My father was then a rather corpulent man, with a high-coloured face, and he wore large spectacles. His time was his own, for we were comfortably off on an income derived from a half-share in the small fortune amassed by my grandfather and his partner in a paper mill. He might have been a more successful, though not perhaps a happier, man if he had done more work and planned to do less. But he only so far followed his hereditary occupations as to expend large quantities of its best ‘handmade’ in the composition of a monograph: The History of Paper Making. This entailed a vast accumulation of books and much solitude. I fancy, too, he believed in the policy of sleeping on one’s first thoughts.
Since he was engaged at the same time on similar compilations with the Hop and the Cherry for theme, he made indifferent progress in all three. His papers, alas, were afterwards sold with his books, so I have no notion of what became of them or of their value. I can only hope that their purchaser has since won an easy distinction. These pursuits, if they achieved little else but the keeping of ‘the man of the house’ quiet and contented, proved my father, at any rate, to be a loyal and enthusiastic Man of Kent; and I have seen to it that a fine Morello cherry-tree blossoms, fruits, and flourishes over his grave.
My father was something of a musician too, and could pizzicato so softly on his muted fiddle as not to jar even my too sensitive ear. He taught me to play chess on a little board with pygmy men, but he was apt to lose interest in the game when it went against him. Whereas it was then that our old friend, Dr. Grose, played his hardest. As my father’s hands were rather clumsy in make, he took pains to be gentle and adroit with me. But even after shaving, his embrace was more of a discipline than a pleasure – a fact that may partly account for my own undemonstrativeness in this direction.
His voice, if anything, was small for his size, except when he discussed politics with Dr. Grose; religion or the bringing up of children with my godmother, Miss Fenne; or money matters with my mother. At such times, his noise – red face and gesticulations – affected one of his listeners, as eager as possible to pick up the crumbs, far more than ever thunder did, which is up in the clouds. My only other discomfort in his company was his habit of taking snuff. The stench of it almost suffocated me, and at tap of his fingernail on the lid of his box, I would scamper off for shelter like a hare.
By birth he came of an old English family, though no doubt with the usual admixtures. My mother’s mother was French. She was a Daundelyon. The blood of that ‘sweet enemy’ at times burned in her cheek like a flag; and my father needed his heaviest guns when the stormy winds did blow, and those colours were flying. At such moments I preferred to hear the engagement from a distant, not so much (again) because the mere discord grieved me, as to escape the din. But usually – and especially after such little displays – they were like two turtledoves, and I did my small best to pipe a decoy.
My father had been a man past forty when he married my mother. She about fifteen years younger – a slim, nimble, and lovely being, who could slip round and encircle him in person or mind while he was pondering whether or not to say Bo to a goose. Seven years afterwards came I. Friends, as friends will, professed to see a likeness between us. And if my mother could have been dwindled down to be of my height and figure, perhaps they would have been justified.
But in hair and complexion, possibly in ways, too, I harked back to an aunt of hers, Kitilda, who had died of consumption in her early twenties. I loved to hear stories of my great-aunt Kitilda. She sang like a bird, twice ran away from her convent school, and was so fond of water that an old gentleman (a friend of Mr. Landor’s, the poet) who fell in love with her, called her ‘the Naiad’.
My mother, in her youth at Tunbridge Wells, had been considered ‘a beauty’, and had had many admirers – at least so Mrs. Ballard, our cook, told Pollie: ‘Yes, and we know who might have turned out different if things hadn’t been the same,’ was a cryptic remark she once made which filled two ‘little pitchers’ to overflowing. Among these admirers was a Mr. Wagginhorne, who now lived at Maidstone. He had pocketed his passion but not his admiration; and being an artist in the same sense that my father was an author, he had painted my mother and me and a pot of azaleas in oils. How well I remember those interminable sittings, with the old gentleman daubing along, and cracking his beloved jokes and Kentish cobbs at one and the same time. Whenever he came to see us this portrait was taken out of a cupboard and hung up in substitution for another picture in the dining-room. What became of it when Mr. Wagginhorne died I could never discover. My mother would laugh when I inquired, and archly eye my father. It was clear, at any rate, that author was not jealous of artist!
My mother was gentle with me, and had need to be; and I was happier in her company than one might think possible in a world of such fleetingness. I would sit beside her workbox and she would softly talk to me, and teach me my lessons and small rhymes to say; while my own impulse and instinct taught me to sing and dance. What gay hours we shared. Sewing was at first difficult, for at that time no proportionate needles could be procured for me, and I hated to cobble up only coarse work. But she would give me little childish jobs to do, such as arranging her silks, or sorting her beads, and would rock me to sleep with her finger to a drone so gentle that it might have been a distant bee’s.
Yet shadows there were, before the darkness came. Child that I was, I would watch gather over her face at times a kind of absentness, as if she were dreaming of something to which she could give no name, of some hope or wish that was now never to be fulfilled. At this I would grow anxious and silent, doubting, perhaps, that I had displeased her; while, to judge from her look, I might not have been there at all.
Or again, a mischievousness and mockery would steal into her mood. Then she would treat me as a mere trivial plaything, talking small things to me, as if our alphabet consisted of nothing but ‘little o’ – a letter for which I always felt a sort of pity; but small affection. This habit saddened my young days, and sometimes enraged me, more than I can say. I was always of a serious cast of mind – even a little priggish perhaps; and experience had already taught me that I could share my mother’s thoughts and feelings more easily than she could share mine.
Chapter Two
When precisely I began to speculate why I was despatched into this world so minute and different I cannot say. Pretty early, I fancy, though few opportunities for comparison were afforded me, and for some time I supposed that all young children were of my stature. There was Adam Waggett, it is true, the bumpkin son of a village friend of Mrs. Ballard’s. But he was some years older than I. He would be invited to tea in the kitchen, and was never at rest unless stuffing himself out with bread and dripping or dough cake – victuals naturally odious to me; or pestering me with his coarse fooling and curiosity. He was to prove useful in due season; but in those days I had a distaste for him almost as deep-rooted as that for ‘Hoppy’, the village idiot – though I saw poor Hoppy only once.
Whatever the reason may be, except in extremely desperate moments, I do not remember much regretting that I was not of the common size. Still, the realization was gradually borne in on me that I was a disappointment and mischance to my parents. Yet I never dared to let fall a question which was to be often in my young thoughts: ‘Tell me, mamma, are you sorry that your little daughter is a Midget?’ But then, does anyone ask questions like that until they cannot be answered?
Still, cross-examine her I did occasionally.
‘Where did I come from, mamma?’
‘Why, my dear, I am your mother.’
‘Just’, I replied, ‘like Pollie’s mother is her mother?’
She cast a glance at me from eyes that appeared to be very small, unless for that instant it was mine that I saw reflected there.
‘Yes, my dear,’ she replied at length. ‘We come and we go.’ She seemed tired with the heat of the day, so I sat quietly, holding her finger, until she was recovered.
Only, perhaps, on account of my size was th
ere any occasion for me to be thoroughly ashamed of myself. Otherwise I was, if anything, a rather precocious child. I could walk a step or two at eleven months, and began to talk before the Christmas following the first anniversary of my birthday, August 30th. I learned my letters from the big black capitals in the Book of Genesis; and to count and cipher from a beautiful little Abacus strung with beads of silver and garnets. The usual ailments came my way, but were light come, light go. I was remarkably sinewy and muscular, strong in the chest, and never suffered from snuffling colds or from chilblains, though shoes and gloves had always been a difficulty.
I can perfectly recall my childish figure as I stood with endless satisfaction surveying my reflection in a looking-glass on the Christmas morning after my ninth birthday. My frock was of a fine puffed scarlet, my slippers loose at heel, to match. My hair, demurely parted in the middle, hung straight on my narrow shoulders (though I had already learned to plait it) and so framed my face; the eyebrows faintly arched (eyebrows darker and crookeder now); the nose in proportion; the lips rather narrow, and of a lively red.
My features wore a penetrating expression in that reflection because my keen look was searching them pretty close. But if it was a sharp look, it was not, I think, a bold or defiant; and then I smiled, as if to say, ‘So this is to be my companion, then.’
It was winter, and frost was on the window that day. I enjoyed the crisp air, for I was packed warm in lamb’s wool underneath. There I stood, my father’s round red face beaming on one side of the table, my mother’s smiling but enigmatic, scrutinizing my reflection on the other, and myself tippeting this way and that – a veritable miniature of Vanity.
Who should be ushered at this moment into the room, where we were so happy, but my godmother, Miss Fenne, come to bring my father and mother her Christmas greetings and me a little catechism sewn up in a pink silk cover. She was a bent-up old lady and a rapid talker, with a voice which, though small, jangled every nerve in my body, like a pencil on a slate. Being my godmother, she took great liberties in counselling my parents on the proper way of ‘managing’ me. The only time, indeed, I ever heard my father utter an oath was when Miss Fenne was just beyond hearing. She peered across at me on this Christmas morning like a bird at a scorpion: ‘Caroline, Caroline,’ she cried, ‘for shame! The Shrimp! You will turn the child’s head.’
Shrimp! I had seen the loathsome, doubled-up creatures (in their boiled state) on a kitchen plate. My blood turned to vinegar; and in rage and shame I fell all of a heap on the table, hiding from her sight my face and my hands as best I could under my clothes, and wishing that I might vanish away from the world altogether.
My father’s voice boomed out in protest; my mother took me into her arms to soothe and scold me; but long after the ruffled old lady had taken her departure I brooded on this affront. ‘Away, away!’ a voice seemed to cry within; and I listened to it as if under a spell. All that day I nursed my wounded vanity, and the same evening, after candle light, I found myself for a moment alone in the kitchen. Pollie had gone to the wood-shed to fetch kindling, leaving the door into the garden ajar. The night air touched my cheek. Half beside myself with desire of I know not what, I sprang out from the doorstep into an inch or so of snow, and picking myself up, ran off into the darkness under the huge sky.
It was bitterly cold. Frost had crusted the virgin surface of the snow. My light footsteps can hardly have shattered its upper crystals. I ran on and on into the ghostly world, into this stiff, marvellous, gloating scene of frozen vegetation beneath that immense vacancy. A kind of stupor must have spread over my young mind. It seemed I was transported out of myself under the stars, in the mute presence of the Watchman of Heaven. I stood there lost in wonder in the grey, luminous gloom.
But my escapade was brief and humiliating. The shock of the cold, the excitement, quickly exhausted me. I threw myself down and covered my face with my hands, trying in vain to stifle my sobs. What was my longing? Where its satisfaction? Soft as wool a drowsiness stole over my sense that might swiftly have wafted me off on the last voyage of discovery. But I had been missed. A few minutes’ search, and Pollie discovered me lying there by the frozen cabbage stalks. The woeful Mænad was carried back into the kitchen again – a hot bath, a hot posset, and a few anxious and thankful tears.
The wonder is that, being an only child, and a sore problem when any question of discipline or punishment arose, I was not utterly spoiled. One person at least came very near to doing so, my grandfather, Monsieur Pierre de Ronvel. To be exact, he was my step-grandfather, for my mother’s charming mother, with her ringlets and crinoline, after my real grandfather’s death, had married a second time. He crossed the English Channel to visit my parents when I was in my tenth year – a tall, stiff, jerky man, with a sallow face, speckled fur-like hair that stood in a little wall round his forehead, and the liveliest black eyes. His manners were a felicity to watch even at my age. You would have supposed he had come courting my mother; and he took a great fancy to me. He was extremely fond of salad, I remember; and I very proud of my mustard and cress – which I could gather for him myself with one of my own table-knives. So copiously he talked, with such a medley of joys and zests and surprises on his face, that I vowed soon to be mistress of my stepmother tongue. He could also conjure away reels and thimbles, even spoons and forks, with a skill that precluded my becoming a materialist for ever after. I worshipped my grandfather – and yet without a vestige of fear.
To him, indeed – though I think he was himself of a secular turn of mind – I owe the story of my birthday saint, St. Rosa of Lima in Peru, the only saint, I believe, of the New World. With myself pinnacled on his angular knee, and devouring like a sweetmeat every broken English word as it slipped from his tongue, he told me how pious an infant my Saint had been; how, when her mother, to beautify her, had twined flowers in her hair, she had pinned them to her skull; how she had rubbed quicklime on her fair cheeks to disenchant her lovers (‘ses prétendants’), and how it was only veritable showers of roses from heaven that had at last persuaded Pope Clement to make her a saint.
‘Perhaps, bon papa,’ said I, ‘I shall dig and sow too when I am grown up, like St. Rosa, to support my mamma and papa when they are very old. Do you think I shall make enough money? Papa has a very good appetite?’ He stared at me, as if in consternation.
‘Dieu vous en garde, ma p’tite,’ he cried; and violently blew his nose.
So closely I took St. Rosa’s story to heart that, one day, after bidding my beauty a wistful farewell in the glass, I rubbed my cheek too, but with the blue flowers of the – brooklime. It stained them a little, but soon washed off. In my case a needless precaution; my prétendants have been few.
It was a mournful day when my grandfather returned to France never to be seen by me again. Yet he was to remember me always; and at last when I myself had forgotten even my faith in his fidelity. Nearly all my personal furnishings and belongings were gifts of his from France, and many of them of his own making. There was my four-post bed, for instance; with a flowered silk canopy, a carved tester and half a dozen changes of linens and valance. There were chairs to match, a wardrobe, silk mats from Persia, a cheval glass, and clothes and finery in abundance, china and cutlery, top-boots and sabots. Even a silver-hooped bath-tub and a crystal toilet set, and scores of articles besides for use or ornament, which it would be tedious to mention. My grandfather had my measurements to a nicety, and as the years went by he sagaciously allowed for growth.
I learned to tell the time from an eight-day clock which played a sacred tune at matins and vespers; and later, he sent me a watch, the least bit too large for me to be quite comfortable, but an exquisite piece of workmanship. As my birthdays (and his) drew near, I could scarcely sleep for thinking what fresh entrancing novelty the festive morning would bring. The only one of his gifts – by no means the least ingenious – which never, after the first flush of excitement, gave me much pleasure, was a two-chambered thatched summer-house, s
et up on a pole, and reached by a wide, shallow ladder. The roof opened, so that on very hot days a block of ice could be laid within, the water from its slow melting running out by a gutter. But I loved sunshine. This was a plaything that ridiculously amused chance visitors; it attracted flies; I felt silly up in it: and gladly resigned it to the tits, starlings, and sparrows to quarrel over as they pleased.
My really useful furniture – of plain old Sheraton design – was set out in my bedroom. In one half of the room slept Pollie, a placid but, before her marriage, rather slow-witted creature about six years my senior. The other half was mine and had been made proportionate to my needs by a cabinet-maker from London. My father had had a low stone balcony built on beyond my window. This was fenced with fine trellis work to screen it from the colder winds. With its few extremely dwarf trees set along in green Nankin tubs, and the view it commanded, I could enjoy this eyrie for hours – never wearied of it in my youth, nor shall if I live to be a hundred.
I linger over these early recollections, simply because they are such very happy things to possess. And now for out-of-doors.
Either because my mother was shy of me, or because she thought vulgar attention would be bad for me, she seldom took me far abroad. Now and then Pollie carried me down to the village to tea with her mother, and once or twice I was taken to church. The last occasion, however, narrowly escaped being a catastrophe, and the experiment was not repeated. Instead, we usually held a short evening service, on Sundays, in the house, when my father read the lessons, ‘like a miner prophet’, as I wrote and told Miss Fenne. He certainly dug away at the texts till the words glittered for me like lumps of coal. On weekdays more people were likely to be about, and in general I was secluded. A mistake, I think. But fortunately our high, plain house stood up in a delightful garden, sloping this way and that towards orchard and wood, with a fine-turfed lawn, few ‘cultivated’ flowers, and ample drifts of shade. If Kent is the garden of England, then this was the garden of Kent.
Memoirs of a Midget Page 2