My Lady Ludlow | Page 3

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MY LADY LUDLOW

CHAPTER I.

I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they
were in my youth. Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches,
carrying six inside, and making a two days' journey out of what people
now go over in a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a
screaming whistle, enough to deafen one. Then letters came in but three
times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed
when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;--but letters were
letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and
studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day,
bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a
little sharp sentence, which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to
be spoken. Well, well! they may all be improvements,--I dare say they
are; but you will never meet with a Lady Ludlow in these days.
I will try and tell you about her. It is no story: it has, as I said, neither
beginning, middle, nor end.
My father was a poor clergyman with a large family. My mother was
always said to have good blood in her veins; and when she wanted to
maintain her position with the people she was thrown among,--
principally rich democratic manufacturers, all for liberty and the French
Revolution,--she would put on a pair of ruffles, trimmed with real old
English point, very much darned to be sure,--but which could not be
bought new for love or money, as the art of making it was lost years
before. These ruffles showed, as she said, that her ancestors had been
Somebodies, when the grandfathers of the rich folk, who now looked
down upon her, had been Nobodies,--if, indeed, they had any
grandfathers at all. I don't know whether any one out of our own family
ever noticed these ruffles,--but we were all taught as children to feel

rather proud when my mother put them on, and to hold up our heads as
became the descendants of the lady who had first possessed the lace.
Not but what my dear father often told us that pride was a great sin; we
were never allowed to be proud of anything but my mother's ruffles:
and she was so innocently happy when she put them on,--often, poor
dear creature, to a very worn and threadbare gown,--that I still think,
even after all my experience of life, they were a blessing to the family.