酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Records of a Family of Engineers-Part4_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


as I had been, with a sense of disproportion between the

warmth of the adoration felt and the nature of the woman,



whether as described or observed. She diligently read and

marked her Bible; she was a tender nurse; she had a sense of



humour under strong control; she talked and found some

amusement at her (or rather at her husband's) dinner-parties.



It is conceivable that even my grandmother was amenable to the

seductions of dress; at least, I find her husband inquiring



anxiously about `the gowns from Glasgow,' and very careful to

describe the toilet of the Princess Charlotte, whom he had



seen in church `in a Pelisse and Bonnet of the same colour of

cloth as the Boys' Dress jackets, trimmed with blue satin



ribbons; the hat or Bonnet, Mr. Spittal said, was a Parisian

slouch, and had a plume of three white feathers.' But all



this leaves a blank impression, and it is rather by reading

backward in these old musty letters, which have moved me now



to laughter and now to impatience, that I glean occasional

glimpses of how she seemed to her contemporaries, and trace



(at work in her queer world of godly and grateful parasites) a

mobile and responsive nature. Fashion moulds us, and



particularly women, deeper than we sometimes think; but a

little while ago, and, in some circles, women stood or fell by



the degree of their appreciation of old pictures; in the early

years of the century (and surely with more reason) a character



like that of my grandmother warmed, charmed, and subdued, like

a strain of music, the hearts of the men of her own household.



And there is little doubt that Mrs. Smith, as she looked on at

the domestic life of her son and her stepdaughter, and



numbered the heads in their increasing nursery, must have

breathed fervent thanks to her Creator.



Yet this was to be a family unusually tried; it was not

for nothing that one of the godly women saluted Miss Janet



Smith as `a veteran in affliction'; and they were all before

middle life experienced in that form of service. By the 1st



of January 1808, besides a pair of still-born twins, children

had been born and still survived to the young couple. By the



11th two were gone; by the 28th a third had followed, and the

two others were still in danger. In the letters of a former



nurserymaid - I give her name, Jean Mitchell, HONORIS CAUSA -

we are enabled to feel, even at this distance of time, some of



the bitterness of that month of bereavement.

`I have this day received,' she writes to Miss Janet,



`the melancholy news of my dear babys' deaths. My heart is

like to break for my dear Mrs. Stevenson. O may she be



supported on this trying occasion! I hope her other three

babys will be spared to her. O, Miss Smith, did I think when



I parted from my sweet babys that I never was to see them

more?' `I received,' she begins her next, `the mournful news



of my dear Jessie's death. I also received the hair of my

three sweet babys, which I will preserve as dear to their



memorys and as a token of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson's friendship

and esteem. At my leisure hours, when the children are in



bed, they occupy all my thoughts, I dream of them. About two

weeks ago I dreamed that my sweet little Jessie came running



to me in her usual way, and I took her in my arms. O my dear

babys, were mortal eyes permitted to see them in heaven, we



would not repine nor grieve for their loss.'

By the 29th of February, the Reverend John Campbell, a



man of obvious sense and human value, but hateful to the

present biographer, because he wrote so many letters and



conveyed so little information, summed up this first period of

affliction in a letter to Miss Smith: `Your dear sister but a



little while ago had a full nursery, and the dear blooming




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号