Records of a Girlhood | Page 4

she established her claim to the
approbation of the general public, fulfilling the promise of her
childhood by performances of such singular originality as to deserve
the name of genuine artistic creations, and which have hardly ever been
successfully attempted since her time: such as "The Blind Boy" and
"Deaf and Dumb;" the latter, particularly, in its speechless power and
pathos of expression, resembling the celebrated exhibitions of Parisot
and Bigottini, in the great tragic ballets in which dancing was a
subordinate element to the highest dramatic effects of passion and
emotion expressed by pantomime. After her marriage, my mother
remained but a few years on the stage, to which she bequeathed, as
specimens of her ability as a dramatic writer, the charming English
version of "La jeune Femme colère," called "The Day after the
Wedding;" the little burlesque of "Personation," of which her own
exquisitely humorous performance, aided by her admirably pure French
accent, has never been equaled; and a play in five acts called "Smiles
and Tears," taken from Mrs. Opie's tale of "Father and Daughter."
She had a fine and powerful voice and a rarely accurate musical ear;
she moved so gracefully that I have known persons who went to certain
provincial promenades frequented by her, only to see her walk; she was
a capital horsewoman; her figure was beautiful, and her face very
handsome and strikingly expressive; and she talked better, with more

originality and vivacity, than any English woman I have ever known: to
all which good gifts she added that of being a first-rate cook. And oh,
how often and how bitterly, in my transatlantic household tribulations,
have I deplored that her apron had not fallen on my shoulders or round
my waist! Whether she derived this taste and talent from her French
blood, I know not, but it amounted to genius, and might have made her
a pre-eminent cordon bleu, if she had not been the wife, and cheffe, of a
poor professional gentleman, whose moderate means were so skillfully
turned to account, in her provision for his modest table, that he was
accused by ill-natured people of indulging in the expensive luxury of a
French cook. Well do I remember the endless supplies of potted gravies,
sauces, meat jellies, game jellies, fish jellies, the white ranges of which
filled the shelves of her store-room--which she laughingly called her
boudoir--almost to the exclusion of the usual currant jellies and
raspberry jams of such receptacles: for she had the real _bon vivant's_
preference of the savory to the sweet, and left all the latter branch of the
art to her subordinates, confining the exercise of her own talents, or
immediate superintendence, to the production of the above-named
"elegant extracts." She never, I am sorry to say, encouraged either my
sister or myself in the same useful occupation, alleging that we had
what she called better ones; but I would joyfully, many a time in
America, have exchanged all my boarding-school smatterings for her
knowledge how to produce a wholesome and palatable dinner. As it
was, all I learned of her, to my sorrow, was a detestation of bad
cookery, and a firm conviction that that which was exquisite was both
wholesomer and more economical than any other. Dr. Kitchener, the
clever and amiable author of that amusing book, "The Cook's Oracle"
(his name was a _bonâ fide_ appellation, and not a drolly devised
appropriate nom de plume, and he was a doctor of physic), was a great
friend and admirer of hers; and she is the "accomplished lady" by
whom several pages of that entertaining kitchen companion were
furnished to him.
The mode of opening one of her chapters, "I always bone my meat"
(bone being the slang word of the day for steal), occasioned much
merriment among her friends, and such a look of ludicrous surprise and
reprobation from Liston, when he read it, as I still remember.

My mother, moreover, devised a most admirable kind of jujube, made
of clarified gum-arabic, honey, and lemon, with which she kept my
father supplied during all the time of his remaining on the stage; he
never acted without having recourse to it, and found it more efficacious
in sustaining the voice and relieving the throat under constant exertion
than any other preparation that he ever tried; this she always made for
him herself.
The great actors of my family have received their due of recorded
admiration; my mother has always seemed to me to have been
overshadowed by their celebrity; my sister and myself, whose fate it
has been to bear in public the name they have made distinguished, owe
in great measure to her, I think, whatever ability has enabled us to do so
not unworthily.
I was born on the 27th of November, 1809, in