Why they should not have been made prize of I do not know. The
little piece of dishonest business which I at once took in hand
and carried through successfully was of no special service to any
of us. I drove the gig into the village, and sold the entire equipage
to the ironmonger for (pounds)17, the exact sum which he claimed as being
due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed
to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy
that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness.
When I got back to the house a scene of devastation was in progress,
which still was not without its amusement. My mother, through
her various troubles, had contrived to keep a certain number of
pretty-pretties which were dear to her heart. They were not much,
for in those days the ornamentation of houses was not lavish as it
is now; but there was some china, and a little glass, a few books,
and a very moderate supply of household silver. These things, and
things like them, were being carried down surreptitiously, through
a gap between the two gardens, on to the premises of our friend
Colonel Grant. My two sisters, then sixteen and seventeen, and the
Grant girls, who were just younger, were the chief marauders. To
such forces I was happy to add myself for any enterprise, and
between us we cheated the creditors to the extent of our powers,
amidst the anathemas, but good-humoured abstinence from personal
violence, of the men in charge of the property. I still own a few
books that were thus purloined.
For a few days the whole family bivouacked under the Colonel's
hospitable roof, cared for and comforted by that dearest of all women,
his wife. Then we followed my father to Belgium, and established
ourselves in a large house just outside the walls of Bruges. At
this time, and till my father's death, everything was done with
money earned by my mother. She now again furnished the house,--this
being the third that she had put in order since she came back from
America two years and a half ago.
There were six of us went into this new banishment. My brother
Henry had left Cambridge and was ill. My younger sister was ill.
And though as yet we hardly told each other that it was so, we began
to feel that that desolating fiend, consumption, was among us. My
father was broken-hearted as well as ill, but whenever he could
sit at his table he still worked at his ecclesiastical records. My
elder sister and I were in good health, but I was an idle, desolate
hanger-on, that most hopeless of human beings, a hobbledehoy
of nineteen, without any idea of a career, or a profession, or
a trade. As well as I can remember I was fairly happy, for there
were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in
love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But
as to my future life I had not even an aspiration. Now and again
there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that
she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while
she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have
thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were
the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.
Then, by degrees, an established sorrow was at home among us. My
brother was an invalid, and the horrid word, which of all words were
for some years after the most dreadful to us, had been pronounced.
It was no longer a delicate chest, and some temporary necessity
for peculiar care,--but consumption! The Bruges doctor had said
so, and we knew that he was right. From that time forth my mother's
most visible occupation was that of nursing. There were two sick
men in the house, and hers were the hands that tended them. The
novels went on, of course. We had already learned to know that they
would be forthcoming at stated intervals,--and they always were
forthcoming. The doctor's vials and the ink-bottle held equal
places in my mother's rooms. I have written many novels under many
circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my
whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing
herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear
from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do,
I never saw equalled. I do not think that the writing of a novel
is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do;
but it is a task that may be supposed to demand a spirit fairly
at ease. The work of doing it with a troubled spirit killed Sir
Walter Scott. My mother went through it unscathed in strength,
though she performed all the work of day-nurse and night-nurse to
a sick household;--for there were soon three of them dying.
At this time there came from some quarter an offer to me of a
commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and so it was apparently
my destiny to be a soldier. But I must first learn German and
French, of which languages I knew almost nothing. For this a year
was allowed me, and in order that it might be accomplished without
expense, I undertook the duties of a classical usher to a school
then kept by William Drury at Brussels. Mr. Drury had been one of
the masters at Harrow when I went there at seven years old, and is
now, after an interval of fifty-three years, even yet officiating
as clergyman at that place. [Footnote: He died two years after
these words were written.] To Brussels I went, and my heart still
sinks within me as I reflect that any one should have intrusted to
me the tuition of thirty boys. I can only hope that those boys went
there to learn French, and that their parents were not particular
as to their classical acquirements. I remember that on two occasions
I was sent to take the school out for a walk; but that after the
second attempt Mrs. Drury declared that the boys' clothes would not
stand any further experiments of that kind. I cannot call to mind
any learning by me of other languages; but as I only remained in
that position for six weeks, perhaps the return lessons had not
been as yet commenced. At the end of the six weeks a letter reached
me, offering me a clerkship in the General Post Office, and I
accepted it. Among my mother's dearest friends she reckoned Mrs.
Freeling, the wife of Clayton Freeling, whose father, Sir Francis
Freeling, then ruled the Post Office. She had heard of my desolate
position, and had begged from her father-in-law the offer of a
berth in his own office.
I hurried back from Brussels to Bruges on my way to London, and
found that the number of invalids had been increased. My younger
sister, Emily, who, when I had left the house, was trembling on
the balance,--who had been pronounced to be delicate, but with that
false-tongued hope which knows the truth, but will lie lest the
heart should faint, had been called delicate, but only delicate,--was
now ill. Of course she was doomed. I knew it of both of them,
though I had never heard the word spoken, or had spoken it to any
one. And my father was very ill,--ill to dying, though I did not
know it. And my mother had decreed to send my elder sister away to
England, thinking that the vicinity of so much sickness might be
injurious to her. All this happened late in the autumn of 1834, in