However, taking one thing with another, those Sundays of the past were not so very dreadful. It is, indeed, open to question whether in essential matters we have greatly improved upon them. Certainly, the inconsistencies of Sabbatarian practice, as I remember them, were no greater than they are now. There was a lady of our acquaintance who had a gift for amateur millinery and a passion for smart bonnets and she once made one under my eye on a Sunday morning. It was understood that she would have imperilled her immortal soul by using needle and cotton, and she did not dream of doing that; she put it together entirely with pins. It took her twice as long, and disturbed the serenity of her mind twice as much, but by getting up early she managed to have it finished by church time, and then to wear it to church with an easy mind. But the same thing would be done—exactly parallel things are done—under my eye to-day, any Sunday of the year.
With regard to the moral practices of week-days, which are but those of Sunday carried over, either there were fewer subtle insincerities amongst the good people of the last generation or I have a keener eye for those which I see around me now. I remember that my elders of the fifties were much addicted to whist, and that a small money stake was necessary to the dignity of their game. They remained sober, friendly, gentlemanly, uncorrupted, allowing for the exceptions to every rule. Nowadays I play a round game with a family party, and one person will not touch a prize in the shape of a coin, but change the coin into "goods" and conscience is immediately satisfied. A clergyman once intimately associated with my household loved whist, but never played cards on principle; he got over the difficulty by sitting behind someone who did, and directing the latter's play with zeal. These are little instances.
At any rate the religious faith of the fifties as to which we were all children, young and old alike, it had one precious quality that it seems never likely to have again—it sufficed. Such as it was, we were satisfied with it. It made for peace and a contented mind. To be sure, we had heard of the "Tracts," and of a terrible bishop called Colenso; we ourselves learned Keble's hymns, with Mrs Alexander's, on Sundays; but we were happily undiscerning of the significance of these portents. They were no concern of ours. We no more expected them to have practical developments than he had expected an Indian Mutiny to result from a little fuss over greased cartridges. The Church of the Fifties, as an educational agent, is more despised to-day than any other institution of that date, but the old-fashioned parson had no spiritual worries to keep him awake o' nights and wear him out before his time; no more had we. Is it not possible that the despisers would give almost anything to be able to say the same?
[CHAPTER IX]
MY GRANDFATHER'S DAYS
The last time that I saw my old good grandfather, to whose old-time home M.G. and Mr B. drove me that July afternoon, was on a Sunday. It was just before we left T—— for D——, where we were living when he died. By the same token I remember the night of the event, when we sat in the music-room with servants (taking care of us in the absence of our parents at his bedside), and how the girls made our flesh creep by telling how Rover had howled and death-watches had ticked in the walls, and winding-sheets had formed on the candles—"sure signs," every one; and how, being so wrought up, we shrieked at a sudden explosion in the fire, which ejected some little glowing shard that they declared to be a coffin—on the top of all the other gruesome portents. It was a blowy October night and we talked in firelight, as befitted the ghostly circumstances. I huddled up to my elder brother on the sofa by the hearth, in mortal dread of the dark drawing-room outside, the darker stairs, the awful attics, that must sooner or later be faced. But I do not recall any governess present, and I think we shared the fear of solitude amongst us and kept well together until morning.
As I said, the last time I saw the old man was on a Sunday—probably our last Sunday at T——.
Our district boasted its peculiarity in having
"A parish without a church,
A church without a steeple,
A steeple without a church,
A parish without people"—