Juliana Horatia Ewing

“ I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not wear a large chignon after all, nor a bonnet full of flowers, nor a dress full of flounces, but a rather short skirt and buckled shoes and grey curls, and a big hat with many bows, and a green satin driving-cloak lined with fur.
How any one, blessed with grown-up freedom of choice, could submit to be driven about by a coach-man in a big carriage, as highly stuffed and uninteresting as a first-class railway carriage, when it was possible to drive one’s self in a sort of toy-cart with a dear white pony as shaggy as a dog, I could not understand. ”

“ Matilda and I burst out laughing at Emma’s excellent imitation of Madame; but Eleanor dropped her foot to the floor with a stamp that broke the sandal, and burst forth into an indignant torrent of words, which was only stayed by the necessity for resuming our morning dresses, and hastening down-stairs. There Eleanor swallowed her wrath with her weak tea; and I remember puzzling myself, to the neglect of mine, as to the probable connection between arithmetic-masters and transparent bodices. ”

“ I have an old letter open by me now, in which, writing of the Arkwrights, he says, “Your dear father’s daughter could have no better home.” And, as I read, my father’s last hours come back before me, and I hear the poor faint voice whispering, “You’ve got the papers, Buller? Arkwright will be kind about it, I’m sure.” And, “It’s all dark now.” And with tears I wonder if he—with whom it is all light now—knows how well his true friends have dealt by me, and how happy I am.
To be busy is certainly half-way to being happy. And yet it is not so with every kind of labour. ”

“ At least, so I thought; but one volume escaped the flames, and the fun Eleanor and I have now in re-reading this has made me regret that I burned the others. Of course, even if I put down all that I can remember, it will not be like having kept my diaries. Eleanor’s biography, in this respect, will be much better than mine; but still, I remember a good deal now that I dare say I shall forget soon, and in sixteen more years these histories may amuse us as much as the old diaries. We are all growing up now. ”

“ I know that once or twice it has happened that young people with whom we have been thrown have said things which have made high-principled Eleanor stand aghast in honourable horror; and that that speechless indignation of hers has been as much lost upon them as the touch of a feather on the hide of a rhinoceros. Eleanor is more impatient than I am on such subjects. I who have been trained in more than one school myself, am sorry for those who have never known the higher teaching. ”

“ Against despising interests that are not our own, or graces which we have chosen to neglect, against the danger of satire, against the love or the fear of being thought singular, and, above all, against the petty pride of clique.
“I do not know which is the worst,” I remember her saying, “a religious clique, an intellectual clique, a fashionable clique, a moneyed clique, or a family clique. And I have seen them all.”
“Come, Mother,” said Eleanor, “you cannot persuade us you would not have more sympathy with the intellectual than the moneyed clique, for instance?” ”

“ It is perhaps useless to try and find reasons for the fancy I took to the “Duchess”—as Aunt Theresa called her—since it was allowed that she fascinated every one who came near her. With the bright qualities which made her admirable in herself, she combined the gracious art of putting other people at ease with themselves; and, remembering how sore [86] the wounds of a child’s self-love are, I think that her kindness must have been very skilful to make me forgive myself for that folly of the looking-glass enough to forget myself in admiration of her. ”

“ I have so wished I had a sister. The boys are very dear, you know; but still boys think about themselves, of course, and their own affairs. One has more to run after them, you know. Not that any boys could be better than ours, but—anyway, Margery darling, I wish you weren’t here just on a visit, but were going to stop here always, and be my sister!”
“So do I!” I cried. “Oh! so very much, Eleanor!” ”

“ It is by this well-scrubbed table, in this kitchen, that our biographies are to be written. They cannot be penned under the noses of the boys.
Eleanor finds rocking a help to composition, and she is swinging backwards and forwards in the glossy old rocking-chair, with a pen between her lips, and a vacant gaze in her eyes, that becomes almost a look of inspiration when the swing of the chair turns her face towards the ceiling. ”

“ But, with Eleanor, facts served more as points to talk from, than as talk in themselves. Through her influence the Why and How of things began to steal into our conversation. We had more discussion and less gossip, and found it better fun.
“One never tells you anything without your beginning to argue about it,” said one of the girls to her one day.
“I’m very sorry,” said poor Eleanor.
“You’re very clever, you mean,” said Emma. “What a lawyer you’d have made, Eleanor! While we growl at the Toad’s tyranny, you make a case out of it.” ”

“ Our home is a beautiful place in the summer, and in much of spring and autumn. In winter I fancy it would look dreary to the eyes of strangers. At night the wind comes over the top of Deadmanstone Hill, and down the valley, whirls the last leaves off the old trees by the church, and sends them dancing over the closely-ranged gravestones. Then up through the village it comes, and moans round our house all night, like some miserable being wanting to get in. ”

“ I, indeed, do believe these qualities to be in great measure inherited; but I believe them also to come of training, and to be more easily lost than Eleanor will allow. She has only lived in one moral atmosphere. I think that the standard of a family or a social circle falls but too easily; and in all humbleness of mind, I say that I have reason to believe that in this respect, as in other matters, elevation and amendment are possible.
However, this is one of the many subjects we discuss, rocking and pacing the kitchen to the howling of the wind. ”

“ I fell against a convenient boulder, and Eleanor turned back, the dogs raging and splashing around her.
“I hope you’re not treading on the Batrachosperma?” she said, anxiously.
“What is it?” I cried.
“It’s what I’ve chiefly come in for,” said she. “I want some to lay out. It’s a water-weed; a fresh-water alga, you know, like seaweed, only a fresh-water plant. I’m looking for the stone it grew near. Oh, that’s it you’re on! Climb up on to it out of the way, Margery dear. It’s rather a rare kind of weed, and I don’t want it to be spoiled. Call the dogs, please. ”

“ Miss Ellen took Eleanor’s hand and drew her towards her.
“My dear,” said she, “you have plenty of sense; and have evidently used it to appreciate what your dear mother has shown and taught to you. Use it now, my dear, to ask yourself if it is reasonable to expect that men who could draw like the old masters would teach in ordinary girls’ schools, or, if they would, that school-mistresses could afford to pay them properly without a much greater charge to the parents of pupils than they would be willing to bear. ”

“ After we had worked for a long time, she sat up, pressing her hand to her forehead.
“My head quite aches, Margery, and I’m so giddy. It’s very odd; gardening never made me so before I went away.”
“You work so at it,” said I, “you may well be tired. What makes you work so at things?”
“I don’t know,” said Eleanor, laughing. “Cook says I do foy at things so. But when one once begins, you know——”
“What’s foy?” I interrupted. “Cook says you foy—what does she mean?”
“Oh, to foy at anything is to slave—to work hard at it. ”

“ I could manage Robinson Crusoe dresses; it’s the civilized ones that will be too much for me, I’m afraid.”
“I believe the sail would go twice as far if we could gore it,” said Eleanor, laughing. “But there’s no waste like the wastefulness of ignorance; and oh, Margery, it’s the gores I’m afraid of! If skirts were only made the old-fashioned way, like a flannel petticoat! So many pieces all alike—run them together—hem the bottom—gather the top—and there you are, with everything straightforward but the pocket.” ”

“ The boys tumbled out, one on each side, and a good deal of fragmentary luggage tumbled out after them. Clement seemed to be rather older than Eleanor, and Jack, I thought, a little younger than me.
“How d’ye do, Margery?” said Jack, shaking me warmly by the hand. “I’m awfully glad to hear the news about you; we shall be all square now, two and two, like a quadrille.”
“How do you do, Miss Vandaleur?” said Clement.
“Look here, Eleanor,” Jack broke in again; “I’ll drive Margery home in the donkey-carriage, and you can go with Clem in the cab. I wish you’d give me the wreath off your hat, too.” ”

“ Great as were the advantages of the life I now shared over an existence wasted in a petty round of ignoble gossip and social struggle, it had the drawback of being almost too self-sufficing, perhaps—I am not certain—a little too laborious. I do think, but for me, it must, at any rate, have become the latter. I am so much less industrious, energetic, clever and good in every way than Eleanor, for one thing, that my very idleness holds us back ”

“ All girls are not awkward at the awkward age. I speak most disinterestedly on Matilda’s behalf, for I never went through this phase myself. It is perhaps because I am small that I can never remember my hands, or any other part of me, feeling in my way; and my clothes—of whatever length, breadth, or fashion—always had a happy knack of becoming one with me in such wise that I could comfortably forget them.
The St. Quentin girls were nearer to Matilda’s age than I, but they too were very happy and looked very nice in the hobble-de-hoy stage of girlhood. ”

“ But we have this large, airy, spotlessly clean room, with its stone floor, its yellow-washed walls, its tables scrubbed to snowy whiteness, its quaint old dresser and clock and corner cupboards of shiny black oak, and its huge fire-place and blazing fire all to ourselves, and we have abundance of room, and may do anything we please, so I think it is no wonder that we like it, though it be, in point of fact, a kitchen. ”

“ Just as a mother would not love her child the better for its being turned into a model of perfection by one stroke of magic, but does love it the more dearly every time it tries to be good, so I do hope and believe our Great Father does not wait for us to be good and wise to love us, but loves us, and loves to help us in the very thick of our struggles with folly and sin. ”

“ One wants to find out why it’s black, and if anything would make it white. Besides, I think perhaps when one looks into one’s grievances, one sees excuses for people—there are two sides to every question.”
“There’ll be one, two, three,” said Emma, looking slowly round and counting the party with a comical imitation of Eleanor’s thoughtful air—“there’ll be fifteen sides to every question by the time we’ve all learnt to talk like you, my dear.” ”

“ Day after day, week after week ran by, till a lassitude crept over me in which I felt amazed at former ambitions, and a certain facility of sympathy, which has been in many respects an evil, and in many a good to me, seemed to mould me to the interests of the fading household. And so I lived the life of my great-grandparents, which was as if science made no strides, and men no struggles ”

“ For some time after Eleanor had passed in through the rickety gates of the south porch, I lingered amongst the gravestones, reading their quaint inscriptions. Quaint both in matter and in the manner of rhyme and spelling. As I also drew towards the porch, I looked up to see if I could tell the time by the dial above it. I could not, nor (in spite of my brief learning in Dr. Russell’s grammar) could I interpret the Latin motto, “Fugit Hora. Ora”—“The hour flies. Pray.” ”