The rocky beach was her favorite playground, where she would lie prone beside its tide pools and gaze and gaze. There were live things in those pools, things which held endless fascination for the child. Her powers of observation were exquisite, her sympathy boundless—even, as we shall see later, for creatures the rest of the world thinks worthy of nothing but death.
The house was surrounded by a garden where there were roses, ivy, apple trees, yellow whins, and heartsease. There was a high wall with a large gate opening onto the principal street of the village. Not far away stand today the ruins of an old flour mill, its windows bricked up, the roof disintegrating. On the seashore can be seen what is left of the quay where grain was unloaded. Amy’s great-grandfather had leased the mill a hundred years before she was born, and her father and uncle William, whose house was just down the road, managed it together. Coming from the lowlands of Scotland, the family joined the Presbyterian church built by the Anti-Burgher Seceders, a group who, because of doctrinal disagreements, had separated themselves from the Church of Scotland. Convinced of their obligation to live for the good of others, the two brothers supported the church with their generous tithes, bought a pony carriage for the minister, and were benefactors of the Millisle National School which was used not only for the three R’s but for Sunday school and evangelistic services.
The love which formed the climate of the Carmichael home was a sinewy one, without the least trace of sentimentality, holding not only the conviction of her father’s side of the family, and the courage of her mother’s, but the toughness of Irish Presbyterians, the ruggedness bred by winters on that cold sea, and no-nonsense principles of child rearing.
There was no question in the minds of the Carmichael children as to what was expected of them. Black was black. White was white. Their parents’ word could be trusted absolutely, and when it was not obeyed there were consequences. Five kinds of punishment were used: being stood in a corner with face to the wall, forbidden to go out to play, slapped, “pandied,” and (worst of all) given Gregory powder. A pandy was a stroke with a thin flat ebony ruler. The child was required to stand still, to hold out his hand at once and not pull it away, to make no fuss, and finally to say politely, “Thank you, Mother.” He knew that the worst was coming when he found a tray set up in the dining room with a pitcher of hot water, a small pitcher of cold milk, a teacup, a teaspoon, and a bottle of pink powder. It was too late for apologies. The mother mixed the potion, the child received it, thanked her for it, and drank it down.
One day Amy and two of her brothers were swinging on the garden gate when an idea struck her. They had been told that the seeds of the nearby laburnum tree were poisonous. “Let’s count how many we can eat before we die!” said Amy. It was not long before they began to feel uncomfortable, and wondered what would happen next. Gregory, of course, was what happened next, and they were sent to bed to meditate on their sins. Some notion of the mother’s strong determination can be gathered from Amy’s report of one occasion when she cried, “Oh, Mother, I’ve such a pain!” The calm reply, “Have you, dear? I hope it will do you good.” “But Mother, I can’t bear it! It’s a dreadful pain.” “Is it, dear? I’m afraid you will have to bear it.”
A nursemaid attempted to frighten the children out of their habit of swallowing plum stones by telling them that a plum tree would grow out of their heads for each stone they swallowed. Amy was charmed by the idea of having an orchard of her very own, within such easy access. Deciding that twelve trees would provide her with plenty of plums to eat and to give away, she gulped down twelve stones.
When told how exceedingly naughty she was, Amy used to think, “If only you knew how much naughtier I could be, you wouldn’t think I’m naughty at all.”
The seven children—Amy, Norman, Ernest, Eva, Ethel, Walter, and Alfred—were called daily to family prayers by the sound of a bell. Probably the servants also were required to attend. Amy remembered the sound of her father’s voice reading the Scripture, a “solemn sound, like the rise and fall of the waves on the shore.” Her ear was trained in this way, from those earliest years when a child’s powers of memorization by hearing are nearly miraculous. For the rest of her life the majestic cadences of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible shaped her thinking and every phrase she wrote. A child, even when apparently distracted, learns far more than adults dream he can learn. Amy did not by any means always attend perfectly to the reading. Once she found a mouse drowning in a pail of water just at the moment when the prayer bell rang. She fished it out, hid it in her pinafore, took her place at prayers, and hoped it would not squeak. It did.
Amy, about five, with mother, Eva, Norman, and Ernest.
Whenever there was a meeting at the little whitewashed church in Balleycopeland, the Carmichael family was there. Amy
