All this ferment of mind was entirely unobserved by my parents.  But when I formed the belief that it was necessary, for the success of my practical magic, that I should hurt myself, and when, as a matter of fact, I began, in extreme secrecy, to run pins into my flesh and bang my joints with books, no one will be surprised to hear that my Mother’s attention was drawn to the fact that I was looking ‘delicate’.  The notice nowadays universally given to the hygienic rules of life was rare fifty years ago and among deeply religious people, in particular, fatalistic views of disease prevailed.  If anyone was ill, it showed that ‘the Lord’s hand was extended in chastisement’, and much prayer was poured forth in order that it might be explained to the sufferer, or to his relations, in what he or they had sinned.  People would, for instance, go on living over a cess-pool, working themselves up into an agony to discover how they had incurred the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away.  As I became very pale and nervous, and slept badly at nights, with visions and loud screams in my sleep, I was taken to a physician, who stripped me and tapped me all over (this gave me some valuable hints for my magical practices), but could find nothing the matter.  He recommended,—­whatever physicians in such cases always recommend,—­but nothing was done.  If I was feeble it was the Lord’s will, and we must acquiesce.

It culminated in a sort of fit of hysterics, when I lost all self-control, and sobbed with tears, and banged my head on the table.  While this was proceeding, I was conscious of that dual individuality of which I have already spoken, since while one part of me gave way, and could not resist, the other part in some extraordinary sense seemed standing aloof, much impressed.  I was alone with my Father when this crisis suddenly occurred, and I was interested to see that he was greatly alarmed.  It was a very long time since we had spent a day out of London, and I said, on being coaxed back to calmness, that I wanted ’to go into the country’.  Like the dying Falstaff, I babbled of green fields.  My Father, after a little reflection, proposed to take me to Primrose Hill.  I had never heard of the place, and names have always appealed directly to my imagination.  I was in the highest degree delighted, and could hardly restrain my impatience.  As soon as possible we set forth westward, my hand in my Father’s, with the liveliest anticipations.  I expected to see a mountain absolutely carpeted with primroses, a terrestrial galaxy like that which covered the hill that led up to Montgomery Castle in Donne’s poem.  But at length, as we walked from the Chalk Farm direction, a miserable acclivity stole into view—­surrounded, even in those days, on most sides by houses, with its grass worn to the buff by millions of boots, and resembling what I meant by ‘the country’ about as much as Poplar resembles Paradise.  We sat down on a bench at its inglorious summit, whereupon I burst into tears, and in a heart-rending whisper sobbed, ’Oh!  Papa, let us go home!’