Gallery of
Great Theosophists
___________________________
Annie Besant
1847 – 1933
President of the Theosophical
Society 1907-1933
Autobiographical Sketches
By
Annie Besant
First published 1885.
I am so often asked for references to some pamphlet or journal
in which
may be found some outline of my life, and the enquiries are so
often
couched in terms of such real kindness, that I have resolved to
pen a few
brief autobiographical sketches, which may avail to satisfy
friendly
questioners, and to serve, in some measure, as defence against
unfair
attack.
I.
On October 1st, 1847, I made my appearance in this "vale of
tears",
"little Pheasantina", as I was irreverently called by
a giddy aunt, a pet
sister of my mother's. Just at that time my father and mother
were
staying within the boundaries of the City of London, so that I
was born
well "within the sound of Bow bells".
Though born in London, however, full three quarters of my blood
are
Irish. My dear mother was a Morris--the spelling of the name
having been
changed from Maurice some five generations back--and I have
often heard
her tell a quaint story, illustrative of that family pride which
is so
common a feature of a decayed Irish family. She was one of a
large
family, and her father and mother, gay, handsome, and
extravagant, had
wasted merrily what remained to them of patrimony. I can
remember her
father well, for I was fourteen years of age when he died. A
bent old
man, with hair like driven snow, splendidly handsome in his old
age,
hot-tempered to passion at the lightest provocation, loving and
wrath in
quick succession. As the family grew larger and the moans grew
smaller,
many a pinch came on the household, and the parents were glad to
accept
the offer of a relative to take charge of Emily, the second
daughter. A
very proud old lady was this maiden aunt, and over the
mantel-piece of
her drawing-room ever hung a great diagram, a family tree, which
mightily
impressed the warm imagination of the delicate child she had
taken in
charge. It was a lengthy and well-grown family tree, tracing
back the
Morris family to the days of Charlemagne, and branching out from
a stock
of "the seven kings of France". Was there ever yet a
decayed. Irish
family that did not trace itself back to some "kings"?
and these
"Milesian kings"--who had been expelled from France,
doubtless for good
reasons, and who had sailed across the sea and landed in fair
Erin, and
there had settled and robbed and fought--did more good 800 years
after
their death than they did, I expect, during their ill-spent
lives, if
they proved a source of gentle harmless pride to the old maiden
lady who
admired their names over her mantel-piece in the earlier half of
the
present century. And, indeed, they acted as a kind of moral
thermometer,
in a fashion that would much have astonished their ill-doing and
barbarous selves. For my mother has told me how when she would
commit
some piece of childish naughtiness, her aunt would say, looking
gravely
over her spectacles at the small culprit: "Emily, your
conduct is
unworthy of the descendant of the seven kings of France."
And Emily, with
her sweet grey Irish eyes, and her curling masses of raven-black
hair,
would cry in penitent shame over her unworthiness, with some
vague idea
that those royal, and to her very real ancestors, would despise
her small
sweet rosebud self, as wholly unworthy of their disreputable
majesties.
But that same maiden aunt trained the child right well, and I
keep ever
grateful memory of her, though I never knew her, for her share
in forming
the tenderest, sweetest, proudest, purest, noblest woman I have
ever
known. I have never met a woman more selflessly devoted to those
she
loved, more passionately contemptuous of all that was mean or
base, more
keenly sensitive on every question of honor, more iron in will,
more
sweet in tenderness, than the mother who made my girlhood sunny
as
dreamland, who guarded me until my marriage from every touch of
pain that
she could ward off, or could bear for me, who suffered more in
every
trouble that touched me in later life than I did myself, and who
died in
the little house I had taken for our new home in Norwood, worn
out ere
old age touched her, by sorrow, poverty and pain, in May, 1874.
Of my father my memory is less vivid, for he died when I was but
five
years old. He was of mixed race, English on his father's side,
Irish on
his mother's, and was born in Galway, and educated in Ireland;
he took
his degree at Dublin University, and walked the hospitals as a
medical
student. But after he had qualified as a medical man a good
appointment
was offered him by a relative in the City of London, and he never
practised regularly as a doctor.
In the City his prospects were naturally promising; the elder
branch of
the Wood Family, to which he belonged, had for many generations
been
settled in Devonshire, farming their own land. When the eldest
son
William, my father, came of age, he joined with his father to
cut off the
entail, and the old acres were sold. Meanwhile members of other
branches
had entered commercial life, and had therein prospered
exceedingly. One
of them had become Lord Mayor of London, had vigorously
supported the
unhappy Queen Caroline, had paid the debts of the Duke of Kent,
in order
that that reputable individual might return to England with his
Duchess,
so that the future heir to the throne might be born on English
soil; he
had been rewarded with a baronetcy as a cheap method of paying
his
services. Another, my father's first cousin once removed, a
young
barrister, had successfully pleaded a suit in which was
concerned the
huge fortune of a miserly relative, and had thus laid the foundations
of
a great success; he won for himself a vice-chancellorship and a
knighthood, and then the Lord Chancellorship of England, with
the barony
of Hatherley. A third, a brother of the last, Western Wood, was
doing
good service in the House of Commons. A fourth, a cousin of the
last two,
had thrown himself with such spirit and energy into mining work,
that he
had accumulated a fortune. In fact all the scattered branches
had made
their several ways in the world, save that elder one to which my
father
belonged. That had vegetated on down in the country, and had
grown poorer
while the others grew richer. My father's brothers had somewhat
of a
fight for life. One has prospered and is comfortable and
well-to-do. The
other led for years a rough and wandering life, and "came
to grief"
generally. Some years ago I heard of him as a store-keeper in
dock-yard, occasionally boasting in feeble fashion that his
cousin was
Lord Chancellor of England, and not many months since I heard
from him in
South Africa, where he has secured some appointment in the
Commissariat
Department, not, I fear, of a very lucrative character.
Let us come back to Pheasantina, who, I am told, was a delicate
and
somewhat fractious infant, giving to both father and mother
considerable
cause for anxiety. Her first attempts at rising in the world
were
attended with disaster, for as she was lying in a cradle, with
carved
iron canopy, and was for a moment left by her nurse in full
faith that
she could not rise from the recumbent position, Miss Pheasantina
determined to show that she was capable of unexpected
independence, and
made a vigorous struggle to assume that upright position which
is the
proud prerogative of man. In another moment the recumbent
position was
re-assumed, and the nurse returning found the baby's face
covered with
blood, streaming from a severe wound on the forehead, the iron
fretwork
having proved harder than the baby's head. The scar remains down
to the
present time, and gives me the valuable peculiarity of only wrinkling
up
one side of my forehead when I raise my eyebrows, a feat that I
defy any
of my readers to emulate. The heavy cut has, I suppose, so
injured the
muscles in that spot that they have lost the normal power of
contraction.
My earliest personal recollections are of a house and garden
that we
lived in when I was three and four years of age, situated in
Grove Road,
St. John's Wood. I can remember my mother hovering round the
dinner-table
to see that all was bright for the home-coming husband; my brother--two
years older than myself--and I watching "for papa";
the loving welcome,
the game of romps that always preceded the dinner of the elder
folks. I
can remember on the first of October, 1851, jumping up in my
little cot,
and shouting out triumphantly: "Papa! mamma! I am four
years old!" and
the grave demand of my brother, conscious of superior age, at
dinner-time: "May not Annie have a knife to-day, as she is
four years
old?"
It was a sore grievance during that same year 1851, that I was
not judged
old enough to go to the Great Exhibition, and I have a faint
memory of my
brother consolingly bringing me home one of those folding
pictured strips
that are sold in the streets, on which were imaged glories that
I longed
only the more to see. Far-away, dusky, trivial memories, these.
What a
pity it is that a baby cannot notice, cannot observe, cannot
remember,
and so throw light on the fashion of the dawning of the external
world on
the human consciousness. If only we could remember how things
looked when
they were first imaged on the retinae; what we felt when first
we became
conscious of the outer world; what the feeling was as faces of
father and
mother grew out of the surrounding chaos and became familiar
things,
greeted with a smile, lost with a cry; if only memory would not
become a
mist when in later years we strive to throw our glances backward
into the
darkness of our infancy, what lessons we might learn to help our
stumbling psychology, how many questions might be solved whose
answers we
are groping for in vain.
II.
The next scene that stands out clearly against the background of
the past
is that of my father's death-bed. The events which led to his
death I
know from my dear mother. He had never lost his fondness for the
profession for which he had been trained, and having many
medical
friends, he would now and then accompany them on their hospital
rounds,
or share with them the labors of the dissecting room. It chanced
that
during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of
rapid
consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the
breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became
swollen
and inflamed. "I would have that finger off, Wood, if I
were you," said
one of the surgeons, a day or two afterwards, on seeing the
state of the
wound. But the others laughed at the suggestion, and my father,
at first
inclined to submit to the amputation, was persuaded to
"leave Nature
alone".
About the middle of August, 1852, he got wet through, riding on
the top
of an omnibus, and the wetting resulted in a severe cold, which
"settled
on his chest". One of the most eminent doctors of the day,
as able as he
was rough in manner, was called to see him. He examined him
carefully,
sounded his lungs, and left the room followed by my mother.
"Well?" she
asked, scarcely anxious as to the answer, save as it might worry
her
husband to be kept idly at home. "You must keep up his
spirits", was the
thoughtless answer. "He is in a galloping consumption; you
will not have
him with you six weeks longer." The wife staggered back,
and fell like a
stone on the floor. But love triumphed over agony, and half an
hour later
she was again at her husband's side, never to leave it again for
ten
minutes at a time, night or day, till he was lying with closed
eyes
asleep in death.
I was lifted on to the bed to "say good-bye to dear
Papa" on the day
before his death, and I remember being frightened at his eyes
which
looked so large, and his voice which sounded so strange, as he
made me
promise always to be "a very good girl to darling Mamma, as
Papa was
going right away". I remember insisting that "Papa
should kiss Cherry", a
doll given me on my birthday, three days before, by his
direction, and
being removed, crying and struggling, from the room. He died on
the
following day, October 5th, and I do not think that my elder
brother and
I--who were staying at our maternal grandfather's--went to the
house
again until the day of the funeral. With the death, my mother
broke down,
and when all was over they carried her senseless from the room.
I
remember hearing afterwards how, when she recovered her senses,
she
passionately insisted on being left alone, and locked herself
into her
room for the night; and how on the following morning her mother,
at last
persuading her to open the door, started back at the face she
saw with
the cry: "Good God! Emily! your hair is white!" It was
even so; her hair,
black, glossy and abundant, which, contrasting with her large
grey eyes,
had made her face so strangely attractive, had turned grey in
that night
of agony, and to me my mother's face is ever framed in exquisite
silver
bands of hair as white as the driven unsullied snow.
I have heard that the love between my father and mother was a
very
beautiful thing, and it most certainly stamped her character for
life. He
was keenly intellectual, and splendidly educated; a
mathematician and a
good classical scholar, thoroughly master of French, German,
Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese, with a smattering of Hebrew and Gaelic,
the
treasures of ancient and of modern literature were his daily
household
delight. Nothing pleased him so well as to sit with his wife,
reading
aloud to her while she worked; now translating from some foreign
poet,
now rolling forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of Queen
Mab.
Student of philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily
sceptical;
and a very religious relative has told me that he often drove
her from
the room by his light playful mockery of the tenets of the
Christian
faith. His mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and
near the
end forced a priest into his room, but the priest was promptly
ejected by
the wrath of the dying man, and by the almost fierce resolve of
the wife
that no messenger of the creed he detested should trouble her
darling at
the last.
This scepticism of his was not wholly shared by his wife, who
held to the
notion that women should be "religious," while men
might philosophise as
they would; but it so deeply influenced her own intellectual
life that
she utterly rejected the most irrational dogmas of Christianity,
such as
eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement of Christ, the
doctrine that
faith is necessary to salvation, the equality of Christ with
God, the
infallibility of the Bible; she made morality of life, not
orthodoxy of
belief, her measure of "religion"; she was "a
Christian", in her own view
of the matter, but it was a Christian of the school of Jowett,
of
Colenso, and of Stanley. The latter writer had for her, in after
years,
the very strongest fascination, and I am not sure that his
"variegated
use of words", so fiercely condemned by Dr. Pusey, did not
exactly suit
her own turn of mind, which shrank back intellectually from the
crude
dogmas of orthodox Christianity, but clung poetically to the
artistic
side of religion, to its art and to its music, to the grandeur
of its
glorious fanes, and the solemnity of its stately ritual. She
detested the
meretricious show, the tinsel gaudiness, the bowing and
genuflecting, the
candles and the draperies, of Romanism, and of its pinchbeck
imitator
Ritualism; but I doubt whether she knew any keener pleasure than
to sit
in one of the carved stalls of Westminster Abbey, listening to
the
polished sweetness of Dean Stanley's exquisite eloquence; or to
the
thunder of the organ mingled with the voices of the white-robed
choristers, as the music rose and fell, as it pealed up to the
arched
roof and lost itself in the carven fretwork, or died away softly
among
the echoes of the chapels in which kings and saints and sages
lay
sleeping, enshrining in themselves the glories and the sorrows
of the
past.
To return to October, 1852. On the day of the funeral my elder
brother
and I were taken back to the house where my father lay dead, and
while my
brother went as chief mourner, poor little boy swamped in crape
and
miserable exceedingly, I sat in an upstairs room with my mother
and her
sisters; and still comes back to me her figure, seated on a
sofa, with
fixed white face and dull vacant eyes, counting the minutes till
the
funeral procession would have reached Kensal Green, and then
following in
mechanical fashion, prayer-book in hand, the service, stage by
stage,
until to my unspeakable terror, with the words, dully spoken,
"It is all
over", she fell back fainting. And here comes a curious
psychological
problem which has often puzzled me. Some weeks later she
resolved to go
and see her husband's grave. A relative who had been present at
the
funeral volunteered to guide her to the spot, but lost his way
in that
wilderness of graves. Another of the small party went off to
find one of
the officials and to enquire, and my mother said: "If you
will take me to
the chapel where the first part of the service was read, I will
find the
grave". To humor her whim, he led her thither, and, looking
round for a
moment or two, she started from the chapel, followed the path
along which
the corpse had been borne, and was standing by the newly-made
grave when
the official arrived to point it out. Her own explanation was
that she
had seen all the service; what is certain is, that she had never
been to
Kensal Green before, and that she walked steadily to the grave
from the
chapel. Whether the spot had been carefully described to her,
whether she
had heard others talking of its position or not, we could never
ascertain; she had no remembrance of any such description, and
the matter
always remained to us a problem. But after the lapse of years a
hundred
little things may have been forgotten which unconsciously served
as
guides at the time. She must have been, of course, at that time,
in a
state of abnormal nervous excitation, a state of which another
proof was
shortly afterwards given. The youngest of our little family was
a boy
about three years younger than myself, a very beautiful child,
blue-eyed
and golden haired--I have still a lock of his hair, of exquisite
pale
golden hue--and the little lad was passionately devoted to his
father. He
was always a delicate boy, and had I suppose, therefore, been
specially
petted, and he fretted continually for "papa". It is
probable that the
consumptive taint had touched him, for he pined steadily away,
with no
marked disease, during the winter months. One morning my mother
calmly
stated: "Alf is going to die". It was in vain that it
was urged on her
that with the spring strength would return to the child.
"No", she
persisted. "He was lying asleep in my arms last night, and
William came
to me and said that he wanted Alf with him, but that I might
keep the
other two." She had in her a strong strain of Celtic
superstition, and
thoroughly believed that this "vision"--a most natural
dream under the
circumstances--was a direct "warning", and that her
husband had come to
her to tell her of her approaching loss. This belief was, in her
eyes,
thoroughly justified by the little fellow's death in the
following March,
calling to the end for "Papa! papa!" My brother and I
were allowed to see
him just before he was placed in his coffin; I can see him
still, so
white and beautiful, with a black spot in the middle of the fair
waxen
forehead, and I remember the deadly cold which startled me when
I was
told to kiss my little brother. It was the first time that I had
touched
Death. That black spot made a curious impression on me, and long
afterwards, asking what had caused it, I was told that at the
moment
after his death my mother had passionately kissed the baby brow.
Pathetic
thought, that the mother's kiss of farewell should have been
marked by
the first sign of corruption on the child's face.
And now began my mother's time of struggle and of anxiety.
Hitherto,
since her marriage, she had known no money troubles, for her
husband was
earning a good income; he was apparently vigorous and well: no
thought of
anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed that he
left his
wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary distress. It
was not so.
I know nothing of the details, but the outcome of all was that
nothing
was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready
money. The
resolve to which, my mother came was characteristic. Two of her
husband's
relatives, Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her
son at a
good city school, and to start him in commercial life, using
their great
city influence to push him forward. But the young lad's father
and mother
had talked of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to
go to a
public school, and then to the University, and was to enter one
of the
"learned professions"--to take orders, the mother
wished; to go to the
Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more
earnestly
urged by my father than that Harry should receive the best
possible
education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last wish.
In her
eyes, a city school was not "the best possible
education", and the Irish
pride rebelled against the idea of her son not being "a
University man".
Many were the lectures poured out on the young widow's head
about her
"foolish pride", especially by the female members of
the Wood family; and
her persistence in her own way caused a considerable alienation
between
herself and them. But Western and William, though
half-disapproving,
remained her friends, and lent many a helping hand to her in her
first
difficult struggles. After much cogitation, she resolved that
the boy
should be educated at Harrow, where the fees are comparatively
low to
lads living in the town, and that he should go thence to Cambridge
or to
Oxford, as his tastes should direct. A bold scheme for a
penniless widow,
but carried out to the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate
body a more
resolute mind and will than that of my dear mother.
In a few months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in
Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow,
then, she
betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set
herself to
look for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond of
long words,
and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day my
mother related
with much amusement how he had told her that she was sure to get
on if
she worked hard. "Look at me!" he said swelling
visibly with importance;
"I was once a poor boy, without a penny of my own, and now
I am a
comfortable man, and have my submarine villa to go to every
evening".
That "submarine villa" was an object of amusement when
we passed it in
our walks for many a long day. "There is Mr. ----'s
submarine villa",
some one would say, laughing: and I, too, used to laugh merrily,
because
my elders did, though my understanding of the difference between
suburban
and submarine was on a par with that of the honest grocer.
My mother had fortunately found a boy, whose parents were glad
to place
him in her charge, of about the age of her own son, to educate
with him;
and by this means she was able to pay for a tutor, to prepare
the two
boys for school. The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of
serious
trouble to me, for it stuck out straight behind when we knelt
down to
family prayers--conduct which struck me as irreverent and
unbecoming, but
which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a year, my
mother
found a house which she thought would suit her scheme, namely,
to obtain
permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then Head Master of Harrow, to
take some
boys into her house, and so gain means of education for her own
son. Dr.
Vaughan, who must have been won by the gentle, strong, little
woman, from
that time forth became her earnest friend and helper; and to the
counsel
and active assistance both of himself and of his wife, was due
much of
the success that crowned her toil. He made only one condition in
granting
the permission she asked, and that was, that she should also
have in her
house one of the masters of the school, so that the boys should
not
suffer from the want of a house-tutor. This condition, of
course, she
readily accepted, and the arrangement lasted for ten years,
until after
her son had left school for Cambridge.
The house she took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and
replaced
by a hideous red-brick structure. It was very old and rambling,
rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the top
of
Hill, between the church and the school, and had once been the
vicarage
of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it was so far
removed
from the part of the village where all his work lay. The
drawing-room
opened by an old-fashioned half-window, half-door--which proved
a
constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new
frock I
always tore it on the bolt as I flew through it--into a large
garden
which sloped down one side of the hill, and was filled with the
most
delightful old trees, fir and laurel, may, mulberry, hazel,
apple, pear,
and damson, not to mention currant and gooseberry bushes
innumerable, and
large strawberry beds spreading down the sunny slopes. There was
not a
tree there that I did not climb, and one, a widespreading
laurel, was my private country house. I had there my bedroom and
my
sitting-rooms, my study, and my larder. The larder was supplied
by the
fruit-trees, from which I was free to pick as I would, and in
the study I
would sit for hours with some favorite book--Milton's
"Paradise Lost" the
chief favorite of all. The birds must often have felt startled,
when from
the small swinging form perching on a branch, came out in
childish tones
the "Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues,
powers", of Milton's
stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to
declaim
the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did
I pass in
Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and
"the Son",
Gabriel and Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side
of the
churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by
an old
wooden fence, over which clambered roses of every shade; never
was such a
garden for roses as that of the Old Vicarage. At the end of the
terrace
was a little summer-house, and in this a trap-door in the fence,
which
swung open and displayed one of the fairest views in England.
Sheer from
your feet downwards went the hill, and then far below stretched
the
wooded country till your eye reached the towers of Windsor
Castle, far
away on the horizon. It was the view at which Byron was never
tired of
gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close by--Byron's tomb,
as it is
still called--of which he wrote:
"Again I behold where for hours I have pondered,
As reclining, at eve,
on yon tombstone I lay,
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wandered,
To catch the last gleam
of the sun's setting ray."
Reader mine, if ever you go to Harrow, ask permission to enter
the old
garden, and try the effect of that sudden burst of beauty, as
you swing
back the small trap-door at the terrace end.
Into this house we moved on my eighth birthday, and for eleven
years it
was "home" to me, left always with regret, returned to
always with joy.
Almost immediately afterwards I left my mother for the first
time; for
one day, visiting a family who lived close by, I found a
stranger sitting
in the drawing-room, a lame lady with, a strong face, which
softened
marvellously as she smiled at the child who came dancing in; she
called
me to her presently, and took me on her lap and talked to me,
and on the
following day our friend came to see my mother, to ask if she
would let
me go away and be educated with this lady's niece, coming home
for the
holidays regularly, but leaving my education in her hands. At
first my
mother would not hear of it, for she and I scarcely ever left
each other;
my love for her was an idolatry, hers for me a devotion. [A
foolish
little story, about which I was unmercifully teased for years,
marked
that absolute idolatry of her, which has not yet faded from my
heart. In
tenderest rallying one day of the child who trotted after her
everywhere,
content to sit, or stand, or wait, if only she might touch hand or
dress
of "mamma," she said: "Little one (the name by
which she always called
me), if you cling to mamma in this way, I must really get a
string and
tie you to my apron, and how will you like that?" "O
mamma darling," came
the fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." And,
indeed, the tie of
love between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever
loosened it till
the sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed
to
slacken in the slightest degree.] But it was urged upon her that
the
advantages of education offered were such as no money could
purchase for
me; that it would be a disadvantage for me to grow up in a
houseful of
boys--and, in truth, I was as good a cricketer and climber as
the best of
them--that my mother would soon be obliged to send me to school,
unless
she accepted an offer which gave me every advantage of school
without its
disadvantages. At last she yielded, and it was decided that Miss
Marryat,
on returning home, should take me with her.
Miss Marryat--the favorite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous
novelist--was a maiden lady of large means. She had nursed her
brother
through the illness that ended in his death, and had been living
with her
mother at Wimbledon Park. On her mother's death she looked round
for work
which would make her useful in the world, and finding that one
of her
brothers had a large family of girls, she offered to take charge
of one
of them, and to educate her thoroughly. Chancing to come to
Harrow, my
good fortune threw me in her way, and she took a fancy to me and
thought
she would like to teach two little girls rather than one. Hence
her offer
to my mother.
Miss Marryat had a perfect genius for teaching, and took in it
the
greatest delight. From time to time she added another child to
our party,
sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl. At first, with Amy Marryat
and myself,
there was a little boy, Walter Powys, son of a clergyman with a
large
family, and him she trained for some years, and then sent him on
to
school admirably prepared. She chose "her children"--as
she loved to call
us--in very definite fashion. Each must be gently born and
gently
trained, but in such position that the education freely given
should be a
relief and aid to a slender parental purse. It was her delight
to seek
out and aid those on whom poverty presses most heavily, when the
need for
education for the children weighs on the proud and the poor.
"Auntie" we
all called her, for she thought "Miss Marryat" seemed
too cold and stiff.
She taught us everything herself except music, and for this she
had a
master, practising us in composition, in recitation, in reading
aloud
English and French, and later, German, devoting herself to
training us in
the soundest, most thorough fashion. No words of mine can tell
how much I
owe her, not only of knowledge, bit of that love of knowledge
which has
remained with me ever since as a constant spur to study.
Her method of teaching may be of interest to some, who desire to
train
children with the least pain, and the most enjoyment to the
little ones
themselves. First, we never used a spelling-book--that torment
of the
small child--nor an English grammar. But we wrote letters,
telling of the
things we had seen in our walks, or told again some story we had
read;
these childish compositions she would read over with us,
correcting all
faults of spelling, of grammar, of style, of cadence; a clumsy
sentence
would be read aloud, that we might hear how unmusical it
sounded; an
error in observation or expression pointed out. Then, as the
letters
recorded what we had seen the day before, the faculty of
observation was
drawn out and trained. "Oh, dear! I have nothing to
say!" would come from
a small child, hanging over a slate. "Did you not go out
for a walk
yesterday?" Auntie would question. "Yes", would
be sighed out; "but
there's nothing to say about it". "Nothing to say! And
you walked in the
lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes? You must use
your eyes
better to-day." Then there was a very favorite
"lesson", which proved an
excellent way of teaching spelling. We used to write out lists
of all the
words we could think of, which sounded the same but were
differently
spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night,"
and so on; and great was the
glory of the child who found the largest number. Our French lessons--as
the German later--included reading from the very first. On the
day on
which we began German we began reading Schiller's "Wilhelm
Tell," and the
verbs given to us to copy out were those that had occurred in
the
reading. We learned much by heart, but always things that in
themselves
were worthy to be learned. We were never given the dry questions
and
answers which lazy teachers so much affect. We were taught
history by one
reading aloud while the others worked--the boys as well as the
girls
learning the use of the needle. "It's like a girl to
sew," said a little
fellow, indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to
run after a
girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography
was learned
by painting skeleton maps--an exercise much delighted in by
small
fingers--and by putting together puzzle maps, in which countries
in the
map of a continent, or counties in the map of a country, were
always cut
out in their proper shapes. I liked big empires in those days;
there was
a solid satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a
large part
of the map was filled up thereby.
The only grammar that we ever learned as grammar was the Latin,
and that
not until composition had made us familiar with the use of the
rules
therein given. Auntie had a great horror of children learning by
rote
things they did not understand, and then fancying they knew
them. "What
do you mean by that expression, Annie?" she would ask me.
After feeble
attempts to explain, I would answer: "Indeed, Auntie, I
know in my own
head, but I can't explain". "Then, indeed, Annie, you
do not know in your
own head, or you could explain, so that I might know in my own
head." And
so a healthy habit was fostered of clearness of thought and of
expression. The Latin grammar was used because it was more
perfect than
the modern grammars, and served as a solid foundation for modern
languages.
Miss Marryat took a beautiful place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth,
in
Dorsetshire, on the borders of Devon, and there she lived for
some five
years, a centre of beneficence in the district. She started a
Sunday-school, and a Bible-class after a while for the lads too
old for
the school, who clamored for admission to her class in it. She
visited
the poor, taking help wherever she went, and sending food from
her own
table to the sick. It was characteristic of her that she would
never give
"scraps" to the poor, but would have a basin brought
in at dinner, and
would cut the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money
she rarely,
if ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself
to seek
permanent employment for anyone asking aid. Stern in rectitude
herself,
and iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her influence, whether
she was
feared or loved, was always for good. Of the strictest sect of
the
Evangelicals, she was an Evangelical. On the Sunday no books
were allowed
save the Bible or the "Sunday at Home"; but she would
try to make the day
bright by various little devices; by a walk with her in the
garden; by
the singing of hymns, always attractive to children; by telling
us
wonderful missionary stories of Moffat and Livingstone, whose
adventures
with savages and wild beasts were as exciting as any tale of
Mayne
Reid's. We used to learn passages from the Bible and hymns for
repetition; a favorite amusement was a "Bible puzzle",
such as a
description of some Bible scene, which was to be recognised by
the