I had been struggling with Dr. Watts, Abercrombie, et al., for several months, when my aunt reluctantly realized that, however admirable the school might be for others, I was not improving in mind or health. As soon as she arrived at this conclusion, she decided to experiment with no more large female seminaries, but to educate me, as best she could, at home.
At the same time I know that my dear aunt suffered from the overthrow of all her plans for my education. She had, for my sake, made great sacrifices in leaving her inherited home. These sacrifices were all for naught. She must have felt keen disappointment, and regret at the loss, toil, expense,—and, above all, my worse than wasted time.
Yet, after all, my time at school may not have been utterly thrown away! The experience may have borne fruit that I know not of. Moreover, I had learned something! I learned that Logic is the art of investigating and communicating Truth!
CHAPTER VII
Masters were found in a preparatory school for my home education. Happy to escape from the schoolroom, I worked as never maiden worked before, loving my summer desk in the apple tree in the garden, loving my winter desk beside the blazing wood in my uncle's office, passionately loving my music, and interested in the other studies assigned me. With no competitive examinations to stimulate me, I yet made good progress. Before I reached my thirteenth year, I had learned to read French easily. I had wept over the tender story of Picciola and the sorrows of Paul and Virginia. I had sailed with Ulysses and trod the flowery fields with Calypso. My aunt had beguiled me into a course of history by allowing me as reward those romances of Walter Scott which are founded on historical events. My love of music and desire to excel in it made me patient under the eccentric itinerant music teacher, the one pioneer apostle of classic music in all Virginia, who was known, more than once, to arrive at midnight and call me up for my lesson; and who, while other maidens were playing the "Battle of Prague" and "Bonaparte crossing the Rhine," or singing the campaign songs of the hero of the log cabin, taught me to love Beethoven and Liszt, and to discern the answering voices in that genius, then young, whose magic music fell not then, nor ever after, upon unheeding ears. I had read with my aunt selections all the way from "The Faerie Queene" through the times of later queens,—Elizabeth and Anne,—and had made a beginning with the queen for whom I had a sentiment, and who has given her name to so fair an age of fancy and of elegant writing. Alas, for the mental training I might have had through the study of mathematics! Were it not that the lack of this training must be apparent to all who are kind enough to listen to my story, I might quote Joseph Jefferson, as Mr. William Winter reports him: "Why, look at me! I seem to have managed pretty well, but I couldn't for the life of me add up a column of figures." The only figures I know anything about are figures of speech. Fortunately, I have had little use for addition. My knowledge has been quite sufficient for my needs.
My French teacher, Mr. Mertons,—a square-shouldered, spectacled German, with an upright shock of coarse black hair, literally pounded the French language into me. With a grammar held aloft in his left hand, he emphasized every rule with his right fist, coming down hard on my aunt's mahogany. If success is to be measured by results, I can only say that, although I perceived some charm in Mme. de Sévigné and in Dumas, I was rather dense with Racine and Molière; and as to the spoken language! I can usually manage to convey, by gesture and deliberate English, a twilight glimmer of my meaning in talking to a polite Frenchman, but blank darkness descends upon him when I speak to him in "a French not spoken in France." The gift for "divers kinds of tongues" was not bestowed upon me.
The music teacher deserves more than a passing notice. He was unique. Mr. William C. Rives found him somewhere in France, and promised him a large salary if he would come to America, live near or in Charlottesville, and teach his daughter Amélie. He was the incarnation of thriftlessness; with no polish of manner, no idea of business, or order, or of the necessity of paying a debt, but he was also the incarnation of music! My uncle again and again satisfied the sheriff and released him from bonds. Finally, he could not appear in town at all by daylight, and often arrived at midnight for my lesson. Gladly my aunt would rise and dress to preside over it. My teacher would disappear before the dawn. He owed money all over town which he had not the faintest intention of ever paying. More than once his defenceless back could have borne witness to a creditor's outraged feelings. But he was resourceful. Thereafter he carried all his music, a thick package, in a case sewed to the lining of his coat. His back, rather than his breast, needed a shield. It was amusing to see him pack himself up, as it were, before venturing into the open.
But with all this, we prized him above rubies. He was a brilliant pianist, a great genius; had studied with Liszt, early appreciated Chopin, adored Beethoven. One of his animated lessons would leave me in a state "which fiddle-strings is weakness to express my nerves," and yet no summons to duty ever thrilled me with pleasure like his "Koom on ze biahno." Once there, absolute fidelity to the composer's writing and the position of my hands exacted all my attention. The margins of my music were liberally adorned with illustrations of my fist—a clumsy bunch with an outsticking thumb.
I always felt keenly the charm of music, even when it was beyond my comprehension. One day, happening to look up from his own playing, he detected tears in my eyes. He was enraged in three languages. "Himmel! Zis is not bathétique! Zis is scherzo! Eh, bien! I blay him adagio." And under shut teeth a sibilant whisper sounded very much like "imbécile," as he hung his head to one side, arched his brows, and drawled out the theme in a ridiculous manner. Once I was so carried away by a delicious passage I was playing that I diminished the tempo, that the linked sweetness might be long drawn out. He literally danced! He beat time furiously with both hands. "Ach! is it you yourselluf, know bedder zan ze great maestro," and sweeping me from the piano stool he rendered the passage properly.
One summer my aunt, in order that I might have lessons, took board in a country place where he lived. I was pleasing myself one day with a little German song I had smuggled from town:—