Augustus John Cuthbert Hare

“ It was productive of great trouble to us afterwards, and obliged me to endure John Gidman, to wear him like a hair-shirt, for forty years. Certainly no ascetic torments can be so severe as those which Providence occasionally ordains for us. As for our dear Lea herself, her marriage brought her misery enough, but her troubles always stayed in her heart and never filtered through. As I once read in an American novel, “There ain’t so much difference in the troubles on this earth, as there is in the folks that have to bear them.” ”

“ How well I remember still the ecstasy of these Saturday evenings, when I was once more alone with the mother of my childhood, who was all the world to me, and she was almost as happy as I was in playing with my kittens or my little black spaniel “Lewes,” and when she would sing to me all her old songs—“Hohenlinden,” “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” &c. &c.—and dear Lea was able to come in and out undisturbed, in the old familiar way. ”

“ But what was far more trying to me was, that in order to prove that her marriage had made no difference in the sisterly and brotherly relations which existed between my mother and Uncle Julius, Aunt Esther insisted that my mother should dine at the Rectory every night, and as, in winter, the late return in an open carriage was impossible, this involved our sleeping at the Rectory and returning home every morning in the bitter cold before breakfast. The hours after five o’clock in every day of the much-longed-for, eagerly counted holidays, were now absolute purgatory. ”

“ She visited every cottage and every person in them, and gave feasts in a barn to all the people. One day the school-children all sang a sort of ode which a farmer’s daughter had composed to her. Never was my sweet mother more charming than in her intercourse with her humble friends at Alton, and I delighted in threading with her the narrow muddy foot-lanes of the village to the different cottages, of old and young Mary Doust, of Lizzie Hams, Avis Wootton, Betty Perry, &c. ”

“ How often I remember my ever-impatient rebellion against the doctrine I was always taught as fundamental—that my uncles and aunts must be always right, and that to question the absolute wisdom and justice of their every act—to me so utterly selfish—was typical of the meanest and vilest nature. How odd it is that parents, and still more uncles and aunts, never will understand, that whilst they are criticising and scrutinising their children or nephews, the latter are also scrutinising and criticising them. ”

“ Sept.—I have been racket-fagging all afternoon. It is such dismal work. You have to stand in one corner of the square court and throw all the balls that come that way to the ‘feeders,’ who throw them to the players when they are wanted. The great amusement of P., one of those I fag for, is to hit the racket-balls with all his might at the fags, and he tried to cut me off a great many times, but missed. At last P. said, ‘I’ll go and get another fag instead of that young beast Hare,’ and he went, but he never came back, or the fag either. ”

“ Oswald Leycester at Lime, which prevented our going to the Rectory, and it was the greatest happiness to read to her, to lead her about, and in every way to show my gratitude for past kindnesses at Stoke. When she left us, we went for the rest of the holidays to the Palace at Norwich, which was always enchanting to me—from the grand old library with its secret room behind the bookcase, to the little room down a staircase of its own, where the old nurse Mrs. Burgess lived one of the thinnest and dearest old women ever seen—surrounded by relics of her former charges. ”

“ I think I shall like Waldegrave, [9] a new boy who has come, but all the others hate him. Blomfield [10] is a nice boy, but his room is very far away. Indeed, our room is so secluded, that it would be a very delightful place if D. did not live in it. In playtime I go here, there, and everywhere, but with no one and doing nothing. Yet I like Harrow very much, though I am much teased even in my form by one big boy, who takes me for a drum, and hammers on my two sides all lesson-time with doubled fists. However, Miss Simmy says, if you could see my roses you would be satisfied. ”

“ Once a large party staying there included a French countess of very noble lineage. One day after breakfast he went up to her in his courteous way and said, “Madame, what will you be pleased to do to-day? will you walk, or ride, or drive?”—“Oh, it is a delightful day, I should like to drive.”—“Then, madame, would you prefer an open or a close carriage?”—“Oh, an open carriage, if you please.”—“And, madame, how many horses will you have?”—“Oh, four-and-twenty horses of course,” she said laughing, “you know I never go out without four-and-twenty horses.” ”

“ Jan. 23.—Yesterday I was in my room, delighted to be alone for once, and very much interested in the book I was reading, when D. came in and found the fire out, so I got a good licking. He makes me his fag to go errands, and do all he bids me, and if I don’t do it, he beats me, but I don’t mind much. However, I have got some friends, for when I refused to do my week-day lessons on a Sunday, and was being very much laughed at for it, some one came in and said, ‘No, Hare, you’re quite right; never mind being laughed at.’ However I am rather lonely still with no one to speak to or care about me. ”

“ But usually, as Aunt Lucy and my mother sat together, their conversation was almost entirely about the spiritual things in which their hearts, their mental powers, their whole being were absorbed. The doctrine of Pascal was always before their minds—“La vie humaine n’est qu’une illusion perpetuelle,” and their treasure was truly set in heavenly places. ”

“ At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it. On the whole, the pleasurable “adventures” of a public-school life had always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough health for any real benefit or enjoyment. ”

“ If any pleasure, any even which resulted from affection for others, had drawn her for an instant from what she believed to be the path—and it was always the thorniest path—of self-sacrifice, she would remorselessly denounce that pleasure, and even tear out that affection from her heart. ”

“ I have known many of those persons whom the world calls “great ladies” in later times, but I have never known any one who was more truly “a lady” in every best and highest sense, than Mrs. Pile.
On leaving Alton, we went to join the Marcus Hares in the express train at Swindon. Uncle Marcus, Aunt Lucy, her maid Griffiths, and my mother were in one compartment of the carriage; my little cousin Lucebella, Lea, an elderly peer (Lord Saye and Sele, I think) , and I were in the other, for carriages on the Great Western were then divided by a door. ”

“ I called out ‘Fire, fire, the window’s on fire.’ This woke Buller, who had been sleeping soundly all this time, and he rushed to the window and forced it down with the lightning full in his eyes. Again all was darkness, and then another flash showed what a state the room was in—the books literally washed off the table, and Forster and Dirom armed with foot-pans of water. Then I threw myself on my bed in agonies of sickness: not a drop of water was to be had to drink: at last Buller found a little dirty rain-water, and in an instant I was dreadfully sick. . . . ”

“ Soon after we reached Hurstmonceaux, my Uncle Marcus became seriously ill at the Rectory. I went with my mother, Aunt Esther, and Uncle Julius to his “charge” at Lewes, and, as we came back in the hot evening, we were met by a messenger desiring us not to drive up to the house, as Uncle Marcus must not be disturbed by the sound of wheels. Then his children were sent to Lime, and my mother was almost constantly at the Rectory. I used to go secretly to see her there, creeping in through the garden so as not to be observed by the aunts, for Aunt Lucy could scarcely bear her to be out of sight. ”

“ I thought the house in New Street charming—the cool, old-fashioned, bow-windowed rooms, which we should now think very scantily furnished, and like those of many a country inn the dining-room opening upon wide leads, which Grannie soon turned into a garden ”

“ Instantly a number of men surrounded the carriage. “There is not an instant to lose, another train is upon you, they may not be able to stop it,”—and we were all dragged out and up the steep bank of the railway cutting. ”

“ I was not allowed to have any holidays this year, and was obliged to do lessons all morning with Mr. Venables, the curate. [16] At this I wonder now, as every day my health was growing worse. I was constantly sick, and grew so thin that I was almost a skeleton, which I really believe now to have been entirely caused by the way in which the miseries of my home life preyed upon my excessively sensitive nervous disposition. And, instead of my mind being braced, I was continually talked to about death and hell, and urged to meditate upon them. ”

“ We lingered on the way with Miss Anna Gurney, a little old lady, who was paralysed at a very early age, yet had devoted her whole life to the good of those around her, and who, while never free from suffering herself, seemed utterly unconscious of her own trials in thinking of those of others. ”

“ The having to sit for hours and hours pretending to be deeply interested in the six huge volumes of Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” one of which was always doled out for my mental sustenance. The being compelled—usually with agonising chilblains—to walk twice to church, eight miles through the snow or piercing marsh winds, and sit for hours in mute anguish of congelation, with one of Uncle Julius’s interminable sermons in the afternoon, about which at that time I heartily agreed with a poor woman, Philadelphia Isted, who declared that they were “the biggest of nonsense.” ”

“ Vaughan made a speech about snow-balling at the Railway Station (a forbidden place) , where the engine-drivers and conductors had been snow-balled, and he said that the next time, if he could not find out the names of the guilty individuals, the whole school should be punished. To-day the snow-balling, or rather ice-balling (for the balls are so hard you can hardly cut them with a knife) , has been terrific: some fellows almost have their arms broken with them. ”

“ Through life he was one of those men who never want presence of mind, and this often stood him in good stead. One Advent Sunday it was the Bishop’s turn to preach in the cathedral, where the soldiers in the barracks usually attend the service: but it was terrible weather, and, with due regard to their pipe-clay, they were all absent that morning. The Bishop had prepared his sermon especially for the soldiers he expected to hear it, and he had no other. ”

“ Hull told me were his three sons—John, Henry, and Frank. I had my tea when they had their dinner. After tea I looked at Miss Hull’s drawings. Mr. Hull gave me a book called ‘The Shadowless Man.’ I stayed up to see a balloon, for which we had to go upon the top of the house. The balloon looked like a ball of fire. It scattered all kinds of lights, but it did not stay up very long. We also saw a house on fire, the flames burst out and the sky was all red. Do give the kitten and the kitten’s kitten some nice bits from your tea for my sake. ”

“ It was delightful to leave Harnish for good at Christmas, 1846, and the prospect of Harrow was that of a voyage of adventure.
In January 1847 my mother took me to Harrow. Dr. Vaughan was then headmaster, and Mr. Simpkinson, who had been long a curate of Hurstmonceaux, and who had been consequently one of the most familiar figures of my childhood, was a master under him, and, with his handsome, good-humoured sister Louisa, kept the large house for boys beyond the church, which is still called “The Grove.” It was a wonderfully new life upon which I entered ”

“ In the other compartment all the inmates were thrown violently on the floor, and jerked upwards with every lurch of the train. If the darkness cleared for an instant, I saw Lea’s set teeth and livid lace opposite. I learned then for the first time that to put hand-bags in the net along the top of the carriage is most alarming in case of accident. They are dashed hither and thither like so many cannon-balls. A dressing-case must be fatal. ”

“ She lived in a beautiful little cottage at Northrepps, full of fossils and other treasures, close to the sea-coast.
Lord and Lady Shrewsbury [15] (the father and mother of the Princesses Doria and Borghese) came to meet my mother at Cromer Hall, perfectly full of the miraculous powers of “L’Estatica” and “L’Addolorata,” which they had witnessed in Italy, and of which they gave most extraordinary accounts.
The kindness of “Uncle Norwich” caused me to love him as much as I dreaded Uncle Julius. In his dealings with his diocese I have heard that he was apt as a bishop to be tremendously impetuous ”

“ It was there that I made my first acquaintance with the existence of many simple luxuries to which, in our primitive life, we were quite unaccustomed, but which in great houses are considered almost as necessaries. The Cavendishes treated us as distant relations, in consequence of the marriage of my Grandmother’s cousin, Georgiana Spencer, with the 5th Duke of Devonshire.
When I returned to Harnish I was still wretchedly ill, and the constant sickness under which I suffered, with the extreme and often unjust severity of Mr. Kilvert, made the next half year a very miserable one. ”