I have now completed all the preliminary notices of my near relatives,
which it is necessary to present in these pages; and may proceed at
once to the more immediate subject of my narrative.
Imagine to yourself that my father and my sister have been living for
some months at our London residence; and that I have recently joined
them, after having enjoyed a short tour on the continent.
My father is engaged in his parliamentary duties. We see very little
of him. Committees absorb his mornings--debates his evenings. When he
has a day of leisure occasionally, he passes it in his study, devoted
to his own affairs. He goes very little into society--a political
dinner, or a scientific meeting are the only social relaxations that
tempt him.
My sister leads a life which is not much in accordance with her simple
tastes. She is wearied of balls, operas, flower-shows, and all other
London gaieties besides; and heartily longs to be driving about the
green lanes again in her own little poney-chaise, and distributing
plum-cake prizes to the good children at the Rector's Infant School.
But the female friend who happens to be staying with her, is fond of
excitement; my father expects her to accept the invitations which he
is obliged to decline; so she gives up her own tastes and inclinations
as usual, and goes into hot rooms among crowds of fine people, hearing
the same glib compliments, and the same polite inquiries, night after
night, until, patient as she is, she heartily wishes that her
fashionable friends all lived in some opposite quarter of the globe,
the farther away the better.
My arrival from the continent is the most welcome of events to her. It
gives a new object and a new impulse to her London life.
I am engaged in writing a historical romance--indeed, it is
principally to examine the localities in the country where my story is
laid, that I have been abroad. Clara has read the first half-dozen
finished chapters, in manuscript, and augurs wonderful success for my
fiction when it is published. She is determined to arrange my study
with her own hands; to dust my books, and sort my papers herself. She
knows that I am already as fretful and precise about my literary goods
and chattels, as indignant at any interference of housemaids and
dusters with my library treasures, as if I were a veteran author of
twenty years' standing; and she is resolved to spare me every
apprehension on this score, by taking all the arrangements of my study
on herself, and keeping the key of the door when I am not in need of
it.
We have our London amusements, too, as well as our London employments.
But the pleasantest of our relaxations are, after all, procured for us
by our horses. We ride every day--sometimes with friends, sometimes
alone together. On these latter occasions, we generally turn our
horses' heads away from the parks, and seek what country sights we can
get in the neighbourhood of London. The northern roads are generally
our favourite ride.
Sometimes we penetrate so far that we can bait our horses at a little
inn which reminds me of the inns near our country home. I see the same
sanded parlour, decorated with the same old sporting prints, furnished
with the same battered, deep-coloured mahogany table, and polished elm
tree chairs, that I remember in our own village inn. Clara, also,
finds bits of common, out of doors, that look like _our_ common; and
trees that might have been transplanted expressly for her, from _our_
park.
These excursions we keep a secret, we like to enjoy them entirely by
ourselves. Besides, if my father knew that his daughter was drinking
the landlady's fresh milk, and his son the landlord's old ale, in the
parlour of a suburban roadside inn, he would, I believe, be apt to
suspect that both his children had fairly taken leave of their senses.
Evening parties I frequent almost as rarely as my father. Clara's good
nature is called into requisition to do duty for me, as well as for
him. She has little respite in the task. Old lady relatives and
friends, always ready to take care of her, leave her no excuse for
staying at home. Sometimes I am shamed into accompanying her a little
more frequently than usual; but my old indolence in these matters soon
possesses me again. I have contracted a bad habit of writing at
night--I read almost incessantly in the day time. It is only because I
am fond of riding, that I am ever willing to interrupt my studies, and
ever ready to go out at all.
Such were my domestic habits, such my regular occupations and
amusements, when a mere accident changed every purpose of my life, and
altered me irretrievably from what I was then, to what I am now.
It happened thus: