Part 4 (1/2)

”Mistletoe,” said she.

Talismanic word! I folded it in paper and brought it home. It is in Australia with me now.

Valentine's Day is hardly a name to be remembered now when the 14th of February comes round. The date was far behind us when we arrived in England, but I am sure the festival must be dead in its native land, and it has never lived during my time in this. And as for Christmas--we could not stay long enough to see an English Christmas again, but I think, if I had seen it, I should have found it no more like the old Christmas than the one I spent at sea. They belonged to their age, those old Christmases of ours, to children not so critical and sophisticated as the children of to-day.

Fragrant memories of Christmas hung about that old house at D----. Happy Christmases with no governesses around! And such tremendous affairs they were! Long, long before the day its heralds were all about us: the choice fowls set apart for fattening; the ox selected that was to make himself famous with a prize, if possible, before the butcher turned him into Christmas beef; the solemn mixing of the Christmas pudding, at which the youngest baby had to a.s.sist (the pudding divided into dozens of puddings boiled in the big copper and hung up in their cloths, to be used in instalments until Christmas came again); the making of the mincemeat in the same wholesale manner (big brown jarfuls, also to last through the year), and of the Christmas cakes, which were so rich that keeping improved them, and the production of which therefore was only limited by the number of canisters available in which to store them; these were matters of vital interest ere autumn had fairly gone. For the Feast of the Nativity was above all things a feast in the popular sense of the word. Loaded shelves in the pantry and an overflowing table, plenty for everybody and everything of the best, was the order not of the day, or of the week but for the month or two that stood for the ”season” with these old-time provincial revellers. When we lived in the country before coming to D---- two dishes in particular were conspicuous on our bill of fare--Christmas dishes only, so far as I can recollect.

One was a game pie, in size and shape resembling a milliner's bonnet box. Its walls were self-supporting and covered with pastry ornamentation in relief; its inside was jelly close-packed with miscellaneous game birds and bits of ham and veal and forcemeat and things; the usual game pie, I suppose (I don't know, it is so many years since I tasted one), but extra big and fine in honour of Christmas. The other dish was a round of ”Hunters' Beef”--very well named since it used to be in great request for hunting sandwiches. It was beef rubbed all over every day for three weeks with a certain dry mixture of sugar, salts and spices, and then baked for six hours in an earthern crock under a pile of shred suet, a meal crust and a sheet of brown paper. It seems to me that I have never tasted real spiced beef since. It was used in thin slices with bread and b.u.t.ter, not eaten like ordinary meat at the substantial meals, and lasted a great while. When Christmas was nearly upon us--governess gone, and all the carking cares of the past year thrown overboard--the bakings and roastings were tremendous, the excitement of preparation turned all heads.

At our farmhouse a cartload of evergreens used to come from our grandfather's woods, sometimes through the snow. Here in the town we still managed to get enough; always the Christmas tree in its largest size. Every room had to be adorned as lavishly as they now adorn the churches, whereas the churches were put off with a bough of holly stuck into each seat end. The Christmas tree was planted in a tub on the drawing-room floor--stripped of carpet and furniture for the nightly games and dances (this floor was not of stone)--and usually the top had to be cut off to get it under the ceiling. Its graduated layers of arms bore dozens upon dozens of coloured wax tapers (the little tin sconces for them were stored from year to year), and about the same number of pendent gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s, apples of gold and silver on the dark green boughs.

The substantial fruit, the presents, were in numbers sufficient to stock a small bazaar. Mother and aunts and family friends had been working on them for months. If the drawing-room could not be shut to children the tree was jealously screened, for a day or two before the great night, which was a party night. It was the young men and maidens who enjoyed themselves in this interval, while the little ones hung about pa.s.sages and peepholes in burning curiosity and suspense. The enchanting moment came when the party tea was over and a succeeding half-hour of thrilling antic.i.p.ation; the drawing-room door was flung wide and we rushed through in a crowd towards the splendid blazing wonder in the middle of the room, sighing forth our ”Oh! oh!” of ecstasy.

The stage-managers ranged us in a circle around it, all goggle-eyed, half stunned with the suddenness of our joy, and someone came round with a bag of tickets--round and round, until each had half-a-dozen or more.

Oh, who would get No.1, the great doll at the top of the tree?--or No.2, the work-box on the tub beneath (the tub hidden in green stuff, mingled with pink glazed calico)? There were great prizes amongst the many little ones, and some that I remember were quite remarkable. One was a board--very difficult to fix to the tree safely--on which a party of dolls were celebrating a wedding, the bride in her veil, with her bewreathed bridesmaids, the little men in coats and trousers, the surpliced parson, all complete. Such time and trouble were to spare for children in those days! The steps were brought in and a man mounted them to detach the articles from the upper boughs. A woman might set herself on fire--once she did, and there was a gallant rescue, and frequently a taper ignited a flimsy toy or set a green branch smoking. Doubtless there were heart-burnings also over the caprices of Fortune in the distribution of the gifts, but I cannot see blurs of that sort on the s.h.i.+ning picture now.

Santa Claus is still much alive, so I need not describe his doings. I only hope the children of to-day enjoy s.h.i.+vering awake for half the night and making themselves ill with the edible contents of their stockings before daylight as much as we did. As for the delicious lurid function, snapdragon, is it obsolete in England yet? It does not come, like Santa Claus, into the scheme of child entertainment in Australia.

There would be a difficulty in finding the requisite depth of darkness on Christmas evenings here. Besides, a supper of raw raisins cannot be good for the infant stomachs. I would not give it to my own children, but still I am glad that the mothers of old were in some things less faddy than we are. One of the treasures of my collection is the weird scene of the magic bowl and the spectral faces around it--the delightful terror of the little girls, the heroic courage of the little boys who seized for them the blazing morsels they dared not touch themselves. A tender memory of that boy to whom I inclined, who shot himself (by c.o.c.king a stiff-jointed gun with foot instead of finger), pictures him gallantly fighting the flames on my behalf.

The Waits, I believe, are heard in the streets of England still. But not, I fancy, on country road and garden paths, guests of the domestic hearth at midnight, a nondescript rabble under no ecclesiastical control, making their own fun, as they then did. Blue-nosed, beery, hilarious, in woollen mitts and comforters, drinking good luck to a dozen hosts in turn and thinking of nothing but how they were enjoying themselves, they are not quite adequately represented to us older folk by the better-drilled but unspontaneous choir-boy. He is like the Christmas card for which we have exchanged the valentine--a shadow replacing the substance, to our thinking.

The choir of the old times was the congregation, led by the clerk in the three-decker. We went to service on Christmas morning, as in duty bound, and sang ”Praise G.o.d, from Whom all blessings flow,” whether we had singing voices or not, and were likewise audible and hearty with the responses, as believing them our own; and when we came out--good, unsophisticated Christians, exchanging our ”Happy Christmas” with everybody we met--the church was content to let us go for the remainder of the day. We went home to our immense dinner (with dessert that lasted through the afternoon), our festive tea, crowned with the Christmas cake, our blindman's buff and turn-the-trencher and drop-the-handkerchief in the cleared drawing-room, our snapdragons, our punch-bowl, our adventures under the mistletoe.

The drawing-room, when not cleared, could not be closed to family use, like the majority of the middle-cla.s.s parlours of the past (I might almost say of the present also), being the highway to the front door, to the garden-playground, and to the music-room, which was the sitting-room. Its four doors were constantly opening and shutting, and it must have been a cave of the winds in winter, although I do not remember it. Strips of crumb-cloth marked the crossing footpaths, warning us to keep off the gra.s.s--_i.e._ the geometrical-patterned green and crimson carpet; they were taken up whenever it was surmised that ”people might be coming,” according to that curiously petty but intense concern for a genteel (however false) appearance, which was one of the things I had, mistakenly but naturally, taken for granted that England had grown out of long ago. The room was still the reception-room for callers and company, and all my mother's artistic skill, which only distinguished itself the more for having so little money at the back of it, had been expended upon its adornment.

When I think how that artistic skill was exercised, I have a foolish impulse to shudder and to smile. When I think again, I have to ask myself, ”Why should I?” Further reflection convinces me that its manifestations were admirable. To say the least, they were not necessarily in bad taste then, although they would and ought to be so now. But there is far more than that to say. The handicraft of the women of the mid-Victorian era had the precious quality of finish and thoroughness, than which there is none more worthy. Careful, delicate, faithful work, no matter on what article expended, was the note of excellence, and the longer I live the more I respect and love it. Such fancy-work proper as adorned this old parlour of ours I do not wish to see reproduced, but it was appropriate to its day and a credit to her who was responsible for it.

She had a sort of settee-sofa under the window on the garden side. It was covered with many squares of finest ”wool-work,” joined together.

There was a different design--vase of flowers, basket of flowers, wreath, bouquet--in each square, although material and ground colour were the same; and the number of them represented so many girl friends who had combined to work them and present her with the sofa on her marriage. It certainly was a graceful idea, cleverly carried out. And wool-work was really very fascinating. With a piece of canvas, a bundle of neatly-sorted Berlin wools, and a coloured pattern of flowers of every hue--the more intricate the better--I was quite happy. I also liked working out peac.o.c.ks and other weird devices into antimaca.s.sars, with crochet needle and white cotton, although not so well. I must have made miles of ”open-work” (the modern _broderie Anglaise_, only better) for underclothes, first and last. Once I made a bead basket to hang by glittering bead chains between draped netted-and-darned window-curtains.

I knitted rag rugs and silk purses, and sections of a great quilt for a spare bed. I did elaborate geometrical patchwork for other quilts, and fine marking of names (learned from my baby sampler) on linen with engrained red cotton; and watchguards in black silk and gorgeous slippers and winter mitts and comforters for father; and mats for lamps and vases, and so on and so on.

But mother was really an artist, because she did not follow patterns, but designed things herself. When she needed curtain cornices for the tops of those windows, and could not afford the gilded, fender-like affairs that were correct and desirable, she nailed deal boards together, covered them with leather, and then with a design of leather flowers or grapes with vine-leaves, which, when varnished, imposed upon the spectator as a carving in wood. Now we would prefer the honest deal, no doubt--I would, at any rate--but then there was not a person of taste who would have done so. She made open wood-carving of leather-work applied to stout cardboard, cutting away the latter from the interstices of the pattern embossed. In the treatment of a pair of flower-holders that used to stand on a table under the mirror between the garden window and the garden door, she subst.i.tuted a scarlet coating made of sealing-wax for the dark wood-stain; her leather-work then called itself coral. As for her wax flowers, they were truly beautiful. She was not content to make up the boxfuls of petals prepared by the trade, but must needs copy flowers out of the field and garden. I do not know how she found time for all she did, but she seemed to do everything, and always to do it right. My faith in her ingenuity and resourcefulness was as my faith in the omnipotence of G.o.d.

It was in that drawing-room of her adornment that we held festival on the afternoon of our famous wedding-day. It rained, and the amus.e.m.e.nt for the guests--after the great breakfast in the music-room and the departure of bride and bridegroom--was to practise archery upon a target in the wet garden from the shelter of the house. The arrows from door and window went wide over the garden walls, and the scared face of the rector popped up in alarm at intervals as they hurtled into his domain.

It was the son of our old neighbours at T---- (the House of the Doll), who, unknown to any of us at the time, pointed a moral for the incautious parent who deposits with his (or her) infant offspring evidence upon which they will some day rise up to judge him. H. was a very smart young fellow, according to the notions of the time, and he forgathered with a pretty cousin of ours, daughter of my father's eldest brother, with whom my father was at feud over a lawsuit and not on speaking terms. Her parents forbade the match, and she came to mine--the hostile camp--for succour. Enthusiastically we took up her cause, and, having given her all facilities for courts.h.i.+p, gave her the finest wedding that could be compa.s.sed from our house. Not only that, but drove her many miles behind white-favoured postilions to the church of her own parish, possibly to ”cheek” her family, who naturally held aloof, although it was rumoured that they watched the pa.s.sing of the bridal carriages from some secret ambush. Of course, we young ones never doubted for a moment that they were wholly malignant and in the wrong; we were as sure as we were of night and day that our father and mother could not possibly make mistakes.

While the happy pair were honeymooning, we a.s.sisted Mrs H., the bridegroom's mother, to prepare for them what we thought an ideal home in L----, a house so towny and stylish, compared with the farm homesteads in which we had been reared, that we were lost in our sense of the occupants' luck and bliss. I had been their little bridesmaid, and I now became their frequent visitor; I suppose their attentions to me were a return for our ill-omened hospitality to them. I used to sit on a stool in the firelit dusk, totally disregarded, while, on the other side of the hearth, H. nursed Cousin E. upon his knee and they whispered together. Later on, I sat on the same stool to nurse the baby, E.

hanging over me to gloat upon him and a.s.sure herself that he was safe in my arms.

The other day I saw that house again, and, looking up at the windows, looked through them upon those past scenes with, oh! such different eyes. According to precedent, H. proved himself, very early in the day, to be the bad lot his wife's people had suspected. The first baby was the last, because there was not time for more. The young father lived beyond his means for a year or two, neglected his business, took to drink, went under, and left the young mother and child to the charity of the relatives who had probably foreseen how it would be. And now that I am older than they were I think of my parents' part in the matter, once so unquestioningly endorsed, and I shake my head. So will my children shake their heads over remembered acts of mine which, at the doing, were even as the decrees of Providence. Doubtless they have done so many a time.

In my flying visits to D---- I was drawn again and again to the neighbourhood of that old house. Any walk that I took for the sake of a walk led past it, and I stopped at the two gates every time, because I could not help it. The second gate, opening into the field that was part of the premises, had its separate a.s.sociations. Here roamed Taffy, when he chose to keep in bounds, a white pony given to my eldest brother by his grandfather, but for his long lifetime the useful servant and beloved friend of the whole family; a dear, sweet-natured humorous creature, human in his affections and intelligence. Taffy walked about the domestic domain like a dog; he undid every fastening of every gate that attempted to confine his rambles. He used to come to the schoolroom window when we were at lessons and watch his chance to grab a mouthful of hair. When mother and I made our journeys together to see her parents, some fifteen miles off, we used to stop at a halfway inn to get a basinful of porter for Taffy, who loved it and drank it down like a Christian; he would not pa.s.s that inn without it. When thirsty at home he sought the pump in the stableyard, took the handle in his teeth and rattled it up and down, and as soon as water trickled from the spout applied his mouth thereto. When I have told this story to my present family, who never knew Taffy, tolerant and superior smiles have accused me of drawing the long bow; so I was pleased when a sister of mine, lately arrived from England after a thirty years' separation from me, was happily inspired to say at table before them all (we were speaking of old times), ”Oh, do you remember Taffy and the pump?” proceeding to tell the tale again exactly as I had told it. Thus Taffy and I got tardy justice done us.

Here, too, in a memorable year, Wombwell's Menagerie established itself.

It was the half of the business which the original Wombwell had left divided between a son and daughter, and the latter was the proprietress and travelling with it. My father let his field to her for the few days that must have been Winnold Fair days (St Wynewall originally--a fair held here annually at the beginning of March, literally from time immemorial, as, according to a deed of the reign of Edward the Confessor, it was flouris.h.i.+ng in his day, and there are no records to tell how long before that); for I recall the state of the temperature.

Which reminds me of an old Norfolk rhyme much in use amongst us, to indicate what might be expected in the way of weather at the season of the Fair:

”First come David, then come Chad, Then come 'Winnle' as if he was mad.”