Their conversation soon became animated and argumentative, though it was about people and places I had no knowledge of; but finally reached a subject then interesting all clever and thoughtful minds—the Tractarian or High Church Movement. As I had read to Father several small pamphlets “Tracts for the Times” I was familiar with the names they constantly quoted—Newman, Keble, Froude, et cetera, but it was Newman they disputed over. The stranger seemed to dislike Newman. He said he was no better than a Calvinist, and had been brought up by his Calvinistic mother on Watts and Romaine and such teachers, that he was pale and thin, had a poor presence, and was more like a Wesleyan preacher than a pillar of the Church. Father spoke hotly, and said he never thought of Newman’s appearance, his influence was something like magic, and that you could not be fifteen minutes in his company, and not feel yourself invited to take an onward step. I liked the stranger for not liking Newman, for Newman’s writing was the hardest and least interesting reading I did for Father.
I was enjoying the dispute, when Ann Oddy tapped at the door, and told father he was wanted a few minutes. Then I stepped off the sofa, and went to the stranger.
52
“Well now!” he cried, “who are you, my little maid?”
I said I was Mr. Huddleston’s daughter, and my name was Amelia.
“And you were on the sofa all the time?” he continued.
“Yes,” I replied, “I am sick.”
“Nonsense!” he ejaculated, but I assured him the doctor said I had an ague, and I had been obliged to take Jesuit’s bark.
“Jesuit’s bark! That is enough to make any one sick. Come with me to Richmond farm, and I will give you new milk in place of it. You can get up early, and go with the dawn maids and see the big Durhams milked. I will have a pony saddled for you, and you can ride all over the farm at my side. And the red Morella cherries are just ripe, and the strawberries coming on, and the raspberries not a month behind. And there are hundreds of hens, and you could go with Tabitha, the hen-wife, and see her clear the nests, and feed the chickens—such a lot of them! And I have the prettiest and kindest of house-keepers; she is called Mary, and she will be good and kind to you. Will you come to Richmond farm with me?”
I told him that I would like it better than anything else in the world, and then I asked, “Would you like me to come?”
“That I would!” he answered heartily, and as he did so, my father re-entered the room with Mother on his arm. Mother had put on her new muslin gown; it was a white muslin, with a tiny pink rosebud in it, and her black hair was beautifully dressed in that Madonna style introduced by Queen Victoria. “I have the prettiest mother in all the world,” I thought, and I went to her side, and clasped her hand.
So the stranger, whom I heard introduced to my mother as Mr. Thomas Richmond ate dinner with us, and this proposal to take me for a few weeks to Richmond farm, was gladly accepted.
Rev. William Henry Huddleston
I was to stay a few weeks, but I stayed most of my time at this farm for two years and a half, and if to be innocently joyful and busy and perfectly free from all care and anxiety is to be happy, then surely these years were the happiest years of my life. A child in Paradise may be as happy, but no 53 earth child could have been more fortunate than I was. Everything was so much better than I expected; yes, I can see the widespreading house amid its trees and gardens as I write, and when I go to Heaven, I would like my angel to pass it on the road, and let me look once more into its sunny rooms.
I soon learned to manage my pony, and I usually rode into Ripon with Mr. Richmond on market days, took my music lesson, and then went home until I was called for. The housekeeper Mary taught me all about milk, cream and butter. I pulled cherries, ate cherries, and made cherry pies, and I knew every hen and chicken on the place. I was very friendly with the gardener, and from him I learned all about vegetables, fruits and flowers. If there was a superstition or story about any flower, he knew it; and he told it to me, generally with the flower in my hand. Thus a lady to whose house I often went to practice my music, gave me one day a pot of myrtle, and I took it at once to the old man. I said, “I want it planted.”
“Well then, Missie, you must plant it yourself,” he replied; “for when myrtle is planted, you must spread out your skirt, and look as proud as you can. I say put it in your window, for myrtle is the luckiest plant for the window, and water it morning and night, looking as proud as you can while doing so. Myrtle is a proud plant, and it loves proud people.” On another day, I was going into the house with a branch of flowering white hawthorn.
“Nay! nay!” he cried to me, “you mustn’t carry white hawthorn into the house. You might go to sleep where it is, and then would come great misfortune.” He looked very differently on a handful of rosemary. “That is all right, is all right,” he said. “Rosemary stands for success in everything.” In the very centre of the garden he had a little bed of grass, and he would not suffer tool of any kind to touch it. He called it “good man’s croft,” and told me that in order “to bring luck, we must always leave a bit of land unplanted for the fairies.”
After I had been about a month at the farm, Mr. Richmond said to me one wet day, “Milly, I have had all my grandfather’s 54 books taken into the library. I want you to sort and shelve them for me. Would you like to do that?”
I knew of nothing I would like half as much, for, as soon as I was well, the thought of books was again a joy to me. We went to the library together, and men were unpacking large boxes of books, and bringing a long table on which to sort them, and a set of library steps, pens, ink, pencils, paper, and so forth. I promised only to sort the books in the afternoon, or when too wet to take my usual morning ride with him about the farm. Then he gave me the key of the room, and left me among a thousand books.
I was so happy! I was so happy! So peacefully, innocently happy! I read more than I sorted; I found so many wonderful books, that it was impossible to pass over. I met Ivanhoe first in that room, and Little Nell, and Pamela, and the Scottish Chiefs, and in a pile of unbound Family Heralds I made acquaintance with the short love story. Never shall I forget what thrilling hours I spent in that room with the “Children of the Abbey.” A year or two ago a lady to whom I named this book, said she had a copy, and would send it to me. I sat down, full of expectation, but alas! though the book was there, I could not summon back the child heart to read it. The tale that stole my heart away when I was eleven years old had nothing to say to me when I was seventy-seven. Yet I touched it tenderly as I whispered, “It charmed me once—I will not spoil that memory,” and so closed it forever.
I thank God that ere any change came over days so beautiful and blessed, they ceased. The library was scarce finished, when I had to leave it; the farm life was just as happy and desirable, when I tearfully bade it good-bye forever. The pretty, clever Mary loved me well, and I had become a real companion to my affectionate friend, who liked me to call him “Uncle Thomas.” It was well to part ere any desire for parting came. Mr. Richmond said he would come for me the following summer, but I knew he would not. I felt sure he would marry Mary, and other interests would occupy him. I said good-bye to Richmond Farm in a fortunate hour. Its memory has sweetened my long, long life, and what I learned in its pleasant rooms, its 55 hay fields, and wheat fields, and cool, sweet dairy, has helped me in many a stress of life, that I then never dreamed of.
The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful, and I was glad we were going to the Isle of Man. I had never consciously seen the sea, but its tides were surely in my blood. I was much excited at the prospect, and Father was as eager and restless as a boy. It called him now, as it had called his fathers before him, and he was impatient of delay. We went in a little steamer called