Tennyson and His Friends
Various
9781465519962
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY EARLY LIFE By Emily, Lady Tennyson Written for her son in 1896 You ask me to tell you something of my life before marriage at Horncastle in Lincolnshire. It would be hard indeed not to do anything you ask of me if within my power. To say the truth, this particular thing you want is somewhat painful. The first thing I remember of my father is his looking at me with sad eyes after my mother’s death. Her I recollect, passing the window in a velvet pelisse, and then in a white shawl on the sofa, and then crowned with roses—beautiful in death. I recollect, too, being carried to her funeral; but I asked what they were doing, and in all this had no idea of death. My life before marriage was in many ways sad: in one, however, unspeakably happy. No one could have had a better father, or been happier with her two sisters, Anne and Louis A. Although, if we were too merry and noisy in the mornings, we were summoned by my Aunt Betsy (who lived with us) all three into her room, to hold out our small hands for stripes from a certain little riding-whip; or if, later in the day, our needlework was not well done we had our fingers pricked with a needle, or if the lessons were not finished, we had fools’ caps put on our heads, and were banished to a corner of the room. My aunt’s nature was by no means cruel; she was, on the whole, kind and dutiful to us, yet no doubt with effort on her part, for she had no instinctive love of children. Among our neighbours we had as friends the Tennysons, the Rawnsleys, the Bellinghams, and the Massingberds. The death of my cousin, Mr. Cracroft, was among my early tragedies. He had been on public business at Lincoln: and on his return to Horncastle, was seized at our house with Asiatic cholera, a solitary case, which proved fatal. Ourselves and his daughters heard of it in a strange way. We were in a tent at a sheep-shearing, the great rustic festival of that day. A village boy came into our tent, and swarmed up the pole, saying to us, “I know something; your father is dead.” We hurried home, and we, three sisters, were put by my aunt (to keep us quiet) to the hitherto-unwonted task of stoning raisins. This made me so indignant that I threw my raisins over the edge of the bowl, and forthwith my aunt caught me up, and—so rough was the treatment of children then—banged my head against the door of our old wainscoted rooms, until I called out for my father, crying aloud, “Murder”; when he rushed in and saved me. My next memory of my father is his giving me Latin lessons; and at this time I somehow came across a copy of Cymbeline, which I read with great delight. Then we had our first riding-lessons. I well recall my dislike of riding, when my pony was fastened to a circus stake, which I had to go round and round. Unfortunately, much as my father wished it, I never became a good horsewoman. He himself was so good a rider, when all the gentlemen of the county were volunteers, that he could ride horses which no one else could ride—so my grandmother would tell me with pride—adding, “Your father and his brother (both six foot three) were the handsomest men among them all.” At that time he kept guard with his fellow-volunteers over the French prisoners, who, he said, were always cheerful and always singing their patriotic songs
