The Adventure of Living : a Subjective Autobiography

or she is brought up. And of those influences, upstairs or downstairs, none, of course, is so potent as that of the nurse. That is what Goethe would call one of the secret

ays with a high distinction. She began as nurse; she next became cook; then housekeeper; then reverted for a time to nurse, and then became something more than housekeeper because she ruled over the nursery as well as over the kitchen, the store-room, and the housemaids' room. But whatever her name in the household, an

complexion was swarthy, her hair was black, and her eyes dark and full of an eager and scintillating brightness which made her face light up and change with every mood of her mind and radiate a vivid intelligence. If anyone who knew her was asked to state

would pace up and down a room, turning at each wall like a lion in a cage, in a way which I have only seen one other person effect with equal spirit and unconsciousness. That was an eminent statesman, in the moment of great political crisis. Her nature was so eager and

In truth, she was an example of Sir Thomas Browne's dictum that we live by an invisible flame within us. As a matter of fact, her flame was anything but invisible. It was remarkably visible. I

. Salome Leaker,-"

anhood, and taught herself by pure force of her will, adopting, curiously enough, what would now be described as the Montessori method. She opened books and read them somehow or other till she understood the meaning of the words. Her letters her mother had taught her. She often told me that nobody had taught her to read. When she h

"Junius," who had begun to exercise a great influence over my rhetorical instincts. It was as natural to consult her on a point of literature as on one of d

ok at what was in them, and often got through a page or two with my duster in my hand. Once I took down a volume marked "Junius," and read a page or two, and as I read I began to feel as if I was dru

is, his style does affect one like wine. That is certainly how it affected, and still affects, me. Even at an age when I did not really know much more about the Duke of Grafton than did Leaker, and probably cared less, I had got the peroration of the first letter to the Duke of Grafton by heart. I used to walk up and down the terrace, or across the meadows that led to the waterfall, sho

me back the reverbera

al crack of the whip ov

f declamation will be s

t in fiction, will f

travelled, as did all people with slender means in those days, in the waggon. These vehicles proceeded at the rate of about three or four miles an hour. All she could tell about her journey was that she lay in the straw, in the bottom of the waggon, and r

hone a glor

banner brig

ic sud

, it must not be supposed that she was indifferent to other forms of art. Anything beautiful in nature or art made a profound impression upon her. When Leaker first went to Paris, on our way to Pau or

most lovely thing in the world. I never thought to see anything so beautiful,

sent to look at. Later on, when we took to going to France regularly for my mother's health, she every year did her homage to the Venus

verse. She was as intense an admirer of Shakespeare as was my father, and a greater lover of Milton. Shakespeare she lived on, including, curiously enough, Timon of Athens, who was a great favourite. When any lazy member of my family wanted to find a particular line or passage in Shakespeare, he or she would go to Le

see her now, with her wrinkled brown face, her cap with white streamers awry over her black hair beginning to turn grey. In front of her was a book, propped up against the rim of a tin candlestick shaped like a small basin. In it was a dip candle and a pair of snuffers. That was how nursery light was provided in the later 'sixties and even in the early 'seventies. As she sat bent forward, declaiming the most soul-shaking things in Shakespeare bet

d that she would not like Wordsworth. As a matter of fact, she loved him and thoroughly understood him and his philosophy of life. She did not merely read the lyric and elegiac poems like Ruth, but had gone through and enjoyed The Excursion

stern Tales or the sentimentalities of Childe Harold, but by a thorough appreciation of Don Juan. Her taste, indeed, wa

is on th

rque is o

I go, To

ouble heal

e, of course, loved the last verse and implanted it deeply in

r for those

e for thos

ver sky's

eart for e

ly she had a heart for every

out enthusiasm and with the trenchant remark that it made her feel as if she was in an overheated conservatory, too full of highly-scented flowers to be pleasant! She was not in the least shocked by Swinburne, and

making quotations, they must blame Mrs. Leaker, for when at her best she threw quotations from the English Classics around her in a kind of hailstorm. Some of the lines that had stuck in her mind were very curious, though she had forgotten where they came from. One specially amusing p

that n

that is

his hour, the

asked, but

ut with some big social scandal or the coming to financial grief of s

s an

g for my y

er literary taste but because it was exceedingly charact

e broom, the

ent poet

it is on s

t ease a

more with her wonderful old sea-stories, especially of the press-gang, which she could almost remember in operation. Her father was, as she

remely exciting. She used to sing, or rather "croon" to us some of the

a gay you

him did not

for mutiny

him were

hat made one's blood run cold, "Men have been hung at the yarda

eaker, when about the age of sixty, brought her old mother, who was then ninety-four or ninety-five, to whom she was devoted, to live in one of the cottages at Sutton, the

en in the world at the same time as a lad who had been at Blenheim in his eighteenth year. Old Mrs. Leaker was, I calculated, born about 1774. She would therefore have been six years old in 1780. But a man who was ninety-five in 1780 would have been born in 1685, and s

, the two little MS. books which she wrote contain some very remarkable and characteristic pieces of writing, and show the woman as she was. Although in her day she had read plenty of autobiographies, she makes no attempt to imitate them, or to write in a pedantic or literary style. As far as she can, she shows us what she reall

and characteristic exord

fty years. I was a nurse and no mother could have loved her children more than I loved

mother, whom the old nur

eries which I often think of in these days, when I note the foolish, the de

e always tried to make her get white bread, not knowing that she could not properly afford it. Many a time (so she told me in after-years) she made her supper off a turnip rather than let her children go hungry to bed. The cheapest sugar was then tenpence a

it did not kill the girl's joy in lif

t wrong to read such books. She told me that when she was married she was given a new edition of all the Elizabethan plays, twenty-five volumes, beautifully bound. (I heard afterwards that a new edition was published at that time.) However, about the year 1818 she thought it right to burn them, although she was so fond of them. Yet when I was sitting at work with her she would tell me tales out of the plays. How vexed I used to be with her for burning them, poor dear lov

saw it in operation, people not very much older told her of how they we

tell her heartrending s

ful things done by the press-gang in the name of

orm of national service ever invented, and I think with pride that my collateral ancestor, Captain George St. Loe (temp. William & Mary) w

nshire port give the lie to those foolish, ignorant, and shameless people who allege that because people are poor they cannot be expected to have any ide

w it struck Le

hings 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

did her daughter. The supernatural gained fresh interest from her skilful story-telling, and the art of the racon

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 t

s fly, and heard the noise of the chopping. She used to show the apron, which she nev

that came up from the sea, made a deep impression upon my mind, though not in any sense a haunting or unp

and curious, and though they cannot be set out her

e and black, as Dartmouth. My mother was, for her time and station, p

ld age that had outlived contemporaries as well as bodily faculties. When, however, the friends of another generation were with her, she nev

light in comparison with want of sight comes back as heavily as ever? How I wish I coul

nurse's surprise at finding that smaller troubles, which for a while wer

s come back to me, a lone old woman who longs for, and yet is afraid of death. If I could only be sur

e Lost, and how often have we

pens wide, finding, as Aristotle would have said, relief and even comfo

ppier moods in which we can feel the magic of spring laying ho

the common yellow ones, then some coloured ones, and did ever a Queen prize jewels as I did those coloured flowers? But the joy in them only lasted a little while. I would next see some white ones, and then the coloured ones were thrown away, and I would set to work to gather the pale ones. Oh, how beautiful they looked! I