My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror(玛格丽特阿姨的镜子)

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My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

My Aunt Margaret's

Mirror

by Sir Walter Scott

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

INTRODUCTION.

The species of publication which has come to be generally known by

the title of ANNUAL, being a miscellany of prose and verse, equipped

with numerous engravings, and put forth every year about Christmas, had

flourished for a long while in Germany before it was imitated in this

country by an enterprising bookseller, a German by birth, Mr. Ackermann.

The rapid success of his work, as is the custom of the time, gave birth to a

host of rivals, and, among others, to an Annual styled The Keepsake, the

first volume of which appeared in 1828, and attracted much notice, chiefly

in consequence of the very uncommon splendour of its illustrative

accompaniments. The expenditure which the spirited proprietors

lavished on this magnificent volume is understood to have been not less

than from ten to twelve thousand pounds sterling!

Various gentlemen of such literary reputation that any one might think

it an honour to be associated with them had been announced as

contributors to this Annual, before application was made to me to assist in

it; and I accordingly placed with much pleasure at the Editor's disposal a

few fragments, originally designed to have been worked into the

Chronicles of the Canongate, besides a manuscript drama, the long-

neglected performance of my youthful days--"The House of Aspen."

The Keepsake for 1828 included, however, only three of these little

prose tales, of which the first in order was that entitled "My Aunt

Margaret's Mirror." By way of INTRODUCTION to this, when now

included in a general collection of my lucubrations, I have only to say that

it is a mere transcript, or at least with very little embellishment, of a story

that I remembered being struck with in my childhood, when told at the

fireside by a lady of eminent virtues and no inconsiderable share of talent,

one of the ancient and honourable house of Swinton. She was a kind of

relation of my own, and met her death in a manner so shocking-- being

killed, in a fit of insanity, by a female attendant who had been attached to

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

her person for half a lifetime--that I cannot now recall her memory, child

as I was when the catastrophe occurred, without a painful reawakening of

perhaps the first images of horror that the scenes of real life stamped on

my mind.

This good spinster had in her composition a strong vein of the

superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her

chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had had formed out of

a human skull. One night this strange piece of furniture acquired

suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles

on her chimney-piece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to roll

about the apartment. Mrs. Swinton calmly proceeded to the adjoining

room for another light, and had the satisfaction to penetrate the mystery on

the spot. Rats abounded in the ancient building she inhabited, and one of

these had managed to ensconce itself within her favourite MEMENTO

MORI. Though thus endowed with a more than feminine share of nerve,

she entertained largely that belief in supernaturals which in those times

was not considered as sitting ungracefully on the grave and aged of her

condition; and the story of the Magic Mirror was one for which she

vouched with particular confidence, alleging indeed that one of her own

family had been an eye-witness of the incidents recorded in it.

"I tell the tale as it was told to me."

Stories enow of much the same cast will present themselves to the

recollection of such of my readers as have ever dabbled in a species of lore

to which I certainly gave more hours, at one period of my life, than I

should gain any credit by confessing.

AUGUST 1831.

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

AUNT MARGARET'S MIRROR.

"There are timesWhen Fancy plays her gambols, in despiteEven of our

watchful senses--when in soothSubstance seems shadow, shadow

substance seems--When the broad, palpable, and mark'd partition'Twixt

that which is and is not seems dissolved,As if the mental eye gain'd power

to gazeBeyond the limits of the existing world.Such hours of shadowy

dreams I better loveThan all the gross realities of life."ANONYMOUS.

My Aunt Margaret was one of that respected sisterhood upon whom

devolve all the trouble and solicitude incidental to the possession of

children, excepting only that which attends their entrance into the world.

We were a large family, of very different dispositions and constitutions.

Some were dull and peevish--they were sent to Aunt Margaret to be

amused; some were rude, romping, and boisterous--they were sent to Aunt

Margaret to be kept quiet, or rather that their noise might be removed out

of hearing; those who were indisposed were sent with the prospect of

being nursed; those who were stubborn, with the hope of their being

subdued by the kindness of Aunt Margaret's discipline;--in short, she had

all the various duties of a mother, without the credit and dignity of the

maternal character. The busy scene of her various cares is now over.

Of the invalids and the robust, the kind and the rough, the peevish and

pleased children, who thronged her little parlour from morning to night,

not one now remains alive but myself, who, afflicted by early infirmity,

was one of the most delicate of her nurslings, yet, nevertheless, have

outlived them all.

It is still my custom, and shall be so while I have the use of my limbs,

to visit my respected relation at least three times a week. Her abode is

about half a mile from the suburbs of the town in which I reside, and is

accessible, not only by the highroad, from which it stands at some distance,

but by means of a greensward footpath leading through some pretty

meadows. I have so little left to torment me in life, that it is one of my

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

greatest vexations to know that several of these sequestered fields have

been devoted as sites for building. In that which is nearest the town,

wheelbarrows have been at work for several weeks in such numbers, that,

I verily believe, its whole surface, to the depth of at least eighteen inches,

was mounted in these monotrochs at the same moment, and in the act of

being transported from one place to another. Huge triangular piles of

planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a

little group of trees that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle

ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white

paint, and are to give place to a curious grove of chimneys.

It would, perhaps, hurt others in my situation to reflect that this little

range of pasturage once belonged to my father (whose family was of some

consideration in the world), and was sold by patches to remedy distresses

in which he involved himself in an attempt by commercial adventure to

redeem his diminished fortune. While the building scheme was in full

operation, this circumstance was often pointed out to me by the class of

friends who are anxious that no part of your misfortunes should escape

your observation. "Such pasture-ground!--lying at the very town's end--

in turnips and potatoes, the parks would bring L20 per acre; and if leased

for building--oh, it was a gold mine! And all sold for an old song out of

the ancient possessor's hands!" My comforters cannot bring me to repine

much on this subject. If I could be allowed to look back on the past

without interruption, I could willingly give up the enjoyment of present

income and the hope of future profit to those who have purchased what

my father sold. I regret the alteration of the ground only because it

destroys associations, and I would more willingly (I think) see the Earl's

Closes in the hands of strangers, retaining their silvan appearance, than

know them for my own, if torn up by agriculture, or covered with

buildings. Mine are the sensations of poor Logan:--

"The horrid plough has rased the green Where yet a child I

strayed;The axe has fell'd the hawthorn screen, The schoolboy's summer

shade."

I hope, however, the threatened devastation will not be consummated

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

in my day. Although the adventurous spirit of times short while since

passed gave rise to the undertaking, I have been encouraged to think that

the subsequent changes have so far damped the spirit of speculation that

the rest of the woodland footpath leading to Aunt Margaret's retreat will be

left undisturbed for her time and mine. I am interested in this, for every

step of the way, after I have passed through the green already mentioned,

has for me something of early remembrance:-- There is the stile at which I

can recollect a cross child's-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity as she

lifted me coarsely and carelessly over the flinty steps, which my brothers

traversed with shout and bound. I remember the suppressed bitterness of

the moment, and, conscious of my own inferiority, the feeling of envy

with which I regarded the easy movements and elastic steps of my more

happily formed brethren. Alas! these goodly barks have all perished on

life's wide ocean, and only that which seemed so little seaworthy, as the

naval phrase goes, has reached the port when the tempest is over. Then

there is the pool, where, manoeuvring our little navy, constructed out of

the broad water-flags, my elder brother fell in, and was scarce saved from

the watery element to die under Nelson's banner. There is the hazel

copse also, in which my brother Henry used to gather nuts, thinking little

that he was to die in an Indian jungle in quest of rupees.

There is so much more of remembrance about the little walk, that --as

I stop, rest on my crutch-headed cane, and look round with that species of

comparison between the thing I was and that which I now am--it almost

induces me to doubt my own identity; until I find myself in face of the

honeysuckle porch of Aunt Margaret's dwelling, with its irregularity of

front, and its odd, projecting latticed windows, where the workmen seem

to have made it a study that no one of them should resemble another in

form, size, or in the old-fashioned stone entablature and labels which

adorn them. This tenement, once the manor house of the Earl's Closes, we

still retain a slight hold upon; for, in some family arrangements, it had

been settled upon Aunt Margaret during the term of her life. Upon this

frail tenure depends, in a great measure, the last shadow of the family of

Bothwell of Earl's Closes, and their last slight connection with their

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

paternal inheritance. The only representative will then be an infirm old

man, moving not unwillingly to the grave, which has devoured all that

were dear to his affections.

When I have indulged such thoughts for a minute or two, I enter the

mansion, which is said to have been the gate-house only of the original

building, and find one being on whom time seems to have made little

impression; for the Aunt Margaret of to-day bears the same proportional

age to the Aunt Margaret of my early youth that the boy of ten years old

does to the man of (by'r Lady!) some fifty-six years. The old lady's

invariable costume has doubtless some share in confirming one in the

opinion that time has stood still with Aunt Margaret.

The brown or chocolate-coloured silk gown, with ruffles of the same

stuff at the elbow, within which are others of Mechlin lace; the black silk

gloves, or mitts; the white hair combed back upon a roll; and the cap of

spotless cambric, which closes around the venerable countenance--as they

were not the costume of 1780, so neither were they that of 1826; they are

altogether a style peculiar to the individual Aunt Margaret. There she

still sits, as she sat thirty years since, with her wheel or the stocking,

which she works by the fire in winter and by the window in summer; or,

perhaps, venturing as far as the porch in an unusually fine summer

evening. Her frame, like some well- constructed piece of mechanics, still

performs the operations for which it had seemed destined--going its round

with an activity which is gradually diminished, yet indicating no

probability that it will soon come to a period.

The solicitude and affection which had made Aunt Margaret the

willing slave to the inflictions of a whole nursery, have now for their

object the health and comfort of one old and infirm man-- the last

remaining relative of her family, and the only one who can still find

interest in the traditional stores which she hoards, as some miser hides the

gold which he desires that no one should enjoy after his death.

My conversation with Aunt Margaret generally relates little either to

the present or to the future. For the passing day we possess as much as

we require, and we neither of us wish for more; and for that which is to

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

follow, we have, on this side of the grave, neither hopes, nor fears, nor

anxiety. We therefore naturally look back to the past, and forget the

present fallen fortunes and declined importance of our family in recalling

the hours when it was wealthy and prosperous.

With this slight introduction, the reader will know as much of Aunt

Margaret and her nephew as is necessary to comprehend the following

conversation and narrative.

Last week, when, late in a summer evening, I went to call on the old

lady to whom my reader is now introduced, I was received by her with all

her usual affection and benignity, while, at the same time, she seemed

abstracted and disposed to silence. I asked her the reason. "They have

been clearing out the old chapel," she said; "John Clayhudgeons having, it

seems, discovered that the stuff within--being, I suppose, the remains of

our ancestors--was excellent for top-dressing the meadows."

Here I started up with more alacrity than I have displayed for some

years; but sat down while my aunt added, laying her hand upon my sleeve,

"The chapel has been long considered as common ground, my dear, and

used for a pinfold, and what objection can we have to the man for

employing what is his own to his own profit? Besides, I did speak to him,

and he very readily and civilly promised that if he found bones or

monuments, they should be carefully respected and reinstated; and what

more could I ask? So, the first stone they found bore the name of Margaret

Bothwell, 1585, and I have caused it to be laid carefully aside, as I think it

betokens death, and having served my namesake two hundred years, it has

just been cast up in time to do me the same good turn. My house has

been long put in order, as far as the small earthly concerns require it; but

who shall say that their account with, Heaven is sufficiently revised?"

"After what you have said, aunt," I replied, "perhaps I ought to take

my hat and go away; and so I should, but that there is on this occasion a

little alloy mingled with your devotion. To think of death at all times is a

duty--to suppose it nearer from the finding an old gravestone is

superstition; and you, with your strong, useful common sense, which was

so long the prop of a fallen family, are the last person whom I should have

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MyAuntMargaret'sMirror1MyAuntMargaret'sMirrorbySirWalterScottMyAuntMargaret'sMirror2INTRODUCTION.ThespeciesofpublicationwhichhascometobegenerallyknownbythetitleofANNUAL,beingamiscellanyofproseandverse,equippedwithnumerousengravings,andputfortheveryyearaboutChristmas,hadflourishedforalongwhileinGerma...

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My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror(玛格丽特阿姨的镜子)

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