---

CHAPTER III

CHILDHOOD IN ROLLESTON: EARLY READING—ADVENTURES IN LONDON STREETS—A COMMUNITY OF DOLLS—BUCKINGHAM PALACE—LIFE IN ROLLESTON—EDUCATION—BROTHER AND FATHER.

When Kate was midway between five and six years of age, the family moved into a larger house and shop nearer to Highbury. Here they fairly established themselves, and here was the home of her recollection when she looked back on her childhood.

Then a new world opened to her, a new, boundless world, unfenced about with material walls, illimitable, inexhaustible—the world of books and measureless imagination. Of a sudden, to her mother’s and her own great happiness and surprise, she found that she could read! First came the two-a-penny Fairy Tales in coloured paper covers. There were larger ones for a penny, but the halfpenny ones were better. Pepper and Salt was one of the most enjoyably and delightfully afflictive. Who that has read it in tender years can ever forget how the Cruel Stepmother kills Salt and buries her, or the mysterious voice that chanted—

‘She drank my blood and picked my bones,
And buried me under the marble stones.’

Kate never forgot them, as, indeed, she never forgot Bluebeard, or Toads and Diamonds, or Beauty and the Beast. But, although she never forgot them, she never remembered them too well. The delicious excitement could always be renewed. A hundred times she had heard Bluebeard call in his awful voice to Fatima to come down. A hundred times Sister Ann had cried her shrill reply: ‘I see the sky that looks blue and the grass that looks green.’ A hundred times the little cloud of dust had risen, and[22] the brothers had come in the nick of time to save her. But, at the hundredth reading, Kate’s fear was as acute and her relief as great as at the first.

Other favourites were Frank, Harry, and Lucy, The Purple Jar, The Cherry Orchard, Julianna Oakley, The Child’s Companion, and Line upon Line.

Then there were the verses of Jane and Ann Taylor, rendered especially delightful by Mrs. Greenaway’s dramatic rendering at bedtime—‘Down in a green and shady bed,’ ‘Down in a ditch, poor donkey,’ and ‘Miss Fanny was fond of a little canary.’ The last harrowed Kate with an intense sorrow, as indeed it did to the day when she set to work to illustrate it for the joy and delight of a later generation in a volume dedicated to Godfrey, Dorothy, Oliver, and Maud Locker.[2] Others which she could never hear too often were ‘Greedy Richard,’ ‘Careless Matilda,’ ‘George and the Chimney-Sweep,’ ‘Dirty Jim,’ ‘Little Ann and her Mother,’ and ‘The Cow and the Ass.’

‘Take a seat,’ said the Cow, gently waving her hand.
‘By no means, dear Madam,’ said he, ‘while you stand.’
Then showing politeness, as Gentlemen must,
The Ass held his tongue that the Cow might speak first.

But one book there was which, whilst it delighted the rest, depressed little Kate horribly and miserably, though she would never confess it, partly out of loyalty to her father and partly from shame at what she felt might be regarded as a foolish weakness. This was a book of rhymes for which Mr. Greenaway had engraved the wood-blocks. It contained the ‘Courtship, Life, and Death of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren’; ‘The Three Bears’; ‘The Little Man and the Little Maid’; ‘The Wonderful History of Cocky Locky, Henny Penney, and Goosey Poosey’; and a story of a Goose and her three daughters, Gobble, Goosey, and Ganderee, which began

A Goose who was once at the point of death
She called her three daughters near. ..

Dolls

.Fortunately she had not a few distractions. There were her dolls, which ranged from the little giant ‘Gauraca’ (given to Kate for learning a piece of pianoforte music so entitled, then in vogue), so huge—more than a yard and a quarter long—that she could only be carried with legs trailing on the ground, to the little group of Dutch mannikins of which half-a-dozen could be grasped in one hand. By right of bulk Gauraca claimed precedence. She wore the discarded clothes of brother John, the tucks in which had to be let down to make them big enough, and took full-sized babies’ shoes. She was a wonder, not indeed altogether lovable; rather was she of value as a stimulator of covetous feelings in others. Below Gauraca came dolls of all sorts and sizes, too many for enumeration, but all of importance, seeing that on their persons were performed those tentative experiments which were to colour the work of twenty years later.

On these dolls Kate dilates at some length, and the gist of her record is this. Least in size though first in rank came the Royal group, with Queen Victoria (who had cost a halfpenny) as its centre, supported by Prince Albert (also a halfpenny) appropriately habited in a white gauze skirt trimmed with three rows of cerise satin, and, for further distinction and identification, a red ribbon tied across his shoulder and under his left arm. These garments could only be removed by an actual disintegration. The Royal circle was completed by the princes and princesses at a farthing apiece. Their dresses were made from the gauze bonnet linings just then going out of fashion, and such scraps of net and ribbon as had proved unsaleable. …

After the wooden dolls, with their crude and irremovable garments, came the far more human-looking effigies in china, which populated the cupboard in the little girls’ bedroom. Their clothes were all exquisitely made by Kate, and were all removable. They took their walks abroad on the mantelpiece. Their hats[28] were made of tiny straw-plaits trimmed with china ribbons and the fluffy down culled from feathers which had escaped from the pillows. They revelled in luxurious gardens made of fig boxes filled with sand collected on Sunday walks to Hampstead Heath, and planted with the tiniest of flowering plants, which often had to be replaced, as they would not thrive in the uncongenial soil. Furniture was hard to come by at a farthing a week, which was Kate’s income at this time, but twenty-four weeks’ saving got a sixpenny piano, for the sake of which the sacrifice of other expensive pleasures during that period was considered not unreasonable. Once indeed Aunt Aldridge came to town and presented the dolls with a work-table, but so great a piece of good fortune never again befell.

Later there were Lowther Arcadian dolls at fourpence halfpenny apiece, but these like the royal group were short-lived and ephemeral. They passed away so rapidly that memory lost their identity, whereas ‘Doll Lizzie,’ made of brown oak, legless, armless, and devoid of paint, and ‘One-eye,’ equally devoid of paint, half-blind, and retaining but one rag arm, were seemingly immortal, and were more tenderly loved than all, notwithstanding the fact that their only clothing consisted of old rags tied round them with string. These remnants went to bed with the little girls, and enjoyed other privileges not accorded to the parvenues.

London, as we see, was now the home of Kate Greenaway, but fortunately there was Rolleston and the country always in the background as a beautiful and fascinating possibility; and it was rarely that a year passed without a visit, though now and again not enough money had been saved to make the thing feasible.

In Kate’s own simple words:

In these early days all the farm things were of endless interest to me. I used to go about in the cart with Dadad, and Nancy to draw us. He thought wonderful things of Nancy—no pony was like her. I shared his feeling, and when my Uncle Aldridge used to inquire how the high-mettled racer was, I felt deep indignation. There was no weight Nancy couldn’t draw—no speed she could not go at (if she liked), but there was no need on ordinary occasions—there was plenty of time. The cart had no springs—it bumped you about; that didn’t matter to me. Sometimes we used to go to Southwell to get malt. This was a small quiet town two and a half miles off, and the way to drive was through green lane-like roads. It took a good while. Nancy went at a slow jog-trot; I didn’t mind how long it took, it was all a pleasure.[29] There was an old cathedral called Southwell Minster, with quaint old carvings in stone and old stained-glass windows which they said were broken and buried in Cromwell’s time so as to save them. Southwell now possesses a Bishop, but it did not then. Then we used to go to the ‘Plot,’ where all the cottage people had land, to get potatoes or turnips. At hay-time and harvest the cart had one of those framework things fitted on, and Nancy fetched corn or hay.

I had a tiny hayfork, a little kit to carry milk in, and a little washing-tub, all exactly like big real ones, only small. I washed dolls’ things in the tub, and made hay with the fork, and carried milk in the kit.

Then, besides Nancy, there were the three cows, numerous calves, two pigs, two tortoiseshell cats, and a variable number of hens. Variable, for barring ‘Sarah Aldridge,’ the tyrant of the yard, their lives were sadly precarious, and the cooking-pot insatiable. ‘Sarah Aldridge,’ so named after the giver, was a light-coloured, speckled, plump hen with a white neck—a thoroughly bad character, a chartered Jezebel of a fowl, bearing a charmed and wholly undeserved existence. She took, says Kate Greenaway, the biggest share of everything, chased all the other hens, and—crowed.

Stowed somewhere in Mary Chappell’s memory was the old proverb—

A whistling woman and a crowing hen
Are neither good for God nor men.

‘Sarah Aldridge’ crowed. And when she crowed Mary became strangely moved with mingled rage and fear. She would fling down whatever she was doing. She would fly after ‘Sarah’ breathing dreadful threats. She would run her well-nigh out of her life, nor desist until she was compelled for want of breath. Then she would fall into an awe-stricken state, which she called a ‘dither,’ convinced that because of this monstrous breach of nature some terrible thing would be sure to happen.

But, notwithstanding her superstitions, Mrs. Chappell was a truly worthy woman,—one of the noblest. Indeed, Kate Greenaway always insisted that she was the kindest, most generous, most charitable, the cheerfullest, and most careful woman she had ever known. To quote her words, ‘in all things she was highest and best.’ She meant nothing derogatory to her husband when she told every one before his face that he was a ‘poor creature.’ He entirely agreed. There was no hint at his being ‘wanting’ in any particular, but rather that Providence was at fault in not vouchsafing him a full measure of health and[30] strength. Indeed, he felt rather distinguished than otherwise when his wife drew attention to his infirmities. He was one of those who thoroughly enjoyed his bad health.

It was a rule of life with Mrs. Chappell never to speak ill of her neighbours. ‘Ask me no questions and I will tell you no stories,’ was the letter always on her lips, and the spirit of charity was always in her heart. She combined the utmost generosity with a maximum of carefulness. She did not know how to be wasteful. She had a merry heart, and Kate always maintained that it was through her that she learnt to be in love with cheerfulness. So that more than one unmindful generation has since had cause to bless the memory of Mary Chappell. Her real name was Phyllis, Phyllis Barnsdale, previous to her marriage. Before going to Rolleston she had been in service with a Colonel, a friend of Lord Byron’s and a neighbour of his at Newstead Abbey. Of her reminiscences Kate retained just two things. Of Byron, that his body was brought home in spirits of wine. Of the Colonel, that he was so short-sighted that the groom only rubbed down his horse on the near side, secure that the half-heartedness of his service would never be discovered.

When Kate first went to Rolleston the Fryers’ farm had passed into the hands of a married daughter, Mrs. Neale, whose husband, an idle, good-natured, foolish man, smoked and drank whilst the butcher-business slipped through his fingers. In Kate’s earliest days they were seemingly prosperous enough, and one of the first things the little Greenaways had to do on arrival at Rolleston was to make an odd little morning call at ‘The House,’ where they were regaled with cowslip wine and sponge-cakes. This was the etiquette of the place: it was the respect due from Cottage to Farm.

The Fryers’ garden was, in Kate’s own words years afterwards, ‘my loved one of all gardens I have ever known,’ and that was saying a good deal, for it would be hard to find anywhere a greater lover of gardens than she was. It was her real Paradise. Round the windows of ‘The House’ grew the biggest and brightest convolvuluses in the world (at least in the world she knew)—deep blue blossoms with ‘pinky’ stripes and deep pink blossoms with white stripes. Her intimacy with them told her every day where the newest blooms were to be found. Across the gravel path on the left as you emerged from ‘The House’ was a large oval bed, with roses, pinks, stocks, sweet Sultans, the brown scabious, white lilies, red lilies, red fuchsias, and in early summer, monster tulips, double white narcissus, peonies, crown imperials, and wallflowers. Indeed, all lovely flowers seemed to grow there. And the scent of them was a haunting memory through life. Then there were the biggest, thickest, and bushiest of box borders, nearly a yard high, so thick and solid that you could sit on them and they never gave way. These bounded the long gravel walk which led straight down to the bottom of the garden, and along which grew flowers of every lovely shape and hue. Beyond them on the left was the orchard—apples, pears, plums, and bushy filberts; on the right the kitchen garden—currant bushes with their shining transparent bunches, red and white, gooseberries, strawberries, feathery asparagus, and scented herbs such as good cooks and housewives love. It was an enchanted fairyland to the little Londoner and had a far-reaching influence on her life and work. Later on her letters teemed with just such catalogues of flowers. So great was her love for them that, next to seeing them, the mere writing down of their names yielded the most pleasurable emotions.

Another thing which greatly appealed to her was the spaciousness[32] of everything—the great house seemingly illimitable in itself, yet stretching out farther into vast store-houses and monster barns. For those were days when threshing machines were unknown and corn had to wait long and patiently to fulfil its destiny. Indeed, people took pride in keeping their corn, unthreshed, just to show that they were in no need of money. Then large bands of Irishmen wandered over the country at harvest-time, leisurely cutting the corn with sickles, for the machine mower was at that time undreamed of.

At the Neales’, too, there were birds innumerable—peacocks strutting and spreading their tails, guinea-fowls, turkeys with alarming voices and not less alarming ways, geese, pigeons, ducks, and fowls. All these things were in the early Rolleston days, but they did not last.

By degrees, through neglect and carelessness, the business drifted away from the Neales into more practical and frugal hands, and in the end they were ruined—wronged and defrauded by the lawyers, the Chappells believed, but in reality abolished by the natural process of cause and effect. Anyhow, the Chappells acted up to their belief, and with unreasoning loyalty gave them money, cows, indeed everything they had, until they were themselves literally reduced to existing on dry bread and were involved in the general downfall. In this Mary Chappell was, of course, the moving spirit, but her husband agreed with all she did, and took his poor fare without complaint.

But before the crash came there were many happy days and lively experiences. There was Newark market on Wednesdays, to which Mary Chappell always went with Mrs. Neale, sometimes, but rarely, accompanied by the latter’s husband. On special occasions Kate went too. Fanny, the brown pony, drew them in a lovely green cart. When Mr. Neale went, Mrs. Chappell and Kate sat behind. When he didn’t, Kate sat behind alone and listened to the two ladies talking about Fanny as if she were a human being, discussing her health, her likes and dislikes of things she passed on the road, in full enjoyment of the never-failing topic of ‘the old girl.’

There was a good deal of preliminary interest about these expeditions. There was the walk up to ‘The House’ with Mary Chappell heavily laden with baskets of butter on each arm. Mary was no ordinary butter-seller. She would no more have dreamed of standing in the butter-market to sell her butter than she would[33] have dreamed of selling it to the shops to be vended over the counter like ordinary goods. Only people who did not keep their pans properly clean would stoop to that. No, she ‘livered’ her own butter. She had her own regular customers who had had her butter for years, and they always wanted more than she could supply. The making of good butter and cheese was part of her religion. She would drop her voice and speak only in whispers of people—half criminals she thought them—whose puncheons were not properly cleansed, whose butter might ‘turn’ and whose cheese might ‘run.’

Arrived at ‘The House,’ they would find the green cart waiting before the door. Then a farm hand would stroll leisurely round with Fanny and put her into the shafts. Everything was done slowly at Rolleston, and bustle was unknown. Next would come Sarah Smith, the maid, with a basket after her kind. Then a help or out of-door servant, with another after his kind. A minute later some one bearing ducks or fowls with their legs tied. These went ignominiously under the seat, and took the cream, as it were, off Kate’s day. Their very obvious fate made her miserable, but she cajoled herself into something like happiness by imagining that someone might buy them ‘who didn’t want to eat them and would put them to live in a nice place where they could be happy.’

As the prospect of starting became more imminent, Mrs. Neale would arrive with the whip and a small basket. Then Mr. Neale, and the two young Fryer nephews who lived with them, would stroll round to see them off. At the last moment would arrive baskets of plums, apples, pears, and, perhaps, sage cheeses, and a start would then be made.

The five miles into Newark, through Staythorpe, Haverham, and Kelham, where the Suttons, to whom nearly all Rolleston belonged, lived at ‘The Hall,’ was a progress of great enjoyment and variety, for they knew not only all the people they met on the road, but all the animals and all the crops, and these had all to be discussed.

[34]

Arrived at Newark, Mrs. Neale was left at the inn, whilst Mary and Kate went their rounds with the butter. All the customers got to know Kate, and the little girl received a warm welcome year after year in the pretty red-brick, green-vine-clad courtyards with which Newark abounded. When the butter was sold the shopping came, and when all the necessary groceries and supplies had been laid in, a stroll through the market-place, where peppermints striped and coloured like shells were to be got. Why people bought groceries when they could afford peppermints Kate didn’t know.

In the market of course everything was on sale that could be imagined, from butter to boots, from pears to pigs, from crockery to calves. But it was the crockery that had a peculiar fascination for Mary, and many an unheard-of bargain made a hole in her thinly-lined pocket. These pots were from Staffordshire and became Kate’s cherished possession in after years.

At last there was the weary return to the inn-yard to find Mrs. Neale, who might or might not be ready to go home. Anyhow Fanny and the cart were always welcome enough when the time came to exchange the confusion and hubbub of the town for the quiet country roads again.

It didn’t matter what time they arrived home, Chappell would always be found watching for them at the gate. Tea was ready and they were hungry for it; Chappell, too, for he spent the whole afternoon on market days leaning over the gate. It was his one chance in the week of seeing his acquaintances as they passed to Newark, and it was his one chance of buying pigs. He had a weakness for pigs, and he would stop every cart that had a likely one on board. Sometimes he would have out a whole load, would bargain for half-an-hour, and then refuse to have one. Time was of no consequence to him, but the owner’s wrath would be great, for all the pigs that were wanted in Newark might be bought before he could arrive there. Then the cart would be driven away to a blasphemous accompaniment, leaving Chappell blandly smiling, placid and undisturbed. This would be repeated many times until the pigs arrived which took his fancy.

On great and rare occasions, Kate would go to market with Aunt Aldridge in a high dog-cart behind a spanking horse named Jack. Then she would have a taste of really polite society, and would be taken to dine in a big room at the chief inn with the leading farmers and their wives. For in the Nottinghamshire of[35] those days the farmers were in a large way, prosperous and with plenty of money to spend. It was quite a shock and surprise to her in after life to see farmers in other parts of the country little better than labourers. For this reason she never cared for Thomas Hardy’s books; she never could get on terms with his characters. But with George Eliot’s it was quite another matter. Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Tulliver, Mrs. Poyser, and the rest, she had known all her life. They were old friends and she felt at home with them at once.

Kate was present at two great events at Rolleston—a fire and a flood. Here is her own account of them:— …

[37]

Next we have a glimpse of Kate making triumphant progresses in the corn-waggons and hay-carts as they rattled back empty to the fields. The corn-waggons, it must be admitted, had a drawback in the little dark beetles—‘clocks’ as the waggoners called them—which ran about and threatened her legs. But these were soon forgotten in the near prospect of a ride back perched high o …n the Harvest Home load, decked with green branches, while the men chanted—…

‘Mr.—— is a good man,
He gets his harvest as well as he can,
Neither turned over nor yet stuck fast,
He’s got his harvest home at last.

Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!’

And she loved to sit on the stile watching for the postman. In earliest days ‘he was an imposing person who rode on a donkey and blew a brass trumpet. If you wished to despatch a letter and lived alongside his beat you displayed it in your window to attract his attention. When he saw a letter thus paraded, he drew rein, blew a blast, and out you ran with your letter. If you lived off his route you had to put your letter in somebody else’s window. So with the delivery. Aunt Aldridge’s letters, for example, were left at the Chappells’ and an old woman got a halfpenny a letter for taking them up to the Odd House.’ In those days the postman was clearly not made for man, but man for the postman.

Once and once only Kate went fishing at the flour mill, which had its water-wheel on the Greet. She sketches the scene vividly in a few words. How lovely it all was, she tells us—the lapping of the water against the banks of the reedy river, the great heaps of corn, the husks, the floury sacks and carts, the white-coated millers, the clean white scent, and, above all, the excitement of looking out for the fish! What could be better than that? It was about as good as good could be, when of a sudden all was changed. There was a jerk of the rod, a brief struggle and a plunge, and there lay a gasping fish with the hook in its silly mouth, bleeding on the bank. What could be worse than that? It was about as bad as bad could be. The sun had gone in. The sky was no longer blue, and misery had come into the world. She loathed the task of carrying the poor dead things home to be cooked, and she refused to partake of the dreadful dish. It was all too sad. The pleasant river and the bright glorious days were all over for them and she was not to be comforted. And that was the end of Kate’s single fishing experience. Surely fate was in a singularly ironical mood when, in later years, it brought her[38] a letter of hypercritical remonstrance because of her supposed advocacy of what the writer considered a cruel and demoralising sport!

Indeed, we have only to read her rhyme of ‘Miss Molly and the little fishes’ in Marigold Garden to realise that her sentiments as a child remained those of the woman:

Oh, sweet Miss Molly,
You’re so fond
Of fishes in a little pond.
And perhaps they’re glad
To see you stare
With such bright eyes
Upon them there.
And when your fingers and your thumbs
Drop slowly in the small white crumbs,
I hope they’re happy. Only this—
When you’ve looked long enough, sweet miss,
Then, most beneficent young giver,
Restore them to their native river.

In this fashion the little ‘Lunnoner,’ as she was always called, got her fill of the country, and her intimacy with more or less unsophisticated nature—a love which was her prevailing passion throughout her life. …

[39]

When Kate was six years old her brother John was born; and of course she remembered to her dying day all the clothes he ever had, and all those which she and her sisters had at the same time; and she notes the details of three of his earliest costumes which she remembered to good purpose. First, a scarlet pelisse, and a white felt hat with feathers; next, a drab pelisse and a drab felt hat with a green velvet rosette; and thirdly, he was resplendent in a pale blue frock, a little white jacket, and a white Leghorn hat and feather—all of which afterwards found resurrection in the Greenaway picture-books.

There was always a deep bond of sympathy between Mr. Greenaway and his little daughter, whom, by the way, he nicknamed ‘Knocker,’ to which it amused him to compare her face when she cried. Her devotion to her father doubtless had far-reaching results, for not only was Mr. Greenaway an accomplished engraver, but an artist of no mean ability. And there was a fascination and mystery about his calling which made a strong appeal to her imagination. On special occasions he would be commissioned to make drawings for the Illustrated London News, and then Kate’s delight would be unbounded. The subject might be of Queen Victoria at some such ceremony as the opening of Parliament; or sometimes of some more stirring occurrence—such, for example, as that which necessitated the long journey into Staffordshire to make sketches of the house and surroundings of the villainous doctor, William Palmer, the Rugeley murderer, an event which stood out in her memory as of supreme interest and importance.

Mr. Greenaway’s office, as long as Kate could remember, was 4, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. There most of his work was done; but when, as frequently happened, there was a scramble to get the wood blocks engraved in time for the press, he would have to work the greater part of two consecutive nights. Then he would bring portions of his blocks home, distributing the less important sections among his assistants, so that the whole might be ready in the morning.

These were times of superlative pleasure to Kate. She would wake up about midnight and see the gas still burning outside in[40] the passage. This meant that her father was hard at work downstairs. About one o’clock he would go to bed, snatch an hour or two’s sleep, and be at it again until it was time to be off to the City. This was his routine, and Kate quickly planned how to take advantage of it.

Waiting till sister Fanny was asleep, she would slip out of bed, hurry into her clothes, all except her frock and shoes, and, covering them with her little nightgown, creep back into bed again. Thus prepared for eventualities, she would fall asleep. But not for long. Somehow she would manage to wake again in the small hours of the morning and see if the light of the gas jet in the passage still shone through the chink of the door. If it did, she would climb with all quietness out of bed, doff her nightdress, slip into her frock, take her shoes in her hand and creep softly down to the drawing-room, where her father was at work. Then he would fasten her dress and she would set to work to make his toast. And so th. e two would breakfast together alone in the early hours with supreme satisfaction.