A LIFE whose light was blown out half a century ago, and whose whole span did not complete twenty years; a girl’s life, which budded, blossomed, and faded in the close shade of a quiet English country-home;—here, it may be said, are scarcely materials of interest for the present generation. Nevertheless, it has been decided to present to the readers of our day a picture of that life as it is given in the journal of Margaret Emily Shore, kept regularly for eight years of her teens, and ending only with her death. This self-revelation, it is thought, will serve better than any formal biography to preserve a memory, not only cherished by surviving love, but deemed worthy of perpetuation by others who have known her only through these pages. I venture to quote the judgment pronounced by one of these, a highly qualified friendly critic, as the justification—or, shall I say, the defence?—of this publication. “She,” whose portraiture is here found, “will obtain favour with those finer spirits who love what is delicate-textured, exquisite, and unique in human shape, as cognoscenti love a fine bronze, whereof the mould, after serving but once, has been destroyed. She belongs to the order of beings of whom Nature makes no replica.”
And it may be suggested that the half-century which has elapsed since this record was closed, adds something, not only to the impression of definiteness and uniqueness left [vi] by its truthful disclosures, but to its general present value. A voice speaking to us in such distinct and living tones across so wide a gulf is a witness in some degree of that change in feeling and point of view which on a large scale makes up the history of thought.
In one not unimportant particular it affords some matter for comparison with the present day, some possible bearing on certain educational problems which we are now busy in trying to solve. Emily Shore, I need not say, went to no High School, no College, no Lectures, passed no Examination, and competed with no rivals; her teaching was that of Nature and of Love. Her education had two characteristics: it allowed her own individuality, with all its tastes and tendencies, freely to expand; and it was an education of pure and good home influences. Her sole instructors were her parents, especially her father; but much, very much, was done by herself. She made her whole existence a happy schoolroom. Besides the father’s lessons so eagerly assimilated and followed out, she had two worlds in which she was her own sole teacher—the world of Nature and the world of Imagination.
Her passion for Natural History will appear in the earlier journals; it was, indeed, in a great degree to her wanderings at dawn of day in the dewy woods, and her late watchings at open windows with a telescope, collecting plants and studying the habits of birds and insects, that she owed the attack of lung-disease which terminated so fatally and so soon. Her almost equal love of Poetry and of historical knowledge gathers strength through all the later pages. In drawing she had no instructor but her mother; but the taste came spontaneously, and was as marked as that for any of the serious studies we have mentioned. From six years old she was accustomed to use her pencil, copying every object she saw. We may add here that she was born in 1819, on Christmas Day, at Bury St. Edmund’s, Suffolk, [vii] spent all her life at home, and, dying of consumption in Madeira, on July 7, 1839, about nightfall, aged nineteen years, six months, and fourteen days, was laid to rest under the cypresses and orange-trees of the Strangers’ Burial-ground in the town of Funchal.
Nothing more need be prefixed to the tale told by herself than that her father, to whom she owed so much, and whom she loved so deeply, was the Rev. Thomas Shore, M.A., of Wadham College, Oxford, who for the first twenty years of his married life maintained his family by private tuition, taking into his house and preparing for college five or six young men, many of whom were of a high social position, and became known in the political world. Some attained to distinction, and of all of them it may safely be said that they carried away a high esteem and regard for him. During the first half of this life he had occasional duty, and often assisted gratuitously in performing the church services. But he declined preferment when offered to him, because doubts which arose in his mind during the constant study of theology made subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles impossible to him; and he continued to support his family by teaching, till age and infirmities compelled him to seek retirement and repose. What he was in domestic life, the pages of his daughter’s journal will in a great measure unfold.
The journal is in twelve octavo volumes, beginning July 5, 1831, when the writer wanted five months of her twelfth birthday, and ending June 24, 1839, a fortnight before her death. The number of pages in each volume is on an average a hundred and sixty. It is all through written in a printing hand, varying but little from first to last. As the facsimile of a page is given, I need only say that all the twelve volumes are executed in precisely the same style, [viii] and with the same care and completeness; and that the whole was written impromptu, without a rough draft, in the midst of as busy a life as ever young creature led!
The selection of extracts from these journals has been a task of much difficulty. In the whole long work of nearly two thousand pages, there is scarcely a passage which, at least to partial eyes, did not seem to possess some charm, some interest of its own. But as a limit was absolutely necessary, it was resolved to be guided by the object of exhibiting individual character as much as possible, without violation of what, even at this distance of time, are felt to be the sacred privacies of the soul, or intrusion on other personalities. A great deal of what is interesting and characteristic, especially of the almost daily notices of her studies and observations on natural history, had to be omitted. But nothing which has been suppressed would tend to give a different idea of her character from what the published extracts convey.
Several passages, too, have been retained as marking the difference, outside and inside, in the aspect of great towns and the life of the country, the intellectual movements and material progress of the England of fifty years ago and the England of to-day.
We subjoin a list of some of her principal compositions, in prose and verse, from the age of eight to that at which she died—nineteen and a half.
1. A little book, with a paper cover, on which is printed in capitals, “Natural History, by Emily Shore, being an Account of Reptiles, Birds, and Quadrupeds, Potton, Biggleswade, Brook House, 1828, June 15th. Price 1 shilling.” Inside are sixteen pages of writing in pencil, in a clear but very childish hand, and very few misspellings. The contents are evidently the result of her own observation or oral teaching, for the language is simplicity itself, and the facts [ix] such as she could not get from books. Here is an account of the green fly:—
“Towards the end of spring, in the month of May, the rose and currant trees are greatly infested by an insect called the green fly. These insects are little more than a quarter of a quarter of an inch in length. They have six legs, each about the length of their bodies. These legs are thinner than a hair. They have three tails, each of which are black.” A footnote adds: “The tails of these insects are very curious. One tail, which is green all over, sticks out horizontally behind; the two others, which are black, stick out higher up, and rather perpendicularly.” “They have two feelers placed on the top of their heads. Their legs have one joint. Here is a drawing of this little insect.” (A rude but very correct sketch follows.) “The colour of the insect is green; the body is covered with stripes. Limewater is a good thing to take away these insects. If made too strong it will make the leaves of the tree white. In the currant trees it swells the leaves and lays its eggs in them. They spoil the roses very much. In the older insects the joints of the legs and the bases of the feelers are black; but the little ones are green all over. These troublesome insects also frequent the honeysuckles in very great numbers. In the currant trees they make purple swellings, and there they live.”
2. A translation of seven chapters of the first book of Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” very literally and faithfully done, and, as usual, very skilfully printed—date 1838.
3. A History of the Jews, begun before she was eleven years old, and finished on completing her twelfth year. It is in a hand as clear and regular as type, with an Introduction and Index, a beautiful map, and twelve illustrations, composed out of her own head, and two of them coloured. These two are “Dagon falling before the Ark,” and “David taking away Saul’s Cruse and Spear.” The first shows [x] the pillared temple of Ashdod, the richly carved copper and smoking tripod, the shattered idol, the rich-robed priest entering, men following with gestures of horror; the second, a scene of yellow moonlight, the bare waste tufted with grass and broken by palm-trees, the tent in which Saul lies sleeping, with shield, spear, and cruse beside him, a man holding open the tent folds, and David cautiously approaching.
4. A History of Greece, finished August 9, 1833, abridged from Frederick Malkin’s.1 As she says in the Preface, “It is true that we may in some instances be accused of plagiarism, where we have nearly copied word for word the corresponding passage in Malkin; but children are to be our critics” (the condescending author was thirteen years and seven months old), “and if the language is plain and intelligible, no matter the source whence it came.”
The book ends with a poem, from which I shall quote only one stanza—
“And still her radiant isles, on every side,Spotted the azure main like fallen stars;A thousand gems risen from the waters wide,A thousand halcyons calming ocean’s roars.”
5. A History of Rome, in the same style, still more beautifully turned out.
6. A number of books, containing Imaginary Histories of England from 1840 to 2354, a “Collection of Celebrated Parliamentary Speeches” (fictitious), and a “Life of the Right Honourable Charles George Howard” (equally so).
7. An account of an imaginary country in the heart of Australia; nearly twelve chapters are given to the geography, natural history, manners and customs, religion, science, literature, language, with the alphabet and grammar, and finally the “political history.” In this work, the most remarkable features are the mechanical execution and the [xi] pretty and spirited illustrations, bits of landscape, imaginary squirrels, birds, flowers (coloured), with “three-celled capsule”; “shepherds, wild sheep, and a hut thatched with large leaves;” figures of men, women, and children; soldiers armed for battle, with weapons very ingeniously constructed; musical instruments, coinage, and canoes. (Fourteen years old.)
8. An unfinished Conversation between herself and the Shade of Herodotus, in which she supposes herself to inform him of all the changes that have taken place in the world since his time. (Fifteen and a half years old.)
9. Fragments of two epics, “Witikind the Saxon,” of which one book was completed in such style that centuries hence it would be looked on as a matchless specimen of the manuscript of our age; and “Cosmurania.” (About fifteen years old.)
10. Three novels, completed, of the romantic order, of course conventional in handling and formal in language, yet made her own by vividness of conception and vigour of execution—“The Emigrants’ Tale,” written in 1835; and “Devereux,” in two volumes, which sprang out of the first, the history of a precocious boy, who escapes from his home, turns pirate, and redeems a career of crime by one act of splendid and pathetic self-sacrifice (1836 and 1837). She had neither read nor heard of Trelawney’s “Adventures of a Younger Son” when she wrote it. Both these works show book-knowledge of other countries, an eye for localities, and skill in describing nature. The printed manuscript of “Devereux” is, perhaps, the most beautifully executed of all her works; it is, in fact, perfect.
11. Three small square books of Poems, written between the ages of ten and nineteen, collected, bound, titled, and prefaced by herself in 1838, the contents being either copied literally from, or remaining in, the original text, thus showing the changes in her printing hand in the course of nine [xii] years, as well as the growth of intelligence, but all equally regular and exact in execution.
A few extracts will be given from each volume. The third, left off not long before her death, contains but few pieces, which, written, as they are, from the very heart, and ringing with melancholy passion, have a far deeper interest than the former ones. But whether they indicate a future and finished poet, whose verses might not be left to die, readers must decide for themselves.
12. Three volumes, “Brief Diaries,” begun April 1, 1835, and ended April 3, 1839, containing merely the common facts of daily family life. It was carried on simultaneously with the fuller journals, and with the same neatness and completeness, even to her latest day of living life, the day before that incident—the bursting of a blood-vessel—which sealed her doom.
I must make some mention of her drawings, which were even more precocious than her writings. As a specimen, there is a drawing of the armoury of Warwic Castle, as she spells it, in childish hand, with the weapons faithfully portrayed, done from memory, five weeks after seeing it, at six years and a half old! From that age she was always using her pencil, copying every object she saw—her nursery and its furniture, the family group, the farmyard, the hay-cart, cows milked and pigs fed, a hunt with horses and dogs, the watchman and his lantern, a man falling from his horse, a wild-beast show with lion and tiger; all was noticed, carried away, and reproduced with a quaint and vivid exactitude. Her sketches were like little dramas, full of human action; where she had not seen she invented, or took hints from the books she had read. Thus we have “Martyrs,” “A Man hanging from a Gallows,” “A Prisoner in Chains,” “Persian Robbers.” At about twelve years old she took to drawing likenesses, though seldom, if ever, requiring her subjects to sit to her; she sat in a corner, [xiii] when the room was full of company, and sketched them in characteristic attitudes. Forbidden to take the portraits of strange visitors, lest the act should be discovered, but unable to resist the temptation, on one particular occasion she sketched the face (that of a sporting parson), as Hogarth did once, on her thumb-nail. She found subjects amongst her father’s pupils, as well as amongst household dependents, and, from the nobleman to the laundress, their likenesses remain to this day as caught by her faithful but not very flattering pencil. To this branch of art succeeded one inspired by her passion for Natural History, that of flower-painting. She conceived the idea of representing in a kind of natural garland or bower the wild flowers proper to every month of the year, with the chief songster of that month placed within it. Sketching then became a passion; a year in Devonshire filled her sketch-book with landscapes, mixed with figures of all that hit her fancy; she sketched even from coach-windows (for railways were then unknown), and beautiful little bits of church architecture filled the corners of her pages. She also drew plans and copied machines with great accuracy.
