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 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

Chapter 7

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. ________ is a library of classes that do not replace ________, but provide an improved alternative for creating
GUI applications.
a. AWT, Swing
b. Swing, AWT
c. JFC, AWT
d. JFC, Swing

ANS: B

2. Programs that operate in a GUI environment must be

a. event driven
b. in color
c. dialog boxes
d. layout managers

ANS: A

3. In GUI terminology, a container that can be displayed as a window is known

as a _______________.
a. message dialog
b. buffer
c. Swing package
d. frame

ANS: D

4. To end an application, pass this as the argument to the JFrame class's setDefaultCloseOperation()
method.
a. END_ON_CLOSE
b. JFrame.END_ON_CLOSE
c. JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE
d. JFrame.CLOSE_NOT_HIDE

ANS: C

5. The minimize button, maximize button, and close button on a window are sometimes referred to as
a. operations buttons
b. sizing buttons
c. decorations
d. display buttons

ANS: C

6. To use the ActionListener interface, as well as other event listener interfaces, you must have the following
import statement in your code:
a. import java.swing;
b. import java.awt;
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

c. import java.awt.*;
d. import java.awt.event.*;

ANS: D

7. When you write an action listener class for a JButton component, it must
a. have a method named buttonClicked
b. implement the ActionLIstener interface
c. have a method named actionPerformed which must take an argument of the ActionEvent
type
d. Both b and c.

ANS: D

8. In a Swing application, you create a frame object from the

a. Jlabel class
b. JFrame class
c. Jpanel class
d. AbstractButton class

ANS: B

9. To use the Color class, which is used to set the foreground and background of various objects, use the
following import statement
a. import java.swing;
b. import java.awt;
c. import java.awt.*;
d. import java.awt.event.*;

ANS: C

10. This layout manager arranges components in rows.

a. GridLayout
b. BorderLayout
c. FlowLayout
d. RegionLayout

ANS: C

11. This layout manager arranges components in regions named North, South, East, West, and Center.
a. GridLayout
b. BorderLayout
c. FlowLayout
d. RegionLayout

ANS: B

12. If panel references a JPanel object, which of the following statements adds the GridLayout to it?
a. panel.setLayout(new (GridLayout(2,3));
b. panel.addLayout(new (GridLayout(2,3));
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

c. panel.GridLayout(2,3);
d. panel.attachLayout(GridLayout(2,3));

ANS: A

13. When using the BorderLayout manager, how many components can each region hold?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 5
d. No limit

ANS: A

14. The GridLayout manager limits each cell to only one component. To put two or more components in a cell,
do this.
a. Resize the cells so they can hold more
b. You can nest panels inside the cells, and add other components to the panels
c. The statement is false. The GridLayout manager does not have this restriction
d. Resize the components to fit in the cell

ANS: B

15. Which of the following statements is not true?

a. Radio buttons are round and check boxes are square.
b. Radio buttons are often grouped together and are mutually exclusive; Check boxes are not
c. Radio buttons and check boxes both implement the ActionListener interface
d. They are all true

ANS: C

16. How many radio buttons can be selected at the same time as the result of the following code?

hours = new JRadioButton("Hours");

minutes = new JRadioButton("Minutes");
seconds = new JRadioButton("Seconds");
days = new JRadioButton("Days");
months = new JRadioButton("Months");
years = new JRadioButton("Years");
timeOfDayButtonGroup = new ButtonGroup();
dateButtonGroup = new ButtonGroup();
timeOfDayButtonGroup.add(hours);
timeOfDayButtonGroup.add(minutes);
timeOfDayButtonGroup.add(seconds);
dateButtonGroup.add(days);
dateButtonGroup.add(months);
dateButtonGroup.add(years);

a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

ANS: B

17. Assume that radio references a JRadioButton object. To click the radio button in code, use the following
statement.
a. radio.Click();
b. Click(radio);
c. Click(radio, true);
d. radio.doClick();

ANS: D

18. The variable panel references a JPanel object. The variable bGroup references a ButtonGroup object,
which contains several button components. If you want to add the buttons to the panel...

a. use the statement, panel.add(bGroup);

b. use the statement, bGroup.add(panel);
c. use the statement, Panel panel = new Panel(bGroup);
d. add each button to panel one at a time, e.g. panel.add(button1);

ANS: D

19. What will be the result of executing the following statement?

panel.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.BLUE, 5));

a. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a blue line border that is 5 millimeters thick.
b. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a blue line border that is 5 pixels thick.
c. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a blue line border that is 5 characters thick.
d. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a blue line border that is 5 inches thick.

ANS: B

20. When an application uses many components, rather than deriving just one class from the JFrame class, it is
often better to encapsulate smaller groups of related components and their event listeners into their own class. A
commonly used technique to do this is:
a. To extend a class from the JAbstractButton class to contain other components and their
related code
b. To extend a class from the JComponent class to contain other components and their related code
c. To extend a class from the JPanel class to contain other components and their related code
d. To extend a class from the JFrame class to contain other components and their related code

ANS: C

21. To include Swing and AWT components in your program, use the following import statements
a. import java.swing; import java.awt;
b. import java.swing; import javax.awt;
c. import javax.swing; import java.awt;
d. import javax.swing; import javax.awt;

ANS: C
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

22. These types of components are coupled with their underlying peers.
a. Lightweight
b. Featherweight
c. Middleweight
d. Heavyweight

ANS: D

23. JFC stands for

a. Java Fundamental Classes
b. Java Foundation Classes
c. Java Fundamental Core
d. Java Frame Class

ANS: B

24. When this is the argument passed to the JFrame class's setDefaultCloseOperation() method, the
application is hidden, but not closed.
a. HIDE_ON_CLOSE
b. JFrame. HIDE_ON_CLOSE
c. JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE
d. JFrame.HIDE_NOT_CLOSE

ANS: B

25. This is a basic window that has a border around it, a title bar, and a set of buttons for minimizing, maximizing,
and closing the window.
a. Pane
b. Container
c. Frame
d. Dialog box

ANS: C

26. Which of the following statements creates a class that is extended from the JFrame class?
a. JFrame DerivedClass = new JFrame();
b. class JFrame DerivedClass;
c. JFrame(DerivedClass);
d. public class DerivedClass extends JFrame{}

ANS: D

27. What does the following statement do?

addButton.addActionListener(new AddButtonListener());

a. Creates an AddButtonListener object

b. Registers the addButton object as an ActionListener with the AddButtonListener
object
c. Creates an AddButtonListener object and registers the AddButtonListener object with
the addButton
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

d. Nothing, the statement is invalid

ANS: C

28. Event listeners must

a. implement an interface
b. be included in private inner classes
c. not receive any arguments
d. exit the application once it has handled the event

ANS: A

29. If button1 is a JButton object, which of the following statements will make its background blue?
a. button1.makeBackground(BLUE);
b. button1.setBackground(Color.BLUE);
c. button1.makeBackground(Color.BLUE);
d. button1.set.Background(BLUE);

ANS: B

30. This layout manager arranges components in five regions.

a. GridLayout
b. BorderLayout
c. FlowLayout
d. RegionLayout

ANS: B

31. Which of the following is not a rule for the FlowLayout manager?
a. Multiple components can be added to a container that uses a FlowLayout manager
b. New components will be added in a row from left to right
c. When there is no more room in a row, additional components are put on the next row
d. All of these are rules for the FlowLayout manager

ANS: D

32. When a component is added to a region in the BorderLayout manager,

a. the component retains its original size
b. it results in a compile time error, if it is too large
c. the component is stretched so it fills up the entire region
d. the region is resized to fit the component

ANS: C

33. When adding components to a container that is governed by the GridLayout manager,
a. you cannot specify a cell
b. you specify the cell with the row and column numbers in the add statement
c. you must add them starting with the lower, right cell
d. the components are added automatically by filling up the first column, then the second, etc.
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

ANS: A

34. Which of the following statements is not true?

a. Radio buttons are round and check boxes are square.
b. Radio buttons are often grouped together and are mutually exclusive; Check boxes are not
c. Radio buttons implement ActionListener; Check boxes implement ItemListener
d. All of these are true

ANS: D

35. Why doesn't the following code compile correctly?

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class ColorCheckBoxWindow extends JFrame
{
private JCheckBox greenCheckBox;
private final int WINDOW_WIDTH = 300, WINDOW_HEIGHT = 100;
public ColorCheckBoxWindow()
{
setTitle("Green Check Box");
setSize(WINDOW_WIDTH, WINDOW_HEIGHT);
setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
greenCheckBox = new JCheckBox("Green");
greenCheckBox.addItemListener(new CheckBoxListener());
setLayout(new FlowLayout());
add(greenCheckBox);
setVisible(true);
}
public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e)
{
if (e.getSource() == greenCheckBox)
{
System.exit(0);
}
}
}
a. ColorCheckBoxWindow is not implementing the correct listener
b. The button cannot be added to the content pane
c. The itemStateChanged method cannot be coded here
d. greenCheckBox should not be a private member

ANS: C

36. Assume that the variable checkbox references a JCheckBox object. To determine whether the check box has
been selected, use the following code.
a. if (isSelected(checkBox)) {/*code to execute, if selected*/}
b. if (checkBox.isSelected()) {/*code to execute, if selected*/}
c. if (checkBox) {/*code to execute, if selected*/}
d. if (checkBox.doClick()) {/*code to execute, if selected*/}

ANS: B
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

37. What will be the result of executing the following statement?

panel.setBorder(BorderFactory.createTitleBorder("Title"));

a. The JPanel referenced by panel will have an etched border with the title "Title" displayed on it.
b. The JPanel referenced by panel will have an empty border with the title "Title" displayed on it.
c. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a line border with the title "Title" displayed on it.
d. The JPanel referenced by panel will have a compound border with the title "Title" displayed on
it.

ANS: A

38. When an application uses many components, instead of extending just one class from the JFrame class, a better
approach is to
a. break the application into several smaller applications
b. reconsider the design of the application
c. encapsulate smaller groups of related components and their event listeners into their own classes
d. just go ahead and do it in one large class

ANS: C

39. This is a graphic image that is displayed while an application loads into memory and starts up.
a. The Java 6 trademark screen
b. Memory usage screen
c. Blue screen of death
d. Splash screen

ANS: D

40. You would use this command at the operating system command line to execute the code in the
MyApplication class and display the graphic image Logo.jpg as a splash screen.
a. java MyApplication Logo.jpg
b. java -splash:Logo.jpg MyApplication
c. java MyApplication –splash
d. java Logo.jpg –splash:MyApplication

ANS: B

TRUE/FALSE

1. A GUI program automatically stops executing when the end of the main method is reached.

ANS: F

2. A common technique for writing an event listener class is to write it as a private inner class inside the class that
creates the GUI.

ANS: T
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures, 2/e © 2012 Pearson Education

3. The following statement adds the FlowLayout manager to the container, centers the components, and
separates the components with a gap of 10 pixels.

setLayout(new FlowLayout());

ANS: F

4. Check boxes may be grouped in a ButtonGroup like radio buttons are.

ANS: T

5. The System.exit method will end the application.

ANS: T

6. The ActionEvent argument that is passed to an action listener's actionPerformed method is the event
object that was generated in response to an event.

ANS: T

7. The FlowLayout manager does not allow the programmer to align components.

ANS: F

8. You must use the statement import java.swing.*; in order to use the ItemListener interface.

ANS: F

9. When a splash screen is displayed, the application does not load and execute until the user clicks the splash
screen image with the mouse.

ANS: F

10. In Java, the ability to display splash screens was introduced in Java 6.

ANS: T
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
themselves—and the rector's wife, with whom I had been lunching,
gathered and offered me a little sprig of green stuff.
"You don't know what that is," said she.
I did not, because it was summer and the pearly berries had not
formed.
"Mistletoe," said she.
Talismanic word! I folded it in paper and brought it home. It is in
Australia with me now.
Valentine's Day is hardly a name to be remembered now when the
14th of February comes round. The date was far behind us when we
arrived in England, but I am sure the festival must be dead in its
native land, and it has never lived during my time in this. And as for
Christmas—we could not stay long enough to see an English
Christmas again, but I think, if I had seen it, I should have found it
no more like the old Christmas than the one I spent at sea. They
belonged to their age, those old Christmases of ours, to children not
so critical and sophisticated as the children of to-day.
Fragrant memories of Christmas hung about that old house at D——.
Happy Christmases with no governesses around! And such
tremendous affairs they were! Long, long before the day its heralds
were all about us: the choice fowls set apart for fattening; the ox
selected that was to make himself famous with a prize, if possible,
before the butcher turned him into Christmas beef; the solemn
mixing of the Christmas pudding, at which the youngest baby had to
assist (the pudding divided into dozens of puddings boiled in the big
copper and hung up in their cloths, to be used in instalments until
Christmas came again); the making of the mincemeat in the same
wholesale manner (big brown jarfuls, also to last through the year),
and of the Christmas cakes, which were so rich that keeping
improved them, and the production of which therefore was only
limited by the number of canisters available in which to store them;
these were matters of vital interest ere autumn had fairly gone. For
the Feast of the Nativity was above all things a feast in the popular
sense of the word. Loaded shelves in the pantry and an overflowing
table, plenty for everybody and everything of the best, was the order
not of the day, or of the week but for the month or two that stood
for the "season" with these old-time provincial revellers. When we
lived in the country before coming to D—— two dishes in particular
were conspicuous on our bill of fare—Christmas dishes only, so far as
I can recollect. One was a game pie, in size and shape resembling a
milliner's bonnet box. Its walls were self-supporting and covered
with pastry ornamentation in relief; its inside was jelly close-packed
with miscellaneous game birds and bits of ham and veal and
forcemeat and things; the usual game pie, I suppose (I don't know,
it is so many years since I tasted one), but extra big and fine in
honour of Christmas. The other dish was a round of "Hunters'
Beef"—very well named since it used to be in great request for
hunting sandwiches. It was beef rubbed all over every day for three
weeks with a certain dry mixture of sugar, salts and spices, and then
baked for six hours in an earthern crock under a pile of shred suet, a
meal crust and a sheet of brown paper. It seems to me that I have
never tasted real spiced beef since. It was used in thin slices with
bread and butter, not eaten like ordinary meat at the substantial
meals, and lasted a great while. When Christmas was nearly upon us
—governess gone, and all the carking cares of the past year thrown
overboard—the bakings and roastings were tremendous, the
excitement of preparation turned all heads.
At our farmhouse a cartload of evergreens used to come from our
grandfather's woods, sometimes through the snow. Here in the town
we still managed to get enough; always the Christmas tree in its
largest size. Every room had to be adorned as lavishly as they now
adorn the churches, whereas the churches were put off with a
bough of holly stuck into each seat end. The Christmas tree was
planted in a tub on the drawing-room floor—stripped of carpet and
furniture for the nightly games and dances (this floor was not of
stone)—and usually the top had to be cut off to get it under the
ceiling. Its graduated layers of arms bore dozens upon dozens of
coloured wax tapers (the little tin sconces for them were stored from
year to year), and about the same number of pendent glass balls,
apples of gold and silver on the dark green boughs. The substantial
fruit, the presents, were in numbers sufficient to stock a small
bazaar. Mother and aunts and family friends had been working on
them for months. If the drawing-room could not be shut to children
the tree was jealously screened, for a day or two before the great
night, which was a party night. It was the young men and maidens
who enjoyed themselves in this interval, while the little ones hung
about passages and peepholes in burning curiosity and suspense.
The enchanting moment came when the party tea was over and a
succeeding half-hour of thrilling anticipation; the drawing-room door
was flung wide and we rushed through in a crowd towards the
splendid blazing wonder in the middle of the room, sighing forth our
"Oh! oh!" of ecstasy.
The stage-managers ranged us in a circle around it, all goggle-eyed,
half stunned with the suddenness of our joy, and someone came
round with a bag of tickets—round and round, until each had half-a-
dozen or more. Oh, who would get No.1, the great doll at the top of
the tree?—or No.2, the work-box on the tub beneath (the tub hidden
in green stuff, mingled with pink glazed calico)? There were great
prizes amongst the many little ones, and some that I remember
were quite remarkable. One was a board—very difficult to fix to the
tree safely—on which a party of dolls were celebrating a wedding,
the bride in her veil, with her bewreathed bridesmaids, the little men
in coats and trousers, the surpliced parson, all complete. Such time
and trouble were to spare for children in those days! The steps were
brought in and a man mounted them to detach the articles from the
upper boughs. A woman might set herself on fire—once she did, and
there was a gallant rescue, and frequently a taper ignited a flimsy
toy or set a green branch smoking. Doubtless there were heart-
burnings also over the caprices of Fortune in the distribution of the
gifts, but I cannot see blurs of that sort on the shining picture now.
Santa Claus is still much alive, so I need not describe his doings. I
only hope the children of to-day enjoy shivering awake for half the
night and making themselves ill with the edible contents of their
stockings before daylight as much as we did. As for the delicious
lurid function, snapdragon, is it obsolete in England yet? It does not
come, like Santa Claus, into the scheme of child entertainment in
Australia. There would be a difficulty in finding the requisite depth of
darkness on Christmas evenings here. Besides, a supper of raw
raisins cannot be good for the infant stomachs. I would not give it to
my own children, but still I am glad that the mothers of old were in
some things less faddy than we are. One of the treasures of my
collection is the weird scene of the magic bowl and the spectral
faces around it—the delightful terror of the little girls, the heroic
courage of the little boys who seized for them the blazing morsels
they dared not touch themselves. A tender memory of that boy to
whom I inclined, who shot himself (by cocking a stiff-jointed gun
with foot instead of finger), pictures him gallantly fighting the flames
on my behalf.
The Waits, I believe, are heard in the streets of England still. But
not, I fancy, on country road and garden paths, guests of the
domestic hearth at midnight, a nondescript rabble under no
ecclesiastical control, making their own fun, as they then did. Blue-
nosed, beery, hilarious, in woollen mitts and comforters, drinking
good luck to a dozen hosts in turn and thinking of nothing but how
they were enjoying themselves, they are not quite adequately
represented to us older folk by the better-drilled but unspontaneous
choir-boy. He is like the Christmas card for which we have
exchanged the valentine—a shadow replacing the substance, to our
thinking.
The choir of the old times was the congregation, led by the clerk in
the three-decker. We went to service on Christmas morning, as in
duty bound, and sang "Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow,"
whether we had singing voices or not, and were likewise audible and
hearty with the responses, as believing them our own; and when we
came out—good, unsophisticated Christians, exchanging our "Happy
Christmas" with everybody we met—the church was content to let us
go for the remainder of the day. We went home to our immense
dinner (with dessert that lasted through the afternoon), our festive
tea, crowned with the Christmas cake, our blindman's buff and turn-
the-trencher and drop-the-handkerchief in the cleared drawing-
room, our snapdragons, our punch-bowl, our adventures under the
mistletoe.
The drawing-room, when not cleared, could not be closed to family
use, like the majority of the middle-class parlours of the past (I
might almost say of the present also), being the highway to the front
door, to the garden-playground, and to the music-room, which was
the sitting-room. Its four doors were constantly opening and
shutting, and it must have been a cave of the winds in winter,
although I do not remember it. Strips of crumb-cloth marked the
crossing footpaths, warning us to keep off the grass—i.e. the
geometrical-patterned green and crimson carpet; they were taken
up whenever it was surmised that "people might be coming,"
according to that curiously petty but intense concern for a genteel
(however false) appearance, which was one of the things I had,
mistakenly but naturally, taken for granted that England had grown
out of long ago. The room was still the reception-room for callers
and company, and all my mother's artistic skill, which only
distinguished itself the more for having so little money at the back of
it, had been expended upon its adornment.
When I think how that artistic skill was exercised, I have a foolish
impulse to shudder and to smile. When I think again, I have to ask
myself, "Why should I?" Further reflection convinces me that its
manifestations were admirable. To say the least, they were not
necessarily in bad taste then, although they would and ought to be
so now. But there is far more than that to say. The handicraft of the
women of the mid-Victorian era had the precious quality of finish
and thoroughness, than which there is none more worthy. Careful,
delicate, faithful work, no matter on what article expended, was the
note of excellence, and the longer I live the more I respect and love
it. Such fancy-work proper as adorned this old parlour of ours I do
not wish to see reproduced, but it was appropriate to its day and a
credit to her who was responsible for it.
She had a sort of settee-sofa under the window on the garden side.
It was covered with many squares of finest "wool-work," joined
together. There was a different design—vase of flowers, basket of
flowers, wreath, bouquet—in each square, although material and
ground colour were the same; and the number of them represented
so many girl friends who had combined to work them and present
her with the sofa on her marriage. It certainly was a graceful idea,
cleverly carried out. And wool-work was really very fascinating. With
a piece of canvas, a bundle of neatly-sorted Berlin wools, and a
coloured pattern of flowers of every hue—the more intricate the
better—I was quite happy. I also liked working out peacocks and
other weird devices into antimacassars, with crochet needle and
white cotton, although not so well. I must have made miles of
"open-work" (the modern broderie Anglaise, only better) for
underclothes, first and last. Once I made a bead basket to hang by
glittering bead chains between draped netted-and-darned window-
curtains. I knitted rag rugs and silk purses, and sections of a great
quilt for a spare bed. I did elaborate geometrical patchwork for other
quilts, and fine marking of names (learned from my baby sampler)
on linen with engrained red cotton; and watchguards in black silk
and gorgeous slippers and winter mitts and comforters for father;
and mats for lamps and vases, and so on and so on.
But mother was really an artist, because she did not follow patterns,
but designed things herself. When she needed curtain cornices for
the tops of those windows, and could not afford the gilded, fender-
like affairs that were correct and desirable, she nailed deal boards
together, covered them with leather, and then with a design of
leather flowers or grapes with vine-leaves, which, when varnished,
imposed upon the spectator as a carving in wood. Now we would
prefer the honest deal, no doubt—I would, at any rate—but then
there was not a person of taste who would have done so. She made
open wood-carving of leather-work applied to stout cardboard,
cutting away the latter from the interstices of the pattern embossed.
In the treatment of a pair of flower-holders that used to stand on a
table under the mirror between the garden window and the garden
door, she substituted a scarlet coating made of sealing-wax for the
dark wood-stain; her leather-work then called itself coral. As for her
wax flowers, they were truly beautiful. She was not content to make
up the boxfuls of petals prepared by the trade, but must needs copy
flowers out of the field and garden. I do not know how she found
time for all she did, but she seemed to do everything, and always to
do it right. My faith in her ingenuity and resourcefulness was as my
faith in the omnipotence of God.
It was in that drawing-room of her adornment that we held festival
on the afternoon of our famous wedding-day. It rained, and the
amusement for the guests—after the great breakfast in the music-
room and the departure of bride and bridegroom—was to practise
archery upon a target in the wet garden from the shelter of the
house. The arrows from door and window went wide over the
garden walls, and the scared face of the rector popped up in alarm
at intervals as they hurtled into his domain. It was the son of our old
neighbours at T—— (the House of the Doll), who, unknown to any of
us at the time, pointed a moral for the incautious parent who
deposits with his (or her) infant offspring evidence upon which they
will some day rise up to judge him. H. was a very smart young
fellow, according to the notions of the time, and he forgathered with
a pretty cousin of ours, daughter of my father's eldest brother, with
whom my father was at feud over a lawsuit and not on speaking
terms. Her parents forbade the match, and she came to mine—the
hostile camp—for succour. Enthusiastically we took up her cause,
and, having given her all facilities for courtship, gave her the finest
wedding that could be compassed from our house. Not only that, but
drove her many miles behind white-favoured postilions to the church
of her own parish, possibly to "cheek" her family, who naturally held
aloof, although it was rumoured that they watched the passing of
the bridal carriages from some secret ambush. Of course, we young
ones never doubted for a moment that they were wholly malignant
and in the wrong; we were as sure as we were of night and day that
our father and mother could not possibly make mistakes.
While the happy pair were honeymooning, we assisted Mrs H., the
bridegroom's mother, to prepare for them what we thought an ideal
home in L——, a house so towny and stylish, compared with the
farm homesteads in which we had been reared, that we were lost in
our sense of the occupants' luck and bliss. I had been their little
bridesmaid, and I now became their frequent visitor; I suppose their
attentions to me were a return for our ill-omened hospitality to
them. I used to sit on a stool in the firelit dusk, totally disregarded,
while, on the other side of the hearth, H. nursed Cousin E. upon his
knee and they whispered together. Later on, I sat on the same stool
to nurse the baby, E. hanging over me to gloat upon him and assure
herself that he was safe in my arms.
The other day I saw that house again, and, looking up at the
windows, looked through them upon those past scenes with, oh!
such different eyes. According to precedent, H. proved himself, very
early in the day, to be the bad lot his wife's people had suspected.
The first baby was the last, because there was not time for more.
The young father lived beyond his means for a year or two,
neglected his business, took to drink, went under, and left the young
mother and child to the charity of the relatives who had probably
foreseen how it would be. And now that I am older than they were I
think of my parents' part in the matter, once so unquestioningly
endorsed, and I shake my head. So will my children shake their
heads over remembered acts of mine which, at the doing, were even
as the decrees of Providence. Doubtless they have done so many a
time.
In my flying visits to D—— I was drawn again and again to the
neighbourhood of that old house. Any walk that I took for the sake
of a walk led past it, and I stopped at the two gates every time,
because I could not help it. The second gate, opening into the field
that was part of the premises, had its separate associations. Here
roamed Taffy, when he chose to keep in bounds, a white pony given
to my eldest brother by his grandfather, but for his long lifetime the
useful servant and beloved friend of the whole family; a dear, sweet-
natured humorous creature, human in his affections and intelligence.
Taffy walked about the domestic domain like a dog; he undid every
fastening of every gate that attempted to confine his rambles. He
used to come to the schoolroom window when we were at lessons
and watch his chance to grab a mouthful of hair. When mother and I
made our journeys together to see her parents, some fifteen miles
off, we used to stop at a halfway inn to get a basinful of porter for
Taffy, who loved it and drank it down like a Christian; he would not
pass that inn without it. When thirsty at home he sought the pump
in the stableyard, took the handle in his teeth and rattled it up and
down, and as soon as water trickled from the spout applied his
mouth thereto. When I have told this story to my present family,
who never knew Taffy, tolerant and superior smiles have accused me
of drawing the long bow; so I was pleased when a sister of mine,
lately arrived from England after a thirty years' separation from me,
was happily inspired to say at table before them all (we were
speaking of old times), "Oh, do you remember Taffy and the pump?"
proceeding to tell the tale again exactly as I had told it. Thus Taffy
and I got tardy justice done us.
Here, too, in a memorable year, Wombwell's Menagerie established
itself. It was the half of the business which the original Wombwell
had left divided between a son and daughter, and the latter was the
proprietress and travelling with it. My father let his field to her for
the few days that must have been Winnold Fair days (St Wynewall
originally—a fair held here annually at the beginning of March,
literally from time immemorial, as, according to a deed of the reign
of Edward the Confessor, it was flourishing in his day, and there are
no records to tell how long before that); for I recall the state of the
temperature. Which reminds me of an old Norfolk rhyme much in
use amongst us, to indicate what might be expected in the way of
weather at the season of the Fair:
"First come David, then come Chad,
Then come 'Winnle' as if he was mad."
So Mrs Edwards (I think that was her name) brought her
Wombwell's Menagerie to our field. The numerous Black Marias of
the caravan filed into the gate before our popping eyes, the elephant
walking as one has heard of the lady doing in the sedan chair that
had the bottom out; we could only see his monstrous feet and
ankles underneath the house that he carried around him, and those
massive members were partly swathed in bandages, because, we
were told, the poor thing suffered from chilblains. The vehicles were
formed into a hollow square, the arena roofed over (it was
deliciously warm to go into out of the cold open air), and the grass
floor thickly bedded in clean straw, from which we sifted treasure-
trove of nuts and lost articles when the show was gone. The
shutters were taken from the cages on the inner side, the entrance
steps put down, and all was ready for business. There was a band,
of course.
The contract gave our household the privilege of free access. I need
not say that it was utilised to the utmost. We had special holidays on
purpose. But the cream of those exciting days was Sunday, when
there was no show and no public, and we were admitted to the
bosom of the family, to see how it lived behind the scenes. In the
afternoon of that day my mother went into the field to show a little
neighbourly attention to the proprietress, taking me with her. It was
one of the most interesting calls I ever made. We found Mrs
Edwards a very superior lady, who did not travel with the show
except now and then, to amuse herself while her children were away
at school (her daughter, I think she said, was "finishing abroad");
she had her good house somewhere, like other ladies. She was in
silk attire, very stylish, and her private van was a thing of luxury
indeed; also she entertained us delightfully. We strolled about the
empty arena, and fraternised with the animals. Many of them were
let out for exercise; others we were allowed to fondle and converse
with. The little gazelle on its slim legs raced round and round in front
of the cages, mocking the futile leer and pounce of the great cats
that would have intercepted it had circumstances allowed; the
monkeys tweaked our ears and pulled the trimming off our hats; the
great elephant swayed about like a moving mountain, and
condescended to take our buns when we mustered courage to
present them. Unforgettable Sunday afternoon! Almost worthy to be
ranked with the splendid day at Port Said. The memory of it was in
my mind when, on my second Sunday afternoon in England, I was
behind the scenes in the "Zoo" at Regent's Park, dear little birds and
beasties climbing over me and showing off their pretty tricks to me
for love and not for money.
But, ah, the nights! The dark nights up in that attic bedroom, when
the wintry wind bore the heart-thrilling plaints of homesick lions and
tigers—so awfully close to one! Oh, suppose they should get out! I
have never been conspicuously strong-minded when alone in the
dark—I have too much imagination—and I used to burrow deep
down in the bedclothes to shut out those appallingly suggestive
sounds.
Time seems to deal tenderly with everything in England, and the two
old gates were the very same old gates, apparently. Approaching
them through the town, I passed the same old shops, with the same
old names on some of them. Next door, across Priory Lane, the same
family of doctors still lived, father and son in contiguous
establishments; only the son of old was now the father, and there
was a new son. The daughters of the parent house, young ladies of
the old days, I found living still, to remember and to entertain me;
one of them, a widow approaching her ninetieth year, was the most
charmingly nimble-minded and witty person of her age that I ever
met. Her intellectual audacity impressed me as one of the most
striking incidents of my return to her little town. She had lived there
always, and was yet unsubdued by the stodgy atmosphere—as
awake to the humour of the ways of a little English town (in which,
as she expressed it, "twopence-ha'penny would not speak to
twopence") as I was. She was handsome too—altogether a dear.
Just opposite her old home, at the beginning (or end) of the street,
swung an inn signboard the sight of which was more delightful to
me than all the priceless canvases that I had been privileged to
make acquaintance with at Grosvenor House a few days previously.
This was the Rampant Horse of olden times—the very same red
horse pawing space, his colour faded out, but his familiar lineaments
intact; and it was a part of my phenomenal luck at that time to see it
just when I did, for the next time I passed that way the sign had
been taken down, doubtless to be "restored." I am convinced that it
had not been touched in the half-century that I had been away, but
just waiting there to greet me.
On the other side of my old home, along the London Road, I walked
in the Past every step of the way. There was the same old
workhouse, which we used to visit after church on Christmas
mornings to see the paupers wolfing their roast beef and plum
pudding, beside it the Court House, full of memories of concert
nights and entertainments—particularly of a demonstration by a girl
clairvoyant, who, while "under the influence," informed a member of
our party that her son was lying dangerously ill at his tutor's house
in Heidelberg; which was afterwards proved to be the case, although
this was the first she heard of it. D—— has a Town Hall now, a
Jubilee Town Hall, but in my day the Court House seems to have
been the place for public functions; and I have an acute
remembrance of sitting through an evening on a ledge but a few
inches wide, being crowded off the benches and too proud to ask for
a lap. My back aches and the calves of my legs curl up now when it
comes across me.
Further on, C—— Hall by the roadside—unchanged, except that I
found it temporarily tenantless. My little girl-contemporaries who
used to live there wore white pants to the feet, frilled around the
ankles, under their short skirts, like Miss Kenwigs. Where, I
wondered, as I looked at the blank windows, where were they now?
Across the road, in front of the hall, lay the park-like lands belonging
to it, the beautiful turf only matched by the beautiful trees—all as it
used to be. There I saw myself, a little thing in a new pink frock,
dancing about with my mother and a crowd of busy ladies amongst
long plank tables, at which the poor folk of the town and for miles
around were being feasted on roast beef and plum pudding, while
brass bands brayed and flags fluttered in the sun. The occasion was
the Celebration of Peace after the Crimean War.
Then the village of D——, object of so many walks in the governess
days—I tramped thither one fresh and sunny morning when I
wanted a good constitutional, and, as usual when I found the door
open, I entered the church. The clergyman, in a rapid gabble, was
reciting the daily service; he had one daily—in the very middle of the
working morning, in a parish containing only those who were bound
to be hard at it earning their living and attending to the needs of
families. When, oh! when will parsons learn common-sense? It was
a relief to see that these parishioners were not seduced from the
path of duty by his well-intentioned invitation. The whole
congregation was embodied in one extremely old man, whose
infirmities had long disqualified him for the work of life. For him, I
thought, it would have been enough at this hour to leave the place
open, to comfort him, when he liked to wander in, with its divine
suggestions. He could not have followed the breathless patter of
words with his deaf ears.
However, perhaps this is not my business.

CHAPTER VI

EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
I went on from D—— into the deeper and more beautiful recesses of
my native county, the localities associated with my earliest years, the
most sacred places of them all. It was early in July, when the
rhododendrons, so thick in the woods, had done their flowering, but
the trees were in full perfection, and the honeysuckles of the hedges
scented the highways.
Two large families of cousins had grown up thereabouts, and some
were still clinging to their native soil. All had been unknown to me
from the time of our paternal grandfather's death, in 1856, which
precipitated the estranging lawsuit—all, that is to say, excepting E.,
who married from our house. As children we used to shoot veiled
glances at each other in church, but that was all the intercourse
permitted to us. However, in later years, when we had sense of our
own to judge the merits of this old quarrel, one and another of my
cousins claimed acquaintance with me through my publishers, and I
came to England with several long-standing invitations from them to
visit them when I could. M.G., a widow a few years older than
myself, was one who had never deserted Norfolk, and whose
charming home was in the very heart of my own country, within a
drive of all the places I most desired to see again. An "abbey," it was
called, a farmhouse now, divorced from its lands, one of those
beautiful English dwellings, several hundreds of years old, that I was
always adoringly and enviously in love with; and attached to it were
the ruins of a religious house, which the county directory informed
me was founded for Cistercians in 1251, and granted at the
Dissolution to the family whose present representative, of the same
name, owns it still, my cousin's friend and landlord. From the old
garden, out of the stupendous trees (are there trees in England to
rival Norfolk trees?), rose fragments of the walls of that old abbey,
broken arches and windows with some stone tracery left in them;
and there were damp depressions in which lumps of carved stone
were jumbled up with weeds and ragged bushes, the crypts which
Time had filled, but not wholly filled, with the rain-washings of
centuries. Imagine my joy in such surroundings! And within the
comparatively modern but still antique (it looked to me Elizabethan)
residence, nothing to clash with the grey stone walls and mullioned
and labelled windows, all simple dignity, frugal refinement, warmth,
ease, comfort. It was a delight to me merely to walk up and down
the stairs, wide and shallow and solid, echoing the footfalls of
generations of gentlefolk at every step; especially when at the top
lay the cosiest of beds and at the bottom the cheeriest of quiet
firesides.
Although it was July we had a fire all the time—the little touch that
made us kin, my cousin and me. The old prejudice against lighting a
fire after spring cleaning or before a certain fixed date in autumn,
coincident with the exchange of lace window-curtains for stuff ones,
or some such annual domestic rite, had not died out in rural England
since I had been away; but here—as soon as I walked in out of the
rain on the afternoon of my arrival—the sight of a ruddy blaze, and a
well-furnished tea-table beside it, told me that in this remote village
I had struck an enlightened woman.
It was so remote a village that there was no way of getting to it
from D—— but by driving the whole eight miles. M. sent the landlord
of her local inn, her accustomed coachman, an intelligent man
whose ancestors had been in service with mine, to fetch me; and he
entertained me on the way with the history of the old families whose
homes we passed and with whom my family had had more or less
intimate relations in the years before he was born, as that history
had been enacted within his lifetime and during the later part of
mine. The soft grey rain came straight down, and we were both
coated and mackintoshed to the eyes. I had to peer from under the
edge of my dripping umbrella at the well-known gateways (the
lodges more modernised than the mansions they belonged to, so far
as I could see the latter through their splendid woods and avenues),
the familiar farms and villages, with their fine old churches, all the
dear, historic landscape; but, wet as it was, I had to struggle not to
make it wetter—and my handkerchief hopelessly buried under my
wraps. I tell you, dear sympathetic elderly reader, the memories that
flocked along that road to greet me were all but overwhelming. It
was, for peculiar and precious charm, the drive of my life—to date;
only the one I had next day surpassed it.
It did not rain next day, and Mr B. drove up to the abbey, spick and
span, in plum-coloured livery and shiny hat, to take us out for the
afternoon. Nice man that he was, with his old family traditions so
entwined with mine, he entered with respectful zeal into the spirit of
the expedition, undertaking that I should miss nothing of interest to
me through default of his. He and M. mapped out the route with
care, and as we pursued it he turned on his box seat at intervals of a
few minutes, to name each feature as we approached or passed it,
and make such comments as seemed called for. Half the time I was
standing up in the carriage behind him, straining my eyes to see, at
the direction of his outstretched whip, something in the dim distance
not yet plain enough to see. And yet, by accident or design, the
latter I suspect, in collusion with M., he was driving slowly past the
very face of T——, the goal of this pilgrimage, without word or sign,
when my roving eye lighting upon it recognised it instantly, without
anybody's aid.
Would that I had a photograph of it! For not only was it a good old
house surpassing my fancy dreams of it, but it had not visibly
changed in the least degree, nor had any of its farm surroundings.
Just as I had left it when I was a child I saw it again when I was an
old woman; and the whole scene was as familiar to the last detail as
if I had been seeing it all the time. The big road gate, the pond
within, the barn, the garden (raised above the surrounding
meadow), the house itself, its generous front windows as wide as
they were deep, and the kitchen at the side, and the dairy running
back to the elder-tree where they used to kill the fowls—everything
was in its old place, and no sign of decadence visible from the point
at which I viewed it. This permanence of English things was so
remarkable to me—because in Australia nothing is permanent, but
altering itself to bigger or better every minute of the time.
As at the moment of sudden death the complete panorama of one's
past life is before the mental eye—as one dreams a whole story in
multitudinous detail between the housemaid's morning knock at
one's door and the echo of it that wakes one (if those legendary
happenings are to be believed)—so I seemed to live all my little
childhood over again in the few minutes that Mr B. held his horse on
the highroad, and I stood at his shoulder to gaze at the place,
which, although not my birthplace, still meant for me the beginning
of all things. Memory could go no further back than to an infancy
that was put to bed in the middle of the day and given meals on its
nurse's lap with a spoon. I looked at the nursery window, and
instantly thought of a little thing left to cry in its crib, untended and
unheard, with feelings so acutely hurt by the unprecedented neglect
that the mark was left for evermore; and the occasion, there is
evidence to show, was the birth of a sister three years younger than
herself.
I looked at the "parlour" window and it was crowded with her. She
was just old enough to be "shown off" as the usual prodigy of
intelligence by adoring parents. My second earliest memory of
myself is as a public singer. They stood me on the big round "centre
table" that they might see me as I sang. I did not know the meaning
of the words I lisped, yet I had remembered many fragments of
them, and the tunes entirely, in spite of having heard neither during
the many intervening years. And now an unknown friend in England,
General Sir M.G., who fought in the Mutiny, who used to sing them
himself before he went to that business, probably at the same time
as I sang them, has filled up for me the gaps in the verses of one of
my favourite songs, with the remark, which I can so feelingly
endorse on my own account, that he wishes he could remember
what he reads now as well as he does what attracted him in those
old days. Almost simultaneously another friend in England, one of
his Majesty's Privy Councillors, did me the very same kindness; and
thus the old ballad seems to have a claim to be given a place in
these reminiscences, for the sake of other of our contemporaries
who may share our sentiment about it.
"'Twas a beautiful night, and the stars shone
bright,
And the moon on the waters play'd,
When a gay cavalier to a bower drew near
A lady to serenade.
To tenderest words he swept the chords,
And many a sigh breath'd he.
While o'er and o'er he fondly swore:
Sweet maid, I love but thee."
With a lingering lilt at the end:
"Sweet mai-aid, sweet mai-aid, I lov-ove, I
lov-ove but
thee."
 "When he turn'd his eye to the lattice high,
And fondly breath'd his hopes,
In amazement he sees, swing about in the
breeze,
All ready, a ladder of ropes.
Up, up, he has gone. The bird she has
flown.
'What's this on the ground?' quoth he.
''Tis plain that she loves. Here's some
gentleman's gloves,
And they never belong'd to me.
These gloves, these gloves, they never
belong'd to me.'

Of course you'd have thought he'd have

followed and
fought,
For it was a duelling age;
But the gay cavalier quite scorn'd the idea
Of putting himself in a rage.
So wiser by far, he pack'd up his guitar,
And as homeward he went sang he,
'When a lady elopes down a ladder of ropes
She may go to Hongkong for me.
She may go, she may go, she may go to
Hongkong for me.'"
I do not know if it was the same cavalier to the same lady—but I
think not, and General G. thinks not—who thus mourned by my
infant lips:
"I'll hang my harp on a willow-tree
And go off to the wars again.
A peaceful life has no charms for me,
The battlefield no pain.
 For the lady I love will soon be a bride,
With a diadem on her brow,
Oh, had she not flattered my boyish pride
I might have been happy now!"
Or:
"Oh, why did she flatter my boyish pride?
She is going to leave me now!"
Looking through that wide window into the old parlour as it used to
be, how plainly I could see the ring of benign or ecstatic faces
around the centre table, visitors and grandparents and uncles and
aunts gathered to behold and applaud the prodigy! Even the
formidable youngest aunt would grant a provisional smile to a
display she could not have approved of; because it was really rather
notable, I believe, considering my time of life, and even she had her
soft moments. Besides, she was then young herself.
When she came to see us at this house—she had not time to come
much to any of the others—she made it her business to show our
mother how we should be brought up. She must have known
something about it, seeing that afterwards she was governess to
young royalties at two of the courts of Europe, but we, while
compelled to bow to her authority, had no respect for it or for her.
Regarding her image dispassionately from this long, long distance, I
see that she was an exceptionally correct and accomplished woman,
but a certain circumstance that took place behind that parlour
window fixed another view of her upon my infant mind too firmly to
be obliterated in a lifetime.
I was just old enough to go to church, and my doting mother had
provided me with a lovely Sunday bonnet. It covered the whole head
closely, in the height of fashion—responsible for many ear-aches, by
the way—and it had two little tails of ribbon on one side of it, each
end fringed out. When this bonnet was tied on, the pelisse that
covered the bareness of the indoor costume being also adjusted, I
was as conscious of my striking appearance as the proud parent
herself. She still had her own toilet to make, and while she dressed I
went down to the hall where the family assembled for the procession
to the village church. It was early, and I was first at the rendezvous,
so I went into the drawing-room to look at myself. A large mirror
that had gilt candelabra branching out on either side, and a fierce
gilt eagle on the point of flight from the apex, hung on the wall by
the window, with a sort of divan that was also a receptacle for music
sheets and other things in front of it. Laboriously I climbed that
ottoman and stood as a statue on a pedestal before that convex
glass. Then I lost count of time in the contemplation of my charms,
and especially of those two fringed ends of ribbon drooping
gracefully to my shoulder. My head was screwed round to bring them
well into view, when I was suddenly petrified by a vision of the
youngest aunt in the doorway. I was caught red-handed, as it were.
It was impossible to evade conviction on the charge that I saw
levelled at me from her pitiless calm eyes. I stood silent, trembling,
wondering what she would do. "She will tell mother," was my first
thought. But she did worse. She sought the nearest work-box, she
approached me—still standing on the ottoman—with unsheathed
scissors in her hand. She lifted one end of fringed ribbon and sliced
it off; she lifted the other and served that the same. In two seconds
my bonnet in which I now had to go to church (impotently raging
and heart-broken) was ruined, and my vice of vanity supposed to
have been destroyed at its source. I cannot recall the effect of the
transaction upon my mother's mind, but I know that its effect on
mine was not what the youngest aunt anticipated. "Some day you
will thank me for it," said she. It was a formula of hers. She was
quite wrong. In half-a-century I have not learned to thank her for it.
She did not kill vanity with those scissors, as she supposed, but love.
It is a mistake common to educationalists the world over.
The eldest aunt, my godmother—she of the Marble Arch episode—
was quite a different sort of person. She too, being also a single
woman, thought she could improve upon her married sister's
methods of managing children, but her pills were so sugared that it
was a pleasure to swallow them; at any rate, it was so here at T——,
before young men, or even boys, could trouble her. One instance of
a lesson prepared and administered for my good, when I was still
little more than a baby, stands out very distinctly.
I had a passion for dolls. It was the first passion of my life, and
lasted until I was so old as to be ashamed to be seen with them.
The first of my family were just any articles that came to hand, but
soon we had a nurse (the first five of us being born in six years, our
mother was not always able to attend to everything, as she desired),
who gave shape and form, of a sort, to my maternal ideals. She
stuffed bags with chaff or sawdust and sewed them together, a
round ball to a larger round ball, and four sausage-shaped ones to
that. This body had the surpassing merit of bigness; clothed in a real
child's cast-off clothes, it seemed itself more real. When nurse had
done her part I used to carry it downstairs to father for him to put a
face and hair on it with pen and ink. Although I always pleaded with
him to make her as pretty as possible, the spirit of mischief
sometimes prompted him to draw the countenance of a goblin or an
idiot. I would open my arms to embrace a lovely baby girl and find a
horrible monster with cross eyes and grinning teeth; at which I
would at once break into a wail and a flood of tears. Then he would
be very sorry, would hasten to somebody for a fresh layer of calico
and sit down and make the face again—this time his very best (and
he was a clever draughtsman) with which I would be quite satisfied.
The breed of dolls improved, of course, with my own development in
taste and knowledge; the rag doll gave place to the wooden Dutch
creature with the pegged joints and shiny black head, and that to
the waxen angel with floss-silk hair and smiling carmine lips, eyes
like the sky and cheeks like the rose, which seemed almost too good
and beautiful for this world. Indeed that was too often the view
taken of her by the authorities. Wrapped in silver paper she would
repose in a drawer in the spare room under lock and key, while I
pined for her companionship, and would only be granted to me as a
sort of distinguished visitor on high days and holidays.
Well, the eldest aunt never came to see us without bringing
presents. As soon as it was known upstairs that she had arrived we
were thrown into a fever of greedy anticipation, wondering what
they would be this time. I can remember the scene of her entrance
into the nursery on two or three occasions, each time in the evening
in her indoor costume, after she had kept us waiting for some time.
She carried her gifts in her arms. But one day instead of coming to
the nursery she sent for us to her room. I, the eldest niece, was
summoned first, and after greetings she took from her box a
ravishing wax doll and laid it in my arms.
"There," said she, "that is for a good girl."
Naturally I assumed it mine. I sat down and nursed it and gloated
over it, while she smiled benignly on me. Then, while at the dizziest
summit of my joy, I was informed that the doll was not for me but
for my next sister. Little did I guess what hung upon my behaviour
under this sore trial! As little can I account for the luck—merit it
could not have been—which led me to take the blow submissively. I
handed back the doll with a sigh, perhaps a tear, but without a
murmur. Straightway another doll, twice as big and fine, was
extracted from the aunt's box and pronounced to be irrevocably my
own—because I had not shown myself selfish under a temptation
carefully calculated to test my character in that respect. The eldest
aunt explained her moral lesson with the result of which she was so
proud—as I was. She made me understand that the smaller doll
would have remained mine had I grudged it to my sister, who would
then have received the big one. As with the lesson of the youngest
aunt (who would have given neither doll to one so undeserving as,
by the merest accident, I might have shown myself), it impressed
itself indelibly on my mind—the profitableness of virtue to oneself,
and never mind what it costs other people. It would have made an
excellent text for one of the children's story-books of the period.
Compared with these disciplinarians my dear mother was nowhere.
She could hardly bring herself to scold a child. As far as I was
concerned my father was the same. His weak indulgence of me, the
open favouritism with which he distinguished me from my brothers
and sisters was—I know now—scandalous. Harsh to his boys, and
too ready to box the ears of the little girls when they were old
enough, he never laid an angry finger on me. One punishment only
was mine, and I must have been bad indeed at the times when it
was inflicted; I was sent to sit on the stairs. That does not sound like
punishment at all, but the treadmill was not dreaded more by those
condemned to it. To sit on the stairs meant to sit on the bottom step
of the front stairs, just facing the hall door, in dread expectation of a
visitor who should be witness of the unspeakable ignominy of my
position—akin to that of one exposed in the village stocks to the
insults of a hostile populace. I could not look at that front door, that
I used to watch in such agonies of fear, without seeing behind it the
huddled little figure, quaking in terror of the caller who hardly ever
came.
If I was let off so lightly myself, I suffered horribly in the
punishments of my nursery companions, particularly in the case of
my one-year-older brother—a thoughtful, gifted, sensitive boy, with
a fragile body and a spirit that could not be bent or intimidated,
who, from his babyhood until he came to his deathbed at seventeen,
was in constant collision with a passionate father who had not the
capacity to understand him. I remember once beating out with a
poker the panels of a door behind which he sat in darkness, a
prisoner on bread and water, proud and silent, with a bleeding back
but a dry eye, that I might get to him to weep over him and comfort
him. It makes me feel wicked, even now, to think of it. And to think
of his poor, delicate, devoted mother, who did understand him, and
to whom he was so precious, more helpless than I to prevent or
mitigate these tragic blunders, makes my own mother-blood run
cold.
In the generations before my own it seems to have been incumbent
on a father who would do his duty to be cruel to his sons (and how
hard the tradition dies!); it was incumbent on a mother to be stern
and distant with her young daughters, if she could—and there is
ample evidence that she forced herself to it. What the conception of
parental duty now is we know. Thinking the matter over, it seems to
me that the happy mean between the two extremes may have been
struck somewhere about the time when I was a child myself. I am
not citing my own experiences in proof of this—far from it—but the
broad general rules that applied to all respectable households of the
period.
The iron hand had taken on the velvet glove. Discipline—still a
synonym for decency, for civilisation, for religion, in the average
parent's mind—was enforced, not pitilessly, as aforetime, but with
firmness, and as a rule in moderate and reasonable ways. The child,
even the spoilt child, remained completely subject to its natural
rulers, whose sense of responsibility for its well-being seemed never
out of their minds; but while "duty" was still the watchword—and the
word stood for a real thing—the weakness of the weak side was
more justly allowed for—not pandered to, you understand; only not
treated as a crime to be cured by punishment. Duty—duty—how one
loathed the word! But how good for character to be trained to
recognise the thing! The very infant, if able to employ itself usefully,
had a daily task of some kind—was taught that life was meant for
work, and that play was unlawful save as a reward for work. Even at
T—— it was my duty, and I knew it, to spend certain hours with a
long seam or hem, stabbing my finger, weeping over repeated
unpickings and admonishments, just as it was my duty to make a
joyless breakfast of bread and milk. Every little girl must know how
to manufacture, single-handed, a whole shirt for her father—and the
amount of fine sewing in a whole shirt of those days must now be
seen to be believed—or hide her head amongst her peers and cause
her mother to be ashamed of her. I was well on the way with this
laborious undertaking before I could read.
Utter drudgery it was, because the scheme of "plain-work" was too
vast, and its details too minute and complicated, for my
understanding, but it did not destroy my inherited love of the
needle. When it ceased to be an instrument of discipline, it became
my favourite toy. I could be kept "good" at any time with beads to
thread, or some wools and a bit of canvas for a kettle-holder, or,
above all, scraps with which to dress dolls. What girl-child makes
dolls' clothes—proper dolls' clothes—now? In my child days it was an
occupation as constant as it was delightful. All the year round I was
stocking a little trunk with elaborate costumes for my children,
against they went with me a-visiting, or in the family party to the
seaside. It was thus that I learned to be independent of dressmakers
for myself in later years. A particularly bright memory of my life at T
—— is the way I "spent the day"—a regular-recurring holiday—at a
neighbouring farmhouse. My hostesses kept a doll for me. I never
took it home—it lived in a drawer in their spare bedroom—but it was
brought out as soon as I arrived, together with such odds and ends
of material as were available at the moment; and down I sat to
reclothe the puppet anew, in a costume of fresh design, the
completion of which would synchronise with the call of parent or
nurse to fetch me home. Now, when a houseful of grown-ups has a
child to entertain for many hours at a stretch, what labour and strain
to keep it amused and happy! These people had only to give me a
doll, a rag or two, and sewing materials, and I was amused for the
whole day, and so happy that I have never forgotten how happy I
was.
On account of that doll—which, after all, was not more than six
inches long—I had been most anxious to see the house belonging to
it. I knew it had been near T——, and, as I remembered it, almost
unique in rustic charm. Often, amid the lightly run up homes of
Australia, I had thought of its solid, old-world, if humble, beauty, and
on this particular afternoon I had purposed to feast my artistic sense
upon it with a satisfaction unknown to me when I was young and
ignorant. It was quite a shock—so accustomed had I become to
finding all I looked for—to discover that it was no more; the one
thing gone, of which no trace at all remained. Its garden was wholly
obliterated, and on the site of the old house stood a new house, the
commonest of the common, from which I turned in disappointment
and disgust. Dear, dear old vanished home! I could not have
believed I should feel its loss so much.
But I can say of it, in the words of the obituary column, that,
although gone, it is not forgotten. In my gallery of Memory the
picture of it hangs, no line or tint bedimmed by the passage of the
years.
Behold it with me, my reader. In the foreground an oval lawn,
carefully kept (for I was frequently employed to weed the daisies
out): it is ringed with gravelled path, then squared box borders, then
flower-beds, behind which on one side rises a thick belt of fir-trees,
and on the other lie the farmyards, over a dividing wall. From the
little green gate in the roadway fence (lined with a clipped hedge)
one views the old dwelling at the top of the lawn; long and low, its
walls a mat of ivy, pierced with latticed casements, opening outward,
and a front door under a little porch; a large, steep, thatched roof,
with dormer windows to the row of four bedrooms, and old
ornamental chimneys in clusters, tall and fat. On the side of the
trees, wooden lattices in the ivy let sunless light into the dairy
(robber rats used to squeeze through the interstices and get caught
fast on their return), and the finest violets and primroses grow
underneath. Also, farther into the green shade, pet hedgehogs live
that a little girl feeds with milk, and that uncurl and scuffle along at
her heels through the pine-needles to show their cupboard love. And
along that side the bees feed from the foxgloves, in the bells of
which little boys entrap them, to chase the little girl with the buzzing
prisoners, helpless in their silken bags. The backyard, unseen, has
red-brick pathways through it, ringing with the clink of pattens and
milk-pails; one leads to a green door, portal of a paradise of
unforbidden fruit; another branches off to the gate of nearest access
to the deeply mired cowyard, which is also the pigyard and poultry-
yard—which, by the way, should suggest an effluvium to be
remembered, but does not, possibly because the windows of the
period were used, not to let air in, but to keep it out. Sweet old
house—altogether sweet, smelling only of lavender and cabbage
roses and pot-pourri and fragrant cookings....
The title of the picture is "The House of the Doll."
For the doll's sake, Mrs H., its mistress, and H.M. (the two Christian
names never dissociated), her daughter, stand out from the shadowy
crowd of my earliest acquaintances in high relief. So small a society
as we were in our village and adjacent hamlets—miles and miles
from any railway—we had, of course, our cliques. Some of the half-
dozen or so of farmers' families were not to be familiarly recognised
on any account; with two or three we were distantly fraternal,
confining our amenities to cake-and-wine calls; one or two were on
such a footing with us that we "dropped in" on each other at
uncanonical hours, and conducted intercourse in our "keeping"
rooms and in our ordinary attire, but still with the perfect
understanding that the precise etiquette of the time forbade the
dearest friend to stay to meals unless previously invited and
prepared for; excepting, of course, in crises of trouble, when
etiquette must ever give way to primitive impulse. The H. family
were amongst these intimates, and chief of them all to me on
account of that doll.
There was a Mr H., but he was a nonentity in his domestic circle, a
slow, fat, white old man, with a large pimple on his nose, and whom
his wife addressed and referred to by his surname only; from all that
I can remember, it seems plain that she (a notable person amongst
us, vigorous, dressy, authoritative, I should say a perfect exponent
of the "proper" in her class) held the purse-strings. I know that she
left home at stated intervals to "collect her rents"—not his. There
was also H., the bushy-whiskered, towny son, apple of his mother's
eye—the same H. who married cousin E.—but he was not much at
his home when I was going there to dress my doll. When he was, he
illustrated the awkwardness of the architectural plan of that and
many of the old houses of the time. The row of upper chambers,
whose dormer windows poked out of the thatched roof, opened one
into the other; Mrs H. and her spouse had command of the
staircase, but H.M. had to go through their room to hers, and H.
through both to his; beyond his lay the spare bedroom, which had a
little newel staircase, no wider than the doors that masked it, in one
corner, going down to the corresponding corner of what was
superfluously styled the "spare" parlour; but these two stately and
sacred rooms were not meant to be made a passage of, and as such
no one thought of using them. So H. came and went by way of his
mother's and sister's rooms, and when I spent the night with them
(sleeping with H. M.) the excitement of his appearances was a great
part of the entertainment. H.M.'s favourite ejaculation, "Lawk-a-
daisy-me!" signalled his approach; if she was in bed she threw the
sheet over her head, if she was up she hid in a closet. She never
seemed to get over the novelty of the thing, which must have been
going on since she was born. And, although she was probably a
young woman, she seemed quite old to me.
Poor H.H.! How history repeats, and also anticipates, itself! Too
elegant for a farmer, and so a corn-merchant, with a desk in the
Exchange at L——, it was quite a condescension on his part to make
a sojourn under the paternal roof; and his mother seemed to glory
in the fact. He was the fine gentleman of the village, bringing the
latest thing in trouser-cut and hat-brim to the rustic youth. How
appropriate his ideals to his end!
Dress, I may remark by the way, although so far less complicated
and costly than it now is, was an equally important matter to us all.
Red-letter days were those on which we met our intimate
acquaintances, at each house in turn, to inspect the new attire
procured twice a year from L——. All the ladies seemed to set
themselves up at once, possibly because fixed days were observed
for bringing out their finery, Easter Sunday being one, but also they
may have wished to avoid the appearance of copying or forestalling
each other. I know there was a great comparing of notes at the
various private views, and ejaculations of admiration signifying polite
surprise. A new dress per season was then a thing unheard of, but a
new bonnet, or, more often, one that had been cleaned and
retrimmed, was forthcoming for every female head. I can see those
bonnets now, with their flowered caps in front and their flouncy
curtains behind, and their strings that used to be rolled up and
pinned in paper when not spread in bow and ends upon the wearers'
breasts. I think Mrs H. and her daughter must have been our great
exemplars in the matter of dress, so numerous seemed the mantles
and fal-lals in addition to the bonnets of their bi-annual show, and
such an impression of their rustling magnificence on Sundays
remains with me.

CHAPTER VII

OLD TIMES AND NEW

It struck me, as I stood up in Mr B.'s carriage to look at the old
house which had so well survived the changes and chances of half-
a-century, that at the beginning of that half-century the cash cost of
happiness was very much lighter than it is at the end; and not the
cash cost of happiness only, but of material well-being, domestic
plenty, social position, everything necessary to the comfort and
dignity of a gentleman. I do not speak of the poor labouring class; I
do not say—I do not for a moment think—that the old times on the
whole were better than the new; but I believe they were better in a
few things, and amongst other things in this—the good taste of
people in the matter of money.
Five hundred a year was then a good income. The fortunate
possessor did not usually thirst for more. He could keep a large,
substantial house amply provided, and take his family for an outing
yearly, and still save something. He had not fifty thousand trivial
drains upon his purse, as we have, consuming our substance we
know not how; he saw his return for what he spent, and he knew
what he wanted, and it was not much. His good home, his county
town, his local meet of hounds—they were not necessarily duller
than the crush of interests in our more fevered world. He grew his
own fruit and vegetables, if not his own pork and butter.
Housekeeping was thrifty, as a matter of duty, apart from any
thought of saving. I knew an earl who took a lump of meat out of a
pig-tub and ordered it to be washed and cooked for his dinner, by
way of pointing a moral to wasteful kitchenmaids. Out of five
hundred pounds a year, the wife would ask, perhaps, twenty pounds
as her personal allowance. Her clothes were always good, with rarely
a button or a darn wanting, but they were made at home or in the
National School—fine linen under-garments (with, of course, silk
stockings) and white calico petticoats, seamed and tucked
exquisitely, but not "enriched" with miles of lace, as in our own
costly fashion. She wore aprons to protect her neat gowns—a black
silk ornamental apron in the afternoon. Her best silk dress was best
for a dozen years, the Paisley shawl of her marriage outfit never out
of fashion. The local dressmaker came to sew for the children—
eighteenpence a day and her meals; she remade the same frock
twice or thrice: turning it on the first occasion, putting it together
after washing on the second, cutting it down for a younger child on
the third; and everything was lined throughout, to enhance the
durability of those everlasting stuffs. Girls went to balls in white
book-muslin and a pink or blue sash; the whole costume, with shoes
and gloves, might have cost a pound; yet we were supposed to be
well dressed—we really were, according to the modest requirements
of the time. So that it is easy to understand why the possessor of
five hundred pounds a year not only felt himself passing rich, but
actually was so. A farmer—a "gentleman-farmer," as he was called,
the class to which we belonged—with half that income clear of farm
expenses, was in a position to envy no man. I fancy that was
something like my father's situation when we were at T——. But he
was constitutionally incapable of managing money—he could not
hold it—and it is mother I think of when I think how ample and
orderly that old home was. The housewife of those days—so humbly
inferior to her lord and master as she was content to consider
herself, although he might not be worthy to tie her shoes (to adjust
her sandals, rather)—she was the home-maker, the heroine of her
day, although nobody knew it, herself least of all. Certainly she had
the advantage over her descendants of those good old contented
servants which are never heard of nowadays, because the feudal
age is past; they were the foundation-stones of the domestic edifice,
which for lack of them is now unsettled, decaying, in some sort out
of date. But apart altogether from consideration of such conditions
as were of the times and not of her individual choice, did she not
know her business well? I ask you, dear friends, who were young
with me.
Her grand-daughters laugh at her little fads and nostrums, but they
had their value and meaning to her and us. I have known of a
modern lady, a collector of curios, getting hold of that, to her,
amusing article, a copper warming-pan. Having been so lucky as to
get hold of it, she hung it up on a wall by a ribbon round its handle,
for an ornament. The housewife of the fifties did know better than
that. She raked red coals into it, poked it between the sheets at the
bottom of a bed, and in a few minutes made that bed the cosiest,
the blissfullest, the most sleep-compelling nest to tuck an ailing child
into on a winter's night that was ever contrived by human
intelligence in any generation. I would like once more to hear that
smothered rattle up and down, to smell that delicious scorchy odour
of the warmed sheets, to feel that sensation of transcendent comfort
as I sank to rest; but, of course, I never shall. Now, when I fear to
be kept awake with the shivers of a raw night, I fall back on a hot-
water bottle or a brick baked in the kitchen oven. The magic
warming-pan, where still extant, hangs cold and useless on the wall.
The present generation does not know its value; no, not even in
chilly England, where I found so many unexpected survivals of
things I had supposed for ages out of date. It seems to me—not
always, of course, nor even often, but now and then—that the
homes of my childhood were more really comfortable than the
corresponding homes of to-day. That there was real comfort in
them, and that at a price far less than we pay for our comfort, is, at
any rate, indisputable.
Deadly dull they would be to us to-day, I know. I saw something of
the life, about the eastern counties, in several families that had
brought it down unchanged to the twentieth century, and I asked
myself, "How could I stand this now?" I could not stand it, with all
my love of peace and quiet, of which I have never been able to get
enough. It would drive me melancholy mad. But in the days to which
these self-contained and unawakened homes belong, it was not dull.
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