Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/147

Rh in India, where he married Maria Anne, daughter of Captain Joseph Leeson of the Earl of Milltown's family. He and she died of cholera in India, and left no issue. She was buried at Meerut. The old Indian Cantonments have in many cases fallen to ruins, the bungalows to wreckage, the graveyards desolate and neglected, the headstones broken or carried away. Some years ago it was proposed to make a race-course where had been the old Cantonment, and for the purpose the cemetery was to be levelled, the monuments removed and thrown aside, and the course carried over it. Happily, Colonel Tinley was in command of the district, and he forbade the desecration. He did more; he tidied up that and other graveyards, copied the inscriptions and sent them to the Genealogical Society.

My Aunt Harriet died in the year 1857. She was one of the smallest, quaintest, most delicate little things I remember to have ever seen. She was not, and never can have been beautiful, but she had a lovely, clear complexion. I remember her wearing a white frilled cap with lilac ribbons, all very large and elaborate about her wizen little face, and small grey curls. She dressed in white with puffed old-fashioned sleeves, tight about the arm below the elbow, and adorned with lilac satin bows. She was ever chilly and sat crouched into the fire, with her gown turned up over her knees, lest it should scorch, and her petticoat singeing with proximity to the grate. Her sister said that her poor little shins were always red and roasted. She spread her delicate hands, with long transparent fingers, over the fire, and then placed the palms upon her knees, then opened them again, like a piece of mechanism, or like the swimming of a little silver whiting. She amused herself with painting small miniatures. She was not clever, but was a great reader, above all of the Literary Gazette, which she greedily perused. She had not much to say for herself, but when she spoke her voice was pleasant, like the cooing of a dove, with that old-world cultured modulation which is now well-nigh lost, but which went with Chinese vases and the odour of potpourri. My daughter Mary has it. My Aunt Harriet could not go out of doors in a strong wind; she would have been blown about like a leaf of Devoniensis rose. One day at Bude she was on the pier, when a gust actually swept her off into the water. The wave carried her back again, and my father, who had