I have now come to a portion of my narrative which entails delicate handling, but I have promised that these pages shall contain confessions, and I will therefore lose no time in owning frankly that I was ever a flirt, and will candidly enter on the subject of my juvenile flirtations.
My first love was naturally much older than myself (being nearly fourteen), and very tall, a very handsome black-eyed fellow, the son of my father’s dear friend and colleague, the Port Admiral. He was by fits and starts very good and condescending to me, and accepted my devotion in rather a patronizing manner. In fact, he was the one qui tendait la joue. I blush to acknowledge that on the Sunday of my first appearance in church (I was then not much more than five years old) I spent nearly the whole of the sermon weighing in my own mind the probability of walking home with George. My wildest hope was fulfilled, little as I deserved it. Hand-in-hand we returned from church, where I had been an inattentive worshipper. My love often passed our nursery windows, of which there were four—two looking round the respective corners—and I invariably ran from one to the other, about the hour I expected his appearance, to watch that beloved, and to me gigantic, form, and follow it with my eyes out of sight. But my attachment though ardent, was not of very long duration; in my juvenile, if fickle, heart, George was ere long supplanted by no less a personage than the Commanding Officer of the Depôt. A man of his years, a soldier, a hero, who wore a Waterloo Medal and a brilliant uniform—a lover full of compliments—for
“A winning tongue had he,”
CHILDISH FLIRTATIONS
what chance had poor George the school-boy with such a rival? I used to walk with my sweetheart on the ramparts to hear the band play, and was often allowed to choose the air. To this very day I am not quite sure whether gratified vanity or real affection preponderated in my childish breast. I am inclined, at this distance of time, to decide in favour of the first-named feeling, for I was most decidedly puffed up and elated by my military conquest. He often assured me he could never part from me, and would ask my father to give me to him, and that he would place me under a glass case on the chimney-piece of his barrack-room in whatever quarters he found himself, with divers similar compliments of the kind, which, I doubt not, he had addressed before and since to other ears. I listened with intense delight to his declarations, for I had a very low opinion of my own personal appearance, as the other members of my family surpassed me greatly in comeliness. He also presented me with frequent gifts, two of which I yet possess, and I still remember him after the lapse of more than half a century, with feelings of real regard. I never saw him again, but I read of his death, which occurred at a very advanced age, with some emotion, and rejoiced at the encomiums which were passed on him as a man and a soldier. I had also an adorer of quite another stamp, age, and profession. He was a contemporary of my father’s, and a full admiral. I tolerated his attentions, and I am bound to say accepted many gifts, which was scarcely honourable in one whose heart was pledged to another. Sir Thomas Williams (for he was a baronet) gave me one day a pigeon of most beautiful plumage, who was so tame as to eat out of my hand, while I on my part, or rather my father for me, made him the more substantial offering of a cow. The pigeon was called “Tom,” the cow received the name of “Mary,” and the exchange was the cause of much bantering on both sides. He was a very benevolent man, and was the original founder or instigator of that excellent establishment “The Naval Female School,” to which, out of regard for my friend’s memory, I became a subscriber when shillings were even scarcer than they are now, and I still continue to take a deep interest in the charity.
EARLY LOVE OF SHAKESPEARE
I am afraid some of these revelations are not calculated to raise me in the estimation of my readers, yet I must make another, for I have pledged myself to tell the truth, and the truth I will tell, I cannot remember how it came about. I suppose I must have overheard my mother or my governess (who, by the way, was a most beautiful young woman) reading Shakespeare, but I took a most extraordinary (at least so it appeared to my elders) taste—I may say passion—for the plays of our immortal poet. I found out where these volumes were placed on the bookshelf, and, one after another, would take them down and devour them with my eyes—the Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its enchanting scenes of fairyland, being my especial favourite. So far, no harm was done; but alas! for the unfortunate day when I overheard (with the proverbially sharp ears of a little pitcher) my father enlarging to a friend of his on my wonderful taste in literature. The two men agreed that such a predilection and such a precocious power of appreciation showed undoubted promise of future talent. Alas! for the little eavesdropper, who had hitherto enjoyed her Shakespeare on her own account in a simple and single-minded manner. Now, for the first (do I boast, if I say for the last?) time in my life, I posed. When company came to dinner and I was allowed to appear in the drawing-room for the brief and dreary period which intervenes between the arrival of the guests and the announcement that “they are served,” I brought in my favourite volume, and was usually found by my father’s friends in an attitude of deep absorption, poring over the pages, and fondly hoping that the company would think me very clever indeed, for I knew father did. I little guessed at the time that I should look back upon myself as I do now, and have for many, many years past, as a revolting little prig. The poses are over, the audiences are not needed, and I love my Shakespeare for himself, and myself, without any ulterior consideration. On the occasion of these, usually official, banquets, I made profound reflections on the law of precedence, as I saw it carried out in one Commissioner’s house, and I came to the conclusion that I did not wish to be a lady of the first standing, as they never had a chance of going in to dinner with the Middies.
One more incident I must recall which was the cause of the greatest amusement and delight to us children, and was indeed planned entirely for our delectation. Two admirals, both well-known and honoured in later years, came to dinner rather early one evening. One was Sir James Gordon, afterwards Governor of Greenwich Hospital, a tall and handsome man, with only one leg, having replaced the other (which he lost, I believe, in action) by what was then called a “Greenwich pensioner”—an ordinary wooden substitute, such as was used by common seamen. The other was Sir Watkin Pell, and he also had but one leg, but, being more of a dandy in such matters, he had provided himself with a shapely cork leg and foot, with its smart silk stocking and jaunty pump. Sir James Gordon, on whose knee I was sitting at the moment, asked if the children would not like to see a race between the two one-leggers. The dining-room was divided from the drawing-room by a long and somewhat spacious hall. This he proposed as their race-course, and, amid the clapping of big and small hands, the cheering on and the backing of Sir James Gordon (who was our idol) by the younger ones, the two admirals started, and the Scotchman won in a canter, to our infinite delight.
I now come to a most important episode in my existence, namely my first appearance on what I still fondly call the right side of the footlights, a circumstance most deeply interesting to myself, in which I shall endeavour to enlist the sympathy of my readers.