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Not the wild, raving & most miserable Mathilda but a youthful Hermitess dedicated to seclusion and whose bosom she must strive to keep free from all tumult and unholy despair The fanciful nunlike dress that I had adopted; the knowledge that my very existence was a secret known only to myself; the solitude to which I was for ever hereafter destined nursed gentle thoughts in my wounded heart.
"No doubt he's saying to himself: 'Shucks! Where's that hermit or hermitess " merrily, "'with the frog in her throat, or the great, big worm?" "Oh! do-o try it again, anyway?" pleaded the visitors together. "It's won-der-ful! We'll be as still as still as a nun's chapel!"
Well, child, 'tis known hermits do not marry. 'Tis too much to ask of their Holinesses. But he set a chair at the foot of his table for the damsel, and bid her share his pulse and crusts; and so 'twas done, and whether in town or country, the Hermitess kept him company till she died.
The comparison to a Hermitess and the wearing of the "fanciful nunlike dress" are appropriate though melodramatic. They appear only in Mathilda. Cf. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, I, 48: "the wingless, crawling hours." It is another passage that Mary seems to have written in some agitation of spirit. Cf. note 26. In F of F A there are several false starts before this sentence.
Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do French, who has published some translations from Æschylus, and some most striking poems," "Our sweet Miss Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her own life Mrs.
"You are twenty-six and growing set in your ways," she would mentally accuse "always wanting a certain table at the café and a certain waitress. Old Maid! Must have your little French book to read away at as you munch your rolls and refuse to be sociable. Hermitess! And always buy chocolates and a London News on Saturday night.
She might have taken a hermitage, but her instinct told her that a fair solitary can only keep young men off by strong measures; and she disliked the character of a hermitess with a bull-dog. She therefore went straight to the great city, took a house, and surrounded herself with attendants.
One tempestuous night, an old hag who had long done business as a hermitess on Helmet Rock came into the bar-room at the Cliff House, and there, amidst the crushing thunders and lightnings spilling all over the horizon, she related that she had seen a young seal in a comfortable overcoat, sitting pensively upon the pinnacle of Seal Rock, and had distinctly heard the familiar words of a Methodist hymn.
Next morning, at daybreak, we very reluctantly, it must be owned, bade good-bye to the kind-hearted, good-natured Sham Rao. The confoundingly easy victory of Narayan hung heavily on his mind. His faith in the holy hermitess and the seven goddesses was a good deal shaken by the shameful capitulation of the Sisters, who had surrendered at the first blow from a mere mortal.
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