The Doctor\'s Daughter

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Produced by Yvonne Dailey, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.

THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.

BY "VERA."
AUTHOR OF "HONOR EDGEWORTH"

"_O Tempora! O Mores!_"

PREFACE.

Charles Dickens observes with much truth, that "though seldom read,
prefaces are continually written." It may be asked and even wondered,
why? I cannot say that I know the exact reason, but it seems to me
that they may carry the same weight, in the literary world, that
certain _sotto voce_ explanations, which oftentimes accompany the
introduction of one person to another, do in the social world.

If it is permitted, in bringing some quaint, old-fashioned little
body, before a gathering of your more fastidious friends, at once to
reconcile them to his or her strange, ungainly mien, and to justify
yourself for acknowledging an intimacy with so eccentric a creature,
by following up the prosy and unsuggestive: "Mr. B----, ladies and
gentlemen," or "Miss M----, ladies and gentlemen," with such a
refreshing paraphrase as, "brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord
Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the
late distinguished Christopher Quill the American Poet"--why should
not a like privilege be extended the labour-worn author, when he
ushers the crude and unattractive offspring of his own undaunted
energy into the arena of literary life?

Mr. B----, without the whispered guarantee of his relative importance,
would never be noticed unless to be riled or ridiculed; and so with
many a meek and modest volume, whose key-note has never been sounded,
or if sounded has never been heard.

We would all be perfect in our attributes if we could! Who would write
vapid, savourless pages, if it were in his power to set them aglow
with rare erudition, and dazzling conceptions of ethical and other
abstract subjects? If I had been born a Dickens, _lector benevole_, I
would have willingly, eagerly, proudly, favoured you with a "Tale of
Two Cities" or a "David Copperfield;" of that you may be morally
certain, however, it is no mock self-disparagement (!) that moves me
to humbly acknowledge (!) my inferiority to this immortal mind. I have
availed myself of the only alternative left, when I recognized the
impossibility of rivalling this protagonist among the _dramatis
personae_ of the great Drama of English Fiction, and have done
something of which he speaks very tenderly and delicately somewhere in
his prolific writings, one's "best." He says, "one man's best is as
good as another man's," not in its results, (I know by experience),
but in the abstract relationship which exists between the nature of
the two efforts, and I am grateful to him for having thus provided
against the possible discouragement of "small authorship."

In the subjoining pages, I offer to the world, a pretenseless record
of the impressions, opinions, and convictions which have been, I may
say, thrust upon me by a contact, which is yet necessarily limited,
with the phases of every-day life.

That some of these reflections and conclusions should not meet with
universal sympathy or approval, is not at all to be wondered at, when
we consider how much more different, than alike, are any two human
lives and lots. I do not ask my readers to subscribe to those tenets
and opinions which may seem unreal and exaggerated to them, because of
their different experience; I can only justify them in myself, by
declaring them to be the outgrowth of my own personal speculations in
the market of commonplace existence.

It has been my pleasure to probe under the surface of sorrow and song
that makes the swelling, restless tide of human passions a strange and
tempting mystery, even to itself; and though my pen may have failed to
carry out the deep-rooted ambition of my soul, there is some comfort
in the thought that I have made an effort; I have tried my young
wings, with the hope of soaring upward: if they are yet too feeble to
bear me, I am no more than the young eagle, and must rise again from
my fall, to await a gathering confidence and strength that may, or may
not, be in store for me.

A little mouse presumed to be the deliverer of a mighty lion, when
this noble beast lay ensnared and entangled in a net; it was slow and
tiresome work for the tiny benefactor to nibble now here, now there,
wherever its small teeth could find a vulnerable or yielding spot: but
a determination and decision of purpose, coupled with an undaunted and
fearless perseverance, have given issue time and again to achievements
even greater, though still less promising, than the undertaking of the
little mouse in the fable, but for those who can yet take heart, in
the face of possible failure, I think half the battle is won.

In introducing a second effort to the public, I feel called upon to
avail myself of the opportunity it affords me, of thanking many
readers for the kindness and consideration extended to my first. It
was kind of them to have dwelt at length upon its few redeeming
traits, and to have touched lightly and gently upon the cruder and
more faulty ones; it was kind of them to have taken into account every
circumstance which had any bearing upon the nature of the work: to
have alluded to the youth and inexperience of the writer. It was kind,
even of those who took it upon themselves to aver, not in the hearing
of the authoress herself, but elsewhere, that the composition was far
from being original. This latter verdict would have been the highest
tribute of all to the talent and erudition of the authoress, had they
who uttered it been capable or responsible judges of literary merit.
Being of that class, instead, who feel it urgent upon them to say
something, however garrulous or silly, when a local topic agitates
their immediate sphere, the authoress has not much reason for hoping
that their intention was really to flatter her maiden effort, by
purposely mistaking it for the work of an older, and abler hero of the
quill; however, if it might have been worthy of a maturer mind and
more powerful pen, in their eyes, a high compliment is necessarily
insinuated, even there, for the humble writer.

If the present story can lighten the burden of an idle hour of
sickness or sorrow; if it may shorten the time of waiting, or distract
the monotony of travel; if it may strike a key-note of common sympathy
between its author and its reader, where the shallow side of nature is
regretfully touched upon; if it may attract the potent attention of
even one of those whose words and actions regulate the tone and tenor
of our social life, to the urgency of encouraging, promoting and
favouring the principles of an active Christian morality, whose beauty
lies, not in the depths or vastness of its abstract conceptions, but
in its earnest, humble, and tireless labours for the advancement of
men's spiritual and temporal welfare--if it may do any one of these
things, it shall have more than realized the fond and fervent wish of
the author's heart: it shall have reaped her a golden harvest for the
tiresome task she has just accomplished, and shall have stimulated
anew her every energy, to associate itself more strongly and ardently
than ever, with the cause which struggles for men's freedom from the
fetters of a sordid and tyrant worldliness.

CHAPTER I.

Five-and-thirty years ago, before many of my fair young readers were
inflicted with the burdens of life, there came into this great world,
under the most ordinary and unpretending circumstances, a helpless
little baby girl: a dear, chubby, little thing, who at that moment, if
never afterwards in the long and intricate course of her mortal
career, looked every jot as interesting and as promising of a possible
extraordinary destiny as did the little being who, some years before
that, opened her eyes for the first time upon the elegant surroundings
of a chamber in Kensington Palace; and neither the Princess Louise of
Sachsen-Koburg, nor Edward the Duke of Kent, were any more elated or
gratified over the grand event which came into their lives on the
twenty-fourth of May, in the year of Our Lord 1819, than Amey and
Alfred Hampden were on the eighth of December, 185-, at the advent of
this little stranger into their humble home. Buried in baby finery,
this unsuspecting new-comer slumbered contentedly in a dainty cot. The
room was silent and darkened, the bright morning sunshine being shut
out by the heavy curtains which were carefully drawn across the
window: there was a ring of rare contentment in the crackle and purr
of the wood-stove, that filled a remote corner of the room with its
comfortable presence: and the sustaining spirit of wedded love, was as
pronouncedly omnipresent as befitted the interesting occasion.

Thus, so far as the eye of those who prognosticate from existing
circumstances could see, there was every prospect of comfort and
happiness in the dawning future, for this passive little bundle of
humanity lying in state in her neatly furnished basket-cradle; whether
it pleased his reverence Father Time, or not, to subscribe thus
obligingly to the wishes of a concerned few, is a secret which my pen
can best tell.

So strangely do the destinies of men and women resolve themselves out
of every day circumstances, that philosophers and moralists, with
their choicest erudition, are ofttimes puzzled over the solution of a
mysteriously chequered life, which they will not allow was guided by
the most natural and common-place accidents of existence.

That there are certain premises, from which the tenor of a yet unlived
life can be more or less accurately anticipated, no one will deny.
There are certain surroundings, certain particular circumstances,
that, from time immemorial have never failed to produce certain
infallible results; but, these abnormal pauses, and unforeseen
interruptions, that, time and again, have made of human lives the very
thing against which appearances were guarding them, are, it may be
providentially, held outside of the range of man's moral vision, and
screen themselves in ambush along either side of the seemingly smooth
vista, that spans the interval for certain individual human lives,
between time and eternity.

Such a high-sounding title as predestination, seems to lose much of
its potent charm when we take an interesting existence into our hands,
to dissect it, and analyse it, and reduce it to a rational origin.
Like decades of heterogeneous pearls, a human career with all its
varied details, glides through the fingers of the moral anatomist,
each fraction standing out by itself, suggesting its own real or
relative importance, yet associating itself ever with the rest, making
of the whole a more or less intricate, and, at best, a very uneven
chain.

When we consider that all the bewildering throng around and about us
have evolved into their present conditions of misery or joy from a
passive and innocent babyhood, we are mystified and awe-stricken;
there is so much inequality among the lots and portions of the
children of men, that it comes strangely home to us in our reverie, to
realize that the starting-point is, for one and all, the great and the
lowly, one and the same.

In its cradle, or on its mother's breast, the human creature knows no
special individuality, but when the rails of the cradle have been
climbed over, and the first foot-print stamped unaided upon the "sands
of time," a distinct personality has been established, which is the
embodiment of possible, probable, or uncertain influences--a
personality which grows and thrives upon internal stimulants
administered by an expanding mind and heart, and which leans almost
entirely for support upon the external accidents of fate or fortune
that may come in its way.

Were we as thoroughly penetrated with this conviction as we should be,
how different would be the issues of many human careers? Could we
accustom ourselves to meditate upon this truth as seriously as we
would upon a religious one, to examine our conscience from it as from
a reliable standpoint every day of our lives, what a flood of sympathy
and Christian charity would be let loose upon the social world from
converted hearts?

When men and women will thoroughly understand the strange and intimate
frame-work of human society, the wail of the pessimist will be soothed
and hushed forever: for then will they realize how dependent we poor
mortals are upon each other for sorrows or joys: then will it be plain
to them that no human life, however obscure, however trifling, is an
unfeeling thing, apart from every other, outside the daily contact of
every other.

Ah! we think, that God's creation, in all its grandeur and unrivalled
beauty, would be little worth, to a creature born to live and enjoy it
alone: and the infinite Wisdom decreed otherwise, when it gave unto
man a friend and companion in the first moments of his existence; but
is the world less desolate, less empty to a million hearts, because a
million others inhabit it as well? Has God's original intention
concerning the mutual love and companionship of His creatures,
survived unto the present day? I think the record of each reader's
large or small experience will answer this question for him eagerly
enough.

That these preliminary reflections should be the outgrowth of such an
ordinary event as the coming of a new baby into the already crowded
world may seem extravagant in more ways than one: but my object, as
the reader will see, is only to remind the forgetful majority, that
there are necessarily many reasons why men and women who have had a
common starting-point in life, should find themselves ere long at such
different goals.

I would suggest to them to consider the essential impressionability of
the human heart, especially in its period of early development, to
examine the nature of every external influence that weighs upon it,
and if the innocence of childhood has been recklessly forfeited with
time, to reserve their judgment until every aspect of the
circumstances has been impartially viewed.

I do not deny that the cradle in which I passed the first hours of
comfort and ease I have ever known, was rocked by a hand as loving as
that which rested caressingly upon the royal brow of the baby
Victoria. From the very first I was a peculiarly situated child,
surrounded by many comforts of which the majority of well-born
children are deprived, and deprived of many comforts by which
lowly-born children are surrounded. I was happiest when I was too
young to distinguish between pleasure and pain, and, as it were to
provide for the emptiness of much of my after life, destiny willed
that my memory should be the strongest and most comforting faculty of
my soul.

My mother died when I was but a few days old, and thus it is that I
have never known the real love or care of a true parent. Before I had
celebrated my third birthday there was another Mrs. Hampden presiding
over our household, but she was not my mother. This I never learned as
a direct fact, in simple words, until I had grown older; but there is
another channel through which truths of this sorrowful nature
oftentimes find their way: strange suspicions were creeping by degrees
into my heart, which with time gained great headway, and resolved
themselves into a questioning doubt, whether there had not been a day
when another, and a kinder face bent over my little cot, and smiled
upon me with a sweetness that did not chill and estrange me from it.

I had never been told in simple words, that my own mother lay under
one of those tall silent tombstones in the graveyard, where old
Hannah, our tried and trustworthy servant, was wont to go at times and
pray. No one had whispered to me that my father's second wife was, by
right, a stranger to the most sacred affections of my young soul, but
I learned the truth by myself.

When my growing heart began to seek and ask for the tender, patient
solicitude, which is to the child what the light and heat of the
summer sun are to the frailest tendril, no answer came to my mute
appeal. My little weaknesses and childish errors were never met with
that enduring forbearance which is the distinctive outgrowth of a
loving maternity. My trifling joys were rarely smiled upon, my petty
sorrows never shared nor soothed by that unsympathetic guardian of my
youth, and so I grew up by myself in a strange sort of isolation,
alienated in heart and spirit from those with whom of necessity I came
in daily contact.

And yet in many ways, my fathers' wife bestowed both care and
consideration upon me. My physical necessities were ever becomingly
attended to. I was allowed to sit at the table with her, which
privilege suggested no lack of substantial and dainty provisions, and
my governess was an accomplished and very discreet lady, whom my
step-mother secured after much trouble and worry; but here the limit
was drawn to her self-imposed duties; having done this much she rested
satisfied that she had so far outstepped the obligations of her
neutral position.

When I look back upon this period from the observatory of to-day, I
can afford to be more impartial in my judgments than I was in my youth
and immaturity. I know now, that my father's second wife was naturally
one of those selfish, narrow-hearted women, who never go outside of
their personal lot to taste or give pleasure. She had not the faintest
conception of what the cravings or desires of a truly sensitive nature
may be, and therefore knew nothing of the possible consequences of the
cold and unfeeling neglect with which my young life was blighted.

And even, had anyone told her, that her every word and action were
calculated to make a deep-rooted impression upon me, she would have
shrugged her shoulders pettishly, I doubt not, and declared that it
was "not her fault," that "some people were enough to provoke a
saint."

This was the woman whom the learned Doctor Hampden brought home to
conduct his household. He had found her under the gas-light at a
fashionable gathering, and was taken with her, he hardly knew why. She
was not very handsome, nor very winning, and certainly, not very
clever, but her family was a rare and tender off-shoot from an
unquestionably ancient and time-honored aristocracy, and, in
consequence, she carried her head high enough above the ordinary
social level, to have attracted a still more potent attention than Dr.
Hampden's.

I have heard that many a brow was arched in questioning surprise, when
the engagement was formally announced, and that nothing but the
ripening years of the prospective bride could have reconciled her more
sympathetic friends who belonged to that class of curious meddlers
that infest every society from pole to pole.

My father was undoubtedly a gentleman, and this was most
condescendingly admitted by his wife's fastidious coterie. A gentleman
by birth, by instinct, in dress, manners, taste, profession, and
general bearing. Moreover, he was a gentleman of social and political
influence, whose name had crept into journals and newspapers of
popular fame: in other words, he was one of "the men" of his day, with
a voice upon all public matters that agitated his immediate sphere.
Wherever he went, he was a gentleman of consequence, and carried no
mean individuality with him: he was that sort of a man one expects to
find married and settled in life, though here conjecture about him
must begin and end.

There are not a few men of his stamp in the world, and the reader I
doubt not has met them as frequently as I have myself. Sometimes they
are pillars of the state, leaders of political parties, with their
heads full of abstract calculations and wonderful statistics. Again
they are scientists, of a more or less exalted standing, artists,
antiquarians, agnostics, and undertakers, and they are all harmless,
respectable Benedicts, you know it without being told. You conclude it
from instinctively suggested premises, and yet in resting at such an
important conclusion nothing could have persuaded you to halt at the
every day, half-way house of courtship.

These men impress their fellow-men with the strange belief that
matrimony was for them a pre-ordained, forechosen vocation, a thing to
be done systematically according to reasons and rules, and the trivial
mind that would fain dwell upon a time in such methodical lives, when
heart predominated over head must apologize to the world of sentiment
and pass on to some less sensitive point of consideration.

My father, as I have said, was quite a consequential individual, his
very white, and very stiff, and very shining shirt-front insinuated as
much; his satiny black broadcloth confirmed it, and even the little
silk guard, that rested consciously upon his immaculate linen,
sustained the presumption. But for those and a few other reasons, he
was looked upon as a man of rigid method and severe discipline, a man
outside the grasp of ordinary human susceptibility, or, in more
familiar terms, a man "without a heart."

I remember, on one particular occasion, when the oft-ruffled serenity
of my step-mother's temperament was wonderfully agitated, that she
reproached him most touchingly for the utter absence of this tender,
palpitating organ; and turning towards her with a smile of the
blandest amusement, he explained to her, in a tone of remonstrative
sarcasm, laying two rigid fingers of one hand argumentatively in the
open palm of the other, "that no man could live without a heart," that
it was an essential element of existence, that its professional name
was derived from the Latin _cor_ or _cordis_, that it was "the great
central organ of circulation, with its base directed backward towards
the spine, and its point, forward and downward, towards the left side,
and that at each contraction it would be felt striking between the
fifth and sixth ribs about four inches from the medium line." "So you
see, my dear," he concluded calmly and coldly, "that you talk
nonsense, when you say I have no heart." That was my father's
disposition; to suspect that any one, or anything else could hope for
the privilege of making his heart beat, except this natural physical
contraction, were a vain and empty surmise indeed. And yet he had been
twice married; the question may suggest itself, had he ever loved? I
dare say he had analysed his amative propensity thoroughly, and knew
to what extent it existed within him, but when a man can reconcile
himself to the belief that on the "middle line of the skull, at the
back part of his head, there is a long projection, below which, and
between two similar protuberances, is his Organ of amativeness," or
that by which he learns "the lesson of life, the sad, sad lesson of
loving," methinks he is not outraged by a public opinion which casts
him down in disgust from the pedestal of respectable humanity, and
this option I will leave to the reader, even though the subject in
this instance be my own parent.

Whether his second wife, and the only Mrs. Hampden with whom we shall
have to deal, was disappointed in her expectations of her husband, or
not, is a something which I could only suspect, or at most, arrive at
from the indications of appearances, as I am entirely ignorant of what
the nature of such expectations may have been.

The domestic atmosphere of our home was apparently healthy, and
untroubled by foreign or unpleasant elements; our surroundings were
apparently comfortable, and the family apparently satisfied. What more
could be desired? Critics complain of the indiscreet writer, who
raises the thick impenetrable veil, which is supposed to screen a
domestic, political or social grievance from the common eye of all
three conditions. Even he who makes a little rend, with his own pen,
for his own ambition's sake, is not pardoned, and so if every picture
which the world holds up to view, presents a fair and brilliant
surface, whose business may it be to ask in an insinuating tone,
whether the other side is just as enchanting or not?

If the world insists upon calling an apparently happy home, happy in
reality, then ours was indisputably so, but the world and I have long
since ceased to agree upon matters of such a nature.

My father was married for some time to his second wife before any
material change came into their lives. I took advantage of the
interval and grew considerably, having proved a most opportune victim
on many an occasion for my disappointed step-mother's ill-humour. This
latter personage had contracted several real or imaginary disorders
and absorbed her own soul, with all its most tender attributes, in her
constant demand and need for a sympathy and solicitude which were
nowhere to be found. Her husband had retired by degrees into the
exclusive refuge of his scientific and literary pursuits, and lived as
effectually apart from the woman he had married, as far as friendly
intercourse and mutual confidence were concerned, as though they were
strangers.

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