An Autobiography | Page 7

not do for them at all--it was only practicable for a nation.
The things I recollect of the life in the village of Melrose, of 700
inhabitants, have been talked over with my mother. and many
embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold
more from her than from my father; but. as he was an unlucky
speculator, I inherit from him Hope, which is invaluable to a social or
political reformer. School holidays were only a rarity in harvest time
for the parish school. At Miss Phin's we had. besides, a week at
Christmas. The boys had only New Year's Day. Saturday was only a
half-holiday. We all had a holiday for Queen Victoria's coronation, and
I went with a number of school fellows to see Abbotsford, not for the
first time in my life.
Two mail coaches--the Blucher and the Chevy Chase--ran through
Melrose every day. People went to the post office for their letters, and
paid for them on delivery. My two elder sisters--Agnes, who died of
consumption at the age of 16, and Jessie, afterwards Mrs. Andrew
Murray, of Adelaide and Melbourne, went to boarding school with their
aunt, Mary Spence, lit Upper Wooden, halfway between Jedburgh and
Kelso. Roxburghshire is rich in old monasteries. The border lands were
more safe in the hands of the church than under feudal lords engaged in
perpetual fighting, and the vassals of the abbeys had generally speaking,
a more secure existence. Kelso. Jedburgh, and Dryburgh Abbeys lay in
fertile districts, and I fancy that when these came into the hands of the
Lords of the congregation, the vassals looked back with regret on the
old times. I was not sent to Wooden, but kept at home, and I went to a
dayschool called by the very popish name of St. Mary's Convent,
though it was quite sufficiently Protestant. My mother had the greatest
confidence in the lady who was at the head of it. She had been a

governess in good situations, and had taught herself Latin, so that she
might fit the boys of the family to take a good place in the Edinburgh
High School. She discovered that she had an incurable disease, a form
of dropsy, which compelled her to lie down for some time every day,
and this she considered she could not do as a governess. So she
determined to risk her savings, and start a boarding and day school in
Melrose, a beautiful and healthy neighbourhood, and with the aid of a
governess, impart what was then considered the education of a
gentlewoman to the girls in the neighbourhood. She took with her her
old mother, and a sister who managed the housekeeping, and taught the
pupils all kinds of plain and fancy needlework. She succeeded, and she
lived till the year 1866, although most of her teaching was done from
her sofa. When my mother was asked what it was that made Phin so
successful, and so esteemed, she said it was her commonsense. The
governesses were well enough, but the invalid old lady was the life and
soul of the school. There were about 14 boarders, and nearly as many
day scholars there, so long as there was no competition. When that
came there was a falling off, but my young sister Mary and I were
faithful till the day when after nine years at the same school, I went
with Jessie to Wooden, to Aunt Mary's, to hear there that my father was
ruined, and had to leave Melrose and Scotland for ever, and that we
must all go to Australia. That was in April, 1839.
As I said, I had a very happy childhood. The death of my eldest sister at
16, and of my youngest sister at two years old, did not sink into the
mind of a child as it did into that of my parents, and although they were
seriously alarmed about my health when I was 12 years old, when I
developed symptoms similar to those of Agnes at the same age, I was
not il1 enough to get at all alarmed. I was annoyed at having to stay
away from school for three months. When the collapse came Jessie had
a dear friend of some years' standing, and I had one whom had known
only for some months, but I had spent a month with her in Edinburgh at
Christmas, 1838, and we exchanged letters weekly through the box
which came from Edinburgh with my brother John's, washing. It was
too expensive for us to write by the post. Well, neither of our friends
wrote a word to us. With regard to mine it was not to he wondered at
much--she was only 13--but the other was more surprising. It