Most undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. When I recollect certain passages of my thrice happy early life, I can not have the slightest doubt about the matter, although it contradicts all foregone conclusions, all nursery and school-room morality, to say so. But facts are stubborn things. Spoilt I was. Every body spoilt me, most of all the person whose power in that way was greatest, the dear papa himself. Not content with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. How well I remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old feet, while the little hands hung on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle (those were days of pig-tails), hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating, and the powder flying down his back. That climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all. I can hear our shouts of laughter now.

Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and careless temper all the professional etiquette of the world could never tame into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine, happened to be a capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage, which, at that time, was the regulation conveyance of a physician, almost wholly to my mother, used to pay his country visits on a favorite blood-mare, whose extreme docility and gentleness tempted him, after certain short trials round our old course, the orchard, into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I might occasionally accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and the distance not too great. A groom, who had been bred up in my grandfather's family, always attended us; and I do think that both Brown Bess and George liked to have me with them almost as well as my father did. The old servant proud, as grooms always are, of a fleet and beautiful horse, was almost as proud of my horsemanship; for I, cowardly enough, Heaven knows, in after-years, was then too young and too ignorant for fear—if it could have been possible to have had any sense of danger when strapped so tightly to my father's saddle, and inclosed so fondly by his strong and loving arm. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a change of residence from a small town to a large one, and going among strange people who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly harmless, if somewhat unusual pleasure.

But the dear papa was not my only spoiler. His example was followed, as bad examples are pretty sure to be, by the rest of the household. My maid Nancy, for instance, before we left Hampshire, married a young farmer; and nothing would serve her but I must be bridesmaid. And so it was settled.

She was married from her own home, about four miles from our house, and was to go to her husband's after the ceremony. I remember the whole scene as if it were yesterday! How my father took me himself to the church-yard gate, where the procession was formed, and how I walked next to the young couple hand-in-hand with the bridegroom's man, no other than the village blacksmith, a giant of six-feet-three, who might have served as a model for Hercules. Much trouble had he to stoop low enough to reach down to my hand; and many were the rustic jokes passed upon the disproportioned pair, who might fitly have represented Brobdignag and Liliput. My tall colleague proved, however, as well-natured as giants commonly are every where but in fairy tales, and took as good care of his little partner as if she had been a proper match for him in age and size.

In this order, followed by the parents on both sides, and a due number of uncles, aunts, and cousins, we entered the church, where I held the glove with all the gravity and importance proper to my office; and so contagious is emotion, and so accustomed was I to sympathize with Nancy, that when the bride cried, I could not help crying for company. But it was a love-match, and between smiles and blushes Nancy's tears soon disappeared, and so by the same contagion did mine. The happy husband helped his pretty wife into her own chaise-cart, my friend the blacksmith lifted me in after her, and we drove gayly to the large, comfortable farm-house where her future life was to be spent.

It was a bright morning in May, and I still remember when we drove up to the low wall which parted the front garden from the winding village road, the mixture of affection and honest pride which lighted up the face of the owner. The square, substantial brick house, covered with a vine, the brick porch garlanded with honey-suckles and sweet-brier, the espalier apple-trees on either side the path in full flower, the double row of thrift with its dull pink bloom, the stocks and wall-flowers under the window, the huge barns full of corn, the stacks of all shapes and sizes in the rick-yard, cows and sheep and pigs and poultry told a pleasant tale of rural comfort and rural affluence.

The bride was taken to survey her new dominions by her proud bridegroom, and the blacksmith finding me, I suppose, easier to carry than lead, followed close upon their steps with me in his arms.

Nothing could exceed the good-nature of my country beau; he pointed out bantams and peafowls, and took me to see a tame lamb, and a tall, staggering calf, born that morning; but for all that, I do not think I should have submitted so quietly to the indignity of being carried, I, who had ridden thither on Brown Bess, and was at that instant filling the ostensible place of bridesmaid, if it had not been for the chastening influence of a little touch of fear. Entering the [pg 504] poultry-yard I had caught sight of a certain turkey-cock, who erected that circular tail of his, and swelled out his deep-red comb and gills after a fashion familiar to that truculent bird, but which up to the present hour I am far from admiring. A turkey at Christmas well roasted with bread sauce, may have his merits; but if I meet him alive in his feathers, especially when he swells them out and sticks up his tail, I commonly get out of his way even now, much more sixty years ago. So I let the blacksmith carry me.

Then we went to the dairy, so fresh and cool and clean—glittering with cleanliness! overflowing with creamy riches! and there I had the greatest enjoyment of my whole day, the printing with my own hands a pat of butter, and putting it up in a little basket covered with a vine leaf, to take home for the dear mamma's tea. Then we should have gone to the kitchen, the back kitchen, the brew-house, the wash-house, and the rest of the bride's new territories, but this part of the domicil was literally too hot to hold us; the cooking of the great wedding dinner was in full activity, and the bridegroom himself was forced to retreat before his notable mother, who had come to superintend all things for the day.

So back we drew to the hall, a large square brick apartment, with a beam across the ceiling, a wide yawning chimney, and wooden settles with backs to them; where many young people being assembled, and one of them producing a fiddle, it was agreed to have a country dance until dinner should be ready, the bride and bridegroom leading off, and I following with the bridegroom's man.

Oh, the blunders, the confusion, the merriment of that country dance! No two people attempted the same figure; few aimed at any figure at all; each went his own way; many stumbled; some fell, and every body capered, laughed, and shouted at once. My partner prudently caught me up in his arms again, for fear of my being knocked down and danced over, which, considering some of the exploits of some of the performers, seemed by no means impossible, and would have been a worse catastrophe than an onslaught of the turkey-cock.

A summons to dinner put an end to the glee. Such a dinner! The plenty of Camacho's wedding was but a type of my Nancy's. Fish from the great pond, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, boiled fowls and a gammon of bacon, a green goose and a sucking pig, plum puddings, apple pies, cheese-cakes and custards, formed a part of the bill of fare, followed by home-brewed beer and home-made wine, by syllabub, and by wedding cake. Every body ate enough for four, and there was four times more than could by any possibility be eaten. I have always thought it one of the strongest proofs of sense and kindness in my pretty maid, that she rescued me from the terrible hospitality of her mother-in-law, and gave me back unscathed into my father's hands, when, about three o'clock, he arrived to reclaim me.

The affluence and abundance of that gala day—the great gala of a life-time—in that Hampshire farm-house, I have never seen surpassed.

This was my first appearance as a bridesmaid. My next, which took place about a twelvemonth after, was of a very different description.

A first cousin of my father, the daughter of his uncle and guardian, had, by the death of her mother's brother, become a wealthy heiress; and leaving her picturesque old mansion in Northumberland, Little Harle Tower, a true border keep overhanging the Warsbeck, for a journey to what the Northumbrians of that day emphatically call “the South,” came after a season in London to pass some months with us. At our house she became acquainted with the brother of a Scotch duke, an Oxford student, who, passing the long vacation with his mother, had nothing better to do than to fall in love. Each had what the other wanted—the lady money, the gentleman rank; and as his family were charmed with the match, and hers had neither the power nor the wish to oppose it, every thing was arranged with as little delay as lawyers, jewelers, coach-makers, and mantua-makers would permit.

How the first step in the business, the inevitable and awful ceremonial of a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, was ever brought about, has always been to me one of the most unsolvable of mysteries—an enigma without the word.

Lord Charles, as fine a young man as one should see in a summer's day, tall, well-made, with handsome features, fair capacity, excellent education, and charming temper, had an infirmity which went nigh to render all these good gifts of no avail: a shyness, a bashfulness, a timidity most painful to himself, and distressing to all about him. It is not uncommon to hear a quiet, silent man of rank unjustly suspected of pride and haughtiness; but there could be no such mistake here—his shamefacedness was patent to all men. I myself, a child not five years old, one day threw him into an agony of blushing, by running up to his chair in mistake for my papa. Now I was a shy child, a very shy child, and as soon as I arrived in front of his lordship, and found that I had been misled by a resemblance of dress, by the blue coat and buff waistcoat, I first of all crept under the table, and then flew to hide my face in my mother's lap; my poor fellow-sufferer, too big for one place of refuge, too old for the other, had nothing for it but to run away, which, the door being luckily open, he happily accomplished.

That a man with such a temperament, who could hardly summon courage enough to say, “How d'ye do?” should ever have wrought himself up to the point of putting the great question, was wonderful enough; that he should have submitted himself to undergo the ordeal of what was called in those days a public wedding, was more wonderful still.

Perhaps the very different temper of the lady may offer some solution to the last of these riddles; perhaps (I say it in all honor, for there is [pg 505] no shame in offering some encouragement to a bashful suitor) it may assist us in expounding them both.

Of a certainty, my fair cousin was pre-eminently gifted with those very qualities in which her lover was deficient. Every thing about her was prompt and bright, cheerful and self-possessed. Nearly as tall as himself, and quite as handsome, it was of the beauty that is called showy—a showy face, a showy figure, a showy complexion. We felt at a glance that those radiant, well-opened, hazel eyes, had never quailed before mortal glance, and that that clear, round cheek, red and white like a daisy, had never been guilty of a blush in its whole life. Handsome as she was, it was a figure that looked best in a riding-habit, and a face that of all head-dresses, best became a beaver hat; just a face and figure for a procession; she would not have minded a coronation: on the contrary, she would have been enchanted to have been a queen-regent; but, as a coronation was out of the question, she had no objection, taking the publicity as a part of the happiness, to a wedding as grand as the resources of a country town could make it.

So a wedding procession was organized, after the fashion of Sir Charles Grandison, comprising the chief members of each family, especially of the ducal one; an infinite number of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins and clansfolk, friends and acquaintances, all arranged in different carriages, according to their rank; ladies, gentlemen, servants, and horses, decorated with white and silver favors, in so long a line, that it extended from Coley Avenue to St. Mary's Church. The first carriage, a low phaeton, drawn by ponies led by grooms, containing three children, two of five and six years old, niece and nephew of the bridegroom, who, with myself (already a lady of experience in that line), were to officiate as bride-maidens and bridegroom's man; the last, also an open carriage, with only the bride and my dear papa, who gave her away.

How well I recollect the crowd of the street, the crowd of the church-yard, the crowd of the church! There was no crying at this wedding though; no crying, and far fewer smiles.

The young couple proceeded to Bath and Clifton from the church door; and the rest of the procession returned to our house to eat bridecake, drink to the health of the new-married pair, and be merry at their leisure; after which many dispersed, but the members of the two families and the more intimate friends remained to dinner; and in the confusion of preparing to entertain so large a party, the servants, even those belonging to the nursery, were engaged in different ways, and we children, left to our own devices, and finding nearly the whole house free to our incursions, betook ourselves to a game at hide-and-seek.

Now in honor of the day, and of the grand part we had filled in the grand ceremony of the morning, we small people had been arrayed in white from top to toe, Master Martin in a new suit of jean, richly braided, his sister and myself in clear muslin frocks, edged with lace, and long Persian sashes, the whole width of the silk, fringed with silver, while all parties, little boy and little girls, had white beaver hats and heavy ostrich plumes. We young ladies had, as matter of course, that instinctive respect for our own finery which seems an innate principle in womankind; moreover, we were very good children, quiet, orderly, and obedient. Master Martin, on the other hand, our elder by a year, had some way or other imbibed the contempt at once for fine clothes and for the authorities of the nursery, which is not uncommon among his rebellious sex: so the first time it fell to his lot to hide, he ensconced himself in the very innermost recesses of the coal-hole, from which delightful retirement he was dragged, after a long search, by his own maid, who had at last awakened from the joys of gossiping and making believe to help in the housekeeper's room, to the recollection that Lady Mary might possibly inquire after her children. The state of his apparel and of her temper may be more easily imagined than described. He, duke's grandson though he were, looked like nothing better or worse than a chimney-sweeper. She stormed like a fury. But as all the storming in the world would not restore the young gentleman or his bridal suit to their pristine state of cleanliness, she took wit in her anger and put him to bed, as a measure partly of punishment, partly of concealment; the result of which was, that he, the culprit, thoroughly tired with excitement and exercise, with play and display, and well stuffed with dainties to keep him quiet, was consigned to his comfortable bed, while we, pattern little girls, had to undergo the penalty of making our appearance and our courtesies in the drawing-room, among all the fine folks of our Camacho's wedding, and to stay there, weariest of the many weary, two or three hours beyond our accustomed time. With so little justice are the rewards and punishments of this world distributed—even in the nursery!