The Adventure of Living : a Subjective Autobiography

by John St. Loe Strachey

There was a good deal of smuggling going on in the town when I was a girl, and one day a member of my mother's chapel brought some gay things for her to buy. Oh, how I did long for her to get me a pretty neckerchief, but she said, "No, my dear, I cannot buy it for you, as I do not see any difference in cheating a single man or a government of men. I believe that in the sight of God both are equally sinful."

Leaker says of her mother, "She had a large share of romance, and loved a tale of witches, or a love-story"—and so did her daughter. The supernatural gained fresh interest from her skilful story-telling, and the art of the raconteur still lives in her pages. Here is one of the best of her stories. Even now it gives a delightful sense of fear:

This story was told me by the mother of a friend of mine—Mrs. Jackson was her name, a ladylike woman, but who appeared to me to be very old when I was a girl. Her husband was sailing master on board a man-of-war, and this is what took place once when she was on board with him. They were in port, and there was a large party of friends and officers spending the evening on the ship, when a sudden storm arose, and no one could go on shore. They were going to amuse themselves with music, and a violin was brought, but a string broke before the instrument had been touched. "Never mind," said the captain, "I have a man on board who is a first-rate hand at deceiving the sight." Everyone was pleased at the idea of conjuring, and the man was sent for, and asked to show some of his tricks; but he said, "No, I can't tonight, as it is not a good time." Said the captain, "What is to hinder you?" "Well, sir, I do not like doing it this stormy weather." "That is all stuff and nonsense," replied the captain; "you must try. Come, set to work." So the man asked for a chafing dish, which was brought to him. There was a fire of charcoal in it. He said and did something (Mrs. Jackson did not tell us what), and after a while there appeared in the dish, coming out of the fire, a tiny tree, with a tiny man holding a hatchet. The tree seemed to grow from the bottom, and the little man chopped at it all the time. The performing man was greatly agitated, and asked one of the ladies to lend him her apron (ladies wore them in those days). Mrs. Jackson took off hers and handed it to him. He tied it on, and ran round the table on which the chafing-dish stood, catching the chips, and apparently in great alarm lest one of them should fall to the ground. She used to say it was painful to see the poor man's agony of fear. While this was going on the storm grew much worse, so that the people on board were afraid that the ship would be driven from her anchorage. At last the tree fell under the tiny man's hatchet, and nothing was left on the table but the chafing-dish. The conjuror gave back the apron, and then, turning to the captain, said, "Never from this night will I do what I have done tonight. You may believe me or not, but if one of those chips had fallen to the ground, nothing could have saved the ship, and everyone on board would have gone down with her."

When the old lady told this story she would say that she had distinctly seen the chips fly, and heard the noise of the chopping. She used to show the apron, which she never wore again, but kept, carefully put away, to be shown to anyone who liked to see it.

Can one wonder that the little man with his little axe and the little tree, and the unknown peril of death that came up from the sea, made a deep impression upon my mind, though not in any sense a haunting or unpleasant one? I longed to see the chips fly and the tiny tree bow to the sturdy strokes of the weird woodman.

Leaker's stories of ordinary witchcraft were many and curious, and though they cannot be set out here I must quote one or two lines in regard to them:

I do not think there was a place in the land so full of witches, white and black, as Dartmouth. My mother was, for her time and station, pretty fairly educated, yet she seemed to me to believe in them firmly.

The autobiography shows that when she was sitting alone, thinking and writing, the old nurse felt acutely the solitude and weariness of an old age that had outlived contemporaries as well as bodily faculties. When, however, the friends of another generation were with her, she never seemed too tired or too sad to enter keenly into all the interests of their lives. After a hopeful consultation with an oculist she writes:

Is it not strange, that when the most terrible trouble is a little better, what looked light in comparison with want of sight comes back as heavily as ever? How I wish I could be more thankful for the mercies I have and not be always longing for the unattainable.

Everyone who has lived through a great crisis has probably shared the old nurse's surprise at finding that smaller troubles, which for a while were reduced to nothingness, soon revive with our own return to ordinary life.