MY TRANSMOGRIFICATIONS.
Miss Mitford, in a very clever little sketch, published in Ackermann’s pretty “Forget-me-not,” has very amusingly detailed the continual transmigrations of the female part of humanity in its progress through childhood, girlhood, and womanhood, to marriage and old age. But to us of the more lordly sex she has denied a mutability which perhaps she has not so much observed—this is solely because she is not one of us, and could scarcely have opportunities of remarking our changes as closely as those of her own sex. She observes, “there is very little change in men from early boyhood, and that they keep the same faces, however ugly.” In some instances it may be so, but in general there are very few animals more unlike than the boy to the man; but perhaps Miss Mitford, in this sweeping indistinction, only alluded to the “wearers of smock frocks,”—in that case there is an end of the argument; but supposing the contrary, (which I do, otherwise an excellent article would be lost,) I will proceed to detail the history of my own “Transmogrifications.”
I cannot say I recollect myself, but I perfectly well remember a portrait that strongly resembled me, painted when I was two years old, for my dear and tender mother, and valued accordingly. It represents a fat, roguish, black-eyed, curly-headed urchin, sitting on a bank with a lap full of flowers, which showed out magnificently from the white frock beneath them. There was happiness, round, rich, luscious, rosy happiness, in every little feature; and altogether it was such a child as a mother might be proud of. Three years after, I can recollect myself—the fat was passing away—I was growing tall, slender, an impudent self-willed imp, the delight of my father, the torment of my sister, and the curse of servants. My god-father gave me a guinea, and I gave it to a groom, as a bribe to let me mount his horse and ride him a few yards to water. I had a new beaver hat—I had no objection to sunbeams, and thought I could turn it to better account—I cut it into the shape of a very tolerable boat, and sent it down the stream, that, innocent of mischief, flowed quietly through the grounds. Yet amid all this wildness, there might have been seen “sparkles of a better nature;” for I had much tenderness in my composition, glimpses of enthusiasm, and some queer undefined notions of the beautiful; for instance, a gang of gipsies sometimes favoured “our village” by pitching their tents in the outskirts; and many a time have I slipped away from the paternal care of “Old John” to listen to the voice of one dark-eyed girl among the troop, who had fascinated my young heart, or (I rather suppose) my ear, by her singing. How often have I wept over the melancholy fate of the lady, who, in the storm at sea, told her lover to
“Take a white napkin, and bind my head softly,
And then throw me overboard, me and my baby;”
and have frequently been elevated to heroism by the splendid portrait of that hero who was martyrised at Tyburn; his constancy at his trial won my fervent admiration.
“I stood as bold as John of Gaunt,
All in my natty attire;
I ne’er seem’d daunted in the least,
Which made the folks admire!
“That all the people they may say,
That I am no des-arter;
For the captain, he must lead the way,
And the men must follow a’-ter.”
My wild spirits were really taken captive by these vagabonds; the lawless independence of their children was my envy; they had no lessons to learn, no elder sisters to keep them in order, nor elder brother to thump them out of their pocket-money; their whole existence to me was paradisaical. I believe if they had attempted to steal me, they would have found the business half done to their hands.
At seven years old I was breeched—I had a cloth jacket and trowsers—I was told that I was a man; and I thought it incumbent on me to be “grave and gentlemanlike.” I paid more attention to my lessons and the young ladies, and thought it an imperative duty to discover they were more amiable and pretty than boys. Soon this affectation became sincere. My sister was better loved than all
