Six to Sixteen | Page 2

New Home--The Arkwrights' Return--The Beasts--Going to
Meet the Boys--Jack's Hat-box--We Come Home a Rattler 209
XXIII. I Correspond with the Major--My Collection--Occupations--
Madame Again--Fête de Village--The British Hooray 219
XXIV. We and the Boys--We and the Boys and our Fads--The Lamp of
Zeal--Clement on Unreality--Jack's Ointment 234
XXV. The "Household Album"--Sketching under Difficulties--A New
Species?--Jack's Bargain--Theories 242
XXVI. Manners and Customs--Clique--The Lessons of Experience--
Out Visiting--House-pride--Dressmaking 257
XXVII. Matilda--Ball Dresses and the Ball--Gores--Miss Lining--The
'Parishioner's Pennyworth' 269
XXVIII. I go Back to The Vine--After Sunset--A Twilight

Existence--Salad of Monk's-hood--A Royal Summons 279
XXIX. Home Again--Home News--The Very End 293

SIX TO SIXTEEN.
INTRODUCTION.
Eleanor and I are subject to fads. Indeed, it is a family failing. (By the
family I mean our household, for Eleanor and I are not, even distantly,
related.) Life would be comparatively dull, up away here on the moors,
without them. Our fads and the boys' fads are sometimes the same, but
oftener distinct. Our present one we would not so much as tell them of
on any account; because they would laugh at us. It is this. We purpose
this winter to write the stories of our own lives down to the present
date.
It seems an egotistical and perhaps silly thing to record the trivialities
of our everyday lives, even for fun, and just to please ourselves. I said
so to Eleanor, but she said, "Supposing Mr. Pepys had thought so about
his everyday life, how much instruction and amusement would have
been lost to the readers of his Diary." To which I replied, that as Mr.
Pepys lived in stirring times, and amongst notable people, his daily life
was like a leaf out of English history, and his case quite different to the
case of obscure persons living simply and monotonously on the
Yorkshire moors. On which Eleanor observed that the simple and
truthful history of a single mind from childhood would be as valuable,
if it could be got, as the whole of Mr. Pepys' Diary from the first
volume to the last. And when Eleanor makes a general observation of
this kind in her conclusive tone, I very seldom dispute it; for, to begin
with, she is generally right, and then she is so much more clever than I.
One result of the confessed superiority of her opinion to mine is that I
give way to it sometimes even when I am not quite convinced, but only
helped by a little weak-minded reason of my own in the background. I
gave way in this instance, not altogether to her argument (for I am sure

my biography will not be the history of a mind, but only a record of
small facts important to no one but myself), but chiefly because I think
that as one grows up one enjoys recalling the things that happened
when one was little. And one forgets them so soon! I envy Eleanor for
having kept her childish diaries. I used to write diaries too, but, when I
was fourteen years old, I got so much ashamed of them (it made me
quite hot to read my small moral reflections, and the pompous account
of my quarrels with Matilda, my sentimental admiration for the
handsome bandmaster, &c., even when alone), and I was so afraid of
the boys getting hold of them, that I made a big hole in the kitchen fire
one day, and burned them all. At least, so I thought; but one volume
escaped the flames, and the fun Eleanor and I have now in re-reading
this has made me regret that I burned the others. Of course, even if I put
down all that I can remember, it will not be like having kept my diaries.
Eleanor's biography, in this respect, will be much better than mine; but
still, I remember a good deal now that I dare say I shall forget soon, and
in sixteen more years these histories may amuse us as much as the old
diaries. We are all growing up now. We have even got to speaking of
"old times," by which we mean the times when we used to wade in the
brooks and----
But this is beside the mark, and I must not allow myself to wander off.
I am too apt to be discursive. When I had to write leading articles for
our manuscript periodical, Jack used to laugh at me, and say, "If it
wasn't for Eleanor's disentangling your sentences, you'd put parenthesis
within parenthesis till, when you got yourself into the very inside one,
you'd be as puzzled as a pig in a labyrinth, and not know how to get
back to where you started from." And I remember Clement--who
generally disputed a point, if possible--said, "How do you know she
wouldn't get back, if