VII. PAPA AND MAMMA 127

which his marriage depended: and in a methodical regularity of conduct and correspondence which never left his mistress a moment of avoidable anxiety, or gave her motive for any serious displeasure.

On these terms the engagement lasted nine years; at the end of which time, my grandfather’s debts having been all paid,¹ and my father established in a business gradually increasing, and liable to no grave contingency, the now not very young people were married in Perth one evening after supper, the servants of the house having no suspicion of the event until John and Margaret drove away together next morning to Edinburgh.²

147. In looking back to my past thoughts and ways, nothing astonishes me more than my want of curiosity about all these matters; and that, often and often as my mother used to tell with complacency the story of this carefully secret marriage, I never asked, “But, mother, why so secret, when it was just what all the friends of both of you so long expected, and what all your best friends so heartily wished?”

But, until lately, I never thought of writing any more about myself than was set down in diaries, nor of my family at all: and thus too carelessly, and, as I now think, profanely, neglected the traditions of my people. “What does it all matter, now?” I said; “we are what we are, and shall be what we make ourselves.”

Also, until very lately, I had accustomed myself to consider all that my parents had done, so far as their own happiness was concerned, entirely wise and exemplary. Yet the reader must not suppose that what I have said in my deliberate writings on the propriety of long engagements³ had any reference to this singular one in my own family. Of the heroism and patience with which the sacrifice was made, on both sides, I cannot judge:-but that it was

¹ [See above, §§ 5, 10 (pp. 15, 19).]

² [February 27, 1818; she was 37, and he 33.]

³ [See, for instance, Fors Clavigera, Letter 90 (Vol. XXIX. p. 429).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]