Aunt Madge showed us the rest of the house, as she had had some rooms done over after our uncle died. In the main room, where Aunt Madge and we girls were to spend many happy times together, a new picture hung over the fireplace, showing Aunt Madge seated at a table and her twin sons standing either side of her. She said that it was in fact a painting of herself and two Fredericks, as Roger had invariably missed the appointments to sit for the painter, which she seemed a little sad about. We had not seen the painting before as Aunt had commissioned it for her husband and had hung it in our uncle’s office.
“You will recall your uncle was a very busy man, and always in and out and missing meals. The painting was sort of a jest from me, to remind him of what his family looked like. Now I wish I’d had one done of him.”
Lastly, we came to the largest chamber in the house, immediately above the shop, which had been our uncle’s office, and which hitherto I had only glimpsed through the door, it being out of bounds. Here sacks and barrels of goods were stored, and two or three boys had assisted my uncle with inventories, bills of sale, calculations and so on, and used to run up and down the stairs continually between the office and the shop with messages and queries. I was looking forward to having a closer view of this room as Madge unlatched the great door and stood back to enjoy the effect on us. For it was entirely changed. This vast space was now lined entirely with books. We gasped.
“I did not know what to do with this room,” she said, “so I brought the library up from Frocester. We never had space for it in town before.” She could see at once that we approved of the transformation she had effected.
We had had few books at home, and reading, apart from the Bible, had never been encouraged. None of us had been to school. Mother had taught our elder sisters perhaps hoping it would in a manner filter down through the family, which it did tolerably. I could read and write with great facility from an early age, but my general knowledge was lamentable. I was also, as I think Evelyn was, still quite innocent of the ways of the world. Grace’s fate had formed a horrible lesson which seemed to teach that the less we knew the better.
This was like opening the gates of paradise.
“Here, my dears,” she announced, “is your university. Read widely and without prejudice. The whole world is within these walls. It is at your disposal in your leisure hours.”
Evelyn and I looked at each other with open mouths before giggling uncontrollably. We would spend many happy hours in this haven, earnestly bent on improving our minds and attempting to build on the shamefully small stock of our knowledge of this world. However, you should by no means picture two serious little scholars, for we derived much nearer pleasure from reading poetry, and read and re-read one we thought very rude, which was only two lines long and was called ‘Her Legs’. It ran:
Fain would I kiss my Julia’s dainty leg,
Which is as white and hairless as an egg.
We also delighted in horrifying each other with pictures from books of medicine, and making each other shriek with laughter by reading from plays and acting out the parts, especially the great manly parts, huffing at the gods and so on.
Grace’s fate had confirmed in us a healthy respect for the dangers of theatre-going but we did not believe (as our father had) that just reading plays was a vicious pastime. Father had more than once delivered sermons on this subject.
“Nothing is more disappointing than to come upon a young person, in the attitude of study, to discover they are reading…” here he would pause dramatically, “a play-book. For if a young man comes to be in love with plays, the next step will be to love playhouses, and if he does not take great care, the next advance might be perhaps to a bawdy house. For plays make a jest of adultery, a joke of fornication, in short, a mock of sin. Thereby the playhouse is the Whore’s Exchange; the Devil’s Church.”
Aunt Madge and her husbands had also collected a vast array of what my father would certainly have called seditious literature. Amongst these, those we liked the best dealt with women’s lot. Until we came to Aunt Madge’s library, we had no idea that there even were pamphlets and books about women, excepting those that likened us to goddesses and other nonsense or those that taught us housewifery. Here there were writings about things I had never thought to question, but only wondered at, like why a boy should be better than a girl; why a husband should have control of all his wife’s money and property; and a hundred other intriguing matters. It was as if someone had said “there is no God”. These books and pamphlets turned everything upside down and looked at it anew, without being afraid or thinking it was sinful.
We would read and re-read phrases from these until we knew them by heart and could summon them like incantations at will. After receiving a letter from our sister Clarissa, full of her solemn admonishments to live cleanly and find husbands, we would intone Margaret Cavendish, who was our favourite. I can still remember some of this magic: “We are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses. We are shut out of all power and authority, by reason that we are never employed either in civil or martial affairs. Our counsels are despised and laughed at, the best of our actions are trodden down with scorn, by the overweening conceit men have of themselves and a thorough despisement of us.” I am not sure I understood it all, but it made me feel stronger and better.
This was all, of course, our secret. We did not venture these opinions at table or in company. We hugged these secret comforters close to ourselves. When I think of that library now I realise I have omitted a most important aspect of the pleasure of being in it, which was the smell, which I can summon even after all these years. The scent of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and all manner of other spices which used to be stored there still clung to the walls and floors, scenting even the books. It added a wholesome sweetness and pungency to our reading.
5
It was an odd sort of a life we led with Aunt Madge. When the Reverend Grimwade had written to her he had offered us as a sort of upper servants in return for our board. We were used to hard work and knew all the domestic arts, as our father had kept no servants but Annie Foster, the cook. The first day Aunt Madge would not let us work; it was a holiday, she said, and we explored the streets roundabout the house which were like rivers of activity and noise. I was most shocked by the fishwives who carried their wares in baskets on their heads with great expertise and let loose torrents of the most foul abuse to one another, including many words I had never heard before. Still, they did not seem to be really angry at each other but only, in a sort, to be prating in their own language. We walked all the way to the real river, and though Evelyn said I had seen it before I must have been little as I did not remember seeing such a marvel.
Londoners perhaps cannot imagine how the Thames seems to a stranger and take for granted this watery thoroughfare, busier, even, than the greater streets, and as full of hazard, with the great boats going up and down its length while the hundreds of smaller boats criss-cross from side to side as well. And the bridge, I think my favourite part in all of London, stretching across, packed tight with shops and houses. I used to dream of living in one of the houses, and wonder what it would be like to look out of the window and see the river flowing underneath you. And I wondered at how it had never been finished, until Evelyn laughed and told me it had been finished, but there had been a fire and the buildings at the end were lost. Still I did not understand how they had not built it up again, as I thought there must be great demand for such houses, and it was not as if there were other bridges. I earnestly wished to have a waterman take us across the river so I could walk back across the bridge, but Evelyn said another day, and besides we had no money, and perhaps I had better learn to swim before gadding in boats and such.