The reader will hardly believe that the death of so hard a father could have been felt otherwise than as an inexpressible relief, and yet I was deeply affected by his loss. The kindest of fathers could hardly have been wept for more. My aunt's tears were more explicable; she was old enough to understand the frightful waste of the best gifts involved in that premature ending; as for my grief, perhaps the true explanation of it may be that I mourned rather the father who had been kind to me in Wales, than the cruel master at Ivy Cottage.
I sometimes try to imagine what he might have been under more favorable circumstances. There were times after his wife's death when he meditated a complete change of residence, which might have saved him. He would always have been severe and authoritative, but without alcohol he would probably not have been cruel.
I remember the day of the funeral quite distinctly. My father's two brothers came, though he had had scarcely any intercourse with them for years. They were most respectable men, quite free from my father's errors; but they had not half his life and energy. Such was the strength of his constitution that so recently as the time of our journey in Wales his health was not visibly impaired, and at the time of his death he had that rare possession for a man of thirty-nine, a complete set of perfectly sound teeth.
His coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in 1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband whilst their short union lasted.
I am the only survivor of that day's ceremony. The little procession has all followed my father into the darkness, descending one by one into graves separated by great spaces of land and sea. And when this is printed I, too, shall be asleep in mine.
Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of Dissenters. --My feeling for architecture and music.--The drawing-master.--My guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French master, Sig. Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the violin.--Dancing.--My aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of Scott.--My first library.--Classical studies.