Are childhood and youth indeed Vanity?
When Christian looks back upon her childhood at Mount
Music, it seems to her that the World, and Life, and
Time, could hardly have bettered it for her, however
they might have put their heads together over the
job.
All her memories are steeped in sunlight.
It was all fun and fights, and strawberries and dogs,
and donkey-riding, and hot evenings on the big river,
with the hum of flies in her ears, and Larry, hailing
her from the farther bank of the Ownashee, across
the stepping-stones. And whenever she thought
about the schoolroom, it was always warm and rather
jolly, especially in the Christmas holidays. They
used to have drawing competitions, of which Larry
was, of course, the promoter, in the old schoolroom,
during the long winter evenings. Larry always
had a pencil in his hand, and was renowned as an artist
of horses and hounds, and Finn’s wolf-dog, Bran,
besides wielding a biting pen as a caricaturist.
Christian could only compete in architectural designs
that demanded neatness and exactness, but Georgy, the
elder twin, had some skill in marine subjects, and,
since he was going to the “Britannia,”
arrogated to himself the position of being an authority
on shipping; so much so, indeed, that general satisfaction
was felt when he was, one evening, worsted by Christian.
The subject selected for competition was “A
Haunted Ship.”
“Where shall I put the ghost?”
Georgy debated, chewing the end of his pencil, with
his head on one side.
“In the shrouds, of course!” said Christian.
“Funny dog!” sneered Georgy,
who considered that his artistic efforts were no fit
subject for jesting. “You’d better
come and shove in one of your Midianites for me!”
Then Christian, with the disconcerting
swiftness of action, mental and physical, that was
peculiarly hers, snatched, in a flash, the mug of
painted-water from Larry’s elbow, and poured
its contents over Georgy’s fair bullet-head;
with which, and with a triumphing cry (learnt from
a County Cork kitchenmaid, and very fashionable in
the schoolroom) of “A-haadie!” she fled,
“lighter-footed than the fox,” and equally
subtle and daring.
Christian was not easily roused to
wrath, but when this occurred, youngest of the party
though she was, it was but rarely that victory did
not rest with her. Two subjects were marked dangerous
among these children, during the combative years of
“growing-up,” and were therefore specially
popular; of these, the one was Christian’s reputed
occult power, coupled with gibes based on that hymn
to which reference has been made; the other was Larry’s
religion.
To the Talbot-Lowry children, their
own religion was largely a matter of fetishes, with
fluctuating restrictions as to what might or might
not be done on Sundays, but they found Larry’s
a more stimulating subject. It was impossible
for them to refrain from speculations as to what Larry
said when he went to confession; equally impossible
not to propose to the prospective penitent an assortment
of sins to be avowed at his next shriving, even though
the suggestions seldom failed to provoke conflict
of the intensity usually associated with religious
warfare.
Lady Isabel, confronted with these
problems, fell back on the manuals of her own youth,
with their artless pronouncements on the Righteous,
the Wicked, their qualifications, their prospects;
and, since the manuals had an indisputable flair
for the subjects most likely to seize the attention
of the young, Lady Isabel was generally able to divert
her offspring’s attention from the Errors of
Rome, with digested narratives of “Adamaneve”
(pronounced as one word) and the Serpent, Balaam’s
Ass, Jonah’s Whale, and similar non-controversial
matters.
“Wiser people than you and me,
darlings,” she would say, with a slight stagger
in grammar, but none in orthodoxy, “have explained
it all for us
“Larry’s papa and mamma
didn’t quite think the same as we do, but we
needn’t think about that, my pet!”
“But, mother, Evans says that
the Pope ” appalling prognostications
as to the future of that dignitary would probably follow.
Unfortunate Lady Isabel! But
parents and guardians have, at least, the power of
the closure.
“We needn’t talk about
it now,” says the hard-pressed mother, “when
you’re grown up you will understand it all better
With Christian, however, this formula
was less efficacious than with her elder brothers
and sister. Her questioning, analysing, unwearying
brain ignored the closure, and evaded poor Lady Isabel’s
evasions. Her religious life had been singularly
vivacious, and the scope and variety of the petitions
that she nightly offered caused considerable embarrassment
to her mother. What was any good Church of England,
or Ireland, mamma to do when an infant of four years
implores its Deity:
“Make me to have a good, fat,
lively conscience, and even if God curses me, help
me not to mind a bit!”
The scandalised mamma decided that
extempore prayer must be discouraged, and seeking
out in one of the manuals a form of prayer of strictly
limited range, repressed all additions and emendations.
Obedient to the traditions of her
own youth, Lady Isabel, as her children successively
attained the mature age of six years, bestowed Bibles
upon them, but it was Christian, alone of the family,
that applied herself with any diligence to the study
of the Scriptures. She began with the Book of
Esther (in which she found a satisfaction that in
after life remained something of a bewilderment to
her), and thence, but this was a year or two later,
for no reason that can be assigned, she passed lightly
to the Book of Revelation. With it, it may be
said, the artistic side of her, that had leaped to
sympathy with Larry’s emotion over “Dark
Rosaleen” and “The Spirit of the Nation,”
awakened, and her artistic life began. That glittering,
prismatic chapter, that tells of the rainbow round
about the Throne, in sight like unto an emerald, and
the Sea of glass, like unto crystal, that was before
the Throne, and the thunderings and the voices, and
the Voice as it were a trumpet talking. Christian
read the chapter over and over again, for the sheer
glory of the beautiful words. She, also, knew
of Voices, and Music, that other people did not seem
to hear. She could understand, and could tremble
to those strange shouts, and trumpet-blasts, and thunderings.
The Pale Horse that happened after
the Fourth Seal was broken!
She would sit as still as if she were
frozen, while she thought of the Pale Horse coming
crashing through Dharrig Wood, with Death on his back,
and Hell following with him she always thought of him in that black wood of pine
trees
“Wake up, Christian!”
Miss Weyman, the governess, would say.
One of the Twins would hiss between
his teeth: “Christian, dost thou see them?”
Christian would feel a spiritual bump,
as though she had been flung off her chair on to the
schoolroom floor, and Miss Weyman (always enviously
spoken of by adjacent mammas as “that most sensible
little Englishwoman”) would say:
“I wonder how much you heard
of what I was reading! I wish I could see you
learning to have a little more concentration!”
Whereas, did the excellent Miss Weyman
only know it, a very little more concentration on
Christian’s part, and it is possible that she,
and Judith, and the Twins, might all have seen the
Pale Horse thundering past the schoolroom windows.
Stranger things have happened. The Indian rope
and basket trick, for instance.
“A most curious child a
perfect passion for animals, and so dreamy,
if you know what I mean,” Miss Weyman would say
to a comrade visitor. “And the things that
she seems to have learnt from the huntsman! But
really a nice little thing, and clever, too, though
a most erratic worker! Now, Judith ”
Miss Weyman felt there was some satisfaction in teaching
Judith. She could concentrate, if the comrade
visitor liked! Nothing was a difficulty to her!
And her memory! And her energy Miss Weyman freely admitted that Judith was
three years older than Christian, but still
In short, Judith was a credit to any
sensible little Englishwoman, but Christian had a
way of knowing nothing (as touching arithmetic, for
example), or too much (as touching Shakespeare and
the Book of Revelation), that implied considerable
independence as to the instructions of Miss Weyman,
and no sensible little Englishwoman could be expected
to enjoy that.