A Childhood In Scotland by Christian Miller

Author:Christian Miller [Christian Miller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847675101
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 1981-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

My father’s own childhood had been extremely harsh. The elder of two brothers, he had been rejected by his mother, who idolised the younger boy. Many years later my own mother told me that when she had accepted his proposal of marriage he had wept, so unable had he been, up to that moment, to believe that anyone could love him. He confided to her that his earliest memories were of hiding his head under his pillow so as to conceal his misery when—as always happened—his mother kissed his brother goodnight and then left the room without even approaching his own bed.

His father also treated him with the utmost severity; neither parent ever gave him a present either at Christmas or on his birthday, and when at the age of 13 he went to Eton his parents neither visited him nor allowed him to come out for such school festivities as the cricket match between Eton and Harrow, which was held annually in London and to which all the boys traditionally went. Nor did his life much improve as he grew older, for although he joined a dashing regiment—the 12th Lancers—his father gave him no allowance, with the result that although his brother-officers liked him and nicknamed him Remedy (short for ‘Remedy-for-the-blues’), he was continually teased about money; his friends, knowing the size of his father’s estate, simply could not believe that he had no income other than his pay—in those days very small—and they looked on his refusal to order wine with his meals as a sign of eccentricity.

He was, however, much respected as a soldier, and when in 1902 he was created a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, thirty lines of closely-packed type recorded his outstanding military career. Retiring from the army in 1909—the year he married my mother—he rejoined at the start of the 1914 war and, until severely wounded, commanded a highland regiment. After my grandfather made over the estate to him, he did everything in his power to be a good landlord; he was hard-working and honourable, and no doubt always acted with the very best intentions, but perhaps because he had never known affection from his own parents he found it almost impossible to show love to his children. True, when the boys were away at school he sat down at his big roll-top desk every Sunday, to write to them, and when my nearest sister, tripping over a dog, fell hands-first into a blazing fire she found herself—in terrible pain—being cradled consolingly in his arms. But the only time I ever remember him playing with me was when he once showed me how to tie a fisherman’s knot, and, as soon as I had mastered the intricacies of fastening line to cast he sent me brusquely away. Whether because he was in continual pain from his war-wound—which had torn away much of the muscles of his right arm—or because he was already developing the hardening of the arteries from which he

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.