Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
over Martindale forest and its purlieus. Or, again, in Devonshire and
Cornwall, over Dartmoor, etc., and, I believe, in many other regions,
though naturally narrowing as civilization widens. The writer is equally
wrong in supposing the prevailing deer of our parks to be the _roe_
deer, which are very little known. It is the _fallow_ deer that chiefly
people our parks. Red deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire,
when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As
my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in
Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary
to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that
there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to
the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I mean, as, by reviving
painful recollections of that ancient Schreiber, who was or ought to be
by this time extinct, would naturally be odious and distressing. Here,
therefore, liberated from all jealousy of overlooking eyes, such as
haunted persons of their expectations at Brighton, Weymouth, Sidmouth,
or Bath, Miss Smith and Miss Watson used to surrender themselves without
restraint to their glad animal impulses of girlish gayety, like the
fawns of antelopes when suddenly transferred from tiger-haunted thickets
to the serene preserves of secluded rajahs. On these visits it was, that
I, as a young pet whom they carried about like a doll from my second to
my eighth or ninth year, learned to know them; so as to take a fraternal
interest in the succeeding periods of their lives. Their fathers I
certainly had not seen; nor had they, consciously. These two fathers
must both have died in India, before my inquiries had begun to travel
in that direction. But, as old acquaintances of my mother's, both
had visited The Farm before I was born; and about General Smith, in
particular, there had survived amongst the servants a remembrance which
seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though,
at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions.
He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched
himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he
might have been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest; and
from this it was but a moderate step in advance to say that he _was_
trodden on. Upon which basis many other wonders were naturally reared.
Miss Smith's father, therefore, furnished matter for a not very amiable
tradition; but Miss Smith herself was the sweetest-tempered and the
loveliest of girls, and the most thoroughly English in the style of her
beauty. Far different every way was Miss Watson. In person she was
a finished beauty of the very highest pretensions, and generally
recognized as such; that is to say, her figure was fine and queenly;
her features were exquisitely cut, as regarded their forms and the
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