Disapproval, of course, among the severer grown-ups. It was mad to let the child try such things. She might have wasted it all. But Tony was all for letting the children do and see and try things. I was wakened one night by a figure standing over me with a candle. It was Tony. ‘Come along,’ said she, picking me up and carrying me out pick-a-back, ‘we are going to see the glow-worms.’ And sure enough she carried me along the drive in my nightdress, to a spot where the worms were shining, and the elders gathered round admiring them. The child didn’t catch her death, as was gloomily hoped by the disapproving, but lived to be always grateful for that only chance that has ever come her way of seeing a glow-worm.
Sanitation was not known at Reskadinnick, neither earth nor water nor any such thing. A huge tub collected the rainwater, of which there was never any shortage, and in this we washed. I had never seen a bathroom, even in London, let alone in Cornwall. A tin bath was kept in each bedroom. In the rain-water was a good deal of livestock wriggling about, but we got used to this. Our drinking-water was grand, coming from a spring in the lane.
Windows were made to open more or less, but they didn’t matter much, because all through the day everybody was in and out at the ever-open doors, and in the evening when the family settled down ‘to unbend over a book’ every opening was shut tight. ‘Night air’ and ‘such a draught’ were considered ‘enough to breed the cholera’. Our light was from candles and paraffin-lamps. Mother told me how magical it seemed to her when she first came to London to see someone turn a tap and produce a light at once from gas. She had heard how the ‘best’ people in London stood out against gas as being vulgar, and that Grosvenor Square was the last place to adopt it.
In spite of primitive conditions and stuffy nights, no one ever seemed to be ill. I never saw a doctor there, or heard the name of one, or heard mother speak of one in earlier days. The older people all lived to great ages, and Uncle Bill reached a hundred. Up to his last few days he could swing along without a stick. He had travelled extensively, even to Greenland, but was born and died at Reskadinnick.
All this travelling of Uncle Bill and my grandfather was for mine-prospecting. Farming was not their main interest. Tin was everything, and it was as tin-mine managers and large shareholders that they made their wealth; and the management of the farm fell to a younger son, Joe.
The chief person round whom the whole establishment revolved was my aunt, always called Tony. Ever since her mother’s death she had been mistress of the house. Not only did she manage every detail of the dairy, the poultry, and the work of the servants, but she was also widely read, an accomplished musician, a witty letter-writer, and above all an entrancing teller of stories. Her peculiar charm consisted in her greater delight in the doings of others than in her own. We children loved her, I think, better than our own mother.
It was from mother that I learnt her story. Among my grandfather’s travels was a visit to Norway, in connexion with a purchase of timber for the mines. He took with him, just for the fun of it, his two eldest girls, my mother and Tony. The port for Norway had to be reached by coach, and this, with the putting up at inns and the voyage in a sailing-vessel, provided plenty of adventure. Their host was a Norwegian named Barnholt, a timber-merchant on a large scale, with one son, named Otto. The visit was made the occasion for excursions up country, mountaineering, driving, riding, and sailing on the fjords. When the time came for the return to Cornwall Otto had lost his heart to Tony.
Not long afterwards Otto’s father died, leaving him to carry on the business of trading with England in timber. Nothing ever went wrong with his vessel, and in his anxiety to be a little richer before his marriage he stopped paying the insurance. On the very next voyage she was lost. Utterly broken in spirit Otto died soon afterwards, and Tony never got over her grief. She had plenty of admirers and appeared to enjoy life to the full, but froze up if any one approached the idea of marriage. All her wealth of affection was poured out on us children, and more especially on Barnholt, who was Otto’s godson. She was the familiar friend, too, of all the cottage children for miles around, who would do anything for ‘Miss Tony’. She had learnt to speak Norsk, and taught me to repeat little verses in it. It was one of my greatest treats to come into her bedroom and be shown some of the endless treasures she had collected. Among these was a baby shoe of Barnholt’s with a hole worn in its sole.
I may add here that she lived to old age, full of humour and gaiety to the last. But shortly before her death she mentioned casually in a letter to me that the one thing she could never thank God for was her creation. I understood then how much a woman can hide.
Some years before my memory runs, Uncle Bill had brought his wife and three children back to Reskadinnick to stay, and there they remained permanently. So there was no lack of inmates. My special chum was Wilhelmina, or Mina, a girl of my own age. Mina’s mother was an aunt of the severe type, in whose presence we were reticent about our escapades. Aunt Knight feared accidents, feared improprieties, feared (of all the absurdities) ill effects from non-stop apple-eating. One thing I shall never forgive her to my dying day: she got wind that Mina and I were riding home from a field on the top of the hay-wagons, and forbade it with such gestures of horror that we were actually alarmed into obedience. For us the wine of life was spilt for the whole hay season. However, she could be kindness itself when things went really wrong. When some little accident did occur, it was just as she had predicted, and one of her rare smiles appeared as she brought forth bandages and things. One day my pony, empty-saddled, came galloping home along the drive. A stirrup had broken and I had been thrown. Aunt Knight looking out of the window straightway swooned, and had to be given restoratives in early Victorian style. Her handwriting was exactly like Queen Victoria’s, and she always crossed her letters. She swept about in black silk, had texts hung up in her bedroom, and shook her head with disapproval at any gaiety. I made Tony laugh by telling her that Aunt Knight was like Dogberry: ‘If a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.’ As for a funeral anywhere about, it was nuts and figs, she was sure to have heard a dog howl, an owl hoot, or a bird flutter in the chimney, and consequently knew that something would happen. If Sirius were shining brightly it meant that Hell was very full.
Christianity did not seem to have penetrated Cornwall much. The Wesleyans were full of salvation and blood, but respectable Church people upheld Old Testament morality, with only lip-service to the New. Tony told me one day that she thought the New Testament was very dull compared to the Old. One Victorian custom which my father (God bless him!) had never even contemplated, was always observed at Reskadinnick. Family prayers, which my dear old grandfather had treated sketchily, were carried out by Uncle Bill with relentless thoroughness. Instead of mumbling a few simple requests to the Almighty, as grandpapa did, he acquired a book which covered the whole nation in its petitions, and even, on Fridays, went the length of praying for foreigners. All the servants were assembled, and it was morning and evening. As Lord Melbourne remarked, religion was threatening to invade the sanctity of private life. Perhaps he referred to Wesleyanism, for I must say that we had no more thrust upon us, except going to church on Sunday. In spite of Uncle Bill’s long prayers, I heard him say one day that he thought it wrong to pray for anything except courage to meet whatever came.
Our parish church was at Penponds, a village some two miles away. The dear old parson was a survival of the eighteenth-century type, who took his dudes lightly. His sermons were so few that Tony said she knew them all by heart and needn’t attend to them. This was as well, for her energy was completely absorbed in keeping the school children decently behaved. To us London children the whole service seemed light comic opera after the austerities of St. Paul’s. Of course we never had the Litany, and the old chap would gabble through the alternate verses of the Psalms as fast as he could, followed by the hurried mumblings of the little congregation. All was simple and quickly over. On Communion Sunday (a very rare affair) matters were equal
ly simple. Tom once stayed, and heard the pop of the cork as the parson opened the bottle of wine just before it was wanted.
Sundays on the whole were very jolly in Cornwall, if it hadn’t been for the best clothes and the wearing of gloves. On account of these we couldn’t pursue the usual plan of walking along the tops of the hedges. To those who don’t know Cornwall I must explain that the hedges there are made of stones and earth, are thick with wild flowers, ivy, and ferns, and are just wide enough on the top to allow anyone to walk unsteadily. Mina and I used to take one each side of a lane, and race each other along. Naturally this involved several falls and scrambling up again—not the best thing for Sunday clothes.
In the afternoons we unbelted and lay under the trees with any books we could find. My eldest cousin Beatrice was serious-minded like her mother, and attempted now and again to hold a Sunday School, and teach Mina and me something out of the Bible. But out of doors, as of course we were, the Bible somehow seemed funny, and the idea petered out.
In addition to the uncles, aunts, and cousins already mentioned there was another large family in the town about two miles away, and the coming and going was so unremitting that one hardly knew who belonged where. Sometimes even before breakfast a detachment of Uncle Joe’s children would be seen coming round the last bend of the drive, full of expectancy that there would be something up.
And there always was.
XI. Outdoor Doings
‘D’ESS me! D’ess me now! D’ess me deckly now!’ According to tradition these were my words, accompanied by a stamp of my foot, as I stood at the top of the stairs one morning in my nightdress. I had overslept for once, and was frantic at having missed an hour of life. Not a moment’s boredom did any of us know, but our programme depended a lot on the weather. Uncle Bill had a trying habit of tapping a kind of clock in the hall and telling us that it was going down. It surely must have gone up sometimes, in order to go down so persistently, but he never reported it. Then some wise grown-up would openly rejoice: rain was good for the garden or the tin-streams or something. However, by and by would come Uncle Joe on his horse, with a broad smile and distinct observations of blue sky in the right quarter.
Enough for us, and the glad cry of ‘cliffs’ would go round. Within an hour of the children’s fiat Tony had packed our baskets, having duly looked round to see how many heads to count. Pretty heavy those baskets were, for in addition to the dinner they contained sketching-materials, bathing-gowns and towels, and often a book or two. However, the boys took it in turn to carry them, and the girls took sticks, spratting-hooks, and cans for possible treasures.
In twos and threes we straggled along our two-mile walk to the cliffs, a gradual rise all the way, chiefly across fields. We had no glimpse of the sea at any time until we were right at the top of the cliffs. We generally ran the last hundred yards or so, impatient for the glory that we knew to be there for us. That last lap was along a grassy path running through a stretch of purple heather. Then we saw the sea. Not the tame affair that you get at the ‘sea-side’, but a vast expanse of ultramarine and emerald, and far, far below, the roar of the breakers booming in and dashing their foam against the dark rocks, and the white flashing of the sea-gulls screaming to welcome us.
However, we were not there to admire—we were for the sea itself. And how to get down there? Had we been strangers we should have been afraid to attempt such a precipitous descent, but none of us could remember a time when it was not as familiar and friendly as the drive. We all plunged at once down a narrow path, a mere sheep-track, among the rocks and heather, scrambling and slithering and sliding, clutching at bushes or digging our spratting-hooks into the earth, till we reached at last a big platform of rock, from which we made a triumphal leap into the deep, soft sand.
Fortunately grown-ups never came with us, or they would have had heart-attacks, or, worse still, would have kept warning us not to slip. Our fearlessness was our safety. Once within a few yards of the sea, our things were off in a twinkling, and into the great pools we splashed. No one dreamt of venturing into that boiling, thundering, open sea, for its perils were too obvious. After about an hour of playing games in the pools, jumping from rock to rock, collecting anemones, shells, and seaweed for our cans, we clothed ourselves again, all except our feet which were bare till the final climb, and flocked round my eldest cousin, Beatrice, who dispensed the dinner. Our first course was always a pasty. I wonder who invented that perfectly complete and portable meal: a round of pastry doubled over contained fresh rump steak, and slices of potato well-seasoned, and when baked became a juicy blend, but not too juicy to be grasped in the hand and nibbled away bit by bit, requiring neither knife nor fork. Then we all chased away to find a jolly place to sit, or to go on pursuing our private ends. Thirst soon brought us to Beatrice again, who doled out lemonade or cider. Then there was seed-cake for the still hungry, and plenty of apples.
After this we usually paddled and scrambled our way among the boulders to the next place along the shore that gave a possibility of climbing up again. About half-way up we would rest on some grassy shelf of the cliffs and follow our particular bent. Charles and Beatrice and I did some painting, others would merely watch the sea for distant steamers. No boats of any kind could come near that coast. My cousin Lucy had a passion for the sea, and never forgave Providence for not making her a boy. She had several blue-jackets to whom she wrote every month in connexion with Miss Weston’s Mission, and from their replies she would spin us yarns, or tell us bits out of Tom Cringle’s Log, and incidentally teach us nautical phrases and how to tie knots.
After the last lap of our long climb to the top we used to enjoy walking along the grassy path among the heather that skirted the edge of the cliff, every now and again dangerously near. At one point this led to ‘Hell’s Mouth’, quite the most attractive spot in the world. It was a deep cove that could not be approached from the shore, and into which no boat could enter without being dashed to pieces. We used to crawl up to the overhanging edge on all fours, lie full length, and gloat with fearful pleasure at the scene below, where the great waves would swirl in on their ugly business, and presently dash out with triumphant roar and splash of spray. Lucy had bloodcurdling tales of human bones down there, of people who had fallen down, or, more darkly, been pushed. I have had to come away hurriedly, understanding Horatio’s words:
The very place puts toys of desperation
Without more motive into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
On the way home we wandered about the fields, gathering any spoil we could find to take home to Tony—blackberries, mushrooms, wild flowers. She welcomed everything, but her first demand was always, ‘Show me your sketches.’ If sea and rocks proved too maddeningly difficult we fell back on a drawing of Carn Brea, a kind of local Fuji-Yama or holy hill. Tony paid us the compliment of severe criticism. To one of my attempts she said, ‘Heather, dear? Oh…I thought it was an impression of the field of Waterloo after the battle.’
Perhaps it was the tea at the end that was the best part of the day. Like mother, Tony firmly believed in a spread on our return. There were splits and butter, apple cake, saffron cake, and lashings of cream. By the way, both in Cornwall and London jam was practically unknown to us, and what we saw of it in other houses we didn’t like. Alice’s ‘jam every other day’ carried no fun for me. Now if it had been ‘apple cake every other day’ I should have understood. This was made by filling a plate with pared apples, covering it with a round of pastry, baking it, reversing the crust, sugaring the apple, and spreading it over the crust. When cold, cream is added if you’ve got it. There was a lifelong feud between two of my aunts, because on one occasion the apple cakes had been salted instead of sugared, and each one declared it was the other who had done it.
When the big expedition to the North Cliffs was not on the cards, there were plenty of other pursuits in the place itself. There were two or thre
e ponds, and a pond has great possibilities. One of these was cunningly placed in the side garden among tall elms inhabited by cawing rooks. Reflections of sky and trees were beautiful, but there was a memory round it. When mother was a girl, a large garden-party was being held at Reskadinnick and the guests were having tea, playing croquet, and strolling about on the front lawn, while the boys and girls were helping to entertain them. The youngest child, a little chap of four named Nicholas, had been given a piece of cake and had wandered down by himself into the side garden to play. After a while one of the guests noticed the beauty of the pond among the trees and walked down towards it. To his horror he found little Nicholas in the pond, into which apparently he had fallen, and either choked by a mouthful of cake, or unheard in the general talk, he had been drowned beyond hope of resuscitation.
‘But what did they all do?’ I used to ask mother when she told me this story. I suppose methods of reviving were unknown, for nothing could she remember except the anguish and self-reproaches of her mother. How one weaves fancies round those who never grow up, and what a real immortality they have! I have thought my Uncle Nicholas would have been the best of all, and grieved for him out of all proportion.
Another pond was of considerable size, occupying the whole of the end of the mowey. Here we let ourselves go. The boys made a raft of two stout planks, and by means of broomsticks were able to navigate the whole pond. A high hedge separated it from the field beyond, but here and there was a foothold on the bank where one could land. Each of these landing-places had some far-flung name—the Cape, Straits Settlements, Yokohama, and so on. One day we enticed the cook up into the mowey ‘for a sail’. She stepped cautiously on board (le mot juste), and before she could retreat Charles pushed off, and after a passage of peril and protest landed her at Madras. She was glad to feel the shore, but before she knew where she was Charles had put to sea again, leaving poor Temperance marooned. We other mariners in the home port shouted with joy, little considering that the family dinner was at stake. After raising the welkin to no effect, Temperance determined to try for an overland passage, and finally tore and scratched her way through the hedge into the lane. She was too devoted to the ‘young gentlemen’ to tell the grown-ups, and accounted for her scratches and the lateness of dinner in a way that would have satisfied Scotland Yard.
A London Child of the Seventies Page 11