To MY MOTHER.
"Southgate, Feb. 10, 1852.—My own dearest mother, I am settled here again after my most happy holidays, with the old faces round me, and the old tiresome conversation about nothing but the comparative virtues of ruff pigeons and carriers.... The last part of the holidays at Canterbury was indeed perfectly delightful, and I enjoyed it—oh! so much. I shall work very hard, and tell Arthur I shall be quite ready for an examination on Pericles, Marathon, and Arbela when I see him again. I am afraid Aunt Kitty thought me awfully ignorant of Greek history, but I really never have had anything to do with it.[74] I think of you and your walk through the beautiful cloister when I plod through the muddy village to our hideous chapel. It is very smoky and dirty and misty, but—I will not be discontented."
"Feb. 14.—And now I think of my dearest mother at home again, sitting in the evening in her own arm-chair in Peace Corner, with her little table and her Testament, and John and my Fausty[75]—all white and clean—bringing in the supper, and, oh! how nice it must be!"
It was very soon after her return from Canterbury that my mother, going to visit a sick woman in the village, slipped down a turfy frostbound bank near some steps in the garden at Lime. Unable to make any one hear her cries for help, she contrived to crawl to the back part of the house, whence she was carried to a sofa, and a doctor was sent for, who found that her leg was broken. After very many weeks upon a sofa, all lameness was cured, but the confinement, to one used to an active life, told seriously upon her health, and my dearest mother was always liable to serious illness from this time, though her precious life was preserved to me for nineteen years to come. Henceforward I never left her without misery, and when with her was perhaps over-anxious about her. Mr. Bradley wisely sent me at once to her for a day that I might be reassured, and I feel still an echo of the pang with which I first saw her helpless—as I so often saw her afterwards. How I remember all the sheltered spots in which Lea and I found primroses for her in the one day I was at home in this bitterly early spring!
To MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).
"March 13, 1852.—Yesterday we had 'a truce,' so I hurried to see Gerard's Hall in Bow Lane before its demolition. It has latterly been an inn, with a statue of Gerard the Giant over the door. A wooden staircase leads into the wine-cellar, once Gerard's Crypt, possessing slender arches and pillars, most beautiful in colour, and forming wonderful subjects for pictures, with pewter pots and stone pitchers thrown about in confusion."
"April 29.—I have been to see Mrs. Gayford, the nurse who brought me over to England. She is very poor, and lives in an attic in the New Wharf Road, but was enchanted to see me. I sate upon the old seachest which has been often with her to India, and heard the history of her going to Mannheim and meeting my father with his 'weak baby—very passionate, you know, but then it's in the nature of such young gentlemen to be so.' And then she described the journey and voyage, and my ingratitude to a lady who had been very kind to me by slapping her in the face when she was sea-sick."
"June 15.—We are in the midst of an examination in Thierry's 'Norman Conquest.' At nine we all assemble in the dining-room, and the greatest anxiety is exhibited: the 'prophets' proclaim their views on the issue of the day, and the 'hunters' speculate upon the horses who are to 'run in the Thierry stakes.' Bradley comes in with the papers and gives one to each, and from that time we are in custody: no one can exchange a word, and two fellows may never go up to the table together. When we have done that set of questions, generally between one and three o'clock, we are at liberty till five, and then we are in custody again till we have done the next, at nine, ten, or eleven. Bradley is on guard all day, or, if he is obliged to go out, Mrs. B. mounts guard for him. They cannot employ themselves, as they have always to wander up and down the rows of writers with their eyes.... I like the life during these examinations, there is so much more excitement than over ordinary work, and one never has time to get stupid, but the others do nothing but bemoan themselves."