Although very well satisfied on the whole with our attempt, we thought it absorbed too much of my husband's time, and he soon requested me to go on with it by myself, and frankly avowed that he could not take any interest in gardening, even in ornamental gardening. This lack of interest seemed strange to me, because he liked to study nature in all her phenomena, but it lasted to the end of his life; he did not care in the least for a well-kept garden, but he liked flowers for their colors and perfumes,—not individually,—and trees for their forms, either noble or graceful, and especially for their shade. He could not bear to see them pruned, and when it became imperative to cut some of their branches, he used to complain quite sadly to his daughter—who shared his feelings about trees—and he would say: "Now, Mary, you see they are at it again, spoiling our poor trees." And if I replied, "But it is for their health; the branches were trailing on the ground, and now the trees will grow taller," he slowly shook his head, unconvinced. When we took the small house at Pré-Charmoy, he was delighted by the wildness of the tiny park sloping gently down to the cool, narrow, shaded river, over which the bending trees met and arched, and he begged me not to interfere with the trailing blackberry branches which crept about the roots and stems of the superb wild-rose trees, making sweet but impenetrable thickets interwoven with honeysuckle, even in the midst of the alleys and lawns.
And now to return to the domestic arrangements arrived at by mutual consent. Upon me devolved the housekeeping, provisioning, and care of the garden, with the help of a maid, occasionally that of Dugald's wife as charwoman, and pretty regularly that of Dugald himself for a certain portion of the day; that is, when he was not required by my husband to man the boat or to help in a camping-out expedition. It was agreed that Thursday should be considered as his master's private servant.
CHAPTER II.
1858.
Money matters.—Difficulties about servants.—Expensiveness of our mode of life.
My husband had a little fortune, sufficient for his wants as a bachelor, which were modest; it would have been larger had his father nursed it instead of diminishing it as he did by his reckless ways, and especially by entrusting its management during his son's minority to a very kind but incapable guardian in business matters, and to another competent but dishonest trustee, who squandered, unchecked, many important sums of money, and made agreements and leases profitable to himself, but almost ruinous to his ward. As to the other trustee, he never troubled himself so far as to read a deed or a document before signing it. Still, what remained when my husband came of age was amply sufficient for the kind of life he soon chose, that of an artist; and he hoped, moreover, to increase it by the sale of his works.
He was, however, aware of the future risks of the situation when he asked in marriage a girl without fortune, and he told me without reserve what we had to expect.
An important portion of his income was to cease after fourteen years—the end of the lease of a coal-mine; but he felt certain that he would be able by that time to replace it by his own earnings, and meanwhile we were to live so economically and so simply that, as we thought, there was no need for anxiety; so we convinced my parents—with the persuasion that love lent us—that after all we should not be badly off.
Soon after the completion of our household organization, however, I began to fear that a very simple way of living might, under peculiar conditions, become expensive. A breakfast consisting of ham and eggs is not extravagantly luxurious, but if the ham comes to thrice the original price when carriage and spoilage are allowed for, and if to the sixpence paid for half-a-dozen eggs you add the wages of a man for as many hours, you find to your dismay that though your repast was simple, it was not particularly cheap. Whichever way we turned we met with unavoidable and unlooked-for expenses. Perhaps an English lady, accustomed to the possibilities of such a place, and to the habits of the servants and the customs of the country, might have managed better—though even to-day I don't see clearly what she could have done; as for me, though I had been brought up in the belief that Paris was one of the most expensive places to live in, and though I was perfectly aware of its prices,—having kept my father's house for some years, on account of my mother's weak state of health,—I was entirely taken by surprise, and rather afraid of the reckoning at the end of the year. No one who has not attempted that kind of primitive existence has any idea of its complications. A mere change of servant was expensive—and such changes were rather frequent, on account of their disgust at the breach of orthodox habits, and the lack of followers; or their dismissal was rendered inevitable by their incapacity or unwillingness, or their contempt for everything out of their own country. We had a capital instance of this characteristic in a nurse who came from Greenock, and who thoroughly despised everything in the Highlands. One night, my husband and myself were out of doors admiring a splendid full moon, by the light of which it was quite easy to read. The nurse Katharine was standing by us, holding baby in her arms, and she heard me express my admiration: unable to put up with praises of a Highland moon, she exclaimed deliberately, "Sure, ma'am, then, you should see the Greenock moon; this is nothing to it."
This change of servants was of serious moment to us, both in the way of time and money, for we had to go to Glasgow or Greenock to fetch new ones, besides paying for their journeys to and fro, and a month's wages if they did not give satisfaction, which was but too often the case.