That shadowy sister very wisely took the earliest opportunity of becoming a shade, so I remember nothing of her but what I have been told. I may say here that I have often, in the terrible years since, had occasion to wish that I too might then have saved myself all further trouble; but alas! a tenaciousness of purpose and a stock of vitality which has not yet all gone have so far hindered me that, although I am physically a very wreck and was twelve years ago given at the outside three years to live, I am still topside. Well, as a cynical American friend once told me, “That’s only one more mistake you’ve made, I guess.” I cannot contradict him.
Thus it came about that my earliest recollections centre on a quaint little house, No. 15 Desboro’ Terrace, now called Marlborough Street. By careful comparison and enquiry I have no doubt that I do remember as far back as 1859-60, when I would be 2½ years old. At the end of Desboro’ Terrace, remote from the Harrow Road, ran the main line of the Great Western Railway, and turning sharply to the right when you had reached the blank wall that closed the terrace, you came into a row of little houses called Desboro’ Place which fronted the line and were only divided therefrom by a narrow roadway and a line of tall rails. My aunt kept a maid—not, God knows, because she had any pride of that sort, but because she was a dressmaker and could not do the housework and attend to her business too, and also, I am ashamed to say, because she usually had some of her brothers sponging upon her. How well I remember once saying to her:
“Auntie, you used to have quite a lot of people to dinner. I can remember Grandfather, Uncle John, Uncle George, Uncle Tom, Uncle Ted, and Aunt Kitty.”
“Ah,” she replied, “yes, but you never knew that my poor fingers were working for them all, except Aunt Kitty—she always worked hard enough for her keep.”
So I said no more. And now I must return to one of my earliest recollections. The maid, her work done, was permitted to take me out, and she used to take me down Desboro’ Place and stand me on the coping clutching the rails and looking down at the puff-puffs. There I saw the wonderful engines of that day, the “Charles Dickens,” the “Robin Hood,” and once the Queen’s special engine, the stately “Lord of the Isles,” with the big gilt crown on the front. I knew the names of many engines and never wanted to go and see the shops, the puff-puffs supplied all my needs, until one day, in an evil moment for her, she took me over the little wooden foot-bridge that still spans the line there. And a passing engine sent a cloud of steam up through the crevices of the planks of the bridge floor, passing up my little bare legs even unto my waist under my frock. The sensation was a novel one, and thenceforward I clamoured to be led thither. I did not know nor did I care if she, my guardian, approved of it. I have since felt that I might have been exacting, but peace be unto her whoever she was, she never made complaint that I heard of.
Up till last year I often made journeys from Paddington, but never without glancing up at the railings as we passed Desboro’ Place (if that is what it is called now) and at once recalling those dim days. They seem to belong to another life, but they had a quiet charm all their own, entirely due to the good influence of my poor aunt, who, amidst all her worries, always kept a cosy corner for me. My education was her chief care, and happily for me we lived next door to a dame-school kept by three maiden ladies. Of my experiences there I have told at length elsewhere, so I will only say here that my principal recollection of next door is of the ladies’ father, a nasty old man whose chief delight seemed to be to get me on his knee in the summer-house and puff strong tobacco smoke in my face. It was of no use struggling or screaming, though I did both, he seemed to have no mercy. I was taught by those gentle ladies that it was a deadly sin to hate anybody, but I came as near hating that old man as made very little odds.
Another curious fact emerges about this time when I would be between four and five years old. I could read—indeed I do not know when I learned, so easy did reading always seem—and from the kind of books to the reading of which I was confined, I had a large and extensive vocabulary, the use of which at inopportune moments often made some of my uncles very angry and brought down upon my head many sarcastic comments. But having no one to whom I could talk or play, I used to march in stately fashion round the small garden, holding the grand old Tom cat’s tail, as he paced majestically before me, and declaim as if to gaping congregations my addresses upon—ah, I don’t remember what! Of course, the themes were religious, could hardly be otherwise remembering my reading, but I would like to know what I used to say aloud then, and the neighbours’ opinions thereupon. As I never heard the latter I must assume that I did not make much noise, not even when, as it were, smitten by sudden madness, I varied my sermons with yells of Murder! Fire! Thieves! No, it could not have been noisy, because I remember that it never scared old Dick, the faithful cat. He was my constant companion, so by that I know that I can never have been cruel.
Indeed the whole environment was as pure and cloistered as could be imagined. A worse preparation for a rough-and-tumble with the world could hardly be imagined, but my poor auntie did her best, the best she knew for me, and kept me, as far as in her lay, unspotted from the world. Of course there were, there always must be, occasions when the primitive man comes to the surface, and I was no exception to the rule. As, for instance, we once had visitors and I was ousted from my aunt’s bed where I had always slept and put with a Mrs. Rawlins, a large lady whom I had taken a vivid dislike to, for no reason, very early in her visit. To please this person the sheets were taken off and my tender skin was excoriated by the coarse blankets. And she wasn’t a nice person. She took up most of the bed; she snored astoundingly, and—well, it doesn’t matter now—but I did not sleep a wink all night, and at the earliest opportunity besought my auntie not to let me sleep with that old woman any more. I don’t know what was done, but I do know that I was restored to my auntie’s bed the next night and said my prayers twice through in sheer gratitude for the relief.
There was a wedding at our house; my Aunt Kitty was married and my prospective uncle endeavoured to ingratiate himself with me. To no purpose. I didn’t like him, and I wouldn’t be cajoled by him. I was not a bit surprised to find in later years that all my childish aversions were justified. But of that great upheaval one fact stands saliently forward: I had a new muslin Garibaldi with bishops’ sleeves and round pearl buttons, a bright plaid skirt, strap shoes and white socks. I was then nearly six years old, but nobody so much as dreamed of a masculine dress for me, and certainly I thought nothing of the matter. But shortly after the wedding at Holy Trinity Church, Paddington, the child of one of my uncles needed baptism, and my wedding garments being fresh, it was deemed a good opportunity for me to be baptised too. Some doubt existed as to whether I had ever been baptised at all, but my poor mother was a Catholic, and I have since learned that, however low she may have sunk, the priest would have insisted upon her child being baptised in the Faith.
Auntie did not know that; she belonged, as she put it, to the “Angelical” Church of England, and so I was baptised at Holy Trinity Church with my infant cousin, and very well do I remember the whole scene. The great empty echoing church and the little group of godfathers and godmothers, the nervous young curate whose cool hand shook so as he placed it on my head and made the sign on my forehead, the clumsy, blundering way in which everybody seemed to behave, except the baby who squalled lustily in the curate’s arms and made him go crimson—ah yes—it is all so vividly present to me now. As is also the astounding thought in my small brain that I could do the whole thing so much better than any of them, conscious, mind you, that I was the most self-possessed person in the little crowd. And that night, when as usual I mounted to the top of the house and went to bed alone, for auntie did not come till one a.m. sometimes, I felt singularly defiant as I knelt to say my prayers. The hole in the palliasses made by their being turned end for end, as sailors say, and the corners cut out for the bedposts coming together, quite lost their power to frighten me by the possibility of some evil thing coming out and doing me some mysterious harm; nor did I any longer fear old Joe, Miss Moore’s great macaw, with which she used to threaten us when we were naughty, though he had hitherto always seemed to be lurking under the bed every night.