n A ^^^<= A SOU II 1 4 2 9 LIB 8 S^S^5-< 1 2 P| 9 — ^ CHARACTER AND COMEDY OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS Verena in the Midst The Vermilion Box Landmarks Listener's Lure Over Bemerton's Mr. Ingleside London Lavender Cloud and Silver A Boswell of Baghdad 'Twixt Eagle and Dove The Phantom Journal The Open Road Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home Variety Lane Mixed Vintages The Best of Lamb The Life of Charles Lamb A Swan and Her Friends London Revisited A Wanderer in Venice A Wanderer in Paris A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in Florence The British School Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach Remember Louvain 1 Swollen-Headed William Quoth the Raven and The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose ; ii. Elia ; III. Children's Books ; iv. Poems and Plays ; V. and vi. Letters. CHARACTER AND COMEDY BY E. V. LUCAS NINTH EDITION METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON hirst PuHished September iqctf Second Edition . , .... October iqorj Third Edition December igofj Fourth Edition November igo8 Fifth Edition December igog Sixth Edition October jgio Seventh Edition January igij Eighth Edition December igi'j - Ninth Edition tqgo PREFATORY NOTE 'T^HE Essays that make up this vohime have been collected by permission from various periodicals. " My Cousin the Bookbinder " ap- peared in the Comhill Magazine: the others in the Outlook, T. P.'s Weekly, the County Gentleman, and the Academy. In almost every case I have altered and expanded the text, I hope for the better. The second half of the book consists of a selection from an epistolaiy series that ran thi'ough Punch, which the proprietors kindly allow me to reprint here. E. V L. CONTENTS "My Cousin the Bookbinder". , . i A Funeral ...... 14 Meditations among the Cages . . .20 Two Irishmen . . . . -29 From Persia to Aberdeen . , -45 The Search and the Gift . . -57 A Philosopher that Failed . . - 63 A Sketch Book . . . . -70 The Beating of the Hoofs . . .84 Our Gardeners and Luck of the Woods 98 Conjurer and Confederate . . . 108 Sister Lucie Vinken . . . .116 Life's Little Difficulties — L The Wedding Present . . . 125 n. Jane's Eighth or Ninth , . 133 in. The Chauffeur . . , .141 IV. The Dedication . . , .149 Life's Little Difficulties {continued) — V. The Appointment . . VL The Testimonial VIL The Box VIIL The Doctor's Visit IX. The Loin of Pork . , X. The Shade of Blue XL The Smithsons, the Parkinsons, and Col. Home-Hopkins xn. "White Pinings " . Xin. The Christmas Decorations XIV. The Prize Competition XV. The Cricket Club Concert »57 164 172 179 187 197 202 210 218 226 «33 vfH CHARACTER AND COMEDY ^ CHARACTER ^ COMEDY "My Cousin the Bookbinder" ^ o " Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's, the bookbinder, who is now with God." — Charles Lamb to P. G. Patmore, 1827 " 00 you've been reading that, sir, have you ^ ^ I have a copy too. J 11 fetch it and show you. . • . The inscription ? Oh yes, that's all right. He's my cousin, true enough : his real name's not Elia, of course ; his real name's Lamb — Charles Lamb, He's a clerk at the East India Ck)mpany's in Leadenhall Street — a little dark man with a large head. Must be nearly fifty by this time. " ' Genius/ you say ? Well, I've heard others say that too — one or two persons, that is : customers of mine ; but I don't know. Perhaps I'm no judge of such things. I'm a bookbinder. The outside of books is my line, not the inside. Oh yes, I've read Elia's Essays — not all tln-ough, perhaps, but here and there. Quite enough to tell, anyway. A I " He must have his Joke " " * Genius/ you say ? My idea of genius is not that. I like a straightforward thing. Did you ever read the Elegij in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray ? Now, there's genius. So beautifully it goes — never a trip in the tongue from beginning to end, and everything so clear a child could understand it, and yet it's literature too. My little girl used to say it. Rasselas, too — do you know that ? The Happy Valley and all the rest of it. That's genius, I think. But not this twisted stuff going backwards and forwards and one never feeling quite sure how to take it. I like a plain man with a plain mind. "It's just the same with my cousin when you meet him. You never know what he's at. He's so nice sometimes, all heart, and friendly- — and then the next time I have a notion that every- thing he says means something else. He leads me on to talk — ^just as I am talking now to you, sir, — and he seems to agree with what I say so warmly ; and then all of a sudden I see that he's just making fun of me all the time. He must have his joke. He comes in here sometimes on his way from the office, and precious little he does there, I can tell you. Oh, they're an easy lot, those East India clerks, " But with all his odd ways and that mischiev- 2 "That Mischievous Mouth of His" ous mouth of liis, his heart's in the right place. Very different from his brother, who died a year or so back. He was nothmg to boast of; but the airs that man used to put on ! I remember his father well — a little brisk man, wonderfully like Garrick, full of jokes and bright, quick ways. He was really a scrivener, but he didn't do much of that in those days, having fallen into an easy place with old Mr. Salt, the Member of Parliament, and a great man in the law. This Mr, Salt lived in the Temple, and little John Lamb — that is your Elia's father — he was his servant : did everything for him and lived in clover ; Mrs. Lamb, she cooked. Mr. Salt was the generous kind — sent the boys to school and all the rest of it. They had it all their own way till the old gentleman died, and theil things went wrong one after the other. It's too sad to talk about. . , . " Except that Mrs. Lamb and her husband's sister. Miss Sarah — ' Aunt Hetty ' they used to call her — never quite hit it off, it was as happy a family as you'd ask for. But there came terrible times. . . . It's too sad. Where was I ? — Oh yes, so you see that Mr. John Lamb, Esquire, who died the other day, had little enough to boast of, but he walked about as if he owned the earth. He used to come in here now and then to give me an order, and he threw it to me as if it was a bone 3 "A Wonderful Wise Woman" and I was a dog. Maiiy's the time I liad it on my tongue to remind him what his father was, but I kept it back. A word unsaid is still to say. He was at the South Sea House, near his brother in Leadenhall Street, but they didn't have much to say to each other. Mr. John, he was a big, blustering, happy man, while this little one who calls himself Elia is all for quietness and not being seen, and having his own thoughts and his own jokes. They hadn't much in common. . . . " Besides, there was another thing. There's a sister, you must know, sir, a wonderful wise woman, but she's not always quite right in her head, poor dear ; and when it was a question of whether someone had to promise to be responsible for her, or she must go to an asylum for the rest of her life, her younger brother, the writer of that book there, under your arm, said he would ; and he gave up everything, and has kept her — it was thirty years ago veiy nearly — ever since. Well, it was thought in the family and by their friends that John, who was a grown man at the time and a bacheloi*, and beginning to be pros- perous, ought to have done more than he did, and I think that sometimes he' thought so too, although he was usually pretty well satisfied with himself. Anyway, he didn't go to see his brother and sistei 4 "No Jokes about Her" much, and Avhen he did I've heard that there was often trouble, because he would have his own way and argufy until he lost his temper. I was told as how he once had a dispute with Mr. Hazlitt the writer over something to do with painting, and knocked him down. Just think of knocking a man down about a matter of paint ! But there's some high-handed men that would quarrel over anything. " Like his little brother, he tried writing too, but he couldn't do it. He wrote a little tract on kindness to animals, and brought it here to be bound in morocco. Not to give away, mind, but to keep. * Author's Copy ' I had to letter it. . . . ' Kindness to animals,' I nearly said to him ; ' what about kindness to sisters .'' ' But I didn't say it. "The sister.'' Ah yes, she's the pick. She's a great woman, if ever there was one. I know her better than any of them, because when they were living near here, and her brother — your Mr. Lamb, the author — was at his office, I often looked in with a pork chop or some little thing like that. There's no jokes about her, no saying things that she doesn't mean, or anything like that. She's all gold, my cousin Mary is. She understands everything, too. I've taken lots of troubles to her — little difficulties about my 5 *' She's the Clever One" children, and what not — and she understands directly, for all she's an old maid, and tells me just what I want to know. She's the clever one. She can write, too. I've got a little book of her stories and some poetry for children — here they are — I boinid them myself: that's the best bind- ing I can do — real russia, and hand tooling, every bit of it. Did she write all of them ? No, she didn't write all, but she wrote the best. Her brother Charles did something to each, but I don't mind that. I think of them as her books — Mary's. If only she had better health, she would write much better than he does ; but her poor head. . . . Every year, you must know, she goes out of her mind for a little while. Oh, it's too sad. . . . " Have they many friends ? Oh yes, a good many. Most of them are too clever for me ; but there are some old-fashioned ones too, that they like for old sakes' sake. They're the best. One or two of them are very good customers of mine. There's Mr. Robinson, the barrister, he brings me lots of books to mend, and I've had work for Mr. Aders, too. But as for your Mr. Lamb, — Elia, — never a stitch will he let you put into any book, even if it's dropping to pieces. Why, he won't even take the dealer's tickets off them. He never thinks of the outside of a book, but 6 *' Life's full of Surprises " you should see him tearing the heart out of them by the light of one candle. I'm told he knows more about what books are worth reading than anyone living. That's odd, isn't it, and his father a little serving-man ! Life's full of surprises. They say he knows all about poetry, too, and helped the great poets. There's Mr. Wordsworth, why, he dedicated a book to my cousin, — I've got it here. The Waggoner, a pretty book it is, too, — and Mr. Coleridge, who wrote about the old sailor man and the albatross, he let my cousin put some little poems of his own into one of his books. It turns one inside out when one thinks of this, and then of the old days and his father powdering Mr. Salt's wig. But I suppose everyone's father had to work once. Still, it's funnier when one belongs to the same family. " Now I come to remember it, his father used to write a little too — free and easy pieces for a charitable society he belonged to, and so on. It's odd how writing runs in a family. But there won't be any more Lambs to write — John left no children, only a stepdaughter, and Charles and Mary are single. This is the end. Well . . . "Yes, they've moved from London now. They're living in Islington. They used to live in the Temple, for years, and then they went to Covent Garden, over a tinman's. Miss Lamb " Hissing his own Play '* liked that better than the Temple^ but her brother Uked the Temple best. It gave her more to do, poor dear, during the day, because her sitting- room window looked over Bow Street, and she could see all that was going on. I'm afraid Islington is very dull after that. She could see the two great theatres, too, and they both love the play. "He wrote a farce once. I went to see it. Nearly twenty years ago, at the Lane, when Elliston had it. We had orders for the pit, my wife and I, and the house was full of clerks from the South Sea House and the East India House. But it wouldn't do. Mr. H. it was called, and the whole joke was about the man's full name. But it wouldn't do. No one really minds names, and his wasn't so monstrously bad — only Hogsflesh when all was said and done. All his friends did what we could for it, and the gentlemen from the great offices cheered and clap})ed, but the Noes got it. I never heard such hissing. I climbed up on the seat to see how poor Miss Lamb and her brother were taking it, — they were right in front, just by the orchestra, — and there was he, hissing away louder than anyone. Think of it, hissing his own play ! It's one of the best jokes I ever heard. But she, poor dear, she was just crying. 8 "Mr. Dyer, the Writer" "No, he never tried the stage again, not to my knowledge. But I always say it wasn't a bad little play. If he'd only have let his sister touch it up, it would have been all right. She would have told him that Hogsflesh wasn't a good enough joke. She knows. . . . " I went up to Islington to see them only last week, but he was out. A nice little cottage, but very c[uiet for her. Nothing to see but the houses over the way, and the New River, and the boys fishing for sticklebacks all day long. The rivei*'s absolutely in front of the house : nothing between you and it. Have you ever heard of Mr. Dyer, the writer ? An old man, nearly blind. Well, he was coming away from my cousin's one day last year, and he walked bang into the water before anyone could stop hiin. Plump in. It's a wonder he wasn't drowned. There was an account of it in the London Magazine for December ; for my cousin's a terrible man to serve up his friends and have jokes against them. He writes about everything just as it happens. I'm always expecting he'll have me in one of his essays. In fact, to tell you a secret, sir, that's why I read them. But I don't think he's got me yet. "Yes, Islington's very different from Covent Garden, and the Temple too ; for though the 9 " She has her Thoughts " Temple is quiet enough, you've only got to pop into Fleet Street to be in the thick of everything. When they lived there she used to like doing her shopping in Fetter Lane, because it was at the top of the lane that she used to go to school yeai's and years ago. For she's getting to be an old woman, you know. Let me see, how old is she .'' — Why, let's see, when was Mary born ? It must have been 1763 ; no, it was 1764. Why, she'll be sixty this year. " What does she do all day .'' Well, she reads a gi'eat deal, stories for the most part. And she sews. She's very good with her needle. And then she has her thoughts. And at night they play cards. He gets back pretty soon, you know. Those East India gentlemen they don't do too much, I can tell you, and I'm told he's one of the laziest. Always either talking or writing letters, I hear. There's a good story of him down there. One of the superiors met him coming in at about half-past ten, and he said to him, sharp-like, ' Mr. Lamb,' he said, ' you come very late.' And what do you think my cousin said, the impudent little fellow ? * Yes,' he said, as cool as you like, ' yes,' he said, ' but see how early I go,' he said. I can't say it as he did, because he stammers and stutters and I'm no mimic : but the brass of it shut the gentleman lO " That's like Good Women " up. My cousin told me himself. He likes to tell you his good things ; but I can't understand a lot of them. Everyone has a different idea of what's funny. I'm with him, though, about old Munden : I could laugh at him all night. " I'm troubled about them up there, so far from London and the theatres and the noise. It's a mistake to give up so much all at once. And they've given up their regular evenings, too, when people came in to play cards and talk. You can't ask busy folk to go to Islington. " My cousin told me some bad news last week. She says that your Mr. Lamb, — Elia, — although he has such an easy time and a large salary, wants to leave the East India House and do nothing. I hope they won't let him. I know enough of life and of him to see what a mistake it would be. It was a mistake to go to Islington : it will be a worse mistake to retire. He says he wants to live in the country ; but he doesn't really. Authors don't know what they want. I always say that every author ought to have a book- binder to advise him. "She knows it's all wrong, poor dear, but what can she do ? He worries so. She sees him all miserable, and after she's said all she can against his plans, she agrees with them. That's like good womeu When they see that what must be must " Not quite a Genius be, they do their best. But it is very sad. . . . It's her I'm so sorry foi*. He's the kind of man that ought to go to business every day. " Well, sir, good-night to you. I hope I haven't been tedious with all my talk. " No, sir, not quite a genius ; but very clever, I grant you." P.S. — Of Lamb's cousin, the bookbinder (now with God), to whom there are two or three references in the Letters, nothing is really known, save that he died in 1 827, and Lamb " waked it " at his funeral to some purpose. He may have been (and it is my theory that he was) only a distant cousin. But if he were a nrst cousin, he was probably the son of that aunt of whom we have no information , save that she gave the little Charles Lamb the cake which he gave to a beggar. It is known that John Lamb had two sisters — Aunt Hetty, who was un- married and lived with the Lambs for twenty years, and one other. This may have been the book- binder's mother. I assume this aunt to be distinct from Aunt Hetty, because Lamb says that she gave him the cake on a holiday, and he returned to school by way of London Bridge. This would locate her 12 Elia was just Published in Southwark, where the Lamb family never lived ; but of course Aunt Hetty may have sojourned in Southwark for a little^ and her nephew may have visited her there. I feel certain that when he made London Bridge the scene of the adventure with the beggar, he meant it : it was not over such reminiscences that he mystified his readers. On the other hand, the bookbinder — if we are to entertain the first-cousin theory — may have been a son of a brother or sister of Lamb's mother ; but nothing is ever said of any such relations of hers. Most probably, I think, the bookbinder was not a first cousin, and belonged to an older generation. In 1827 Lamb was fifty-two; probably the book- binder was seventy. I have chosen early 1 82-i as the time of this conversation, because Elia was just published. J3 A Funeral o ^i> 9 Meditations among the Cages o ^ T~\ RIFTING somewhat aimlessly about the Zoo "^^^ on Sunday afternoon, I came suddenly upon the hippopotamus's vast and homely countenance peering round tlie corner of its stockade. It is the hugest/ most incredible thing — just for an instant a little like the late Herbert Campbell carried out to the highest power — and I felt for the moment as if I were in another world, a kind of impossible pantomime land. There was nothing frightening about it ; it was more companionable than many faces that sit opposite one in a 'bus ; and yet it was repellent, un-negotiable, absurd. It is not a thing to see suddenly. This hippopotamus, who is now thirty years or more old, shows signs of age. Her feet are sore, her eyes are scaly, her teeth are few and awry and very brown. In bulk she is immense, of a rotund solidity unequalled in my experience. The Great Tun, filled with its gallons, would, one 20 The Weighty Hippopotamus feels, be light compared with her. I could not help wondering what will happen when she dies, as die she must before very long : how her gigantic carcase will be moved, how dealt with, how eliminated. I am sure her lifeless form will be the heaviest thing in London — heavier than any girder, heavier than any gun. One has this impression, I suppose, because one knows some- thing of the weight of an oi'dinary body, and one's mind multiplies that, whereas a girder or a gun conveys no distinct impression. Even the baby hippopotami, in the next cage, ridiculous little pigs of hippos, fresh from their packing-case and the voyage from Africa, are probably each heavier than four aldermen ; but the old one is fifty times heavier than the baby, and might easily, such is the consistency of her alarming barrel, be full of lead. When her tottering legs at length give way and she falls to rise no more, may I not be there to see ! Standing before this ridiculous mammoth, so useless and unwieldy, I failed utterly to under- stand the feelings of the big-game hunter who could deliberately shoot it. If ever there was an animal that should inculcate or encourage the maxim " Live and let live," it is the hippo- potamus. I cannot understand how a man can dare to be responsible for adding so much 21 The best Short-slip mortality to this already encumbered earth. And yet there are members of West End clubs sipping their coH'ee at this moment who have probably shot many. To kill a lion or tiger, or any of the active, dangerous beasts : I can understand that, although I wish never to do it ; but to interrupt the already stagnant life of one of these gentle mountains — that I could never bring myself to do. How can one kill a creature that wallows ? Falling in later with a zoological Fellow, with a head full of Greek and a pocket full of apples and onions, without which he never visits these friends, I learned many curious facts. Among other things, I learned that the hornbill, who looks a desperately fierce biped, prepared at a second's notice to stab one with his iron beak, even in the back, is really the kindliest and most comj)anionable of birds, ready and eager for any amount of petting. He is also, perhaps, the best short-slip in the Gardens, for unwieldy as his beak looks to be, he can catch anything, throw it how you may. Albert Trott has hitherto been my ideal, but he reigns in my mind no more. Le rot est niort ; vive I' hornbill. I cannot get over my surprise about the horn- bill, whose favourite food, it ought to be known, is grapes. No animal looks much less tractable 22 Pel's Owl and nursable ; yet as a matter of fact the horn- bill is as anxious to be noticed as a spoiled dog, and as full of sentimentality. Best of all — even more than grapes — he likes to be scratched under the chin, and he leans his head farther and farther back in the enjoyment of this ecstasy, until his bill points into the sky like the spire of a village church. In close proximity to the hornbills live the boat- bill, who is as lovely as a Japanese print, and Pel's Owl, who has perhaps the richest eyes in the whole Zoo, and not the least melancholy life ; for he, accustomed to fly lightly and noiselessly over the surface of African rivers, catching un- wary fish in his claws as he flies, is now confined to a cage within a cage, a few feet square. What must be his thoughts as he watches the sight- seers go by ! What must be the thoughts of all these caged aliens ! The seals and sea-lions, one can believe, are not unhappy ; the otter is in his element ; the birds in the large aviaries, the monkeys, the snakes — these, one feels, are not so badly off. But the beasts and birds of a higher spirit, a mounting ambition — the eagles and hawks and lions and tigers, and Pel's Owl — what a destiny ! What a future ! I would not think their thoughts. I learned also from my instructive Fellow that 23 Eagle and Thar one of the llamas can expectorate with more pre- cision and less warning than any American de- scribed by the old satirists ; that the Bird of Paradise, exquisite and beautiful though he is, with eveiy right to be disdainful and eremitic, will yet cling to the sides of the cage to eat a piece of apple from the hand, and, having taken it, swallow it whole ; that the most westerly owl in the owl house will say "woof-woof" after any- one that it esteems ; that eagles like having their heads stroked, and that there is one of them who, if you give it a lead, will crow like a cock. I doubt if such things should be. I like to think of the eagle as soaring into the face of the sun with an unwinking eye, and allowing no liberties. But in Regent's Park. ... I suppose we must make allowances. Does not the rhinoceros eat biscuits ? I learned also that the thar loves orange-peel above all delicacies, and that the mountain goat who possesses the biggest horns can bring them down on the railings with a thwack that, if your finger chanced to be there, as it easily might, would assuredly cut it in two ; but, on the other hand, that the slender, graceful deer in the pen near the elephants, who has lately lost one horn, is as gentle as a spaniel and greatly in need of sympathy. 24 In Delia's Arbour I learned, also, that the baby elephant eats Quaker oats ; and that there are keepers in the Gardens who have never yet seen the beaver, not because they keep looking the opposite way, but because that creature is so unaccountably shy. The only chance one has of catching a glimpse of him is at sunset. But the introduction to Delia was the crown of the morning — the coping-stone of my good fortune in meeting this zoological friend. We spent an hour in her company, while she toyed with an assorted fruitarian dinner. I should not call her a slave to her palate : I never remember seeing a non-human animal (is she a non-human animal, I wonder?) so willing to drop a delicacy and turn to other things. She turned with chief interest to my walking-stick ; but now and then the trapeze caught her restless eye, and she was on it ; and now and then it seemed to be time to embrace or to be embraced. A very simple, loving soul, this Delia (is she a soul, has she a soul, I wonder ?), with the prettiest little thumb imaginable — for an ourang-outang, and, so far as I could observe, no anieres pensces. Clean, too. In fact, quite one of us. Delia is the first ape I ever saw that did not make me uneasy. So many monkeys — especially the larger apes — are such travesties of ourselves 25 The Diving Birds — and not only such travesties, but now and then such reminders of our worse selves — that one regards them with an increased scepticism as to man's part not only in this life, but in the next. But Delia is winsome ; Delia has the virtues. She is kind, and gentle, and quiet. All her movements are deliberate and well thought out. She has none of the dreadful furtive sus- piciousness of the smaller monkeys ; so far as I could see, no pettiness at all. And the hair that serves her also for clothes, like Lady Godiva, is a very beautiful rich auburn. I cherish her memory. It was the more pleasant to come under Delia's fascination, because I had just seen that horrible sight, the feeding of the diving birds. Here, at the most, one said in Delia's warm basement- room — here, at the most, is only mischief and want of thought ; here are no cruel predatory jaws pursuing their living prey. The diving birds give one, indeed, a new symbol for rapacity and relentlessness, partly because the victims which they catch with such accuracy arid ferocity, are so exquisitely made for joy and life. Can there be anything more beautiful than a slender diaphanous fish, gliding through the water with the light of day inhabiting its fragile body? The movements of a fish are in themselves grace in- 26 Eland and Mouse * carnate. The keeper flings a dozen of these Httle miracles mto the tank, and straightway they begin their magical progress through the green water. He then opens a cage, and a huge black and white bird, all cruel eye and snapping beak, plunges in, and in two minutes it has seized and swallowed every fish. The spectacle appeared to be very popular ; but I came away sick. I walked from Delia's boudoir to the lions, and from the lions to the sea-lions, by way of the long row of sheds where the nilghais and hartebeests and elands dwell, and found that the real interest of this house lay, not in those aliens, but in a domestic creature which, common though it be in English homes, is yet not too easy to observe — the mouse. If you want to see the mouse at ease, confidently moving hither and thither, and taking its meals with a mind secure from danger, go to the Zoo, nominally to study the eland. It is no injustice to the eland, who cares nothing for notice, therein differing com- pletely from the male giraffe, who looks after his departing friends with a moist and wistful eye and a yearning extension of neck that only the stony-hearted can resist. The eland is less affectionate ; he has no timidity, and he has no vanity. He does not mind what you look at, and a; The Pickpocket therefore you may lavish all your attention on the mice that move about among his legs like the shadows of little racing clouds on a windy April day. And so I came away, having seen everything in the Zoo except the most advertised animal of all — the pickpocket. To see so many visitors to the cages wearing a patronising air, and to hear their remarks of condescension or dislike, as animal after animal is passed under review, has a certain piquancy in the contiguity of this ever present notice, " Beware of Pickpockets," warning man against — what ? — man. Lions, at any rate, one feels (desirable as it may be to capture their skins for hearthrugs), pick no pockets. 28 Two Irishmen «o e> .lO .^ ys* Tj^HEY are King Bagenal and Edward Edge — the autocrat and the gate-keeper. They have nothing in common save their race and their genuineness ; but a book of essays, like mis- fortune, makes strange bedfellows. Of King Bagenal I have discovered very little ; but it is all splendid. He was a king only by the courtesy of the countryside, who knew the royal stamp when they saw it ; to the postman he was Mr. Bagenal, of Dunleckny, in the county of Carlow. But if ever regality coursed through a wild Irishman's veins. . . . You could not qualify for the throne of a Bagenal merely by swagger and bluster : you had to be what you professed to be ; you had to be a king right through. And there is this to be said of the kings that get their title from their neighbours — that they are kings in fact, whereas a king in the more ordinary sense, who comes to the title by descent, can very easily 29 King Bagenal's Pistols be no king at all. His tJirone may bean accident, and he may never ilo more than sit nervously on the edge of it; but a King Bagenal leans back and lolls. He was superb in his lawlessness and authority. Only two creators could have made King Bagenal. One is the God of Ireland ; the other is George Meredith, who made Harry Richmond's Titanic father and the Gi'eat ?*lel. This is how Daunt, in his Ireland and her Agitators, describes the monarch : " Of high Norman lineage, of manners elegant, fascinating, polished by extensive intercourse with the great world, of princely income and of boundless hospitality, Mr. Bagenal possessed all the qualities and attributes calculated to procure for him popu- larity with every class. A terresti'ial paradise was Dunleckny for all lovers of good wine, good horses and dogs, and good society. ... His politics were popular ; he was the mover of the grant of ^^50,000 to Grattan in 1782. He was at that time member for the county Carlow. " Enthroned at Dunleckny, he gathei'ed around him a host of spirits congenial to his own. He had a tender affection for pistols ; a brace of which implements, loaded, were often laid before him on the dinner-table. After dinner the claret was produced in an unbroached cask ; Bagenal's 3° Advice to the Young practice [his pi-aclice !] was to tap the cask with a bullet from one of his pistols^ whilst he kept the other pistol m terruran for any of his convives who should fail in doing ample justice to the wine. " Nothing could be more impressive than the bland, fatherly, affectionate air with which the old gentleman used to impart to his junior guests the results of his own expeiience, and the moral lessons which should regulate their conduct through life. 'In truth, my young friends, it behoves a youth entering the world to make a character for himself. Respect will only be accorded to character. A young man must shoAv his proofs. I am not a quarrelsome person — I never was — I hate your mere duellist; but ex- perience of the world tells me that there are knotty points of which the only solution is the saw-handle. Rest upon your pistols, my boys ! Occasions will arise in which the use of them is absolutely indispensable to character. A man, I repeat, must show his proofs — in this world courage will never be taken upon trust. I protest to Heaven, my dear young friends, that 1 advise you exactly as I should advise my own son.' And having thus discharged his conscience, he would look blandly round upon his guests with the most patriarchal air imaginable." 31 " Heaven's Will be Done ! '* "His practice/' says Daunt, "accorded with his precept. Some pigs, the pi-operty of a gentle- man who had recently settled near Dunleckny, strayed into an enclosure of King Bagenal's, and rooted up a flower-knot." The incensed monarch paved the way carefully to a challenge. " Nor was he disappointed. The challenge was given by the owner of the pigs ; Bagenal accepted it with alacrity, only stipulating that as he was old and feeble, being then in his seventy-ninth year, he should fight sitting in his arm-chair ; and that, as his infirmities preventing early rising, the meeting should take place in the afternoon. ' Time was,' said the old man with a sigh, ' that I would have risen before daybreak to fight at sunrise — but we cannot do these things at seventy-eight. Well, Heaven's will be done ! ' "They fought at twelve paces. Bagenal wounded his antagonist severely ; the ai-m of the chair in which he sat was shattered, but he escaped unhurt ; and he ended the day with a glorious carouse, tapping the claret, we may presume, as usual, by firing a pistol at the cask." There you have King Bagenal. This was little more than a hundred years ago. And to- day ? What happens to-day when pigs trespass } An exchange of shots ? Never. An exchange of lawyers' letters. How could his proud spirit 32 As Tennyson nearly said have brooked such meanness, such postponements ! Yes, it was well that he had to lay aside his crown wlien he did. Life was rapidly becoming too much for him. The whole course of events was tending to squeeze out old gentlemen with impulsive pistols ; to-day there cannot be one left. It is impossible to think of anything more incon- gruous than King Bagenal in a police-station ; but had he lived to our monotonous time he would of a certainty be often there, only at last to be transferred permanently to a real prison to await execution. How could he escape, and yet how monsti'ous it would be ! King Bagenal died at the right time : before duellists became murderers ; before Father Mathew set a fashion against carousals ; before every editor was a judge and jury. There is no longer any premium on eccentricity. People are terrified by it, and journalists, taking their ideas from their readers, foster the fear. Dull- heads, as Tennyson nearly said, are more than " characters," and sheep-like faith than Irish blood. Exeunt the royal race of Bagenals Enter In spite of generations of reckless, combative Irish gentlemen, it is odd that we have still to go to American literature for the classical instances of impetuosity with firearms. This is a reproach c 33 Thompson of Angel's to Irish authors which should touch them closely. Irish gentlemen were killing and wounding each other on sight almost for centuries before America was heard of, and yet it was left for Bret Harte and Mark Twain and John Hay in the Far West' to fix the type of fire-eater that carried his honour in his belt. Perhaps a line or two from the elegiacs on Thompson of Angel's will best describe what I mean : — " Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver, Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom. Why [Thompson is musing], why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid, The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestones and marble Lean on his chisel and gaze ? I care not o'er much for attention : Simple am I in my ways, save but for this lightness and freedom. " Why were not similar elegiacs written years before on Bagenal of Dunleckny ? What is wrong with Irish authors ? But I would except Lever, who, as a matter of fact, has Bagenal himself in his Knight of Givynne — or the scenario of him — under the name of Bagenal Daly. Yet how far from life ! To read of Bagenal and his contemporaries is 34 The Decay of Duelling to be filled with wonder that any gentleman was left alive in Ireland at all. It was a state of society which at this day one simply cannot begin to understand. There are. Heaven knows, still enough ways of dying ; but the short-tempered and accurate-shooting Hibernian is no longer one of them. Whether or not we are less courageous I do not know ; but there is less engaging insolence about than there used to be, and less of conscious superiority. Jack not only was not as good as his master in King Bagenal's day, but he never thought he was. Similarly, his master then had no doubts ; but to-day very few of us are quite certain about anything, either on earth or else- where. Duelling goes out very quickly when dubiety comes in. The duellist is one who is sure of himself and his ground. Mr. Bagenal had no doubts. One word more of the Carlow King. The traditions of Dunleckny allege, says Daunt, that when Bagenal, '' in the course of his tour through Europe, visited the petty Court of Mecklenburg- Strelitz, the Grand Duke, charmed with his mag- nificence and the reputation of his wealth, made him an offer of the hand of the fair Charlotte, who, being politely rejected by King Bagenal, was afterwards accepted by King George III." That sets the seal on his native royalty. The 35 Farewell to Bagenal King of England had to marry the King of Carlow's leavings. It was well for our satirical literature that Bagenal was firm, for where would Peter Pindar have been had Farmer George not married the Princess Charlotte ? She was his best Muse. And so we leave the uncrowned king and come to the gate-keeper. All that I know of Edward Edge comes from a slender square book printed in 1899 in Alassio. It is compiled by H. H. W., and is entitled Edgiana : Being a Collection of Some of the Sayings of Edward Edge. Money cannot buy this book, which is as rare as an Elzevir, and much more humanly interesting. It would be amusing to accumulate conjectures as to who and what this Edward Edge was. How long would it be, I wonder, before anyone guessed that he was the keeper of the gate at St. Patrick's Deanery in Dublin — Swift's own deanery, but in a later day, 1865 until the late eighties, when he was pensioned off, to die, aged about eighty, in 1894. That was Edward Edge's sphere of activity, and he adorned it, if not by any great distinction as a porter, at any rate with his flowers of speech. For Edge's niche in the Temple of Fame he owes to his tongue — to the readiness and freedom of it, to his store of odd 36 The richest Irish Talkers epithets and sudilen searching criticisms, and perhaps most of all to his vivid, although innocent, oatlis. For just, as the French say, there is no need for a sculptor to be himself made of marble, so can a man keep a deanery gate and be no dean. Loyalty and fidelity Edge had to a degree not much, if any, less than a Christian martyr ; but he did not allow the contiguity of St. Patrick's to chasten his nimble objurgatory fancy or modify his memories. Glory be ! And H. H. VV., in his turn, has not allowed the fear of wounding tender susce})tibilities to stand in the way of a faithful reprockuttion of the old man's eloquence. You can, in fact, do a good deal in a book when you print it privately at Alassio. The two richest Irish talkers of recent times are, I suppose, Terence Mulvaney and Martin Dooley. But both are imaginary : projections of men of genius. Edward Edge lived ; his photo- graph is before me, a good deal like Charles Kingsley. Twenty years ago, the treasures of his vocabulary and the riches of his memory were at the service of anyone clever enough to get round him. And many a Dublin resident must remember him well. To draw Edge out, to lure him on to obiter dicta, became, indeed, a recognised pastime among the Dean's friends 37 Edge's Genealogy who were humorists, and it is eminently one of these who put together this very curious and perhaps unique little book. Edge came from Wicklow, where he was born about the year of Waterloo, and where he spent the first fifty years of his life. Here is his genealogy : — " Misther H., did ye ever hear tell of Edgware Road, in or about the city o' London ? Well, th' Edges owned that, and bedambut I'm thinkin' the weighty part o' the county o' Middlesex. It was Isaiah Edge that come over wid William, and was at the siege o' Derry. There's some o' th' Edges wouldn't look at me now. There's ould Ben Edge, a cousin o' mine, that owns all the coal-mines in the Queen's County. There's a third cousin o' mine — John Edge — that's Sittin' Justice of Inja. The Queen come up to him in the sthreet in London, and she taps him on the shouldher, and she says, ' Begod I'll make ye Sittin' Justice of Inja,' and that's what he is this minute. Now I might be dyin' be the roadside, and fire the bit he'd offer furta stan' me the price of a pint ! "My sixth grandmother was a Jewganawt [Huguenot]. Faith, she had to gotlier together all her ould pooks an' wallets an' away wid her out o' the city o' Paris in the year 1 572. My great-grand-mother knew Latin an' Hay-ber-doo [Hebrew], and bedambut she had the weighty parto' the Gurdeek [Greek] toongue. There's aii 38 Cardinal Newman oiilfl sesther o' minej that's a terrible savin' woman ; that wan id live on the clippins o' tin ! Faithj she'd go furder on a ha'penny nor I would on two shillin' ! "Now isn't it a wondherful thing furta say, in the regyard o' the breed o' th' Edges, that no matther some o' them might 'a become poor brutes and divils, there was never wan o' the breed that turdned Roman ! " He was a staunch Protestant, and loved to attend controversial meetings at which Roman Catholics were corrected and repudiated. That, says his biographer, was probably all the religion he knew — the glow of satisfaction upon the rout, real or imagined, of the heretics. His hostility to Rome was continual, as, indeed, became a good " Dane's Man." Observe him before a portrait of Cardinal Newman : — "Sure, what the blazes does Misther John have the likes of him on the wall for? Heth an' if I had that ould fella's picture, I'd fii'e him out on the sthi'eet, and bedambut I'd lep on him, so I would. [Going up close to the picture and peering into it.] Musha, a dam ould Roman eye ; that's what he has ! " But he could be fair, too. " My opinion," he said once, "it don't matter Adam what bl — y denomination a man id belong ta ! Sure there's rogues Roman an' there's rogues Prodesan' ! " V) Pronunciation's Artful Aid The old man could write and read with much difficulty ; hence probably the quaintness and personal character of his vocabulary, which — like a child's — consisted largely of words as he thought he heard them. Hence " alcohol " became " alcordn " ; " Protestant," " Prodesan " ; '^ Admiral," "Admirdle"; "girl," " g'yairdle " ; "foreigners," "fawrdners " ; " colonel," "curdlan," and so forth. One book he had of which he never tired. Culpepers Herbal — " The Culpeper " he called it — and drew all his remedies, save a few into which a modern spirit entered, from its depths. Himself the soul of honesty, he delighted artistically in bold rogues, whatever their de- nomination might be ; but probably preferred them, when bold, to be "Prodesan" — such as Frank Splay, the window-cleaner : — " Well, ould Splay (the Catholic I call him, an' he all the time a good Prodesan) come hito the lodge th' other night, about the time he was afther takin' Lord Plunket's pledge. ' Well, Frank,' says I, ' how didja fare yistherda' ? ' ' Aw, very well,' says he ; ' I was clanin' the windas for such and such an ould wan.' ' Tell me,' says I, ' and did she give ye a tundherin' fine dinner ? ' ' Faith, she did ; I eat may be 3 lbs. o' beef — the dinner was out o' the way good.' 'And did she give ye ne'er a hap'orth to dhrink ? ' ' Begob and 40 " A Terrible Cute Chap " she did so ; "heth an," says she, " lue poor iii.ui, I believe your dinner isn't complate without the dhrink ! " ' ' Begor I believe not, ma'am,' says he. Well, what the divil should he do but he takes and dhrinks two or three pints o' Guinness's finest. ' Aw, gog's bloog an' 'ounds,' says I to him, ' y'ould thief Frank, but yer afther breakin' Lord Plunket's pledge ! ' " ' Heth an' I am not,' says he ; ' sure I didn't pay for the po-ert-ther ! ' " Aw, Frank's a great ould rogue entirely ! "Well, there was another time he was clanin' for an ould lady on the Sarc'lar Road. Mindja there was an ould cupboard in the cordner wid the divil a less nor a mather o' 3 lbs. o' beef in it. Well, when th' ould wan had her back turdned an' she out o' the room, what the blazes divilment should he be up ta but he goes up to the cupboard and bl — y end to the thruppence but he eat every dambit o' the beef out o' that, and bad luck t'all but he sticks the th' ould cat locked up inside the cupboard. Presently she comes down to the kitchen an' opens the press. "'Aw, gog's bloog an' fury,' says she, 'the cat's afther atin' all me beef on me I had for yer dinner. Fm sorry, me poor man, Fve nothin' furta give ye t'ate ! ' ' Faith, so am I, ma'am,' says he, ' more's the pity ! ' — an' he wid the 3 lbs. o' beef in his ould body all the time, the great ould thief. Faith, Frank's a terrible cute chap entirely in the regyard of all soorts o' divilment ! " I quote a few of his detached sayings or peim'es. 41 Various Obiter Dicta Of" the waves at Newcastle : — " Aw ! the waves up here does be nothin' to- wardst what there was below in Newcastle comm' up to forty or fifty year ago. There'd be waves there, and bloog an' 'ounds there'd be room for a whole regiment to march in undher the curdle o' the wave wid th' arch it did make." Of ablutions and shaving : — " Sathurda' nights or Sunda' morn'ns is times enough for a man to wash his hands ! sure a man that id wash his hands more nor that, id have no indtisthry .'" [? Any etymological connection in his mind with " Dust " .?] " It's of a Sathurda' night I'd always tear the heavy scoom off o' me puss wid th' ould razor." Of a cure for a cold : — " If it was a thing ye had a heavy surfeit o' cowld, faith there's nothing betther ye could do only take an' ate a rale terrible ould salty book haird'n [buck herring !] that id give ye the divil's drooth [drought, i.e. thirst], an' then nothin' id sadisfy ye but ye should swally two or three bookets o' cowld spring Avathei', an' agin yid be in bed, be the tundherin' Mack, the lather o' pesperation yid be in id sweep the cowld to blazes out o' your body ! " Concerning homoeopathy : — " Aw sure I know all about the Home-potticks ; sure it was a w oman in the city o' Paris that in- 42 Three Proud Boasts vented it. Little seeds and ground airubs [herbs] — that's the way the' goes to work ! " Of one who had been dismissed for drinking : — " Well now, it's a quare thing fiirta say ould XYZ should 'a been put out of it for the dhrink, an' he as daycent a man as ever carried a shillin' ! Heth an' I always thought he was a man that could hould a siip without lett'm in ! " Of a sportsman : — " One o' the brothers was a docthor ; th' other follied shootin' — he'd be always shootin' — an' gog's great tare an 'ounds but he was a grand shot ! All nations id be comin' furta shoot agin him, but the' might as well 'a stopped at home. Aw, there's nothin' that flies — nothin' undher the stars — but he'd hit." And here are three of his proud boasts : — " There's not a man in all Ireland, put England bo it that same, that id be able furta hould a candle to me in the matther o' puttin' down doong ! "There's not a man iji Ireland that id be able to read the names over the shop-doors agin me ! " Misther H., I might be blind dhroonk, and dammyskin I'd be safer in the regyard o' lockin' and boultn' th' ould gate nor another man id be an' he black sober ! " Let me close with H. H. W.'s description of 43 His Sunday Glory this simple profane old man in all the glory of authority on a Sunday afternoon : — "Punctually at 4.30 he would take his stand just outside the door, on the pavement, leaving the door ajar, to wait for the Dean's coming in from the Cathedral. Edge would often have more than half an hour to wait before the Dean appeared, but these were perhaps the proudest moments of the week for him, for in the mean- time the departing congregation, including the elite of Dublin residents and visitors, some driving, some on foot, would have filed by ; and as he stood there, endimanche with clean collar and the best 'rig' he could muster, in full view of all 'the Quality' did they but turn their heads to see him, he experienced to the full a dignified consciousness of being ' the Dane's port-ther,' and moreover of executing that function ' betther nor any man in Ireland.' " Edward Edges there must always be — ti'ans- parent, humorous souls who do their duty and worship their masters — but with the spread of education and papers their speech is bound to become less individual and racy. The more praise, then, to H. H. W. for preserving for us these jewels that fell from the old gate-keeper's lips. 44 From Persia to Aberdeen o •c?' ^o T T is my misfortune to be just too late for most of the more dramatic incidents of the open air. Once, for example, walking with a naturalist in St. Leonard's Forest and lagging for some minutes behind him (the only time I had done so during the day), I joined him just as he was standing as still as a stone watching a bank. " If you had come a minute sooner," he said, "you would have seen a snake swallow her young." That is the kind of thing that happens to me. Again, last year, I went to stay in a house under the South Downs close to a little spinney, and was met by the news that an old vixen had cubs there and everyone had seen them playing together. I need hai'dly say that I did not. Yet a lady that I know well, who cares nothing for these things, once came on a small fox-cub that had lost itself near Willingdon, in Sussex, and nursed it in her arms. I, who would value such 45 A Cat carrying Kittens an experience rightly, will go down to my grave and never find anything. Even moles elude me. With the exciting untoward incidents of civilised life I am equally unlucky. Last year, for example, while at Cowes, on two distinct days I followed a race for some hours, and left each, as it turned out afterwards, only a minute or so before the mast of one of the yachts was carried away. I am not lucky. The harvest of my quiet eye comprises little that is unusual. Horses have always risen again before I can reach the crowd. Fires are out. Men in fits have recovered. But there is an exception now and then ; and I have seen a pretty thing to-day of which I had before only heard and had much wanted to see. I have seen a cat carrying her kittens. This cat is even more unsatisfactory than the generality of her selfish kind. Her life is more resolutely detached from that of her owners ; her return for any kindness that is shown her is even less spontaneous and noticeable. It is testimony to the amazing cleverness of cats that they are kept and fed at all, to say nothing of being petted. It all comes back to the old truth that if you want people to honour you, you must despise them. This cat began her career of tyranny by making us walk five miles instead of two at the ond of a 46 Expense continuous tiring day ; but a houseful of beautiful wild creatures, blue and elusive as wood smoke, was compensation enough. Melisande (as we will call her here) was one of them, and her second act of tyranny was to make us pay far too much for her, or, at any rate, more than I could afford. Her third was to catch an expensive cold, her fourth to have an expensive consort, and her fifth to have four expensive and delicate children. What their delicacy cost I have no notion, but there is a firm of veterinary surgeons whose books could tell. For these kittens, I may remark, Melisande cared nothing, and it is no exaggei'ation to say that her first display of anything like affection for her mistress coincided with the departure of the last of her family, bound for a neighbouring chemist, who puts an end to unfortunate animals at a shilling a head. Nothing in life, indeed, so became these kittens as their departure from it, for none of their medicaments to keep them alive had cost so little as this extremely reasonable coup-de-grdce. We were soon to discover, however, that Melisande's callous treatment of her first children resulted less from the want of maternal feeling than from a deep-rooted and almost passionate Radical- ism that led her to desire by any means to debase 47 Blue Persian Philosophy her blood and to despise everything that was of equally high lineage. For her long pedigree now reposing in my desk (which goes back even to Darius) she cared less than nothing. She believed in the people and was prepared to back her belief — even to consorting day and night with a perfectly awful sandy cat with a permanent black smudge on his left cheek. And now she has three new kittens — one jet black, one rather like herself but sadly democratised, and one tabby — and she loves them to distraction. It was these that I met her carrying, having decided to change her home from the wood stack to some more convenient address, nearer the kitchen. On the strength of our experience with Melisande, my advice would be — not to buy a pure-bred cat of great distinction. I am perhaps underrating the aesthetic pleasure which a Blue Persian can give. This I know can be intense, and there are moments when Melisande is dis- tractingly lovely — as lovely as a pearl-grey sea, or an evening mist. Her eyes, too, are of a burning orange unlike anything else in Nature. But although she is superlatively distinguished in her beauty, it must be remembered that there never was a cat that could do anything ugly. Even that vile sandy cat with the smudge to whom Melisande gave her heart has the most exquisite 48 The best Cat I know contours. The curves and graces of the ordinary household cat are perhaps for all practical purposes beauty enough for a working English home ; and when to these is allied a dependent, or even proprietary, interest in the human members of the family — a dallying to be scratched, a purring on the hearth, and a coaxing presence at meals in the hope of a scrap — why, then, to anyone who values friendliness as I do, the ordinary cat becomes more to be desired than any prize-winning queen. The best cat I know at this moment lives in Northamptonshire, and follows its master and mistress wherever they go, about the garden and fields — just like a dog, only with more circum- spection. Whenever they stop the cat stops too, and perhaps leans against their legs. When they go on the cat goes on too, just behind, silently, composedly, like a shadow with a waving tail. I should like a cat that would do that. Instead, we have the costly Melisande, who would not lift a finger if she saw me drowning. I am only just beginning really to understand the nature of the Aberdeen. Our last was a very ingratiating little bitch, full of affection and roguishness, who, however, was with us for so short a time, and during that time was so occupied in thoughts as to how to evade our vigilance and D 49 The Call of Nature be getting on with the true business ot life, becoming a mother — that we never had the un- dress material workings of her mind at all. Even when most coquettish and endearing, even when putting in motion all the machinery of lovable- ness, with her head on one's chest and the ridiculous boot buttons which she called her eyes looking up into one's face, her brain, to a keen observer, was manifestly busy over one matter only, and that the old topic. Precautions we had to take, because there were two very sound reasons why Betty ought not to have puppies yet. One was that she was far too young, being herself but a mere chit ; and the other that the neighbourhood contained no husband of equal birth. But one might as well attempt to stop the tide as control these affairs. A male Aberdeen mysteriously appeared within call, and Betty's face assumed an expression of amused satisfaction. . . . Her owners, however, who became wise only long after the event, had no suspicion. . . . One day she disappeared, and was absent for so long — nearly a week — that we gave her up completely. And then one evening she suddenly was in the room again, very thin, very demonstra- tive, but also very nervous and restless. She ran to the door and back again. She whined all the time. 5° A Lesson Learnt There is a story in a book that I read far too many years ago, when I was at my first school, which tells how a merchant who was travelling with a large bag of money sat down by the road- side to rest, and on resuming his journey forgot (as merchants do in stories, but nowhere else) his property. His dog, however, perceived the error, and, by jumping up at him and barking, did its best to impede his steps, make him think, and drive him back. The merchant endured this for some time, and then, persuaded that the creature was mad, and having tested it with water, which it was too unhappy to stop and drink, drew his pistol and shot it. The poor thing, bleeding horribly, crawled away and disappeared. Some hours afterwards the merchant at last missed his hag, hurriedly retraced his steps to his resting- place, and there found it safe and sound — with his dog's lifeless body stretched across it. True or untrue, this stoiy made a great impression on me, and I remember determining never to be so tbolish as to disregard, in the unimaginative mercantile manner, the dumb gestures of any animal ; and therefore, when Betty had run to the door and back sevei*al times, I lit a lantern, tied a long string to her collar, and expressed my intention of going with her wherever she might lead, no matter how far. 5' Betty's Secret She took me painfully at my word, dragging me at a gallop down an almost vertical bank, thick with brambles and very wet with dew. On and on I went, slipping and sliding and torn, until she suddenly disappeared as thoroughly as if the earth had swallowed hei'. As it indeed had, for she had entered a large deep hole under the roots of a tree. With great difficulty I hauled her forth again and stretched my arm into the hole as far as it would go, but could feel nothing. Meanwhile Betty was so pulling at the cord and fighting to get back again that I allowed her to do so, listening the while very attentively, and I was presently aware of a faint whimpering in the remoter recesses of this planet, and knew the secret of her absence and her retreat. She had puppies, and in her pride of motherhood had chosen to make her own home for them. No one should help. It was only because hunger had conquered that she had returned to the house. Her pride, however, was not stubborn, and when the puppies were extricated with a rake and placed comfortably in a basket near the fire, she was the happiest mother that the Granite City ever sent forth. With Betty my acquaintance with Aberdeens for a while ceased, for she soon after left us, and her one puppy that we kept early developed fits 52 The Thin End of the Wedge and died — the effect, I imagine, of his mother's maternal precocity. But recently I have taken up my studies in Aberdeen teri'ierdom again, having acquired direct from Aberdeen one Boby, who is, I am told, a fine example of the breed. He travelled alone at the age of four months from Scotland to St. Pancras, and w^as to be fetched in the forenoon. It was, however, later before that could be, and in the meantime he had thrown the Aberdeen spell over most of the parcels' office staff, and was surrounded by the luxuries of the season. I doubt if any other dog could do this as an Aberdeen can. It is a regular habit with them to have all they want. I have a theory that this is partly because they are so like little pigs. Everyone adores little pigs, and everyone would like to pet one ; but nobody has ever done so. In default the Aberdeen puppy, who is the next thing to a little pig, receives a double share of attention — part for his likeness for that other and part for himself His nose, too, must have a share in his victories. It is the thin end of the wedge made visible. The rest cannot but follow. I don't know how it is with Aberdeens whom time has sobered into grisly fidelity, such as I see following their masters as dinghys follow yachts ; but at the age of six months, judging by 53 Aberdeen and Spaniel this Bobjj they are not readily obedient, not brave, and not unselfishly affectionate. Such love as Boby offers is cupboard love purely. He adds to these defects a curious lack of enterprise : he cares nothing for a walk. If by any chance it is necessary to chastise him or even reprimand him when he is out — principally for eating un- suitable things — he runs straight home again, and, carrying his wounded heart into the kitchen (where he reigns), is healed in the usual manner. It is my experience that dogs do not vary much : each is a type of his breed ; and so I make bold to deduce from Boby the generalisation that all Aberdeens are self-protective. Perhaps they get it from their country. In a dog self-protectiveness is rather a grave defect, showing very black against the radiant whiteness of the character of the other dog here — a spaniel — who does all that one wants a dog to do : is very loyal, full of trust in you, brave, enterprising, and so much attached to his people that probably no amount even, of actual cruelty would alienate him or cause him to prefer his own company. Indeed, he hates his own company ; and that, I take it, is a virtue in a dog. But he has no finesse, no moods, no arts. You must take a spaniel for what he is — always the same. It is the special privilege of the 54 The Art of Begging Aberdeen puppy to have temperament and wiles : to get back by stealth, by cleverness, by sheer force ot" personality and a capriciousness as well ordered as that of any pretty actress, all and more that he may be in danger of losing by defects of character. For his hours of coldness he atones by a few minutes of exquisite dependence ; for his long fickleness — giving all his store to a total stranger and keeping ten yards between himself and his own — he makes up by falling at the right moment flat at one's feet with his paws in the air, constituting an invitation to scratch and for- get that no ordinarily constituted human being- can resist. But probably the biggest gun in the deadly armoury of the Aberdeen is the art of begging. Begging is almost a birthright with an Aberdeen. It is as natural to him as to a hospital ; and he knows its power. He knows that masters and mistresses are snobs, and like to be begged to : that it is one of our foibles. This he knows, and gains immensely by it. While other dogs are fussily striving to attract attention at the table, and being told to lie down, the Aberdeen is seated quietly at the side of the weakest guest, being plied with delicacies and consuming them without a sound. The quietest Aberdeen that I ever met was at the Dorset Arms at East 55 Vertical and Unashamed Grinstead, a pleasant hostelry, with Dr. Johnson's chair from the Essex Head, and signed photo- graphs of Dan Leno, and miles of Ashdown Forest from the coffee-room window. An aged Aberdeen lives, or lived, there, who will sit motionless by your chair for hours if need be, with a look of re- signed, almost pious, patience on his countenance. You never see him come in or go out. When you sit down he is not there ; but suddenly he is, as still as a ghost, and to all appearances as solidly fixed in his vertical position as the Nelson Column. Our little Boby is learning the same device. No one taught him ; but one day, the time having arrived, instead of Ij'ing down as heretofore, he subsided naturally on his tail, lifted his fore-paws, and was begging. Straightway we passed utterly into his power, and he perceived it, and now in extreme cases he begs even where there is no meal in progress. For mercy, the superficial observer might think ; but that is not so : no Aberdeen would beg for mercy, being in a position to command it. He begs by instinct — as the simplest way out of his difficulty ; and it is so. Begging is merely one of the thousand and one wiles of this fascinating, naughty, incorrigible, and wholly adorable breed. S6 The Search and the Gift ^o ^e> o ' I ""HE other day I lent a lady Gaboriau's "*■ Dossier 113, which she returned with the remark that she liked the ingenuity of it but wished there was not so much crime. Without quite subscribing to this criticism, I think there is a good deal in it — for gentle ladies — and while meditating thereon, it occurred to me that there is an excellent opening, as the advertisements say, for a writer who will apply the principles of the detective story to blameless affairs — that is to say, retaining the detective but eliminating the bloodstains and the dark passions of Mont- martre. For, after all, the fascinating part of a detective story is not the murder or the theft, but the methods of the detective ; not the poetical justice at the close, but the steps by which it has been reached. In a word, the fascinating thing about a detective story is the search. 57 The Great Seekers The search is one of the oldest motives in literature, and it remains one of the strongest — the search either for an object or an idea — for a golden fleece, like Jason's^ or a father, like Tele- machus' ; for definite hidden treasures, like John Silver's, or adventures that may come, like Don Quixote's or Lavengro's ; for a criminal, like Lecoq's or Sherlock Holmes's, or a religion, like Lothair's ; for a wife, like Ccelebs', or for position, like Evan Harrington's. These are very different examples, but the search motive is their basis, and it is the basis of half the fairy stories. I am striking into too high a road. My original idea w^as that there should be a new novel of con- crete search, retaining the detective and all his ingratiating methods, but retaining them only for the absorbing interest of inquiry — that alluring quality which one might call sleuthiness ; and not that the cell or the gallows should claim their own. Quite the reverse, indeed ; for whereas in the ordinary detective story a man is pursued in order to be punished, in the new detective story he might be tracked in order to be rewarded. No matter why the detective was engaged — whether at the whim of an eccentric or by a firm of lawyers to find an heir — his methods need not differ. All his gifts of deduction, his disguises, his resource, his godlike opportunism, that we 58 Hariot Pickin's Sampler find so irresistiblcj might be retained ; but his revolver and handcuffs — those, I ("ear, Avoidd go. Their absence would not, however, impair the search — and the search is the thing. But my scheme would do more than merely satisfy the reader's craving for excitement. It would automatically bring back the novel of character, the novel of adventure on the road among men and women of to-day — the real romance. Let us take an example to illustrate what I mean ; and it happens that the very lady who made the criticism which started me on these meditations supplies what I want. With the returned copy of Gaboriau's story came a present of an old sampler — very restful to look upon, with its faded silks all sobered by time into soft neutral tints, and a primitive representation of the Tree of Knowledge flanked by our first parents, the serpent intervening. Above are these verses, spelt in a pre-Rooseveltean day : — "Jesus, permit thy grarachious name to stand As the first effots of my youthful hand, And as my little fingers over the canvas move. Engage my tender heart to seak thy love, With thy dear children have a part, And wright my name myself upon Jesusis heart." At the foot is written — " Hariot Pickin worked this sampler June 2, aged 13, 1828." 59 Instructions to a Detective Now, what could be a better task to set a detective than to find Hariot Pickin or her descendants? She was thirteen m June 1828: that is to say, if alive to-day she is an old lady of ninety-two. Did she marry ? If so, her name probably ceased to be Pickin. No doubt the tracking of Hariot would not take very long ; but several things about it are certain. One is that the modiis operandi of the discoverer would be interesting, and the other is that his inquiries would of necessity take him among many persons, and would, faithfully recorded, make excellent reading. I often find myself pining a good deal for the old-fashioned kind of novel in which there are long joui*neys, and in which new characters are continually appearing. The search for Hariot Pickin, in capable hands, should yield much satis- faction of this kind. Another example. I turn to my shelves and take down an old book. It is Bunyan's Holy War, in calf, much stained and battered. On the fly-leaf, in a very faint ink, is written " David Sandeman" ; on the top of the introduction, also in very faint ink, " Wm. Bathgate." " Bring me," suppose I were to say to the detective, "as soon as you can, full pai'ticulars of this David Sandeman and this William Bathgate." Would it not be an interest- ing task ? Would not the recoi'd of his adventures 60 The Right Kind of Reader be full of human nature ? Probably there have been so many David Sandemans and William Bathgates that he could not do it ; but it serves as an example^ and in this kind of story failure is of little importance, since the real thing is the people by the way. Anything that can multiply good novels of people by the way is to be desired. But I have still a third example. When I reached my modest home the other evenmg, 1 found a parcel and a letter. The letter had neither beginning nor end, nor had it any address ; it merely said, in a firm and generous hand, that the writer, having gathered from certain printed words of mine that I like the good things of the earth (when I can get them !), and having also a feeling that the pleasure that she had drawn from these and other printed words of mine ought to be repaid a little, was leaving at my door two packets of caravan-bome tea which had come to her from Russia, and which she liked to think her friends were drink- ing — she herself, she added, adhering the while to her customary half-crown blend. Now, here was a pretty thought and a pretty deed I Of caravan-borne tea I had often heard, but had never drunk any, much less owned it. And of gratitude I had often occasionally heard whisperings, but not much of that does one meet 6i " If this should meet the Eye ..." wilhciLhcr. Vet here were both together! Well, I drank the tea, aiul it was exquisite ; but the trouble — the Httle drop of bitter in the teacup — was how was I to say " thank you " for it. I suppose, logically speaking, I had been saying " thank you " for a long time, putting the cart before the horse, so to speak : so at least the lady's kind-hearted letter indicates with such grace. But who would be logical ? I wanted to say it again. Of course I did nothing ; but here was a chance for a search-novel all to hand. To find that Lady Bountiful ! I might, of course, have stumbled on the trail instantly ; and it might have taken years. Sherlock Holmes, 1 suppose, would have placed her letter under the microscope ; he would have analysed the ink ; he would have earned a little sample of the tea to the Docks — possibly even to Russia. How interesting it would all be ! So I have never been able to say " Thank you." Not until now. And yet will She read this book alsoj or have J outstayed my welcome .'' . . 63 A Philosopher that Failed <=> e> ^ /~\F Oliver Edwards, nothing, I believe, is ^-^ known beyond the fact that he had been at Pembroke College with Dr. Johnson ; that he- was a solicitor in Barnard's Inn ; that he married twice ; that he lived on a little farm of sixty acres near Stevenage and came to London twice a week ; and that he wore grey clothes and a wig with many curls, and went to church on Good Fridays. We know of Edwards' life only this, and of his speech we have only some dozen sen- tences ; and yet he will live for ever, by virtue of having crossed the stage of literature on one fine mornmg one hundred and twenty-nine years ago. He might be likened to the bird with which the Venerable Bede compared the life of man in a famous and beautiful passage : the bird that flies out of the dark void into the lighted banqueting hall and out again into the void once more. So with Edwards ■ for sixty years he was not ; then 63 A Good Friday Meeting he met Dr. Johnson and his Boswell in Butcher Row, stayed with them for an hour ; and was not again. But the hour was sufficient : it gave him time to make his one deathless remark. By virtue of that remark he lives, and will live. Edwards's day was Good Friday, April 17, 1778 — "a delightful day," says Boswell. How little the good Edwards can have thought, as he climbed out of his bed in Barnard's Inn that morning and donned his grey clothes and his curly wig, that he was about to become immortal. He spent, I take it, the early hours in his office, reading conveyances or deeds and writing letters ; then he went to church, whither Dr. Johnson and Boswell had also gone, to St. Clement's, which through some strange stroke of luck is standing, with the Doctor's pew intact within it, to this dark, irreverent, rebuilding day. On the way Boswell (who could grow the flower quite easily now, having obtained much seed) remarked that Fleet Street was the most cheerful scene in the world, adding, skilfully as he thought, " Fleet Street is, in my mind, more delightful than Tempe ! " The Doctor, however, having the same dislike of the imitator that most teachers and all cynics possess, had his dash of cold water ready. "Ay, ay, but let it be com- pared with Mull." So they passed on to church, 64 The Country Life where the Doctor was pleased to see so numerous a congregation. It was after church that they met Edwards, whom Johnson had not seen for forty years. The recognition came from the lawyer^ a talkative, friendly, and not easily daunted man, who thereafter quickly got to work and enlarged to Boswell on the pleasure of living in the country. Boswell, again in the true John- sonian manner, replied, " I have no notion of this, sir. What you have to entertain you is, I think, exhausted in half an hour." But Edwards was deeper and more sincere. "What," he said, "don't you love to have hope realised ? I see my grass, and my corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if this frost has not nipped my fruit trees." Johnson, who had been in a reverie, possibly missing the familiar scent of incense, — for, in spite of Boswell's innuendoes to the contraiy, Edwards does not appear to have been at all impressed by the magnitude and lustre of his old friend, — here re- marked, " You find, sir, you have fears as well as hopes ; " and I am glad he did so, for it gave Boswell the opportunity to add the reflection, " So well did he see the whole when another saw but the half of a subject." And yet it is more than likely that Edwards saw the whole too. E 65 The Parson's Happy Lot Being comfortably seated in the Bolt G)urt library on this sunny Good Friday, Edwards, who had already commented with delightful blunt- ness, but perfect innocence, on the Doctor's age, remarked, "Sir, I remember you would not let us say ' prodigious ' at college. For even then," he added, turning to Boswell, "he was delicate in language, and we all feared him." Johnson said nothing of this at the time, but to his Boswell said afterwards, in private, "Sir, they respected me for my literature " — meaning by "they" the undergraduates — "and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world." That was one hundred and twenty-nine years ago, and it is amazing still. The conversation with Edwards then tm-ned to money, and it came out that the lawyer had given much away. He also admitted to a longing to be a parson and live in comfort and comparative idleness. Johnson had an opening here, and took it. " I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands," he said, " than the care of souls. No, sir, I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life." Edwards, however, did. There is no evidence that the Doctor convinced him. My impression is that he was never convinced by 66 The Johnsonian Game anyone's arguments. I picture him as the kind of man who goes through life contentedly, secure in his own opinion. Nothing could daunt Edwards, and so innocent and happy was he that he had no notion he was not observing the strict rules of the game. The rules of the Johnson conversational game made it imperative that you should utter only questions or provocative opinions, and then wait for the answer and receive it humbly. But Edwards smilingly broke them all. He asked questions, it is true, but long before the Doctor could reply he had volunteered, with appalling hardi- hood, scraps of autobiography. If there is one thing an autobiographer like Johnson cannot stand it is the autobiography of others. And yet the Doctor, with his great human imagina- tion, knew that Edwards was a pearl of sincerity and candour, and in his heart, I am sure, valued him accordingly. " I have been twice married. Doctor," said Edwards, apropos of nothing, cheerily adding the terrifying sentiment, " You, I suppose, have never known what it was to have a wife ? " This — to Johnson ! We can see Boswell shivering on his chair's edge. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "I have known what it was to have a wife, and [in a solemn, tender, faltering tone] I have known what it was to lose 67 " Some hogsheads, I warrant you " a wife. It had almost broke my heart." Edwards was unabashed. He said instantly, " How do you live, sir ? " adding, " For my part, I must have my regular meals and a glass of good wine." Dr. Johnson replied suitably — the kind of reply that would usually settle the matter among his guests — " I now drink no wine, sir. Early in life I drank wine ; for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal." Edwards rose to a fine height of irreverence here, to the immense dismay, I have no doubt, of Boswell, who, with all his advantages, had not been at Pembroke with his hero. He cut in with, " Some hogsheads, I warrant you." The Doctor succeeded in taking no notice (quite pos- sibly he was secretly flattered ; we all like to be credited with great deeds), and continued his dull alimentary history ; but the victoiy was Edwards's, for the Doctor, when asked if he ate supper, merely and very uncharacteristically said " No," leaving it for his visitor to remark, with something of the great man's own manner made human, "For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass in order to get to bed." That is good enough ; but it is not the single remark by which Edwards is known — on which his deathless fame rests. That had come earlier. 68 Cheerfulness breaking in " Y'ou are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson/' said Edwards. " I have tried, too, in my time to be a philo'sopher ; but I don't know how ; cheer- fuhiess was always breaking in," That was Edwards's great speech. By virtue of that candid confession he takes his place with the shining company of simple souls, the hierarchy of the ingenuous. It was too much for Boswell, who had no eye for children, young or old. But on repeating it to Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men he knew, they said with one accord that " it was an exquisite trait of character." He therefore refrained from belittling it in the book. To Boswell's intense relief, Edwards at last went. He had begun by calling Dr. Johnson (who was sixty-nine) old; he left with another reference to his age. Looking him full in the face, he said, " You'll find in Dr. Young the line, *0 my coevals I remnants of yourselves.'" When he was gone, Boswell came to himself again, and quickly remarked that he thought him a weak man ; and the Doctor, smarting under the imputation of senility, was, I regret to say, weak enough to agree. But they were both wrong. Edwards was a strong man — strong in his cheerfulness and his transparency. 69 A Sketch Book ^c^ ^^ -^ o o I Y^ VER since I first read Mr. Housman's Shrop- ■^ shire Lad, that beautiful, melanclioly eulogy of Nature and elegy on Man, these lines have run in my head, and " Some "CluntonandClunbury, ^^y," I have said, "I Cluns;unford and Clun, .,, . ^l^ >> a j , '^ . , will go to Clun. And Are the quietest places ° Under the sun." ^^^ I have seen Clun, and Clunton, and Clun- bury (but not Clungunford), and I know that the poet is one who tells the truth. They are the quietest places under the sun. I walked to Clun from Craven Arms, that busy jmiction of rails in a country of road travel- lers, under the shadow of Callow Hill and Wen- lock Edge ; and by great good fortune I walked on a Monday morning — good fortune, because on Mondays there is an auction of cattle at Craven Arms, and faring westward then one meets 70 The Road to Clun little companies of sheep and lambs, and little com- panies of bullocks, and here a stallion, and there a bull, and carts containing jolly Shropshire farmers in front and calves under nets behind, and carts containing just jolly Shropshire farmers, and carts containing jolly Shropshire farmers in front and pigs behind, and jolly Shropshire farmers on horseback, and now and then a woman with a basket. And sometimes the sheep are driven by old men, and sometimes by boys, and sometimes by men on horseback, and once on this Monday by a gay young farmer on a bicycle, his machine being the only modern note in the day. For the rest, it was sheer Chaucer. Thus it was all the way to Clun — or nearly all the way — nine miles, until I asked myself, " What can Clun be like after this exodus ? Can there be a beast left within its walls ? " A question that was answered all in good time by the sight of numberless bullocks and sheep and lambs in all the meadows that encompass that quiet place. For in this part of Shropshke the animals of the field are as the sands of the seashore. The road lies in the valleys, one of which melts naturally into another all the way. First comes Aston-on-Clun, Clun being not only the quiet place, but also a mirthful, busy, inquisitive mill- stream with insinuating activities and a contented 71 Pasha and Harem purr, that keeps one company all the way here- after — alwaj^s busy and gay, and always talking to itself. Aston-on-Clun is notable for a good inn, with the unexpected style "The Kangaroo," kept, and kept genially and well, by a host and hostess who, when they walk out together (if ever they do), must strike dismay into the local culverts. Then the road climbs a hill, below which, on the left, all among the greenest water meadows, is Clunbury, which is little more than a great farmyard to which a church and cottages have been added — and oh, so quiet under the sun In some ways Clunbury is the quietest (always excepting Clungunford, which I did not see), because it is off the road, and few must be the travellers who find it. Clunton is right in the road ; but before we enter it I must tell you of an embarrassment. For suddenly at the side of the road appeared the whitest, uprightest, boldest chanticleer you ever saw, tame and friendly, and no sooner had I done admiring him and passed on, than there sprang from nowhere eleven hens, white and splendid as himself, and forthwith the whole harem, pasha and all, set out to follow me into Clunton. I hastened my steps ; they hastened theirs : it began to be ridiculous. To enter one of the quietest places under the sun 72 The Necessaries of Life pursued, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, by a crowd, not of children, but poultry, would be too absurd — apart altogether from a suggestion of theft. And so — much against my will, for there was a rare compliment here, a homage to which I am totally unused : to be followed with such affection by these dazzling aristocrats of the field — so I shoo'd them back, and passed through Clunton unattended, just the ordinary, insignifi- cant creature that I am, without retinue or the adoration of fowls ; and so on to the goal. Clun, I may say at once, has all the necessaries of life. It has a river, and a grey bridge, and a church half-way up the hill, and a castle high on its green mound, with noble stonework still remaining, and a hospital for old men, such as Anthony Trollope's Warden had in his care, each old man having to wear a cap and gown in Clun's few but important streets ; and several inns, of which, remembering good fortune at Aston-on- Clun, I made choice of " The Buffalo." And while the meal was preparing I sat on a seat in the sunny garden on a southern slope, and watched the smoke stealing up from the chimneys beyond the river below, and heard the sleepy sounds from the timber yard, and now and then a dog barked or a cock crew, and now and then someone crossed the bridge, not because he had 73 Clungunford Unvisited any business to do — oh dear, no! — but merely to get to the other side, where it might be M'armer ; and sitting there, I knew that the poet knew. It is the quietest place under the sun. Some day I shall go to Clun again. For the present I am the happier for having been there. " CI'mton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun, Are the quietest places Under the sun." But what of Clungunford ? It may be the best of all. Some day I shall know. II "Talking of bathing/' said the Captain, "I remember, years and years ago, when I was apprentice, we was lying at Sarawak. _. , ^. Every morning me and Fred Wynn — he was the other apprentice — we had to go a matter of a mile or so through the woods to fetch water. We carried the beaker Chinese fashion, slung to a pole acrost our shoulders. Well, the first morning, as we drew up to the spring — just a little basin of rock with the water rurming into it ; beautiful water it was, clear as 74 A Sarawak Memory crystal, and cold, cold as ice — as we drew up to the spring, there was a lot of Malay girls standing round. Girls maybe of fifteen or so — that's to say, about our own age — and fifteen's a woman in those hot parts. They'd been bathing, and one was in the water when we hove in sight, and as naked as my hand, all of 'em, except for a little shimmy thing. Fred was for stopping, but I said, * Come along, I mean to have a bathe.' Well, the girls stood by laughing among themselves, and just as I was — in a pair of trousers and a singlet — I jumped in, splash! Lord, it nearly cut me in two, it was that cold. You wouldn't believe how cold it was ! But we always went in every morning, naked if we were alone, or just as we wei'e if the girls were there. But, bless you, they wouldn't have minded any way. " After a time we got quite chummy ; used to run races with them. I thought I could run in those days : I was reckoned pretty fast. But, bless you, those girls 'Id gather up their little shimmy things round their waists with one hand and run like a good-fellow. Me and Fred wasn't nowhere. "And afterwards we'd sling their water jugs on the pole along with our beaker, and two or three girls would hang on each end, and we'd carry 'em along to just outside the village, kiss 75 In a Spanish Jail 'em good-bye all round, and then make all sail for the ship. " Ah ! " added the Captain, " they were good times." Ill " Once/' said the detective, " I had to go to Spain to bring back an embezzler. Extradited, he was. While I was there I looked into the jail. There was an Englishman there, a sailor. * Hullo, Jack,' I said, ' what are you here for?' ' Why,' he said, 'they give me three yearsfor blacking a policeman's eye.' 'No?' I said, ' Straight ! ' says he. ' I'd had a drop too much one night, and the swine interfei'ed, and I landed him a black eye. Nothing more, swelp me, and they give me three years for it.' 'Well, Jack,' I said, 'I'll see if a sovereign is any good (for I know what money can do out there), and if it is, I'll stand it.' I tried, but it wasn't no use. He was too good a man for them, I think. I went back the next day to tell him, and found him with a whip in his hand in charge of a gang of Spanish prisoners. He was lashing away all he knew. 'All right/ he said, when I told him; 'then I'll have to stay it out, I suppose.' And he went on lamming into his men. ' I reckon I'll get quit with this country by degrees,' he said." 76 A Staffordshire Cynic IV As a guide to old customs and old humours the domestic pottery of England is quite trustworthy, and I recommend anvone who visits The „ ^ Brighton, and has time to call, to look Beerometer. o ^ at the Willett Collection in the Museum there. Walking idly through it lately, I was attracted by a case entitled " Conviviality," given up to jugs and mugs with snatches of song upon them, drinking mottoes, and so forth, and a pretty sprinkling of topers and maltworms and tosspots. Among this welter of flaming noses and Imperial pints my eye was caught by the "Staffordshire Beerometer," which I went to the pains of copying. Here it is : — 50. Drunk as a Lord. 45. Drunk. 40. Disguised in Liquor. 35. As sober as a man ought to be. (Knows what he is about. ) 30. Drunk without, but sober within. 25. Fresh. (Worse for liquor. ) 20. Market fresh. (Has had a drop.) 10. Sober as a Judge. 5. Sober as I am now. (Have had 5 quarts among three of us.) o. Sober. 5. Had nothing since breakfast. 10. Had nothing to-day. 77 The Nature of a Lord At a time wlien there is talk of reforming the Upper Chamber^ it is pleasant to note the high- water (or should one say high-beer ?) mark of tlie drinker's ambition. Lords, say what you will, have their use. Of course it was, to a beer-eater (as the vivid modem slang has it) in a Stafford- shire pot-house the rosiest dream — to be drunk as a Lord. A liOrd (whatever he may be now, and my own impression is that Lords will be Lords always) was then something so uttedy splendid and ruthless : a gilt-edged creature who never walked, except from his horse or carriage into the best room of an inn, and back again ; who had his way with most men and all women ; who ate meat whenever he wanted if, and knew the King as a brother. That was a Lord. To be drunk like such a man as that ! At the other extreme should, but does not, come the Judge. The Apogee and the Nadir — the Lord and the Judge. But alas ! it is not so. The Staffordshire satirist knew better, and below that of the Judge are two degrees of sobriety — ''Sober as I am now" and "Sober." But the Beerometer is at least a hundred years old, and perhaps older. Times have changed. Judges to- day . . . I do not consider the Beerometer to be too intelligent. It misses scores of fine shades, the 78 *' Market-Merry " nuances of inebriation. But for the aiulience for whom it was intended — the Staffordshire beer- eaters — it served. After all, to know his audience is the first essential of the rural wit. Perhaps the state at 20 degrees is the most ingenious — " market fresh " — though I prefer the commoner teion (to me) of ''market merry." I have always thought " market merry " one of the happiest of countryside coinages. It says every thing, and says it so simply and gaily. I suppose that 30 degrees was what Terence Mulvaney had reached when he claimed to be properly sober in the head but "ondacently drunk about the legs." The condition at 35 degrees is very pleasantly stated ; but here I run risks of arousing the teetotalers, for the sentiment (with the mercury so high) cuts into their very existence. "As sober as a man ought to be" is their own motto — but at zero. To find it at 35 is the devil. I MET her in Antwerp, in a saloon where Eng- lish and Scotch captains, mates, and engineers could hear their own language and y on y drink their native beverages — an odd Bstronsss place for a noblewoman, especially one so old and white, spriglitly still, and with a 79 Baroness and Poet melancholy dignity that impressed me not a little, and also impressed some rather too high-spirited young people who would have made fun of her had she abated a jot of this birthright. It was two in the morning when she entered, with a large book under her arm and in her hand a bundle of tickets. The tickets were for a concert she was giving, and I bought one, although it was not till the next week, when I should be far away ; and then she told me she was a poet, and we sat down together at a little table, and she opened her book and read to me with fond maternal empressement a number of very indifferent sonnets copied there in her thin, angular, foreign hand. Interspersed among the sonnets were letters from the great men to whom she had sent them : all Frenchmen, and all very polite to Madame la Baronne ; and a few cuttings, chiefly from small local Belgian papers, referring to her concert platform triumphs. She told me her history, too, but I forget it ; and a few audacious stories, but I forget those too. Her, however, I shall not forget, with her white head and her wistful air of decayed gentility, and the occasional hint of impropriety in her tired eye, and her manuscript book of weak verse and in- sincere compliments. I remember her because she was exceptional, but also because she was 80 The Beaulieu River simple ; and I know I made her happy because when she shuffled out to carry her tickets to another saloon I kissed her finger-tips and gave her such a bow as never before or since have I called on my poor back to execute. VI It is in a sailing-boat that I would choose always to approach Beaulieu. It was thus the last time I saw her — the perfect day. „. We had come across from the Island River. under a fresh breeze, our ears filled with the rush of our progress, and the sibilant wake of the little dinghy tugging at its rope behind, and all the murmuring of sails and cordage amid light-hearted waves and wind. That in itself is good enough ; and then suddenly we had turned into the invisible Beaulieu River, as still as a pond, and had crept inland between fields and trees as silently as the flight of a distant bird save for the dinghy's contented chuckle. The sea for the great emotions — the high romance, the supreme carelessness ; but there is a minor romance about a river that in its way is equally fascinating. It is the difference between the high road and the footpath. If I had a yacht of my own, I would always be sailing up new F 8i Sailing up New Rivers rivers. To sail up a new river is almost more of ail enterprise than to set one's prow towards the illimitable ocean. To be so near humanity, yet apart from it ; to thread one's way in strange landscapes ; to pass through towns one has never seen before, perhaps not stopping at all ; to see men and women on the banks for the first and last time at once — old men, lovers, children. I am thinking now of the great rivers that are navigable far inland ; but the Beaulieu River, though very short and very lonely, has its romance too. It leads inland ! A house or so at the mouth, a fai*m a little higher on the left, are all its signs of life until one comes to Buckler's Hard ; the rest is meadows, trees, and birds. Birds all the way ; for on the first boom that marks the enti-ance channel a shag was perched motionless with extended wings, like a fowl in heraldry. At one bend we surprised a heron, who flapped off cumbrously, old enough and wise enough to have trusted us ; curlews were playing their plaintive reed instru- ments almost without cessation ; plovers ran along the banks ; and once a swan bustled five grey cygnets into safety as we came into sight. By its birds and its verdant flatness the Beaulieu River reminded me not a little of the Broads ; but the Broads have nothing like Buckler's Hard. 82 The Secret of Buckler's Hard Buckler's Hard stands alone — quite the most curious village or hamlet I ever saw. It is more like a short section of a Georgian High Street than anything else — cut out of some quiet old market town like Lymington, near by, and set bodily on the top of a bank in a field by the side of a serene river. It begins suddenly and ends suddenly, climbing the slope indeed to the sky ; the backs of the houses that form the two sides of the street looking upon illimitable greenery, the fronts facing each other across a roadway that is grass. With the exception of the first house on the right-hand side, all are about the same size; but this one is more imposing than the others, and has a doorway that might have come from Bedford Row. I puzzled some time over Buckler's Hard, where we disembarked and loitered, and then the secret was given me by a tall fisherman busy with his nets on the bank. There was once a dockyard here, and the houses were the homes of the shipwrights, and the imposing one at the end was that of the chief officer. Nelson's Agamemnon was built here, the fisherman told me . . . and as he spoke it was possible in the hot noon air to hear again the hammers and all the myriad noises of this noblest and bi'avest of industries. 83 The Beating of the Hoofs o >e> o T T AVING occasion the other day to post from Brecon to Abergavenny, I was particularly gratified to find that the landlady of the "Castle" had put at our disposal a carriage with rubber tyres and a pair of horses ; for I knew that we were thus destined to have the best of music all the way — the beating of the hoofs. And it was so. Silent or talking, thoughtful or observant of the mountains beneath their gi'ey hoods, I was ever conscious of the sound of eight loyal and urgent iron-shod feet — not so fiercely as one hears it in the background of one of the move- ments of RafTs " Leonore " symphony, but a steady, soothing undertone. It is not the least of the advantages of the rubber tyre, that this pleasant melody is so clarified. It is perhaps the best thing that Leopold, King of the Belgians and Despot of the Congo, has done. Before rubber tyres came in, one had to go to the horse 84 The Glory of Motion tramways for it ; and I remember how agreeable, in consequence, were the long rides up the Hampstead Road and the Brecknock Road that I took when first I came to London. But the hoofs on the Welsh macadam were better than this, for they were steady and sure ; there were none of those sudden and disconcerting mishaps that are so common on London's greasy stones — those agonised slippings of the iron shoe with a catastrophic clamour to which not even the oldest Londoner's ear ever quite becomes accustomed. I will not name the absence of hoof-beats in so many words as a count in the indictment of the motor-car, because the indictment of the motor- car must be getting to be very teasing reading ; but I will say that the car has certainly a very regrettable immunity from hoof-beats, and has nothing for the ear in their place. For the ear nothing : but I suppose that the increased speed that the petrol offers is, for most, sufficient compensation. Not, however, for me, who have an old-fashioned notion that for the high road, as opposed to a track or rails, the speed that horses may attain is speed enough. The glory of motion as celebrated by De Quincey is as much of that glory as most of us sinners are entitled to. I have an uneasy feeling that I have not earned the right to dash along at twenty-five to thirty-five 85 The Speed of Horses miles an hour, — that we ought not to go faster than the horse, — although I should be puzzled to say exactly what it was I had left undone that would qualify me lo do so. But the feeling is there, none the less, and it is none the weaker for being vague. What I sometimes wonder is, would De Quincey, were he able to sit beside Mr. Jarrott, or that terrible Belgian, Jenatzy, have an increased sense of speed, or would he still pin his faith to horses to convey most pro- foundly the impression of velocitous travel ? Because it is not, of course, always the fastest thing that most suggests fastness. A moderately hasty omnibus, for example, rolling down White- hall, would seem to be moving with a greater impetus than the hansom that overtook it : and I can conceive it possible that a runaway stage coach, going at only fifteen miles an hour, might have a far more impressive onset than a motor-car going at forty miles an hour, under perfect control. If so, that would justify De Quincey. But the comparison would be fair only if the observer were horse-blind. It would be the horse that would really convey the impression of speed ; not the speed itself. The speed of a motor-car, even at forty miles an hour, one would not notice very vividly unless one were in its wind, so to 86 The Noblest Animal speak ; but the speed of four horses phmging along, out of control, with a coach of people behind them, would seem to be terrific, because the eye would be trebly fed ; fed with the actual quickness of the vehicle, so much quicker than usual ; fed with the alarm of the passengers ; but most of all fed with the fury and appalling madness of energy of the animals themselves, all so frantic and undisciplined. I have not seen many runaway horses, but all that I have seen filled me with a tightening alarm that I can still recall with the utmost vividness. I doubt if a sculptor or painter, challenged to represent the most sublimely terrifying thing that human beings can meet, could do better than to mould or depict a frenzied horse. I believe that the horse is not only the noblest animal we know, but in its rage the most terrible. It is customary to say that the lion is the noblest creature, but the lion, for all his grandeur, has a furtive look ; and the tiger even more so ; while the elephant, for all his size, has just that touch of the grotesque which is fatal. But the horse is beautiful, and noble too. And it is all to his advantage as a symbol of terror that he is normally the kindly friend of man, in perfect subjection, and that his frenzy is an aberration. The contrast intensifies the emotion. 87 The Incomplete Philippian I should, however, be conveying a very false impression if these remarks upon the noble animal led anyone to suppose that I am either a horse- man or even comfortable in a horse's presence. Quite the reverse. I am one to whom the horse is an unknown and perilous quantity. I have for horses and dogs an affection that most people seem to keep for their fellow-men ; but although with dogs I am at home, I am totally at a loss to know how to deal with the larger creature. A horse's eye disquiets me : it has an expression of alarm that may at any moment be translated into action. I like to know where an animal is looking, and these bright, startled, liquid con- vexities never tell me. I have been on a horse's back, it is true. 1 once hired a horse and rode it over the South Downs for a fortnight ; but I never feel that there is true raj)port between a horse and myself. I began too late. To understand horses and be understood by horses, one must be brought up with them. But for the great centaurs — the giants of the saddle — no one can have more admiration than I : a little, perhaps, because they are so foreign, almost so astral, a people. I don't mean jockeys, who are mere riding auto- mata without personalities ; I mean the great hunting men with the noble and resonant names, The Great Centaurs — and of all of whom " characteristic anecdotes " (brave words ! ) are told, — the men celebrated by the glowing pen of "Nimrod " : Tom Assheton- Smith, and Hugo Meynell, and Sir Bellingham Graham, and Tom Sebright, and Mr. Osbaldeston, and Jack Musters, and John Mytton, and John Warde of Squerries. When one reads the lives of the ordinary great men — statesmen, poets, divines, painters, and so forth — one can to a considerable extent put oneself in their place : the life described, although carried out to a high power, is still more or less one's own, is recognisable. But to read "Nimrod's" generous and spirited pages — to read of these mighty and wonderful horsemen — is (with me) to be transported to a kind of fairyland to which I am never likely really to penetrate, and where, if I did, I should be an ahen and ashamed. That is why I think " Nimrod " one of the greatest of writers — because he takes me into an unattain- able world and keeps me enchanted. "When Jack Shirley was whipper-in to Mr. Smith, he was riding an old horse called Gadsby (not much the better for having been many years ridden by his master) over one of the worst fields in Leicestershire for a blown horse — between Tilton and Somerby — abounding with large ant- hills and deep, holding furrows. The old horse was going along at a good slapping pace, with 89 Captain Bridges his head quite loose, and downhill at the time, whilst Jack was in the act of putting a lash to his whip, having a large open clasp knife between his leelh at the time I " That is the kind of thing that " Nirarod " tells, and what could be more different from the ordinary routine of a literary man ! Or take Captain Bridges of the Hambledon Hunt :— " Being out one day with the foxhounds, he saw two gentlemen parleying with a farmer in a gateway, who refused to let them pass through it. The Captain rode up to them, and asked what was the matter. ' Why,' said one of the gentle- men, ' this farmer says he will murder the first man who attempts to go into his field.' ' Does he ? ' said the Captain ; ' then here goes, life for life,' and immediately charged him. The fellow aimed a desperate blow at his head with a very heavy stick, which, in spite of the velvet cap, would have felled him to the ground, if he had not had the good fortune to have avoided it ; when, taking to his heels, the coward fled, with the Captain after him, and absolutely crept into a large covered drain to avoid him. ' Who- whoop ! ' said the Captain, 'I've run him to ground, by G-d ! '" *'Nimrod" tells us, later, in proof of the Captain's humour, that the last time he saw him out he told him he had been severely attacked by gout 90 John Mytton in the early morning, but, " deteriTiined to hunt," he had taken two strong calomel pills and sixty drops of colchicum ; on the top of this he had put a glass of hot gin and water on the road to covert, " to keep things in their place." There's a captain for you ! It was of this gallant sportsman, by the way, that " Nimrod " uses the admirably descriptive ])hrase : " the nightingale had oftener heard him than he had the nightingale." A tired journalist, worn with town, looking out for a hero, an exemplar — could he do better than choose Captain Bridges ? Yet how impos- sible ! But of the harum-scarum hunting man Mytton is the blazing example. Even less like the daily routine of a journalist and literary hack was the career of this inspired rake-hell, who thought so little of money that he could be traced in his morning walks by dropped bundles of banknotes ; who fought dogs with his teeth, on equal terms, and won ; who drank six bottles of port daily, the first while shaving ; who spent £10,000 in getting into Parliament, and occupied his seat only half vin hour ; who consented to go to Oxford only on /ondition that he was never asked to open a book ; who jumped toll-gates in his gig ; who owned and hunted two packs, and once came in at the death, after many hours' riding, with three broken ribs ; 9X English Wild Oats who set a spring trap for his chaplain one Sunday morning, and, having caught him, thought the frolic amply atoned for by a bottle of Madeira ; who thrashed all who offended him, and afterwards gave them a guinea ; and who, when some kind of compromise was offered him by his lawyer which would save an estate from the hammer and produce him an income of £6000 a year, remarked, " I wouldn't give a damn to live on £6000 a year." Surely if unlikelihood of imitation is, a measure of admiration (as it is), here is a hero indeed for a quill-driver who must keep office hours ! Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by the life of John Mytton, although there is no real pleasure to be taken in it. The spectacle of the riotous spendthrift, the man whose only enemy is himself, as we say, is melan- choly enough, however we consider it. Why not, then, leave poor My tton's ghost unvexed .'' Because, I would say, he was great. In his way he was among the giants. England has produced many madcaps, many wastrels of genius : to go the pace recklessly, to sow wild oats, seeming to be more easy with our youth than with those of any nation, the result probably of security and wealth and the absence of that enforced military service which reminds the young Continental so forcibly that he 92 A Furious Career is but a cog in a great machine, together with a certain tendency in the national character (observed once very acutely by FalstafF) to overdo our amusements. It is not so long since Mytton died : 1834 — the same year in which died Charles Lamb. He was bom in the year that saw Lamb contributing poems to Coleridge's first volume, 1796"^ and it is not uninteresting to reflect how different were the two lives that were simultaneously to pass in London and at Halston, Mytton's home in Shrop- shire. Mytton's father died when his son was two, and probably the boy's ruin was a result, for his mother was fond to folly, and no one opposed his wUl. He -went to Westminster and Harrow, being expelled from both, and came of age to £60,000 in ready money and an income of £10,000. For a short time he was a cornet in the 7th Hussars, but on his majority he resigned, and took to country pursuits. It was in 1819 that he brought himself to sit in Ps^rliament for half an hour ; in 1820 came the dissolution, and he legislated no more. He married twice — his first wife died, and his second left him. His hounds, his racehorses, his cellars, his coverts, and his friends all did their work, and by 1830 he was a debtor in hiding in Calais. In 1834 he was dead of delirium tremens in the Kmg's Bench Prison. He was buried in 93 "Nimrod's" Tribute the private chapel of his old home, and his funeral was attended by half Shropshire, for the country- people idolised him. His life was written by his friend " Nimrod/' who also had come upon disaster, although not so luridly, and was also a refugee at Calais. It is a curious, warm-hearted, tolerant book, unique in the language — the kindest biography that a rake-hell ever had, and a wonderful memorial of the three-bottle days that are past. Now and then the gallant '' Nimrod " sweats something very like blood in his efforts to palliate his friend's enormities, but he almost succeeds. Mytton, looked at from one point of view, was just a criminal detrimental, wickedly selfish, shamelessly wasteful. That is true enough. But he rose to such heights in this wastefulness, and he gave himself to folly with such generous abandon, that he compels admiration. His follies, indeed, were (as often happens) largely runaway virtues. Bravery in the haiids of a young fool quickly becomes recklessness ; generosity turns to extravagance ; conviviality degenerates into drunkenness. Mytton had none of the petty vices, the dirty little mean self-protective thoughts that seem to be consistent with the highest reputations. He was open and without arriere pensie. Having well thrashed an opponent, 94 Aiken's Aquatints he gave him (as I have said) a guinea. With nioi'e judgment he would have been a great country gentleman. Instead, he is perhaps the biggest madcap fool in English history. He was certainly the only one whose life was published with aquatints by Aiken and Rawlins. Those aquatints — how well I remember them! I saw the book first — where, I forget now — when I was quite a child, and some of the pictures burned their way into my memory. John Mytton returning from Doncaster races m a chaise with the windows open — I should remember that nightpiece for ever, even if in counting his winnings he was not amused to see the wind catch the banknotes and whirl them into the void. John Mytton riding his bear into the drawing- room, to the consternation of his guests. Who that first saw that picture in childhood could ever forget it? Mytton was very amusing with this bear, and once, after making George Underbill, the horse-dealer, exceedingly drunk, he put him to bed with it and two bulldogs. (He had an inexhaustibly pretty fancy.) John Mytton forcing the leader of his tandem to jump a gate, but being foiled by the wheeler. John Mytton shooting ducks on the ice under the moon, crawlmg after them in nothing but his night-shirt, gun in hand. John Mytton setting 95 '* Never upset in a Gig ? " this same night-shirt, or another, on fire to cure the hiccoughs. And lastly, the spirited picture of the famous incident of the guest and the gig, by which, in many persons' minds, Mytton lives. " Was you ever much hurt of being upset in a gig ? " asks the genial John of a friend whom he is driving in one of those vehicles. *'No, thank God," says the unsuspecting man, forgetting with whom he had to deal, " for I never was upset in one." " What," replied Mytton, " never upset in a gig ? What a damned slow fellow you must have been all your life ! " and, " running his near wheel up the bank, over they both went." The story contains John Mytton's greatness. The superb foolhardiness of it ; the excellent bo?ihomie of it ; the swiftness of the catastrophe, impulse and action being one ; the recklessness not only of his own life, but his friend's, for the prosperity of the joke : — these would be impossible to a small man. Had Mytton been a soldier, with such a disre- gard of danger and rapidity of thought and deed, his monument might be at this moment in St. Paul's Cathedral and his statue in Trafalgar Square — and he no different in character. But fate designed that he should squander his gifts and do no one the faintest service. More, it was admitted 96 A Nut for Optimists by his biographer that Mytton was drunk for seven years on end, a term extended to twelve years by another witness. There is here a waste of power and a perversion of fine, generous instincts that I leave to Dr. Paugloss and other apologists for this universe to explain away. 97 Our Gardeners and Luck of the Woods T SAY "our gardeners/' but it is a misnomer. I believe that, strictly speaking, we have never had a gardener at all. We have had only substitutes, understudies, " supplies." A gardener, I am told, before you can rightly call him " your gardener," must be in your service only ; whereas our gardeners have been independent men whom gold has for a while bribed into spending a few of their hours each week on our soil, and that only irregularly, and who have instantly thrown us over when anything better offered. However, let it pass. Our gardeners they shall be called. We have had so many that I forget their order ; but let us begin with Banks. Banks was an old, cheery man with a short white beard — a widower, who lived all alone in a tiny cottage that might have been inhabited by a witch in a fairy tale. Once T went to see him there — when 98 The Verb "to Brish " he was ill with jaiinders (as he called them), and found him in bed as yellow as a dandelion. You have no idea how funny an old yellow gardener in bed can look. Banks was a good workman, and a very kindly personage to have about the place, and he would have become our real gardener, I think, had it not been for an act of folly on his own part which removed him from our neighbourhood for ever. His exit was dramatic, for one morning he was sent into the village to buy some cord, and he was not heard of again for six weeks, and then he was in a distant town, with his only son, and was not in his right mind. And when the truth came out the case was harder than ever. To think that Cupid should have had an eye to that odd little old man ! But he had, and the odd little old man fell — rather heavily — and he was seen no more. By Heaven's mercy the baby died. That was the end of Banks, and no more did he brighten our garden with his meri-y old face and delight our ears with his odd words, of which the verb " to brish " was by no means the last — to brish being something midway between really cutting a hedge and just looking at it. After Banks came, I think, Rateman — or was it Thrupp ? No, Rateman. Rateman was younger and more energetic than Banks, but not so good. 99 Rateman and Banks He dashed at his work^ and made vast superficial differences to the place ; but it was not thorough work. He never trenched two spits deep in his life, and never will ; whereas Banks would not have slept if he had done less where it was needed. Rateman wanted to cut down trees and move mountains, while Banks was content to help Nature do her gentle, gradual will. Another difference between Rateman and Banks was that whereas Banks always had money, Rateman always wanted it. I have borrowed money from Banks, but Rateman still owes me two shillings. It was immediately after acquiring that sum that he left. Peters came next. Peters was by profession a poacher, but he affected gardening as a blind to the police. He yawned most of the day from want of sleep, and yet worked too, and not at all badly. Peters had the artistic temperament, and our garden, in which are no vegetables — nothing but flowers and shrubs and odd levels and much stonework — pleased him and drew out his fancy. We lost Peters only because the iron hand of circumstances caused him to move. Then came our greatest failure — a decrepit old man with the horrible name of Crossbones. Those other men had all done something, even if it were not what we wanted done : but Crossbones Crossbones and Thrupp did nothing but patient and ineffectual hoeing. He had a stock phrase with which to meet all suggestions : " I've never done that in gennle- men's places/' his illusion being that he had spent a protracted lifetime as the honoured gardener of this and that aristocrat. For all I know to the contrary, he may have done so ; but he gave us none of the benefit of his career. As the leisurely disturber of the topmost soil of a "gennleman's place" he was perfection; but beyond that he was useless. He quickly went. Thrupp, who succeeded, plunged us into difHculties, as you will see. Thrupp was a strong man of powerful will, with a contempt for his employers. No matter what he was told, he did only what he thought right. For he looked upon himself as one who could make no mistake, and his standard was the wonderful plot of land behind his own cottage, of whose fruitfulness and docility he was never tired of telling us. There was nothing this garden did not bring forth — its soil was everything it should be, short of auriferous. Thrupp took no stock in flowers, and at last, by dangling before our eyes a promise of some such fecundity as his own being persuaded by his gifted hands to grace a piece of our land, he induced us to allow him to turn half the orchard into a vegetable patch. But nothing was A Terrified Employer ever grown there but crowsfoot — plenty of it — and nettles that sting most infernally when one goes to pick up walnuts and apples. I knew in my heart that this would be so ; but Thrupp was master. How he came to leave us we have no real knowledge ; but I am sure he never received notice, because I am sure we should never have had the courage to give it — having no telephone. But vanish he did, and very characteristically ; and since we did not know whether he had left or not, and as we were terrified by what might happen if we engaged another man and Thrupp was only resting, we were for several weeks without any help at all. I sent out scouts to learn what he was doing, but could get no real information. They could not definitely report that he was in another situation. I wrote him postcards, but he did not answer, I would have called but for want of courage and his eye. . . . That cold eye. . . . I forget who came next, but there were several stop-gaps before Coward appeared, one of whom, I remember, advised me to pay a shilling or two more the next time I bought a spade ; and another carefully pulled up some scores of cherished seedlings under the impression tJiat they were weeds. And then the millennium dawned ; for, taking everything into consideration. Coward (who 1 02 The Pen runs away is still with us) is the most successful man we liave Iiadj for he w'orks well, obeys iustructionSj dis- tinguishes between weeds and seedlings, is willing to do anything else if need be, has no dignity to incommode him, and does not talk unless he is spoken to. Also he is without theories, and breeds rather good ducks. His drawback is a fondness for golf (he is a local champion), which deprives us of his services far too often. When he is most wanted here, he is on the links. One peculiarity of Coward's is perhaps worth mentioning. Although veiy strong, he has the thinnest arms I ever saw on anyone but a premiere danseuse — thinner even than hers, maybe, for I sus- pect that much of the thinness of Genee's arms, for example, is illusory, proceeding from the con- trast between them and her exceedingly sturdy legs. Such legs ! Have you ever seen Genee ? Half fairy, half kitten, and wholly adorable. But we are talking about gardeners. Coward's arms, as 1 say, for all his power, are thin as hop-poles. But his most interesting characteristic is his wayside fortune — he has what I will call the luck of the woods. If anything curious or untoward is afoot. Coward is there ; if raroe aves are seen by anyone, the eyes are Coward's. The other Sunday, for example, I had an appointment with him ; and as it was Sunday 103 The Woodcock afternoon, he had on his best clothes, and 1 noticed that not only his light grey suit, but also his dark grey overcoat, were those which I had given him a few months ago, and once again I wondered why one can ever be so foolish as to give away such valuable and irreplaceable things as old clothes. Well, we talked for some time — an hour — on the matter in hand, and then he turned to go (he lives two miles away, across the common), but swinging round again, he remarked casually, " I picked up a woodcock as I came along." " Yes," I said tentatively, expecting that he was proposing to hand it to me as an offering to the table, and wondering what it had died of. " Rather a good one," he added, and, throwing open his coat — my coat — revealed the head and three inches of bill of a large woodcock pro- truding from an inside pocket : to my astonishment intensely alive. Its sparkling black eyes looked at me with a steady inquisitiveness, but no fear. Coward pulled it forth, quite naturally and easily, as if live woodcocks were his normal cargo, and began to stroke its head as affectionately and gently as if the soul of his grandam had really taken up its habitation therein ; and the bird accepted the attention quietly and, to all appearance, happily. I was then told that it had a broken wing ; was 104 A Birthright probably shot the day before ; and was now on its way to the keeper's. The bird was then pat back into the pocket — my pocket — again, and its captor walked off, leaving me all amused perplexity. I was not only perplexed and amused ; I was sad too. I had a sense of failure. For a large part of the force of this anecdote is that that overcoat was no longer mine. So long as I owned it and wore it, nothing ever got into its pockets but such dull and normal articles as pipes and pouches and gloves. But no sooner had I given it away than one of the shyest and strongest of British birds found its way there quite naturally. The reason is, of course, not only that the coat had ceased to be mine, but that I had given it to a man eminent among those who have the luck of the woods. Such luck cannot be acquired ; you have it or you have it not, like the ars poetica or a caul. No matter how much you want it, you cannot get it. A man who has it not may spend his whole life in the country and never even come across a blind- worm ; a man who has it may live all his life in Bloomsbury and one day visiting Epping Forest find a cuckoo's egg in a robin's nest. I don't say I am totally without it, because 105 Shadow without Substance 1 was once with a man who has it strongly, and saw a pigeon attacked in mid-air by a hen-harrier and killed ; and it fell near us, and turned out to be a carrier pigeon with a message under its wing and a registered number, which led to an interesting cori'espondence. This shows that I am not wholly destitute of such luck, because if I were I should not have been walking with that man. But I do not possess more than a glimmering, although I once found a black snake wriggling across Great Portland Street at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night, and killed it with a ground ash ; and although one Sunday morning three years ago I was confronted suddenly by a young owl on a juniper bush, and it allowed me to take it in my arms. But these experiences are exceptions, proving no rule. The man who has the luck of the woods always has it, like my gardener friend, to whom gravitate, by a kind of natural law, all creatures in distress, and before whose eyes are unfolded the most inter- esting dramas that the English fauna can play. Such men have the key of the countryside. As I say, we had been talking for an hour before he showed me his treasure-trove. Here came out the difference between us — between a man who has the luck of the woods and a man who has it not ; because, had I chanced on 1 06 The Enviable Men a woodcock with a broken wing^ I should in the first place never have thought of packing it in my pocket, and, in the second place, it would have been the first thing I should have spoken of on meeting an acquaintance. Those who possess the luck of the woods, the key of the countryside, are very enviable. To me they are more enviable than any other men — more enviable even than conjurers. lol Conjurer and Confederate <> -o ^ <^ -£>o <:> . o Mr. Launcelot Wyke Pilling, of " The Drijads," Worthing, to Dr. W. Porter Roddy, Mereham, Norfolk Dear Dr. Roddy, — I am just collecting together in one volume all my fugitive poetry of the past nine years^ since the publication of my Death of Ham, a7id other Poems, and it would give me great pleasure to dedicate the book to you, not only as some recognition of your industry as an antiquary, but also as an acknowledgment of the great skill which you displayed during my long and very severe illness last summer, from which I am now happily recovered, save for an increased tendency to take cold. — Believe me, dear Doctor, yours veiy truly, Launcelot Wyke Pilling 149 Life's Little Difficulties Dr, Roddy to Mr. Pilling My dear Mr. Pilling, — Your letter, with its flattering offer, does me too much honour. The archaeologist quickly gets into the habit of not looking for recognition or reward. Perhaps, as antiquity has worked for him, it is only right that he should work for posterity. Hence, although such coups as I may have brought off in the fields of archaeology and folk-lore have been commemo- rated in the local press and in the minutes of our Society, the wider world knows almost nothing of me. The dedication page of your volume will be the first intimation cf my name and career to a large portion of the English-speaking community. I thank you very heartily for your courtesy. Perhaps you will let me have a notion of the form which the dedication will take. As for your tendency to catch cold, of which I am very sorry to hear, I would recommend the adoption of an abdominal belt, often a sure precautionary measure. — Believe me, my dear Sir, youi's very truly, W. Porter Roddy 150 The Dedication III Mr. Pilling to Dr. Roddy Dear Dr. Roddy^ — It gratifies me extremely to find that you will allow your name to honour my poor bantling. The dedication will run thus : — To W. Porter Roddy, M.D, the modern Galen to whom the author owes his life, I'ecently jeopardised on a visit to the East Coast by a severe attack of rheumatoid arthritis, and the modern Old- buck to whose imaginative labour and indefatigable researches into the storied past the townspeople of Mereham and the in- habitants of East Norfolk generally owe so much, this volume is, with respect and admiration, dedicated. I think that that expresses the case very clearly and, if I may say so, with a pleasant allu- siveness, and I feel sure thrt you will agree with me. I am ordering an abdominal belt. — Believe me, dear Doctor, yours very truly, Launcelot VVyke Pilling P.S. — I re-open this to say that I have suddenly become the victim of a most curious and, 151 Life's Little Difficulties to me, alarming singing in the ears, so loud that I can hardly hear anything that is going on. L. W. P. Dr. Roddy to Mr. Pilling Dear Mr. Pilling, — The wording of the dedi- cation is very flattering, and I am so much honoured by it that I hesitate to utter a syllable of criticism ; but since you have been so kind I am emboldened to suggest that a more suitable predecessor than Oldhuck might be found. For two reasons : (l) he was a character not in real life but in fiction, in a novel by Sir Walter Scott, and Galen being a real man I would suggest, with all deference, that whatever antiquary you choose should be real too ; and (2) if by any typographical disaster, such as are, unhappily, only too frequent in our local press, a space were to intervene between the first and second syllables of his name, the reference to me would become instantly not respectful as you so kindly desire, but grotesque. I trust I make myself clear. I would suggest the substitute of some such name as Aubrey or Leland. The singing in the ears has probably passed away by this time ; but if it has not I should 152 The Dedication take a tonic. Weston's Syrup might be useful, and it is easily obtained of any chemist. — Believe me, yours veiy truly, W. Pouter Roddy Mr. Pilling to Dr. Roddy Dear Dr. Roddy, — I am sorry that you take exception to my dedication, which was, I assure you, not idly thrown off, but represents the work of some hours of thought. Your objection to Oldbuck illustrates once again the impossibility of reconciling science with poetry. I, a poet, wishing my dedication to be in keeping with my book, choose deliberately a figure of the imagina- tion from the greatest of all modern novelists (whom you do not, I fear, sufficiently esteem). You, being a man of science, require me to sub- stitute the name of some fusty old bookworm and tombstone -scraper from real life. Few people give way to criticism so readily as I, but in this case I really must be firm. The singing in the head, which you treat so lightly, still continues to cause me the gravest concern. I have taken two doses of the syrup without any relief. — Believe me, yours truly, Launcelot Wyke Pilling 153 Life's Little Difficulties VI Dr. Roddy to Mr. Pilling Dear Mr. Pilling, — I am sorry that we cannot see eye to eye in this matter, I have taken the liberty of submitting your dedication to several of my friends, including the Vicar, an exception- ally gifted man, and the Curator of the Museum, whose memoir on bees is a standard work, and all agree with me that a suggestion of not pre- cisely frivolity but want of the highest seriousness is imparted by the reference to Jonathan Oldbuck. The Vicar is also of opinion that it is, perhaps, understating the case to limit my reputation, as you do, to East Norfolk, since I have several times contributed to Notes and Queries. I have, however, done with criticism, and beg to repeat my thanks to you for your kindness. A tonic requires time to do its work. Two doses could not effect ;iny material improvement. The singing is probably over by now. — Believe me, yours very truly, W. Porter Roddy VII Mr. Pilling to Dr. Roddy Dear Dr. Roddy, — I am horrified to learn that you have committed the solecism — the unpardon- The Dedication able solecism — of showing my dedication to strangers. Were you more conversant with the laws, written or unwritten, of authorsliip, you would know that this is never done : that every- thlBg is avoided that can take the fine edge of novelty from a new book. The incident has completely disheartened me, and I am quite incapable of attending any further to the dedi- cation. To add to it all, the singing in my ears increases. — Believe me, yours faithfully, LaUNCELOT WyKE PiLLING VIII Dr. Roddy to Mr. Pilling Dear Mr. Pilling, — I am extremely sorry; but my friends read the dedication in strictest confidence, and I was quite unaware that I was oflPending. Perhaps the matter had better drop altogether. You will have, I am sure, no diffi- culty in finding a worthier and less critical object to whom to offer your volume. — Believe me, yours very truly, W. Porter Roddy »5S Life's Little Difficulties Mr. Pilling to the Bishop of Caster My Lord, — I am just collecting together in one volume all my fugitive poetry of the past nine years, — since, in fact, the publication of my Death of Ham, and other Poems, — and it would give me great pleasure and confer a high dis- tinction upon the book, if I might be permitted to dedicate it to you, not only to mark your interest in poetry, but also from personal gratitude for benefits received from your Lenten sermons last year, which I attended with my wife, and which we still vividly remember. — Believe me, my Lord, your obedient servant, Launcelot Wyke Pilling The Rev. Cyril Blood {Private Secretaiy to the Bishop of Castei-) to Mr. Pilling Dear Sir, — I am instructed by the Bishop to say that he will be pleased to accept the dedi- cation to which you refer; but that if you pro- pose to make it a lengthy one he must insist on seeing a proof. — I am, yours faithfully, Cyril Blood 156 The Appointment Mr. Adrian Spilling, of the Education Office, to Miss Mela Bland (By hand. " Wait reply ") My DEAR Girl, — What has happened ? I waited for you from five minutes to three until twenty past four, when I had to go in order to show up in Whitehall for a little while. Where can you have been? It is not as if I had so much time to spare that it can be frittered away like this. Surely I wrote clearly enough — " Under the clock, Victoria, at three." I distinctly remember writing these words. Please let me have a line at any rate to say you are all right. — Yours always, A. »57 Life's Little Difficulties Miss Mela Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling (Bj/ hand. " Wait reply ") My dear Adrian, — Do send me a word to say you are well, and that it was only some horrid office business that kept you. I am so nervous about you, I waited as you told me under the clock at Victoria, from five minutes past three (I could not possibly get there before) until four, and then I gave it up and went to Mrs. Legge's to tea, as I was compelled to do. Unless you had come and gone before I got there, I cannot have missed you, for I watched everybody that entered the station. These broken appointments are terribly wearing. I am tired out this evening, and quite unfit to dine at the Sergisons, where they always talk about Velasquez and show you sprigs of the true poet's laurel. — Ever yours, M. Miss Meta Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling {By hand. Answer to No. 1) Dear Adrian, — I haven't the slightest idea what your letter means. I repeat that T waited under the clock at Victoria from five minutes 158 The Appointment past three until four. If you also were there you were invisible. I am relieved to find you are all right. — Yours, M. IV Mr. Adrian Spilling to Miss Meta Bland {By hand. Answer to No. 2) Dear Meta, — It is inexplicable to me. I was certainly there, and as certainly you were not ; and another afternoon has been lost. These things I simply cannot view with composure. Life is too short. I will let you know about Thursday as soon as I can, but my Chief seems to be inclined to resent my long ab- sence to day, and I shall have to be a little careful, — Yours, A. P.S. — It has just occuiTed to me that you may have been waiting at the London and Brighton part of the station. That, of course, would explain it, although how you could imagine me to mean that I camiot think. Miss Meta Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling Dear Adrian, — I have only just learned that there are two stations at Victoria. Considering 159 Life's Little Difficulties how often I have been to Brighton lately, you surely might have been more explicit and said quite plainly that it was the other that you meant. It is all very foolish and disappointing. I should like to forget it. — Yours, M. VI Mr. Adrian Spilling to Miss Meta Bland ' Dear Meta, — I should like to forget it too ; but what you say simply bowls me out. I always looked upon you as one of the few women who have any intelligence. How you can say you did not know there was another Victoria passes my knowledge, when it was from there that we went on that awful visit to your aunt at Favershara. However, I shall know better next time. — Yours, A. VII Miss Meta Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling Dear Adrian, — I thought we went to Favers- ham from Charing Cross ; but anyway I don't see why you are so bitter about poor Aunt Adelaide. I am sure she was very kind to you, and even let you smoke in the house, which no one was ever allowed to do before. It seems to me that since 1 60 The Appointment you knew all about there being two Victoria Stations you might have walked over to the other one to see if I was there. — Yours, M. VIII Mr. Adrian Spilling lo Miss Mela Bland Dear Meta, — I don't understand you at all about your aunt. All the time we were there you were scheming to be out of doors, and I still remember your sigh of relief when the train started on the Monday morning ; but now you take a directly opposite view, I suppose women are like this. As to coming over to the Brighton side to see if you were there, I never dreamed you could be so foolish as to make the mistake, and besides, if I had left my post I might have missed you. But do let us drop this wretched subject. I am very sorry to say that I can't possibly take you to hear Kreisler on Friday as we had planned. My Chief has asked me to dinner, and it ampunts to a command. But I could come afterwards and take you home. — Yours, A. i6i Life's Little Difficulties IX Miss Meta Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling Deab Adrian, — It doesn't in the least matter about Kreisler, as Mr. Cumnor-Hall, who was here this evening when your note came, is going to take us. Please don't trouble to leave your party in order to fetch me home, as Mr. Cumnor-Hall has asked us to have supper after- wards. He is always so generous about things like that. — Yours, M. Mr. Adrian Spilling to Miss Meta Bland Dear Meta, — Of course you must do as you wish about Cumnor-Hall. I shall certainly not come to fetch you, as he is not the kind of man that I care about. Your sneer about my want of generosity is the cruellest thing I ever re- member anyone saying to me. When one has only £300 a year in a Government office, and a very small private income, supper parties at the Savoy are not easy things. If you want luxuries like that it is a pity you ever made me love you. — Yours, A 162 The Appointment XI Miss Meta Bland to Mr. Adrian Spilling Dear Adrian, — You are most unkind and unfair. You know I did not mean to suggest that you were ungenerous. I tliink of you as the most generous man I know. And you ought to know that the last thing I should ever do would be to sneer at you. I don't sneer at anyone, least of all at you. But that horrid Victoria Station affair seems to have made us both ready to misunderstand each other. Do let us have all Saturday afternoon somewhere and forget this stupid, bad-tempered week. — Ever yours, M. XII Mr. Adrian Spilling to Miss Mela Bland (By hand^ My darling Meta, — We will go to Kew on Saturday afternoon. I will come for you at half- past two. I hope you will think this little piece of enamel rather sweet. I do. — Yours always, A. 163 VI The Testimonial Jahez Copley, of Copley's Stores, to the leading residents of Great Burley and neighbourhood (cyclostyle) The Missenden Testimonial Fund Dear Sir (or Madam), — I have the honour to inform you that our worthy Stationmaster Mr. Missenden J having received promotion, is leaving us very shortly for a higher sphere of activity, and some of his friends met together last night at the " King's Arms " to confer as to a testimonial to be presented to him. Greatly to my surprise, I was asked to undertake the duties of hon. secretary and hon. treasurei*, and it is in these capacities that I take the liberty of addressing you. The meeting decided to open a subscrip- 164 I'he Testimonial tion list for Mr. Missenden in the town and neighbourhood, and to present him with the proceeds and with an illuminated address. The following is the address that was drawn up — I may say by myself: — Presented to JAMES HENRY MISSENDEN BY THE GENTRY AND INHABITANTS OF GREAT BURLEY on the occasion of his departure from that Town, on the completion of nearly Eight ^'ears of honourable service as Station Master, to take up a post of increased responsibility at Clapham Junction — as a mark of their appreciation of his Courtesy and Efficiency during his period of office at Great Burley Terminus. This address will be engrossed in several colours and in gold, with appropriate borders and scroll- work (as in the illuminated texts in our bedrooms) by Miss Millie Feathers, at the school, who is very clever and artistic with her hands, and presented to Mr. Missenden, with the purse, at the " King's Anns " on a suitable evening. — Await- ing your reply, I am, dear Sir (or Madam), yours obediently, Jabez Copley Hon. Sec. and Treasurer of the Missenden Testimonial Fund 165 Life's Little Difficulties Added, in Mr. Copley's own hand, to a few of the letters P.S. — It is not my wish to intrude business, but I feel it would be wrong not to take this opportunity of informing you that I have just received a particularly advantageous line of pre- served fruits, which I can do at extraordinarily low terms. No time should be lost in ordering. Miss Mill to Mr. Jabez Copley Dear Mr. Copley, — I had no idea that the Stationmaster was going. How interesting to find that his name is Missenden ! It was the name of my mother's favourite cook. She came, I think from Esher, or it may have been Exeter. It is odd how long one may live without knowing the name of one's Stationmaster, although my niece tells me it has to be painted up some- where, like a licensed victualler's. I think I should like to try a box of the preserved fruit if it is really nice. — Yours truly, Lydia Mill i66 The Testimonial Sir Charles Transom's Secretary to Mr. Jahez Copley Dear Sir, — Sir Charles Transom directs me to present his compliments and to express his regret that he must decline to lend his support to the testimonial to the Great Burley Stationmaster. Sir Charles dislikes to see this kind of premium put upon duty, nor can he forget the want of sympathetic zeal and alacrity displayed by the Stationmaster in the autumn of 1898 in the matter of a lost portmanteau containing the manuscript of Sir Charles' monograjoh on the Transom family. — Believe me, yours faithfully, Vincent A. Lincoln The Vicar of Great Burley to Mr. Jahez Copley Dear Mr. Copley, — I am afraid I cannot associate myself very cordially with the terms of your testimonial to Mr. Missenden. Eight years is a very short period to signalise in this way, and I do not care for the part played by the " King's Arms." I am sorry to have to take this line ; but we must act as we believe. I 167 Life's Little Difficulties should be seriously vexed if you got up a testi- monial for me after so short a term of work. — I am, yours sincerely, Reginald Lowther Mr. Jabez Copley to the Vicar of Great Burley Reverend Sir, — I regret that you cannot give your valuable and esteemed support to the testimonial to Mr. Missenden, but I respect your motives. I should like to say in reply to your suggestion about a testimonial to yourself and my connection with it, that I should never, I hope, so far presume as to take the leading part in a movement of this kind for a gentleman like yourself. My rule in life is that station should keep to station, and I trust I shall never be so foolish as to depart from it. But although I should not presume to take a leading part in your testimonial, as you kindly suggest, I should, however, contribute to it with a whole heart. — Believe me, yours obediently, Jabez Copley Hon. Sec. and Treasurer of the Missenden Testimonial Fund i68 The Testimonial VI Mr. Aylmer Penistone to Mr. Jahez Copley Dear Mr. Copley, — I do not quite feel dis- posed to give anything to Missenden. You should draw up a different testimonial for those of us who travel third-class, omitting the word " courtesy." — I am, yours faithfully, Aylmer Penistone VII Mrs. Lyon Moiinteney to Mr. Jahez Copley Mrs. Mounteney is very pleased to see, from Mr. Copley's letter, that a spirit of frendliness and comradeship is abroad in Great Burley. Would that all English towns had the same generous feelings ! Not having used the railway for several years, owing to her poor health, Mrs. Mounteney does not feel that she could with propriety identify herself with so personal a testimonial, but she wishes it every success. Mrs. Mounteney does not cai'e for preserved fruit. VIII Mr. Murray Collier, L.R.C.P., to Mr. Jabez Copley Dear Mr. Copley, — A difficulty with regard to the boys' boxes, which occurs regularly at the 169 Life's Little Difficulties end of each term, and which brings out Mr. Missenden's native churlishness Hke a rash, makes it impossible for me to support your appeal. After what I have had to say and write to the Stationmaster it would seem pure pusillanimity to give him money and praise. May I, however, suggest the emendation of one small oversight in your otherwise tasteful address ? By no possible means can our little wayside station be described as a " terminus," which is a Latin word signifying the end, as I fancy your son Harold (whom we all find a very promising and attractive boy) would be able to tell you. — I am, yours sincerely, Murray Collier Mr. Jabez Coiiley to the leading residents of Great Burley and Neighbourhood (cyclostyle) The Missenden Testimonial Fund Dear Sir (or Madam), — I beg to inform you that at an influential and representative meeting held last evening at the " King's Arms," it was decided with much regret not to take any further steps with regai-d to the testimonial to Mr. Missenden, and to return to the several donors 170 The Testimonial the £4^ l7s. 6d. which the united efforts of myself and two of my assistants have been able to collect in the past month, minus an amount of one guinea to Miss Millie Feathers for work already done on the illuminated address, which cannot, we fear, owing to the peculiar nature of the wording and its reference to Clapham Junction, be adapted to suit any other person. If anything is now done to indicate to Mr. Missenden that Great Burley appreciates his services, which is very doubtful, it will be done by a few personal friends, at the " King's Arms." I may say here that I have decided under no conditions to ever again undertake the duties of Secretary or Treasurer of a Testimonial, whether hon. or even well paid. — Believe me, dear Sir (or MadaiTti), yours obediently, Jabez Copley P.S. — As I am now laying down for ever the pen of the testimonial promoter, I may return to my true vocation as a purveyor of high-class provisions by saying that I have received this morning a consignment of sardines of a new and reliable brand, which I can do at Ggd. the box. 171 VII The Box -i> -c?^ o • o -^^ Mrs. Smythe-Smith to Mrs. Clhby Dear Mrs. Clisby, — I wonder if you would care to use the enclosed box for the Mausoleum Theatre on Thursday week. We mtended to go ourselves, but my husband finds that he will have to travel North that day in connection with an important case. — With kind i*egards, I am, yoTu-s truly, Ruth Smythe-Smith Mrs. Clishy to Mrs. Henderson My dear Mrs. Henderson, — Would you and Mr. Henderson care to join us at the Mausoleum on Thursday week .'' We have a box for that night, and should be so glad if you would look 172 The Box in. Just ask for Mrs. Clisby's box. — With kind regards, I am, yours sincerely, Mabel Clisby M7S. Clisby to her sister, Mrs. Thorns My dear Sophy, — Our friends the Smythe- Smiths (he is the barrister) have sent us a box, which tliey are unfortunately prevented from using, for the Mausoleum on Thursday week. Will you and Henry join us ? We are also asking some nice people we met at Matlock in the summer — the Hendersons. Mr. Henderson is in an important position at Lloyd's, and his wife, who is very charming, is a cousin of Sir Wilson Arkstone, who made the Corve Tuimel. — Your loving M. Mrs, Thorns to Mrs. Clisby Dear Mabel, — We shall love to come to the theatre with you. But Aggie insists on coming too, and bringing Bertie Rawler with her. I am sure you won't mind, she has so few pleasures, and Bertie, who is always so considerate, can 173 Life's Little Difficulties stand at the back if we are at all crowded. He is quite like one of ourselves already, and I have no hesitation in asking him to do all kinds of little things like this. If only he could get some permanent and lucrative employment, we should be so happy. At present he is an agent for a new kind of combined fountain pen and office ruler, which he is trying very hard to introduce into the City, but without much success, I am afraid. — Your loving S. Mr*. Clishy to Mrs. Thorns My dear Sophy, — I am very son*y to have to disappoint you, but really I don't see how we can manage Mr. llawler on Thursday night. I am sure that eight will be plenty, and Frank, who is so impetuous, entirely without my knowledge has asked a Mr. Flack, an American over here on business, to whom he wishes to show some kindness, to join us. So that if Aggie comes, and I am so sorry to have forgotten to mention the dear girl when I wrote first, we shall be eight — four couples — without Mr. Rawler. — Your loving M '74 The Box VI Mrs. Thorns lo Mrs. Clishy Dear Mabkl, — It does not matter about liertie. We liave arranged that he shall go to the Uj)i)er Circle and come and see us between the acts. Do tell me a little more about Mr. Flack. What is his business.'' Some Americans can be very attractive. I suppose he has left his wife and family in America ? — Your loving S. Mrs. Clisby to Mrs. Thorns My dear Sophy, — If Mr. Rawler is coming to see us between the acts I think he ought to dress. Couldn't he get a seat in the Dress Circle .'' — Your loving M. VIII Mrs. Thorns to Mrs. Clisby Dear Mabel, — Of course Bertie will dress. Going to the theatre is no novelty for him. He was at school with two of Wilson Barrett's sons. You do not answer my question about Mr. Flack. I always like to know in advance something about the people I am going to meet. — Your loving S. 175 Life's Little Difficulties Mrs. Clisby to Mrs. Thorns {By haiid) My very dear Sophy, — A most unfortunate thing has happened. Chancing to be m the neighboui'hood this morning, Frank looked in at the theatre just to see in the plan where our box was, and perhaps mention to one of the officials that you and the Hendersons would be asking for it in the evening. To his horror he found that it was a top box, capable of holding four persons at the most, two of whom could not see the stage except by leaning over veiy uncom- fortably. It is unpardonable of Mrs. Smythe- Smith not to have told me. The question now is, What shall we do ? After thinking it over very carefully, I wonder if you would mind postponing your visit to the theatre for a while until there is a better play — the papers seem to think very little of the thing now on — and bringing Mr. Rawler to dinner on Sunday at half-past one. It is so very difficult for me to put off the Hendei'sons. I am so sorry to have to ask you to be so unselfish, but blood is thicker than water, isn't it ? — Your loving M. P,S. — Mr. Flack seems to be a man of means. 176 The Box He is connected with a new patent, and we are veiy glad to be able to do something to make his time in London less lonely. Frank in putting him off will make some other an*angement. X Mrs. llioms to Mrs. Clishy (By hand) Dear Mabel, — What a pity you did not find out how many the box would hold ! I had a feeling, as I mentioned to Henry quite at the first, that you were asking too many. Of course we should like to come to dinner on Sunday, and will do so with pleasure ; but I can't help thinking that the best thing to do now is for you to telegraph to the Hendersons that you are ill and have given the box away, and then to take just Aggie and Mr. Flack. The poor girl badly needs a little excitement, and it would be very unfortunate if Frank had to be discourteous to this young American. — Your loving S. XI Mrs. Clisby to Mrs. Thorns {By hand) Dear Sophy, — Before your reply came I had written to the Hendersons putting them off", but M 177 Life's Little Difficulties a telegram came from them almost immediately after to say that they would not be able to come, as Mrs. H. has influenza. I am so vexed that I wrote. By all means let Aggie come and meet Mr. Flack. Did I tell you he is quite elderly ? His wife came to England with him, but has gone to Stratford-on-Avon and Salisbury for a few days. — Your loving M. Mrs. Thorns to Mrs. Clishy {By hand) Dear Mabel, — Aggie cannot come after all, as Bertie's brother is taking them to the Hippodrome. We will be punctual on Sunday, and very likely shall bring Bertie's brother with us. I am sure you won't mind. — Your loving S. 178 VIII The Doctor's Visit o o ^^ o^ Mrs. Baring-Ilayne to Dr. Tunks {By hand) My dear Doctor, — It would be a great solace and satisjadion to me if you would in future kindly change your hour of call from half-past eleven to half-past ten every morning. — Yours sincerely, Editha Baring-Rayne Oct. 27 n Dr. Tunks to Mrs. Baring-Rayne {By hand) My dear Mrs. Baring-Rayne, — Your very reasonable request puts me, I regret to say, in a 179 Life's Little Difficulties position of some delicacy. It has long been my habit to call on Miss Cann at half-past ten, and Col. Stubbs at eleven, reaching you at 11.30. Both these patients have been in my care for some years, and I feel sure that you will See at once on reading this how difficult it would be for me suddenly to change a custom of such long standing. — Believe me, yours sincerely, WiLBRAHAM TuNKS Oct. 27 in Mrs. Baring-Rayne to Dr. Tvnks {Bij hand) Dear Doctor, — I am sorry to say that I cannot share your view. Health, as I have often heard you say, is the ?)wst important thing there is, and I am convinced that my health would in every way benefit if I could begin the day earlier. I have been reading a very interesting pamphlet on the subject of early rising, and am convinced that to wait for you until half-past eleven, when so much of the sweetest and freshest part of the day is over, is a great mistake. Of course when I wrote I assumed that you have been sincere in your interest in my health, and would immediately j8o The Doctor's Visit comply with so simple a request. But life is one long disilhisionment. — Yours sadly, Editha Bauing-Rayne Oct, 27 Dr. Tunics to Miss Cann {By hand) My dear Miss Cann, — I have been thinking lately a good deal about your new pains, and I cannot help feeling that it would be better if you were to rest longer in the morning before being disturbed. I therefore propose in future to call at 11.30 instead of 10.30, at any rate for a sufficient time to test the accuracy of this theory. — Believe me, yours sincerely, WiLBRAHAM TuNKS Oct. 27 ▼ Miss Cann to Dr. Wilbraham Tunk, {By hand) My dear Doctor, — Your letter has so shaken me that I fear the worst. It is quite impossible for me, as I thought you knew, to remain in bed so long. I know of nothing so depressing as i8i Life's Little Difficulties these long, solitary niorning hours. Please never refer again to the subject, and believe me, yours sincerely, Victoria Cann P.S. — Sometimes I think it would be better for all of us if I gave up the struggle altogether. V. C. Di: Tunks to Mrs. Baring-Rayne {By hand) My dear Mrs. Baring-Rayne, — It grieves me exceedingly to have to say so, but I see no possible way of meeting you in your request as to change of visiting hours. Nor can I agree with the author of your pamphlet that it would be well for you to begin the strain and worry of the day a minute earlier than you now do. You must, however, do as you think fit. As you know, I am the last person to wish to impose any tyrannical system upon my patients and friends. I should also say that Miss Cann, much as I should like to effect an interchange of hours, is not, I consider, in a sufficiently robust state to bear it. — Believe me, yours sincerely, WiLBRAHAM TuNKS Oct. 27 182 The Doctor's Visit Mrs. Baiing-Rayne to Dr. Tunks {By haiul) Dear Doctor, — You of coui-se know best, but from the number of tradesmen's carts that draw up at Miss Cann's door it is clear that she at any rate has an appetite. Whereas I, ax you know, have eaten nothing for years. But it is evident that there is more in this distressing business than meets the eye, and I shall therefore take my own steps to protect my health. Do not there- fore call to-morrow at all. — Yours truly, Editha Baring-Rayne Oct. 27 VIII Mrs. Baring-Rayne lo Mr. Llewellyn Boakes, M.R.C.S. {By hand) Mrs, Baring-Rayne presents her compliments to Mr. Llewellyn Boakes, and would be glad if he would call to see her to-morrow morning at half-past ten. Oct. 27 183 Life's Little Difficulties Mr. Boakcs to Mrs. Baiing-Rayne {By hand) Mr. Llewellyn Boakes will have great pleasure in calling upon Mrs. Baring-Rayne to-morrow morning. He regrets, however, that owing to appointments with other patients he will be unable to reach Mrs. Baring-llayne at the hour she names, but he will be at her house certainly not later than eleven-thirty. Oct. 27 Extract from a letter from Mrs. Baring-Rayne to her Sister-in-law If you ask why my letter is so dismal, it is because I have lost my regular medical attendant. It is a long story, but owing to a very curious li7ie of co7iduct which he chose to take up, we . . . Nov. 2 XI Mrs. Barinsr-Rayne to Mr. Boakes {By hanct) Dear Mr. Boakes, — I liave been feeling of late so vnich worse — much worse than I have told you, 184 The Doctor's Visit for it is not right to burden others with all our troubles — that on the advice of a Httle pamphlet I have decided on a complete change of routine, the leading principle of which is total avoidance of all vegetable Jood. Although I do not as a rule put any faith in such literature, yet I am convinced that the writer of the pamphlet in question — a member of your profession, by the way — telh the tndh. Knowing as I do from re- marks that you have let fall that you are largcljj a I'egetariav, I feel that under these circumstances to ask you to continue your visits would be not only wrong and tactless on my part, but jminful to yourself. — Yours very truly, Editha Baring-Rayne Nov. 4 XII ■ Mrs. Baring-Rayne to Dr. Tutiks {By hand) My dear Doctor, — I have been a very im- pulsive and masterful woman, but all that is over. My heart to-daj' is like a liltle child's, that knows its ti-ue friends. Do let us forget this teri'ible week of misunderstanding and cross purposes. I shall expect you to-morrow morning at half-past i8s Life's L>ittle Difficulties eleven, just as in the old days. Imaginative sympathy is so rare. — Yours sincerely, Editha Baring-Rayne P.S. — How odd is this occasional reappearance of old forgotten characteristics ! You know how grey, how sad, how humble, my life is. Yet suddenly there breaks out this mood of imperi- ousness, which years ago at school earned me the nickname of Boey (short for Boadicea). Where has it been slumbei'ing all this time ? These are among the mysteries. E. B.-R. Nov. 4 186 IX The Loin of Pork <:^ ^> <:? Miss Daisy Hopping to a lifelong school friend (^E.vlract) The news is that mother is going to give another No. 1 dinner party, the first for three years. We are to have waiters from London instead of poor old Smart, the greengrocer, who breathes down your back, and two special entrees, and the champagne that grandpapa left us instead of what Dick always calls the Tete Montee brand for local consumption. And the county people are asked this time — no Smithsons and Parkinsons and Col. Home-Hopkins, and the other regular old stodgers who go to all the parties within a radius of six miles. It is all because Uncle and Aunt Mordaunt are coming from India, and he has just got a C.S.I. 202 The Smithsons, Etc. Messrs. Palti and Casserole to Mrs. Montgomery Hopping MadaMj — In reply to your esteemed favour of the 22nd we would suggest quenelles de volaille aiix champignons as one entree and ris de veau a I' Armandine as the other. The two waiters will come to you by the 3.5 from Euston. — We are. Madam, yours faithfully, Patti and Casserole III Miss Daisij Hoj^ping to the same lifelong s^^mol friend. {Extract^ Mother is in her best temper, as all the guests she has asked have accepted. Lena and I are not to come down to diimer, because there won't be room, but we are to go in afterwards, and mother is giving us new dresses. Mine is \thirty lines omitted.^ So you see it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Uncle Mordaunt will talk about Stonehenge all the time, but they all say they are so charmed to be going to meet him. 203 Life's Little Difficulties IV Mrs. Leonard Halt to Mrs. Montgomery Hopping Dear Mrs. Hopping, — I am so very sorry tc have to tell you that we shall not be able to dine with you on the 5th after all, as my husband is ill with a chill. You will, I know, be glad to hear that his temperature is now nearly normal, after a very anxious time, but the doctor forbids all thought of going out of doors for at least ten days. I am exceedingly sorry, as we were so looking forwai'd to the evening at your pretty house and to seeing dear Sir Mordaunt again. — I am, yours sincerely, Mildred Hatt Lady Ditrdham to the Hon. Mrs. Willie Ross Dear Nanny, — We reached town yesterday, after a delightful cruise, and now we want to see you and Willie more than anything, so come up on the 5th, Thursday, and we will go somewhere, and have supper, and talk it all over. If you have an engagement, break it. — Yours, Bee 204 The Smithsons, Etc. VI The Hon. Mrs. Willie Russ to Mm. Monlgomeri/ Hoj)ping Deak Mrs. HopriNo, — It is very distressing to me to have to decline an invitation after accept- ing it, but I have just discovered that we have an engagement for the 5th which cannot be i)ut off. I am so very sorry, and 1 })roraise I will never be so careless again — if you ever give me another chance ! Believe me, dear Mrs. Ho])ping, yours very truly, Annette Ross Canon Bath to Mrs. Montgomery Hopping My dear Mrs. Hopping, — I very deeply regret to have to write as I must ; but we are all servants and at the mercy of our masters, and the Bishop has just signified his intention of visiting Widdes- don on the day of your charming party, and has asked me to be his host. To so good a churchwoman as yourself I need not say more, except that I am deeply concerned to have to break faith with you and to miss a congenial antiquarian gossip with 205 Life's Little Difficulties Sir Mordauut. — Believe me, dear Mrs. Hopping, yours sincerely, Oliver Bath Mrs. Vansittart to Mrs. Montgomery Hopping Dear Mrs. Hopping, — I have put off writing till the last moment, hoping that the necessity might pass, but I am now forced to say that I shall not be able to dine with you on the 5th. Poor Arthur was brought home on Saturday, from mixed hockey, so badly bruised and injured that he has been in bed ever since and requires constant attention. I am sure that you (who also are a mother) will understand that I should not like to leave him in this state even for an evening ; and so I hasten to let you know. — Yours sincerely, Kate Vansittart P.S. — You will please tell Sir Mordaunt and Lady Hopping that I am deeply grieved not to meet them. IX Mrs. Moiitgomeri) Hopping to Messrs. Patti and Casserole. {Telegravi) Mrs. Montgomery Hopping will not require either the entrees or the waiters for the 5th. 206 The SmithsonSj Etc, Miss Daisif Hopping la the same lifelong sc/iool friend, (^Extract) This house isn't fit to live in. Everyone who was invited has backed out, except old General Stores, who says he put off going to the South of France on purpose. Mother never thought he would come at all. If it weren't for him, mother (who is more like a whirlwind than anything I ever experienced) says she would have no party at all ; but now she must go on with it, especially as she told Uncle Mordaunt. And so it means the Smithsons and the Parkin- sons and Col. Home-Hopkins after all. The worst of it is we are not to have new dresses. XI Mrs. Parki?iso?i to Mrs. Montgomert/ Hopping Dear Mrs. Montgomery Hopping, — It will give Mr. Parkinson and myself such very great pleasure to dine with you on the 5th to meet your distinguished brother-in-law. A dinner party at your house is always such an event, and in our remote neighbourhood, where excitements are so few, short notice perhaps adds to the delight. — Believe me, yours sincerely, Mildred Parkinson 207 Life's Little Difficulties Cul. Home-Hupkins to Mrs. Monlgomeiy Hopping My dear Lady, — Your word is always law^ and you may count on me to be on your hospit- able doorstep at the stroke of eight. Would that you had said seven, that an hour of ha})pi- ness were added ! I beg you not to apologise for what you call short notice. No notice should be too short to a soldier. — I am, dear Lady, yours to command, Edgar Home-Hopkins Mrs. Smithson to Mrs. Montgomery Hopping My dear Mrs. Hopping, — It would give Mr. Smithson and myself much pleasure to accept your kind invitation were it not that we are a little in bondage to a visitor, a niece of my husband's, such a very nice girl, who is staying with us before taking up a position at Cannes as a companion to a very interesting old lady, the widow of Commander Muncaster, who, you may remember, died a few weeks ago. As we do not quite like to leave Madeline alone all the even- ing, I wondered if I might bring her with me. She is a very nice girl, and quite the best pupil at the Guildhall School of Music last year. 208 The Smithsons, Etc Perhaps you would like her to bring some nuisic with her. I know it is often a help. But of course, dear Mrs. Hopping, you will say at once if it is inconvenient or likely to put your table out, and then we can perhaps get Miss Moberly to come in for the evening and bring her knitting, and keep Madeline company, as I should not like to refuse your very kind invitation. The Doctor was saying only the other day how long it was since we had the pleasure of dining with you. As for short notice, I hope you won't mention it. It is so difficult often to give long notice, as I know only too well. — Yours very truly, Martha Smithson P.S. — I find I have not said how glad we shall be to see Sir Mordaunt and Lady Hopping. Mrs. Montgomery Hopping to Mrs. Smart To Mrs. Smart, — I am glad your husband can come for Thursday evening. I am counting on him to be here at five to help with the silver, and I shall want some mushrooms if you can get them, some French beans, and two heads of celery. E. Montgomery Hopping 209 XII "White Finings" o ^e> per A. B. C. [1 Encl.] From the Scots Reader One of the most amusing misprints that we can recollect occurs in While Pinings (Thalia and Erato Press), by Vesta Swan, which otherwise is not noteworthy. The poetess undoubtedly wrote : "Watch the progress of the soul StruggHng aye to heaven our goal ; " bat the waggish printer has made her say, "Struggling aye to heave on coal." 217 XIII The Christmas Decorations The Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter to his curate, the Rev. Arthur Starling Dear StarlinGj — I am sorry to appear to be running away at this busy season, but a sudden call to London on business leaves me no alterna- tive. I shall be back on Christmas Eve for certain, perhaps before. You must keep an eye on the decorations, and see that none of our helpers get out of hand. I have serious doubts as to Miss Green. — Yours, L. L. II Mrs. Clihhom to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter Dear Rfxtor, — I think we have got over the difficulty which we were talking of — Mr. 218 The Christmas Decorations Lulham's red hair and tlie discord it would make with the crimson decorations. Maggie and Popsy and I have been working like slaves, and have put up a beautiful and effectual screen of evergreen which completely obliterates the keyboard and organist. I think you will be delighted. Mr. Starling approves most cordi- ally. — Yours sincerely, Mary Clibborn III Miss Pitt to the Rev. Lawrence Lidhettei My dear Mr. Lidbetter, — We are all so sorry you have been called away, a strong guiding hand being never more needed. You will remember that it was arranged that I should have sole charge of the memorial window to Colonel Soper — we settled it just outside the Post Office on the morning that poor Blades was kicked by the Doctor's pony. Well, Miss Lockie now says that Colonel Soper's windoAv belongs to her, and she makes it impossible for me to do anything. I must implore you to write to her putting it right, or the decorations will be ruined. Mr. Starling is kind, but quite useless. — Yours sincerely, Virginia Pitt 219 Life's Little Difficulties Miss Lockie to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetler My dear Mr. Lidbetter, — I am sorry to have to trouble you in your enforced rest^ but the interests of the church must not be neglected, and you ought to know that Miss Pitt not only insists that the decoration of Colonel Soper's window was entrusted to her, but prevents me carrying it out. If you recollect, it was during tea at Mrs. Millstone's that it was arranged that 1 should be responsible for this window. A telegram to Miss Pitt would put the matter right at once. Dear Mr. Starling is always so nice, but he does so lack firmness. — Yours sincerely, Mabel Lockie Mrs. St. John to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter Dear Rector, — I wish you would let Miss Green have a line about the decoration of the pulpit. It is no use any of us saying anything to her since she went to the Slade School and acquired artistic notions, but a word from you would work wonders. What we all feel is that the pulpit should be bright and gay, with some cheerful texts on it, a suitable setting for you 220 The Christmas Decorations and your helpful Christmas sennon, but Miss Green's idea is to drape it entirely in black muslin and purple, like a lying in state. One can do wonders with a little cotton-wool and a few yards of Turkey twill, but she will not undei*stand this. How with all her nouvemi art ideas she got permission to decorate the pulpit at all I cannot think, but there it is, and the sooner she is stopped the better. Poor Mr. Starling drops all the hints he can, but she dis- regards them all. — Yours sincerely, Charlotte St. John Miss Olive Green to the Rev. Lawrence Lidhettei Dear Mr. Lidbetter, — I am sure you will like the pulpit. I am giving it the most careful thought, and there is every promise of a scheme of austere beauty, grave and solemn and yet just touched with a note of happier fulfilment. For the most part you will find the decorations quite conventional — holly and evergreens, the old ten-ible cotton-wool snow on crimson background. But I am certain that you will experience a thrill of satisfied surprise when your eyes alight upon the simple gravity of the pulpit's drapery and its 221 Life's Little Difficulties flowing sensuous lines. It is so kind of you to give me this opportunity to realise some of my artistic self. Poor Mr. Starling, who is entirely Victorian in his views of art^ has been talking to me about gay colours, but my work is done for ijou and the few who can understand. — Yours sincerely, Olive Green VII Mrs. Millstone to the Rev. Lann-cnce Lidhetter Dear Rector, — ^Just a line to tell you of a delightful device I have hit upon for the decora- tions. Cotton-wool, of course, makes excellent snow, and rice is sometimes used, on gum, to suggest winter too. But I have discovered that the most perfect illusion of a white rime can be obtained by wetting the leaves and then sprinkling flour on them. I am going to get all the others to let me finish off everythiixg like that on Christmas Eve (like varnishing-day at the Academy, my husband says), when it will be all fresh for Sunday. Mr. Starling, who is proving himself such a dear, is delighted with the scheme. I hope you are well in that dreadful foggy city. — Yours sincerely, Ada Millstone 222 The Christmas Decorations VIII Mrs. Hohbs, ckarrvoman, to the Rei\ Lawrence Lidhcllcr Honoured Sir, — I am writing to you because Hobbs and me dispare of getting any justice from the so called ladies who have been turning the holy church of St. Michael and all Angels into a Covent Garden market. To sweep up holly and other green stuff I don't mind, because I have heard you say year after year that we should all do our best at Christmas to help each other. I always hold that charity and kindness are more than rubys, but when it comes to flour I say no. If you would believe it, Mrs. Millstone is first watering the holly and the lorrel to make it wet, and then sprinkling flour on it to look like hore frost, and the mess is something dreadful, all over the cushions and carpet. To sweep up ordinery dust I don' t mind, more particulerly as it is my paid work and bounden duty ; but unless it is made worth my while Hobbs says I must say no. We draw the line at sweeping up dough. Mr, Starling is very kind, but as Hobbs says you are the founting head. — Awaiting a reply, I am, your humble servant, Martha Hobbs 223 Life's Little Difficulties IX Mrs. Vansittart to the Rev. Lawrence Lidhelter Dear Rfxtor, — If I am late with the north windows you must understand that it is not my fault, but Pedder's. He has suddenly and most mysteriously adopted an attitude of hostility to his employers (quite in the way one has heard of gardeners doing), and nothing will induce him to cut me any evergreens, which he says he cannot spare. The result is that poor Horace and Mr. Starling have to go out with lantei'ns after Pedder has left the garden, and cut what they can and convey it to the church by stealth. I think we shall manage fah-ly well, but thought you had better know in case the result is not equal to your anticipation. — Yours sincerely, Grace Vansittart Mr. Lulham, organist to the Rev. Lawrence Lidbetter Dear Sir, — I shall be glad to have a line from you authorising me to insist upon the removal of a large screen of evergreens which Mrs. Clibborn and her daughters have erected by the organ. There seems to be an idea that the organ is unsightly, although we have had no complaints 224 The Christmas Decorations hitherto, and the effect of this barrier will be to interfere very seriously with the choral part of the service. Mr. Starling sympathises with me, but has not taken any steps. — Believe me, yours faithfully, Walter Lulham • XI The Rev. Lawrence Lidhetler to Mrs. Lidbetter My dearest Harriet, — I am having, as I ex- pected, an awful time with the decorations, and I send you a batch of letters and leave the situation to you. Miss Pitt had better keep the Soper window. Give the Lockie girl one of the autograph copies of my Narrow Path, with a reference underneath my name to the chapter on self-sacrifice, and tell her how sorry 1 am that there has been a misunderstanding. Mrs. Hobbs must have an extra half-a-crown, and the flouring must be discreetly discouraged — on the ground of waste of food material. Assure Lulham that there shall be no barrier, and then tell Mrs. Clibborn that the organist has been given a pledge that nothing should intervene between his music and the congregation. I am dining with the Lawsons to-night, and we go afterwards to the Tempest, I think. — Your devoted L. P 225 The Prize Competition Miss Bristowe to her niece, Miss Grace Bnstoivc My dear GraciEj — Your Aunt Sophie and I have been thinking so much of late about your brave resolve to earn a little money for yourself and be independent of your dear father, who has burdens enough on his purse, Heaven knoAvs ! We have not heard what you have decided to do, but have great doubts as to the lasting lucrative- ness of poker-work, unless done on a very large scale. And bookbinding, we understand, needs a long and rather expensive apprenticeship. Sweet-pea growing, I read somewhere recently, can be profitable, but that needs not only know- ledge but land, and I doubt if your father could spare you that ; and I believe all the glebe is let. 226 The Prize Competition Poor man, he will soon need all the rent the glebe brings in if these terrible lladicals have their own way much longer, with their dreadful views about the Church. But what I wanted to tell you was that your aunt, when at a garden party at the Hall yesterday, met a very attractive girl who had already received three guineas in prizes from the Westminster Gazette, and is quite confident of making much more. I doubt if you ever see the Westinbister Gazette, which is certainly not your dear father's colour at all, but it is in other ways quite a nice paper, and really tries to be fair, I think, even if it fails. We see it whenever your uncle comes here, as he always brings it with him. It seems that every Saturday there is a prize competition, with quite good prizes, for literary people, and you were always so clever with your pen. Your aunt says that the one for next week is quite easy — to write a poem of four lines, the first two lines of which end with the words " editor " and " coastguard." The prize is a guinea. Surely you could do that. I will write for a Westminster Gazette and send it to you as soon as it comes, with all the particulars. — With love, I am your affectionate Aunt Meta 227 Life's Little Difficulties Miss Grace Brislowe to her aunt, Miss Bristowe Dear Aunt MetAj — How very good of you — just when I was getting so desperate, too ! Of course I will try — in fact, I have tried already, but it is not as easy as you think, because there are so few rhymes to either of the words. Jack is going to try to get me a cheap copy of a rhyming dictionary when he goes to town to- morrow, and I am writing to Uncle Basil to help me too. Mr. Rainey-Spong is also interesting himself in it. As he nearly won the Newdigate and is just bringing out a volume of poetry he ought to be very useful. We have been having some ripping tennis this summer. — Much love. Your loving Gracie III Miss Grace Bristowe to her uncle, Basil Heriot, All Souls' College, Oxford My dear Uncle Basil, — You are so very clever, will you help me with a piece of literary work that I have on hand .f" I am trying to write a poem the third line of which must rhyme to ''editor" and the fourth line to "coastguard." If I do it better than anyone else 1 shall earn a 228 The Prize Competition guinea, and that is a good deal in these hard times, especially as I want a new driver, and a brassie too. Please write by return of post if you can. — Your loving niece, Grace Basil Heriot to his niece, Grace Bnstotve My dear Niece, — I fear you have applied to the wrong source, and even if I had any of the mastei-y of bouts rimh with which you are kind enough to credit me, I could not waste any time on such frivolity just now, since all my strength is needed for the completion of the tenth volume of my commentary, and even this letter to you is making sad inroads on the day's routine. I gather from your hurried note that you are competing for some newspaper prize. If you must do such things, I wish you would make an effort to win one of the Westminster's guerdons offered for skill in transliterating from the English into Greek. That would be worth doing ; but possibly you, with your unfortunate addiction to manly pursuits, are of a different opinion. I wish you would try to be more like your aunt Frideswide, who had written an essay on the Chanson de Roland before she was your 229 Life's Little Difficulties age and still knows nothing of golf. If ever I can help you in a more serious and worthy difficulty, I shall be glad to make the time ; but before you propound your queries I hope you will be quite sure in your mind that it is I, and I only, who can answer them. — Your affectionate uncle, Basil Heriot Miss Grace Bristowe to her aunt, Miss^Bristowe Dear Aunt Meta, — I am not having such an easy time as you expected, and I am beginnin| to believe in the saying that nothing good is ever done except by hard work. Jack could not get a rhjTiiing dictionary second-hand, and it seemed absurd to spend much on a new one, and the stupid boy hadn't the sense just to turn to those two words in the shop. Uncle Basil, too, was not very helpful. He seems to think that light poetry is hardly worth writing in English at all. As for poor Mr. Rainey-Spong, I happened to mention to father that we were composing a poem in collaboration, and he was furious, and said he did not pay curates for that, and made him visit all kinds of old frumps as a punishment. But I think it will be all right. — Your loving Gracie 2y> The Prize Competition The Rev. At hoi Rainei/Spong to Mixs Grace Bristowe Dear Miss Gracie, — I am sending you by Gibbings's boy the fruits of my industiy. I wisli it could have been move worthy, but I have had an unexpected number of small duties to perform during the past two days. — Yours most sincerely, A. R.-S. Miss Grace Bristowe to her mint, Miss Bn'stoive Dear Aunt Meta, — Here it is. Will you please send it in for me, so as to save time.'' — Your loving niece, Guacie P.S. — I have already spent half the money on a perfectly adoraWe puppY — an Aberdeen, quite pure. I VIII Miss Biistorve to her niece, Miss Grace Bristowe Mv very dear Gracie, — I have such sad news for you. The Westminster Gazette, which was delayed in the post, has only just come, and I find, to my great disappointment, that there were certain very restricting and, I think, very unfair 231 Life's Little Difficulties conditions to that competition. The rules say that neither "creditor" nor "postcard" maybe used ; and this, I fear, disqualifies your really very excellent poem, which therefore I return. I am so very sorry to have raised your hopes so groundlessly. — Your affectionate Aunt Meta P.S. — I hope you will be able to induce the people to take back the dear little doggie. The Rev. Athol Rainey-Spong to Messrs. Peter 4" Co., publishers Dear Sirs, — I enclose one more trifle which I should like printed at the end of the book, in the section entitled Leviore plectro. Impromptu Written at the request of a young lady who supplied the author with the terminal words of the first two lines, and challenged him to complete the quatrain. Station is naught. This man's a brilliant editor, And that a simple, plain, unlettered coastguard ; Yet this one's life's made sad by many a creditor, While that will beam at but a picture postcard. Believe me, yours faithfully, Athol Rainev-Spong 232 XV The Cricket Club Concert -o^ ^e> 'C^ The Rev. Coesar Dear to Lady Bird Dear Lady Bird, — It will give so much pleasure in the village if you could see your way to caiTy out a promise which you very kindly made in the summer, and be the moving spirit in the concert which is to be held on the IQth for the Cricket Club. With the many well-known artistes whom you expressed yourself able to induce to perform, the concert cannot but be an unqualified success, and the new roller assured to us. I might say that the names of Miss EUaline Terriss and Miss Gertie Millar, whom you felt confident of getting, when placed before the Cricket Club Committee alicited the warmest enthusiasm. So also did that of Mr. Lewis Waller. — Believe me, dear Lady Bird, yours sincerely, C^sar Dear 233 Life's Little Difficulties Lady Bird to the Rev. Ccesar Dear Dear Rector, — I am sorry that engagements keep me in town, as I should have liked to have talked this concert over with you. I will certainly manage it ; but I have a feeling — mere instinct, perhaps, rather than reason, but I always trust my instinct implicitly, and have never known it fail me : indeed, all my troubles have come from want of faith in it — that to get London performers would be a mistake. After all, this is a village concert, and the rustics will feel much more at home if the performers are their own people. Will you therefore send me a few names of singers in the neighbourhood to whom I can write ? You will be glad to hear that I have prevailed on Sir Julian to tell some stories of Big Game shooting in Nigeria, and my cousin Captain Ide has pro- mised to imitate Mr. Beerbohm Tree. My own contribution will be a share in a little French duologue. — Yours sincerely, Millie Bird III Lady Bird to Mr. Hall-llall Lady Bird having undertaken, at the request of Dr. Dear, to get up the concert on the 17th, 234 The Cricket Club Concert she would be enchanted to learn that Mr. Hall- Hall would be willing to give one of his delightful recitations. Mr. Hall- Hall will be glad to hear that Sir Julian has promised to deliver a short address on his experiences with Big Game in Nigeria. IV Mr. Hall-Hall to Lady Bird Mr. Hall-Hall presents his compliments to Lady Bird and will be very glad to assist in the concert on the 17th. He does not, however, recite, as Lady Bird seems to think, but sings bass. Lady Bird to Miss Effie Plumber Lady Bird presents her compliments to Miss Rffie Plumber, and would be very glad if she would sing at the Cricket Club Concert on the 1 7th. Lady Bird recently heard a very attractive song called " Hyacinth," which she would recom- mend to Miss Plumber's notice. Lady Bird herself intends to take part in a short Fi'ench duologue, and Sir Julian will give the audience the benefit of his Big Game experiences in Nigeria. 235 Life's Little Difficulties VI Miss Effie Plumber to Lady Bird Miss Effie Plumber presents her compliments to Lady Bird, and begs to say that she will be pleased to sing at the Cricket Club Concert on the 17th. Miss Effie Plumber thanks Lady Bird for her suggestion, but she is in the habit of singing "The Holy City" and "Jerusalem" on these occasions, with, for an encore, " Daddy/' and she cannot see any reason for departing from custom. The Rev. Ccesar Dear to Lady Bird Dear Lady Bird, — Chancing to meet Miss Plumber this morning, I find that she is under the impression that she is to sing for us on the 17th. I hasten to correct this misapprehen- sion, if it is also yours, because the date is the 19th. — I am, dear Lady Bird, yours sincerely, CyESAR Dear Lady Bird lo the Rev. Ccesar Dear Dear Rector, — Owing to the very unfortunate way in Avhich you made the figure 9 in your first 336 The Cricket Club Concert letter about the concert^ I took it for a 7, and have asked everyone for the 17th. Will you therefore change the date to that night ? — Yours sincerely, Millie Bird IX The Rev. Coesar Dear to Lady Bird My dkar Lady Bird, — ^1 regret exceedingly the ambiguity in the numeral. My writing is usually considered so clear. I regret also that the alteration of the date to the 17th is impossible, for several reasons. I have no doubt, however, that you will be able to get most of those who are helping us to come on the 19th, and to find among your great circle of friends and acquaint- ance others to take the place of the one or two that cannot. I should like to have a complete list of names as soon as possible. — Believe me, dear Lady Bird, yours sincerely, C^SAR Dear X Lady Bird to Mr. Hall-Hall Lady Bird presents her compliments to Mr. Hall-Hall, and regrets to say that, owing to a mistake of the Rector's, the date of the concert was given in her letter as the I7th instead of the 19th. She trusts that the change of evening 237 Life's Little Difficulties will make no difference to Mr. Hall-Hall, and that he will still favour the company with one of his charming recitations. Did Lady Bird say in her previous letter that Sir Julian was intending to relate some of his experiences with Big Game ? Lady Bird to the Rev. Ccesar Dear Dear Rectok, — I am very sorry that you will not alter the date. This luckless piece of illegible writing of yours may ruin the whole evening. As my uncle the Archbishop used to say, "Great events often have the smallest beginnings." But now that the date is the 19th for certain, it must not be changed, and we must do what we can. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing is that, on a little capricious impulse, I decided after all that a slight leaven of the real thing might be good, and asked Mr. Hayden Coffin and Miss Isabel Jay for the 17th, and both promised, saying that that night was the only one that was free to them for mwnths and months. This is truly the irony of fate. At present all I can count on is Sir Julian's Big Game stories, which promise to be veiy in- teresting, especially as he is taking lessons in elocution ; Captain Ide's imitations of Mr. 238 The Cricket Club Concert Beerbohm Tree ; my own share in a little French duologue ; and a few local efforts, including one of your friend Mr. Hall-Hall's recitations (not " Ostler Joe/' I hope !). — Yours sincerely, Millie Bird XII Telegram from the Rev. Ccesar Dear to Ladi/ Bird Am altering date to I7th to secure Coffin and Jay. Dear XIII Telegram from Lady Bird to the Rev. Caesar Dear Do not alter date. Have just heard both Coffin and Jay uncertain. No reliance on artistic tem- perament. Bird XIV Mr. Hall-Hall to Lady Bird Mr. Hall-Hall presents his compliments to Lady Bird, and regrets that he will be unable to assist in the concert on the 1 !)th by reason of an old engagement. Mr. Hall-Hall begs again to assure Lady Bird that he does- not recite, but sings bass. XV Lady Bird to the Rev. CcBsar Dear My dear Rector, — I am exceedingly sorry, but the responsibility of this concert has worn ^39 Life's Little Difficulties me to such an extent that Sir Julian msists on our leaving at once for the Riviera. Ever since the discovery of that unfortunate slip of yours in the date, I have felt the strain. I am one of those who cannot take things lightly. I am either all fire or quite cold. I have been all fire for your concert and its dear charitable object, and the result is that I am worn out, consumed. Wreck though that I am, I would persevere with it to the end if Sir Julian would allow it ; but he is a rock. I therefore enclose all the correspondence on the subject, which will show you how the case stands and make it very easy for you to com- plete the arrangements. All the hard work is done. — Believe me, with all good wishes, yours sincerely, Millie Bird P.S. — Sir Julian is having his Big Game reminiscences type-written for you to read to the audience. They are most thrilling. I have instructed Grant to send down the lion-skin hearthrug for the evening. It should be hung over a chair so that the two bullet-holes show. There might be a lighted candle behind it with advantage /■nncea by Morrison Sf Oibb Limited, Edinburgh (^ .7' 5 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. 3 1205 03057 3305 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A A 001 429 812 9