interesting personages many of
them have since become: then they were men walking as trees
before us, without names or histories; now some of the very
names mean for us the history of our time. Very young people's
eyes are certainly of more importance to them than their ears,
and they all see the persons they are destined to spend their
lives with, long before the figures begin to talk and to explain
themselves.
My grandmother had a little society of her own at Paris, in
the midst of which she seemed to reign from dignity and kind-
ness of heart; her friends, it must be confessed, have not as yet
become historic, but she herself was well worthy of a record.
Grandmothers in books and memoirs are mostly alike, stately,
old-fashioned, kindly, and critical. Mine was no exception to the
general rule.
She had been one of the most beautiful women
of her time; she was very tall, with a queenly head and carriage;
she always moved in a dignified way. She had an odd taste in
dress, I remember, and used to walk out in a red merino cloak
trimmed with ermine, which gave her the air of a retired empress
wearing out her robes. She was a woman of strong feeling,
somewhat imperious, with a passionate love for little children,
and with extraordinary sympathy and enthusiasm for any one in
trouble or in disgrace. How benevolently she used to look round
the room at her many protégés, with her beautiful gray eyes!
Her friends as a rule were shorter than she was, and brisker,
less serious and emotional. They adopted her views upon poli-
tics, religion, and homœopathy, or at all events did not venture to
contradict them. But they certainly could not reach her heights,
and her almost romantic passion of feeling.
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## p. 12295 (#341) ##########################################
12295
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
(1860-)
T
HE writings of Charles G. D. Roberts are distinguished by
an imaginative quality, which in its most perfect expres-
sion elevates them to a high plane of originality; and even
in its fainter manifestations lends charm to them. This quality is
instinct in both his prose and his verse; like a subtle fragrance it
attracts and eludes the reader, who will return to his poems and his
stories when works of more palpable excellence are forgotten. He
is an exquisite poet of the minor order; his limitations are well de-
fined, but within them he is complete and
satisfying. The writer of 'An Epitaph for
a Husbandman' and 'The Deserted City'
has not the range of the earth and sky;
but the fields which are his he has made
beautiful.
He is still a young man, so judgment of
his work must take account of the unknown
element of the future.
