All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Amelia E. Barr

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      “Then Ann, we will ask them to join us,” and Mother laughed pleasantly, and added, “Your cooking, Ann, would be a great treat to them.”

      In a fortnight the house being settled, the question was schools. There was no choice on this subject, there being only one ladies’ school. It was kept by the Misses Johnston, three very handsome women who were daughters of one of the old hunting, racing, drinking squires, called “fine old English gentlemen.” At his death, there was nothing left for his daughters, and they opened a school. Jane and I were entered as pupils there, but I did not find in any of the three, another Miss Pearson. They were unfitted for teachers and appeared to dislike the office, and though I learned the lessons set me, I made no particular progress in anything but music. In this study my teacher was a French emigrant, and I learned rapidly under his tuition.

      We had not been half a year in this school, when a momentous question arose. A girl called Mary Levine came one day, and she was entered for all the senior classes, as well as for music, dancing, drawing and French. We all concluded that her father must be very rich, but Miss Grey, the daughter of one of the Canons of the Cathedral, said she had never heard of the Levines, and she did not believe they were anybody at all. For a few days suppositions as to Miss Levine’s social standing were rife. Then it was discovered that she was the daughter of Daniel Levine, a Jewish jeweler and money lender. Instantly every one drew away from the girl, and she was shocked and amazed at the scorn and animosity shown towards her. I saw her tearfully talking to Miss Johnston one evening as the dismissed school was leaving the room, and when I reached home I told Mother what I had heard and seen.

      Mother advised us not to name the subject in my father’s 50 presence, but this advice was rendered nugatory by events which had to be met and decided on; for Mr. Downes, the banker, the Reverend Mr. Eamont, Canon Grey and several others removed their daughters the next day from school, pending Miss Johnston’s decision as to opening her school to Jewish children. Every day there were more defections, and the distracted ladies sent a messenger to each patron of the school, asking them to answer by “yes” or “no” the following question:

      “Do you object to your daughters associating with the Jewess, Mary Levine, in the classes of our school?

      “The Misses Johnston.”

      The long roll of patron’s names came to Father among the last, and Mother noticed that the answer in every case had been a positive “yes.” Father took the roll, and without consulting any one, wrote hurriedly but decidedly, “Yes, I object.”

      I do not believe there was one reply favorable to the Jewish girl, and yet I could see no fault in her, nor any reason for her dismissal; and the school was much thinned by the circumstances, and I disliked it more than ever. Nor did her ejection from the school restore confidence. Several of the older pupils went to a celebrated boarding school at York, and others to Harrogate, and an air of dissatisfaction pervaded the class rooms.

      As the spring opened I was sick. Father said, “No wonder!” He himself felt the change “from the clear, mountain air of Penrith, to the damp heavy atmosphere of Ripon.” The doctor said I had some kind of an ague, and gave me Jesuit’s bark. I had never been sick in all my life, and the feeling of inertia, and the abominable Jesuit’s bark, made me miserable. I was taken from school, and told to “amuse myself.” But books had become uninteresting. I had a headache, and it hurt me to read, and the Jesuit’s bark made every day a sickening terror. We call Jesuit’s bark quinine now, and have it in little white capsules, and are not conscious of its taste; but any one needing quinine in those days had to take a decoction of the bark of the tree—a whole tumbler full 51 of the black, nauseous liquid three times a day. Jane had no ague, and was quite happy at school; for she was fond of embroidery, and was working a petticoat for Mother in a new kind of that art—the same kind that has been fashionable for the last three or four years, which is accomplished by cutting holes in the cloth and then seaming them around.

      One day in early June, I was lying on a sofa which stood in the parlor-study, and Father was writing. I can listen now as I write, and hear the scratching of his quill pen upon the paper. Suddenly a gentleman came riding rapidly to our door, and asked for Mr. Huddleston. My father lifted his head at the sound of the voice, listened a moment, threw down his pen and rose to go out of the room, but before he could do so the stranger entered, and then it was “William!” “Thomas!” and they clasped hands and sat down together. I had no mind to go away, unless sent, and I closed my eyes and lay still as if asleep.

      Their conversation soon became animated and argumentative, though it was about people and places I had no knowledge of; but finally reached a subject then interesting all clever and thoughtful minds—the Tractarian or High Church Movement. As I had read to Father several small pamphlets “Tracts for the Times” I was familiar with the names they constantly quoted—Newman, Keble, Froude, et cetera, but it was Newman they disputed over. The stranger seemed to dislike Newman. He said he was no better than a Calvinist, and had been brought up by his Calvinistic mother on Watts and Romaine and such teachers, that he was pale and thin, had a poor presence, and was more like a Wesleyan preacher than a pillar of the Church. Father spoke hotly, and said he never thought of Newman’s appearance, his influence was something like magic, and that you could not be fifteen minutes in his company, and not feel yourself invited to take an onward step. I liked the stranger for not liking Newman, for Newman’s writing was the hardest and least interesting reading I did for Father.

      I was enjoying the dispute, when Ann Oddy tapped at the door, and told father he was wanted a few minutes. Then I stepped off the sofa, and went to the stranger.

      52

      “Well now!” he cried, “who are you, my little maid?”

      I said I was Mr. Huddleston’s daughter, and my name was Amelia.

      “And you were on the sofa all the time?” he continued.

      “Yes,” I replied, “I am sick.”

      “Nonsense!” he ejaculated, but I assured him the doctor said I had an ague, and I had been obliged to take Jesuit’s bark.

      “Jesuit’s bark! That is enough to make any one sick. Come with me to Richmond farm, and I will give you new milk in place of it. You can get up early, and go with the dawn maids and see the big Durhams milked. I will have a pony saddled for you, and you can ride all over the farm at my side. And the red Morella cherries are just ripe, and the strawberries coming on, and the raspberries not a month behind. And there are hundreds of hens, and you could go with Tabitha, the hen-wife, and see her clear the nests, and feed the chickens—such a lot of them! And I have the prettiest and kindest of house-keepers; she is called Mary, and she will be good and kind to you. Will you come to Richmond farm with me?”

      I told him that I would like it better than anything else in the world, and then I asked, “Would you like me to come?”

      “That I would!” he answered heartily, and as he did so, my father re-entered the room with Mother on his arm. Mother had put on her new muslin gown; it was a white muslin, with a tiny pink rosebud in it, and her black hair was beautifully dressed in that Madonna style introduced by Queen Victoria. “I have the prettiest mother in all the world,” I thought, and I went to her side, and clasped her hand.

      So the stranger, whom I heard introduced to my mother as Mr. Thomas Richmond ate dinner with us, and this proposal to take me for a few weeks to Richmond farm, was gladly accepted.

      Rev. William Henry Huddleston

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