University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

Mr. Chevillere will perceive that I have
merely sketched a long train of circumstances
connected with our family history; but I hope I
have said enough to enable him to understand what
I have now to relate, more immediately concerning
myself. He will, in due time, perceive that the
circumstances already glanced at had a powerful
and unfortunate influence upon my destiny.

With the exception of the death of my grandmother,
nothing remarkable occurred between the
time just spoken of and my thirteenth year. My
childhood was happy and unclouded; and the attention
bestowed upon my mental cultivation was
such as might have been expected from devoted
and intelligent parents towards an only child; and
my improvement by their instructions was such as,
at least, to satisfy their partial judgment.

Those happy days were destined too soon to
end—too soon it was thought that I was old enough
to improve under other and less kind and blinded
instructers—too soon it was determined that I
must leave the dear home of my youth, the society
of my parents, and the scenes of my childish rambles.
Oh! how little do we know the value of the
wild, gay, irresponsible happiness of childhood, until

we look back upon it from after years. Already,
young as I am, I have often to recur to memory's
stores in order to seek consolation from the past
for the unutterable sufferings of the present. It
was determined that I must now be sent to a
boarding-school in the city of New-York. This
gave me much pleasure in prospect, so long as the
day of separation from my parents was at a distance.
The idea of a boarding-school in a large
city is pleasing to a gay and thoughtless girl; and
doubtless, under ordinary circumstances, it is the
source of much innocent delight. It is in such
places that we form the dear friendships which are
to endure, at least in memory, for a life-time. If
the persons of our friends pass away, they still
remain with us in spirit; and the scenes and enjoyments
of younger life will sometimes, upon the
casual touching of a chord, rush back upon us with
a melancholy which, though desirable, is over-whelming
and even suffocating. The term seems
to me peculiarly adapted to that singular oppression
of the soul which only the female heart endures.
But I was speaking of more pleasing anticipations:
these were but too free and buoyant;
and therein, perhaps, was laid the foundation of all
my after sorrows. The day of my departure soon
arrived, when all my pleasing anticipations were
turned into weeping and sorrow. Something inexpressible
seemed to burden my heart upon this
first separation from my mother. Whether it is a
usual thing with our sex on such occasions, or
whether it was a more especial presentiment of
coming evil in my particular case, I do not know.
Certain I am, that I had never experienced any
thing like it before; and what seems peculiarly
strange to me now is, that the undefined sufferings
of that hour were very like those which oppressed
me under the real misfortunes of which they could
only have been the foregoing shadows. There
was really an identity in the miserable feelings
attendant upon the two occasions. This may appear
like folly: but, certainly, every one who has
suffered at all can recur to each link in the gloomy
chain, as particularly as we can travel back over
the identical feelings of by-gone enjoyments.
These are not the associations of the moment only,
but specific and peculiar sufferings related to the
cause, and even existing when the mind is abstracted
from all surrounding objects. And these
same nightmare feelings will arise again and again
over the heart, when we are least expecting them.
Sometimes, in the gay and joyous hour, they have
come over me like a horrible dream, in exactly the
same gloomy hues and colours in which they first
presented themselves.

I have dwelt upon this presentiment a moment,
because it seems to me that there was something
peculiar in its first appearance; as I was but a
child of thirteen, and had never felt more mental
suffering than a moment's childish vexation. These
were entirely new feelings, totally unconnected
with my past experience at that time: how far

they were connected with that which was to come,
I leave others to judge for me.

At length I parted with all those most dear to
me upon earth except my father, who accompanied
me. And here I may remark, that however peculiar
and poignant were my feelings of the parting
hour, they were of short duration. One night's
sleep, away from home, effected the cure; all was
forgotten, and my gay anticipations returned. I
began already to select play-fellows and intimates
from the crowd with which my imagination peopled
the boarding-school. My plans were all arranged,
dresses bought, and books selected.

Having parted from my father, a new life opened
upon me, entirely different from any thing I had
before experienced. I was now placed with girls
near my own age, in that little epitome of the female
world called a select boarding-school. Here
I found, for the first time, the pleasures of congenial
intimacy with beings of my own age, and the pains
of envy, jealousy, rivalry, and all the meaner passions.

The love of admiration is a singular passion in
girls so young; I say singular, because it is a general,
undefined, impracticable feeling, having no
ultimate object; a strange, fluttering, wild emotion,
which is seldom analyzed by those who are under
its influence. Indeed I doubt whether it could
exist in a person who had judgment enough to
know exactly its origin, support, and end.

A boarding-school is a very hot-bed for this tumultuous

feeling, as it exists primitively, and many
of the seemingly whimsical actions and flighty
speeches of very young girls, under such circumstances,
may be traced to it as their source.

There is one radical error of all girls at that age,
which, it seems to me, may be the nucleus of this
feeling. It is the dread of being overlooked in the
human crowd—a fear that our virtues, our beauties,
our accomplishments, or our intelligence, may
be slighted. We cannot easily discern that the
very efforts which we make to distinguish ourselves
from the common multitude, tend but the
more forcibly to stamp us of the commonest material
of the number, and that the method best calculated
to elevate us above the mass, is to seek
deeper retirement in that oblivion which we then
most dread. This grand mistake, it seems to me,
has its origin likewise in a preceding error, with
regard to those qualities which the other sex most
admire in us. How can a girl, without experience,
ascertain, at the very threshold of life, that retiring
modesty, that seemingly negative virtue, is the
index by which all others are supposed to be fore-told;
how can she possess by intuition, that which
is nothing less than the grand result of all female
education, experience, and accomplishment? True,
there is a native modesty in most young girls,
whose infantile education has been parental; but
this is more properly called bashfulness, and may
be allied with many reprehensible qualities, and
of itself requires discriminating cultivation. There

is a great difference between native bashfulness
and that self-possessed modesty, which can never
be attained but through the influence of good sense
in the pupil, and discriminating judgment in the
parent or teacher.

It must not be supposed for a moment, that the
cultivated humility of which I speak, is the same
which many intriguing mothers and chaperones
inculcate upon their daughters and protegées.
These cunning instructers only enforce the imitation;
I am speaking of the genuine principle and
feeling; and I dwell upon these things the more
diffusely, because much of my after unhappiness
was owing to a neglect of them, as I am sorry
to add, they are too often overlooked in similar
institutions. It may seem that I speak too openly
of the failings of my sex, when I detail the progress
of the desire for admiration, and take it for granted
that it is a feeling common to all; but it must be
recollected that I speak of the secret motives of
action in females of my own age at that time, not
of the disgusting exhibitions of the passions which
are too often to be met with in forward and uncultivated
young ladies. I speak of it when it is
not directly perceptible to any but a discerning
mind; when it displays itself not so much by direct
and unwomanly advances, as by whimsical actions
and foolish conversation. How often do we hear it
said of girls, at about the age of fourteen, that they
are “light-headed” and “flighty.” This is nothing
more than the secret working of the desire for admiration,

and the fear of not receiving it. This
may seem a humiliating exposure of secret female
motives, and so it would be, if I were speaking of
those whose characters are formed; but it is not
so. I refer to the feelings of myself and my associates
at the most interesting period of female education;
and I consider it by no means humiliating
to my sex in general, to expose feelings, which in
their rude and natural state, are disgusting to a
refined mind, but which, judiciously cultivated and
guided, give origin to most of the social happiness
of our race.

It will be perceived that the school into which I
was now introduced, like all others of its kind, was
a nursery for the growth and nurture of many other
things than those which were formally put forth to
the world as the regular routine: these indeed
form but a small part of boarding-school education.
Young ladies are there, for the first time, thrown
into a community of their own age, sex, feeling,
and prospects; for the first time cut off from the
restraints of affectionate parental authority, and
subjected to that which is formal, indiscriminating,
and too often, ludicrous. The consequence is, that
there is soon established a little republic of feeling,
which is ruled by a tacit under-authority among
pupils themselves. These develop similar passions
and feelings to those which we experience in the
world; female ambition, rivalry, jealousy, hatred,
revenge, and all the little wars and contests to
which they give rise.

For the first year there were no occurrences of
an unusual character besides these developments;
at all events, none connected with those events
which I have undertaken impartially to relate.
Twice a year I was allowed to visit my father's
house, and always with renewed delight; fierce as
our little contests sometimes were at school, they
were all forgotten when the parting hour came at
the end of the session; plentiful showers of tears
washed away every vestige of bitter feeling; and
we returned, at the commencement of the next
session, with open arms for every one, like dear
friends who had long been parted; but soon again
we were divided into our little factions, each one
with her favourites.