black leather, studded with brass nails, I associated with certain funereal notions connected with a hearse and a coffin—notions vague and undefined, but not the less chilling and depressing. When the servants told me that if I was naughty Old Bogie would have me, I immediately thought of my grandmother; and in moving about the room, I always gave her chair as wide a berth as I could, lest I should be arrested by the awful clutch of those mysterious looking fingers.
Of all days in the week I hated Sunday; for then, whilst my father and mother, and most of the servants, went to the church, which was some miles distant, I was left at home to keep company with this dreaded personage: who, besides reading prayers to me and the remnant of the establishment, taught me my Catechism and the Ten Commandments; but as I detested the teacher, and did not in the smallest degree understand the object of what she taught, as may be imagined my progress was not considerable. My father and mother always called her Ma’am; and I believe the latter feared, and probably disliked, her as I did. The former, on the contrary, was very much attached to her; and I fancy his character was formed on the model of hers, and that there was a strong sympathy between them.
I have no recollection of any other persons coming about the house; I do not think my father ever received company; and as the building we inhabited, although situated amidst the most romantic scenery in England, was itself extremely dismal, with low-roofed rooms, wainscoted with dark oak, and small, high windows in deep embrasures, that admitted but a scanty allowance of light, perhaps childhood has seldom had a less cheery home. There was a small village near us, through which I sometimes passed when driving in the carriage with my parents, and well I can recall the envy with which I looked at the dirty children playing in the mud! I thought how happy they must be! They had no Bogie at home, sitting on her funereal throne in dreadful majesty! They were not condemned to wear spotless clothes! They might make a litter and a noise if they pleased—I was never allowed to make a noise; and as for play, I had nobody to play with. I remember one of the maids, I suppose pitying my forlorn childhood, once brought me a ball from a neighbouring fair; but the next day, being Sunday, I unluckily dropped it from under my pinafore, where I was fingering it, whilst my grandmother was reading prayers, and it rolled over to her footstool. Nothing could exceed the good lady’s horror and indignation at such an instance of irreverence on my part; and, besides taking away the ball, she asked me what I supposed God Almighty could think of me. I could not tell, of course; but I know what I thought of him; I thought he was another Bogie, only less disagreeable than my grandmother because I did not see him. How could I think otherwise, when she informed me every Sunday that, if I did not learn my Catechism and obey the Ten Commandments, he would burn me in everlasting fire? Now, with respect to the Commandments, there were some of them I did not understand; and others I found it impossible to obey. I couldn’t keep the Sabbath holy, according to my grandmother’s views, for such poor amusements as I had I wanted as much on that day as on any other; whereas her injunctions were, that I was to be kept strictly to the above studies, and to spelling out a certain number of chapters in the Bible; read them I could not; for learning was presented to me in such an ungracious form, that I was a very backward child. Then with regard to coveting other people’s goods, I was conscious of coveting a vast variety of things, which I suppose arose from my having nothing I could call my own. I coveted the gardener’s rakes and spades, and wheelbarrows, and rollers, none of which I was permitted to touch. I eagerly coveted the donkey driven every Tuesday and Friday to the back door by the butcher’s boy. I coveted a flageolet that belonged to one of the footmen; and indeed this I broke the eighth commandment by ultimately stealing; and I longed madly for a beautiful Shetland pony, which sometimes passed the carriage when we were driving along the road to Castleton, with a happy-looking little boy on its back.
Then, against the fifth commandment, according to which I was enjoined to honour my father and my grandmother, I rebelled. If to fear was to honour, I certainly did my duty; but I was perfectly conscious that I hated them both, and that I would have liked to kill them, as I sometimes did the spiders and earwigs. With regard to my mother, who had disappeared from Elfdale before the period I now write of, I was not taught to honour her; and in the book from which I learnt my Catechism, the word grand was substituted in legible characters for the word mother.
The stealing of the flageolet was a dreadful business, for if I was unhappy till I got it, I was twenty times worse afterwards. The possession of it was torture; and whoever has read a whimsical article published some years since in The Household Words, detailing the feelings of a man supposed to have stolen the Koh-i-noor, will be able to conceive mine. It describes them exactly.
As the diamond was of no use to the possessor unless he could turn it into money, so was the flageolet of no use to me unless I could play upon it; or at least make the attempt to do so; of my success I had not a doubt. I thought the tunes were inside of it, and that I had only to blow into the holes and I should produce as good music as the footman. But how to do this and not be heard, was the question. In the house it was impossible; in the grounds, I never could tell that there was not a gardener or a gamekeeper, or even my father, within hearing; and beyond their boundaries I was not permitted to stray. I took it to bed with me every night, and when I heard the bell ring for family prayers, which was immediately before supper, I hid my head under the clothes, and ventured to utter a low squeak, which set me glowing with delight. With similar precautions by day, in some remote part of the grounds, after scrutinising every tree and bush, I would venture to put the cherished instrument to my lips; but although persuaded that I only required sufficient scope for my abilities to play a