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The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells

W >> W. D. Howells >> The Lady of the Aroostook




"I heard them this morning," said Lydia. "They seemed to wake me
with their crowing, and I thought--I was at home!"

"I'm very sorry," said Dunham, sympathetically. He wished Staniford
were there to take shame to himself for denying sensibility to this
girl.

The cook, smoking a pipe at the door of his galley, said, "Dey won't
trouble you much, miss. Dey don't gen'ly last us long, and I'll kill
de roosters first."

"Oh, come, now!" protested Dunham. "I wouldn't say that!" The cook
and Lydia stared at him in equal surprise.

"Well," answered the cook, "I'll kill the hens first, den. It don't
make any difference to me which I kill. I dunno but de hens is
tenderer." He smoked in a bland indifference.

"Oh, hold on!" exclaimed Dunham, in repetition of his helpless
protest.

Lydia stooped down to make closer acquaintance with the devoted birds.
They huddled themselves away from her in one corner of their prison,
and talked together in low tones of grave mistrust. "Poor things!"
she said. As a country girl, used to the practical ends of poultry,
she knew as well as the cook that it was the fit and simple destiny
of chickens to be eaten, sooner or later; and it must have been less
in commiseration of their fate than in self-pity and regret for the
scenes they recalled that she sighed. The hens that burrowed yesterday
under the lilacs in the door-yard; the cock that her aunt so often
drove, insulted and exclamatory, at the head of his harem, out
of forbidden garden bounds; the social groups that scratched and
descanted lazily about the wide, sunny barn doors; the anxious
companies seeking their favorite perches, with alarming outcries,
in the dusk of summer evenings; the sentinels answering each other
from farm to farm before winter dawns, when all the hills were
drowned in snow, were of kindred with these hapless prisoners.

Dunham was touched at Lydia's compassion. "Would you like--would you
like to feed them?" he asked by a happy inspiration. He turned to the
cook, with his gentle politeness: "There's no objection to our feeding
them, I suppose?"

"Laws, no!" said the cook. "Fats 'em up." He went inside, and
reappeared with a pan full of scraps of meat and crusts of bread.

"Oh, I say!" cried Dunham. "Haven't you got some grain, you know,
of some sort; some seeds, don't you know?"

"They will like this," said Lydia, while the cook stared in
perplexity. She took the pan, and opening the little door of the coop
flung the provision inside. But the fowls were either too depressed
in spirit to eat anything, or they were not hungry; they remained in
their corner, and merely fell silent, as if a new suspicion had been
roused in their unhappy breasts.

"Dey'll come, to it," observed the cook.

Dunham felt far from content, and regarded the poultry with silent
disappointment. "Are you fond of pets?" he asked, after a while.

"Yes, I used to have pet chickens when I was a little thing."

"You ought to adopt one of these," suggested Dunham. "That white one
is a pretty creature."

"Yes," said Lydia. "He looks as if he were Leghorn. Leghorn breed,"
she added, in reply to Dunham's look of inquiry. "He's a beauty."

"Let me get him out for you a moment!" cried the young man, in his
amiable zeal. Before Lydia could protest, or the cook interfere, he
had opened the coop-door and plunged his arm into the tumult which
his manoeuvre created within. He secured the cockerel, and drawing it
forth was about to offer it to Lydia, when in its struggles to escape
it drove one of its spurs into his hand. Dunham suddenly released it;
and then ensued a wild chase for its recapture, up and down the ship,
in which it had every advantage of the young man. At last it sprang
upon the rail; he put out his hand to seize it, when it rose with a
desperate screech, and flew far out over the sea. They watched the
suicide till it sank exhausted into a distant white-cap.

"Dat's gone," said the cook, philosophically. Dunham looked round.
Half the ship's company, alarmed by his steeple-chase over the deck,
were there, silently agrin.

Lydia did not laugh. When he asked, still with his habitual sweetness,
but entirely at random, "Shall we--ah--go below?" she did not answer
definitely, and did not go. At the same time she ceased to be so
timidly intangible and aloof in manner. She began to talk to Dunham,
instead of letting him talk to her; she asked him questions, and
listened with deference to what he said on such matters as the
probable length of the voyage and the sort of weather they were likely
to have. She did not take note of his keeping his handkerchief wound
round his hand, nor of his attempts to recur to the subject of his
mortifying adventure. When they were again quite alone, the cook's
respect having been won back through his ethnic susceptibility to
silver, she remembered that she must go to her room.

"In other words," said Staniford, after Dunham had reported the whole
case to him, "she treated your hurt vanity as if you had been her pet
schoolboy. She lured you away from yourself, and got you to talking
and thinking of other things. Lurella is deep, I tell you. What
consummate tacticians the least of women are! It's a pity that they
have to work so often in such dull material as men; they ought always
to have women to operate on. The youngest of them has more wisdom
in human nature than the sages of our sex. I must say, Lurella is
magnanimous, too. She might have taken her revenge on you for pitying
her yesterday when she sat in that warehouse door on the wharf. It
was rather fine in Lurella not to do it. What did she say, Dunham?
What did she talk about? Did she want to know?"

"No!" shouted Dunham. "She talked very well, like any young lady."

"Oh, all young ladies talk well, of course. But what did this one
say? What did she do, except suffer a visible pang of homesickness
at the sight of unattainable poultry? Come, you have represented
the interview with Miss Blood as one of great brilliancy."

"I haven't," said Dunham. "I have done nothing of the kind. Her
talk was like any pleasant talk; it was refined and simple, and--
unobtrusive."

"That is, it was in no way remarkable," observed Staniford, with a
laugh. "I expected something better of Lurella; I expected something
salient. Well, never mind. She's behaved well by you, seeing what
a goose you had made of yourself. She behaved like a lady, and I've
noticed that she eats with her fork. It often happens in the country
that you find the women practicing some of the arts of civilization,
while their men folk are still sunk in barbaric uses. Lurella, I see,
is a social creature; she was born for society, as you were, and I
suppose you will be thrown a good deal together. We're all likely to
be associated rather familiarly, under the circumstances. But I wish
you would note down in your mind some points of her conversation.
I'm really curious to know what a girl of her traditions thinks about
the world when she first sees it. Her mind must be in most respects
an unbroken wilderness. She's had schooling, of course, and she knows
her grammar and algebra; but she can't have had any cultivation. If
she were of an earlier generation, one would expect to find something
biblical in her; but you can't count upon a Puritanic culture now
among our country folks."

"If you are so curious," said Dunham, "why don't you study her mind,
yourself?"

"No, no, that wouldn't do," Staniford answered. "The light of your
innocence upon hers is invaluable. I can understand her better through
you. You must go on. I will undertake to make your peace with Miss
Hibbard."

The young men talked as they walked the deck and smoked in the
starlight. They were wakeful after their long nap in the afternoon,
and they walked and talked late, with the silences that old friends
can permit themselves. Staniford recurred to his loss of money and his
Western projects, which took more definite form now that he had placed
so much distance between himself and their fulfillment. With half a
year in Italy before him, he decided upon a cattle-range in Colorado.
Then, "I should like to know," he said, after one of the pauses, "how
two young men of our form strike that girl's fancy. I haven't any
personal curiosity about her impressions, but I should like to know,
as an observer of the human race. If my conjectures are right, she's
never met people of our sort before."

"What sort of men has she been associated with?" asked Dunham.

"Well, I'm not quite prepared to say. I take it that it isn't exactly
the hobbledehoy sort. She has probably looked high,--as far up as the
clerk in the store. He has taken her to drive in a buggy Saturday
afternoons, when he put on his ready-made suit,--and looked very well
in it, too; and they've been at picnics together. Or may be, as she's
in the school-teaching line, she's taken some high-browed, hollow-
cheeked high-school principal for her ideal. Or it is possible that
she has never had attention from any one. That is apt to happen to
self-respectful girls in rural communities, and their beauty doesn't
save them. Fellows, as they call themselves, like girls that have what
they call go, that make up to them. Lurella doesn't seem of that kind;
and I should not be surprised if you were the first gentleman who had
ever offered her his arm. I wonder what she thought of you. She's
acquainted by sight with the ordinary summer boarder of North America;
they penetrate everywhere, now; but I doubt if she's talked with them
much, if at all. She must be ignorant of our world beyond anything we
can imagine."

"But how do you account for her being so well dressed?"

"Oh, that's instinct. You find it everywhere. In every little
village there is some girl who knows how to out-preen all the others.
I wonder," added Staniford, in a more deeply musing tone, "if she
kept from laughing at you out of good feeling, or if she was merely
overawed by your splendor."

"She didn't laugh," Dunham answered, "because she saw that it would
have added to my annoyance. My splendor had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, don't underrate your splendor, my dear fellow!" cried Staniford,
with a caressing ridicule that he often used with Dunham. "Of course,
_I_ know what a simple and humble fellow you are, but you've no
idea how that exterior of yours might impose upon the agricultural
imagination; it has its effect upon me, in my pastoral moods." Dunham
made a gesture of protest, and Staniford went on: "Country people
have queer ideas of us, sometimes. Possibly Lurella was afraid of
you. Think of that, Dunham,--having a woman afraid of you, for once
in your life! Well, hurry up your acquaintance with her, Dunham, or
I shall wear myself out in mere speculative analysis. I haven't the
_aplomb_ for studying the sensibilities of a young lady, and
catching chickens for her, so as to produce a novel play of emotions.
I thought this voyage was going to be a season of mental quiet, but
having a young lady on board seems to forbid that kind of repose. I
shouldn't mind a half dozen, but _one_ is altogether too many.
Poor little thing! I say, Dunham! There's something rather pretty
about having her with us, after all, isn't there? It gives a certain
distinction to our voyage. We shall not degenerate. We shall shave
every day, wind and weather permitting, and wear our best things."
They talked of other matters, and again Staniford recurred to Lydia:
"If she has any regrets for her mountain home,--though I don't see why
she should have,--I hope they haven't kept her awake. My far-away cot
on the plains is not going to interfere with my slumbers."

Staniford stepped to the ship's side, and flung the end of his
cigarette overboard; it struck, a red spark amidst the lurid
phosphorescence of the bubbles that swept backward from the vessel's
prow.




IX.


The weather held fine. The sun shone, and the friendly winds blew out
of a cloudless heaven; by night the moon ruled a firmament powdered
with stars of multitudinous splendor. The conditions inspired Dunham
with a restless fertility of invention in Lydia's behalf. He had heard
of the game of shuffle-board, that blind and dumb croquet, with which
the jaded passengers on the steamers appease their terrible leisure,
and with the help of the ship's carpenter he organized this pastime,
and played it with her hour after hour, while Staniford looked on
and smoked in grave observance, and Hicks lurked at a distance, till
Dunham felt it on his kind heart and tender conscience to invite him
to a share in the diversion. As his nerves recovered their tone, Hicks
showed himself a man of some qualities that Staniford would have liked
in another man: he was amiable, and he was droll, though apt to turn
sulky if Staniford addressed him, which did not often happen. He knew
more than Dunham of shuffle-board, as well as of tossing rings of rope
over a peg set up a certain space off in the deck,--a game which they
eagerly took up in the afternoon, after pushing about the flat wooden
disks all the morning. Most of the talk at the table was of the
varying fortunes of the players; and the yarn of the story-teller
in the forecastle remained half-spun, while the sailors off watch
gathered to look on, and to bet upon Lydia's skill. It puzzled
Staniford to make out whether she felt any strangeness in the
situation, which she accepted with so much apparent serenity.
Sometimes, in his frequently recurring talks with Dunham, he
questioned whether their delicate precautions for saving her feelings
were not perhaps thrown away upon a young person who played shuffle-
board and ring-toss on the deck of the Aroostook with as much self-
possession as she would have played croquet on her native turf at
South Bradfield.

"Their ideal of propriety up country is very different from ours,"
he said, beginning one of his long comments. "I don't say that it
concerns the conscience more than ours does; but they think evil of
different things. We're getting Europeanized,--I don't mean you,
Dunham; in spite of your endeavors you will always remain one of the
most hopelessly American of our species,--and we have our little
borrowed anxieties about the free association of young people. They
have none whatever; though they are apt to look suspiciously upon
married people's friendships with other people's wives and husbands.
It's quite likely that Lurella, with the traditions of her queer
world, has not imagined anything anomalous in her position. She may
realize certain inconveniences. But she must see great advantages in
it. Poor girl! How she must be rioting on the united devotion of cabin
and forecastle, after the scanty gallantries of a hill town peopled by
elderly unmarried women! I'm glad of it, for her sake. I wonder which
she really prizes most: your ornate attentions, or the uncouth homage
of those sailors, who are always running to fetch her rings and blocks
when she makes a wild shot. I believe I don't care and shouldn't
disapprove of her preference, whichever it was." Staniford frowned
before he added: "But I object to Hicks and his drolleries. It's
impossible for that little wretch to think reverently of a young girl;
it's shocking to see her treating him as if he were a gentleman."
Hicks's behavior really gave no grounds for reproach; and it was only
his moral mechanism, as Staniford called the character he constructed
for him, which he could blame; nevertheless, the thought of him gave
an oblique cast to Staniford's reflections, which he cut short by
saying, "This sort of worship is every woman's due in girlhood; but
I suppose a fortnight of it will make her a pert and silly coquette.
What does she say to your literature, Dunham?"

Dunham had already begun to lend Lydia books,--his own and
Staniford's,--in which he read aloud to her, and chose passages
for her admiration; but he was obliged to report that she had rather
a passive taste in literature. She seemed to like what he said was
good, but not to like it very much, or to care greatly for reading;
or else she had never had the habit of talking books. He suggested
this to Staniford, who at once philosophized it.

"Why, I rather like that, you know. We all read in such a literary
way, now; we don't read simply for the joy or profit of it; we expect
to talk about it, and say how it is this and that; and I've no doubt
that we're sub-consciously harassed, all the time, with an automatic
process of criticism. Now Lurella, I fancy, reads with the sense of
the days when people read in private, and not in public, as we do.
She believes that your serious books are all true; and she knows that
my novels are all lies--that's what some excellent Christians would
call the fiction even of George Eliot or of Hawthorne; she would be
ashamed to discuss the lives and loves of heroes and heroines who
never existed. I think that's first-rate. She must wonder at your
distempered interest in them. If one could get at it, I suppose the
fresh wholesomeness of Lurella's mind would be something delicious,
--a quality like spring water."

He was one of those men who cannot rest in regard to people they meet
till they have made some effort to formulate them. He liked to ticket
them off; but when he could not classify them, he remained content
with his mere study of them. His habit was one that does not promote
sympathy with one's fellow creatures. He confessed even that it
disposed him to wish for their less acquaintance when once he had
got them generalized; they became then collected specimens. Yet,
for the time being, his curiosity in them gave him a specious air of
sociability. He lamented the insincerity which this involved, but he
could not help it. The next novelty in character was as irresistible
as the last; he sat down before it till it yielded its meaning, or
suggested to him some analogy by which he could interpret it.

With this passion for the arrangement and distribution of his
neighbors, it was not long before he had placed most of the people on
board in what he called the psychology of the ship. He did not care
that they should fit exactly in their order. He rather preferred that
they should have idiosyncrasies which differentiated them from their
species, and he enjoyed Lydia's being a little indifferent about books
for this and for other reasons. "If she were literary, she would be
like those vulgar little persons of genius in the magazine stories.
She would have read all sorts of impossible things up in her village.
She would have been discovered by some aesthetic summer boarder, who
had happened to identify her with the gifted Daisy Dawn, and she would
be going out on the aesthetic's money for the further expansion of her
spirit in Europe. Somebody would be obliged to fall in love with her,
and she would sacrifice her career for a man who was her inferior,
as we should be subtly given to understand at the close. I think it's
going to be as distinguished by and by not to like books as it is not
to write them. Lurella is a prophetic soul; and if there's anything
comforting about her, it's her being so merely and stupidly pretty."

"She is not merely and stupidly pretty!" retorted Dunham. "She never
does herself justice when you are by. She can talk very well, and on
some subjects she thinks strongly."

"Oh, I'm sorry for that!" said Staniford. "But call me some time when
she's doing herself justice."

"I don't mean that she's like the women we know. She doesn't say witty
things, and she hasn't their responsive quickness; but her ideas are
her own, no matter how old they are; and what she says she seems to
be saying for the first time, and as if it had never been thought out
before."

"That is what I have been contending for," said Staniford; "that is
what I meant by spring water. It is that thrilling freshness which
charms me in Lurella." He laughed. "Have you converted her to your
spectacular faith, yet?" Dunham blushed. "You have tried," continued
Staniford. "Tell me about it!"

"I will not talk with you on such matters," said Dunham, "till you
know how to treat serious things seriously."

"I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well,
I don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects:
it's the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there
she had better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that
Archbishop Laud was a _saint incompris_, and the good King
Charles a blessed martyr."

Dunham did not answer till he had choked down some natural resentment.
He had, several years earlier, forsaken the pale Unitarian worship of
his family, because, Staniford always said, he had such a feeling for
color, and had adopted an extreme tint of ritualism. It was rumored at
one time, before his engagement to Miss Hibbard, that he was going to
unite with a celibate brotherhood; he went regularly into retreat at
certain seasons, to the vast entertainment of his friend; and, within
the bounds of good taste, he was a zealous propagandist of his faith,
of which he had the practical virtues in high degree. "I hope," he
said presently, "that I know how to respect convictions, even of
those adhering to the Church in Error."

Staniford laughed again. "I see you have not converted Lurella.
Well, I like that in her, too. I wish I could have the arguments,
_pro_ and _con_. It would have been amusing. I suppose,"
he pondered aloud, "that she is a Calvinist of the deepest dye, and
would regard me as a lost spirit for being outside of her church. She
would look down upon me from one height, as I look down upon her from
another. And really, as far as personal satisfaction in superiority
goes, she might have the advantage of me. That's very curious, very
interesting."

As the first week wore away, the wonted incidents of a sea voyage lent
their variety to the life on board. One day the ship ran into a school
of whales, which remained heavily thumping and lolling about in her
course, and blowing jets of water into the air, like so many breaks
in garden hose, Staniford suggested. At another time some flying-fish
came on board. The sailors caught a dolphin, and they promised a
shark, by and by. All these things were turned to account for the
young girl's amusement, as if they had happened for her. The dolphin
died that she might wonder and pity his beautiful death; the cook
fried her some of the flying-fish; some one was on the lookout to
detect even porpoises for her. A sail in the offing won the discoverer
envy when he pointed it out to her; a steamer, celebrity. The captain
ran a point out of his course to speak to a vessel, that she might be
able to tell what speaking a ship at sea was like.

At table the stores which the young men had laid in for private use
became common luxuries, and she fared sumptuously every day upon
dainties which she supposed were supplied by the ship,--delicate
jellies and canned meats and syruped fruits; and, if she wondered at
anything, she must have wondered at the scrupulous abstinence with
which Captain Jenness, seconded by Mr. Watterson, refused the luxuries
which his bounty provided them, and at the constancy with which
Staniford declined some of these dishes, and Hicks declined others.
Shortly after the latter began more distinctly to be tolerated, he
appeared one day on deck with a steamer-chair in his hand, and offered
it to Lydia's use, where she sat on a stool by the bulwark. After
that, as she reclined in this chair, wrapped in her red shawl, and
provided with a book or some sort of becoming handiwork, she was even
more picturesquely than before the centre about which the ship's pride
and chivalrous sentiment revolved. They were Americans, and they knew
how to worship a woman.

Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the
others did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at
table, he took his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her
a perfunctory civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he
interested himself in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike.
"A woman," he said, "must always dislike some one in company; it's
usually another woman; as there's none on board, I accept her enmity
with meekness." Dunham wished to persuade him that he was mistaken.
"Don't try to comfort me, Dunham," he replied. "I find a pleasure
in being detested which is inconceivable to your amiable bosom."

Dunham turned to go below, from where they stood at the head of the
cabin stairs. Staniford looked round, and saw Lydia, whom they had
kept from coming up; she must have heard him. He took his cigar from
his mouth, and caught up a stool, which he placed near the ship's
side, where Lydia usually sat, and without waiting for her concurrence
got a stool for himself, and sat down with her.

"Well, Miss Blood," he said, "it's Saturday afternoon at last, and
we're at the end of our first week. Has it seemed very long to you?"

Lydia's color was bright with consciousness, but the glance she gave
Staniford showed him looking tranquilly and honestly at her. "Yes,"
she said, "it _has_ seemed long."

Letter: Gender roles in the Cinderella story

Doctors assure us that wherever you find an elderly, pompous old writer long past his prime you will find a bottle of scotch nearby. If only that were the case. Hilly hid mine after I fell up the stairs when I came home from the Garrick yesterday, and I've had to make do with a bottle of Blue Nun I found in the maid's parlour. Not that I am an alcoholic. Dipsomaniacs are a breed of the lower orders you meet on street corners: people like myself are bon viveurs who happen to like a drink. Or 12.

My primary observation is that drinking makes the daily grind of dealing with people so much easier. You drink a pint of whisky and become the life and soul of the party. You then start insulting people, before sweating heavily and wetting yourself involuntarily. You will usually find that everyone quickly avoids you, thereby relieving you of the need to make conversation. This is why I prefer to do much of my drinking at home. It saves so much time.

There are a great many drinks on the market - spirits, wines and beers - and I've probably drunk them all. Usually in some kind of combination with one another. Mixing cocktails is one of my favourite hobbies. Here's one I invented last week for my great sycophant, Christopher Hitchens.

The Hitch

One bottle of Babycham

One bottle of absinthe

Five shots of Angostura very bitters

Two tablespoons of bile

Two or three glasses of this tincture can give you a lifetime of self-satisfaction.

At some time you will probably be forced to invite people to your home and they may expect a drink. My advice is to offer them the cheapest tipple you can find; my local off-licence does a ghastly Mosel at 70p a bottle. I've never cared for even the best wines, and this should guarantee those poncing off you neither ask for top-ups nor stay long, thereby leaving you more money and time for the pub.

It is well known that only the very dullest of petit-bourgeois minds fail to over-imbibe on a daily basis, so I regard hangovers as a price worth paying for my brilliance. That said, I have found ways of coping with this metaphysical malaise. The first is to fuck someone; preferably somebody else's wife, but if your own is the only one around then she will do. The second is to read a book by that little shit Mart; it will either remind you you're not that bad a writer or give you some sleep.

The one downside to drinking is that it can make you fat. This is remedied by cutting out food entirely and drinking all spirits without mixers. My weight has gone down to 19st with this diet. There isn't much more to say, but as I'm being paid by the column I'd better repeat myself. And now that I'm dead, there's no harm in Bloomsbury repackaging the same material several times in the same collection.

I don't really like wine. Gin is for pansies, though a snifter with water doesn't go amiss. Liqueurs are best left to patent-shoed Wops. Or Americans. Champagne is an overrated girl's drink, though it can be drunk with any food; as such, it's a perfect breakfast drink because a scotch before 10am is very non-U.

I loathe pubs with loud music, but my utmost detestation is reserved for sanctimonious ex-topers. There's nothing worse than a man who doesn't drink. I once tried not drinking for several hours and my wives and mistresses said how dull it was that I was conscious and they were spared removing my soiled trousers from my bloated legs.

Whisky is my favourite tipple, though I recommend never giving it to a Welshman as it's wasted on someone with an IQ of less than 80. Have I mentioned that I'm partial to a Macallan? Gosh is that the time? Hilly's coming to change my IV drip before I fall unconscious again. The publisher can bloody well pad out the rest of the book with a pointless quiz without me.

Q: Who will buy this?

A: No one.

The digested read digested: The old pub bore.

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Jury clears judge of libelling mother
Sales of 'misery memoirs' fall after they boomed beyond all expectations since Dave Pelzer wrote A Child Called It

Constance Briscoe wins Ugly libel case

A judge who was sued for libel by her mother over allegations of childhood cruelty and neglect in her bestselling "misery memoir" won her case yesterday.

Constance Briscoe burst into tears at the high court in London as a jury unanimously cleared her and publishers Hodder & Stoughton over the claims in Ugly, which her mother Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, had alleged were a "piece of fiction".

During the 10-day trial, Briscoe, 51, who was one of the first black women judges in the UK, told the court her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore", a "potato-head" and "miss piss-a-bed".

She described trying to kill herself by drinking diluted bleach after failing to get taken into care, and told the jury she used a university grant to have plastic surgery to remove the "ugliness" her mother had taunted her over.

Briscoe, of Clapham, south London, also said that when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.

Ugly, published in 2006, has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK. Briscoe and Hodder & Stoughton had denied libel and said the book was substantially true. Andrew Caldecott QC, for Briscoe, said the events occurred between 1964 and 1975.

Briscoe-Mitchell, from Southwark, south-east London, left court without making any immediate comment about her legal defeat. During the trial she had denied all the allegations of verbal and physical abuse and claimed she and her daughter had enjoyed a loving relationship within a happy family.

Her counsel, William Panton, told the jury Briscoe was "spinning a yarn", claiming his client had struggled to bring up her 11 children and had provided for them equally to the best of her ability.

Outside court, Briscoe told reporters she was "very happy" with the jury's verdict, which came after more than a day of deliberation.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me," she said. "Now I just want to get on with my career. I would like to thank all my readers who have sent me messages of support, including the very many children who provided helpful advice.

"I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors it should never be swept under the carpet."

Hodder & Stoughton said it was pleased with the verdict. "We are very proud to be Constance Briscoe's publisher," a statement said. "Her books Ugly and Beyond Ugly have touched hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them children. Sadly, as we know from the news over the past few weeks, child abuse is all too common and nothing and no one should ever stand in the way of the truth."

Asked during the trial why she wrote the book, Briscoe said: "I didn't believe for a split second that I owed my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone who from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, who faced adversity at every turn, could come through."

The court heard she had cleaned offices for two hours every day before school until her studies took her to Newcastle University, the criminal bar and, eventually, to become one of the country's few black women judges.

"I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be whatever you want to be," Briscoe said. "You just have to believe in yourself ... you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar.

"You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe that my book has done an enormous amount of good."

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