CHAPTER XII

OTTERBURN

225. IN blaming myself, as often I have done,¹ and may have occasion to do again, for my want of affection to other people, I must also express continually, as I think back about it, more and more wonder that ever anybody had any affection for me. I thought they might as well have got fond of a camera-lucida, or an ivory foot-rule: all my faculty was merely in showing that such and such things were so; I was no orator, no actor, no painter but in a minute and generally invisible manner; and I couldn’t bear being interrupted in anything I was about.

Nevertheless, some sensible grown-up people did get to like me!-the best of them with a protective feeling that I wanted guidance no less than sympathy; and the higher religious souls, hoping to lead me to the golden gates.

226. I have no memory, and no notion, when I first saw Pauline, Lady Trevelyan;² but she became at once a monitress-friend in whom I wholly trusted,-(not that I ever took her advice!)-and the happiness of her own life was certainly increased by my books and me. Sir Walter, being a thorough botanist, and interested in pure science generally, did not hunt, but was benevolently useful, as a landlord should be, in his county. I had no interests in county business at that time; but used to have happy agricultural or floral chats with Sir Walter, and entirely admired his unambitious, yet dignified stability of rural, and celestial, life, there amidst the Northumbrian winds.

¹ [See above, pp. 44-45, 424.]

² [Certainly before 1851: see Vol. XII. p. xix. For Paulina, eldest daughter of the Rev. W. Jermyn, D.D., married to Sir Walter Trevelyan in 1835, see the Introduction to Vol. XXXVI.]

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