Chapter VII. PROFILES OF CHILDHOOD.
The flow of the day in my city home is lost for me. But pictures and portraits stand out, sometimes blurred, sometimes surprisingly distinct, upon a confused background. There was food enough for curiosity and dreaming in the pauses of suffering. I must have lived for several days in an enchanted world solely by the single glimpse I had of my godfather.
He had sent me a present of a book about cocks and hens, largely illustrated. I was sitting in the store-room poring over it in the dreary society of Mrs. Clement, the new housekeeper. The previous one, Mrs. Dudley, I remember vaguely as a stern unsympathetic person, with crimped iron-grey hair under a voluminous cap trimmed with puce ribbons. She once forced me to swallow a Gregory-powder in a delusive snare of black-currant jam. I must have swallowed medicines before and since, and yet the taste and smell and look of that nauseous powder are still with me whenever my mind reverts to those days. Hence my delight when I learned that Mrs. Dudley was going away, and my cordial welcome of her successor, Mrs. Clement.
"So she's in here," somebody cried, rapping with a stick upon the door ajar.
I looked up from my book and saw a wonderful sight, of which I was afterwards vividly reminded in a French school by a picture of the famous "Postillon de Longjumeau," a jaunty figure with a pointed black beard and a tall wide-brimmed hat on one side. He bore himself gallantly, wore top-boots, a long coat with several little capes to it, and carried a smart riding-whip in his hand. This was my godfather.
I had never seen him before, and to my lasting regret I have never seen him since. He was out in '48, was proscribed, and had wandered about strange lands. He died in China, having first sent my mother a pretty case of Imperial tea, which she distributed in minute portions to all her friends, measuring the tea out with a small silver egg-cup. As fast as each consumed her portion, she returned for another, and as my mother had always a greater pleasure in giving than in receiving, my godfather's present was soon exhausted.
I remember being swung up in the air and shrieking in pretended fright, for children, sensational and dramatic little creatures, must persuade themselves there is an element of peril and adventure in their tamest diversions. Not to imagine oneself afraid is to miss the peculiar zest of enjoyment.
When I was seated gravely on his knee, my godfather asked me to spell out a few lines of his book.
"Cocks and hens—eh? Just suit a little girl from the country," he laughed, helping me to hold the book.