Aunt Charlotte, having a thirst for knowledge and being naturally quick and clever, had improved and enlarged her mind by reading, and she could at times be a very agreeable companion. Aunt Mary, on the other hand, having no aspirations nor wish for knowledge, remained all her life what the education of those times made her. But she wished to appear what she was not, and would lay claim to accomplishments and acquirements that were non-existent, and which everybody knew to be so. It was ludicrous to hear her speak of the pictures she had painted, the embroidery she had worked, and other arts and graces of which she was entirely ignorant. Her prejudices and superstitions were numerous. She lived in constant fear of robbers and footpads, was very jealous of her position as an inhabitant of a palace, and made herself very disagreeable to her neighbours by assuming superiority because she and her sister had lived so many years in the same dull rooms. This, in her opinion, gave her a claim to the respect of all Kensington.
The rooms my aunts inhabited were gloomy and dismal — they all looked into courts and had no view beyond them and the windows of rooms opposite; but Aunt Charlotte had obtained permission from the authorities to convert one of these small courts into a garden, and this she had done with great taste and skill. In the centre she had planted a miniature shrubbery, consisting of lilacs and other flowering shrubs, and round the walls of the enclosure, and underneath the windows of the different rooms, were placed large boxes full of flowers. My aunt was not allowed to move the stones with which the court was paved, so she covered them with these boxes, and in this way changed the ugly and gloomy space into something pleasant and cheerful to the eye.
It used to be a great delight to us children to walk from our home, two miles away in London, pay a visit to my aunts in the old Palace, and then have a game of play in Aunt Charlotte's garden.
There was a strange fascination to us in the place, and the charm remained after I was grown up. My aunts were not especially kind to us; we were not received with much affection when we went to see them, indeed, sometimes we got a regular snubbing, so I do not know why we were fond of going to them. When my dear father walked with us there was reason enough for our enjoyment. He went there very often on Sundays, having business to transact with Princess Sophia, who had apartments in the Palace just opposite those of my aunts, and on those occasions we were always his companions. He would leave us while he paid his visit to the Princess, and then pick us up on his return home.
On these occasions we went through a regular catechism, and every kind of question was put to us concerning our daily life, with the purpose of eliciting information, which children are so proud to give to their elders, of all that went on at home. When this was over we were regaled with certain small buns that were excellent and came from a confectioner at Kensington, Mrs. Smith by name. But good as these buns were, I do not think we valued them so highly as we did Aunt Charlotte's stories. She was first rate in this capacity, and had a way of lowering her voice and dropping her words one by one when she related some tale of horror which wonderfully heightened the effect, and I can feel now the thrill which passed through me as we listened with suspended breath for the denouement of the story.
Sometimes when our youthful nerves were in danger of being too much excited Aunt Charlotte would suddenly stop and either say, " That is all," or turn the finale into a joke. Oh, what a delightful, painful enjoyment it was to sit huddled together round Aunt Charlotte's knee at the close of a summer day, with the shadows creeping round the room, with doors behind you leading to empty and unfurnished rooms, while she slowly repeated tales of ghosts and mysterious disappearances, always speaking as if she firmly believed them. Then you felt that you dared not turn your head for fear of encountermg some form that had silently issued through the closed door and was waiting at the back of your chair I As soon as you moved the spell was broken; but the difficulty was to move and to dispel the charm in which the relater held you. My mother did not approve of these tales of horror, so when she was present my aunt confined herself to moral and polite literature and kept her imagination under control.