Basil | Page 6

arm, and
pointed significantly, with a low bow, towards the decrepit old lady
who had once been my mother's governess. Then walking to the other
end of the room, where the penniless Abbe was looking over a book in
a corner, he gravely and courteously led the little, deformed, limping
language-master, clad in a long, threadbare, black coat, up to my
mother (whose shoulder the Abbe's head hardly reached), held the door
open for them to pass out first, with his own hand; politely invited the
new nobleman, who stood half-paralysed between confusion and
astonishment, to follow with the tottering old lady on his arm; and then
returned to lead the peer's daughter down to dinner himself. He only
resumed his wonted expression and manner, when he had seen the little
Abbe--the squalid, half-starved representative of mighty barons of the
olden time--seated at the highest place of the table by my mother's side.
It was by such accidental circumstances as these that you discovered
how far he was proud. He never boasted of his ancestors; he never even
spoke of them, except when he was questioned on the subject; but he
never forgot them. They were the very breath of his life; the deities of
his social worship: the family treasures to be held precious beyond all
lands and all wealth, all ambitions and all glories, by his children and
his children's children to the end of their race.

In home-life he performed his duties towards his family honourably,
delicately, and kindly. I believe in his own way he loved us all; but we,
his descendants, had to share his heart with his ancestors--we were his
household property as well as his children. Every fair liberty was given
to us; every fair indulgence was granted to us. He never displayed any
suspicion, or any undue severity. We were taught by his direction, that
to disgrace our family, either by word or action, was the one fatal crime
which could never be forgotten and never be pardoned. We were
formed, under his superintendence, in principles of religion, honour,
and industry; and the rest was left to our own moral sense, to our own
comprehension of the duties and privileges of our station. There was no
one point in his conduct towards any of us that we could complain of;
and yet there was something always incomplete in our domestic
relations.
It may seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous, to some persons, but it
is nevertheless true, that we were none of us ever on intimate terms
with him. I mean by this, that he was a father to us, but never a
companion. There was something in his manner, his quiet and
unchanging manner, which kept us almost unconsciously restrained. I
never in my life felt less at my ease--I knew not why at the time--than
when I occasionally dined alone with him. I never confided to him my
schemes for amusement as a boy, or mentioned more than generally my
ambitious hopes, as a young man. It was not that he would have
received such confidences with ridicule or severity, he was incapable of
it; but that he seemed above them, unfitted to enter into them, too far
removed by his own thoughts from such thoughts as ours. Thus, all
holiday councils were held with old servants; thus, my first pages of
manuscript, when I first tried authorship, were read by my sister, and
never penetrated into my father's study.
Again, his mode of testifying displeasure towards my brother or myself,
had something terrible in its calmness, something that we never forgot,
and always dreaded as the worst calamity that could befall us.
Whenever, as boys, we committed some boyish fault, he never
displayed outwardly any irritation--he simply altered his manner

towards us altogether. We were not soundly lectured, or vehemently
threatened, or positively punished in anyway; but, when we came in
contact with him, we were treated with a cold, contemptuous politeness
(especially if our fault showed a tendency to anything mean or
ungentlemanlike) which cut us to the heart. On these occasions, we
were not addressed by our Christian names; if we accidentally met him
out of doors, he was sure to turn aside and avoid us; if we asked a
question, it was answered in the briefest possible manner, as if we had
been strangers. His whole course of conduct said, as though in so many
words--You have rendered yourselves unfit to associate with your
father; and he is now making you feel that unfitness as deeply as he
does. We were left in this domestic purgatory for days, sometimes for
weeks together. To our boyish feelings (to mine especially) there was
no ignominy like it, while it lasted.
I know not on what terms my father lived with my mother.