Margaret Oliphant - The Two Marys

MY name is Mary Peveril. My father was the incumbent of a proprietary chapel in that populous region which lies between Holborn and the New Road – a space within which there is a great deal of wealth and comfort, and a great deal of penury and pain, but neither grandeur nor abject misery. I like those streets, though I know there is no loveliness in them. I feel that I can breathe better when I come out into the largeness and spacious width of the squares, and I take a pleasure which many people will laugh at in the narrow paved passages – crooked and bent like so many elbows, with their bookstalls and curious little shops. How often have I strayed about them with my father, holding on by his coat-skirts when I was little, by his arm when I grew tall, while he stood and gazed at the books which he could so seldom afford to buy. When he found a cheap one that pleased him, how his face brightened up! While he looked at them I was not often thinking what the thoughts might be in his mind. What was I thinking of – swinging by the skirts of his coat, or by his arm when I grew a great girl? How can I tell? Thinking how bright the twinkling lights were; how funny life was, so full of people passing whom we never saw again – of paving-stones and shop-windows; and droll with whispering airs that blew round the corners, and always seemed to want to tell you something; and again more lights and more faces and more shop-windows. In winter these passages always felt warm and comfortable, and I had some theory about them which I scarcely remember now – something like the theory of the poor man whom I once heard saying that he went into the streets by night because the gaslights made them so warm. The desolateness of such a forlorn being, seeking warmth in the lighted, streets, did not strike me when I heard that speech; I only felt I understood him, and had frequently been conscious of the same feeling. But I remember very well how once, when I was swinging back a little upon papa’s arm, clinging to him, proud of showing that I belonged to him and was old enough to take his arm, yet separate from him, as youth so often is, thinking my own thoughts, living in another world, I all at once caught the illumination on his face as he fell upon a book he wanted which was cheap enough to be bought. To think he should really care about such a trifle – he – papa, the clergyman whom everybody looked up to; that he should look as pleased about it as Ellen our servant did when she got a new dress! I was half humiliated, half sympathetic. Poor papa! What a pity he could not buy a great many books when he cared so much for them! But yet, I think, there was a little sense of shame on his behalf, and of humiliation, mingled with that more amiable thought; that he should care so much about anything, seemed somehow a derogation from his dignity, a descent on his part into a less lofty place.

We lived in Southampton Street, in the end where there are no shops. We had two very white steps before our front-door, which was the brightest point about us. When anyone asked in that street where the clergyman of St Mark’s lived, the house was always pointed out by this: “No. 75, the house with the white steps.” I used to think for years and years that they were a natural feature, and had nothing to do with any work of man, or rather, woman. It was a shabby house inside. There were two little kitchens in the basement, two little parlours on the ground-floor, two little bedrooms above that, and on the top storey I think there were three divisions instead of two. One of the little parlours – the back one, which looked out upon a little square yard about the same size – was papa’s study. It was not a cheerful room, with that outlook upon four brick walls, and a little square bit of mouldy black soil in which flourished some poor tufts of grass, and the big water-butt in the foreground, where the water was black with soot – when there was any water at all. The room had a writing-table in it, always covered with books and papers, and papa’s chair – black haircloth, beginning to wear white at the edges – between the table and the fire, and two other black chairs standing against the opposite wall. It was divided by folding doors from the parlour, in which we lived. This room was furnished with a haircloth sofa, half-a-dozen chairs, a round table with a close-fitting oilcloth cover, and, thrust up into a corner, an old piano, upon which I practised sometimes, and which on other occasions served as a sideboard. There was a short Venetian blind at the lower part of the window to keep people from seeing in, and a chair in the recess, on which I used to sit and darn papa’s stockings and dream. Sometimes I read, but, generally, dreaming was more fun. I made out such nice new lives for myself and papa. Sometimes I would dream that we were quite different people from what we appeared to be – great people, rich and noble, with all kinds of grandeur belonging to us, though no one knew; and how it would be found out all of a sudden, to the confusion of everybody who had ever been uncivil. I used to trace out, as minutely as if I had seen it, every detail of what we were to do. I was Lady Mary in these visions; and if anyone had called me so I should have been, I am sure, more shocked to think that it had been prematurely discovered than struck by the unreality of the title. It was not unreal to me. Sometimes it would take other shapes, and my imagination would content itself with the notion of someone dying and leaving us a fortune, and how we would wear mourning and do our very best to be sorry; but the other idea was much the favourite. It was very sweet to me to think that, for all so humble and so unknown as we were, things would appear very different if people but knew ! The old life comes round me as my thoughts go back to it, the afternoon sounds in the street – vulgar sounds, but softened by summer air as much as if they had been the sweetest; the drowsy tinkle of the muffin-man’s bell, the prolonged cry of “water-cre-e-e-sses!” the sound of children’s voices and dogs barking, and distant wheels that always ground out an accompaniment; and myself in the window, poor Mr Peveril the clergyman’s daughter, to my own knowledge Lady Mary, and a very great, small person. I wonder which was the real Mary – she or I.

I have heard that in poor mamma’s time we were so fine as to have a drawing-room upstairs on the first floor, like Mrs Stephens next door; but that splendour was long, long over, for mamma died soon after I was born, and I was left all alone – a small baby, with papa on my hands to look after. I do not think, however, that I was at any time very sorry for this. I was sorry for her, who died so young, but not for myself; I felt instinctively that, had she been there, always poking between papa and me, I should not have liked it, and that on the whole things were best as they were. The room which had been the drawing-room was papa’s bedroom, and I slept in the room behind, over his study. Ellen had the three little places up above all to herself, though one of them was called – I don’t know why – the spare room. In this little place we lived, and never asked ourselves whether it was dingy or not. The walls were dark, with papers which had not been renewed so long as I could remember; and the curtains were dark, and always had the look of being dusty, though, thanks to Ellen, they never were so in reality. We had no pictures, except two old prints from Raphael’s cartoons. One was the “Miraculous draught of fishes,” and the other “Peter and John at the beautiful gate of the Temple.” How I remember those twisted pillars, and how many dreams have they twisted through! But I never admired them, though they were part of my life. I should have liked a landscape better, or some pretty faces like those one sometimes sees in the shop-windows. When the people who went to St Mark’s talked of having a lithograph of papa the thought made me wild with excitement; but the lithograph was never done.