Collected Works of Frances Trollope, page 380
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIV
CHAPTER LV
CHAPTER LVI.
CHAPTER LVII.
CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXII,
CHAPTER LXIII.
Frances’ son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, was a prolific writer
CHAPTER I.
JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS.
[Extract from the journal of Miss Mary King, of Weldon Grange, Hertfordshire.]
JULY 7TH, 1820. — I have this day completed my twenty-eighth year. Three years ago I well remember thinking that I had reached the extremest limit of young maidenism, and consequently that I had fairly entered upon the confines of old ditto. I well remember too, that the idea was a painful one, and that it made me sad despite all my efforts to prevent it. In proof thereof, there stands the entry in my journal, at page 372, three volumes back, wherein I say, “I feel miserable because I am so old; and I am, and I ought to be, ashamed of myself for it.” Whereunto is added the pithy quotation of I know not whose words:
“If trifles like these
Your temper can tease,
What signifies all your great sense?”
And this self-reproof, as I presume, did myself much good — for here I am, three years older, noting the same fact, aggravated by three additional years, without any feeling of sadness whatever. On the contrary, instead of fancying that my youth is past, I am quite conscious — too triumphantly conscious perhaps, of being in the very highest prime and vigour of existence. When I was younger, I was less so.
If I were a preacher, with a female congregation sitting under me, as the elect call it, I would honestly do my best to impress upon them the folly, the danger, nay, the certain mischief of persuading themselves that their days of greatest power are their days of girlish youth.
This is a great mistake. In nine hundred and ninety eases out of a million, no female reaches her period of greatest power till she has passed her girlish bloom.
August 2nd, 1820. — The last twenty-five days of this, my faithful journal, are the most interesting of any of the events which I have as yet recorded — at least the perusal of them is the most interesting to me.
Why is this so, Mary King?
Perhaps my style improves as I advance in life. I am quite sure that my intellect does, ergo my manner of writing ought to improve also.
Will not this do by way of an explanation?
No, Mary King, it will not.
What will it do then?
The truth, Mary King, and the truth is that there is not a single page of the last twenty-five days’ journal in which the name of John Anderson does not appear, and sometimes, I verily believe, half-a-dozen times over.
Of course, this clever discovery, together with this frank avowal of it, amounts to a memorandum that I have, on or before the 2nd August, 1820, fallen in love with John Anderson.
Is it really so? Is John Anderson my jo?
No, verily! Let me not lay that flattering unction to my soul. The young man is as guiltless of having made love to me, as is the babe unborn.
And how, Mary King, shall you like reading these pages of your journal some dozen years hence? Do you in your heart believe that there is any chance of your then being Mrs. John Anderson?
No, you do not.
And why?
Is it because you do not in your heart believe that John Anderson does not like you as much as you like him? Is that the reason?
No. It is not the reason; for in my heart of hearts I do believe that he likes me very nearly as much as I like him; but I believe also that he has most firmly resolved not to tell me so.
Here we have been, during the few last happy weeks, meeting each other at every house in the neighbourhood, walking together, dancing together, and oh! for everlasting talking together, but never has he yet found an opportunity for hinting that he should like to have me for a wife.
Nevertheless, it certainly requires no very flattering self-delusion to make me perceive that every tune he comes into a room where I am, his first object is to get near me.
If I were pretty, only tolerably pretty, I should think nothing of this — for I have for the last dozen years of my life, been very fully aware of the fact that not one young man in five hundred sees a pretty girl without showing in some way or other that he is inclined to take notice of her, and that there is not one in a thousand who does not make his desired avoidance of an ugly one rather more conspicuous still. And therefore it is that this constantly seeing and knowing that John Anderson seeks me in preference to all my pretty neighbours, leads me to think that he is as near to loving me as I am to loving him.
But though I am pretty sure of the fact, I am equally so that he has some excellent good reason for not confessing it to me.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Sept. 9th, 1820. — Both hopes and fears are all over now! John Anderson has left Hertfordshire, and before the end of the next month he will have left England too, being about to establish himself in India.
It was only a few days before he left the country that I knew a word about his having any hope or intention of going to India; but as soon as the thing was settled, he told me of it himself. He did not say a word however about loving me, yet still I do not believe that I was mistaken when I thought he liked me.
My opinion is that he did not think it right to say anything about love, because he was not rich enough to say anything about marriage. I heard our good clergyman say to Mrs. Johnstone that he was very glad to hear of Anderson’s appointment, for he believed he had nothing else to depend upon, and that he was an excellent, good fellow. And I dare say he is an excellent, good fellow, and that his never having made love to me in words is a proof of it. It is my fault, I suppose, if the system did not answer quite so well as he intended it should.
However, I am not going to break my heart for John Anderson. You would not approve that species of devotion, Mary King.
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Extract from the journal of Mr. John Anderson. “Prince William Henry,” Indiaman. At Sea.
Oct. 30th, 1820. — That page of my life’s history is finished! I am glad it records nothing worse. Yet it might have recorded something better. In the selfsame hour in which I perceived that Mary King took pleasure in listening to me, in that selfsame hour I ought to have turned away and sought her conversation no more. And I should have done so, I am sure I should have done so, had she been a pretty girl; but she was not a pretty girl, and as I talked to her with a full persuasion that there was no danger of my falling in love with her, I thought there could be no danger of her falling in love with me. But feeling, as I now do, that I was most lamentably mistaken in my own case, I cannot help fearing that I may have been mistaken in hers also. And if so F — why then I have left a thorn in the heart of Mary King.
I wish we had never met! But there is little wisdom, and less piety in the wish, and she would be the first to say so. The time may come to both of us perhaps, when we shall each remember the other with more of pleasure than of pain. But had Mary King been a poor girl, instead of a rich one, I would not have left England without asking her to leave it with me.
* * * * * * *
[Extract from a Madras newspaper.]
Married at Madras, on the 5th April, 1824, John Anderson, Esq., junior partner in the banking-house of Messrs. Moxley and Anderson, to Amy, daughter to Colonel Shirberg, of the Hon. E. I. Company’s Service.
CHAPTER II.
AND now, gentle reader, we start fair, for you know pretty nearly as much about the first thirty-two years of my heroine’s life, as I do myself; but I have known a good deal about her since, and as I think it possible that some of the adventures which subsequently befel her may amuse you, I will proceed to relate all the most remarkable circumstances concerning her which have come to my knowledge.
For the nine years which immediately followed the last entry which I have copied from her journal, nothing, however, occurred to her of much apparent importance, although it was probably during that time that her character formed itself, and acquired the degree of strong individuality which I have persuaded myself is sufficiently remarkable to be described with a fair chance of creating in others, something of the same interest which it has excited in me.
Mary King lost her mother while still too young to mourn for her. She would probably have been a very different person had this event occurred twenty years later; for this mother is said to have been a very clever, strong-minded woman, and the influence and companionship of such a parent would doubtless have been very beneficial to her daughter. For decidedly the chief defects in Mary King’s character arose from her having been too much accustomed, almost from infancy indeed, to depend upon herself and her own resources upon all occasions which require judgment and decision, either for the regulation of her conduct or her opinions.
Her father had a multitude of good qualities, but firmness of character was not among them; moreover he was not only one of the weakest, but one of the most indolent of men, and had his intellect enabled him to imagine the most perfect system of education that it was possible for a motherless girl to receive, this indolence would have for ever prevented his bringing it into action.
So in fact, Mary King, as she often said herself, never received any education at all, save and except the being taught to read, write, and achieve sums in the three first rules of arithmetic; all of which she acquired with very tolerable success by means of a daily lesson of one hour long from the clerk of the parish.
But the said clerk, being an honest man as well as a good schoolmaster, very solemnly announced to her papa on the day that Miss Mary completed her twelfth year, that the young lady had got all out of him that he should ever be able to teach her; for that she could read, write, and cipher, quite as well as he could himself. Whereupon the good gentleman paid him his last quarter’s account; and so ended the tuition of Mary King.
The daily lesson had certainly never been a very heavy task for the little girl, nevertheless she was very proud of the perfect independence which followed its dismissal. The house, considering who was the master of it, was singularly well stocked with books; for the late Mrs. King was the only child of a somewhat bookish father, and having inherited the whole of his rather large and very miscellaneous library, lived just long enough, poor lady, to see it all conveniently deposited on shelves in a good-sized room up-stairs, which was singularly quiet and out of the way; and of this room, Miss Mary took undisputed possession on the identical birthday whereon her education was declared complete.
Had it been the handsomest room in the house, her doting father would with equal facility have yielded the exclusive possession of it to her if she had asked for it; but in that case it would scarcely have become so essentially her own, — For it is highly probable that the pleasure of looking at her, might have then so far conquered his indolence, as to have tempted him to walk from the breakfast-parlour to the room opposite; but the effort necessary for conveying his person up thirty slight, narrow, crooked, twisting stairs, to the nest which his dear wife had lined, as he jocosely expressed it, with dead men’s brains, was quite out of the question; and it was therefore with a perfection of seclusion which many a professional bookworm might have envied, that Mary King passed the greater part of her life, from the early age of twelve years, in reading every book that she could get hold of.
Nor was her own the only library to which she had free access. At the cheap rate of being called “the oddest girl that ever lived,” she obtained the privilege of borrowing books wherever she could find them; and from the time she completed her twenty-first year, — which important period was dignified by the increase of her allowance from twenty to fifty pounds per annum, — she not only indulged herself by the purchase of many precious volumes; but, by means of subscribing to a London library, obtained the reading of many more.
It is probable that if a mouse were shut up with uninterrupted access to the very largest cheese that ever was made, its constant nibblings would in time produce a greater consumption of the article than would be considered possible by any one who had not watched the marvellous result of ceaseless perseverance. And in like manner, the amount of Mary Kind’s reading was considerably greater than any mere ordinary observer ‘would conceive possible.
Nor was her memory at all inferior to her perseverance, either in vigour, or activity. What she read not only became her own, but was always ready for use; a peculiarity which arose partly from a habit, as she went on, of referring to facts that had been laid up, and thoughts that had been generated by former study, and partly from the unmixed nature of her occupations.
In the case of Mary King and her father, as in many others, it was very evident that the marked dissimilarity of character between them was far from having any tendency to lessen their mutual affection; on the contrary, it seemed only to increase it. The love of Mr. King for his daughter was that of a peculiarly helpless person for a being who seemed sent into the world for the express purpose of supplying all his wants and all his wishes; and who, moreover, performed this filial task in a manner which made his dependence on her as much a pleasure to him as it was a necessity; while on her side, her attachment to him was of that tenderest kind which a woman’s heart is pretty sure to feel for one who loves, trusts, and is dependent upon her.
But this sort of dependence on one side, and support on the other, though there is much that is beautiful in the union it produces, cannot go on for years, without producing’ marked effects on the characters of both parties. The father could hardly fail to become too completely managed, or the daughter to become too completely managing; but although a few harmless jokes upon the subject might occasionally pass among their neighbours, the affection between the manager and the managed was never weakened for a single instant by any consciousness on either side that their mode of going on together was not exactly what it ought to be. Nay, it may very reasonably be doubted whether they could have loved each other so devotedly, had any feature of their intercourse been changed.
The great defect of Mr. King’s character was the indolence above alluded to, and which, from being partly constitutional and partly habitual, had so completely taken possession of him, as to render even the effort of forming an opinion for himself an intolerable bore, and he accordingly avoided it with as much instinctive dislike as other men feel for a smoky chimney or a scolding wife.
The chief fault in his daughter’s character was, as will readily be understood, of a very different quality. If he was too yielding, she was too tough. If he relied upon himself not at all, she, generally speaking, relied too much upon herself, and upon nobody else. Her own mind was so much the result of her own labour, that she had the same sort of confidence in it that a pains-taking workman might have in a tool of his own formation; so that while the father rarely felt quite certain as to what he most wished to do, and never certain at all as to how it should be done, the daughter rarely knew what doubt, either in the one case or the other, could mean.
All this was no more than perfectly natural when then respective dispositions and the circumstances in which they were placed, are taken into consideration. The strange and puzzling part of the case is, that when the most important question of Mary King’s life was to be decided, it was the father, and not the daughter, who decided it.
CHAPTER III.
JUST about the time that his daughter entered her fiftieth year, Mr. King began to confess to himself, though he confessed it to nobody else, that he felt as if he were beginning to grow old. He could still indeed walk stoutly for a mile or two without any other assistance than that of a stick; could still eat a hearty dinner, and enjoy a glass or two of good old port after it; yet, nevertheless, he had somehow or other got it into his head that he was not so young as he had been; till at length having remained in this suspicious state of mind for nearly a twelvemonth, he at once, and rather suddenly, became convinced that he certainly was old, and, consequently, that it was highly probable that he should not live very long.
But although he but rarely forgot this, after he had once fully made up his mind to believe it, he carefully avoided mentioning the subject to his daughter, for he thought it would make her unhappy; and he had the greatest possible dislike to the idea of her being unhappy in any way. But although he did not talk about it, he never thought for long together about anything else; for the most anxious doubts and fears were perpetually tormenting him as to what would become of her and her money, when she should no longer have any man belonging to her.
This painfully-awakened anxiety had its origin in his strong conviction that men only were capable of taking care of the money concerns of a family, and of all the affairs in which this important medium of intercourse between human beings was the agent.
Mr. King, generally speaking, was not a man of strong convictions on any subject, and many people found it possible, and his daughter always perfectly easy, when she differed from him, to make him say (after he had taken the trouble of uttering two or three sentences in support of his own opinion), “Well, I don’t doubt you are right. I have never given myself the trouble of thinking much about it.”
But not so on the subject of money; and this difference probably arose from the great practical facility with which the value of the implement called money, becomes impressed upon the mind of all human beings who receive the breath of life in the lands where it is known.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIV
CHAPTER LV
CHAPTER LVI.
CHAPTER LVII.
CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXII,
CHAPTER LXIII.
Frances’ son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, was a prolific writer
CHAPTER I.
JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS.
[Extract from the journal of Miss Mary King, of Weldon Grange, Hertfordshire.]
JULY 7TH, 1820. — I have this day completed my twenty-eighth year. Three years ago I well remember thinking that I had reached the extremest limit of young maidenism, and consequently that I had fairly entered upon the confines of old ditto. I well remember too, that the idea was a painful one, and that it made me sad despite all my efforts to prevent it. In proof thereof, there stands the entry in my journal, at page 372, three volumes back, wherein I say, “I feel miserable because I am so old; and I am, and I ought to be, ashamed of myself for it.” Whereunto is added the pithy quotation of I know not whose words:
“If trifles like these
Your temper can tease,
What signifies all your great sense?”
And this self-reproof, as I presume, did myself much good — for here I am, three years older, noting the same fact, aggravated by three additional years, without any feeling of sadness whatever. On the contrary, instead of fancying that my youth is past, I am quite conscious — too triumphantly conscious perhaps, of being in the very highest prime and vigour of existence. When I was younger, I was less so.
If I were a preacher, with a female congregation sitting under me, as the elect call it, I would honestly do my best to impress upon them the folly, the danger, nay, the certain mischief of persuading themselves that their days of greatest power are their days of girlish youth.
This is a great mistake. In nine hundred and ninety eases out of a million, no female reaches her period of greatest power till she has passed her girlish bloom.
August 2nd, 1820. — The last twenty-five days of this, my faithful journal, are the most interesting of any of the events which I have as yet recorded — at least the perusal of them is the most interesting to me.
Why is this so, Mary King?
Perhaps my style improves as I advance in life. I am quite sure that my intellect does, ergo my manner of writing ought to improve also.
Will not this do by way of an explanation?
No, Mary King, it will not.
What will it do then?
The truth, Mary King, and the truth is that there is not a single page of the last twenty-five days’ journal in which the name of John Anderson does not appear, and sometimes, I verily believe, half-a-dozen times over.
Of course, this clever discovery, together with this frank avowal of it, amounts to a memorandum that I have, on or before the 2nd August, 1820, fallen in love with John Anderson.
Is it really so? Is John Anderson my jo?
No, verily! Let me not lay that flattering unction to my soul. The young man is as guiltless of having made love to me, as is the babe unborn.
And how, Mary King, shall you like reading these pages of your journal some dozen years hence? Do you in your heart believe that there is any chance of your then being Mrs. John Anderson?
No, you do not.
And why?
Is it because you do not in your heart believe that John Anderson does not like you as much as you like him? Is that the reason?
No. It is not the reason; for in my heart of hearts I do believe that he likes me very nearly as much as I like him; but I believe also that he has most firmly resolved not to tell me so.
Here we have been, during the few last happy weeks, meeting each other at every house in the neighbourhood, walking together, dancing together, and oh! for everlasting talking together, but never has he yet found an opportunity for hinting that he should like to have me for a wife.
Nevertheless, it certainly requires no very flattering self-delusion to make me perceive that every tune he comes into a room where I am, his first object is to get near me.
If I were pretty, only tolerably pretty, I should think nothing of this — for I have for the last dozen years of my life, been very fully aware of the fact that not one young man in five hundred sees a pretty girl without showing in some way or other that he is inclined to take notice of her, and that there is not one in a thousand who does not make his desired avoidance of an ugly one rather more conspicuous still. And therefore it is that this constantly seeing and knowing that John Anderson seeks me in preference to all my pretty neighbours, leads me to think that he is as near to loving me as I am to loving him.
But though I am pretty sure of the fact, I am equally so that he has some excellent good reason for not confessing it to me.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Sept. 9th, 1820. — Both hopes and fears are all over now! John Anderson has left Hertfordshire, and before the end of the next month he will have left England too, being about to establish himself in India.
It was only a few days before he left the country that I knew a word about his having any hope or intention of going to India; but as soon as the thing was settled, he told me of it himself. He did not say a word however about loving me, yet still I do not believe that I was mistaken when I thought he liked me.
My opinion is that he did not think it right to say anything about love, because he was not rich enough to say anything about marriage. I heard our good clergyman say to Mrs. Johnstone that he was very glad to hear of Anderson’s appointment, for he believed he had nothing else to depend upon, and that he was an excellent, good fellow. And I dare say he is an excellent, good fellow, and that his never having made love to me in words is a proof of it. It is my fault, I suppose, if the system did not answer quite so well as he intended it should.
However, I am not going to break my heart for John Anderson. You would not approve that species of devotion, Mary King.
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Extract from the journal of Mr. John Anderson. “Prince William Henry,” Indiaman. At Sea.
Oct. 30th, 1820. — That page of my life’s history is finished! I am glad it records nothing worse. Yet it might have recorded something better. In the selfsame hour in which I perceived that Mary King took pleasure in listening to me, in that selfsame hour I ought to have turned away and sought her conversation no more. And I should have done so, I am sure I should have done so, had she been a pretty girl; but she was not a pretty girl, and as I talked to her with a full persuasion that there was no danger of my falling in love with her, I thought there could be no danger of her falling in love with me. But feeling, as I now do, that I was most lamentably mistaken in my own case, I cannot help fearing that I may have been mistaken in hers also. And if so F — why then I have left a thorn in the heart of Mary King.
I wish we had never met! But there is little wisdom, and less piety in the wish, and she would be the first to say so. The time may come to both of us perhaps, when we shall each remember the other with more of pleasure than of pain. But had Mary King been a poor girl, instead of a rich one, I would not have left England without asking her to leave it with me.
* * * * * * *
[Extract from a Madras newspaper.]
Married at Madras, on the 5th April, 1824, John Anderson, Esq., junior partner in the banking-house of Messrs. Moxley and Anderson, to Amy, daughter to Colonel Shirberg, of the Hon. E. I. Company’s Service.
CHAPTER II.
AND now, gentle reader, we start fair, for you know pretty nearly as much about the first thirty-two years of my heroine’s life, as I do myself; but I have known a good deal about her since, and as I think it possible that some of the adventures which subsequently befel her may amuse you, I will proceed to relate all the most remarkable circumstances concerning her which have come to my knowledge.
For the nine years which immediately followed the last entry which I have copied from her journal, nothing, however, occurred to her of much apparent importance, although it was probably during that time that her character formed itself, and acquired the degree of strong individuality which I have persuaded myself is sufficiently remarkable to be described with a fair chance of creating in others, something of the same interest which it has excited in me.
Mary King lost her mother while still too young to mourn for her. She would probably have been a very different person had this event occurred twenty years later; for this mother is said to have been a very clever, strong-minded woman, and the influence and companionship of such a parent would doubtless have been very beneficial to her daughter. For decidedly the chief defects in Mary King’s character arose from her having been too much accustomed, almost from infancy indeed, to depend upon herself and her own resources upon all occasions which require judgment and decision, either for the regulation of her conduct or her opinions.
Her father had a multitude of good qualities, but firmness of character was not among them; moreover he was not only one of the weakest, but one of the most indolent of men, and had his intellect enabled him to imagine the most perfect system of education that it was possible for a motherless girl to receive, this indolence would have for ever prevented his bringing it into action.
So in fact, Mary King, as she often said herself, never received any education at all, save and except the being taught to read, write, and achieve sums in the three first rules of arithmetic; all of which she acquired with very tolerable success by means of a daily lesson of one hour long from the clerk of the parish.
But the said clerk, being an honest man as well as a good schoolmaster, very solemnly announced to her papa on the day that Miss Mary completed her twelfth year, that the young lady had got all out of him that he should ever be able to teach her; for that she could read, write, and cipher, quite as well as he could himself. Whereupon the good gentleman paid him his last quarter’s account; and so ended the tuition of Mary King.
The daily lesson had certainly never been a very heavy task for the little girl, nevertheless she was very proud of the perfect independence which followed its dismissal. The house, considering who was the master of it, was singularly well stocked with books; for the late Mrs. King was the only child of a somewhat bookish father, and having inherited the whole of his rather large and very miscellaneous library, lived just long enough, poor lady, to see it all conveniently deposited on shelves in a good-sized room up-stairs, which was singularly quiet and out of the way; and of this room, Miss Mary took undisputed possession on the identical birthday whereon her education was declared complete.
Had it been the handsomest room in the house, her doting father would with equal facility have yielded the exclusive possession of it to her if she had asked for it; but in that case it would scarcely have become so essentially her own, — For it is highly probable that the pleasure of looking at her, might have then so far conquered his indolence, as to have tempted him to walk from the breakfast-parlour to the room opposite; but the effort necessary for conveying his person up thirty slight, narrow, crooked, twisting stairs, to the nest which his dear wife had lined, as he jocosely expressed it, with dead men’s brains, was quite out of the question; and it was therefore with a perfection of seclusion which many a professional bookworm might have envied, that Mary King passed the greater part of her life, from the early age of twelve years, in reading every book that she could get hold of.
Nor was her own the only library to which she had free access. At the cheap rate of being called “the oddest girl that ever lived,” she obtained the privilege of borrowing books wherever she could find them; and from the time she completed her twenty-first year, — which important period was dignified by the increase of her allowance from twenty to fifty pounds per annum, — she not only indulged herself by the purchase of many precious volumes; but, by means of subscribing to a London library, obtained the reading of many more.
It is probable that if a mouse were shut up with uninterrupted access to the very largest cheese that ever was made, its constant nibblings would in time produce a greater consumption of the article than would be considered possible by any one who had not watched the marvellous result of ceaseless perseverance. And in like manner, the amount of Mary Kind’s reading was considerably greater than any mere ordinary observer ‘would conceive possible.
Nor was her memory at all inferior to her perseverance, either in vigour, or activity. What she read not only became her own, but was always ready for use; a peculiarity which arose partly from a habit, as she went on, of referring to facts that had been laid up, and thoughts that had been generated by former study, and partly from the unmixed nature of her occupations.
In the case of Mary King and her father, as in many others, it was very evident that the marked dissimilarity of character between them was far from having any tendency to lessen their mutual affection; on the contrary, it seemed only to increase it. The love of Mr. King for his daughter was that of a peculiarly helpless person for a being who seemed sent into the world for the express purpose of supplying all his wants and all his wishes; and who, moreover, performed this filial task in a manner which made his dependence on her as much a pleasure to him as it was a necessity; while on her side, her attachment to him was of that tenderest kind which a woman’s heart is pretty sure to feel for one who loves, trusts, and is dependent upon her.
But this sort of dependence on one side, and support on the other, though there is much that is beautiful in the union it produces, cannot go on for years, without producing’ marked effects on the characters of both parties. The father could hardly fail to become too completely managed, or the daughter to become too completely managing; but although a few harmless jokes upon the subject might occasionally pass among their neighbours, the affection between the manager and the managed was never weakened for a single instant by any consciousness on either side that their mode of going on together was not exactly what it ought to be. Nay, it may very reasonably be doubted whether they could have loved each other so devotedly, had any feature of their intercourse been changed.
The great defect of Mr. King’s character was the indolence above alluded to, and which, from being partly constitutional and partly habitual, had so completely taken possession of him, as to render even the effort of forming an opinion for himself an intolerable bore, and he accordingly avoided it with as much instinctive dislike as other men feel for a smoky chimney or a scolding wife.
The chief fault in his daughter’s character was, as will readily be understood, of a very different quality. If he was too yielding, she was too tough. If he relied upon himself not at all, she, generally speaking, relied too much upon herself, and upon nobody else. Her own mind was so much the result of her own labour, that she had the same sort of confidence in it that a pains-taking workman might have in a tool of his own formation; so that while the father rarely felt quite certain as to what he most wished to do, and never certain at all as to how it should be done, the daughter rarely knew what doubt, either in the one case or the other, could mean.
All this was no more than perfectly natural when then respective dispositions and the circumstances in which they were placed, are taken into consideration. The strange and puzzling part of the case is, that when the most important question of Mary King’s life was to be decided, it was the father, and not the daughter, who decided it.
CHAPTER III.
JUST about the time that his daughter entered her fiftieth year, Mr. King began to confess to himself, though he confessed it to nobody else, that he felt as if he were beginning to grow old. He could still indeed walk stoutly for a mile or two without any other assistance than that of a stick; could still eat a hearty dinner, and enjoy a glass or two of good old port after it; yet, nevertheless, he had somehow or other got it into his head that he was not so young as he had been; till at length having remained in this suspicious state of mind for nearly a twelvemonth, he at once, and rather suddenly, became convinced that he certainly was old, and, consequently, that it was highly probable that he should not live very long.
But although he but rarely forgot this, after he had once fully made up his mind to believe it, he carefully avoided mentioning the subject to his daughter, for he thought it would make her unhappy; and he had the greatest possible dislike to the idea of her being unhappy in any way. But although he did not talk about it, he never thought for long together about anything else; for the most anxious doubts and fears were perpetually tormenting him as to what would become of her and her money, when she should no longer have any man belonging to her.
This painfully-awakened anxiety had its origin in his strong conviction that men only were capable of taking care of the money concerns of a family, and of all the affairs in which this important medium of intercourse between human beings was the agent.
Mr. King, generally speaking, was not a man of strong convictions on any subject, and many people found it possible, and his daughter always perfectly easy, when she differed from him, to make him say (after he had taken the trouble of uttering two or three sentences in support of his own opinion), “Well, I don’t doubt you are right. I have never given myself the trouble of thinking much about it.”
But not so on the subject of money; and this difference probably arose from the great practical facility with which the value of the implement called money, becomes impressed upon the mind of all human beings who receive the breath of life in the lands where it is known.
