An Autobiography | Page 5

public speaking, and I recalled, when I was recovering from the
measles, the maid in whose charge I was, wrapped me in a shawl and
took me with her to hear a gentleman from Edinburgh speak in favour
of reform to a crowd gathered round. He said that the Tories had found
a new name--they called themselves Conservatives because it sounded
better. For his part he thought conserves were pickles, and he hoped all
the Tories would soon find themselves in a pretty pickle. There were
such shouts of laughter that I saw this was a great joke.
We had gasworks in Melrose when I was 10 or 11, and a great joy to us
children the wonderful light was. I recollect the first lucifer matches,
and the wonder of them. My brother John had got 6d. from a visiting,
uncle as a reward for buying him snuff to fill his cousin's silver
snuffbox, and he spent the money in buying a box of lucifers, with the
piece of sandpaper doubled, through which each match was to be
smartly drawn, and he took all of us and some of his friends to the
orchard, we called the wilderness, at the back of my grandfather

Spence's house. and lighted each of the 50 matches, and we considered
it a great exhibition. 'MY grandfather (old Dr. Spence) died before the
era of lucifer matches. He used to get up early and strike a fire with
flint and steel to boil the kettle and make a cup of tea to give to his wife
in bed. He did it for his first wife (Janet Park), who was delicate, and he
did the same for his second wife until her last fatal illness. It was a
wonderful thing for a man to do in those days. He would not call the
maid; he said young things wanted plenty of sleep. He had been a navy
doctor, and was very intelligent. He trusted much to Nature and not too
much to drugs. On the Sunday of the great annular eclipse of the sun in
1835, which was my brother John's eleventh birthday, he had a large
double tooth extracted--not by a dentist, and gas was then unknown or
any other anaesthetic, so he did not enjoy the eclipse as other people
did. It took place in the afternoon, and there was no afternoon church.
In summer we had two services--one in the forenoon and one in the
afternoon. In winter we had two services at one sitting, which was a
thing astonishing to English visitors. The first was generally called a
lecture--a reading with comments, of a passage of Scriture--a dozen
verses or more--and the second a regularly built sermon, with three or
four heads, and some particulars, and a practical summing up.
Prices and cost of living had fallen since my mother had married in
1815, three months after the battle of Waterloo. At that time tea cost
8/0 a lb., loaf sugar, 1/4, and brown sugar 11 1/2d. Bread and meat
were then still at war prices, and calico was no cheaper than linen. and
that was dear. She paid 3/6 a yard for fine calico to make petticoats.
Other garments were of what was called home made linen. White
cotton stockings at 4/9, and thinner at 3/9 each; silk stockings at 11/6. I
know she paid 36/ for a yard of Brussels net to make caps of. It was a
new thing to have net made in the loom. When a woman married she
must wear caps at least in the morning. In 1838 my mother bought a
chest of tea (84 lb.) for 20 pounds, a trifle under 5/0 a lb.; the retail
price was 6/0--it was a great saving; and up to the time of our departure
brown sugar cost 7 1/2d., and loaf sugar 10d. It is no wonder that these
things were accounted luxuries. When a decent Scotch couple in South
Australia went out to a station in the country in the forties and received

their stores, the wife sat down at her quarter-chest of tea and gazed at
her bag of sugar, and fairly wept to think of her old mother across the
ocean, who had such difficulty in buying an ounce of tea and a pound
of sugar. My mother even saw an old woman buy 1/4oz. of tea and pay
11/2d. for it, and another woman buy 1/4lb. of meat.
We kept three maids. The cook got 8 pounds a year, the housemaid 7
pounds, and the nursemaid 6 pounds, paid half-yearly, but the summer
half-year was much better paid than the winter, because there was the
outwork in the fields, weeding and hoeing turnips and potatoes, and
haymaking. The winter work in the house was heavier