Works of Ellen Wood, page 1310
Mr. Price lived in a large house, under the very shadow of the Cathedral, where they always attended service. Thus the child’s earliest impressions were tinged with the ecclesiastical element to which she grew devoted, and which is so frequently introduced into her novels. Doubtless, even before she could speak, her large wondering eyes would trace with earnest gravity the solemn Cathedral outlines. From this she would turn to the College boys tearing through the gateway of Edgar Tower; would listen to their footsteps clattering through the cloisters as they rushed to and from school; and thus even in infancy she began to study unconsciously the character of that complex creature, the schoolboy, to be reproduced in later years with so much truth and fidelity.
It was in one of their morning walks that the housekeeper, whilst probably she saved the life of her charge, also possibly laid the foundation for future lifelong delicacy.
She had been warned against a certain field, in which a bull was wont occasionally to pass his days. This bull had been known to show signs of viciousness, and was to be avoided. Unfortunately Mrs. Tipton, like many other excellent people, had a will of her own — a far stronger will, indeed, than her gentle mistress. She was accustomed to command, and to think for herself. The field was a favourite field with her, and a pathway running diagonally through it led to her favourite walk.
On this particular morning the bull was certainly there, but at the far end, quietly grazing, and looking as if he and mischief had parted company for ever. The pathway was at this end of the field, the bull at that end; it was ridiculous to talk of danger, argued Mrs. Tipton: and they passed over the stile. The child was wearing a red silk hood trimmed with fur, and when they were half-way across the path the mild-looking animal caught sight of the hood — and was mild no longer. With one furious bound he charged down upon them. Tipton, repenting too late, paralysed with fear, took the child in her arms, and rushed onwards for dear safety: it was, indeed, a race for life. She gained the farther hedge, but not the stile. The bull was almost upon them. Scarcely knowing what she did, wild with terror, she threw the child over the hedge into the adjoining field.
How she escaped herself she never knew: whether she reached the stile in time, or broke through the hedge, she could never tell; but she did escape. Expecting to find the child seriously injured, she was surprised to see her standing unharmed, but pale, quiet, and startled. Perhaps the long grass had saved her. Perhaps her fall had been broken by one of those guardian spirits in whom all her life she firmly believed, and to whose care she ever seemed providentially consigned. The escape was certainly little less than a miracle.
Tipton never again had the opportunity of transgressing, even if she had the wish, for the bull was seen no more. He had forfeited the right to his ambrosial fields, and spent the remainder of his life in a humble shed. And Mrs. Tipton herself was never quite the same afterwards. The shock had been great, and she possibly felt that having received mercy she must show mercy in return. Henceforth she ruled with less severity in her little kingdom; the sceptre was more visible than the sword; until, in a very few years, she and many of her beloved surroundings passed into the unknown, and their places knew them no more.
CHAPTER II
“The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.”
THE childhood of genius is said to be either very awakened or very backward. In the case of Ellen Price it was the former. At seven years old she had gone through the studies of girls twice her age. She could repeat whole poems, such as Gray’s Elegy and the Deserted Village; and before she was thirteen knew by heart a great deal of Shakespeare. Her memory was remarkable. In later days, when asked to do so by her children, she would sometimes recite in the twilight, by the hour together, poem after poem: her sweet and gentle tones so quiet and impressive that — to give a solitary example — at
“The cricket chirrups on the hearth,
The crackling faggot flies,”
one almost heard the one and saw the other. Time after time her intonation and emphasis seemed to bring out new charms and meanings, betraying singular depths of quiet feeling and sympathy with the poet. The year before she died, one of her children having asked a question with regard to Sterne’s Maria, she immediately repeated two whole pages bearing upon the subject. Yet she had never opened the book since she was thirteen — an interval of sixty years. As a child, after reading her daily tasks once through, she could always say them fluently. History was her favourite study, and to the end of life there were few historical facts and persons that she could not recall at will.
In her early home she had all things very much her own way; all her wishes were regarded. Her grandmother supplied her liberally with pocket-money; but where in most cases it would have been spent in toys and bon-bons, in this instance it went in books: in stories and fairy tales, in poetry and history; books of which she soon possessed a great store, looked upon as her chief treasure and resource. With these, even as a young child, she would take refuge from the world around her, and become lost and absorbed in an ideal existence of her own.
We have heard her say that even in those early days this was her great happiness — to be amongst her books. Already her mind was busy weaving simple plots and small romances, and she would endow living people with strange histories and create fictitious characters to suit her childish imaginings. The quiet cloisters she crowded with dream people, and at night as she watched the outlines of the Cathedral steeped in moonlight, she would fancy the dark and solemn aisles peopled with all the ghosts of those who reposed there and belonged to the historic past. When only three years old her grandmother would teach her poems which she easily learned by heart, and when friends were present she would be brought into the drawing-room to recite verse after verse. She was looked upon as a small wonder, and it was well that she did not develop into that most unfortunate of all fates, an infant prodigy. But her mind, happily, was never introspective, dwelling upon self, a mental condition that always leads to suffering, and too often to failure. She was ever occupied with outward things, taking the keenest interest in all her surroundings. Nevertheless, the indulged life at her grandmother’s could not be without a certain danger, and perhaps it was well that it was soon to be interrupted.
When she was seven years old, Mr. Price, the grandfather, died, after a few months’ mysterious illness which baffled all physicians. He suffered no pain, but gradually grew weaker, faded, and passed away. After death, when lying in his coffin, it was proposed to take in his little grand-daughter — of whom during life he had been so fond, and who had returned all his affection — for one look before the last sad office was performed, and the face for ever closed to mortal eyes. The act, kindly prompted, was a mistake. Peculiarly sensitive and impressionable, a nature probably no one quite understood or realised, the child was so terrified by the sight that she fell into strong hysterics, and for many hours they almost feared for the result. In time she calmed down and recovered; but the impression remained, and was never forgotten.
After the death of her grandfather changes were made in the household, and it was decided that the little girl should return to her own home.
For her this meant the commencement of a new life. At her grandmothers she had reigned alone, the light and charm of the household; a child with capacities beyond her years; her every desire gratified. In the new home she became the companion of her father, whose cultivated mind guided her from that hour, and no doubt had considerable influence in directing her intellect. Over and above her governess, he superintended her reading; and she ever looked up to him with the utmost reverence and affection. Mr. Thomas Price was a very good man, without being what is called deeply religious. At any rate he made no parade of his religion. Goodness was innate with him, and he inherited from his mother that calmness of spirit which caused him to take the affairs of life only too quietly. He was eminently just and kind-hearted, especially good to the poor, who in every right cause found him a strong champion. No man in Worcester was more looked up to and respected; and at public meetings his few quiet words had more weight than the longer sentences of others. Those were not days when the labouring classes were gaining the upper hand, and nothing roused the spirit within Mr. Price so much as the righteous complaint of the working people. Consequently he was the most popular of men, and could rule where others failed. Many a trouble was quelled at the rising by his influence: a voice never raised, a hand never stretched out. So much was this the case that his power was scarcely realised; it told imperceptibly; he was so seldom seen, went so little amongst them, said so little when he did appear, that even the men themselves scarcely knew how much they valued and regarded him.
One secret of his influence was his singular good sense and clear judgment, inherited from his father. Although his mind was highly cultivated, he must sometimes have felt that his faculties were wasted in things beneath them. A university career, where he might have taken honours and spent his days in the intellectual atmosphere for which Nature meant him — this is what ought to have been. He had only to stretch out his hand and take it, and would have done so but for that want of ambition and energy. He lived in a world of his own, revelling in solitude and contemplation, his mental gifts sufficient for him; every moment of the time not due to business was spent in the atmosphere of his well-chosen library.
It seems almost a pity that he had wealth and work to inherit; that he was an only child; for energy and exertion were thus rendered unnecessary. He was able to supply all his simple tastes, to surround himself with luxuries he never cared for, and to indulge in all the refinements that he loved.
With such a nature Ellen Price’s earlier years were passed: the years after she left her grandmother’s home, up to the time of her marriage. Her father was exactly the man, and possessed exactly the mind, to strengthen the good seed already in her heart. All his refinement and intellectual attainments found an immediate response in her own sensitive and sympathetic temperament At all periods of her life she placed high ideals before her; and here, during her most impressionable years, she dwelt under the wing and shadow of one who fulfilled her loftiest aspirations. The Times, in reviewing East Lynne, said they had never before met an authoress so capable of delineating with a few strokes of the pen the portraits and characters of men, and of noble men; but the faculty was being trained from the days of her youth; it grew with her growth, until it became a part of herself.
Much of her talent must have been inherited from her father. He never wrote: few wrote in those days who did not feel within them the sacred fire of inspiration; it was supposed to be an inborn gift, just as much as music or painting or any other of the divine arts: but he was of an original and very thoughtful turn of mind. His thoroughness, wide reading, powers of applying himself to mental work — all this was in singular contrast to the want of physical energy and activity which distinguished him throughout life. Had he lived in the Middle Ages he would have been a hermit devoted to contemplation; or, turning alchemist, he would have sought with nervous zeal the secrets of science and nature. Born under the influence of the eighteenth century, he became nothing but a quiet scholar who had very much mistaken his vocation, and in consequence, if we err not, was never quite the thoroughly happy and satisfied man he might have been under other circumstances.
All his earnestness of purpose and high sense of duty equally characterised his daughter Ellen; and it is because we feel how much she owed to her father, how much she inherited from him, both in mental and moral qualities, that we dwell upon the character of Mr. Price. With her, Nature had been more prodigal in gifts; and the faculties which were wanting in the father to make him a great man were bestowed upon the child. She had singular nervous energy, which would never allow her to rest satisfied without attaining to great things; and this, combined with untiring powers of application, carried her safely and successfully through years of earnest work and deferred hope.
She possessed also what perhaps was the strongest and certainly the highest faculty within her — an eminently spiritual nature, to which everything else was subservient. Devotion was her first duty; quiet, simple, and unobtrusive; never talked about, never paraded: for she ever felt that utterance made all feeling commonplace, and the deepest subjects were too sacred for words. No doubt this also was innate; Heaven’s best gift was not denied to one who ever seemed under its special protection. With all truth and reverence it may be said that throughout life the hand of God was upon her, and she was ever in His keeping. “Thou shalt hide me under the shadow of Thy wings, and I shall be safe from fear of evil.” Such might have been the motto of all Mrs. Henry Wood’s days; and, unless the succeeding pages fail in their object, this fact must become abundantly evident From her earliest years she was brought up in a sacred atmosphere. Her first recollections, we have seen, were the outlines of the Cathedral under whose shadow she dwelt, for her grandfather’s house was either in the Close or very near to it. Her first remembered sounds were the sweet College bells ringing for service. From her nursery window her attendant would hold her up to watch the people passing on their way to and from the College services with grave and reverent step. A little later in the day her grandmother was in the habit of taking her out and pacing the quiet, deserted, beautiful cloisters. She would talk of the happy dead resting there; would point to the strange gravestone with its sad inscription “Miserrimus,” and say to the wondering, impressionable child that one lay there whose life must have been all sorrow and suffering — perhaps one who had wasted his days in sin, which at last had brought him to realise that such a life must ever end in such an epitaph. Or again, perhaps one who had only suffered through the sins of others, himself good and righteous. It all read the same lesson, whatever the cause for the inscription, that sin ended in sorrow.
And the child would look up with earnest eyes, and contemplate the gravestone — which ever after held a fascination for her — with thoughts beyond her years. We do not think there was ever a time when she resolved to be good, to choose the better part; goodness was part of her character, and it became more confirmed with her growth. She possessed a singularly self-contained nature and disciplined mind. But we shall see that quietness and contemplation and a life of thought were very early forced upon her.
After these quiet walks and talks in the solitary cloisters — a great contrast to the hour when the College boys, released from school, would invade the sacred precincts and make them echo with their noise — the grandmother would enter the Cathedral and pace its equally deserted aisles, impressing upon the child that they were now in the house of God; that here they were on holy ground, and here they came to worship Him. And Sunday after Sunday, when still too young to realise or take part in the service, she would be taken to their own pew, which immediately faced that of the Dean’s family.
One thing that in those days charmed and delighted her was the wonderful east window, which had no special design, but was a kaleidoscope of ancient glass of many rich tints. Her gaze would often wander to this marvellous vision, attracted by beauty of colouring. We do not know whether the window still remains, or has given place to something modern and inferior. Sometimes it would be difficult to draw her away from the fascination. Service ended, the magnificent organ would roll its volume of sound through roof and arches, and many of the congregation would pace the aisles whilst the player extended his voluntary beyond the utmost limits, and the bedesmen would wax impatient and think it hard that they should be kept from their Sunday dinner; but the pacing congregation, and the sweet notes of the organ, and the strains of Beethoven and Handel were as nothing to the little child in comparison with the wonderful colours of that east window. All through life Mrs. Henry Wood retained her love for old stained glass, and was ever reverently susceptible to the charm of harmonious tones.
She had inherited her father’s artistic taste, and in earlier years painted in water-colours, loving to form and sketch her own groups. Her artistic eye in placing flowers, whether to decorate a table or a room, was a talent in itself, and a rare one. In later years her drawing-rooms in France were always beautiful with a profusion of blossoms and ferns, that threw a charm over the rooms such as few others possessed. Generally she attended to her own flowers, and it was always a labour of love; but if for some reason they had been changed by the housekeeper, she would presently go round the rooms, and quickly transform what before had been very inartistically arranged.
CHAPTER III
“Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears.”
WE have spoken of Mr. Price, and must not omit some mention of his wife; for Mrs. Henry Wood’s talent seemed inherited from both parents: the deeper qualities from the father, all the vivacity and ease from the mother.
Mrs. Price was in all things the exact opposite to her husband. In appearance she was extremely pretty; small and fairy-like, with dark flashing eyes, a wealth of dark curling hair, a very pink and white complexion. The portrait we are able to give of her was painted when she was about forty years old, and the bloom of youth had faded. Moreover it was taken immediately after a dangerous illness, when she had been very near to the gates of death. The face was somewhat drawn, the perfect oval had fallen in, the features looked exaggerated. Nevertheless the likeness was thought good. In her movements she was light and graceful; active and energetic, but a little wanting in repose. Like many little women, she was fond of ruling and of having her own way, and her quiet husband allowed her in most things to do as she pleased. Year after year passed, and Mr and Mrs. Price remained the excellent friends husband and wife ought to be; but it grew into an understood thing that his study must not be too often invaded, and he gradually withdrew more and more into its seclusion. Within that sanctum his daughter Ellen, and she alone, always found a welcome and a sure resting-place; and there much of their time would be spent reading and conversing, discussing books, playing chess, happy in each other’s society.
