MY WEAKNESSES

5

I mention these trifling details as I wish to be 'an honest chronicler,' and to give a correct idea and faithful account of myself; and I hope that you kind people who have lived with me will again recognise me in these chapters, and not find anything incongruous between that which you may remember of me and that which I have written down here, and that you will be able, as it were, to bind me up in my book. At the same time I ask you to think of me as benevolently as you can, to make excuses for my weaknesses-physical, intellectual, and moral. I know them well-nobody knows them much better than I do; and you cannot read these pages, and between the lines, without discovering most of them. Liberavi animam meam. I speak seriously and sorrowfully when I sayBe kind to my Remains, and, oh! defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend.

But to continue. I was a well-built child, and fairly well grown; nervous, however, and highly sensitive. Both as child and boy I had a curious affection, from which my mother and one or two other members of her family have suffered. It generally assailed me when I was in repose and alone, indoors and out-a strange sensation, as if invisible or ghostly wheels, or something like them, were rushing round or about me. The sighing of the wind in the trees, the droning of bees, or any

faint sound, lent itself to and intensified the feeling; whereas a boisterous bluebottle at the window-pane at once dispelled it.

It was an uncanny visitation: it justified all my phantom terrors. But luckily it only lasted a minute or two; it would come and go, and come again. However, by rousing myself and speaking aloud, or moving about quickly, I was able to exorcise the fiend. At night it once or twice mingled with my dreams, and then it became a nightmare of brimstone horror. It proved to be merely a nervous disorder, and I have long since outgrown it.

I had a decided objection to ghostly rooms, or to passing down ill-lighted passages where bogies might be suspected of lurking, only waiting their opportunity to pounce out. I do not remember the time when I was absolutely free from such tremors. I always had them; they took substance from the japanned perforated rushlight of my nursery, and from a hundred other things. I had them last year, at dusk, in the spectral gallery at Cobham. Imight have them now. I could write a succubine chapter, and call it Gobliniana,' which would surprise you. Yet nobody knows this. Why, it would astonish my wife! My childhood was embittered by stories of the Press-gang; I had panics that some day I should commit a murder and be hanged. I

dare say most children suffer thus; but, mark you, my misery was not the crime, but the gallows.

1

Besides this, I suffered from nervous exhaustion, cerebral lassitude, and a most delicate stomach: I hardly ever did or ate anything unusual without being unpleasantly reminded of it. I inherited this infirmity ab incunabulis; 1 it lay down with me, and when my mother rocked me, she rocked my discomfort also. I slept with it, and no sooner did I open my eyes in the morning than it woke also. As I grew this small misery grew and strengthened with me, till it became a large one. It was present at my baptism.

I was baptised in the drawing-room at Greenwich Hospital by my godfather, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham. After the ceremony (for me a novel and possibly exciting one) the Bishop, in his usual stately 2 manner, as has been described to me, for it is beyond the period of memory, presented me with a handsome Testament, illustrated, and bound in dark blue morocco, gilt; and the instant it was placed before me I was incontinently sick over it. In after-years I well remember the shame of being shown this precious volume, and that it

1 I hope my children may not inherit this infirmity, or any of my regrettable defects of character. We do not really hate our foibles and vices till we recognise them in our beloved offspring.

2 I am told that he was a stately little personage. It is to him that my father dedicated his Lectures on the Bible.

ever bore the disfigurement of that early catastrophe. Thus my introduction to the sacred writings was not auspicious.

As a consequence of this feebleness I used soon to get weary and restless; and, à propos thereof, there is a tradition that when I was about five years old I was promised a delightful row in a wherry (the Thames flowed under our windows). The day for its realisation arrived; we took our seats, the boat put off from shore; but I had not been ten minutes afloat before I turned to my mother: Mamma, why do people get tired in boats?' This feeling and this sort of sentiment have more or less troubled me through my whole life.

My father was short, clean-shaved, had a neat and active figure, and a nose that would have satisfied Mr. Walter Shandy himself. I have a lively recollection of his bright eyes, intelligent and homely face, his blue coat and gilt buttons; also that we children were very distinctly afraid of him.

1 There is a portrait of him in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, but it is of my Sunday father. I wish I had one of my everyday father. The Lockers were a homely-looking race. Uncle John Locker, who was very ugly, used to say that you could not widen the mouth of a Locker without injury to his ears. One day at Malta, at the dinnertable, he asked a stranger, who had just landed, to take wine, expressing his pleasure in seeing him there and his obligation in these words: 'Yesterday, sir, I was the ugliest man in all Malta!' Tradition says that the man did not resent this speech, so I presume my uncle, with all his impudence, had some social tact.

We scuttled away if he came into the room where we were at play, for he was strict, had a quick, decided manner, and a rather irritable temper. Though benevolent, he seemed a little hard. For instance, if, as any boy might, I knocked down a wineglass, or stumbled over a footstool, he would say, with surprise, 'Can't you navigate, sir?' Or, conversing with visitors, he would suddenly wish to refer to some book, and would call me to him, would describe its aspect, shelf, and position on that shelf. He would go through this swiftly, clearly, succinctly, and then send me off headlong to fetch it.1 I used to go in a tremor, for I was shortsighted, and hardly ever could find his book, and I dreaded the flouts which, I believe, were as quickly forgotten by this dear father as they were hastily uttered. He would say and do things, little things, which no woman would have said and done if she had been a man. There was very little of the woman in my father; but-and in this respect he was like most women-he could not tolerate falsehood, cowardice, and low descent. However, perhaps I may be unjust in all this, for in John Wilson Croker's manuscript memoir of my father he speaks warmly of his perfect temper. I know he did his best to instil into us a love of truth and a respect

1 Now and then I propose to send my children on an errand, and apologise for doing so. They accept the apology, but they do not go.