Ivy Compton-Burnett: Parents and Children

‘Honor and Nevill were, madam. Gavin never is.’

‘I was sick almost the whole time,’ said Honor.

‘Dear, dear, poor Hatton and Mullet!’ said Eleanor, in a bracing tone. ‘Well, I must go and see if the others have anything that does not please them. We must not give all the attention to one part of the house.’

‘We didn’t say we were not pleased,’ said Gavin, when his mother had gone.

‘Neither did Mother,’ said Honor. ‘But she palpably was not.’

Hatton dispatched the three to the garden in the charge of Mullet, who walked up and down telling stories, with them all hanging on to her arms. When the time for exercise was over, she was the only one who had had any exercise, and she had had a good deal.

Eleanor went to the schoolroom to visit the next section of her family. She found two girls and a boy seated at the table with their governess, engaged in scanning an atlas, which could only be surveyed by them singly, and therefore lent itself to slow progress. This was their customary rate of advance, as Miss Mitford was a person of easy pace, and it was the family practice to economize in materials rather than in time. It seldom struck Eleanor or Regan that a few shillings might be well spent. Shillings were never well spent to them, only by necessity or compulsion. Two governesses came under the last head, and money was allotted to the purpose, but to do them justice in the smallest possible amount.

‘Well, my dears,’ said Eleanor, her tone rendered warm by her sense that these children probably differed from the others, ‘you have not been to the sea. You have been at home and been bright and happy all the time. I believe it never pays to do too much for children.’

‘No,’ said James, the youngest of the three, making an accommodating movement.

‘You would just as soon be at home, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t you, Isabel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t you, my Venice?’

‘I am not quite sure. No, I don’t think I would.’

‘You would like to go to the sea?’ said Eleanor, with a surprise that would have seemed more natural to a witness of the late scene. ‘We must see about it next year. What do you think, Miss Mitford?’

Miss Mitford looked up in response, but not in response of any particular nature. She was a short, rather odd-looking woman of fifty, looking older than her age, with calm, green eyes, features so indeterminate that they seemed to change, and hair and clothes disposed in a manner which appeared to be her own, but had really been everyone’s at the time when she grew up. It had seemed to her the mark of womanhood, and it still served that purpose. She was a person of reading and intelligence, but preferred a family to a school, and knew that by taking a post beneath her claims, she took her employers in her hand. She held them with unflinching calm and without giving any quarter, and criticism, after she had met it with surprise and had not bent to it, had not assailed her. Eleanor was hardly afraid of her, as she did not feel that kind of fear, but she hesitated to judge or advise her, and seldom inquired of her pupils’ progress except of the pupils behind her back.

James joined his sisters on such days as a recurring and undefined indisposition kept him from school, occasions which did not involve his dispensing with education. They were actually the only ones when he did not do so, as he was a boy who could only learn from a woman in his home. The stage at which he could learn, but only under certain conditions, had never received attention. He was a boy of twelve, with liquid, brown eyes like Nevill’s, features regarded as pretty and childish, and vaguely deprecated on that ground, and a responsive, innocent, sometimes suddenly sophisticated expression. His dependence on Hatton at Nevill’s age had exceeded his brother’s, and still went beyond anyone else’s. If Hatton could have betrayed a preference, it would have been for him; and it sent a ray of light through his rather shadowed life to remember that at heart she had one.

Isabel was a short, pale girl of fifteen, with a face that was a gentle edition of Fulbert’s, delicate hands like Honor’s, a humorous expression of her own, and near-sighted, penetrating eyes; and Venetia, known as Venice, was a large, dark, handsome child a year and a half younger, with a steady, high colour and fine, closely-set, hazel eyes, and an amiability covering a resolute self-esteem, which was beginning to show in her expression, though only Isabel was aware of it. The two sisters lived for each other, as did Honor and Gavin; and James lived to himself like Nevill, but with less support, so that his life had a certain pathos. He would remedy matters by repairing to the nursery, where Hat-ton’s welcome and Honor’s inclination to a senior brought Nevill to open, and Gavin to secret despair. The suffering of his brothers was pleasant to James, not because he was a malicious or hostile, but because the evidence of sadness in other lives made him feel a being less apart. He showed no aptitude for books, and this in his sex was condemned; and he carried a sense of guilt, which it did not occur to him was unmerited. It was a time when endeavour in children was rated below success, an error which in later years has hardly yet been corrected, so that childhood was a more accurate foretaste of life than it is now.

‘So you are not at school, my boy?’ said Eleanor.

‘No,’ said James, giving a little start and looking at Isabel.

‘He does not feel well,’ said the latter.

‘Doesn’t he?’ said Eleanor, with rather dubious sympathy, as if not quite sure of the authenticity of the condition. ‘The unwellness seems to come rather often. It is kind of Miss Mitford to let you be in here. Have you thanked her?’

‘No.’

‘Then do it, my dear.’

‘Thank you,’ said James, without loss of composure, having no objection to being treated as a child, indeed finding it his natural treatment.

‘He is not much above the average, is he, Miss Mitford?’ said Eleanor, not entertaining the possibility of an absolutely ordinary child.

‘No, I don’t think he is.’

‘You think he is up to it at any rate?’

‘Well, I did not say so. Perhaps it was you who did.’

‘Do you think he would learn more with his sisters at home?’

‘You mean with their governess, don’t you? Well, a good many boys would.’

‘But I suppose we cannot arrange it?’

‘No, you must be the slave of convention.’

‘I suppose most boys are backward.’

‘Well, some are forward.’

‘You must make Miss Mitford think better of you, James.’

‘I hope you do not think I take an ungenerous view,’ said Miss Mitford.

‘Do you never alter your opinions?’ said Eleanor, with a faint sting in her tone.

‘I seldom need to. My judgement is swift and strong,’ said Miss Mitford, with no loss of gravity.

‘Could you not help James, Isabel?’

‘Not as well as Miss Mitford.’

‘Could you, Venice? You are nearer his age.’

‘Is that a qualification?’ said Isabel.

‘It would help her to see his point of view.’

‘It might make her share it.’

‘You think the girls are intelligent at any rate, Miss Mitford?’ said Eleanor, seeking to turn this readiness to account.

‘It is a good sign that they think so.’

‘Do you never praise anyone?’

‘I am rather grudging in that way. It is a sort of shyness.’

Venice gave a giggle.

‘Are you not going to say a word to me, Venice?’ said Eleanor.

‘Yes,’ said Venice, in a bright, conscious tone, turning wide eyes on her mother. ‘I was thinking about the sea. I should like to go next year.’