Part 8 (2/2)

She had found the Venus for herself, although some fault in the directions had made her feel sure that it could not be what she had been sent to look at Later on, e took to going to France regularly for e to the Venus What is more, when she went for the first ti the Venus de Medici was in coh, as I have said, all beautiful things appealed to her, literature was her first love and the element in which she lived But literature did not in her case only mean Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible, as it does to so lish people She cropped all the flowers in the fields of literature, prose and verse She was as intense an adreater lover of Milton

Shakespeare she lived on, including, curiously enough, _Tireat favourite When any lazy mee in Shakespeare, he or she would go to Leaker rather than trouble to look up the quotation in a concordance; Leaker was certain to find you at once what you wanted

There was no pedantry about her and no mere _tour de force_ of the memory She entered into the innermost mental recesses of Shakespeare's characters What is h ere kept clean and well looked after, there was no nonsense in her nursery as to over-exciting ourShe was quite prepared to read us to sleep with the witches in _Macbeth_, or the death-scene in _Othello_ I can remember now the exaltation derived, half from the mesmerism of the verse and half fro of the lines: ”Put out the light, and then put out the light” I see her noith her wrinkled brown face, her cap hite strearey In front of her was a book, propped up against the rim of a tin candlestick shaped like a small basin In it was a dip candle and a pair of snuffers That was how nursery light was provided in the later 'sixties and even in the early 'seventies As she sat bent forward, declais in Shakespeare between nine and ten at night, we lay in our beds with our chins on the counterpanes, silent, scared, but intensely happy We loved every word, and slept quite hen the play was finished We were supposed to go to sleep at nine, but if there was anything exciting in the play, very little pressure was required to get Leaker to finish, even if it took an extra half-hour--or a little ht or day

Though no Sabbatarian, she had a tendency to give _Paradise Lost_ a turn on Sundays As far as I reained_ _Coreat favourites with her One ht have supposed that she would not like Wordsworth As a hly understood him and his philosophy of life She did not one through and enjoyed _The Excursion_ and e she loved, and Southey, and Crabbe, and Gray, and Dr Johnson, and indeed the whole of English poetic literature In , and admired them both

Byron was a special favourite of hers, and here again she showed her intellect and her taste, not by worshi+pping the Eastern Tales or the sentih appreciation of _Don Juan_ Her taste, indeed, was al Take a sihtful lines to Toin:

My boat is on the shore, And o, Toreat deal of synation, she, of course, loved the last verse and implanted it deeply inintensity:

Here's a tear for those who love me, And a smile for those who hate, And whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate

That was her own spirit Truly she had a heart for every fate She was quite fearless

Although she was not in the least a prejudiced person, I remember once, in the excite to create an equal enthusiasm in her mind She returned me the book, however, without enthusiasm and with the trenchant remark that it made her feel as if she was in an overheated conservatory, too full of highly-scented flowers to be pleasant! She was not in the least shocked by Swinburne, and if you produced a good line or two you could win her approval, but the atmosphere was not sympathetic Of Rossetti she was a little h scope and freedom

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the educational advantages of such a nurse, and of having the very best part of English literature poured into one's mouth almost with the nursery-bottle, and certainly with the nurseryIf my friends findquotations, they must blame Mrs Leaker, for when at her best she threw quotations frolish Classics around her in a kind of hailstorm Some of the lines that had stuck in her otten where they cahteenth-Century satirical verse I have never been able to trace Perhaps if I put it forth here I shall find out whence it comes--very likely from some perfectly obvious source The lines which were used to calrandiose and self-conceited moods ran as follows:

Similes that never hit, Vivacity that is not wit, Schemes laid this hour, the next forsaken, Advice oft asked, but never taken

She had a couplet which she often produced when the newspapers ca to financial grief of soreat family name On such occasions she wouldfor h I quote it not the least to show her literary taste but because it was exceedingly characteristic of her, was in the spring-time always on her lips:

The broo it, And sweet it is on su it

I could fill a book, and perhaps some day I will do so, with Leaker's reflections on s, and still more with her wonderful old sea-stories, especially of the press-gang, which she could almost remember in operation Her father was, as she always put it, ”in the King's Navy,” and he had been ”bosun” to a shi+p's ”cap'n” He was at the Mutiny of the Nore, but was not a mutineer

She was, however, full of stories about the Mutiny, which we found extre, or rather ”croon” to us soan with this verse:

Parker was a gay young sailor, Fortune to hi for mutiny at the Nore, Worse than hi that verse to us, she would add in low tones thatat the yardarhout the Fleet”

That in itself seeh Leaker I had a much more remarkable example of what, in spite of the smiles of the statistician, fascinated us all Leaker, when about the age of sixty, brought her old mother, as then ninety-four or ninety-five, to whoes at Sutton, the year being, as far as I can recollect, 1868 or 1869 I can distinctly recall the old lady She was very thin and faded, but with all her wits about her, though weak and shy

Leaker told us, with pride, that her irl, had sat upon the knee of an old soldier who had fought at Blenheim This is quite possible If old Mrs Leaker was, as I think, only five years short of a hundred in 1869, she could easily have been in the world at the sahteenth year

Old Mrs Leaker was, I calculated, born about 1774 She would therefore have been six years old in 1780 But a man as ninety-five in 1780 would have been born in 1685, and so twenty-nine in 1714, the year of Blenheim Possibly some historical calculator will despoil me of this story Meantime, I am always thrilled to think that I have seen a woreat Marlborough at his greatest victory

Before I leaveabout a very curious and interesting attempt which, at my request, she made at the end of her life It was to put down her recollections and reflections

Unfortunately, I made this request rather too late, and so the result, as a whole, was confused and often unintelligible Still, the two little MS books which she wrote contain so, and show the woh in her day she had read plenty of autobiographies, she makes no attempt to imitate them, or to write in a pedantic or literary style As far as she can, she shows us what she really was Leaker's heart beats against the sides of the little books just as I used to hear it when I was a child in her ar-pains, or else trying to give consolation, for she was often, like all fierce people, er