Twice we had holidays to suit his sad convenience. Holidays with us were not at Christmas, and Midsummer, Easter, and Michaelmas. If my mother was unusually busy, we had what we called a holiday, though in reality it involved harder work than our regular lessons; but we fetched, and carried, and ran errands, and became rosy, and dusty, and sang merry songs in the gaiety of our hearts. If the day was remarkably fine, my dear father—whose spirits were rather apt to vary with the weather—would come bursting in with his bright, kind, bronzed face, and carry the day by storm with my mother. “It was a shame to coop such young things up in a house,” he would say, “when every other young animal was frolicking in the air and sunshine. Grammar!—what was that but the art of arranging words?—and he never knew a woman but could do that fast enough. Geography!—he would undertake to teach us more geography in one winter evening, telling us of the countries where he had been, with just a map before him, than we could learn in ten years with that stupid book, all full of hard words. As for the French—why, that must be learnt; for he should not like M. de Chalabre to think we slighted the lessons he took so much pains to give us; but surely we could get up the earlier to learn our French.” We promised by acclamation; and my mother—sometimes smilingly, sometimes reluctantly—was always compelled to yield. And these were the usual occasions for our holidays.
It was the fashion in those days to keep children much less informed than they are now on the subjects which interest their parents. A sort of hieroglyphic or cipher talk was used in order to conceal the meaning of much that was said if children were present. My mother was proficient in this way of talking, and took, we fancied, a certain pleasure in perplexing my father by inventing a new cipher, as it were, every day. For instance, for some time I was called Martia, because I was very tall of my age; and, just as my father began to understand the name—and, it must be owned, a good while after I had learned to prick up my ears whenever Martia was named—my mother suddenly changed me into “the buttress,” from the habit I had acquired of leaning my languid length against a wall. I saw my father’s perplexity about this “buttress” for some days, and could have helped him out of it, but I durst not. And so, when the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was executed, the news was too terrible to be put into plain English, and too terrible also to be known to us children, nor could we at once find the clue to the cipher in which it was spoken about. We heard about “the Iris being blown down,” and saw my father’s honest, loyal excitement about it, and the quiet reserve which always betokened some secret grief on my mother’s part.
We had no French lessons; and somehow the poor, battered, storm-torn Iris was to blame for this. It was many weeks after this before we knew the full reason of M. de Chalabre’s deep depression when he again came amongst us; why he shook his head when my mother timidly offered him some snowdrops on that first morning on which he began lessons again; why he wore the deep mourning of that day, when all of the dress that could be black was black, and the white muslin frills and ruffles were unstarched and limp, as if to bespeak the very abandonment of grief. We knew well enough the meaning of the next hieroglyphic announcement, “The wicked, cruel boys had broken off the White Lily’s head!” That beautiful queen, whose portrait once had been shown to us, with her blue eyes and her fair, resolute look, her profusion of lightly powdered hair, her white neck adorned with strings of pearls! We could have cried, if we had dared, when we heard the transparent, mysterious words. We did cry at night, sitting up in bed, with our arms round each other’s necks, and vowing, in our weak, passionate, childish way, that if we lived long enough, that lady’s death avenged should be. No one who cannot remember that time can tell the shudder of horror that thrilled through the country at hearing of this last execution. At the moment there was no time for any consideration of the silent horrors endured for centuries by the people, who at length rose in their madness against their rulers. This last blow changed our dear M. de Chalabre. I never saw him again in quite the same gaiety of heart as before this time. There seemed to be tears very close behind his smiles for ever after. My father went to see him when he had been about a week absent from us—no reason given, for did not we, did not everyone know the horror the sun had looked upon? As soon as my father had gone, my mother gave it in charge to us to make the dressing-room belonging to our guest-chamber as much like a sitting-room as possible. My father hoped to bring back M. de Chalabre for a visit to us; but he would probably like to be a good deal alone; and we might move any article of furniture we liked, if we only thought it would make him comfortable.
The Interchange of Novels between English and American Authors
From Introduction to Mabel Vaughan, 1857
If it were not an Irish way of expressing myself, I should call prefaces in general, the author’s supplement to his work; either explaining his reasons for writing it, or giving some additional matter, which could not be included, or else was forgotten in the book itself.
Now as I am not the author of the following story, I cannot give her reasons for writing it, nor add to what she has already said; nor can I even give my opinion of it, as by so doing I should have to reveal much of the plot in order to justify praise, or explain criticism.
Such alterations as might be required to render certain expressions clear to English readers the authoress has permitted me to make in the body of the work; some foot-notes I have appended explanatory of what were formerly to me mysterious customs and phrases; and, here and there, I have been tempted to make additions, always with the kindly granted permission of the authoress.
In conclusion, I may say a few words on the pleasant intercourse we English are having with our American relations, in the interchange of novels, which seems to be going on pretty constantly between the two countries. Our cousinly connection with the Americans dates from common ancestors, of whom we are both proud. To a certain period, every great name which England boasts is a direct subject of pride to the American; since the time when the race diverged into two different channels, we catch a reflex lustre from each other’s great men. When we are stirred to our inmost depths by some passage or other in Uncle Tom, we say from all our hearts, “And I also am of the same race as this woman.” When we hear of noble deeds—or generous actions; when Lady Franklin is helped in her woeful, faithful search by sympathising Americans; when the Resolute is brought home to our shores by the gallant American sailors, we hail the brave old Anglo-Saxon blood, and understand how they came to do it, as we instinctively comprehend a brother’s motives for his actions, though he should speak never a word.
It is Anglo-Saxon descent which makes us both so undemonstrative, or perhaps I should rather say, so ready to express our little dissatisfaction with each other, while the deeper feelings (such as our love and confidence in each other) are unspoken. Though we do not talk much about these feelings we value every tie between us that can strengthen them; and not least amongst those come the links of a common literature. I may be thought too like the tanner in the old fable, who recommended leather as the best means of defence for a besieged city, but I am inclined to rank the exchange of novels between England and America as of more value, as conducive to a pleasant acquaintanceship with each other, than the exchange of works of a far higher intrinsic value. Through the means of works of fiction, we obtain glimpses into American home-life; of their modes of thought, their traditional observances, and their social temptations, quite beyond and apart from the observations of a traveller, who after all, only sees the family in the street, or on the festival days, not in the quiet domestic circle, into which the stranger is rarely admitted.