Rosalie’s earliest apprehension of the world
was of a mysterious and extraordinary world that revolved
entirely about her father and that entirely and completely
belonged to her father. Under her father, all
males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion
over it; no females owned any part of the world or
could do anything with it. All the males in this
world—her father, and Robert and Harold
her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes
saw—did mysterious and extraordinary things;
and all the females in this world—her mother,
and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters, and Ellen
the cook and Gertrude the maid—did ordinary
and unexciting and generally rather tiresome things.
All the males were like story books to Rosalie:
you never knew what they were going to do next; and
all the females were like lesson books: they just
went on and on and on.
Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them.
Extraordinary and wonderful creatures who could do
what they liked and were always doing mysterious and
wonderful things, especially and above all her father.
Being with her father was like being with a magician
or like watching a conjuror on the stage. You
never knew what he was going to do next. Whatever
he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of
being startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too
much) nothing her father did was ever surprising to
Rosalie; but it was surprising in the sense of being
absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even better
than reading when she first began to read, and far
better than anything in the world before the mysteries
in books were discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit and
stare at her father and think how wonderful he was
and wonder what extraordinary thing he would do next.
Everything belonged to him. The whole of life
was ordered with a view to what he would think about
it. The whole of life was continually thrown
off its balance and whirled into the most entrancing
convulsions by sudden activities of this most wonderful
man.
Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful
father with a bull after him! Why, that was her
very earliest recollection of him! That showed
you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the
first time (as it were) flying before a bull!
Bounding wildly across a field towards her with a
bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her
mother ever rush along in front of a bull? Never.
Was it possible to imagine any of the women she knew
rushing before a bull? It was not possible.
To see a woman rushing before a bull would have alarmed
Rosalie for she would have felt it was unnatural; but
for her father to be bounding wildly along in front
of a bull seemed to her perfectly natural and ordinary
and she was not in the least alarmed; only, as always,
enthralled.
