“The sky was blue. The sun was bright. The water was sparkling. The leaves were green.”
“And then I met another dragon,” Ruby interrupted. “And this dragon didn’t want to play with me. So the first dragon that was the nice dragon ate the bad dragon.”
“I have seen many children in my life,” Octavius Joy told us at day’s end. “But never a child like Ruby.”
Perhaps that is because there never was another child like Ruby. Of course, many people, I am sure, feel that way about their sons and daughters and other loved ones. So I will say simply that Ruby was an energetic, charming, exuberant, marvelous, ingratiating, indefatigable bundle of joy.
She took a child’s delight in walking the streets and looking in shop windows. When a rare winter storm came to London, she and Christopher strolled about, leaving footprints in the freshly fallen snow on London Bridge above the River Thames. Her first shoes with laces were cause for celebration.
Like all children, she thought at times that she was the pivot on which the world turned. She drew a picture of my bakery that I affixed to the wall and, whenever she came to visit, gazed at the drawing with pride. She regarded each annual celebration of her birth as a well-earned distinction brought about as a consequence of her own monumental achievement.
She was unruly at times.
“Miss Spriggs,” I chastised on one such occasion. “I am older than you and, some might think, wiser. Therefore, I will inform you that it is not the custom in London to put one’s knife in one’s mouth. The fork is reserved for that purpose, but is not to be inserted in the mouth further than necessary. Also, it is worthy of mention that, in polite society, the spoon is not used as a catapult to hurl small objects round the room.”
And she could be stubborn. Most children in London were taught to read by their parents if they were taught at all. Marie helped Christopher with his lessons and began the process of teaching Ruby.
“I know the alphabet,” Ruby told me. “A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . Me.”
“Now it is my turn,” I said, seeking to gently correct her. “A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E—”
“No! A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . Me.”
“Ruby Spriggs, I regret to inform you that ‘me’ is not a letter in the English alphabet.”
“Me.”
“E.”
“Me.”
“Of all the obstinate, stubborn, wrong-headed little creatures that were ever born, you are the most so.”
Stubborn, but gifted where letters were concerned.
The Church of England at that time held to the position that one should learn to read the Bible as part of the journey to salvation. To the extent that children were taught to read and write, it was most often through religious texts.
The learning center that Octavius Joy founded was a temple of good intentions with a different view. The center was open to men, women, and children of all ages with separate classes for children and adults. Reading was taught to the young with an eye toward Mother Goose and to adults through the reading of light classics and popular journals.
“I want those who come here to understand when they leave that reading is for pleasure as well as knowledge,” Mr. Joy said.
Ruby learned the letters of the alphabet and the novelty of their shapes by sound and by sight. She had a gift for putting them together on paper, which she did with the deliberation of a bookkeeper and in a hand that was clear. She worked hard at her learning.
“A” is an archer. And also an apple. “B” is a ball. And also a boy. “C” is a cat. “D” is a dog.” And so on through the zebra at the end of the alphabet.
Sometimes, the students at the learning center read aloud in chorus.
“The man has a hat . . . The man has a fat cat.”
In time, that became “The . . . handsome . . . prince . . . held the . . . beautiful . . . princess . . . in his . . . arms . . . and . . . kissed her.”
Often, Christopher sat beside Ruby at night and listened to her read until it was too dark for her to see the letters. And they would write sentences back and forth to one another on their slates.
“Ruby has a pretty dress . . . I love uncle.”
Other times, Christopher read aloud to her, which he did as though the eyes of a significant portion of the population of London, if not all of England, were upon him.
And at times, he gave in to frustration.
“It is no use,” he said one evening. “I try and I try. I think I can read, and then I cannot. What I read makes no sense. A cow cannot jump over the moon.”
“And an old woman does not live in a shoe,” Marie reminded him.
His face brightened. “Now I remember. It is a ha-ha.”
And all the while, Ruby was growing older. The winds and tides rose and fell. The earth moved round the sun myriad times.
Ruby reached a certain age and moved her bed to share a room with Marie instead of Christopher.
Her blue eyes seemed bluer and her spirit even lighter than before. A prettier face, a more loving heart, never bounded so lightly over the earth. There was such joy in her laugh that the sternest misanthrope would have smiled in her presence. One could not fail to become attached to her. Her charm and grace were enough to make a prison cheerful.
She wore plain clothes, but had the carriage of a princess when she wore them. Young children clustered at her skirts. Old men and women spoke a friendly greeting when she passed. She remained devoted in attachment to Marie and Christopher. And the crowning glory of it all was that she was without guile and seemed totally unaware of how delightful she was.
When Ruby was young, little boys had fallen in love with her, often making gifts of small trinkets, nuts, and apples. Now came attention of a similar kind from boys who were older. She kissed a few but nothing more.
“You have your mother’s look of beauty,” Christopher told her. “You are to tell me, not only if you ever fall into trouble, but also when you fall in love.”
He and I met on occasion for a glass of ale. Once, as we drank, he spoke to me of Ruby’s mother.
“She was a beautiful woman, whose life was destroyed by a madman. It is all in the police records. It is not necessary for Ruby to know.”
He continued to work cheerfully in the bakery from sunrise until dark. As Ruby grew older, she often worked with him. I watched one afternoon as she made an apple pie. Kneading away at the dough, rolling it out, cutting it into strips, lining the pie dish with it, slicing the apples, raining cinnamon upon them, packing them into the dish until it was full and wanting only the top crust.
She wondered at the beauty of flowers, the depth of the ocean, the height and blueness of the sky. And she fell in love with reading, treasuring every book she read and receiving ongoing words of encouragement from Octavius Joy.
“How is my favorite scholar today?” he would ask each time he saw her.
She was in his home from time to time. She grew familiar with the dining room, parlour, drawing room, and kitchen, his study on the ground floor where he conducted business, and the wonderful staircase with a balustrade so broad that she might have walked up it almost as easily as on the stairs themselves.
But her favorite room—and it was Mr. Joy’s favorite as well—was the library. It was a large room lit during the day by windows on the south and west walls and by lamps at night. There were comfortable chairs and an ornate carpet. But its most remarkable feature was shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling and were lined with books. Some were in fine leather-bound sets. Others had the appearance of having been collected