THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 OVER BEMERTON'S
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 LISTENER'S LURE 
 
 THE OPEN ROAD 
 
 THE FRIENDLY TOWN 
 
 THE GENTLEST ART 
 
 FIRESIDE AND SUNSHINE 
 
 CHARACTER AND COMEDY 
 
 THE LADIES' PAGEANT 
 
 A WANDERER IN HOLLAND 
 
 A WANDERER IN LONDON 
 
 ANNE'S TERRIBLE GOOD-NATURE
 
 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 AN EASY-GOING CHRONICLE 
 
 BY 
 
 E. V. LUCAS 
 
 "IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR HUMAN BEINGS NOT TO INFLUENCE 
 
 EACH OTHER: WE ARE ALL LINKS IN A CHAIN." Observers Corner 
 
 "Ntto 0rfc 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electroty pcd. Published October, 1908. 
 
 Nortooob 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick <fe Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS AND FINDS A HOME IN 
 
 WESTMINSTER i 
 
 II. INTRODUCING THE READER TO MR. AND MRS. 
 WYNNE, A COUNTY CRICKETER, A SUFFRAGETTE, 
 AN HEIR OF THE AGES, AND AN ANGEL IO 
 
 III. THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED AND THE FIRST 
 
 BEMERTONIAN NUGGET 20 
 
 IV. DESCRIBING MR. AND MRS. DUCKIE, ALF PINTO, 
 
 BEATRICE, AND ERN 32 
 
 V. MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE LETS HIMSELF 
 
 GO 4O 
 
 VI. MR. BEMERTON CONFERS UPON ME THE FREEDOM 
 
 OF HIS TREASURY 54 
 
 VII. RECALLS OLD STRUGGLES IN THE EARLY DAYS OF 
 
 GRACE AND INTRODUCES A TYRANT FROM LUD- 
 
 LOW 62 
 
 VIII. I MEET AN OLD FRIEND AND RECEIVE A LESSON IN 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 72 
 
 IX. How MRS. FRANK TRIED HER INNOCENT GAMES 
 
 ON ONE OF THE GREAT ONES OF THE EARTH 8l 
 
 583457 
 
 LISRARf
 
 vi OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 X. A HERO-WORSHIPPER AGAIN GLIMPSES HIS HERO, 
 
 AFTER MANY YEARS 9! 
 
 XI. MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK BRINGS us 
 
 INTO THK COMPANY OF QUAINT AND LEARNED 
 GENTLEMEN IOI 
 
 XII. THESPIS SENDS ME TWO REPRESENTATIVES ON THE 
 
 SAME DAY AND MONOPOLISES OUR ATTENTION . 114 
 
 XIII. I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM, READ A GOOD 
 
 POEM UNDER DIFFICULTY, AND LEARN SOME- 
 THING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SECOND- 
 HAND BOOKSELLER 127 
 
 XIV. THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE IS ILLUSTRATED, AND I 
 
 BECOME A MONEY-LENDER 137 
 
 XV. MR. DUCKIE, WITH HIS NAPKIN ON HIS ARM, 
 
 SUGGESTS A SCHEME FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS . 148 
 
 XVI. MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE MEETS MORE 
 
 THAN HIS MATCH, AND FINDS A RESCUER . .154 
 
 XVII. IN WHICH, AFTER EXCEEDINGLY TEDIOUS TALK 
 ABOUT THE WISE EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS 
 CASH, AN IDLER IS SET TO WORK . . .164 
 
 XVIII. WE ASSIST AT A FUNCTION IN THE MODERN 
 
 SMITHFIELD, BUT NOT QUITE TO THE DEATH . 175 
 
 XIX. SOME LATTER-DAY CHILDREN ARE PROVIDED WITH 
 
 VERY CONGENIAL MATERIAL FOR LAUGHTER . 1 88 
 
 XX. AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE LEADS TO PLANS OF 
 TRAVEL, AND NAOMI AND I ACCEPT A RESPONSI- 
 BILITY . .' , * " . . . .198 
 
 XXI. WE ARE WHIRLED AWAY BY THE 2.2O FROM 
 CHARING CROSS AND MEET THE QUEEN OF THB 
 ADRIATIC , 208
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXII. MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK SOLACES 
 ME WITH THE ODD AND HUMANE HUMOURS 
 OF STUARTS AND TUDORS . . . . 219 
 
 XXIII. Miss AZURE VERITY AND MR. DABNEY OF THE 
 
 BALANCE CONTINUE TO KEEP MY MIND TO 
 
 A SINGLE SUBJECT 23 1 
 
 XXIV. WITH MR. BEMERTON'S ASSISTANCE I TAKE 
 
 REFUGE AMID A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA 
 DOGS 239 
 
 XXV. I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS AND HAVE THE 
 BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR CONTRASTING THE 
 GRAVE AND THE GAY 248 
 
 XXVI. MR. DABNEY AGAIN SUFFERS, AND THE YOUNGER 
 
 GENERATION DOES NOT KNOCK AT THE DOOR 
 BUT WALKS RIGHT IN AND TALKS EXTRAORDI- 
 NARY STRAIGHT TALK 263 
 
 XXVII. Miss GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY . . . 274 
 XXVIII. REACHING A POINT WHERE MY HISTORY BEGINS 
 
 TO BE WORTH RECORDING, I CEASE TO NAR- 
 RATE IT , 282
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS AND FINDS 
 A HOME IN WESTMINSTER 
 
 "TV/TR. FALCONER," said Naomi to Mrs. 
 
 IVJ. Duckie, "wants quiet, clean rooms and 
 the simplest cooking. Rarely anything but 
 breakfast, and that very light. It must be in 
 this neighbourhood, so as to be near Queen Anne's 
 Gate." 
 
 Mrs. Duckie said that hers were the quietest 
 rooms in London and almost the nearest to 
 Queen Anne's Gate: certainly the nearest quiet 
 rooms. As for her cooking, although she had of 
 course in her time served up for dinner parties of 
 ten or a dozen, when she was with Canon Lyme, 
 she was famous for her small happetising meals 
 too. If Mr. Dabney was only up and dressed we 
 might ask him. 
 
 Mr. Dabney had the rooms above mine or, I 
 should say, above those which (as I could see) 
 
 B I
 
 2 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Naomi intended should be mine in about five 
 minutes but being a gentleman on the press 
 who kept very late hours, he did not appear till 
 nearly lunch time ; all gentlemen who use their 
 heads, said Mrs. Duckie, needing their full eight 
 hours, if not nine. As for herself, she could do 
 with six or seven; but Duckie wanted his full 
 eight, and had them too, coming as he did from 
 a sleepy stock. She had known him of a Satur- 
 day night when he had slep' for a good ten. 
 
 "I also like to get up late," I said, "but that is 
 owing to my misfortune in being unable to sleep 
 well. I suffer very badly from insomnia." 
 
 "Yes," said Naomi, "and that is one reason 
 why I brought you first to these rooms, because 
 of the advantage of living over a second-hand 
 bookseller's shop. Don't you see that there 
 will always be something to read? When you 
 can't sleep," she hurried on, "and you are tired of 
 all your own books, as one then is, you have only to 
 get up, light a candle, slip on your dressing-gown" 
 (Naomi's mind is all hopefulness and practical 
 method), "and go down to the shop for as many 
 others as you want. Because of course you will 
 become friends with the bookseller directly. You 
 always do." 
 
 "All very well; but how if the bookseller only 
 rents the ground floor and basement and lives 
 four miles away in Harringay with the key under 
 his pillow? which as a matter of fact he does, for 
 Mrs. er Mrs. told me so while you were 
 looking at the bathroom. What then, Naomi?"
 
 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 3 
 
 "Oh, I don't think anything of that," she 
 said: "why, he'll give you a duplicate key within a 
 week. And look," she went on, "what splendid 
 cupboards those are, and it's a Lambert grate too, 
 and it's known that they throw the heat right out 
 into the room" (Naomi has no scepticism in her, 
 and she remembers so many advertisements), "and 
 it is so convenient to have the bedroom and the 
 bathroom leading out of each other. It is a good 
 bath, too: the hot water comes at once." 
 
 "How long does it run hot?" I asked. 
 
 "Dear Kent," she cried, now as completely on 
 the side of the landlady as if they were in partner- 
 ship, "you are so suspicious. It keeps hot all the 
 time. I tried it." 
 
 Mrs. Duckie corroborated. "There isn't another 
 house within a mile," she said, "which lets rooms 
 that has a bathroom like ours. It was put in 
 by the landlord when he thought of living here 
 himself, and then of course he had his accident and 
 married the nurse and settled down at Hendon 
 for life. And though I wish him nothing but 
 happiness, it's an accident that I've found it in 
 my heart to be very thankful for, laying in that 
 beautiful bath of a Saturday night." 
 
 "After the books and the bathroom," Naomi 
 broke in, "the best thing is the corner position. 
 The windows look right along two streets. Think 
 how interesting that will be sometimes. Because 
 I shall put your table in the corner, so that 
 you can look up from your reading and see out 
 of both equally well."
 
 4 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I mentioned something about draughts. 
 
 "Oh no," said Naomi; "there will be india- 
 rubber piping put all round, and sandbags over the 
 cracks." 
 
 "They are such a violent red," I said. 
 
 "Yes, of course, when you buy them," said 
 Naomi, who thinks ahead by instinct, "but I shall 
 cover them for you. I saw some stuff at Libnett's 
 the other day. I think purple is the colour for this 
 room, and blue for the bedroom. Yes, purple and 
 blue. I will send for a book of patterns at once, 
 and we can choose them to-morrow morning when 
 the light is good." 
 
 "But the 'Goat and Compasses' opposite," I 
 said, determined to be as difficult as I could, 
 "isn't that rather near?" 
 
 "Not a better conducted house in London," 
 Mrs. Duckie at once broke in. "The landlord and 
 the landlady are as nice a couple as God Almighty 
 ever set behind a bar. He was butler to Lord 
 Latimer, and she was the cook, and his Lordship 
 left them each five hundred pounds. They've 
 only been there eight months, and already the 
 place is so changed you wouldn't know it. The 
 difference between it now and what it used to be!" 
 Mrs. Duckie raised her hands. "I assure you, 
 miss," she said, "that if you had brought your 
 your " 
 
 "Grandfather," I suggested. 
 
 "Oh no, sir!" said Mrs. Duckie. "What a 
 thing to say ! Grandfather indeed ! Why, you're 
 in your prime."
 
 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 5 
 
 "Of course," said Naomi, "what rubbish you 
 talk!" 
 
 "As I was saying," Mrs. Duckie continued, 
 "if you had brought him to these rooms a year 
 ago, and implored me on your bended knees to let 
 him" take them at twice the rent, I should have 
 said no. My conscience wouldn't have permitted 
 me to let them to a refined gentleman with 
 insomnia and scholarly ways of life and relations 
 in Queen Anne's Gate. I should have said no. 
 But now why, I might be living in the Little 
 Cloisters at the Abbey again, it's so respectable 
 and quiet." 
 
 "The sign of the 'Goat and Compasses,'" I 
 remarked, "is said to be derived from the words, 
 'God encompasseth us.'" 
 
 "I shouldn't be surprised," said Mrs. Duckie, 
 who at that moment was called away. 
 
 "Then you insist on my taking these rooms," I 
 said to Naomi. 
 
 "No, Kent, not insist," she answered. "But 
 they're really nice rooms. And central too. You've 
 only got to cross the bridge and you're all among 
 your Clubs and everything else, and such a nice 
 walk to lunch through the park among the ducks 
 and cormorants. I should be miserable if you 
 were in Jermyn Street with no compulsory nice 
 walk at all. And you're close to us and the 
 Stores." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "and if ever I choose to go into 
 Parliament, which any one may do to-day, how 
 convenient! And how easy to become a Roman
 
 6 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Catholic, with the new Cathedral so handy ! And 
 I might buy one of the Thames steamboats, 
 which I am told are going very cheap, and keep 
 it at Westminster Bridge." 
 
 Naomi laughed. She laughs at me now and 
 then, not because she thinks I am particularly 
 funny, but because she knows it makes me happier 
 to think that I am thought funny. For Naomi 
 takes things as they come, and, like most women, 
 has no need of jokes. Brightness and sense appeal 
 to her more than all fantasy, wit, or cleverness. 
 People who think ahead are bound to be rather 
 automatically receptive, and as a matter of fact her 
 mind was already turning over the patterns ; but the 
 undercurrent of sweetness always running in her 
 nature prompted her little kindly laugh. Deceptive, 
 no doubt, but innocently so. A gentle hypocrisy is 
 not only the basis but the salt of civilised life. 
 
 "The only objection left," I said, "is the name 
 of the landlady. Do I really understand you to say 
 that it is Duckie?" 
 
 Naomi laughed outright. This struck her as 
 being really funny. "But, my dear Kent," she 
 said, "you would not refuse good rooms because 
 of the landlady's name?" 
 
 "Oh yes, I would," I replied. "That's exactly 
 what I would do." 
 
 "Not when all you have to do," said Naomi, 
 "is to call her something else? One of our 
 parlourmaids was named Victoria, but we called 
 her Jane. You could call Mrs. Duckie Landlady 
 or Housekeeper."
 
 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 7 
 
 At this moment Mrs. Duckie returned, and I 
 took the rooms without another word. 
 
 "Mr. Bemerton will be very pleased," she said. 
 "Mr. Bemerton has the book shop downstairs. 
 He asks me every day if I have a tenant yet, and 
 he has been hoping it would be some one who is 
 fond of reading." 
 
 As a matter of fact (although I did not tell 
 Naomi so, wishing her to think that it was all her 
 doing), as a matter of fact, I had made up my 
 mind directly I saw the book shop underneath, 
 that unless there were very imposing obstacles 
 I should make these rooms my home. My 
 feet have always led me naturally to second-hand 
 booksellers' shops, and after thirty years of exile 
 in such a bookless city as Buenos Ay res, the idea 
 of being so close to one of these little terrestrial 
 heavens was too much for me. Besides, think 
 of the name Bemerton with the suggestion of 
 holy Mr. Herbert in it. 
 
 That was my fate, I knew swiftly (as one does 
 know his fate at fifty-five). I was to live over 
 Bemerton's. 
 
 Having arranged to send in some paperhangers 
 and painters at once, we bade Mrs. Duckie farewell 
 and descended the stairs to the street; but I 
 would not depart until I had bought a book for 
 luck. Being a profound believer in the humour 
 if not the reason of chance, I told Naomi that 
 from the first shelf on the left hand that came 
 as high as my heart I would buy two books: 
 for her, the twenty-ninth book from the doorway
 
 8 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 (her age is twenty-nine) ; for me, the fifty-fifth ; 
 no matter what the subject and no matter what the 
 price. 
 
 And what do you think they were? Naomi's 
 by curious and very pleasant fortune was Walton's 
 Lives (with holy Mr. Herbert of Bemerton shed- 
 ding a gentle light over all); and mine was a fat 
 volume in a yellow paper cover, lying on its side, 
 for which I had to pay two solid English pounds. 
 
 Naomi's face was a picture of disapproval as I 
 produced the money; for she is no believer in 
 fate and no supporter of supine acquiescence, wise 
 receptivity, and all the rest of it: Naomi believes 
 in self-help and courage and in getting one's 
 books from the London Library. But when she 
 saw the title her expression changed from dis- 
 approval to positive grief, for it ran thus: A 
 Chinese Biographical Dictionary, by Herbert A. 
 Giles, London and Shanghai, 1898. 
 
 "My dear Kent," she cried, "how very wrong of 
 you to do these silly superstitious things ! What- 
 ever can you find to interest you in Chinese 
 biography?" 
 
 "My dear young lady," said the bookseller, 
 "you make a great mistake. The gentleman has 
 bought what is at once one of the best and the 
 least known books in this shop. If he looks at 
 it to-night, however casually, and does not agree 
 with me, I will cheerfully give him two pounds 
 again for it to-morrow morning." 
 
 Directly Naomi heard this she brightened again 
 for was there not a bargain in the air ? and off
 
 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 9 
 
 we trotted to Queen Anne's Gate in very good 
 humour, talking furniture and decoration all the 
 way, with a word as to the promising and un- 
 usual business habits of Mr. Bemerton, and a few 
 remarks from me on the favourite topic of the 
 kindness of chance when one really gives her 
 her head and refrains from even the shadow of 
 authority. 
 
 To this Naomi replied that she thought, all 
 things considered, that I had better get most of 
 the things at the Stores rather than go all the 
 way to Tottenham Court Road.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 INTRODUCING THE READER TO MR. 
 AND MRS. WYNNE, A COUNTY 
 CRICKETER, A SUFFRAGETTE, AN 
 HEIR OF THE AGES, AND AN ANGEL 
 
 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, where my stepsister 
 and her family live, is, I think, save for the 
 lack of sun, the most attractive street in 
 London. My stepsister's house backing on the 
 Park, the windows on that side pick up some 
 kindly oblique rays in the afternoon, but hi the 
 morning they are sunless. My stepsister, who is 
 an optimist, says, however, that she would as soon 
 see from her rooms London lit by the sun as have 
 the sun herself. 
 
 Certainly she has made her own especial 
 sanctuary very charming, and the view over the 
 Park and the water to the cool line of Carlton 
 House Terrace and the grey mist above is 
 very soothing. To the right is the half smoked, 
 half gleaming stone-work of the Government 
 offices. 
 
 It is a quiet spot, undisturbed by shattering 
 traffic. One sits here within sound of the greater 
 
 10
 
 MY STEPSISTER'S FAMILY n 
 
 music of the city, but so far removed from it that 
 the cries of the water-fowl and the cooing of out- 
 rageously fat pigeons come soothingly to the ear. 
 Now and then a bugle sounds in the neigh- 
 bouring barracks. Big Ben booms the hours. 
 In the room at the top of the house which I 
 occupied on my return from abroad while Naomi 
 was scouring the neighbourhood for a lodging for 
 me, I used, as I lay awake at night, to hear the 
 water-fowl so clearly that at first it seemed like 
 old days in Norfolk. Now, it is a circumstance 
 worth recording that after Norfolk there is no 
 place where one can so certainly count upon 
 watching the sure strong flight of wild-duck as 
 St. James's Park. 
 
 It is very interesting, after an intercourse with 
 a family which for some years has been carried 
 on wholly by letter, with perhaps an occasional 
 interchange of photographs, to be set down sud- 
 denly in its midst and become one of it. My 
 stepsister of course came more or less naturally 
 enough to me, for we had been friends when we 
 were young, before I went abroad. Moreover, she 
 requires no learning: she is always complete and 
 the same. But her husband I had never seen, and 
 as for the children (as I thought of them), they 
 were just names and anecdotes and faded cartes 
 de visile to me. I, however, thanks to their 
 mother's loyalty, was more to them, for they had 
 been told much about my young days, and I 
 have no doubt that portions at least of my in- 
 frequent letters were read aloud as they arrived.
 
 12 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 The initial difficulty by no means a small 
 one of what I was to be called having been 
 slowly overcome (myself objecting as strongly to 
 the Uncle Kent which they seemed to favour as 
 they did to the Kent pure and simple which I 
 wanted), all went very smoothly, and the family 
 quickly dropped company manners and showed 
 me what it really was. Not that the difference 
 was very marked, but a difference of course there 
 always is company manners being for the most 
 part a kind of sandpaper that removes the asperities 
 (and occasionally the attractions) of personality. 
 
 They are all very affectionate, but at the same 
 time they all have their idiosyncrasies and cherish 
 them. 
 
 There are (as one says) two boys and two girls; 
 but the boys are twenty-seven and twenty-five, and 
 the girls twenty-nine and twenty-one. Naomi, 
 the eldest, is the quiet head of the house, for my 
 stepsister has poor health and takes things easily, 
 and it is understood that she must be saved from 
 anxieties and trials. Naomi therefore is the buffer 
 state not only between her mother and the kitchen 
 but between her mother and the world. 
 
 Drusilla when I first arrived was a Slade student, 
 a. suffragette, and beyond correction or even in- 
 struction on any point under the sun. She wore a 
 badge bearing the words "Defiance, not Defence." 
 Drusilla is very pretty, but Naomi, I think, is 
 beautiful. It is, however, Drusilla who wins notice. 
 Naomi's beauty is for a riper judgment, since the 
 better you know her the more beautiful she is.
 
 MY STEPSISTER'S FAMILY 13 
 
 I thought of Ceres directly I saw her, and the 
 impression grows. If I were an artist I would 
 paint her so. She has the steady level gaze 
 that I think of as that goddess's: she loves all 
 little helpless things, and all little helpless things 
 love her; she leaves nothing quite where it is, but 
 stimulates and nourishes it. And yet to compare 
 Naomi with Ceres is not doing her full justice, for 
 it takes no count of her sympathetic imagination 
 or her readiness for fun. Ceres the goddess, I 
 take it, might have been the dullest woman in real 
 life. 
 
 Naomi, although she could not be called clever 
 and certainly is not witty, is so full of what, to 
 save much language, one might call womanliness, 
 and the best womanliness, as to suggest profound 
 sanity. If I had to describe this gift in a single 
 word, I should say acceptivity. Those of us who 
 are born critical and exacting approach nothing 
 quite simply : we disapprove or we approve, and in 
 so doing lose not only time but equanimity. But 
 to Naomi's serene, sane mind the world has to be 
 accepted as it is, and therefore she is always the 
 same. Not that she considers everything perfect, 
 but she has an instinctive realisation of the 
 inevitability of imperfection which keeps her 
 contented or at any rate prevents querulous 
 discontent. 
 
 Naomi's sweet and candid mind, without poring 
 over the matter at all, has, one feels, submitted 
 life and all its phenomena to a reasonable evalua- 
 tion. She understands: in a word, accepts. It
 
 14 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 is indeed a special prerogative of even stupid 
 women to do this simply. The last thing that 
 men learn about women is how transparent and 
 natural they really are in all the essentials, our 
 delay being due largely to our own want of 
 imagination and not a little to the circumstance 
 that we are brought up to expect freakishness, 
 insincerity, and mischief. Proverbial lore, the 
 testimony of so much literature, and the whole 
 tendency of national facetiousness run that way. 
 And yet feyv intelligent men individually would 
 support it from their own knowledge, and most 
 would say that among their least admirable and 
 most ridiculous moments were those which they 
 had once spent in protecting their wives or sweet- 
 hearts (to use a better word than fiancees) from 
 possibilities of offence in public places. Women 
 are far nearer nature than men: so near, indeed, 
 that one suspects that the inventor of most of the 
 superficial proprieties was not Mrs. Grundy but 
 her husband. 
 
 Naomi has no vocation. The eight years 
 intervening between her birth and that of Drusilla 
 made all the difference, and it is as natural for 
 the elder sister never to have learned, say, type- 
 writing, as it is for the younger to learn painting 
 in Gower Street. But Naomi is by far the busier. 
 She is, indeed, always employed, either indoors or 
 out. She does the shopping, decides the menu, 
 writes most of the letters, engages servants, and 
 pays the calls. 
 
 Those are her family duties. Her own tastes
 
 MY STEPSISTER'S FAMILY 15 
 
 run in the direction of what is called charity, but 
 to them she herself would never give that word. 
 The number of her pensioners (and I might 
 say subjects or worshippers) no one probably will 
 ever know. They are not by any means all in 
 want of material help, the only benefaction she 
 offers beneath many roofs being the bounty of her 
 smile and cheerfulness. She makes a point, for 
 example, of retaining knowledge of the Queen 
 Anne's Gate servants after they leave, which they 
 do only to be married and have fat and happy 
 babies with punctuality and dispatch for Miss 
 Naomi to play with and befriend. There are 
 three such servants at this moment in various 
 parts of London whose babies are visited regu- 
 larly; but Frank's twins naturally come first. 
 Then there is a hospital at which Naomi attends, 
 and a girls' club of which she is the treasurer; 
 and of course she has a retinue of "chars" and 
 sewing women. 
 
 The boys are Frank and Lionel. Frank is 
 the only one that is married, and he lives in a 
 tiny house in Barton Street with his wife and his 
 twins. He is at present a journalist, but all kinds 
 of books are to come from him. Lionel is at 
 the Bar, but not yet has he pleaded a cause, 
 largely, I fancy, on account of the British solici- 
 tor's unwillingness to believe in the zeal or capac- 
 ity of a Middlesex fast scorer (for Lionel plays 
 for that county), and partly because his grand- 
 mother's generosity has made it so absurdly possible 
 for Lionel to neglect his duties.
 
 16 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Frank I like immensely, for he is quiet and 
 kind and humorous, but Lionel is more caustic 
 and impatient than one wants, and he is also a 
 shade too voluble upon games. He may be said 
 to live for them; and, as with most men who do 
 so, his yawns come with the dusk. Cricket I too 
 adore, and we have this passion in common; but 
 Lionel is not interested in the past, and that, of 
 course, is where all my cricket lies. He is, how- 
 ever, going to take me to see him play, and I 
 dare say I shall soon learn enough about the new 
 men not to bore him. Into golf I cannot follow 
 him; partly because I have never played, and 
 partly because I like socialism in games, and the 
 idea of employing a caddie will always be un- 
 pleasant to me. Lionel naturally cannot accept 
 this point of view, and so few other golfers that 
 I know are able to do so that I have come to 
 the conclusion that the golfing temperament is 
 essentially aristocratic a feudal inheritance the 
 property exclusively of those who can see nothing 
 absurd or even degrading in the spectacle of power- 
 ful frivolous men being followed by boys of burden. 
 
 With my stepsister I was of course quickly at 
 home; but with her husband, Alderley Wynne, 
 K.C., I shall never really be comfortable. Beside 
 his clear, comprehensive, legal, synthetic mind, 
 accustomed to see the end at the same moment 
 that it sees the beginning, generalising swiftly 
 and usually accurately, my intellectual edges 
 appear so very ragged and indistinct, and my 
 hesitancies with regard to right and wrong so
 
 MY STEPSISTER'S FAMILY 17 
 
 cowardly and anarchical. Moreover, he does not 
 understand how any man can voluntarily expa- 
 triate himself except for gain, and I have come 
 back so little better off than I left. Alderley likes 
 a man to make either money or reputation; he 
 is impatient of all who stand still. Stuff must 
 in due course be succeeded by silk in life as well 
 as at the Bar, he holds. I figure as a stationary 
 man, which is only one degree less reprehensible 
 than a retrograde man. None the less, since he 
 is devoted to his wife in a very beautiful, attentive 
 way, and she is fond of me, and I stand for her 
 relation (although I am, of course, no kin to her 
 really), even although his critical judgment tells 
 him that I have failed, his heart and house are 
 open to me. 
 
 It is amusing to watch him with his daughters, 
 for although he disapproves of almost every word 
 that Drusilla says, yet his passion for intellectual ac- 
 tivity makes him secretly far prouder of her than of 
 Naomi, whom he loves truly enough, but is inclined 
 rather to group with mere creatures of instinct. 
 
 Naomi threw out signals of understanding at 
 once and took me under her charge, as I have 
 already shown. You leave it to me, she seemed 
 to say, evidently looking upon me as a foreigner 
 in need of help and instruction at every turn. Un- 
 married girls of twenty-nine, if they have not grown 
 embittered (as they are too apt to do), can be very 
 administrative and protective. The maternal feel- 
 ing, I suppose. 
 
 With Drusilla, whose blood circulates more in 
 c
 
 i8 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the brain, I have not hit it off so well, although 
 we are quite friendly. She so clearly looks upon 
 me pityingly as a trifler and in a sense an 
 ignoramus (for I had never even heard of John), 
 and she is not yet old enough to see ihat England 
 and its needs can perhaps be as well, if not 
 better, studied from abroad than when one is in 
 the midst. The difference between Naomi and 
 Drusilla is that Drusilla asks, Naomi gives. 
 Not the least remarkable thing in this wonderful 
 world in which we grope and have our being, is 
 the amazing differences that can exist in the children 
 of the same parents. 
 
 With the exception of Frank, the family seems 
 to be incorrigibly celibate. But of course at every 
 moment lifelong decisions to be single are being 
 overturned, and one never knows. Drusilla now, 
 I feel, might easily follow some such remark as 
 "Please pass the salt" with the statement, made 
 equally coolly, that she was engaged. If so, it 
 would probably be to a Fabian with long hair, a 
 blue flannel collar, and a red tie, or some youthful 
 artist whose genius carries with it a perpetual 
 dispensation from soap and razor. All her friends 
 seem to be young men of these two brands, who 
 like drawing to be ugly and poetry to be Irish. I 
 meet her now and then in St. James's Park with a 
 retinue of them, and we stand on the bridge and 
 exchange views of life for a few moments or draw 
 each other's attention to the light over Whitehall 
 and the colour of London. Then they move off, a 
 little as if they were guests for the Last Supper,
 
 MY STEPSISTER'S FAMILY 19 
 
 with their brown beards and blue collars, and Dru- 
 silla and I walk to Queen Anne's Gate together. 
 
 They are all simple good fellows, in spite of 
 their very patent atheisms and nihilisms and solemn 
 vows to be married either without a ceremony at 
 all or hi a registry office; but I don't think our 
 little Drusilla is for any of them. For this new 
 comradeship between young men and young 
 women is not making for marriage, especially 
 among the bisexual, as to a certain extent most 
 artists and revolutionaries are. 
 
 One other member the family may be said to 
 have : Mr. Adolphus or Dollie Heathcote, an 
 articled pupil of Alderley's who is continually 
 dropping in in the evening and is on the best 
 terms with himself and every one: a very 
 agreeable ornamental person. When it was 
 the fashion to present me with contributions of 
 furniture or knick-knacks for my rooms, Dollie, 
 who seems to have an infallible scent for 
 everything that is, hi his own phrase, dodgy, 
 and who lights his cigarettes with a pocket spirit- 
 lamp that would not be out of place in the 
 Arabian Nights, gave me a clock on a new design 
 which dispenses with a dial but records the hours 
 and minutes on little numbered labels. These labels 
 are nipped away by an invisible agency one by one 
 as they expire, and are for one's comfort almost too 
 much like performers in a sombre moral drama 
 illustrating the flight of time and the approach of 
 annihilation. Dollie, however, I am sure has no 
 such thoughts. "A top-hole idea," he called it.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED AND 
 THE FIRST BEMERTONIAN NUGGET 
 
 MY first few days over Bemerton's were a 
 dream of joy and liberty. I am happy 
 enough still (my nature is happy), but in those first 
 few days I was realising the desire of half a life- 
 time I was in the dovecote, so to speak, that 
 all my thoughts had been homing to, day and 
 night, for years and years. 
 
 How often had I awakened and lain awake for 
 hours, powerless to sleep again with all London 
 in my head not only its sights and sounds but 
 the scents of it. Latterly, when the date of my 
 release was fixed and grew nearer, this small-hour 
 excitement had so intensified that I began to fear 
 brain-fever, and indeed at the end nothing but 
 drugs had saved me; but the voyage put things 
 right : once again the sea washed away as who 
 says ? is it not Lucretius ? the ills of man. 
 
 At my stepsister's I was in a kind of trance. 
 It was all so strange and unreal, and also there, 
 even if subconsciously, I played the voluptuary, the 
 
 20
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 21 
 
 epicure, and postponed the true rapture to the last, 
 thinking that I would not begin to realise all the 
 best anticipations until my rooms were my own 
 until once again I was my own master, as one 
 never is in any one else's house. Dreams of 
 London liberty that were dreamed alone should 
 be realised alone; and so, although Naomi and 
 I went everywhere, and I tasted many of the 
 pleasures I had meditated upon, there was, as it 
 were, a veil between them and my sensorium, not 
 to be lifted until I was free once more and the 
 obligations of a grateful guest were removed. Dear 
 Naomi, I think, understood, and hastened accord- 
 ingly in her search for rooms. 
 
 At first this perfect irresponsibility in my city 
 of delight was almost too much: I was in danger 
 of another breakdown. Sleep I could not. I 
 roamed London from west to east, from south 
 to north. I drifted wherever the impulse took 
 me. I was intoxicated with humanity bemused 
 by people. I stood for hours on the bridges watch- 
 ing the tugs and the barges. I stood for hours 
 in Farringdon Street at this barrow and that. 
 
 I had no method: I boarded buses for the 
 docks, and never got beyond the stalls of Butchers' 
 Row. I set out in the morning for Highgate, and 
 by evening was still in the Charing Cross Road. 
 I accepted invitations to dinner, and what time the 
 entree was being served I might be seen through 
 the steam of sausage and mashed dining in a small 
 eating-house. I started to pay calls on old friends, 
 and wandered to the National Gallery. I read
 
 22 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the advertisements of the best plays, and found 
 myself in the Middlesex. I meditated Hampstead 
 Heath, and instead inhaled invigorating draughts 
 of naphtha in the New Cut. I bought a ticket 
 for Queen's Hall, and allowed a melodrama in 
 the Mile End Road to play fast and loose with my 
 emotions. 
 
 But I had my disappointments too. It was 
 too often not the London of my dreams. My 
 dreams had taken no account of change. The 
 Piccadilly I had visualised so long and so long- 
 ingly was the Piccadilly of 1875 how different 
 from this ! My Strand was a Strand on which 
 no County Council had wreaked its zeal. One 
 of my favourite haunts as a youth had been 
 Clare Market that Hogarthian oasis and Clare 
 Market has passed for ever; and who can lay 
 his hand upon his heart and say that the Charing 
 Cross Road is any real substitute for the street 
 of Holy Well? That that area was insanitary and 
 is better away has nothing to do with it. The 
 true Londoner cares no straw for sanitation. He 
 thrives on ill conditions. 
 
 I swear to you that through my heaven blow 
 pungent clouds of sulphurous metropolitan smoke 
 such as we breathed in perfection years ago 
 between Portland Road and King's Cross and 
 between Blackfriars and Charing Cross. Where are 
 they now? The higher slopes of Snowdon are 
 hardly more free from grime than the ladylike 
 highway into which electricity has converted the 
 underground.
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 23 
 
 London's other new means of rapid transit were 
 a disappointment too. We have motor cars in 
 Buenos Ay res, but I was not prepared for such a 
 capture of the streets as I found. For how many 
 nights before I came away did coloured omnibuses 
 in full sail fill my dreams in irresistible onset! 
 That was London. The motor bus has its onset 
 too, but it has none of the old rollick. It comes 
 rigidly towards you, immense and terrifying. It 
 does not sway nor roll. It wears the inflexible, 
 pitiless air of progress. It is Juggernaut. How 
 human and genial was the bus! 
 
 But among all the London phantasmagoria 
 that had flickered before my sleeping and waking 
 and dozing eyes the hansom cab was, I think, the 
 most constant. I used to hear the horse's bell. 
 ... I had never forgotten my first hansom ride. 
 Does any one forget it ? My next my second 
 first hansom ride, so to say was to be as 
 memorable. I thought about it absurdly. I 
 remembered the sense of comfort with which one 
 settled down into the seat and closed the flaps 
 and then composed oneself to watch London 
 unfold. . . . But I found the motor cab the 
 master of the streets. The hansom was still 
 there, but not the hansom that I had known. 
 The dashing driver was gone, the knowing fellow 
 with a straw in his mouth, and a coat with large 
 buttons, and a raffish tall hat on the side of his 
 head. The hansom driver to-day is more like the 
 growler driver of the past: a beaten man. I am 
 sorry for him, and so long as I am not in a hurry
 
 24 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I will climb into his vehicle as of old that is, 
 until it disappears, as I suppose it must. And 
 what then? In my youth old hansoms when they 
 died went to Oxford. Where will they go to-day? 
 
 But, when all is said, the London that one 
 most desired in such an exile as mine was the 
 London of winter. London on a fine November 
 evening at, say, six o'clock, after Christmas has 
 been signalled, when there is an edge on the air 
 and an indigo mist in the streets and the shops 
 are all lighted. The return home to a bright 
 fire under these conditions, with the evening paper 
 or a new book or magazine! It was a simple 
 ideal, but it carried extraordinary comfort and 
 satisfaction with it. 
 
 Slippers . . . 
 
 I used to meditate on it for hours. 
 
 What a deal of pleasant Undress repose must 
 be missed by the fashionable! How poor an 
 exchange are dress boots for soft slippers, a stall 
 for an arm-chair, and (I myself would add) a play 
 for a book ! 
 
 That reminds me that I must tell you about 
 my first Bemerton purchase, the Chinese Bio- 
 graphical Dictionary. Mr. Bemerton was right: 
 it is a treasure. I only nibbled at it at first, 
 opening at random and reading a life here and 
 there there are 2,579 ^ ves m ^ altogether and 
 I was never disappointed. And then I began 
 to take it seriously, and now I know something 
 of its merits and for awhile am measuring man- 
 kind by a Chinese standard.
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 25 
 
 It is the model of biographical dictionaries. I 
 have long possessed our own Dictionary of National 
 Biography, in how many weighty volumes? Sixty- 
 two, including the Errata; but after the dry, epi- 
 grammatic conciseness of Dr. Giles it is unreadable. 
 To this sage appraiser of Chinese genius and 
 address all meritorious men come alike whether 
 statesmen, cynics, sorcerers, or saints. He never 
 questions: he merely puts on record in brief 
 credulous sentences their characters and deeds. 
 When all is said, it is, I suppose, their imperturb- 
 ability and saturnine humour that are the most 
 engaging qualities of the Chinese. They could 
 not have found a better celebrant, or one more in 
 tune with themselves, than Dr. Giles. He sets 
 down everything gravely, and is as kind to the 
 supernatural as to the natural. The sole qualifi- 
 cation for admission into the Gilesian Valhalla is 
 merit. 
 
 The book's brevity is its great charm. It was 
 Henri Taine, I think, who said that there was 
 no volume he could not compress into a chapter, 
 and no chapter that would not go into a sentence. 
 Dr. Giles has carried out Taine's thrasonical brag. 
 There is no Chinese lifetime, however crowded and 
 illustrious, that he cannot pack into a paragraph or 
 a page. Nor does anything strike one as wanting. 
 One could do with more, of course, and yet who 
 would have the olive larger? There is no blemish 
 on this work save its prohibitive weight as a bed 
 book, and that I have overcome by cutting it 
 into four pamphlets.
 
 26 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I find a disdain for worldly advantage among 
 these pagan Celestial philosophers that makes a 
 more reasonable ideal for some of our Western 
 plutocrats to-day than many that are placed before 
 them in the professional pulpit. A few Englishmen 
 have had a similar whimsical unworldliness, but 
 they are few and far between. I imagine that 
 J. K. Stephen had, for one, and the Shelley that 
 emerges from certain of Hogg's pages. A glitter- 
 ing example of the humorous romantic detachment 
 and carelessness of public opinion that I mean is 
 Chang Chih-ho, of the eighth century A.D., who 
 spent his time in angling, but used no bait, his 
 object not being to catch fish. When Lu Yu 
 asked him why he roamed about, Chang's answer 
 was instant: "With the Empyrean as my home, 
 the bright moon my constant companion, and the 
 four seas my inseparable friends what mean you 
 by roaming?" and when a friend offered him a 
 comfortable home instead of his poor boat, he 
 replied, "I prefer to follow the gulls into cloud- 
 land rather than bury my ethereal self beneath 
 the dust of the world." Isn't that fine? 
 
 There should certainly be a Chang Chih-ho 
 Society. The spread of such roseate impractic- 
 ableness would do no harm at all. Indeed, the 
 crying need for the moment in this country, 
 as in America, is a gospel of poverty to cope 
 with the gospel of riches that is vitiating society. 
 Sufficient exemplars for preachers of this new 
 evangel could probably be found in Dr. Giles's 
 pages alone, but if others were needed there is
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 27 
 
 always the wise and silent India in reserve. Yang 
 Ksiung, a poet of the first century B.C. (note the 
 period), would be one high among them. On the 
 completion of Yang's most famous work, " a wealthy 
 merchant of the province was so struck by its 
 excellence that he offered to give 100,000 cash if 
 his name should merely be mentioned in it. But 
 Yang answered with scorn that a stag hi a pen or 
 an ox hi a cage would not be more out of place 
 than the name of a man with nothing but money 
 to recommend him in the sacred pages of a 
 book." 
 
 Another recluse, Chdo Fu, who flourished B.C. 
 2,357, to k to the branches of the trees to be 
 removed as far as possible from contact with the 
 world. " Yao offered him the throne, but he declined 
 and immediately went and washed his ears to free 
 them from the defilement of such worldly con- 
 tamination," nor would he let his calves drink of 
 the water. 
 
 Not the least interesting and instructive thing 
 about this work is its record of virtue, genius, and 
 fortitude of not only a non-Christian people but to 
 a large extent, as we understand it, a non-civilised 
 people. 
 
 Another eminent pagan was Chang Chen-chou, 
 of the seventh century A.D., who, on being ap- 
 pointed Governor of Shu-chou, "proceeded to his 
 old home and spent ten days hi feasting his re- 
 latives and friends. Then calling them together, 
 he gave to each a present of money and silk, and 
 took leave of them with tears in his eyes, saying,
 
 28 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 'We have had this pleasant time together as old 
 friends. To-morrow I take up my appointment 
 as Governor; after that we can meet no more.' 
 The result was an impartial and successful 
 administration." 
 
 Of Chen Shih, A.D. 104-187, who was also 
 famous for his probity, a pleasant story is told. 
 On one occasion "when a thief had hidden 
 himself among the roof-beams, he quietly called 
 together his sons and grandsons, and after a short 
 moral lecture pointed up at the thief, saying, 'Do 
 not imitate this gentleman on the beam.' The 
 latter was so touched that he came down and 
 asked forgiveness, promising to lead an honest 
 life for the future, and departing joyfully with a 
 present of money." 
 
 Another sage was Sun Fang, of the twelfth 
 century A.D., an Imperial physician, who called 
 himself the Hermit of the Four Stops. He ex- 
 plained this to mean that when he had taken his 
 fill of plain food, he stopped; when he had put 
 on enough plain clothes to keep himself warm, he 
 stopped; when he had realised a fair proportion 
 of his wishes, he stopped; and finally, after grow- 
 ing old, free from covetousness or envy, he would 
 also be prepared to stop. 
 
 With him may be coupled Ping Chi, who died 
 B.C. 55, at the time that our tight little island was 
 being invaded by the Romans. "In 63 he was en- 
 nobled as Marquis, and in 59 became Minister of 
 State. The following story is told of his acumen. 
 One spring day he came upon a crowd of brawlers,
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 29 
 
 among whom were several killed and wounded ; but 
 he took no notice of them and passed on. Soon 
 afterwards he saw an ox panting violently, and 
 at once showed the greatest concern. 'For,' as 
 he explained, 'the brawlers can be left to those 
 whose business it is to deal with such matters; 
 whereas an ox panting in spring means that heat 
 has come before its time, and that the seasons are 
 out of joint, thus opening a question of the deepest 
 national interest.'" 
 
 Among the philosophers I like Yin Hao, who, 
 when he failed to grapple with the rebellion of 
 Yao Hsiang, was impeached for incompetence 
 and cashiered. "He took his punishment without 
 complaint, except that he spent his days in writing 
 with his finger in the air the four words ' Oh ! oh 1 
 strange business!'" Sang Wei-han had philosophy 
 of another kind: "He was short of stature, with 
 a long beard; but used to stand before a mirror 
 and say, ' One foot of face is worth seven of body.' 
 At the same time, he was so hideously ugly that 
 the very sight of him made people sweat, even in 
 mid-winter." 
 
 Chinese thoroughness is also worth some 
 attention in the West. Look at Chi Cha'ng. Chi 
 Cha'ng was an archer who arrived at proficiency 
 by painful measures. "He began by lying for 
 three years under his wife's loom, in order to learn 
 not to blush. He then hung up a louse, and 
 gazed at it for three years, until at length it 
 appeared to him as big as a cart-wheel. After 
 this, he is said to have been able to pierce through
 
 30 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the heart with an arrow." Another conscientious 
 model was Liu Hstin, who died A.D. 521, and 
 "who read all night, having a lighted twist of 
 hemp arranged in such a way as to burn his 
 hair if he began to nod from drowsiness." 
 
 Chang I, who died B.C. 310, a political ad- 
 venturer, and eventually Prime Minister, had a 
 certain dry humour. "It is recorded that in his 
 early life, after a banquet at the house of a 
 Minister of Ch'u, at which he had been present, 
 he was wrongly accused of stealing some valuable 
 gem, and was very severely beaten. On his 
 return home, he said to his wife, 'Look and see 
 if they have left me my tongue.' And when his 
 wife declared that it was safe and sound, he cried 
 out, 'If I still have my tongue, that is all I 
 want.'" 
 
 Here is humour again: Tung-fang So, a 
 censor in the first century B.C., "on one occasion 
 drank off some elixir of immortality which be- 
 longed to the Emperor, and the latter in a rage 
 ordered him to be put to death. But Tung-fang 
 So smiled and said, 'If the elixir was genuine, 
 your Majesty can do me no harm; if it was not, 
 what harm have I done?'" 
 
 Of Chao Kao, who died B.C. 207, a famous 
 rebel, we have this sinister variant of Andersen's 
 story of the Emperor's new clothes: "Tradition 
 says that on one occasion, in order to discover 
 which of the officials at the Court of Hu Hai, the 
 Second Emperor, would be likely to defy him, he 
 presented the Emperor with a stag, saying that it
 
 THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED 31 
 
 was a horse. His Majesty, bewildered by the 
 absurdity of the statement, appealed to his 
 surrounding courtiers. Those who were bold 
 enough to say that it was a stag were marked down 
 by Chao Kao for destruction." 
 
 Are they not an interesting company? Let 
 me end this taste by the celebration of one of the 
 most attractive of all Ch'Sn Tsun. Ch'6n Tsun, 
 who died A.D. 25, was distinguished as a letter- 
 writer, but still more famous for his love of good 
 company. That, however, is nothing: the char- 
 acteristic that fills me with pleasure is the follow- 
 ing: "He used to keep his guests with him, even 
 against their will, by throwing the linch-pins of 
 their carriages into a well." What a delightful 
 trait or, rather, habit !
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DESCRIBING MR. AND MRS. DUCKIE, 
 ALF PINTO, BEATRICE, AND ERN 
 
 MRS. DUCKIE has only one fault. Her 
 virtues are many, chief among them an 
 almost fervid cleanliness, displaying itself in the 
 spotlessness of the rooms and an affection for 
 fresh towels that is Continental certainly 
 very un-English. She believes, too, in open 
 windows, to a point inconceivable in a retired 
 cook. 
 
 But she has a fault, and that is talkativeness 
 more than talkativeness, for she spins a kind of 
 gummy web of words from which the listener, 
 unless he is more ruthless than I can be, has the 
 greatest difficulty in disentangling himself. The 
 law of association governing her mind, as it does 
 that of so many feminine talkers, one thing leads 
 to another. To me, who have nothing to do 
 who am out, so to speak, for no other purpose 
 than to occupy a stall in the theatre of life and 
 watch the play this does not matter very much, 
 and I have already learned the trick of listening 
 
 32
 
 DESCRIBING THE DUCKIES 33 
 
 with one ear only, and making by a natural reflex 
 action the expected sounds due from common 
 politeness; but I can imagine it driving another 
 and busier man mad, and I wonder what Mr. 
 Dabney's short way with her is. 
 
 Mrs. Duckie's family consists of three children 
 and a husband. They are quite prosperous, for 
 two of the children, now grown up, keep them- 
 selves, and Mr. Duckie does well enough as head 
 waiter in a Fleet Street chop house of the old 
 type. The eldest son indeed more than keeps 
 himself, for he has latterly become a celebrity 
 and earns the income of at least an Under 
 Secretary almost that of the President of the 
 Local Government Board, to whom I have no 
 doubt he has in his time made many success- 
 ful sarcastic allusions. For Herbert Duckie (to 
 give him his baptismal name) is a music-hall 
 singer. 
 
 The mild syllables uttered over the child by 
 the curate at the font some five-and-twenty years 
 ago are, however, unknown to London, on whose 
 placards Herbert Duckie figures more provoca- 
 tively as Alf Pinto. Of this pseudonym his 
 mother is rightly proud, for there is more in it 
 than meets the casual eye. Much thought went 
 to its architecture, Alf standing not only for an 
 abbreviation of Alfred, but signifying also a moiety, 
 and Pinto being pronounced humorously by the 
 initiate with the "i" long thus convivially sug- 
 gesting a measure of the national beverage. The 
 joke is not original, I fear, for I remember it in
 
 34 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 a delightful travesty of poor Ouida; but it seems 
 to have been genuinely evolved afresh by young 
 Duckie and his friends. 
 
 His father and mother are naturally proud of 
 him, for in addition to his fame and his con- 
 siderable salary, he has the kindly filial habit 
 of driving up to the house on fine Sunday 
 afternoons in a dogcart and taking some of the 
 family noticeably in it to Epping, or the Welsh Harp, 
 or Richmond. 
 
 Mrs. Duckie's attitude to her gifted son is 
 reverential and wondering. She is proud of his 
 shining gifts and success, and perplexed at his 
 possession of them; although, as she says, it comes 
 from her side, grandfather being that musical, and 
 her Uncle Will a terrible one to notice and make 
 jokes. 
 
 How true it is that honour can come from our 
 friends quite as much as from our personal attain- 
 ments often, perhaps, more. Dollie Heathcote, 
 I feel sure, has hitherto looked upon me as a 
 harmless old buffer, hopelessly out of date, but 
 amiable enough, and possibly a person to be 
 conciliated in view of my kinship with his 
 chosen family. But when one evening at dinner 
 I asked him casually if he knew Alf Pinto, respect 
 for me began to grow, and when I went on to 
 say that I had met Alf Pinto and conversed with 
 him, he was at my feet. 
 
 "Not the Alf Pinto?" he said. "Not the man 
 who sings 'He isn't so pleased as he was'?" 
 
 "The same," I said.
 
 DESCRIBING THE DUCKIES 35 
 
 He asked me feverishly how I knew him, but 
 I am not quite so green as that. If I told Dollie 
 that Alf Pinto was my landlady's son, all, or 
 nearly all, the gilt would be off the gingerbread. 
 So I made a mystery of it, and the young 
 gentleman went off to a dance baffled but still 
 reverent. 
 
 He did not, however, go before we had arranged 
 an evening together at the Frivoli to hear Alf and 
 other stars; and also not before I was able to 
 enlighten him as to the true esoteric pronunciation 
 of Alf's name. 
 
 "I notice," I said, "that you call him Alf 
 Pinto. Isn't that rather a confession of weak- 
 ness on your part? I thought you were in 
 the very innermost and most knowledgable 
 know." 
 
 Dollie looked for him abashed. "Why, 
 what do you mean?" he asked. 
 
 I then explained the mystery. 
 
 "By Jove!" said Dollie, "that's clever! It's 
 one of the dodgiest things I ever heard. 'Alf 
 Pinto'! Ripping!" 
 
 He went away in a taxi, rolling the morsel of 
 wit on his appreciative tongue. 
 
 The other Duckie children are Beatrice and 
 Em. Beatrice is twenty-two; Ern is thirteen. 
 Beatrice is also connected with the footlights, 
 being dresser to Miss Azure Verity, the actress 
 who is just now drawing all London (as we say) 
 to the Princess's to see her hi the part of Selma 
 Origen in Mr. Operin's new play.
 
 36 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I sometimes wonder what Mrs. Duckie would 
 make of Browning's lines 
 
 "Dante once prepared to paint an angel: 
 Whom to please? You whisper 'Beatrice'" 
 
 for to her proud maternal tongue this beautiful 
 name is a dissyllable Be-trice ; and of Be-trice's 
 intimacy with Miss Verity I hear much every 
 morning, together with quotations from that lady's 
 conversation, and tales of her successes with 
 society. 
 
 Be-trice also, I find, has abandoned her 
 patronymic. In the profession to which she 
 belongs so completely as to feel entitled to refer 
 to our leading actresses by their last names only 
 on the first occasion on which we met, she 
 spoke casually of Terry, thereby meaning, to 
 my horror and shame, the incomparable Ellen 
 in that profession Be-trice is not known as Miss 
 Duckie but as Miss Lestrange. 
 
 As for Em, he is a healthy young London boy, 
 with all its scepticism and slang at his fingers' ends. 
 Mrs. Duckie wants him to be a civil engineer: 
 Mr. Duckie believes in trade, and fancies among 
 trades none so much as that of the butcher. 
 "An engineer," says Mrs. Duckie, "is more 
 gentlemanly." "But," says Mr. Duckie, speaking 
 with experience, "whatever happens, people 
 must eat; the last thing they give up is their 
 victuals. No doubt," he says, "engineering is 
 useful; but look at the money it costs to learn it, 
 and look at the competition afterwards. Whereas 
 I can get the boy into a first-class butcher's
 
 DESCRIBING THE DUCKIES 37 
 
 to-morrow, and what's more, I can be of use to 
 him myself. How could I help him in his 
 engineering? But though I say it as shouldn't, 
 there isn't a better judge of a steak, point or 
 rump, or a chop, mutton or pork, than me in 
 London." 
 
 Ern himself, I need hardly say, is opposed to 
 both callings. At present he has but one ambi- 
 tion, and that is to be a shover. His only real 
 employment so far has been parcel-packing for 
 Mr. Bemerton on the few days each month 
 following the publication of his catalogue. Great 
 days downstairs, I can tell you, and sometimes 
 twenty telegrams in a morning. 
 
 I have now described all the fauna of 
 Bemerton's except one the waterman who, 
 however, does not come indoors but lends 
 redolence to the exterior. The waterman tends 
 the cab rank and incidentally runs errands for 
 the neighbourhood. London is rich in such 
 wastrels, whose career is all behind them. They 
 have no doubt begun reputably enough in this 
 or that trade, drifted into the drink habit, and 
 steadily filed through one employ after another 
 until they have nothing left but the street corner 
 when they are out of pence, and the public bar 
 when pence come their way. 
 
 This man alternately drinks and shivers. His 
 clothes are thin useless things hi which he wraps 
 himself. He stands at the corner and beats his 
 arms; looks up each street; walks a few steps; 
 exchanges the time of day with a cabman;
 
 38 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 and disappears into the "Goat and Compasses" 
 again. 
 
 One of the enduring problems to the social 
 observer is, Where do poor men find so much 
 money for beer? When it comes to that, I 
 suppose that the basic question of civilised life 
 is, How on earth can the Blanks afford to live 
 as they do? But the riches of the poor are only 
 a little less astonishing than the riches of one's 
 neighbours. This man seems to be dependent 
 for his earnings on the good-nature of a few 
 cabmen and very infrequent employment by the 
 residents of the neighbourhood. I, for example, 
 have given him odd tips for fetching me taximeter 
 cabs. And yet he seems rarely to want the means 
 to realise his one remaining and considering how 
 little he can have to remember with joy, I must 
 confess exceedingly reasonable ambition, which 
 is to keep fuddled. When all is said against 
 alcohol, there remains the unassailable fact that 
 it is the poor man's best accessible anodyne. The 
 poet's line 
 
 "Let us be drunk and for a while forget," 
 
 contains the whole philosophy of intoxication. 
 
 Possibly the landlord of the "God encom- 
 passeth" is lenient with him in the matter of pay- 
 ment, for the waterman is certainly the cause of 
 much forgetting in others. For with all his ruined 
 air and deplorable condition he seems to be a com- 
 panionable man. He has popularity in his way. 
 Men at work he watches with extraordinary intel-
 
 DESCRIBING THE DUCKIES 39 
 
 ligence and camaraderie: no robin by a wood- 
 shed does it better. And he seems to know what 
 to say to them. When the road was up for new 
 electric wires, he was the life and soul of the 
 party. I should not be surprised if he was the 
 best after-breakfast talker in London. 
 
 He is always cold and manifestly a sick man; 
 but he has that wonderful gift of the London 
 idler of never being so ill that it is necessary to 
 stay at home. Home, do I say? It is a word 
 which, we are too often told, the English have and 
 the French, to their eternal loss, have not; but I 
 should not like to see the inside of the waterman's 
 sanctuary. It is perhaps wiser to be careful how 
 we pity the French. I have seen his wife: for she 
 brings him dinner hi a bowl a dispirited, broken 
 woman. But his children? It is too horrible a 
 thought.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE LETS 
 HIMSELF GO 
 
 I HAD not long been over Bemerton's when 
 Mrs. Duckie knocked at the door to ask if 
 Mr. Dabney, the gentleman upstairs, the gentle- 
 man on the press, might have a few words with 
 me. 
 
 Of course I said yes, and in a minute or so he 
 came in a man of the ordinary age in London 
 just now, clean shaved, with prematurely grey 
 hair, a slightly discontented expression, and a 
 sensitive, critical mouth. 
 
 He made the usual apologies that a well-bred 
 man makes to a stranger with whom he in- 
 tends to be friendly, and attributed his visit to 
 a remark of Mrs. Duckie's to the effect that I 
 had been living in Buenos Ayres since 1875 and 
 had only just returned. "It seemed to me," he 
 added, "that to an observant man London and 
 the English generally must after so long an 
 exile present many changes, and I thought you 
 would perhaps allow me to ask you a few ques- 
 
 40
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 41 
 
 tions about your impressions for an article in my 
 paper." 
 
 I said that provided my name was not men- 
 tioned I had no objection whatever, although I 
 doubted, &c. &c. ; but I might, as it happened, 
 have spared myself that excursion into conven- 
 tional false modesty, for I soon found that Mr. 
 Dabney had no real intention of interviewing me 
 at all, but only wanted the stimulus of my 
 experience, or the excuse of my mere existence, 
 to interview himself. As he talked on I wondered 
 if that is the way that all interviews by the more 
 capable and thoughtful journalists are done. 
 May be. 
 
 His paper, it seems, is The Balance, a weekly 
 critical review which he runs almost single-handed 
 ("Everything that means anything," he says, "is 
 done by one man"), the financial backing coming 
 from a source which he said he was not in a 
 position to reveal, to me or indeed to any one. 
 The Balance has a circulation of less than two 
 thousand; but, as Mr. Dabney says, every one 
 who counts has to read it. Its aim is to be 
 sane, impartial, and fearless (the aim of all of us), 
 and Mr. Dabney really believes that it achieves 
 this end; but his mind, I should say, with all its 
 vigour and acumen, though naturally inclined to 
 justice and courage, is about as capable of imparti- 
 ality as a prize-fighter is capable of metaphysics. 
 
 None the less, Mr. Dabney 's paper, which I 
 have since studied carefully, makes the right 
 effort, and it comes as a corrective to the party
 
 42 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 organs that can see no good in any Bill brought 
 forward by the other side at any time, and 
 particularly so when it chances to be a measure 
 promised vaguely by their own. 
 
 It is one of the least satisfactory thoughts 
 that come to a reader of the papers that so many 
 men with the gift of expressing themselves well 
 and seeing fairly clearly into things should be 
 so willing to adapt their intellects to the party 
 machine. We are all, of course, born, as the 
 poet says, Liberal or Conservative; but from 
 journalists one expects a rather more complex 
 psychology. We look to journalists to see a 
 little farther not only into the future but also 
 into the past than ordinary persons. Unhappily 
 in England just now, as I remarked to Mr. 
 Dabney, thus incurring his most vitriolic agree- 
 ment, the type of journalist who seems to have 
 most readers is permitted to be the least sagacious 
 and the least independent. 
 
 Mr. Dabney is by nature a pessimist so much 
 so that one wonders what he would do if any of 
 the reforms he desires were to come into force. 
 He is one of those eloquent and clear-sighted 
 men who must be in revolt to be articulate and 
 well-directed. He was for a long time leader- 
 writer on a daily paper, but gradually found 
 himself more and more irked by the necessity 
 of expressing not his own views but his editor's. 
 At last, unable to bear it any longer, he retired. 
 The circumstance was recorded in the press in a 
 paragraph in the ordinary way, and the very next
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 43 
 
 day Mr. Dabney received a letter from a stranger 
 asking him to prepare an estimate of the cost of a 
 weekly journal that should represent his own views 
 and contain also a sufficiency of acceptable various 
 matter. He did so, on the most disadvantageous 
 scale that even his pessimism could devise, and 
 the next day he received a cheque for the first 
 year's expenses and instructions to begin at once. 
 Under such unworldly conditions was The Balance 
 bora. 
 
 "You say you left England in 1875," Mr. 
 Dabney began. "Then you are now in a 
 position to observe some very curious develop- 
 ments, for the changes in London alone since 
 that date have been extraordinary. Our whole 
 character seems to have undergone a revolution. 
 We used to be economical, home-keeping: we 
 have become gad-abouts, pleasure-hunters. We 
 pour our money into the hands of entertainers and 
 restaurateurs. Remember, I speak of London. 
 To what extent England resembles London I am 
 not in a position to say. But London becomes 
 daily more hedonistic, more atheistic. Plain living 
 and high thinking are discredited. High living and 
 low thinking have it all to themselves." 
 
 Mr. Dabney spoke with concentrated fury, 
 through his teeth, as if I were the primary 
 cause of this calamity. I believe that of all 
 uncomfortable conversationalists (and the world 
 is full of them) the most uncomfortable are those 
 who would convert you to your own way of 
 thinking. This is Mr. Dabney's weakness: he
 
 44 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 conceives of all his interlocutors as heretics and 
 antagonists. 
 
 "But to what," I asked him, "do you attribute 
 this effect?" 
 
 "To too long a period of prosperity; to peace; 
 and" he almost spat the words from him "to 
 the modern press. The new journalism may not 
 have produced it, but it has fostered it. Since 
 you left England there has sprung up a totally 
 new press a press that does not dictate but 
 flatters; that finds out what the mob wants and 
 gives it them. A press without any mind 
 nothing but an infernal instinct for success. A 
 press in the hands of young men in a hurry, with- 
 out knowledge, experience, or conviction. Oppor- 
 tunists, improvisers, cynics." 
 
 "But surely there are good papers too?" 
 
 "One or two. But it is those others that have 
 the public ear. They are the true organs of the 
 democracy." 
 
 "And yet," I said, "at the last General Election 
 did not these popular papers lose almost every 
 seat?" 
 
 "Ah!" he said, "that is so. But that is not, I 
 fear, any proof of their want of influence generally. 
 Political changes are deeper than that. The mob 
 is moved politically never by opinions but always 
 by personality. We don't in England vote for 
 Liberals or Conservatives : we vote for men. Senti- 
 ment controls us. We vote for one man because 
 we are sorry for him; for another, because we 
 once met him somewhere and he was very
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 45 
 
 pleasant; for another, because his. father's horse 
 won the Derby; for another, because his opponent 
 is So-and-so whom we detest. In England we 
 never accept any one as a simple fellow-creature: 
 we must always fix not only an adjective upon 
 him but some personal feeling. That is why 
 papers lose their influence when elections are on. 
 But at other times they can be steadily operative 
 for good or bad; they can vulgarise all they touch 
 or dignify it. The new press vulgarises. Its gods 
 are false. It knows no shame. When found 
 out, it slavers. When chastised, it says, How 
 charmingly you use the whip." 
 
 Mr. Dabney was now happy. His face shone 
 it might have been with the reflected glow of his 
 molten words. He was the Savonarola of Fleet 
 Street. 
 
 "Cynicism," he went on, "is not the only fault. 
 A gross sensuality has also come upon us. A 
 journalist should be something of an ascetic, a 
 recluse: an observer from without. He should 
 not be in the social machine; he should not know 
 every one. How can you keep your hands clean 
 if you know every one? His dress suit should 
 be rusty; one cannot dine out without consuming 
 salt, and by salt are we captured. Journalists 
 now eat too much and too well. It was a bad 
 day for England when a journalist first ate a 
 plover's egg." 
 
 "Journalists, hi short," I said, "should live over 
 Bemerton's." 
 
 He grunted a short acknowledgment of my
 
 46 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 mild humour, and continued: "Every nation, 
 according to Arnold, has the papers it deserves. 
 That is true. The greater part of this nation, 
 suffering just now from swelled head and swelled 
 stomach and swelled pockets, has the paper it 
 deserves. Cynicism and self-esteem run through 
 everything. Christian of course we never were, 
 and never shall be, not even in adversity; but we 
 are no longer in the least afraid of God. We are 
 getting nasty, too. We buy messy little indecent 
 novels by the thousand, as far removed from 
 honest British coarseness as the poles are asunder. 
 We have given up respecting the Bible. 
 
 " I will give you an instance of our new cynicism, 
 our carelessness. The other day, at one of the 
 large music halls, a dancer appeared nightly in 
 nothing whatever but a skirt of beads, and 
 capered as provocatively as she was able round a 
 waxen head. The dancer affected to be Salome, 
 the daughter of Herodias, while the waxen head 
 was intended for that of the decapitated John the 
 Baptist, the forerunner, if I remember aright, of 
 our Lord. This in a London music hall ! The 
 exhibition rapidly became the rage, and several 
 other halls, in the usual slavish imitative way, 
 had their Salomes too. Every one went to see 
 and applaud the principal one, including the 
 Prime Minister, who subsequently, to mark his 
 especial approval, entertained the lady at 10 
 Downing Street. So far as I could discover, I, 
 who am a professed sceptic, was practically the 
 only person in London whose feelings were
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 47 
 
 outraged. I call the incident deplorably signifi- 
 cant. 
 
 "It seemed to me," Mr. Dabney continued, 
 "sufficiently offensive that a sacred figure such as 
 John the Baptist a figure of peculiar sanctity to 
 Christians should be subjected to the indignity 
 of taking part hi a music-hall performance at all, 
 amid knockabouts and comic singers and all the 
 other seaminesses of those places; but it was far 
 worse that English people of high position should 
 flock to see it.' For any head, you must see, 
 would have done as well. The girl had to dance 
 more or less naked to some waxwork property: 
 that we will take for granted. Then why not the 
 head, say, of Holofernes, who is only hi the 
 Apocrypha? The spectacle might then have 
 drawn merely the Leader of the Opposition, but 
 it should have served." 
 
 Mr. Dabney smiled a ghastly smile as he made 
 his final joke and paused for breath. 
 
 "Were there no protests at all?" I asked. 
 
 "There may have been a few," he said: "I 
 was exaggerating a little; but very few. Where 
 were they to appear? A press that lives largely 
 by advertisements does not lightly advise people 
 to stay away from places of entertainment. Do 
 you know," he added, "that my paper is the only 
 paper hi London that does not take advertise- 
 ments. So long as there are advertisements there 
 cannot be absolutely free speech. It is not 
 humanly possible. 
 
 "You may say," he went on (but I had said
 
 48 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 nothing of the kind. I had, as a matter of fact, 
 hardly opened my mouth: he had given me no 
 chance). "You may say," he went on, "that we 
 are not more cynical now than we were in the 
 days of the Regency. True, perhaps. But that 
 is what makes it so serious. Because since the 
 Regency we have had eighty years or so of serious- 
 ness and steady improvement the Victorian Era, 
 with its fine political and intellectual and religious 
 activity, its Reform Bill, its Tractarian movement, 
 its Dickens and Carlyle, its Browning and Rus- 
 kin, its awakening to new ideas. To-day we are 
 steadily going back on all that. We believe only 
 in pleasure and success: our one ideal is wealth." 
 
 "Well," I said, for I was getting a little tired, 
 and perhaps I was a little piqued too at the turn 
 the "interview" had taken, "and what is the 
 remedy for all this evil?" 
 
 "War," he said. "Nothing more or less. A 
 bloody war not a punitive expedition or ' a sort 
 of a war'" (he quoted these words with white 
 fury). "That might get us right again." 
 
 "At great cost," I said. 
 
 "A surgical operation," he replied, "if the only 
 means of saving life, cannot be called expensive." 
 
 "But supposing we went under?" 
 
 "If we did, it would be better so. Then we 
 should begin again in a new spirit. Loss would 
 be gain." 
 
 "A very dreadful form of cure," I said. 
 
 "True. But not more dreadful than the decay 
 that comes from complacency. A nation fight-
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 49 
 
 ing for its life makes for me a finer spectacle than 
 a nation overeating at a banquet. 
 
 "The most sacred and valuable treasure that 
 the English have lost," he went on more gravely, 
 "is the capacity for self-denial. The old figure of 
 John Bull was never to my mind admirable. He not 
 only looked too secure in his own wealth and 
 rectitude but too apoplectic. But he was a better 
 national symbol for the English than the new 
 John Bull that one would have to draw now were 
 one a satirical artist with critical vision a John 
 Bull more like a Maida Vale Jew. John Bull grows 
 materialistic and sensual. An anxious war would 
 mend that. Set him fighting for very existence, 
 and you will bring out his good qualities again." 
 
 "I don't agree with you," I said, "about war. 
 Its horrors are too horrible. What I think we 
 want is a saint." 
 
 "You won't get one," said Mr. Dabney, "and 
 besides, every saint has a bee in his halo." 
 
 "I don't know that that matters," said I. "It 
 is the bees that do the work. The bee is often 
 the most original part of the man's brain, just as 
 the skeleton is often the only really living thing 
 in the family's cupboard. Most people are dead. 
 
 "The saint," I went on, "that England needs 
 is a saint of extraordinary personal magnetism 
 a saint (as I see it dimly) whom our young men 
 and women will follow in enthusiastic ecstasy; 
 a saint " 
 
 "A counsel of perfection," Mr. Dabney inter- 
 rupted. "Will your saint begin as a curate?"
 
 50 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 he inquired icily. "Remember that a pulpit 
 engaged in the struggle for existence is doomed 
 as a friend. The Church to-day is too much 
 represented by angry casuists in the Commons 
 and anxious fathers of families in the vicarages; 
 while Nonconformity has become largely the 
 preserve of astute and prosperous journalists. 
 One listens in vain for the unworldly voice. 
 
 "The most successful revival of our time," he 
 continued, "had to be put frankly upon a gross 
 material basis before it had a chance General 
 Booth's progress as a social ameliorator being 
 marked by heartiness, shrewdness, and humour, 
 much more than by any beauty of holiness; while 
 it is free from any suggestion of pure sacrifice, 
 since the quid offered for the quo is so splendid 
 happiness here and an everlasting crown to follow, 
 in exchange for giving up merely a few oaths, 
 merely a few debauches, merely a few blows on a 
 wife's body. 
 
 "England," he continued, "is still full of con- 
 science, as it always will be; but its activities 
 have of late become more and more altruistic. It 
 is our neighbours that we have become so careful 
 for, rather than ourselves. We spend hours in 
 Boulter's Lock on Sundays meditating on the 
 wisdom of keeping weaker vessels out of exhibi- 
 tions on that day, and statesmen solve knotty 
 points of the Licensing Bill over champagne at 
 their clubs. Virtue we still consider the best goal 
 for others: but for ourselves, success. Success 
 is the new god, and will be, I suppose, for
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 51 
 
 some time yet, so zealously is the altar flame 
 guarded. 
 
 "I think your plea for a saint is very charm- 
 ing, but I don't believe in it. I don't think the 
 English would know what to do with a saint if 
 they found one. Wales might, and Ireland might, 
 but not England. A saint, to work any kind of 
 effect, must have an emotional, self-forgetting 
 material to work upon. There is very little here. 
 Sentiment we have, but not emotion. And we 
 are too much afraid of the ridicule of the people 
 next door. 
 
 "I have often amused myself by speculating on 
 the probable reception that Christ would have 
 were he now to appear in London. A character 
 sketch expressing the profoundest admiration in 
 The Daily Mail; his portrait in The Daily Mirror, 
 probably beside that of public men whom he 
 more or less resembled; a guarded leader in The 
 Church Times; and in The British Weekly an 
 appeal to Nonconformists not to lose their heads 
 yet not until a little more was known. 
 
 "But now tell me," said Mr. Dabney, "what 
 you have observed yourself. For it seems to me 
 I have done most of the talking." 
 
 "Oh," I said, "my observations have not been 
 so profound as yours. I have merely walked 
 about the streets and seen the surface of things. 
 Of that kind," I said, "the most noticeable change 
 that has struck me although it may, in common 
 with all my other impressions, be sheer illusion 
 is the increase of sarcastic facetiousness. London
 
 52 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 has always, I imagine, indulged in this disguise of 
 its real feelings this armour, one might almost 
 say, against fate but the habit seems to be more 
 diffused than I remembered. I think I discern 
 also an increase of genuine cynicism, as indeed 
 you have said cynicism rather than pessimism, 
 I should say; by cynicism meaning a natural 
 acceptance of the ills of life without grumbling at 
 them. The frame of mind comes, I suppose with 
 you, largely from irreligion, materialism; but it 
 has been fostered, no doubt, by the English 
 climate. Not that the English climate has 
 changed, but the English people, in their increased 
 love of pleasure and pursuit of it, have come to 
 think more of fine weather than they did, and not 
 finding it, have acquired a new bitterness. So at 
 least it amuses me to fancy. For the increased 
 love of pleasure is visible on every side." 
 
 Mr. Dabney agreed very heartily, considering 
 how little disapproval there was in my voice. As 
 he seemed in danger of resuming his eager and 
 caustic monologue, I hastily went on to say that 
 I also agreed in the main with him, but was dis- 
 posed to think that the worst of the case was 
 confined to London and that the great heart of 
 the country was not cankered. "And even in 
 London," I added, "I have noticed as I walked 
 about quite a number of kindly deeds, indicating 
 that good-heartedness and thought for others are 
 still powerful here. I watch your fine fury that 
 such things can be," I added, "and I hear of 
 preachers lamenting the wickedness of the world;
 
 MR. DABNEY LETS HIMSELF GO 53 
 
 but I cannot share either passion. My wonder 
 is that people are so good. I think that the 
 courage and endurance and optimism of human 
 beings are amazing. Nothing is done for them: 
 the brave hopefulness with which they rise 
 morning after morning is dashed by noon; but 
 still they go on, doing their best. And the more 
 sceptical we grow, surely the more is it to our credit 
 to be brave and decent."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MR. BEMERTON CONFERS UPON ME 
 THE FREEDOM OF HIS TREASURY 
 
 I TOOK an early opportunity of visiting Mr. 
 Bemerton and introducing myself: not a 
 difficult task with the Chinese treasure as a 
 lever, while the way had been, of course, further 
 paved by Mrs. Duckie, who, like most London 
 matrons of her class, could pave the way to 
 anything. 
 
 Mr. Bemerton is a kind-looking man of about 
 sixty, a bachelor. He is very short, clean-shaven, 
 with silver-rimmed spectacles and white hair. An 
 alert and contented man. He has been in the 
 second-hand book business, he tells me, all his 
 life, having begun as an errand boy at Sotheby's. 
 He set up for himself thirty years ago, and has 
 done well enough, never rising quite to a first 
 folio nor descending much to remainders, but 
 maintaining a steady mean between these two 
 extremes. He has probably never read through 
 a whole volume in his life; but he knows some- 
 thing about most. He has a knack of dipping 
 
 54
 
 FREEDOM OF A TREASURY 55 
 
 which had he been born an author instead of a 
 bookseller might have made his fortune as a 
 popular scholar and even now would qualify him 
 for a librarianship almost anywhere. Libraries, 
 however, he does not much esteem. People should 
 own their books, he holds ; but that, of course, is 
 a counsel of perfection, or would be were it not 
 for the multitude of reprints that are now to be had 
 at the price of a cigar. 
 
 Mr. Bemerton's only sign of impatience or 
 intolerance is displayed when he is reminded by 
 customers of the cheapness of the modern reprint ; 
 but I must do him the justice to explain that it 
 is not for an instant the result of any commercial 
 self-protection on his part, for his soul is without 
 clay, but the genuine distaste of the born explorer 
 for a well-mapped country. What can become of 
 book-hunting, he asks, if everything is reprinted 
 in uniform binding for a shilling or sixpence? 
 He does not often make an epigram his mind is 
 too candid but he came near it when he said 
 the other day that the test of a good book was 
 that it was not reprintable in any series. "Let us 
 pray," he said, "that the best things continue to 
 drop through this net." 
 
 How a man who can afford a few shillings can 
 read in a modern mechanical reprint an old book 
 still accessible in its stout original honest paper 
 and clear print, with the good smell of years about 
 it, he fails to understand. "Do you know," he 
 says, "that most of the books published to-day 
 and all the cheap ones will have perished in
 
 56 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 less than a hundred years? The paper will fall to 
 pieces." 
 
 I should say that not the least interesting 
 part of his shop is the case in which he keeps 
 those books which are too good to be reprinted 
 for a shilling. What are they? Not for any- 
 thing would I divulge their titles; but we know, 
 he and I. The time has come for book-lovers to 
 keep secrets. 
 
 Mr. Bemerton has had his triumphs; but he does 
 not want them. He wants to progress smoothly 
 in the middle way. Yet he has discovered two 
 or three valuable MSS. which brought him some 
 hundreds of pounds from English collectors and 
 would, had he been willing to sell them to America, 
 have produced ten times as much: and among 
 his regular customers was Mr. Gladstone, who, 
 when he was at No. 10 Downing Street during 
 his last term of office as Premier, often looked 
 in and always found something. It was almost 
 impossible for a book to carry no association for 
 that swooping, pouncing brain. He either knew 
 it, or knew of it, or had always wanted to know it. 
 
 It was Mr. Gladstone who made the suggestion 
 to Mr. Bemerton that booksellers should open at 
 night. "The time for second-hand book-shops," 
 he said, "is after one's work, not during one's 
 work. I should like to stroll round this way 
 after the House rose, even in the small hours of 
 the morning, and spend a quarter of an hour by 
 your shelves. So would most of the Members of 
 both Houses. It would pay you."
 
 FREEDOM OF A TREASURY 57 
 
 'If you will announce it, sir, in a speech, I 
 will do so," said Mr. Bemerton, and the great 
 man laughed. 
 
 The last book that Mr. Gladstone bought was 
 Hartley Coleridge's Northern Worthies. "A good 
 book," said he, "but it might have been better. 
 Hartley would have written better had he been 
 his father's grandson instead of son. He was 
 too near." 
 
 Mr. Bemerton ventured to suggest that perhaps 
 he was too near Wordsworth also. "Oh no," said 
 Mr. Gladstone. "He parodied him, and once he 
 stole a leg of mutton from his larder, for a joke. 
 That shows that Wordsworth could do him no 
 harm." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is Mr. Bemerton's trump card, 
 but he tells me that Carlyle came in once, but 
 once only. He bought Evelyn's Life of Mrs. 
 Godolphin in Pickering's edition to give, he 
 said, to a foolish young woman; and he arranged 
 with Mr. Bemerton to have it bound with the 
 editor's introduction omitted. Mr. Bemerton says 
 that after leaving the shop Carlyle returned to 
 make certain that his instructions were understood. 
 "Be sure to cut out the pipe-lights!" were his 
 exact words. Rather hard on Samuel of Oxford. 
 
 Another customer was Mr. Locker-Lampson, 
 who liked books to be slender and pocketable, 
 but whose taste was a little too fastidious for Mr. 
 Bemerton's shelves. Mr. Bemerton treasures an 
 autograph copy of Patchwork which its author 
 sent him.
 
 58 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Mr. Bemerton is assisted by his niece, Miss 
 Ruth Wagstaff, and, according to Mrs. Duckie, it 
 is well that he is, for as he gets older and less 
 anxious the bookseller grows more soft-hearted 
 and (Miss Wagstaff's phrase) soft-headed. " Plenty 
 of soft-heartedness and soft-headedness about her, 
 I don't think," says Mrs. Duckie in the London 
 sarcastic idiom. But this is not doing that young 
 lady justice. Her heart and head are both good, 
 but she feels a responsibility thrust upon her by 
 reason of some of her uncle's unworldly tendencies, 
 and this lays a consequent over-emphasis on her 
 natural practical business aptitude. 
 
 I have always had a respect amounting almost 
 to reverence for the name of Ruth, although none 
 of that more intimate feeling which would lead 
 me to wish it to belong to any of my own people; 
 I have also always felt that among names which 
 exert any influence upon their bearers, Ruth stood 
 high. Ruths should be quiet, wise, sincere, and 
 if not positively beautiful, at least comely and 
 pleasant to look upon. Miss Wagstaff has 
 shattered this poor little fabric of sentiment. 
 Sincerity and candour she certainly has in some 
 abundance, but she is not wise except with the 
 destructive wisdom that London imparts to her 
 children, and she is neither beautiful nor comely. 
 
 She sits at a little table surrounded by the best 
 literature and reads penny novelettes, but her 
 eyes and ears are never off duty. If a poor 
 woman comes in to sell a book, Ruth is watchful 
 to prevent Mr. Bemerton from giving too much.
 
 FREEDOM OF A TREASURY 59 
 
 If a poor scholar comes in to buy one, she is 
 equally alert to prevent Mr. Bemerton taking too 
 little. At intervals she walks to the door to cast 
 a glance at certain unprotected shelves or curtail 
 the studies of the free readers. These are her 
 despair : " They think it's a Carnegie library," she 
 says with a toss. Some day I shall draw her 
 attention to a little poem by Mary Lamb on this 
 subject; but not yet. Courage may come. 
 
 The other member of the staff is Mr. Joshua 
 Glendinning, who sits in a room in the basement 
 for a week every month preparing Mr. Bemerton's 
 catalogue. Mr. Glendinning is a British Museum 
 Reading-Room hack who gets all kinds of odd 
 jobs to keep him going, from copying sermons 
 (on Fridays and Saturdays) to collating quoted 
 passages in proofs and now and then correcting 
 the Greek and Latin of a more fortunate but 
 less scholarly literary man. He once, I learn, was 
 not only a schoolmaster but had a flourishing 
 school of his own; but the devil of intemperance, 
 whose wiles for the overthrow of Christian repu- 
 tations are permitted to conquer so easily, was 
 too much for him, and he gradually and steadily 
 lost all. The gentlest, simplest creature at heart, 
 he now lives on a few pence a day in a Rowton 
 House, wishes no man ill, save perhaps himself, 
 carries a Times dated somewhen hi 1893 pro- 
 truding negligently from his pocket as if it were 
 to-day's and he was a gentleman on his way 
 to his stockbroker's (the harmless melancholy 
 deception!) and sits every evening in the same
 
 60 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 corner of the same saloon bar tearfully imbibing 
 gin and water and laying plans for the new career 
 which will begin on the morrow. 
 
 "Then you don't want to sell me the Chinese 
 book again?" said Mr. Bemerton, after we had 
 exchanged a few generalities. 
 
 "No," I said, "certainly not;" and from Miss 
 Wagstaff's table I heard what sounded like a 
 sarcastic sniff deprecative of her uncle's insanity 
 in suggesting such a transaction. 
 
 "Mrs. Duckie," said Mr. Bemerton, "tells me 
 that you sleep badly. If there are any books 
 here that you would like to keep by your bed, 
 you are welcome to them. The only thing is, we 
 should like to have them back in the morning." 
 (So Naomi was among the prophetesses after 
 all!) 
 
 I accepted the offer cheerfully and promised 
 that the daily restoration should be my first 
 thought. 
 
 "For night reading," said Mr. Bemerton, "it 
 was Mr. Lecky's theory Mr. Lecky often came 
 in that books should be very nearly dull. But 
 it's not very easy to find exactly the right thing." 
 
 "What would you call a nearly dull book?" 
 I asked. 
 
 He looked round for awhile. "This," he said 
 at last, and he brought me a volume of Nichols' 
 Literary Anecdotes. "It's good and sound, and 
 now and then it's amusing, but it's often very small 
 beer. There isn't a better bed book or wouldn't 
 be if only it was a little lighter to hold. The
 
 FREEDOM OF A TREASURY 61 
 
 curious thing about it is that it is the one case 
 known to me of an original book the best of which 
 is all in the footnotes. You take a volume and 
 try." 
 
 The world is very small; the mistake is, of 
 course, ever to have thought it large. While Mr. 
 Bemerton was talking to another customer, and 
 I was at his shelves making my hands very 
 grubby (as only old books can) and my eyes 
 very glad (as old books can almost more surely 
 than anything else), I noticed the address on a 
 parcel which Ern had just finished packing Miss 
 Gold, The Cedars, Esher. 
 
 "Is Miss Gold one of your customers?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Miss Gold," said Mr. Bemerton, "is my best 
 customer. She buys something from every 
 catalogue, which is sent to her one post earlier 
 than any one else. Do you know her?" 
 
 Do I know her? Miss Gold and I were once 
 very nearly . . . 
 
 How long ago that was, and how different 
 my life might have been! And now? I must 
 certainly at once go to Esher to see her again.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 RECALLS OLD STRUGGLES IN THE 
 EARLY DAYS OF GRACE AND INTRO- 
 DUCES A TYRANT FROM LUDLOW 
 
 ON Easter Monday I went with Alderley and 
 Naomi to see Lionel play for a mixed team 
 against Surrey. It was the first match of the 
 year and bitterly cold, but to watch real cricket 
 again was an inducement that would have led 
 me to brave any temperature. For think of it ! 
 it was my first match since the Gentlemen v. 
 Players at Prince's in 1874 when the Gentlemen 
 won by 61 runs. Thirty-four years ago! I was 
 then twenty-four, and I went with my brother 
 Tom and saw every ball bowled. 
 
 Thirty-four years ago, I say, and yet what is 
 that? To me it has been a lifetime; but what 
 has it been to that huge man with the iron-grey 
 beard? I had read his name in the papers as 
 being among the players, and Lionel had shown 
 me his letter inviting him to be one of the team; 
 and yet it needed ocular testimony to believe that 
 this was W. G. that the W. G. I saw make no 
 
 62
 
 63 
 
 at Prince's in that 1874 match was still active in 
 the field. '"Time has run back,'" I quoted to 
 Lionel, '"and fetched the Age of Gold';" but 
 he was not listening. Milton is not much in his 
 line. 
 
 All the Gentlemen v. Players matches were 
 days of Grace at that time. At Prince's, I 
 remember, G. F. came off in the first innings 
 93 not out. How we all hoped that Strachan 
 would keep his end up to let him get the 
 hundred, which meant more than it does to-day 
 and was not yet called a century; but it was 
 not to be. Then came Ross, but Alfred Shaw 
 caught and bowled him at once, and G. F.'s 
 chance was over. If was G. F. who in the 
 second innings (when W. G. made his no) 
 caused an odd bit of trouble. Old Jim Lilly- 
 white was bowling, with his beautiful easy 
 delivery just a brief trot to the wicket and a 
 gentle natural swing of his left arm. Well, he 
 sent up a ball to G. F., who put it tamely 
 back right to the bowler's hands, or what would 
 have been right to his hands had not W. G. 
 intervened. W. G.'s intervention did not mean 
 then quite what it would to-day: he was not 
 then so wide as a church door, but he was 
 enough; and before Jim could get round the 
 obstacle the ball was out of danger. Poor Lilly- 
 white, with G. F.'s 93 not out only too present 
 to his mind, appealed first to one umpire and 
 then the other, but both held that W. G. was 
 not to blame: he had not aggravated his offence
 
 64 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 of bulk by any conscious action. The Players 
 didn't like the decision at all, but. G. F. made 
 only 12, and the match was lost without even 
 those runs. 
 
 The Players' strongest men were Harry Jupp, 
 Harry Charlwood, Shaw, and Morley. Daft also 
 was playing, but he made only 21. Charlwood, 
 the Sussex man, came out top scorer with 85, 
 not a few of them made by a stroke which 
 seems to have utterly died away since then a 
 glance under the left leg. He was very good at 
 it, the little, active, mutton-chop-whiskered fellow. 
 
 My very first Gentlemen v. Players match 
 was in 1868. It was at Lord's, and W. G. was 
 playing then too. He only made 134 not out, 
 but it sufficed. People, I understand, go to see 
 individual cricketers now, but there can never 
 since not even in Ranjitsinhji's best days (which 
 I missed) have been such excitement and 
 enthusiasm among the watchers of the cricket 
 skies as in the late sixties and early seventies in 
 W. G.'s first decade. The Gentlemen's innings 
 at the Lord's match in 1868 was a sufficient 
 indication of the place in which this stripling of 
 nineteen, a year older than I was, stood even 
 then for his "hand" (as a few old-fashioned 
 persons still called a score) was 134 not out, and 
 the whole side made only 201. 
 
 It was W. G., too, who took the Players' 
 wickets 6 in the first innings for 50 runs and 
 4 in the second for 31. He is not bowling 
 much now, and he has come to field in the
 
 THE EARLY DAYS OF GRACE 65 
 
 way that provokes a good-natured cheer from 
 the crowd after every stopped ball; but the 
 shining fact remains that here he is still, in the 
 cricket field, an active man. 
 
 As I watched him I had to rub my eyes; for 
 it seemed as if all my years of exile, all my absurd 
 conscientious attention to duty in that far-off alien 
 land, had been a dream. 
 
 What has happened in the interval? Everything 
 has happened. The Franco-Prussian war; the 
 death of Dickens ; the re-establishment of the French 
 Republic; the bombardment of Alexandria; the 
 rise of the Salvation Army ; the Boer war ; Stevenson, 
 Whistler and Kipling; the Daily Mail; the assassina- 
 tion of Kings and Queens and Presidents; the de- 
 struction of San Francisco. And all the while W. G. 
 has been playing cricket. 
 
 After 1868 I saw every Gentlemen v. Players 
 match but two until I went to Buenos Ayres at 
 the beginning of 1875 in which time the 
 Players won only once. I saw I. D. Walker 
 make his 165 at the Oval in 1868. At Lord's hi the 
 following year I saw W. G.'s hit for 7 off Wootton, 
 no longer possible there except with an overthrow, 
 and I. D.'s 71; and I remember what a hard nut 
 to crack Jupp was in the second innings. Poor 
 Yardley, who afterwards wrote burlesques, came 
 into the match that year. 
 
 But the 1870 match at the Oval was the great 
 one, for that was when G. F. first played, and 
 though he got spectacles, he took altogether 
 8 wickets for 46 runs, and W. G. made his 
 
 F
 
 66 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 215 in the second innings. As it happened, it 
 was too many, for it meant a draw; but what a 
 feat it was! 
 
 Two days later, on his twenty-second birthday, 
 at Lord's, he made 109. That was the closest 
 match I ever saw, the Gentlemen, who went all 
 to pieces in their second innings before old Jim 
 Southerton and Farrands, winning by only 4 runs. 
 
 In 1871 at Lord's there was a draw again. 
 W. G. and Hornby and Yardley and Alfred 
 Lubbock all did well, but Ephraim Lockwood for 
 the Players did best of all. This was the match 
 in which George Freeman took three wickets in 
 four balls. 
 
 I missed the Oval match that year, and alas! 
 I was not at Brighton to see W. G. make his 217 
 for the Nonpareil's benefit; but I was at Lord's 
 in 1872 again, when the champion was on hand 
 with 77 and 112 and Daft made a superb 102 
 in the Players' second innings. W. G. was again 
 in form on the next day, at the Oval, making 
 117, while Hornby and Yardley put on 163 
 between them. 
 
 The next year at Lord's the Gentlemen won 
 almost too easily by an innings and runs, W. G. 
 contributing 163, while at the Oval the same 
 thing happened again, his share then being 158 
 and 7 wickets for 65. 
 
 In those days you were almost as certain to 
 see the champion come off as you now are to 
 see an advertised actor perform. He stood aside 
 from the glorious uncertainty of the game.
 
 THE EARLY DAYS OF GRACE 67 
 
 That year, 1873, gave us three matches, an 
 extra one being arranged at Prince's, at which 
 the Gentlemen again won by an innings and 
 runs, W. G. making 870 and the impaydble 
 "Monkey" 104 (without running any one out, 
 too,) and G. F. 63. Tom Emmett, I remember, 
 bowled at the very top of his comic energies, 
 and he made 32 in the second innings; but 
 Grace and the influence of Grace were too much. 
 
 The next year, 1874, at the Oval W. G. 
 was more restrained, but his countryman, Frank 
 Townsend, made 59 and G. F. 28 and 47, and 
 the "Monkey" 18 and 45, and all was well. 
 Ephraim Lockwood carried his bat right through 
 the Players' innings for 67, and in the second 
 innings put on a hundred with Jupp before they 
 were parted; but after that Absolom and Buch- 
 anan began to see daylight, and the Gentlemen 
 won by 48 runs. Two days later, however, at 
 the Oval the Players won for the first time since 
 1866, Lockwood again playing beautifully. I 
 recall his cutting as wonderful. W. G. made 
 48 and 12, the "Monkey" 63, and G. F. 22 
 and 36. In the second innings our blood ran 
 cold as Hill got Ridley, the "Monkey," and 
 I. D. Walker with successive balls. It was that 
 miracle which won the match. 
 
 And then came my Prince's match that I spoke 
 of first, and my day of watching first-class cricket 
 was done. These were the only matches I 
 allowed myself; for the rest, I was busy at work 
 or playing village cricket at home.
 
 68 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 And now here I am with the prospect of 
 more Gentlemen v. Players matches (which 
 are the best of all) before me. It is almost too 
 much. Such happiness seems unrealisable : once 
 again I have the old school feeling more than 
 feeling, prescience that the end of the world 
 will come before the holidays. 
 
 Lionel did pretty well, but it was bad cricket 
 weather, for there was a snow-laden wind which 
 numbed the fingers. It was, however, a start: 
 a new cricket season had begun. 
 
 I have since seen the Gentlemen v. Players 
 of 1908, and I am disappointed. It was not so 
 much the inferior cricket of the Gentlemen that 
 troubled me: I would as soon see the Players 
 win; it was the spirit of the Gentlemen that 
 distressed me, or rather the want of it. Gentle- 
 men they may be in name and even station, 
 but they no longer play like gentlemen; they 
 play like overworked artisans. Anxiety and 
 boredom have crept into cricket. The Gentle- 
 men as I remember them took the field joyously 
 and cut a dash. It was their pride to let no 
 ball pass them. The Gentlemen to-day are 
 listless and without jokes almost without per- 
 sonality. They have no Grace and, even more 
 conspicuously perhaps, no "Monkey." It comes, 
 I fancy, very largely from playing too much. 
 What was once a game is now a calling; and 
 a calling which involves of necessity so much 
 disappointment and so much idleness (while wait- 
 ing first for one's own innings and then for the
 
 69 
 
 other innings of one's side to finish, to say nothing 
 of rain,) must lead to a certain amount of cynicism 
 and saturnine fatalism. 
 
 I don't think that cricket as a whole has im- 
 proved in these thirty years. Batting, perhaps, 
 is nearer perfection; but it is far less interesting. 
 The first-class game seems to know three strokes 
 only the late cut, the off drive, and the leg glance : 
 all good, and it is astonishing how many batsmen 
 can make them; but I would like to see more 
 hitting, in the old style, where fieldsmen are not. 
 In my time the fieldsmen did not exert such a 
 magnetic influence over the ball as they now do, 
 attracting it for the most part straight to their hands. 
 
 Bowling, I think, is not so good as it was. 
 Too much dependence has been placed on the fast 
 bumping men and five slips, and the result is a 
 loss in the more delicate finesse that was so 
 attractive when I was young the finesse of Shaw 
 and Southerton, and Jim Lillywhite, and later, as 
 I have been told, of Lohmann and Peel and Briggs. 
 
 But the pendulum is always swinging, and 
 personality knows no law and may appear at 
 any moment; so I do not despair. And it will 
 always be the best of games. 
 
 In the evening after Lionel's match I found 
 Queen Anne's Gate in despair. The annual visit 
 of old Mrs. Wynne Grandmamma, as she is 
 called, for Margaret's mother (my stepmother) 
 long since gave up all rivalry in the title the 
 annual visit of Mrs. Wynne has been fixed for 
 next month.
 
 yo OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Every one dreads this yearly fortnight of best 
 behaviour, but does not say so for fear of Alderley 
 overhearing. As for Alderley, he looks forward 
 to his mother's visit with what appears to be the 
 keenest anticipation, but it has been remarked by 
 the family that never does he have so many public 
 and legal dinners as during its progress. His 
 heartiness at breakfast is, however, unbearable, 
 Drusilla says. 
 
 Old Mrs. Wynne, who is nearing eighty, if not 
 quite that age, holds decided views on the de- 
 cadence of modern life, cannot forgive the Queen 
 Anne's Gate celibacy, and has so capricious a 
 memory that while remembering clearly incidents 
 of the dim past she is often unaware that she is 
 saying now what she said with equal solemnity 
 five minutes earlier. 
 
 Her convictions and foibles, added to her tire- 
 less activity, eighty years sitting more lightly on 
 her shoulders than forty on those of many persons, 
 make her a formidable visitor, especially to 
 Drusilla, who, being her favourite, has always to 
 be in attendance. What this means to that im- 
 patient young rebel may be instantly understood 
 when it is stated that Grandmamma's first excite- 
 ment after she is comfortably settled under her 
 son's roof is to visit the Royal Academy and, 
 catalogue in hand, conscientiously look at every 
 picture long enough at any rate to decide whether 
 or not it merits a pencil mark. When it is added 
 that Grandmamma's taste is governed wholly by 
 sentiment, that Drusilla is at the Slade, and that
 
 THE EARLY DAYS OF GRACE 71 
 
 the visit lasts four hours early in May, the extent 
 of the poor girl's sufferings may be gauged. 
 
 Being a happy old lady, Grandmamma says 
 more of the pictures that she likes than of those 
 that displease her; but it is on record in the family 
 that, standing before one of Mr. Sargent's master- 
 pieces, she was heard by the whole room to exclaim, 
 "My dear, never let that man paint me!" her 
 idea apparently being that Mr. Sargent pursued 
 his quarry rather in the desperate way that an 
 Italian gunner pursues little birds than was over 
 besought. Drusilla promised.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND AND RECEIVE 
 A LESSON IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 IT was not so easy to run down to Esher to 
 see Miss Gold. Cowardice intervened. It 
 requires not a little courage for a naturally 
 diffident and sympathetic person to renew a 
 friendship that thirty years ago was in danger 
 of becoming the closest of all intimacies between 
 a man and a woman. 
 
 Miss Gold Agnes, as I called her was then 
 a girl of twenty-one or two, and I fancy that 
 people were beginning to join our names. We 
 were together a great deal; her society gave me 
 extraordinary pleasure, for she had a natural 
 frankness and shrewdness and was intellectually 
 a rebel. To be a rebel then was, for a girl, very 
 exceptional. Also she danced beautifully and so 
 masterfully as to make me as a partner cut some 
 kind of a figure, which no other woman could do, 
 and she liked me enough to give me three or 
 four dances every evening. Our last meeting was 
 at a party in Hyde Park Street, I remember, on 
 
 72
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 73 
 
 the last night of the year 1874 and I held her 
 hand for a few moments longer than I should. I 
 did not mean anything by it but affection. It was 
 one of those sudden impulses to convince persons 
 that you like them very much or feel for them very 
 much; but I believe it meant more to her. I 
 often regretted it, and never so much as when I 
 heard of her accident. 
 
 Her accident! She was intensely fond of horses, 
 and rode every morning. I have seen her in the 
 Row many a time and envied the men with her 
 their power to afford a horse. One day, when she 
 was still a mere girl, soon after I left England, she 
 was thrown, and has never stood upright since. 
 She is carried from her bed to a couch and from 
 her couch to bed. That is her life, and has been 
 these thirty years. 
 
 I can assure you that I (who am still vigorous 
 and last saw her dancing) dreaded the visit. To 
 see Miss Gold again was for long an unbearable 
 thought, for I possess little of that fortitude in 
 bearing other persons' calamities that La Roche- 
 foucauld attributed to the world at large. 
 
 But I made up my mind at last, and Naomi 
 accompanied me to a flower shop to buy some 
 flowers as an offering. 
 
 It was then that I made a discovery of my 
 own with regard to the changes that have come 
 upon England, for, looking round the florist's, I 
 suddenly realised the vast increase not only in 
 interest in flowers but in the variety of flowers 
 that has been witnessed by the thirty years and
 
 74 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 more that I have been abroad. Where can it 
 lead? I have wondered often since, after luxurious 
 travels amid nursery gardens and Temple mar- 
 quees ? Take, for example, daffodils. In my youth 
 there were daffodils too but they were in two 
 varieties only, the double and the single. That 
 was all. To-day there must be hundreds, all 
 beautiful and all named. In my day they were 
 not grown among grass as now they are: there 
 was no encouragement of wild exuberance as 
 one now sees. No one said, "How sweet Sir 
 Watkin looks under the trees!" How could they, 
 for Sir Watkin had not been evolved. 
 
 I wish, by the way, that some one would call a 
 flower after me. I should feel that indeed I had 
 lived to some purpose could I, even from my 
 death-bed, raise a weary head and, straining my 
 poor, exhausted, failing auditories, catch the words, 
 "How luxuriantly the Kent Falconers bloom this 
 year!" Thus hearing I could die in peace. 
 
 And the anemone. That is a totally new 
 discovery. I saw for fourpence bunches of 
 anemones of a deep purple such as was never 
 heard of in my time. And tulips are even more 
 wonderful. We had tulips, of course, but they 
 were the flaunting type. The new tulips can burn 
 too, but also how sweet and grave they can be; 
 and again, how cheery and courageous ! But 
 most of the new colours are wonderful. Sweet- 
 peas we used to call merely sweet-peas and grow 
 for scent: to-day the sweet-pea has a thousand 
 names and colours, and every year, I am told, new
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 75 
 
 and exquisite hues find expression in its but- 
 terfly bloom. The delphinium again is a magical 
 revelation. I seem to remember something dingily 
 like it a larkspur we called it but that this 
 flower should ever adventure so gently up and 
 down the scale of blue into the tenderest melodies 
 who would have expected that? The del- 
 phinium seems to me the perfect flower against 
 or under a grey sky. It is not till the sun has left 
 that it comes to its delicate own. I like to think 
 of all the care and thought that the great florists 
 have been spending during my absence to evolve 
 this lovely apparition against my return. 
 
 Naomi tells me that gardening has become as 
 fashionable as motoring, and England surely is 
 very fortunate in this pretty hobby, although it 
 hurts me a little not only to think of what I missed 
 by being born too soon, but also to have such 
 difficulty in finding some of my old favourites. 
 The Sweet William, for example, eludes me in 
 garden after garden, and mignonette I no longer 
 smell. In our garden at home, before artistic 
 gardening was heard of, these were grown 
 profusely. The only flower in which I see no 
 improvement is the rose. No doubt there are 
 beautiful new roses; but all my favourites are the 
 old ones, and I do not find that the new roses 
 smell as sweet. The cabbage rose remains the 
 most satisfying of all. 
 
 Miss Gold lives in a large and cheerful 
 Georgian house. Her sitting-room is on the 
 ground floor, with high French windows uniting
 
 76 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 it to the lawn. Like so many invalids, she is far 
 less susceptible to cold than most of us, and she 
 lies there with the windows open most of the time. 
 On fine days she is wheeled into the garden itself 
 or into the paddock. All the pretty apparatus for 
 ingratiating human beings with birds is to be 
 seen hi the garden the bath and the nest boxes 
 and the cocoanut for the tits. This means, of course, 
 the privation of a cat; but instead of a cat Miss 
 Gold keeps several dogs, with a King Charles 
 spaniel as the most privileged, and in the paddock 
 she has a home of rest for old horses. 
 
 The garden is very full of flowers so full that 
 I might well have bought something else with 
 my money and it has also two large cedars, 
 beneath which her wheeled couch often stands. 
 
 Very nervously did I ring Miss Gold's bell; 
 but, as is usual hi this life, I found the realisation 
 of the visit far easier than the anticipation. The 
 little lady was brave enough for two. "My dear 
 Kent," she said, after a little while, "you must 
 not come and see me if you are going to look so 
 sad. I want you to come often: you will do me 
 so much good. But it is quite useless if you 
 have such a mournful expression. What is it 
 after all? I am very happy lying here. I have 
 many kind friends. The garden is so wonderful 
 always, and I have a gardener who is also an in- 
 valuable companion and never wants to make a 
 rustic fence. The birds trust me: there is a 
 robin that comes right into the room and will do 
 so until he is a month or so older and has been
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 77 
 
 told more about man's nature. I have letters every 
 morning, and my eyes are so good that I can read 
 and write all day if I like. As for death, my dear 
 Kent, we must not be so frightened of it. I 
 have grown to think of death without any fear or 
 shuddering. After all, if I live to be eighty, my 
 life on my eightieth birthday will be as much 
 behind me as a child's of five. It is only to-day 
 that we live for to-day and to-morrow. No one 
 dares to look much more forward than that. The 
 past is so completely over that in a kind of way 
 one life may be said to be as long as another." 
 
 I did my best to be equally optimistic, and 
 quoted an old epigram of my friend Trist's to 
 the effect that every birth certificate is in a 
 manner of speaking a death warrant. 
 
 Miss Gold liked that. "And another thing," 
 she said: "considering how uncertain is life and 
 how many fatal accidents occur every day, it is 
 illogical to be cheerful with every one else, and 
 pull a long face when you come to see me. 
 Because I may be lying on this couch in ten 
 years' time just as I am to-day; whereas one of 
 your strong, healthy friends with whom you dine 
 to-night may be knocked down and killed by a 
 motor car to-morrow morning. No, Kent, with 
 me you must be gay." 
 
 I so far fell into her humour as to tell her about 
 one or two of Mr. Giles's Chinese heroes, whose 
 quiet acceptance of death is perhaps their most 
 astonishing characteristic to a Western reader 
 the characteristic which most differentiates
 
 78 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 them from ourselves, who cling to life more 
 passionately with each generation. I told her of 
 the death of Wang Ching-we'n of the fifth century 
 A.D., who one evening, as he was playing chess 
 with a friend, received orders to commit suicide. 
 "After having read the Imperial mandate, he 
 finished his game and put the board away. A 
 bowl of poison was brought to him; and then 
 turning to his friend he remarked jestingly, 'I am 
 afraid I cannot ask you to join me!' and quietly 
 drained the bowl." 
 
 "That is the way," said Miss Gold; "but it 
 certainly is not English." 
 
 I told her also of the death of Hsieh Chiu-cheng, 
 whose was perhaps the most ludicrously ironical 
 end on record, since it came "from poisoning 
 himself with a compound which he fancied was 
 the Elixir of Life." 
 
 Miss Gold asked me if any women were in- 
 cluded in the book. There are, of course, a few, 
 but China is not a woman's country. One is 
 Liu Shih, the wife of an official at Court, who 
 also had dealings with the cup. The Emperor one 
 day sent her "a potion which he commanded her 
 to drink, and which he said would cause instant 
 death if she was jealous; adding that if she was 
 not jealous she need not drink it. Without 
 hesitation she drank it off, saying that death 
 would be preferable to such a life." 
 
 Another Chinese lady is Li Fu-jen of the 
 second century B.C., who was so beautiful that 
 "one glance of hers," said a poet, "would destroy
 
 I MEET AN OLD FRIEND 79 
 
 a City, two glances a State." Li Fu-jen, however, 
 lived for pleasure; more heroic was Li Hsien, who, 
 finding that she fascinated a student named Che'ng 
 Yuan-ho to such an extent that he began to 
 neglect his career, she tore out her eyes: "after 
 which," says the historian, "her lover rapidly rose 
 to distinction." But and here comes in the 
 surprise to the Western reader accustomed to 
 think of the Chinese as monsters of impassive 
 selfishness after he had achieved distinction he 
 married her, all sightless as she was. Isn't that 
 a pretty story? 
 
 To my mind, one of the most agreeable girls 
 in the book is the sarcastic waiting-maid who 
 rebuked the meanness of To Ku. "On one 
 occasion he bade a newly purchased waiting- 
 maid get some snow and make tea in honour of 
 the Feast of Lanterns, asking, somewhat pom- 
 pously, 'Was that the custom in your old home?' 
 'Oh no,' the girl replied; 'they were a rough 
 lot. They just put up a gold-splashed awning, 
 and had a little music and some old wine.'" 
 
 We talked also of the Wynnes, and Miss Gold 
 made me promise to bring Naomi to see her, and 
 she asked also if I would bring Trist, whom 
 neither of us had seen since the early seventies, 
 but who was in those days my inseparable friend 
 and very attractive also to her. She was greatly 
 amused by my discovery of her name at 
 Bemerton's and the chance which had taken me 
 to live over her favourite bookseller's shop. But 
 in Mr. Dabney she was even more interested.
 
 8o OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "How extraordinary to think he should be in 
 the same house," she said. "There is no journalist 
 whom I follow so closely. He has a fearless 
 mind and a hatred of injustice. Do you like him?" 
 
 "Well, he compels attention," I said, "but he is 
 a little too near white heat for me." 
 
 "If he were cooler," said Miss Gold, "he would 
 probably be tolerant like you and then he 
 would be no use. There is so much comfortable 
 tolerance to-day, so little anger. I hope he will 
 go on being angry." 
 
 "He will," I said.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW MRS. FRANK TRIED HER INNO- 
 CENT GAMES ON ONE OF THE 
 GREAT ONES OF THE EARTH 
 
 THERE is a most amusing article in this 
 week's Balance on the Scold and her place 
 in mediaeval life. The writer had seen a ducking- 
 chair somewhere, and had been led by it to a 
 series of reflections on the Scold and, what is 
 perhaps more interesting, the Scold's husband. 
 
 It is a topic on which we are very ill informed, 
 and the fancy has a free field. What, he asked, 
 was the husband doing while his wife was being 
 corrected? Was he a spectator or an absentee? 
 Was he proud a kind of inverted hero or was 
 he ashamed? Had he not more probably a very 
 lively sense of what was hi store for him at night 
 and was he not nerving himself for the fray in the 
 inn parlour? 
 
 The writer then went on to consider the home- 
 coming of the Scold: wet through certainly, but 
 was she penitent? Did she scold no more? Is 
 any one ever cured? The home-coming of the 
 
 G 8l
 
 8a OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 husband, he suggested, would be later. And so 
 forth. 
 
 Meeting Mr. Dabney on the stairs, I mentioned 
 the article and asked him who wrote it. He 
 said it was written by a young fellow named 
 Wynne Frank Wynne. Isn't that odd? I 
 knew Frank for an amusing embroiderer, but I 
 never thought of him having so much humour 
 as that. 
 
 He and his wife being at Queen Anne's Gate 
 to dinner, I congratulated him. 
 
 "How did you know I wrote it?" he asked; 
 and I told him about Mr. Dabney. "By the 
 way," I added to Naomi, "that proves my 
 prophecy. Don't you remember my saying that 
 Mr. Dabney and I would find we had a common 
 friend; and it turns out to be Frank." 
 
 Frank, however, denied that he knew him: 
 his connection with the paper was the result of 
 correspondence, and so I said I would bring Mr. 
 Dabney to Barton Street to tea and they should 
 then meet. 
 
 "But isn't he very fierce?" asked Mrs. Frank, 
 thinking, I am sure, of the twins. 
 
 "You must tame him," I said. 
 
 She certainly tried. 
 
 Never was there such a tea. Mrs. Frank 
 must have lain awake half the night meditating 
 upon the attack, for this was her first editor, and 
 was she not a young journalist's wife? (Such a 
 chance.) In her original scheme were hot cakes 
 and cold, muffins and crumpets, brown bread and
 
 MRS. FRANK'S INNOCENT GAMES 83 
 
 white, jam and marmalade; but she had a doubt 
 and put it to Frank. 
 
 "Isn't there a danger," she said, "that he may 
 think we're too well off already?" 
 
 Frank thought there might. So the muffins 
 went and the other hot cakes and the marmalade. 
 
 "And what about my dress?" she said. "I 
 should like to wear the red one, but it does look 
 a little bit expensive." 
 
 "It's very beautiful," said Frank. 
 
 "Don't you like the purple one, then?" she 
 asked anxiously. 
 
 "Of course I do: they're both beautiful." 
 
 "Well, which shall it be?" 
 
 "Why not the red dress and leave off all your 
 rings but the wedding ring?" 
 
 And so did these Machiavellian babes arrange 
 it. 
 
 They might have saved themselves their trouble, 
 for Mr. Dabney is one of those persons who carry 
 their environment with them. He ate his tea 
 nobly, but he could not have said afterwards 
 what he consumed: it was all cake to him, or 
 all bread-and-butter, such is the activity of his 
 mind. 
 
 Mrs. Frank was adorable: she talked her best 
 talk and, her fears allayed, sent for the twins, 
 whom Mr. Dabney inspected with a most admir- 
 able show of interest, although at any moment I 
 felt he might remark that one or the other was 
 too long and would be better with twenty lines 
 cut out
 
 84 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 He arranged for some articles with Frank, and 
 then left. Mrs. Frank was very happy, but I 
 doubt if her innocent and loyal strategy had any- 
 thing to do with it. Still, it is very pretty to see 
 a young wife working for her husband. 
 
 "Frank is a dear," Mrs. Frank said to me 
 later, "but really he is a little too casual about 
 refusing work. The Balance only takes two 
 articles a week, which doesn't pay for more 
 than nurse and our dinners, but nothing will 
 induce him to write for other papers unless he 
 likes them." 
 
 "O si sic omnesl" I said. 
 
 "What does that mean?" she asked coldly. 
 "I have an uncle who talks like that." 
 
 "I'm very sorry," I said, "I won't do it again. 
 It means that I wish all the other journalists were 
 like Frank. Then we should have some decent 
 honest papers." 
 
 "Oh yes," she said, "but really one can be 
 too nice and fastidious. What about the twins? 
 I wanted them to go to Eton. And he won't 
 write a play either," she continued. "That's the 
 way to make money, and it's so easy. We go to 
 the theatre pretty often, and I never see any- 
 thing that Frank couldn't have done better. 
 All you have to do is to make people say 
 foolish things in nice clothes. But Frank says 
 he couldn't. He says it's a special gift, and he 
 hates the stage. He won't even try." 
 
 "Frank's all right," I said; "he's finding him- 
 self. You mustn't hurry him."
 
 MRS. FRANK'S INNOCENT GAMES 85 
 
 "There are so many things we want," she re- 
 plied. "You don't know." 
 
 "I'm afraid you're a bad woman," I said. 
 "You should believe more in the ravens. Young 
 journalists and young journalists' wives ought not 
 to be rich. If you talk like this I shall begin to 
 think you have made a mistake and ought really 
 to have married a stockbroker." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Frank is doing quite well 
 enough. His name is getting to be known for 
 delicate work, and he is in the way of making 
 four or five hundred a year already. That is 
 plenty. But you might as well pour Chateau 
 Yquem into the Thames as tell a young wife that 
 she would be less happy with more money. 
 
 Frank, however, does not let it worry him, but 
 goes smiling through the world, elaborating his 
 little humorous fancies, building up little literary 
 lyrics, and writing reviews and so forth; and 
 there is probably no great danger in Mrs. 
 Frank's covetousness. But I wish she wouldn't. 
 
 I don't know that I blame her, for the air is so 
 full of cupidity nowadays that it is taken in through 
 the pores unless you watch yourself very carefully. 
 She is otherwise a rational little woman, of no great 
 force of character but plenty of cheerfulness and 
 loyalty, who has in reality one of the serenest of 
 lives, for the twins are no more trouble than they 
 ought to be to supply their mother with congenial 
 topics of conversation and that leaven of anxiety 
 that keeps mothers happy, and Mrs. Frank's mother 
 and Frank's mother vie with each other in shower-
 
 86 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 ing little presents on the household, and Naomi is 
 continually looking in with her dear sunny face. 
 
 Let Mrs. Frank be happy while she can. Some 
 day her husband will be offered ;iooo a year to edit 
 a paper, and a literary peeress will take them up, 
 and that will be the end. 
 
 I find that Frank has been selling his review 
 copies to Mr. Bemerton for a long time, and they 
 are old friends. I met him there recently on 
 the search for second-hand copies of the collected 
 poems of one of the older living poets, having 
 had a commission from an editor to prepare his 
 obituary notice against the dread summons. I 
 had not given much thought to this branch of 
 journalistic industry, but of course now that I 
 think of it I see that the pigeon-holes of Fleet 
 Street must be full of these anticipatory articles 
 which only need occasional revision to date to be 
 all ready when the scythe is finally sharpened. 
 To meet an editor must be for a thoughtful 
 celebrity as chilling as the spectacle of the 
 mummy at the Egyptian banquet. 
 
 Frank tells me that the practice on one of the 
 papers for which he is engaged is to withhold 
 payment until the article is used. "This," he 
 says, " is all very well so long as one is flush. 
 But if one were broke just think of what one 
 might be tempted to do, for I see Blank [his 
 poetical victim] at the Museum continually, and 
 could easily poison his soup at the Vienna Cafe*." 
 
 "Poets," Frank said to me one day, "ought to 
 have some common fund from which they might
 
 MRS. FRANK'S INNOCENT GAMES 87 
 
 borrow for sustenance without shame some 
 Pactolian spring into which to dip their cups. 
 You know those ingenious contribution boxes 
 invented by Mr. Sidney Holland, which invite 
 you to drop in a penny and by so doing main- 
 tain the London Hospital for one second a dial 
 indicating the passage of your own pennyworth 
 of time as you do so. Well, I thought once of 
 adopting this plan, and calling upon the public to 
 drop in a penny and thus maintain me. 'A 
 penny keeps a poet for half an hour,' it might 
 have said." 
 
 "Apropos of poets," said I, "come upstairs 
 and I will show you a book." I need hardly say 
 what the book was. 
 
 I delighted Frank immensely by reading him 
 the passage describing the ruse to which Ch'en 
 Tzu-ang the poet resorted in order to win 
 recognition. 
 
 "Proceeding to the capital he purchased a very 
 expensive guitar which had been for a long time 
 on sale, and then let it be known that on the fol- 
 lowing day he would perform upon it in public. 
 This attracted a large crowd; but when Ch'en 
 arrived he informed his auditors that he had some- 
 thing in his pocket worth much more than the 
 guitar. Thereupon he dashed the instrument into 
 a thousand pieces, and forthwith began handing 
 round copies of his own writings." 
 
 Like every one else who sees this fascinating 
 volume, Frank was wild for more, and I read him 
 excerpts from the lives of other poets not better
 
 88 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 than Dr. Samuel Johnson's, but more concise and 
 freakish. Such as Wang Po, a poet of the 
 seventh century A.D., who began as a statesman, 
 but on being dismissed from office for satirising 
 the cock-fighting propensities of the Imperial 
 princes, filled up his leisure by composing verses. 
 
 "He never meditated upon these beforehand, 
 but after having prepared a quantity of ink ready 
 for use, he would drink himself tipsy and lie 
 down with his face covered up. On waking, he 
 would seize his pen and write off verses, not a 
 word of which needed to be changed; whence he 
 acquired the sobriquet of Belly-draft." 
 
 Liu Ling, another poet, and one of the Seven 
 Sages of the Bamboo Grave, was also a hard 
 drinker and a man of infinite humour. It was 
 he who declared that "'to a drunken man the 
 affairs of this world appear but as so much 
 duckweed in a river.' He wished to be always 
 accompanied by a servant with wine, and followed 
 by another with a spade, so that he might be 
 buried where he fell. On one occasion, yielding to 
 the entreaties of his wife, he promised to 'swear 
 off,' and bade her prepare the usual sacrifices of 
 wine and meat. When all was ready, he prayed, 
 saying, 'O God, who didst give to Liu Ling a 
 reputation through wine, he being able to con- 
 sume a gallon at a sitting and requiring a quart 
 to sober him again, listen not to the words of 
 his wife, for she speaketh not truth.' Thereupon 
 he drank up the sacrificial wine, and was soon as 
 drunk as ever."
 
 MRS. FRANK'S INNOCENT GAMES 89 
 
 A tenderer genius was Cheng Ku, of the 
 ninth century A.D., who "said that no one should 
 sing his Song of the Partridge in the presence of 
 Southerners, as it made them think sadly of their 
 far-off homes." 
 
 Li Po, founder of the coterie known as the 
 Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (having got his 
 hand in as a club-maker by forming, some years 
 earlier, the hard-drinking company known as the 
 Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook), should certainly 
 be better known in a country where the sanction 
 of an illustrious wine-bibber a Burns or an 
 Omar is so necessary to literary convivialists. 
 The mother of Li Po, who roystered and revelled 
 in the eighth century A.D., dreamed just before 
 his birth of the planet Venus. The boy was 
 therefore a poet at ten years of age, and a great 
 swordsman very soon after. 
 
 About A.D. 742 he reached Ch'ang-an. The 
 Emperor "was charmed with his verses, prepared 
 a bowl of soup for him with his own hands, and 
 at once appointed him to the Han-liu College." 
 Later, "with a lady of the Seraglio to hold his 
 ink-slab, he dashed off some of his most impas- 
 sioned lines; at which the Emperor was so 
 overcome that he made the powerful eunuch 
 Kao Li-shih go down on his knees and pull off 
 the poet's boots." Kao's desire for revenge made 
 it necessary for Li Po to leave the court, which 
 he did with seven companions, and they are now 
 known collectively as the Eight Immortals of the 
 Wine Cup. He met his death, characteristically,
 
 90 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 by drowning, "from leaning one night over the 
 edge of the boat, in a drunken effort to embrace 
 the reflection of the moon." 
 
 Li Po had no monopoly of such ends. Fu I, 
 another poet and the originator of epitaphs, was 
 of the same mettle. His own epitaph, which he 
 composed with accurate foresight, runs thus 
 
 "Fu I loved the green hills and the white clouds, 
 Alas ! he died of drink. " 
 
 "Very different from our reputed Laureate," 
 Frank remarked, adding, "I wish you'd lend me 
 that book." 
 
 "For why?" I replied. "To write about it?" 
 
 He admitted the weakness. 
 
 "No," I said with startling decision. "No."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A HERO-WORSHIPPER AGAIN GLIMPSES 
 HIS HERO, AFTER MANY YEARS 
 
 TO look up Trist was, I knew, both necessary 
 and desirable, and yet I dreaded it too. 
 Not quite as I had dreaded the visit to Esher, but 
 as a duty to be put off. Why? For we had 
 been great friends; more, he had been my 
 exemplar, my model. His year or two of senior- 
 ity, his/<> for civilisation, as I might call it, had 
 set him in the position of mentor. I had been 
 rather at his feet than by his side. That was 
 thirty and more years ago; and now, ... do 
 you understand? 
 
 In the days when Trist and I shared rooms, I 
 was in the City and he sub-edited an evening paper. 
 He was fresh from Oxford, wealthy, contemptuous, 
 and gay; he took his duties very lightly, but was 
 an admirable man for the post, and did much to 
 establish the paper's reputation on the humorous 
 side. 
 
 Although I could not afford it, I went to the 
 same tailor and hosier; I smoked the same brand, 
 
 91
 
 92 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 which was then a simple thing to do, for it was 
 before the second discovery of tobacco, so to speak, 
 when there were few mixtures, and no "Pioneers 
 of the Smoking World," and it was possible to 
 walk twenty yards along a street and not pass 
 three tobacconists. I am not naturally a hero- 
 worshipper, but Trist found me at an impression- 
 able age and he filled an empty space. I had 
 better have been in love, no doubt, but that was 
 not my way. 
 
 Soon after I had left England he threw up 
 journalism, travelled, then did some political 
 private-secretarial work and so forth, and as 
 relation after relation died and left him money 
 he gradually became a connoisseur of life and 
 nothing else, and settled down in Gray's Inn, 
 permanently, with his floating population of fifty 
 pairs of perfect trousers, a profile glass, and an 
 invaluable man. 
 
 In Buenos Ay res I had written to Trist now 
 and then, and he to me: enough to inform each 
 other that the end was not yet, but little more. 
 
 I continued to put off the call as long as I could. 
 There is something very perilous in the resump- 
 tion of intercourse after many years, especially 
 when the man you are going to see was once your 
 hero. Heroes do not wear well, and it is a 
 question whether they are less heroic to their 
 valets who see them continually or to old 
 admirers who have acquired thirty years of 
 experience since they saw them last. I was 
 going, I felt, to see Trist with very clear eyes,
 
 HERO-WORSHIPPER AND HIS HERO 93 
 
 and I did not want to. I am absurdly fond of 
 the past. 
 
 Few friendships, I suppose, wear honestly 
 through a long life. The friends do not progress 
 equally; one matures quickly, the other slowly. 
 One becomes pious, the other impious. They 
 marry (this is the commonest interruption of all) 
 antipathetic wives. It is all as it should be if 
 they were really friends once, for friends, in fact, 
 belong to periods rather than to all time, although 
 sentiment would have it otherwise. One is always 
 changing a little, although of radical change there 
 is almost none, and new friends are found in tune 
 with each stage. I could admit no longer any 
 need for Trist, and yet all the same I longed to see 
 him and dreaded it too. 
 
 There was another obstacle in the way. We 
 were both bachelors. In every man, I take it, 
 even the most married, there sleeps a bachelor; 
 but a bachelor through and through as I have 
 been, and as Trist is, is a less negotiable quantity. 
 No one probably has more affectionate impulses 
 than I, a warmer wish to help and comfort, 
 and yet I am always conscious of a slight barrier 
 between me and those I would befriend and 
 assist, a barrier which probably would not be 
 there had I married. Marriage, there is no doubt, 
 is a solvent; and the curious thing is that the 
 married reveal their state: marconigrams pass. 
 
 Bachelors have many advantages, but they are 
 all minor. Perhaps the greatest advantage they 
 enjoy is that of still being able to follow an
 
 94 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them 
 all the pleasure that it would give many a man 
 who has tasted restriction. Feeding on impulses 
 can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll. 
 
 As it happened, fate took the matter out of my 
 hands, for I walked bang into Trist one afternoon 
 under my own roof that is to say, in Bemerton's 
 shop. He was engaged hi the characteristic 
 occupation of making some one do something for 
 him, and in this case he was dealing with such 
 ordinarily unpromising material as Miss Ruth 
 Wagstaff. He seemed so genuinely glad to see 
 me again that I felt ashamed of having so long 
 deferred my visit; and I promised to dine with 
 him that very evening. 
 
 I found Trist in very comfortable, almost lux- 
 urious, rooms, at the top of a seventeenth-century 
 house in Gray's Inn, overlooking a beautiful grave 
 square on one side and a beautiful grave lawn on 
 the other. Not quite the true Oxford cloister, 
 but very near it; and with busy London within 
 a stone's-throw. His only companion is his man, 
 Jack Rogers, once a sailor in the King's Navy, 
 but now through the loss of an eye enjoying a 
 pension on land, although only twenty-nine years 
 of age, and acting as valet, cook, and parlour- 
 maid to my old friend. Why a navy which owes 
 most of its prestige to the activities of a man 
 who lacked not only one eye but also one arm 
 should be in such a hurry to get rid of Jack I 
 cannot understand; for he sees far more with his 
 widowed orb than the ordinary observer does
 
 HERO-WORSHIPPER AND HIS HERO 95 
 
 with two, and is quite the most capable all-round 
 hand I have yet met. 
 
 That Trist should live in Gray's Inn, off Hoi- 
 born, of all streets, and that his man should not 
 
 have been for some years with the Duke of B 
 
 and the Earl of A , are the surprising things; 
 
 but then Trist makes a point of never belonging 
 wholly to any type. His aim is always to be 
 original somewhere, although never original 
 enough to be conspicuous. 
 
 Another of his foibles is to be thought worldly 
 to a point of cynicism; but he is of course far 
 too English to be a genuine success, although he 
 may deceive the poor observer. Every man has 
 some ideal, and Trist has been true to his ever 
 since I have known him. I should describe his 
 ideal, which he acquired as quite a youth, as a 
 blend of Lytton's Zanoni and Meredith's Adrian 
 Harley, the wise youth. (For one has to get 
 one's durable exemplars from books; in real life 
 one finds them out.) Underneath, however, he 
 has a sympathetic kindliness which has prompted 
 him to many actions wholly out of keeping with 
 his cool exterior. 
 
 He does nothing: he is a true dilletante; but 
 though he does nothing he knows all. He studies 
 the papers, collects gossip, sees the new plays, 
 reads the new books, attends sales at Christie's 
 and Sotheby's. Half-past seven finds him in 
 evening dress as naturally as it finds a baby in 
 bed. He is never in a hurry, and never late. 
 His cigarette case is always full.
 
 96 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Trist's second ambition (the first being never 
 to be unprepared) is to own the best Old Crome. 
 His life may be said almost to have been dedicated 
 to Old Crome. He has three on his walls, and he 
 wants others, but they must be better than the 
 three; which to my eye are perfect. Two are 
 views of Household Heath, which stood for the 
 promised land to this painter, and the other is a 
 cottage and a tree and a peasant woman. They 
 are the only pictures in the room. In the dining- 
 room one painter again is represented, and one 
 only, the rare and marvellous Bonington, who 
 perished in his pride, but not before he had 
 revolutionised French landscape painting, all 
 water-colours. Trist spends hours every week 
 in curiosity shops, and in the summer, when he 
 is driven from London by sheer lack of activity 
 there, he makes his holiday in Norfolk, partly 
 sailing on the Broads and partly bicycling among 
 the farmhouses, into which with masterly address 
 he finds his way and scans the walls for the 
 Master's glow. His manners are charming, and 
 he rarely meets with a rebuff. Down to the 
 present time, however, he tells me, one Crome 
 and one only has he found that he covets and 
 that he cannot get. The owner, a strong wealthy 
 farmer of as much independence .and will-power 
 as Trist himself, would as soon sell his daughter. 
 
 Nothing else moves Trist to feeling. Old 
 Crome and Bonington can light his eye, but for 
 the rest his attitude through life is one of cool, 
 amused detachment and perfect self-possession.
 
 HERO-WORSHIPPER AND HIS HERO 97 
 
 I have from time to time set down his obiter 
 dicta on the management of one's affairs in a 
 very civilised progress through this vale of tears; 
 but as I can remember only those that he has 
 dropped in my hearing, the record necessarily is 
 deprived of thousands that may be better, as 
 indeed I suppose BoswelPs also is. (A new col- 
 lection of Johnson's good things uttered when 
 Boswell was absent would stand almost first 
 among the books we desire. I mentioned this to 
 Mr. Bemerton one day, for we often talk of the 
 impossible books we should like to have. "Yes," 
 he said, "and what a good subject for the forger." 
 He is, by the way, greatly interested in literary 
 forgeries, and keeps a number of them together 
 on a shelf, and is one of the few people who have 
 read Vortigern.) 
 
 Here, then, are certain of the aphorisms with 
 which Trist would, hi his Chesterfieldian manner, 
 instruct his son, if he had anything so ridiculous. 
 All begin with the same words concerning 
 which I might perhaps say that by "life" Trist 
 does not mean what a poet means, or a saint, or 
 a schoolboy, or a motorist, or even what I mean 
 by it. Trist means by "life" a protected ease. 
 I have jotted them down from time to time as 
 I remembered them my first thought being mis- 
 chievously to convict him of inconsistency. I see 
 now, however, that one definite idea connects all. 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is the pigeon- 
 holing of women." True enough of Englishmen, 
 at any rate, who want women only when they 
 H
 
 98 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 want them (and then they must behave) ; but no 
 Frenchman would say it. 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to say the 
 same things to everybody. To differentiate one's 
 treatment of people may be interesting, but it 
 leads to complications." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to assume 
 that no one else has any feelings." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is the use and 
 not abuse of alcohol. A wise ap&ritif can make 
 a bad dinner almost good, and a bad partner 
 almost negligible." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to be so well 
 known at a good restaurant that you can pay by 
 cheque." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to make your 
 tailor come to you." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, who hates gossip, 
 "is never to see two unrelated people together; but 
 if you must, and it can't be helped very easily, 
 never to mention it again. Three-quarters of the 
 ills of life proceed from the report that So-and-so 
 has been seen with So-and-so. There is too much 
 talk. A wise autocrat would cut out the tongue 
 of every baby. A silent society would probably 
 be a happy one; because it would be largely 
 without scandal." That seemed to me, I said, too 
 drastic, and I recommended instead the example 
 (from my Chinese book) of Hsin Shao, of the 
 second and third century A.D., "who is now 
 chiefly remembered in connection with his 
 practice of devoting the first day of every
 
 HERO-WORSHIPPER AND HIS HERO 99 
 
 month to criticism of his neighbours and their 
 conduct." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is never to be 
 out of small change." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to keep down 
 acquaintances. One's friends one can manage, 
 but one's acquaintances can be the devil." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to show your 
 hand. There is no diplomacy like candour. 
 You may lose by it now and then, but it will be 
 a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring 
 as having to keep up a deception." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to live near 
 a post office, but never to go there one's self." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is never to think 
 you know what other people are feeling about 
 you. You are sure to be wrong." 
 
 "The art of life," says Trist, "is to be thought 
 odd. Everything will then be permitted to you. 
 The best way to be thought odd is to return a 
 cheque now and then on a conscientious scruple. 
 There is no such investment." 
 
 Trist also has a very interesting and ingenious 
 theory that goes more deeply into the manage- 
 ment of life. "I do not believe," he once said to 
 me, "in carving out our own destiny, but I be- 
 lieve that the unexpected happens so often, and 
 the expected so seldom, that one might by 
 steadily anticipating ills avoid calamity." 
 
 Trist, however, is not really as monstrous as 
 these maxims would make him out to be. For 
 the full play of his personality he must un-
 
 ioo OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 doubtedly be calm and prosperous and spoiled; 
 but once he is in that state of bliss he can be 
 extraordinarily kind. One would not see him 
 carrying a poor woman's bundle, or putting 
 himself out over a street casualty; but he has 
 befriended several young artists and musicians, 
 and he lends money capriciously to needy persons 
 at the very moment when money means most to 
 them. He likes to play Fate. 
 
 I came away from his rooms that first evening 
 a little saddened. I could not help contrasting 
 the past, when he was so necessary to me, with the 
 present, when we each made the other constrained, 
 and had grown so naturally into the power of 
 doing without each other that the early conditions 
 could never be restored. 
 
 But since then I have fallen into the old Trist 
 habit again, and now I like to be with him almost 
 as much as ever, although I am no longer plastic 
 as I was. I like his fastidiousness, and it amuses 
 me (and perhaps does me good) to watch the 
 skill with which he looks ahead by instinct to 
 ensure his comfort. 
 
 We are to go down to Miss Gold's to tea one 
 afternoon next week. Trist, it seems, has a taxi- 
 cab driver in his pocket, and he will convey us 
 there. "I telephone him when I want him," said 
 Trist; "it is far better than being bothered with 
 a car of one's own." 
 
 Of course.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 
 BRINGS US INTO THE COMPANY 
 OF QUAINT AND LEARNED GEN- 
 TLEMEN 
 
 / "~T*HE older I grow, the less, I find, do I want 
 -1- to read about anything but human be- 
 ings. (The proper study of matured mankind 
 is certainly man.) But human beings as human 
 beings are not enough: they must, to interest 
 me, have qualities of simplicity or candour or 
 quainmess. A few such I have found in Mr. 
 Bemerton's first highly-commended bed book 
 the Literary Anecdotes of John Nichols, a series 
 of volumes, very unpromising at first, and truly 
 as dull as Mr. Lecky told my friend that a bed 
 book should be, descriptive of the attainments 
 of the principal contributors to The Gentkmarfs 
 Magazine (best of periodicals) in the second half 
 of the eighteenth century (a period when to be 
 an antiquary and a gentleman was so easy) 
 when that publication belonged to Bowyer the 
 printer. 
 For the most part these old dry-as-dust clergy-
 
 102 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 men and scholars had little enough to recommend 
 them to any one but Bowyer, who seems to have 
 basked with equal satisfaction in the friendship of 
 all ; but when one looks deeper one finds treasure. 
 
 Sir Hildebrand Jacob, for example, one does 
 not soon forget. Sir Hildebrand was a bibli- 
 ophile and a minor poet and dramatist, who 
 died in 1790. "As a general scholar, he was 
 exceeded by few; in his knowledge of the 
 Hebrew language he scarcely had an equal. In 
 the earlier part of his life, one custom which he 
 constantly followed was very remarkable. As 
 soon as the roads became pretty good, and the 
 fine weather began to set in, his man was ordered 
 to pack up a few things in a portmanteau, and 
 with these his master and himself set off, without 
 knowing whither they were going. When it 
 drew towards evening, they inquired at the first 
 village they saw, whether the great man in it was 
 a lover of books, and had a fine library. If the 
 answer was in the negative, they went on farther; 
 if in the affirmative, Sir Hildebrand sent his com- 
 pliments, that he was come to see him; and there 
 he used to stay till time or curiosity induced 
 him to move elsewhere. In this manner Sir 
 Hildebrand had very nearly passed through the 
 greatest part of England, without scarcely ever 
 sleeping at an inn, unless where town or village 
 did not afford one person civilised enough to be 
 glad to see a gentleman and a scholar." 
 
 Sir Hildebrand reminds one a little of the Don, 
 though lacking utterly in any suggestion of the
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 103 
 
 pathos which so beautifully cloaks that sublime 
 figure. To seek books comes, however, next to 
 the search for adventures and wrongs to redress. 
 A good author might found a very charming story 
 on this literary knight-errant and his encounters 
 with the rural collector. It is not the least loss 
 brought to us by railroads and motor cars that the 
 problem of the lodging for the night is so easily 
 solved to the exclusion of chance hospitality. 
 One wants to know more of Sir Hildebrand how 
 he went to work to become a guest and what mis- 
 conceptions he had to live down. 
 
 Another of Nichols' heroes is the Rev. William 
 Budworth, the schoolmaster who so nearly en- 
 gaged the young Samuel Johnson as an usher 
 and who was the instructor of the learned Bishop 
 Hurd, the friend of Warburton. Mr. Budworth, 
 who taught the Free Grammar School at Brewood, 
 was a precisian of the first water. He made no 
 mistakes. "His person, which was rather above 
 the middle height, was formed with the nicest 
 symmetry; and he had, perhaps, as fine a presence 
 as almost any man in the kingdom. His air, 
 deportment, language, voice, in short, every word 
 and every action, announced the accomplished 
 gentleman. He had not the fine eagle-eye of a 
 Conde*, nor, askaunt, did it flash conviction and 
 terror like Chatham's ; there was nothing tremendous 
 in his aspect; he never spoke like thunder, nor did 
 he command with the pomp of a bashaw ; but there 
 was an irresistible and indescribable something, 
 which always commanded respect, and for ever
 
 104 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 inspired the beholders with awe; his look and his 
 voice pierced to the very inmost soul." 
 
 I imagine that, which is the work not of Nichols 
 but of a contributor, to be the perfect description 
 of the perfect schoolmaster. One sees what a 
 terror would such a man strike into the heart 
 and knees of the young. It was a dull day for 
 English readers (I think) when the description of 
 the person was first considered unnecessary. We 
 rarely get it now. 
 
 Among the anecdotes of Mr. Budworth (and I 
 may say here that Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, 
 in spite of its title, is poorer in anecdotes than 
 almost any book I ever opened) is this, referring 
 to a social and more or less unbending, if not 
 convivial, evening at that model's house. Mr. 
 Budworth, I should first say, was a vegetarian. 
 "Among other topics of conversation, Mr. Martin 
 took the freedom to ask Mr. Budworth, what his 
 sentiments were respecting the lawfulness or un- 
 lawfulness of eating blood. His reply was nearly 
 in the following terms : ' I have read the authors on 
 both sides of the question; those who wrote in 
 favour of the prohibition had the greatest weight 
 with me, and therefore I have always abstained 
 from eating it.'" 
 
 Boswell, I suppose, made the record of this 
 kind of conversation possible. I wish it had not 
 gone out; but with hero-worship (of which it was 
 a symptom) it has passed. We seem to have 
 grown too critical for such hero-worship any more; 
 the minor dictator, being no longer able to induce
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 105 
 
 people to take him at his own valuation, has either 
 become merely a grumbler or has diminished into 
 a man and a brother. 
 
 Another possessor of the higher dignity but 
 a very different man from Mr. Budworth, 
 although his contemporary was John Baskerville 
 (noble name!), the Birmingham printer of the 
 Bible whose spacious page one occasionally and 
 very joyfully observes on the lectern of such 
 village churches as one has the luck to find open. 
 Baskerville printed the Bible like an angel, but 
 he did not esteem its matter. He was, in fact, a 
 very determined agnostic, and in his last will and 
 testament he provided for the persistence of his 
 hostility to accepted dogma. John Baskerville is 
 thus described by a friend of Nichols: "In re- 
 gard to his private character, he was much of a 
 humorist, idle in the extreme; but his invention 
 was of the true Birmingham model, active. He 
 could well design, but procured others to execute: 
 wherever he found merit, he caressed it: he was 
 remarkably polite to the stranger, fond of show; 
 a figure rather of the smaller size, and delighted 
 to adorn that figure with gold lace. Although 
 constructed with the light timbers of a frigate, his 
 movement was stately as a ship of the line." 
 
 From the printer we pass to a printer's friend 
 to Mr. James Elphinstone the grammarian, the 
 friend of Benjamin Franklin and also of Johnson 
 and Jortin. Mr. Elphinstone had a very agree- 
 able gentle eccentricity. "The colour of his suit 
 of clothes was invariably, except when in mourn-
 
 106 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 ing, what is called a drab; his coat was made in 
 the fashion that reigned, when he returned from 
 France, in the beginning of the last century, with 
 flaps and buttons to the pockets and sleeves, 
 without a cape; he always wore a powdered bag- 
 wig, with a high toupee; and walked with a 
 cocked hat and an amber-headed cane; his shoe- 
 buckles had seldom been changed, and were 
 always of the same size; and he never put on 
 boots. It must be observed, however, that he 
 lately, more than once, offered to make any 
 change Mrs. Elphinstone might deem proper: but 
 in her eyes his virtues and worth had so sanctified 
 his appearance, that she would have thought the 
 alteration a sacrilege. Mr. Elphinstone' s principal 
 foibles originated, some in virtue itself, and others 
 in the system he had early laid down for pre- 
 serving the purity of the English tongue. As an 
 instance of the former, when any ladies were present 
 in company whose sleeves were at a distance from 
 their elbows, or whose bosoms were at all exposed, 
 he would fidget from place to place, look askance, 
 with a slight convulsion of his left eye, and never 
 rest till he approached some of them, and, point- 
 ing to their arms, say, 'Oh yes, indeed! it is very 
 pretty, but it betrays more fashion than modesty ! ' 
 or some similar phrase; after which he became 
 very good-humoured." 
 
 Another gentle humorist (in the old sense of 
 the word, which is far better than the new) was 
 Dr. John Taylor, Registrar of Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, editor of Demosthenes and ^Eschylus, and
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 107 
 
 Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's, who died in 1766. 
 A friend sent to Sylvanus Urban an admirable 
 account of this old scholar, containing a very 
 pleasant picture of his patience with visitors 
 more than patience, his sweet cordiality. "You 
 have mentioned that Dr. Taylor was too busy 
 a man to be idle. This is too shining a particular 
 in the Doctor's temper and abilities not to be a 
 little more insisted upon. If you called on him in 
 College after dinner, you were sure to find him 
 sitting at an old oval walnut-tree table entirely 
 covered with books, in which, as the common 
 expression runs, he seemed to be buried: you 
 began to make apologies for disturbing a person 
 so well employed; but he immediately told you 
 to advance, taking care to disturb as little as you 
 could the books on the floor; and called out, 
 'John, John, bring pipes and glasses;' and then 
 fell to procuring a small space for the bottle 
 just to stand on, but which could hardly ever be 
 done without shoving off an equal quantity of 
 the furniture at the other end; and he instantly 
 appeared as cheerful, good-humoured, and d6gage, 
 as if he had not been at all engaged or interrupted. 
 Suppose now you had stayed as long as you 
 would, and been entertained by him most agree- 
 ably, you took your leave, and got half-way down 
 the stairs; but, recollecting somewhat that you 
 had more to say to him, you go hi again; the 
 bottle and glasses were gone, the books had 
 expanded themselves so as to re-occupy the whole 
 table, and he was just as much buried in them as
 
 io8 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 when you first broke in on him. I never knew 
 this convenient faculty to an equal degree in any 
 other scholar." 
 
 It seems to me that Dr. John Taylor in his 
 study would make a good picture for an artist of 
 interiors. 
 
 But my favourites among Bowyer's friends are 
 William Clarke, the Sussex parson, and Richard 
 Gough, the antiquary of Enfield. Mr. Gough's par- 
 ticular line was topography, and in addition to 
 a work of his own on the topography of Great 
 Britain, he translated and edited Camden's 
 Britannia. Having considerable wealth, he was 
 able to employ illustrators to enrich his text 
 very thoroughly, and when he died he left all his 
 MSS. and drawings to the Bodleian, where they 
 may be seen by the curious to-day. But the 
 trait in the character of this amiable scholar 
 which has most attracted me is his kindness to 
 animals more than kindness, for any one can feel 
 that, but gratitude too, which fourd expression 
 in the minute and thoughtful epitaphs which he 
 wrote for the gravestones of his pets. Here is 
 one upon Toby perhaps a sparrow : 
 
 To immortalise the memory 
 
 of Merit and Innocence, which, having long since left the 
 
 abodes of men, shine forth among brutes, and to perpetuate 
 
 the unhappiness of Favourites, 
 
 is this monument erected. 
 
 He who is here deposited was, like all the good, removed from 
 future evils, though his character was such as might alone procure 
 him esteem. His station was sufficient to protect him from those 
 insults which his equals continually bear; and his greatest recom- 
 mendation was to have been taught at home. He was no wise
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 109 
 
 inferior to the fam'd favourite of Lesbia, though all his praise is 
 
 confined to this; but he owed his death to a different cause, the 
 
 sportive jealousy of another object of partiality having sent hither 
 
 the unfortunate Toby. 
 
 Pretty if heavy pleasantry, is it not? Here follows 
 an epitaph upon a cat : 
 
 After a life spent in the useful 
 purposes of peopling the world with 
 my own race, defending my 
 friends from intruding 
 animals, and entertain- 
 ing them in my youth 
 with wanton tricks, 
 here rest I 
 in peace, 
 the old TORTOISE-SHELL CAT. 
 
 Had I died in Egypt, an immortal sepulchre and religious venera- 
 tion had remembered me to posterity ; but now, such is the change 
 of time, it is owing to Mr. Jarvis and a plate of lead that you hear 
 any more of me, since compassionate man put an end to the 
 calamities of life, which others of his species would have but aug- 
 mented. As the Gods are said to have considered their faithful 
 votaries by an easy death, the same reward have I obtained for my 
 services; and thus have I closed a scene of great revolutions, 
 though few of these affected me. 
 
 So Priam, father of an endless race, 
 His happiness and honour, while his Troy 
 Remain'd and flourish'd, dropt into his tomb 
 By great Achilles' hand; and not a stone 
 Tells where the bones of Asia's Monarch rest. 
 
 Finally, let me quote what is perhaps the only 
 inscription extant on the grave of a pheasant, 
 a bird which most county gentlemen, even the 
 kindest, first kill for sport and then honour in 
 death in a totally different way. I am not
 
 no OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 blaming them: I wish only to point the con- 
 trast. Mr. Gough composed this epitaph on a 
 pheasant that he had tamed: 
 
 Beneath 
 
 this humble but grateful monument rests all that remains of one 
 
 who, after having, amidst the changes and vicissitudes of this 
 
 mortal life, preserved a heart as superior to them as his condition 
 
 would admit, paid his debt to Nature, Oct. , 1756. 
 
 Many years ago he left his native air 
 
 to breathe in British Freedom; 
 
 and resigned his extensive territories in the East 
 
 for less ample possessions, where his reception 
 
 was more suitable to his merit. 
 
 Exalted above the ignoble crowd which surrounded him, 
 
 he maintained that native dignity which became a consciousness 
 
 of his superior excellence. 
 
 Endowed by nature with all the advantages 
 of person, he despised the arts of dress. 
 
 The same easy temper which softened the solitude of celibacy 
 heightened his relish of the married state; and the same ben- 
 evolence which distinguished him in society would have taught 
 him the just discharge of parental duties had the care of 
 posterity demanded. 
 
 He never plumed his wings to lofty flights, 
 
 nor sought the refinements of Art where Nature's 
 
 bounty could be obtained. 
 
 As he lived superior to ambition or interest, he fell no 
 
 sacrifice to party rage or political malice; but, after the 
 
 long enjoyment of unsullied reputation, withdrew 
 
 from the stage on which he had performed 
 
 his part so well. 
 
 Blush not, whosoever thou art, that with the poring eye of 
 
 P. Gemsege l or W. Toldervey 1 does decypher these 
 
 letters, to receive instruction from the example of a 
 
 PHEASANT. 
 
 1 Two old and respectable correspondents of Mr. Urban (in The 
 Gentleman's Magazine).
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK HI 
 
 Only a man of singular thoughtfulness and 
 sweetness of nature would thus go to the trouble 
 of celebrating his pets. 
 
 Modern poetry contains many such tributes, 
 notably Matthew Arnold's poems on Geist and 
 Max, and Matthias the canary; but little of 
 Gough's tenderness and solicitude had come 
 between his own day and that of the bereaved 
 gentlemen of the Greek Anthology, how many 
 centuries earlier. That is to say, in literature; 
 but, in fact, I suppose, men have always loved 
 their pets with equal depths. There is a dead 
 partridge in the Greek anthology : 
 
 No longer, poor partridge migrated from the rocks, does thy 
 woven house hold thee in its thin withies, nor under the sparkle 
 of fresh-faced Dawn dost thou ruffle up the edges of thy basking 
 wings; the cat bit off thy head, but the rest of thee I snatched 
 away, and she did not fill her greedy jaw; and now may the 
 earth cover thee not lightly but heavily, lest she drag out thy 
 remains. 
 
 That pairs off with Mr. Gough's pheasant, and 
 indeed may have given him his inspiration. 
 
 And here are two epitaphs on favourite dogs, 
 also hi Mr. Mackail's beautiful translation : 
 
 Here the stone says it holds the white dog from Melita, the most 
 faithful guardian of Eumelus; Bull they called him while he was 
 yet alive; but now his voice is prisoned in the silent pathways 
 of the night. 
 
 And 
 
 Thou who passest on the path, if haply thou dost mark this 
 monument, laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog's grave; 
 tears fell for me, and the dust was heaped above me by a master's 
 hands, who likewise engraved these words on my tomb.
 
 ii2 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Richard Gough of course knew these, and, as 
 I say, he very probably took his inspiration from 
 them; but the circumstance does not diminish 
 the beauty of his own affectionate thoughtfulness 
 in composing epitaphs of his own and having 
 them cut in the stone. 
 
 Nichols, who, of course, after his quaint manner, 
 buries all the human characteristics of his anti- 
 quarian and scholastic friends in the small type 
 of the footnotes, gives also a model address of 
 a candidate to his constituents as prepared by 
 Mr. Gough for a friend who thought to contest 
 a seat. It is a brief but amusing document, 
 obviously the work of a golden-hearted, pure- 
 minded recluse, removed by nature and circum- 
 stances far from the turmoil of ambitious men. 
 It runs thus : 
 
 "I offer myself a Candidate to represent the 
 
 County [or Borough] of , with a determined 
 
 resolution neither to solicit, nor influence, the votes 
 of the free electors. Superior to such influence 
 myself, I cannot condescend to bribe or intimi- 
 date my countrymen. I stand forth, therefore, 
 on no other ground than public virtue. If there 
 is so much left in this place as to direct your 
 choice to me, I shall be happy in calling it 
 forth, whether I succeed in my election or not. 
 I shall neither make nor authorize any other 
 application than this. As I have no ends of 
 my own to serve, I profess myself of no 
 party; and resolved to follow the dictates of 
 my own conscience, with respect to my duty,
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK 113 
 
 to my Country, my Sovereign, and my Con- 
 stituents." 
 
 When Mr. Gough himself came to die, his 
 learned friend Dr. Sherwin said of him in The 
 Gentleman's Magazine that "his cellar was as 
 open to the necessities of afflicted industry as 
 his noble library to the wants and wishes of 
 literary men." A noble epitaph. Those great 
 days have passed away. Gentlemen no longer 
 have a Magazine, and many of them cut a fine 
 enough figure without either library or cellar. 
 Indeed, I am not sure that the tendency of the 
 cellar to dwindle into a Tantalus is not the 
 most lamentable sign of the times.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THESPIS SENDS ME TWO REPRESENTA- 
 TIVES ON THE SAME DAY AND 
 MONOPOLISES OUR ATTENTION 
 
 I WAS sitting in my room at half-past ten 
 wondering whether I should go to the 
 Oval or to Lord's when a brisk rap sounded at 
 the door, it was flung open, and in burst a 
 dazzling, rustling creature. 
 
 "Oh, I beg your pardon!" she said. "I have 
 come to the wrong room. I thought this was 
 Miss Lestrange's room." 
 
 I saw who it was in a flash it was Azure 
 Verity. I told her that Miss Lestrange dwelt in 
 some remote region of this wonderful expand- 
 ing house to which I had never penetrated, and 
 that if she would wait a moment I would ring 
 for Mrs. Duckie. 
 
 "Mrs. who?" she asked, with an air of such 
 perfect ingenuousness that I was caught at once. 
 
 "Duckie," I said, and then she laughed, and I 
 no doubt blushed. 
 
 "Not really?" she inquired, laughing again. 
 114
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 115 
 
 "It is absurd, isn't it?" I said. 
 
 It his long been my theory that some of the 
 best friendships are based upon a good initial 
 faux pas or ridiculous misunderstanding. The 
 freemasonry of laughter gets to work at once 
 and does in an instant what it otherwise might 
 take days or weeks to achieve. 
 
 "May I tell you," I asked, "who you are, 
 and then we can introduce each other?" 
 
 "Certainly," she said. 
 
 "You are Miss Azure Verity, now acting with 
 unparalleled success at the Princess's Theatre hi 
 Mr. Operin's new play, and you have come to 
 see your dresser, who calls herself Miss Lestrange 
 but is really Miss Duckie." 
 
 "Wonderful!" she cried. "You are a Zanzig. 
 But," she added, "so am I. You know there 
 are always two of them. Let me now do my 
 turn." 
 
 I had long since decided that I would not ring 
 the bell before it was really necessary. 
 
 "You are the gentleman," she said, "from 
 abroad who has the beautiful niece, and reads 
 old books all night, and talks to mother hi the 
 mornings about what London used to be like 
 thirty years ago the gentleman who promises to 
 go to the theatre to see Miss Verity but never 
 gets nearer than a music hall. Am I right, sir?" 
 she concluded, with an adorably mischievous smile. 
 
 "Quite right," I said. "We are very extra- 
 ordinary people, it is clear, and we ought to suc- 
 ceed as duettists."
 
 n6 OVER BEMEBTON'S 
 
 "Yes," she said, "Falconer and Verity thought- 
 readers and clairvoyants. That sounds all right." 
 
 "Verity is indeed an inspiration," I added. "It 
 would make the fortune of a palmist." 
 
 "Oh," she said, "don't make any jokes about 
 my name. I am so tired of them. Punch did 
 it again only last week. Please ring for Mrs. 
 Mrs. Duckie," she added, "but before I go I 
 want you to promise me something. Promise 
 me that if I send you a box you will not only 
 come to the theatre but bring your niece too. Will 
 you promise?" 
 
 I promised, and Mrs. Duckie appearing, the 
 apparition disappeared. 
 
 Be-trice's illness brought me a second meeting 
 with her illustrious brother Alf Pinto. He looked 
 in to see if she was well enough to be driven 
 to Epping, and by his mother's wish came into 
 my room. 
 
 I told him that I had heard him at the 
 Frivoli, and he seemed to be as gratified as 
 any other kind of artist would be. "But I've 
 got a better song than any of those," he assured 
 me, and forthwith sang it. I suppose that to 
 be as assured as that is half-way towards the 
 conquest of the world; but for my part I 
 could as easily undress in a crowded drawing- 
 room as sing an unaccompanied song. He fixed 
 me with his bold, roguish eye throughout three 
 long coarse verses and three inane choruses. 
 And without any shame, too; but indeed how 
 could he have shame, for there was none over:
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 117 
 
 I had it all. I had no notion where to look 
 until he had done. 
 
 "That's a clinker, isn't it?" he said, and his 
 words once more convinced me how needlessly 
 we can suffer for others, for they proved him 
 utterly oblivious to any confusion or want of 
 appreciation on my part. 
 
 I temporised. "With proper costume and a 
 full band it ought to go very well," I said; and 
 I suppose it would, for the thing was as ugly 
 and tawdry as the people want. Another ex- 
 posure of marriage. The awakening after the 
 raptures of courtship to the disenchantment of 
 wedded life: the horror of crying twins and 
 a bad-tempered wife and all the rest of it. 
 The cruelty, the hateful ugliness, of this tireless 
 delight hi the ruin of the happiest of all human 
 hopes ! 
 
 "Why," I said, "do you always sing this kind 
 of thing? Why is there no song about a happy 
 marriage with some love and trust hi it?" 
 
 "Where's the joke?" he asked. 
 
 "But surely," I said, "it could be made 
 humorous or amusing enough. Surely there 
 are families that have cheerfulness and gaiety as 
 well as quarrels and poverty and drink. Look 
 at your own father and mother." 
 
 "Not worth singing about," he said. "No 
 fun in it." 
 
 I suppose this is so. People go to the music 
 halls to laugh at, not smile with. They want 
 a target, and apparently they are so constituted
 
 u8 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 that they never relate the experiences in the 
 songs to their own lives. The shilling at the 
 pay-box absolves them from thought, releases 
 them from fact; they, are in fairyland for the 
 evening or what stands for fairyland to them. 
 Otherwise how could any member of the audience 
 face marriage or paternity at all? 
 
 The odd thing is that, taking music-hall 
 laughter as the test, the logical outcome is that 
 if in England marriage were either abolished or 
 became uniformly successful, and if we returned 
 to a state of nature and called a spade a spade, 
 there would be no humour left. Jokes came in 
 with wives and clothes. 
 
 "Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is 
 so impracticable. It would be new, at any rate, 
 and novelty is said to be a great thing." 
 
 "Not in songs," replied Alf. "They don't 
 want anything new in songs except the tune. 
 They've all got to be about the same things 
 for ever and ever." 
 
 But for all his ready-made cynicism and 
 London brass, young Duckie is a decent fellow 
 who seems to have character enough to be able 
 to withstand the allurements of the bar. It is 
 an odd way of making a living, but he works 
 at it honestly and hard. 
 
 He receives sometimes, he tells me, as many 
 as a dozen songs a day, none of them any good 
 at all. "Do you mean all of them worse than 
 the one you have just sung?" I said, rather 
 unkindly.
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 119 
 
 But he saw no sting. "Yes," he said simply. 
 "It is not so easy as it looks," he went on, "to 
 sing even a good song; and to make a bad 
 song, and they're mostly bad, go, wants hours 
 of practice not only alone but with the band. 
 The difficult thing to get is movement all the 
 time." (He meant what a more accomplished 
 artist would call the rhythm.) "It's not only 
 that you've got to have a voice, but you've got 
 to drive every word home too, and also keep 
 it going." 
 
 This, I gather, is where the value of being 
 unashamed comes in. The music-hall singer 
 must be ashamed of nothing. 
 
 Our evening at the Frivoli to hear Alf had 
 been, I suppose, a success, for we were all hi 
 good enough spirits; but with exceptions so 
 rare and far between as to constitute oases which 
 only made the desert the more arid, the per- 
 formance was dull and stupid. But we had 
 one half-hour of the real thing, when a little 
 Scotchman swung on to the stage and sang 
 three Scotch songs, with every line and every 
 syllable telling. Curious songs, too, to come from 
 that dour northern country, songs with an almost 
 Oriental warmth in them and an infectious and 
 irresistible glee. I sounded Alf about this little 
 rival. He had no jealousy; he recognised 
 supremacy and honoured it. "Oh yes," he said, 
 "Lauder he's a genius. He can do what he 
 likes. There's no need for him to sing the 
 old stuff. But he's almost the only one. All
 
 120 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the rest of us have got to give it to them. 
 But," he added, "why do you bother about it, 
 Mr. Falconer? Music-hall songs aren't written 
 for you. Music-hall songs are written for the 
 gallery and the pit, every one of them, and 
 always will be." 
 
 "Well," I said, "that may be so, but I am 
 interested none the less in improving them." 
 
 "Better leave it alone," he answered. "They're 
 as good songs as the people deserve." 
 
 And perhaps he is right; but one's fingers 
 get in the way of itching to alter so many 
 things. 
 
 None the less I think that the music halls have 
 improved since my young days. There are 
 grimy-minded men still, but the double entendre 
 is rarer than it was, and a measure of drollery 
 has become important. Merely to roar out 
 ugliness is not as sufficient as it used to be. 
 The acrobatics, juggling, conjuring, and other 
 exhibitions of skill are infinitely superior: so 
 much so, indeed, that to see certain human gifts 
 in perfection a visit to the music hall has 
 become a necessity; while that curious modern 
 extension of the illustrated newspaper the 
 cinematoscope has also a real interest of its 
 own, and takes the place of rubbish very satis- 
 factorily. 
 
 Until this spring I had not been in an English 
 music hall since January 1875. We made a 
 final round of them just before I sailed for the 
 Argentine. Thirty-three years ago! There were
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 121 
 
 not so many then, nor were those that we had 
 under such intensely business-like control. The 
 singer when he had finished in those days 
 would take his glass in the hall: no tearing off 
 in a motor car to perform again elsewhere. It 
 was now and then even possible to get an 
 encore; there is no such thing to-day. Every- 
 thing is now cut and dried, and each performer 
 contrives to do as little as possible, and is 
 supported by his Union in that praiseworthy 
 ideal. 
 
 Alf was interested hi hearing of the old easier 
 system. "I'd often like to give encores," he 
 said, "but there's no chance. It would throw out 
 the whole time-table. But it's a loss the singer 
 can feel quite as much as the audience only 
 they don't know it." I liked him for saying 
 that. 
 
 My last music hall was, I remember, on a 
 Monday night, I sailed on the Wednesday and 
 spent the Tuesday night at home, and it was 
 a very special occasion the benefit of Sam 
 Adams, the manager of the Royal, in Holborn. 
 I have since been hi the Royal as it is to-day 
 it is called the Holborn Empire and how 
 changed! Two performances nightly, and not 
 a single thing the same except its site. Sam 
 had a red, impetuous face and curly hair, and 
 a shirt front that, one felt, would cover the 
 Oval. 
 
 I asked Alf Pinto about him, and found that 
 his name was not even known; but Trist tells
 
 122 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 me he is dead, and his own hall the Trocadero, 
 or Troc, as it was called by the bloods has 
 disappeared too, and is now a restaurant. Poor 
 Sam! It is odd what flashes of insight one 
 has. I remember thinking that night, in the 
 midst of his triumph and all the jolly good- 
 fellowship that sweltered round him, that he 
 did not look as if marked out for happiness or 
 longevity. 
 
 I cannot remember much of the evening, but 
 George Leybourne was there with two or three 
 slap-up songs, and Lieutenant Cole the ven- 
 triloquist, and Sam Redfern, a burnt-cork cynic, 
 and Henri Clark, a comic singer, and an extra- 
 ordinary couple named Ryley and Marie Barnum, 
 who called themselves (to the total exclusion of 
 George Fox) "the Original Quakers," the adjec- 
 tive made necessary, I imagine, by too successful 
 imitation of their discreet yet mischievous 
 caperings. Trist tells me that of these enter- 
 tainers Leybourne is dead (to think that death 
 should come also to Champagne Charley!), Henri 
 Clark owns a music-hall in the Edgware Road, 
 and Sam Redfern was recently in the bank- 
 ruptcy court through inability to make a chicken 
 farm pay. Well, well! 
 
 But if I can see no more of the performances 
 of these variety stars, there are two or three actors 
 still performing whom I saw that month during 
 my farewell round of gaiety. Lionel Brough, 
 who was then with Willie Edouin and Lydia 
 Thompson in Blue Beard at the Globe, is still
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 123 
 
 playing, and Wyndham, who was in Brighton at 
 the Royal Court, is active almost as ever; but 
 James Thome, whom I laughed at in Our 
 Boys at the Vaudeville, Irving who was in Hamlet 
 at the Lyceum, Buckstone and Sothern in Our 
 American Cousin at the Hay market where are 
 they? 
 
 We went to the Princess's to the Royal Box, 
 if you please to see Miss Verity : Naomi and 
 I, Lionel, and Dollie Heathcote with the very 
 latest shirt and a dress suit watch no thicker than 
 half a crown. Serious plays are as a rule not 
 much in either Dollie' s or Lionel's way: and 
 Operin is now always serious, with his con- 
 scientious transcript of types from what is called 
 real life (as if there were two kinds of life), who 
 talk pedantic grammar and covet their neigh- 
 bours' wives. Some day perhaps a playwright 
 will arise observant enough to find other domestic 
 difficulties as full of dramatic possibilities as this 
 dreary formula of the tertium quid; but at present 
 we are as much under its sway as the French 
 nation are under that of their single joke. There 
 are a thousand problems of daily life within the 
 experience of every one that have as much drama 
 in them as is needed. One would think that all 
 England had nothing to do but break the seventh 
 commandment; whereas those of us who do so 
 are in a minute minority, and are not the 
 especially interesting persons. Is there no 
 material for drama in the lives of husbands 
 who do not tire of their wives and wives who
 
 124 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 do not tire of their husbands the most enviable 
 people of all, when all is said? 
 
 Both Dollie and Lionel, as I say, would rather 
 have been at a musical comedy, but they had a 
 very real desire to meet the famous Azure, and 
 the evening promised an opportunity. Naomi 
 was very happy to be at the play and to wear 
 a new dress, neither event being too common 
 with her; and as for me, I did not much mind, 
 for once, although had I been alone I should 
 probably have faltered at the theatre portico. 
 I have too many points in common with Wang 
 Hiu-Chih, one of the illustrious persons in my 
 Chinese book, and the occupier of a high place 
 on the roll of honour of the diffident. "On 
 one occasion," it is recorded, "he went in the 
 snow to visit a friend, named Tai Ta-k'uei; but 
 on reaching the door he turned round and went 
 home again. Being asked the explanation of 
 this behaviour, he replied, 'I started full of 
 spirits; when they were exhausted, I came 
 back.'" So is it very often with me; I start 
 out full of spirits, and when they are exhausted 
 I come back. Probably there are no persons 
 in London at this moment who in the past 
 few months have seen so many first acts, and 
 first acts only, as I have. It needs a very 
 engaging dramatist or very acceptable perform- 
 ers to make me forget the allurements of the 
 word Exit. 
 
 But on the present occasion I was on duty 
 and in perfect order. At the end of the second
 
 THESPIS SENDS REPRESENTATIVES 125 
 
 act a servant came summoning us to Miss 
 Verity's dressing-room. Naomi would not go, 
 try as I would to make her, but Dollie and 
 Lionel hurried off with no attempts to conceal 
 their pleasure. In a very few moments, however, 
 they were back again, and Miss Verity with 
 them a rustle of femininity at high pressure. 
 "If you don't come to see me, I must come to 
 see you," she said very winningly to Naomi; and 
 she sat down at the back of the box, well out 
 of view, and talked away gaily and extremely 
 well. Why she so wanted to make an impression 
 on this quiet girl I did not understand; but I 
 will venture the opinion that she had never 
 worked harder to ingratiate herself with a man. 
 
 The entr'acte was not long, but long enough 
 for her to wring from Naomi her consent to come 
 to tea. 
 
 "You are very rude," she said to me as a 
 parting shot. "You have never said how you 
 like me hi the play." 
 
 How I wish I was a better liar; or, hi other 
 words, less of an intellectual snob. I did not 
 like her hi the play, and I did not like the play. 
 The simple natural thing under such conditions 
 was to say, "You are absolutely delightful," but 
 having a paltry vanity as to preserving pure one's 
 twopenny-halfpenny critical sense, I said nothing, 
 and instead was just awkward and offensive. 
 
 "Never mind, Mr. Falconer," said Azure, who 
 divines swiftly, "don't say anything. Keep that 
 conscience intact whatever happens."
 
 126 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 And so saying she was gone, with Lionel and 
 Dollie in attendance. Such is the vitality of her 
 personality that it seemed for the moment as if 
 she had taken all the air with her and we 
 languished in a vacuum. But only for a moment 
 or so. 
 
 "She is very attractive," said Naomi, with a 
 little sigh. " It must be nice to have such power 
 and be so popular." 
 
 I took her hand and stroked it. 
 
 Dollie and Lionel here came back, crushed 
 their hats against their bosoms, and sat dawn. 
 
 "She's a ripper," said Lionel. "She's coming 
 to see me play against Somerset to-morrow." 
 
 "Jolly awkward if you make a blob," said 
 Dollie. "I've got her autograph." 
 
 "Where? I should like to see it," said Naomi. 
 
 "Here," he said, "on my shirt front. That 
 means fifteen and six, for of course I shan't wear 
 the shirt again. I shall have it framed. Isn't it 
 jolly handwriting?"
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM, READ 
 A GOOD POEM UNDER DIFFICULTY, 
 AND LEARN SOMETHING OF WHAT 
 IT MEANS TO BE A SECOND-HAND 
 BOOKSELLER 
 
 I WAS writing letters at about noon, when 
 Mrs. Duckie entered to see if I would be 
 so good as to speak to Miss Wagstaff for a 
 moment. Down I went, and found that bitter 
 mercantile virgin all tears and trouble. She had 
 a telegram to say that her mother was ill, and 
 would she come at once; but Mr. Bemerton was 
 in the country valuing a library, and who was 
 to mind the shop? Could I make any sugges- 
 tion? 
 
 I made the only natural one: I said I would 
 mind it myself. 
 
 This apparently had not occurred to her, and 
 it seemed to strike Mrs. Duckie (who is more 
 jealous of the fair fame of what she calls gentlefolk 
 than they themselves are likely ever to be) as an 
 act of impropriety beyond pardon. But I had 
 my way, and at last got Miss Wagstaff off in 
 
 127
 
 I 2 8 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 a hansom; but not before she had showered 
 instructions upon me. 
 
 "The prices," she said, "are marked just inside. 
 They are all net, but if any one bought several 
 books you might knock something off. Don't 
 ever knock anything off a cheap book." 
 
 "Be very careful," she said, "with people who 
 look at the illustrations. Sometimes they pinch 
 the plates." 
 
 "Whatever you do," she said, "don't buy any 
 books." 
 
 "Keep an eye," she said, "on the outside 
 shelves." 
 
 "Don't let any one," she said, "stand too long 
 reading." 
 
 "See that they don't slip one book into their 
 pocket while they buy another," she said. 
 
 "Watch them," she said, "to see that they 
 don't rub out our price and put in another 
 themselves." 
 
 That, I think, was her very last counsel. I 
 sank down in a chair in a kind of stupor. I had 
 not been prepared for such revelations of perfidy. 
 I had thought of a second-hand bookshop as 
 being off the main stream of human frailty and 
 temptation; and behold it was the resort of the 
 most abandoned! Is there no natural honesty? 
 I wished that Mr. Bemerton would return and 
 liberate me to walk upstairs out of life again and 
 get on with my make-believe. 
 
 It gave me at the same time a new idea of 
 Miss Wagstaff, and I found myself admiring
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM 129 
 
 her. How naturally she took these things; how 
 simple and right it seemed to her that customers 
 should be suspect ; while I I had been sunning 
 myself in a comfortable sense of all-pervading 
 virtue, and was now cowering beneath the dis- 
 covery of the contrary I, a man of fifty and 
 more, who had some claims to be considered a 
 cosmopolitan and citizen of the world, and she 
 a Cockney spinster with no experience of any- 
 thing but her home and this shop. 
 
 But a customer coming in, I had to suspend 
 my reflections and attend to business, which hi 
 this case consisted in replying, with some decision, 
 that we never bought last year's Whitaker's 
 Almanack. The adaptability of man how 
 naturally I said "we" ! 
 
 Apart from the necessity of replenishing his 
 stock by attending sales and buying books; the 
 wearing task of looking narrowly at larcenous 
 fellow-creatures; the pangs that it must cost him 
 to sell the books that he wants to keep; and the 
 attacks made upon his tenderer feelings by un- 
 fortunate impoverished creatures with worthless 
 books to sell; apart from these drawbacks, the 
 life of a second-hand bookseller seems to me a 
 happy one. I could myself lead it with consider- 
 able contentment. During my four hours of 
 authority I took eleven shillings, met some en- 
 tertaining people, discovered on the shelves a 
 number of interesting books, and read at intervals 
 a poem I had long known by repute but never had 
 seen before Walter Pope's "Wish." 
 K
 
 130 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 A second-hand bookseller, I found, may read 
 much in his time, but he cannot read continu- 
 ously. My perusal of Walter Pope's poem was 
 broken somewhat in the way I have attempted 
 to describe. I got through the Horatian argu- 
 ment all right : 
 
 "When I'm at Epsom or on Banstead Down, 
 Free from the Wine, and Smoke, and Noise o' th' Town, 
 When I those Waters drink and breathe that Air, 
 What are my Thoughts? What's my continual Prayer?" 
 
 and I was allowed to complete in peace the first 
 stanza and the chorus : 
 
 "Hi I live to be old, for I find I go down, 
 Let this be my fate in a country town: 
 May I have a warm house, with a stone at the gate, 
 And a cleanly young girl to rub my bald pate. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 May I govern my passion with an absolute sway, 
 And grow wiser and better, as my strength wears away, 
 Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay." 
 
 But here entered a very small dirty boy to know 
 if I could spare his mother a piece of stamp 
 paper. 
 
 I said it was the one thing we didn't keep, and 
 resumed the poem: 
 
 "May my little house stand on the side of a hill, 
 With an easy descent to a mead and a mill, 
 That when I've a mind I may hear my boy read 
 In the mill if it rains; if it's dry, in the mead. 
 
 Near a shady grove and a murmuring brook, 
 With the ocean at distance, whereon I may look, 
 With a spacious plain, without hedge or stile, 
 And an easy pad-nag to ride out a mile."
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM 131 
 
 At this point there entered a rusty elderly man 
 with a Cruden's Concordance, to know if I would 
 buy it. I said we already had several, and I could 
 not as a conscientious business man add to the 
 stock. He sighed, surveyed me attentively, and 
 went away, saying that he would bring something 
 else. I implored him not to, but with an ineffable 
 look of misfortune he shuffled away. I turned 
 again to the page : 
 
 "With Horace and Petrarch, and two or three more 
 Of the best wits that reign'd in the ages before; 
 With roast mutton, rather than ven'son or teal, 
 And clean, though coarse linen, at every meal. 
 
 With a pudding on Sundays, with stout humming liquor, 
 And remnants of Latin to welcome the vicar; 
 With Monte, Fiascone, or Burgundy wine, 
 To drink the king's health as of t as I dine. 
 
 May my wine be vermilion, may my malt drink be pale, 
 In neither extreme, or too mild or too stale; 
 In lieu of desserts, unwholesome and dear, 
 Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear. 
 
 Nor Tory, or Whig, Observator, or Trimmer 
 May I be, nor against the law's torrent a swimmer; 
 May I mind what I speak, what I write, and hear read, 
 And with matters of State never trouble my head." 
 
 At this point a lady faltered in, saying she 
 felt very fault, and might she sit down a moment. 
 I gave her my chair, and called to Mrs. Duckie 
 for some water. The lady told me her home 
 was in Ashford, and she was only up for the day, 
 having to get some things for her boy who was 
 joining a merchant-ship, and did I know where 
 Heronsgate Mansions were, because she had a
 
 132 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 cousin living there whom she would like to see, 
 and was there a good dentist in this neighbour- 
 hood, and could I tell her if the 4.43 to Ashford 
 was still running. 
 
 Having at length resumed my chair, I proceeded 
 with Walter Pope : 
 
 "Let the gods, who dispose of every king's crown, 
 Whomsoever they please, set up and pull down; 
 I'll pay the whole shilling impos'd on my head, 
 Tho' I go without claret that night to my bed. . . . 
 
 Tho' I care not for riches, may I not be so poor 
 That the rich without shame cannot enter my door; 
 May they court my converse, may they take much delight 
 My old stories to hear in a winter's long night." . . . 
 
 The rusty man here came in again, and after 
 spending a moment at the shelves, offered me 
 another book, and pitched such a tale of woe that 
 I bought it for myself. Two days afterwards, I 
 may here remark, Miss Wagstaff came up to ask 
 me if I had sold a copy of Rogers' Italy with Tur- 
 ner's plates while I was in charge. 
 
 "No," I said, "but I bought one." 
 
 She examined it swiftly, and informed me 
 that it was their own copy which had been sold 
 to me. 
 
 "He spotted you for a greenhorn all right," 
 she said. "And had a starving family, hadn't 
 he? And was only just out of the Brompton 
 Hospital?" 
 
 I said it was so.
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM 133 
 
 "Oh that Brompton Hospital!" she added. 
 "Life would be quite simple if it had never been 
 built. They've all got some one there when they 
 want to sell a book." 
 
 I gave Miss Wagstaff the book again, and 
 said I was very sorry. 
 
 "You'll always be taken in," she said, as she 
 hurried off. "You go about asking for it." 
 
 Probably; but how can one say no to certain 
 forms of distress, real or so well-managed as to 
 seem real? After my experiences I know that 
 it is not the disposal of books that presents the 
 greatest difficulty to a bookseller, but the acquisi- 
 tion of them. At least I know that that would 
 be the case with me. My difficulty would always 
 be to refuse to buy the books which the unhappy 
 persons brought in. A very little while after the 
 shabby man had departed with his ill-gotten gains, 
 a neat little old woman entered with a brown paper 
 parcel which she undid with excessive deliberation 
 and care, revealing at last a shabby copy of an 
 odd volume of Rowe's Shakespeare. At the same 
 time she took out of her purse a folded newspaper 
 cutting and placed it in my hands. Then she 
 looked at me with an expression in which excite- 
 ment, hope, and fear were almost unbearably 
 blended. 
 
 The wretched cutting, as I knew by inspired 
 prevision, related to the sale of a first folio, which, 
 after spirited bidding, was knocked down for 
 987. The pathetic figure before me had read 
 the paper, had dimly remembered that among her
 
 I 3 4 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 dead husband's books was an old Shakespeare, 
 and at last, with a beating heart, had found it 
 and seen infinite possibilities of debt-paying and 
 comfort before her. 
 
 What was I to do? She was manifestly so 
 truthful, and the hope dying out of her poor 
 eager face left it so wan and wintry. 
 
 A second-hand bookseller, I suppose, having 
 chosen to be a second-hand bookseller and to live 
 by his choice, has a short way with such clients. 
 I know he must have. But I wondered what 
 Mr. Bemerton would do, that is, if Miss Wagstaff 
 permitted him to come on in that scene at all. 
 The disparity between anything that I could give 
 her and the sum she was expecting was clearly 
 so immense that I did nothing at all. I merely 
 said I was very sorry, and bowed her out, and 
 returned once more to Walter Pope. 
 
 "May none whom I love to so great riches rise 
 As to slight their acquaintance and their old friends despise; 
 So low or so high may none of them be 
 As to move either pity or envy in me. . . . 
 
 To outlive my senses may it not be my fate 
 
 To be blind, to be deaf, to know nothing at all; 
 
 But rather let death come before 'tis so late, 
 
 And while there's some sap in it may my tree fall. . . ." 
 
 Here a little girl from a neighbouring shop ran 
 hi to ask for two sixpences for a shilling. 
 
 "You won't buy a nice set of Dickens, too?" 
 I asked her, quite in the Wagstaffian manner, I 
 thought. 
 
 "Not to-day," she said gravely, with perfect
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM 135 
 
 London readiness; "but mother' 11 be wanting the 
 washing-book bound in morocco next week." 
 
 "With a courage undaunted may I face my last day, 
 And when I am dead may the better sort say: 
 In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow, 
 He's gone, and not left behind him his fellow. . . . 
 
 I care not whether under a turf or a stone, 
 With any inscription upon it or none, 
 If a thousand years hence, 'Here lies W. P.' 
 Shall be read on my tomb; what is it to me?" 
 
 Here entered a studious-looking youth who wished 
 to know if I had a copy of Hoffding's Psychology. 
 I said no; and almost immediately after came 
 a commanding matron with her daughter for a 
 complete set of Trollope for an invalid son who 
 was going a voyage to the Cape. I said I was 
 sorry, but I could not tell whether I had one 
 or not: I was not the real bookseller, and knew 
 nothing of the stock. 
 
 "I call it disgraceful," said the lady. "Mis- 
 management on all sides. We've only just been 
 to the Stores, and failed to get a pocket sextant. 
 I can't think what's coming to London. Where 
 are the standard novels kept in this shop?" she 
 asked sternly. 
 
 "I have no idea," I replied. "Let's hunt for 
 them together." 
 
 "Certainly not," she said. "I have no time," 
 and off she marched; but not before her daughter, 
 who looked as if she wished to sink into the 
 earth for shame, had thrown me a glance of 
 sympathetic compassion which was a perfect balm
 
 136 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 for any wounds I might have received. And then 
 I finished Walter Pope's poem: 
 
 "Yet one wish I add, for the sake of those few 
 Who in reading those lines any pleasure shall take, 
 May I leave a good fame and a sweet-smelling name. 
 Amen. Here an end of my wishes I make. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 May I govern my passion with an absolute sway, 
 
 And grow wiser and better, as my strength wears away, 
 
 Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay." 
 
 That is the song which Benjamin Franklin 
 sang, as he informed George Whately, a thousand 
 times when he was young; "but now," he added, 
 at fourscore, "I find that all three of the con- 
 traries have befallen me."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE IS ILLUS- 
 TRATED, AND I BECOME A MONEY- 
 LENDER 
 
 ONE of the strangest phenomena in this life 
 of ours, I often think, is the way in 
 which one thing leads to another. We million 
 mortals may live alone, each in his sea of life 
 enisled, but our influence on each other is con- 
 tinuous and remarkable, and and this is the 
 thought that pulls one up so suddenly very 
 often unconscious. It is not every pebble, so to 
 speak, that we drop into the water that makes 
 rings: the water is often already too restless to 
 feel it; but the widening circumference of the 
 rings that even an idler's stone can produce 
 are almost terrifying to think of. The facile 
 moralist would say that this being so, people 
 of strong or attractive personality must be 
 very careful: but to be careful is useless. A 
 capricious fate more powerful than the vigilant 
 self-protectiveness of any human being is in 
 command. 
 
 I am led to these reflections by something that
 
 138 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 happened at Bemerton's in the afternoon on that 
 summer day. It was about a quarter to three, 
 and Mr. Bemerton was due back at three exactly, 
 when a nice-looking schoolboy of about fourteen, 
 with a frank and courageous countenance, walked 
 in carrying a book. 
 
 This he handed me, a little self-consciously, 
 with a request to know if I could give him a 
 shilling for it. It was Hall and Knight's Algebra, 
 and inside was written Estabrook I. 
 
 Now I am no censor, but I have certain fixed 
 theories as to the law of meum and tuum and 
 the training of boys, and also some undimmed 
 recollections of the financial straits of my own 
 schooldays; moreover, I liked this boy's ingenuous 
 face. 
 
 So I said, "The book is yours to sell, of 
 course?" 
 
 " Oh yes," he replied. 
 
 "You bought it with your own money?" I 
 continued Socratically. 
 
 "Well, I didn't exactly buy it with my own 
 money," he admitted. "But it's mine: that's my 
 name in it." 
 
 "A schoolbook," I said: "one that you use in 
 your lessons?" 
 
 "I shan't want it again," he replied; "I go 
 into another form next term." 
 
 "But you think you have a right to sell it, as 
 it was brought for you and you only?" 
 
 "Oh yes, of course I do," he answered; "and I 
 want a bob to-day most fearfully. We've got a
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE 139 
 
 half-holiday, and it's the Yorkshire match at the 
 Oval." 
 
 "You think your father would like to know 
 that you are raising money on a schoolbook to 
 go to a cricket match?" I asked. 
 
 " But I've done with it," he repeated. 
 
 "You think your father would like to know? 
 That is the whole point. If you can assure me 
 that he would not mind your selling the school- 
 book like this just for an afternoon's pleasure, I 
 will give you a shilling for it at once." 
 
 He thought a little while and shuffled his feet, 
 and his fine face clouded. 
 
 "No," he said at last, "he wouldn't like it," 
 and he put out his hand to take the book back. 
 
 "How much pocket-money do you get?" I 
 asked, as I gave it to him. 
 
 "Threepence a week," he said. 
 
 "Well," I said, "I will lend you the shilling, 
 and you can pay me back as soon as it is 
 convenient." 
 
 "Oh, I say, how frightfully decent of you!" he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 So I handed him the shilling, and he crammed 
 the book into his pocket and rushed off, being 
 joined just outside by a smaller boy whom I 
 guessed to be Estabrook II. 
 
 Estabrook! Now you see the conjunction of 
 ideas, for one of my closest companions at school 
 forty years ago had been an Estabrook, and it is 
 not a common name. Could this boy, I wondered, 
 be the son of my old friend? I had not long to
 
 140 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 wait to discover, for an unexpected tip from an 
 uncle made it possible for him to discharge his 
 debt quickly, and he was back within a week with 
 the shilling in his hand. 
 
 Bemerton sent him upstairs to me, after hav- 
 ing explained that I was not really the bookseller, 
 but an eccentric gentleman masquerading as such; 
 and I asked him at once about his father, and 
 soon ascertained that it was really my old school- 
 fellow; and so I gave Kenneth, which was the 
 debtor's name, a message to the effect that I 
 should give myself the pleasure of calling upon 
 him next Sunday afternoon. We agreed that 
 nothing should be said as to the circumstances 
 under which Kenneth and I had originally met: 
 all we were to say was that we had come upon 
 each other accidentally in Bemerton's. This 
 harmless compact of secrecy made, as must so 
 often have been the case, a very firm foundation 
 of our friendship a friendship which led to some 
 very agreeable afternoons. 
 
 But see how it came about. The Rev. Ephraim 
 Pye-Lipwood, tiring of horses, buys a motor-car 
 of one of his parishioners. He goes for his first 
 ride and forgets to put on enough wraps. He 
 catches a cold, which develops into double 
 pneumonia, and he dies. His widow wishes to 
 sell his library, and asks a friend to recommend a 
 good dealer. The friend recommends Mr. Joseph 
 Bemerton of Westminster, and Mr. Bemerton 
 arranges to go down by the 10.7 from Victoria 
 on Tuesday.
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE 141 
 
 He does so, leaving the shop in the capable 
 hands of Miss Ruth Wagstaff. Meanwhile what 
 does Miss Wagstaff 's mother do? For a long time 
 she has not been quite herself : ever since, in fact, she 
 ate that pork chop at her sister's husband's aunt's. 
 Nothing somehow has seemed to agree with her 
 since; and her dyspepsia came to a head this 
 very morning, at about half-past ten, just as Mr. 
 Bemerton in his third-class compartment had 
 finished The Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Hence the summons to Miss Wagstaff, and 
 cause of my finding myself stationed in the shop 
 all ready to deal with Master Kenneth Estabrook, 
 and thus resume acquaintance with an old friend 
 and make acquaintance with a delightful family. 
 We never know when we are moulding destiny. 
 
 The Estabrooks have six children, for they 
 belong to a generation that was not afraid of 
 such liabilities. Estabrook is a stockbroker in a 
 comfortable way, and they live in a large house in 
 the Cromwell Road almost opposite the Natural 
 History Museum, which is a regular Sunday after- 
 noon resort hi winter. The children are four boys 
 and two girls. Kenneth is the eldest; then comes 
 John, who is at Osborne, and has the proud 
 privilege of calling Prince Edward of York 
 "Sardines" (which is, I am told, the very natural 
 nickname of one destined later to take his title 
 from Wales, i.e. whales in schoolboy humour) ; 
 then comes Christopher, who is at Westminster 
 (Estabrook II); then Norah, aged ten; Winifred, 
 aged eight; and Sam, aged six.
 
 142 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 They seem to me very nice children, but a 
 shade over-sophisticated, and with the modern 
 touch of mockery. In my innocence I offered the 
 youngest a beautiful piece of silver paper from 
 a packet of tobacco, such as would have made 
 me, at his age, feel something like a million- 
 aire. But it had no attractions for him. His 
 toys are ready-made, I imagine, and cost 
 money. 
 
 After Kenneth, I think that my favourite is 
 Norah, whom the others rather impose upon (it is 
 ill to be the first girl in a family that already 
 numbers three boys), and Norah, I think, likes me. 
 I have already taken her to the Hippodrome, to 
 the Zoo, and to the Exhibition; and I don't 
 in the least see why she should not have a pony 
 and ride straddle-legged in the Park as the little 
 girls now do. Little girls are little girls for so 
 short a time: they have such a way of leaving the 
 room frank, loving, uncalculating creatures, and 
 returning in a few moments (so to speak) as women, 
 with their hair up and their skirts down and views 
 on art and music; that it behoves their elderly 
 admirers to take advantage of all the opportuni- 
 ties of enjoying their society while they are still 
 children. 
 
 Life is strangely suspicious and impatient of 
 youth and candour and innocence and nawett. 
 Hardly does it perceive these exquisite qualities to 
 exist than it rubs away their bloom with a rough 
 finger. How often one longs for an arrested 
 progress for a little girl to go on being a little
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE 143 
 
 girl a little longer; for the perpetual kitten of 
 our dreams! But no; the Creator is not that 
 kind of artist. 
 
 I took upstairs with me a fine copy of Paterson's 
 Roods, a book I had not seen since the sixties, 
 when I used often to pore over my father's copy 
 and set forth on imaginary journeys from London 
 to Truro, London to Norwich, London to Dover, 
 London to Everywhere, with Paterson's aid. I 
 remember how proud I used to be to find our own 
 ancestor in the margin John Murray Falconer, 
 Esq., of West Wolves House, Long Melton, five 
 miles north of Cirencester, my father's grandfather; 
 and Wilmington Oakes, Esq., of Masters Hall, 
 just to the west of Evesham, grandfather of my 
 mother. I had, indeed, an ambition at that time 
 some day to be in Paterson myself, not knowing 
 that the book was already outmoded, and that I 
 was doomed to spend most of my life in a country 
 where roads are chiefly tracks. 
 
 Paterson's noble book, once in every country 
 house and most town houses, is now rare, but it 
 remains the best outline account of England in 
 existence. Publishers may vie with each other in 
 bringing out guide-books, and highway-and-byway 
 books, and atlases and gazetteers; but Paterson's 
 Roads still conquers. Everything about the best 
 edition of it is right: its arrangement, its type, 
 its spaciousness, its interest in gentlemen's places, 
 its little pictures of turnpike gates, its careful 
 information; but most of all its period, before 
 rails came in, when horses were still honoured,
 
 144 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 and postboys never died, and innkeepers 
 flourished. 
 
 Paterson may be said to pair off with Fielding. 
 He is Fielding's courier, so to speak. Fielding 
 has the romance; Paterson finds the roads and 
 looks after the luggage and the horses. He is a 
 companion to Pickwick, too: a serious, methodical 
 Sam Weller. Spend an hour with Paterson, and 
 you will have the England of Tom Jones and 
 Samuel Pickwick before you; you will know it 
 through and through. The period between these 
 two books was Paterson' s period. Tom Jones was 
 published in 1749, Pickwick in 1837; Daniel 
 Paterson was born in 1739 and died in 1825, 
 living towards the end so quietly that Edward 
 Mogg, who brought out a sixteenth edition in 
 1822 and dedicated it to George iv., referred to 
 its true author as "the late." 
 
 Of Daniel Paterson little far too little is 
 known, save that he was an officer and a gentle- 
 man. I have been looking him up. He was 
 successively ensign, lieutenant, captain, major, and 
 lieutenant-colonel of infantry. For a long time 
 he was assistant to the Quartermaster- General at 
 the Horse Guards, and in 1771 his road book 
 was first published and dedicated to his supe- 
 rior officer. In 1812 he was made Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Quebec, a post he still held at his 
 death. There's a melancholy fate for the author 
 of the best English road book. Quebec ! It was 
 probably due to this enforced exile that to 
 Edward Mogg fell the task of bringing the great
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE 145 
 
 work up to date; but he certainly ought to have 
 known that its author was still living. Daniel 
 Paterson's grave is at Clewer, near Windsor; but 
 where he was born I know not. 
 
 One can open Paterson at random, sure to 
 alight on some name that will quicken and kindle 
 the memory. For example, I opened it last 
 night at page 524 and had good luck, coming 
 at once upon the great name of John Warde. 
 Page 524 is in the Cross-Roads section, and the 
 gallant Colonel (assisted by Edward Mogg) is 
 taking us from Maidstone to Guildford, by 
 Westerham, Reigate, and Dorking. Against 
 Westerham, a quiet Kentish town with some 
 significance for himself, since it was there that 
 Wolfe was born, destined in time to make 
 Quebec a city requiring a Lieutenant-Governor, 
 against Westerham he draws our attention to 
 Squerryes, the seat of John Warde, Esq.; and is 
 not John Warde of Squerryes one of Nimrod's 
 heroes? "Whoever," says that large-hearted man, 
 "heard him utter an ill-natured word respecting 
 any one, living or dead? Where was there a 
 kinder friend or a better neighbour? And, above 
 all things, where was his equal as a companion?" 
 That was the whole-hearted way hi which sports- 
 men used to write of each other in the forties, 
 before Paterson's Roads was quite out of date. 
 "Rough as was his exterior, Mr. Warde was 
 accomplished and well informed, and capable of 
 adapting his conversation to any society into 
 which he might be thrown. In short, it is a
 
 146 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 matter of doubt whether there has existed a man 
 whose name has not been long before the public 
 either in the capacity of a senator, a soldier, a 
 sailor, or an author, so universally known as Mr. 
 Warde of Squerryes, in Kent, was to all English- 
 men in all quarters of the globe." Such was 
 John Warde, for fifty-seven years a Master of 
 Foxhounds, and known as "The Father of the 
 Field." 
 
 Mr. Warde did a little in the way of La Roche- 
 foucauld and Vauvenargues, but his maxims rarely 
 departed from sport, although, of course, a man 
 who is qualified to write sound maxims for sports- 
 men is automatically qualified also to sum up life. 
 Here are some of the sententiae of John Warde, 
 Esq., of Squerryes, Master of the Pytchley and 
 other Hunts, as reported by Nimrod's pen : 
 
 "Half the goodness of a horse goes in at his 
 mouth." 
 
 "Never buy a horse from a rich man who 
 hunts, or from a poor man till you have tried 
 him." 
 
 "Never believe a word any man says about a 
 horse he wishes to sell not even a bishop." 
 
 "Never refuse a good dinner from home, unless 
 you have a better at home." 
 
 "Never keep a drinking man nor a very 
 pretty maid-servant." 
 
 Most of the successful conduct of life could 
 be secured by careful obedience to these five 
 counsels. 
 
 Paterson's was by no means the first road-
 
 THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE 147 
 
 book; but it is the best. Mr. Bemerton showed 
 me the other day Ogilvy's, a delightful series of 
 copper-plates, fourth edition, dated 1753. Every 
 word in it is engraved, which makes reading some- 
 times a little difficult, but the effort is worth 
 making. The great charm of the book is that all 
 the journeys start from London, and the road is 
 pictured the whole way. Every mile is marked. 
 Thus the journey from London to Berwick, 260 
 computed and 339 measured miles, takes ten 
 pages of three columns each. Nothing is needed 
 but gradients and a few technical particulars to 
 make it still perfect for the motorist. It would be 
 an agreeable task to bring one of these books into 
 line with the present day of machinery and petrol, 
 agreeable, although tinged with melancholy.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 MR. DUCKIE, WITH HIS NAPKIN ON 
 HIS ARM, SUGGESTS A SCHEME FOR 
 HUMAN HAPPINESS 
 
 TO-DAY I carried out my promise of lunch- 
 ing at the Golden Horn and testing the 
 quality not only of the house's famous saddle, 
 but also of Mr. Duckie's skill as a waiter. He 
 had reserved a corner seat in one of the pews, 
 and had evidently given orders to his assistant 
 that I was to be well looked after: an agreeable 
 attention, but carrying with it the necessary 
 corollary, in an English eating-house, that other 
 guests were neglected. 
 
 I was amused by a father and son who 
 occupied the same compartment. This father 
 was evidently of the Temple a man of about 
 fifty, and intensely proud of his son, a youth from 
 Oxford, who, however, no matter what learning 
 his head might hold, was too callow to fancy 
 exhibitions of paternal interest young enough 
 to be self-conscious and vigilant as to form, 
 and even, I am afraid, the least little bit in doubt 
 148
 
 MR. DUCKIE SUGGESTS A SCHEME 149 
 
 as to his father's satisfactoriness as a judge of 
 life. He would grow out of such foibles, I think, 
 for he had a good face. The core of the little 
 comedy lay in the father's desire to let me, a 
 stranger, into the secret of his son's success. 
 He stood sufficiently in fear of the boy to refrain 
 from talking to me about him, or indeed talking 
 to me at all. Young Oxford, he knew instinct- 
 ively, would not like that, and the honest fellow, 
 who was clearly of a sociable communicative cast, 
 with a very agreeable vein of naive snobbish- 
 ness, had to content himself by making such 
 remarks to his son as carried important informa- 
 tion with them. 
 
 His great chance, however, came at the end of 
 the meal, at which the boy hitherto had been 
 drinking water. "Will you have a glass of port, 
 old man?" the proud father asked. Young 
 Oxford consented, and when their glasses were 
 filled, the father, with half a glance towards me 
 to see that I was attentive, gave the toast, "Well, 
 old man, here's to another First!" 
 
 After they had gone I was alone in the pew, 
 and as the other customers' needs grew fewer, 
 Mr. Duckie paused now and then by the table 
 and talked to me. He had been there, he said, 
 for twenty-four years. 
 
 "Then you have seen many changes?" I asked 
 him. 
 
 No, he said, not there. Everything was the 
 same. It was their strength to be the same. 
 The young governor, he'd tried some new notions,
 
 ISO OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 such as a foreign waiter or two, but it was a 
 mistake. Gentlemen didn't like it. Gentlemen 
 liked what they'd been accustomed to. Foreign 
 waiters might be nippier with the plates, but 
 gentlemen didn't like to have to teach them 
 English. It was not that gentlemen wanted to 
 talk much ; but when they did talk they wanted 
 to be understood and replied to in their own 
 language. 
 
 Mr. Duckie was now head- waiter and proud of 
 his post. I asked him if he was satisfied gener- 
 ally with his life. 
 
 He said that he was, except for tired feet; and 
 now and then, he added, he could not help 
 wishing that some one would invent a new joint. 
 Beef and mutton, pork and veal, he said, that's 
 all there is. When he first came there they had 
 had venison once a week, but it had gone right 
 out of favour. Gentlemen never inquired for it 
 any more. 
 
 I asked him how he kept his temper when cus- 
 tomers were unreasonable. 
 
 "Oh, that's all in the day's work," he said. "I 
 know they don't mean it. It's not the gentlemen 
 who are snappish, it's their empty stomachs. But 
 there's less grumbling here than in any other 
 eating-house in London," he said; "and I'll tell 
 you for why. I know how to deal with them. 
 All my men have instructions to take the order 
 for drinks with the food, and execute it at once. 
 That's the way to soothe them. In the ordinary 
 restaurant, gentlemen aren't asked what they'll
 
 MR. DUCKIE SUGGESTS A SCHEME 151 
 
 drink until they've got their food, and even then 
 there's a delay. It's that that sours them. They 
 can't bear waiting. It's just the same with little 
 crying babies. Give them the bottle and they're 
 all right. Gentlemen aren't really difficult if you 
 think a little." 
 
 "But I suppose," I said, "that there are always 
 a few who can't be satisfied any way." 
 
 "Of course there are," said Mr. Duckie (who, 
 by the way, sinks familiarly here to plain John) ; 
 "but, Lor' bless you, we don't mind them. 
 That's their way. If it wasn't if they really 
 meant all they said they'd go somewhere else. 
 But they don't, and so we just put up with it. 
 Why, there's gentlemen so much in love with 
 grumbling that they'd call for a toothpick after 
 eating clear soup. It's their nature. 
 
 "It is not the gentlemen," he went on, "that 
 break a waiter's heart; it's the kitchen. That's 
 where our trouble is. It's cooks that ruin eating- 
 houses. A cook who has a grudge against a 
 head-waiter can cost his governor pounds and 
 pounds a day. It's all in his hands; he can 
 spoil things, or he can keep them back till the 
 customers bang out in a fury. Just now we've 
 got as nice a lot in the kitchen as you'd wish to 
 meet in a day's march, but we have had some 
 fair terrors. Gentlemen who blame waiters for 
 being slow don't remember that the food has got 
 to be cooked and served up, and that the waiter 
 doesn't do either. 
 
 "But there;" Mr. Duckie said, "an empty
 
 152 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 stomach can't remember everything. I often 
 think this would be a better- tempered and happier 
 world if we ate a little all the time instead of 
 saving up our appetites for real meals. But 
 speaking as a waiter, I can see it's best as it is." 
 
 "Does your son ever come and see you here?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "You mean the comedian?" he said. "Yes, 
 now and again. But I don't encourage him. I 
 don't think it's a good thing for a father to wait 
 on his son. Not that I think there's any shame 
 in it, nor that I feel unwilling, knowing as I do 
 what genius is. But it's not good for Herbert. 
 It's better for young men never to see their fathers 
 at a disadvantage; and suppose some bad- 
 tempered gent was to be rude to me while he 
 was here, and I of course not able to answer back 
 or do anything (because of course waiters mustn't) , 
 that wouldn't be right, would it ? not a good 
 thing for a son to see?" 
 
 "But he's a good son," I said. 
 
 "Oh yes, he's all right. But he's only twenty- 
 five, and he's on the Halls, and he makes a lot 
 of money. It's a strange life, different from 
 anything we're accustomed to. They turn night 
 into day, and they get all this applause, and 
 everything's got to be funny, and you don't know 
 where you are. And then, of course, he's got his 
 touring to look after a week here and a week 
 there, all over the country. It wouldn't suit me. 
 I'm all for regularity." 
 
 "Do you ever go and hear him sing?" I asked.
 
 MR. DUCKEE SUGGESTS A SCHEME 153 
 
 "Not much. The Halls aren't much in my 
 line. I prefer real music. The Queen's Hall is 
 my mark. There's a gentleman who comes here 
 who gives me tickets for that, and when I've got 
 a free evening which is not often, for I wait at 
 City dinners and such things most nights after we 
 close here off I go to a symphony. They're 
 beautiful, and so soothing. We had Mr. Henry 
 J. Wood here once, and I saw to it that he had a 
 good lunch, I can promise you. I picked out 
 his chop myself. But the man I'd like to 
 wait on is Tchaikovsky. Wouldn't I enjoy 
 looking after him? He'd go away hungry 
 I don't think." 
 
 "Tchaikovsky?" I said. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "The composer of the 
 Pathetic Symphony. It's the most beautiful thing 
 I ever heard. If you were to go to that you'd 
 understand why, with the exception of a fatherly 
 pride, I don't much care about Herbert's turns." 
 
 And here I bade him good afternoon, and took 
 my way to Lionel's chambers, murmuring as I 
 went 
 
 "I want to know a butcher paints."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE MEETS 
 MORE THAN HIS MATCH, AND 
 FINDS A RESCUER 
 
 THE breakfast table, which is the Wynnes' 
 Upper House, setting the seal, or other- 
 wise, upon schemes that have been comparatively 
 idly adumbrated at other times and in other places, 
 having decided that Grandmamma, who had 
 leanings towards literary men, would like to meet 
 an author, it was agreed that I should bring Mr. 
 Dabney to dinner on Saturday. 
 
 "Can't we get any one better than that?" 
 Lionel asked. 
 
 "Mr. Dabney is very nice," said Naomi. 
 
 "I daresay," said Lionel; "but he's not known. 
 What's he written?" 
 
 "He's an editor," I explained. "His paper is 
 The Balance, a very courageous influential organ. 
 Frank writes for it." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Lionel, "but Grandmamma isn't 
 going to get excited over that. What's an 
 editor? The world's full of them. They've got
 
 MR. DABNEY MEETS HIS MATCH 155 
 
 one or two at Ludlow, I'll bet. What Grand- 
 mamma wants to meet is a fellow who writes 
 books, novels. Can't you get hold of one of 
 them? What about Jacobs? I shouldn't mind 
 meeting him myself." 
 
 It was pointed out that we did not know Mr. 
 Jacobs. 
 
 "Then we ought to," said Lionel. "What's 
 the good of an editor anyway? Every paper 
 seems to have a dozen of them. How would 
 you like me to bring Plum Warner? he's written 
 loads of books." 
 
 Mr. Dabney, however, remained our only lion. 
 
 When the evening arrived, it looked as though 
 Grandmamma and he were going to hit it off 
 perfectly, and I began to feel quite happy about 
 my introduction of this firebrand into the house- 
 hold. 
 
 "I hear that you are a writer," Grandmamma 
 began, very graciously. "I always like literary 
 company. Years ago I met both Mr. Dickens 
 and Mr. Thackeray." 
 
 I saw the lid of Lionel's left eye droop as he 
 glanced at Naomi. Mrs. Wynne, I gathered, was 
 employing a favourite opening. 
 
 Mr. Dabney expressed interest. 
 
 "There are no books like theirs now," Grand- 
 mamma continued. "I don't know what kind of 
 books you write, but there are no books like those 
 of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray." 
 
 Mr. Dabney began to say something. 
 
 "Personally," Grandmamma hurried on, "I
 
 156 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 prefer those of Mr. Dickens, but that perhaps 
 is because me dear fawther used to read them 
 to us aloud. He was a beautiful reader. There 
 is no reading aloud to-day, Mr. Dabney; and, I 
 fear, very little home life." 
 
 Here Grandmamma made a false move, and 
 let her companion in, for he could never resist 
 a comparison of the present and the past, to the 
 detriment of the present. 
 
 "No," he said, "you are quite right." And 
 such was the tension that Grandmamma's remarks 
 had caused that the whole room was silent for 
 him. "We are losing our hold on all that is 
 most precious. Take London at this moment 
 look at the scores and scores of attractions to 
 induce people to leave home in the evenings 
 and break up the family circle restaurants, 
 concert rooms, entertainments, theatres. Look 
 at the music halls. Do you know how many 
 music halls there are in London and Greater 
 London at this moment?" 
 
 "No," said Grandmamma sternly, "I have no 
 notion. I have never entered one." 
 
 Lionel shot a glance at me which distinctly 
 said, in his own deplorable idiom, "What price 
 Alf Pinto?" 
 
 Mr. Dabney, I regret to say, intercepted the 
 tail of it, and suddenly realised that he was 
 straying from the wiser path of the passive 
 listener. So he remarked, "Of course not," and 
 brought the conversation back to Boz. 
 
 "Mr. Dickens," said Grandmamma, "did me
 
 MR. DABNEY MEETS HIS MATCH 157 
 
 the honour to converse with me in Manchester 
 in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband 
 on business, and we stayed in the same hotel as 
 Mr. Dickens, and breakfasted at the same table. 
 The toast was not good, and Mr. Dickens, I 
 remember, compared it in his inimitable way to 
 sawdust. It was a perfect simile. He was very 
 droll. What particularly struck me about him 
 was his eye so bright and restless and his 
 quick ways. He seemed all nerves. In the 
 course of our conversation I told him I had met 
 Mr. Thackeray, but he was not interested. I 
 remember another thing he said. In paying his 
 bill he gave the waiter a very generous tip, which 
 was the slang word with which me dear husband 
 always used to describe a douceur. 'There,' 
 Mr. Dickens said, as he gave it to the waiter, 
 
 'that's ' How very stupid! I have forgotten 
 
 what he said, but it was full of wit. 'There,' 
 he said Dear me!" 
 
 "Never mind, Grandmamma," said Naomi, 
 "you will think of it presently." 
 
 "But it was so droll and clever," said the old 
 lady. "Surely, Alderley, dear, I have told you 
 of it?" 
 
 "Oh yes, mother, many times," said Alderley; 
 "but I can't for the life of me think of it at the 
 moment. Strange, isn't it," he remarked to us 
 all at large, "how often the loss of memory in 
 one person seems to infect others one forgets 
 and all forget. We had a case in Chambers the 
 other day."
 
 158 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Their father's stories having no particular sting 
 in them, his children abandoned him to their 
 mother, who listens devotedly, and we again fell 
 into couples. 
 
 But it was useless to attempt disregard of old 
 Mrs. Wynne. There was a feeling in the air 
 that trouble lay ahead, and we all reserved one 
 ear for her. 
 
 "And Mr. Thackeray?" Mr. Dabney asked, 
 with an appearance of the deepest interest. 
 
 "Mr. Thackeray," said Grandmamma, "I had 
 met in London some years before. It was at 
 a conversazione at the Royal Society's. Mr. 
 Wynne and I were leaving at the same time 
 as the great man, and however you may con- 
 sider his writings he was great physically, and 
 there was a little confusion about the cab. Mr. 
 Thackeray thought it was his, and we thought it 
 was ours. Me dear husband, who was the soul 
 of courtesy, pressed him to take it; but Mr. 
 Thackeray gave way, with the most charming 
 bow to me. It was raining. A very tall man 
 with a broad and kindly face although capable 
 of showing satire and gold spectacles. He 
 gave me a charming bow, and said, 'There will 
 be another one for me directly.' I hope there 
 was, for it was raining. Those were, however, his 
 exact words: 'There will be another one for me 
 directly. ' " 
 
 Mr. Dabney expressed himself in suitable terms, 
 and cast a swift glance at his hostess on his other 
 side, as if seeking for relief. She was talking, as
 
 MR. DABNEY MEETS HIS MATCH 159 
 
 it happened, about a novel of the day in which 
 little but the marital relation is discussed, and 
 Mr. Dabney, on being drawn into the discussion, 
 remarked sententiously, " The trouble with marriage 
 is that while every woman is at heart a mother, 
 every man is at heart a bachelor." 
 
 "What was that?" said Grandmamma, who 
 is not really deaf, but when in a tight place likes 
 to gain time by this harmless imposition. "What 
 did Mr. Dabney say?" she repeated, appealing to 
 Naomi. 
 
 Poor Mr. Dabney turned scarlet. To a mind of 
 almost mischievous fearlessness is allied a shrink- 
 ing sensitiveness and distaste for prominence of 
 any kind, especially among people whom he does 
 not know well. 
 
 " Oh, it was nothing, nothing," he said. " Merely 
 a chance remark." 
 
 "I don't agree with you," replied Grandmamma 
 severely, thus giving away her little ruse. "There 
 is no trouble with marriage. It is very distress- 
 ing to me to find this new attitude with regard to 
 that state. When I was a girl we neither talked 
 about incompatibility and temperament and all 
 the rest of it, nor thought about them. We 
 married. I have had to give up my library 
 subscription entirely because they send me 
 nothing nowadays but nauseous novels about 
 husbands and wives who cannot get on together. 
 I hope," she added, turning swiftly to Mr. Dabney, 
 "that those are not the kind of books that you 
 write."
 
 160 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "Oh no," said Mr. Dabney, "I don't write books 
 at all." 
 
 "Not write books at all?" said Grandmamma. 
 "I understood you were an author." 
 
 "No, dear," said Naomi, "not an author. Mr. 
 Dabney is an editor. He edits a very interesting 
 weekly paper, The Balance. He stimulates others 
 to write." 
 
 "I never heard of the paper," said Grandmamma, 
 who is too old to have any pity. 
 
 "I must show it to you," said Naomi. "Frank 
 writes for it." 
 
 "Very well," said Grandmamma. "But I am 
 disappointed. I thought that Mr. Dabney wrote 
 books. The papers are growing steadily worse, 
 and more and more unfit for general reading, 
 especially in August. I hope," she said, turning 
 to Mr. Dabney again, "you don't write any of 
 those terrible letters about home life in August?" 
 
 Mr. Dabney said that he didn't, and Grand- 
 mamma began to soften down. "I am very fond of 
 literary society," she said. "It is one of my great 
 griefs that there is so little literary society in 
 Ludlow. You are too young, of course, Mr. 
 Dabney, but I am sure it will interest you to 
 know that I knew personally both Mr. Dickens and 
 Mr. Thackeray." 
 
 Here a shudder ran round the table, and Lionel 
 practically disappeared into his plate. I stole a 
 glance at Mr. Dabney's face. Drops of per- 
 spiration were beginning to break out on his 
 forehead.
 
 MR. DABNEY MEETS HIS MATCH 161 
 
 "Mr. Dickens," the old lady continued remorse- 
 lessly and all unconscious of the devastation she 
 was causing, even at the sideboard, usually a 
 stronghold of discreet impassivity, "Mr. Dickens 
 I met at a hotel in Manchester in the sixties. I 
 was there with me dear husband on business, and 
 we breakfasted at the same table. Mr. Dickens 
 was all nerves and fun. The toast was not good, 
 and I remember he compared it in his inimitable 
 way to sawdust." 
 
 Mr. Dabney ate feverishly. 
 
 "I remember also that he made a capital joke 
 as he was giving the waiter a tip, as me dear 
 husband always used to call a douceur. 'There,' 
 he said " 
 
 Mr. Dabney twisted a silver fork into the shape 
 of a hair-pin. 
 
 It was, of course, Naomi who came to the 
 rescue. "Grandmamma," she said, "we have a 
 great surprise for you the first dish of straw- 
 berries." 
 
 "So early!" said the old lady. "How very 
 extravagant of you, but how very pleasant." She 
 took one, and ate it slowly, while Mr. Dabney 
 laid the ruined fork aside and assumed the 
 expression of a reprieved assassin. 
 
 "'Doubtless,'" Grandmamma quoted, "'God 
 could have made a better berry, but doubtless He 
 never did.' Do you know," she asked Mr. Dabney, 
 "who said that? It was a favourite quotation of 
 me fawther's." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Mr. Dabney, who had been
 
 162 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 cutting it out of articles every June for years, "it 
 was Bishop Berkeley." 
 
 The situation was saved, for Grandmamma 
 talked exclusively of fruit for the rest of the meal. 
 Ludlow, it seems, has some very beautiful gardens, 
 especially Dr. Sworder's, which is famous for its 
 figs. A southern aspect. 
 
 At one moment, however, we all went cold 
 again, for Lionel, who is merciless, suddenly 
 asked in a silence, "Didn't you once meet 
 Thackeray, Grandmamma?" 
 
 Naomi, however, was too quick for him, and 
 before the old lady could begin she had signalled 
 to her mother to lead the way to the drawing-room. 
 
 By the time the evening ended, Mr. Dabney 
 had quite recovered, and he was ready enough 
 on the way home to laugh at his adventure. We 
 talked Dickens long into the night; and there is 
 no better subject. Mr. Dabney said one very 
 interesting thing. "What I always wonder about 
 Dickens," he said, "is how on earth did the man 
 correct his proofs?" Because, as he went on to 
 point out, between the time of writing and the 
 time of correcting he must have thought of so 
 many new descriptive touches, so many new 
 creatures to add, so many new and adorable fan- 
 tastic comments on life. How could he deny 
 himself the joy of putting these in? for there 
 can be no pleasure like that of creation. 
 
 I went to bed still laughing but I should not 
 have laughed had I known what possible danger 
 for me lay ahead, the product of that comic
 
 MR. DABNEY MEETS HIS MATCH 163 
 
 dinner conversation. Strange at what light and 
 unconsidered moments the strongest mesh of the 
 web of life may be spinning ! We never know. 
 Had Mr Dabney not needed rescuing, and had 
 Naomi not come to his rescue. ,
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IN WHICH, AFTER EXCEEDINGLY TE- 
 DIOUS TALK ABOUT THE WISE 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS 
 CASH, AN IDLER IS SET TO WORK 
 
 RICHES," said Miss Gold, "are a great 
 responsibility. I want to be altruistic, 
 but I want to be sure or as sure as possible 
 of the money going in the right way." 
 
 Trist, who had come down to Esher with me, 
 smiled cynically. 
 
 "There are hospitals and so forth, I know," 
 Miss Gold continued, "but this mere writing of 
 cheques seems to me such a cowardly thing. I 
 feel that one ought to think so hard before every 
 gift. I not only feel that, but I must confess to 
 wanting a little fun for my money too. The 
 solving of the problem how to spend it wisely 
 is indeed my chief hobby." 
 
 "A very fascinating one," I said. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "so fascinating that when 
 people calling here say, 'Oh, Miss Gold, how 
 kind and charitable you are!' I blush, because 
 
 164
 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH 165 
 
 I know that although it may look like kindness 
 and charity it is really nothing whatever but 
 self-indulgence." 
 
 "My dear Miss Gold," said Trist, "my dear 
 Miss Gold, may I implore you not to begin that. 
 Between us three, let it be understood from the out- 
 set that there is no such thing as unselfishness." 
 
 She laughed. "Very well," she said, "but, 
 none the less, the thought is with me continually. 
 I take it for granted one minute, and the next 
 I am up in arms against it." 
 
 "If you are at all troubled about small bene- 
 factions," I said, "I must bring Miss Wynne to 
 see you. She could help in the little ways so very 
 sensibly." 
 
 "I should love to see her," said Miss Gold. 
 "Every one whom one can trust to do a few little 
 things is so valuable; but it is the large sums 
 that are the hardest nuts to crack. I have so 
 much, you know, and I can spend so little. This 
 house costs practically nothing; I want no 
 clothes; the doctor is almost my heaviest 
 expense, and really I could do without him, 
 because whether he comes or whether he doesn't 
 this thing has got to go on getting worse. That 
 is fixed." 
 
 My poor Agnes. 
 
 "I have had the most fantastic ideas," she 
 hurried on. "I'll tell you of one of them. 
 You know Burns's lines about resisting tempta- 
 tion? They're in that green book on the second 
 shelf, there; the fourth from the end. It is
 
 166 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Cunningham's edition, and came from your shop. 
 The book-mark is in the place." 
 
 I found them. 
 
 "Read them aloud," Miss Gold commanded. 
 
 I did so 
 
 "Then gently scan your brother Man, 
 
 Still gentlier sister Woman; 
 Tho' they may gang a kennin' wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human: 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving Why they do it; 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 
 How far perhaps they rue it. 
 
 Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us, 
 He knows each chord, its various tone, 
 
 Each spring, its various bias: 
 Then at the balance let's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
 "Well," she said, "what do you think I did? 
 I wrote to a thousand clergymen, chosen at 
 random from the directory, and asked if I might 
 be allowed to defray the cost of having these 
 lines suitably illuminated in gold in some part 
 of their church. Many did not answer at all; 
 others refused straightforwardly on their own 
 responsibility; many said that they themselves 
 would like to give permission, but their bishops 
 would not approve. One only asked me to do 
 it, and I did it; but I have a notion, from the 
 report of a spy that I sent down, that a hatchment 
 has since been hung over it."
 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH 167 
 
 "You might," said Trist, "have offered to 
 strike a bargain with them. In place, for 
 example, of the tenth commandment, which was 
 devised for the well-being of an Eastern tribe hi 
 camp, and has no bearing whatever at the present 
 day in a civilisation that demands Sunday labour 
 of most kinds, from cooking to shunting, and is 
 broken perhaps most flagrantly by the clergymen 
 who enunciate it at so much a year (yes, and call 
 it work too, holding their poor foreheads as they 
 tell you of their weary life) you might have 
 offered Burns's lines in place of that. Burns at 
 any rate touches real life, whereas the presence 
 of that law on the walls of the chancel has 
 merely an archaeological value." 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Gold, "but we must not look 
 for logic." 
 
 "Nor," said Trist, "hi a social society like the 
 Church for courage." 
 
 "I don't blame the clergymen," I said. "They 
 have to live. Better, they very properly thought, 
 go on with elemental condemnations than let 
 in the thin end of such a dangerous wedge as 
 imaginative understanding." 
 
 "The New Testament," said Trist, "will never 
 catch up with the Old hi this country. The Old 
 is certainly the best from the point of view of men 
 who have to bring up families. Trade unionism 
 must be very wary, and look ahead." 
 
 "Why didn't you go on to offer the verses to 
 the Nonconformists?" I asked. 
 
 "I was discouraged," she said. "That is one
 
 i68 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 of the temptations to which I most easily fall a 
 prey discouragement. I felt I could not reopen 
 the project." 
 
 "You might have given it a turn," I said. 
 "For example, in my Chinese book it is written 
 of Wang Kung-i, of the seventh century A.D., that 
 on being asked by the Emperor Kao Tsung to 
 explain the secret of the harmony in which three 
 generations of his family had lived, he wrote 
 the single word 'Forbearance' many times. You 
 might have offered them that anecdote, and 
 entitled it 'A Lesson from a Heathen Land,' 
 and therefore, even if apposite, negligible here. 
 Every one, then, would be pleased." 
 
 "Of course," said Miss Gold, "money is really 
 the last instrument with which benevolence, 
 charity, altruism, whatever you call it, works; 
 but most of us, being in a hurry, put it first. 
 The first really is thought. I will give you an 
 example of what I call the truest thought for others, 
 and one which to my mind, if not to the Rontgen- 
 rayed eye of a cynical bachelor, really involves 
 self-sacrifice. I have a friend who spends a 
 great deal of her time how do you think ? In 
 writing letters to prisoners in the gaols. They 
 are pious letters, full of appeals to the better 
 nature and reminders of Christ's loving-kindness 
 and the chance that remains to every one. They 
 must, to a large extent, merely reproduce the 
 ordinary solace that is offered by the chaplains 
 and visitors; but this lady writes them herself, 
 very carefully and legibly, and she employs
 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH 169 
 
 several of her nieces to paint flowers on the top 
 of each piece of note-paper. She is a wealthy 
 and an intellectual woman, and might be much 
 more congenially employed: but she does this 
 because she wants to do something to alleviate 
 the lot of the outcast. It seems to me a very 
 beautiful deed." 
 
 "How I envy her!" I said. 
 
 "Envy?" 
 
 "Yes, her singleness of mind. I could not do 
 it; not only because I should not dare to offer 
 such solace, but also because my sympathy would 
 be too much with them. I should feel, in the case 
 of so many, that their imprisonment was the real 
 offence rather than the so-called crime that took 
 them there, and that would stay my hand. The 
 letter that I should write would be a letter that 
 would never pass the governor's office. Take, for 
 example, a starving man who stole bread, and is 
 in prison for that. It would be too cruel a 
 mockery to comfort him with evangelical maxims. 
 Hunger comes before conduct and far before 
 religion. Another man might be there for debt, 
 which is quite as often the result of accident as 
 turpitude. Another might have merely killed the 
 middle-aged seducer of a child of tender years. 
 It is too difficult. I am too uncertain." 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Gold. "I am a little like 
 that too; we are too complex for charity, you 
 and I. In all probability we are merely meddling 
 busy-bodies, groping towards what we hope is 
 light, but doing harm by the way."
 
 170 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "I agree with you entirely," said Trist, who 
 had been silent for some time. "My suspicion is 
 that no one can do anything for any one; and 
 my belief is that certain persons with soft hearts 
 are doomed to ruin where they would assist. 
 Most of the charitable are wreckers cer- 
 tainly the cheque-writers are, and certainly I 
 am. I have proved it again and again; but I 
 shall probably go on, since resistance is so 
 difficult and one is usually so much wiser than 
 one's deeds. I will give you an example. I 
 once did such an apparently harmless thing as 
 to give a tailor's assistant a season ticket for 
 Earl's Court. It admitted one only and he could 
 not afford a shilling a night for his wife; he 
 went every night alone; their home life was 
 interrupted and then destroyed, and they have 
 never been happy since. That, of course, was an 
 error on my part. Had I thought a little longer 
 I should have realised that the ticket was putting 
 him, as the saying is, above himself, and have 
 held my hand. 
 
 "That is one example. I could give you 
 many others," Trist continued, "all of which con- 
 vince me that I am a danger to society and 
 ought to be locked up for giving money away as 
 surely as any of your kind friend's prisoners are 
 locked up for abstracting it." 
 
 "This is very terrible," said Miss Gold. 
 
 "Well, I believe it to be true of myself," Trist 
 said; "others may have better fortune; but for 
 the most part the feckless should be left alone.
 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH 171 
 
 It sounds brutal, but after my experience you 
 will acquit me of wishing to speak brutally. Eng- 
 land, as I said before, is an Old Testament country, 
 and had better be left to it. Christianity meddles." 
 
 "That means," I said, "not the cessation of 
 charity but the materialisation of it. Manna and 
 quails once more. And a very good thing too." 
 
 "Certainly," said Miss Gold. 
 
 "Those stanzas of yours," I went on, "might 
 have a serious undermining influence on the 
 single-minded. Is it worth while to interfere 
 with such an accepted beatitude as 'Blessed are 
 the untempted, for they shall be accounted the 
 best men?'" 
 
 "Yes," said Trist, "but that expresses only 
 part of the case. The real wording should be, 
 'Blessed are those who escape the prohibited 
 temptations, for they shall be reputed the best 
 men.' Avarice, for example, which the author of 
 the beatitudes loathed with all his magnificent 
 loathing, has become a very popular and highly 
 esteemed temptation. A man indeed practically 
 writes himself down both fool and failure if he 
 does not succumb to it. 
 
 "Meekness also has gone out, although my 
 own private opinion is that when Christ extolled 
 the meek and promised them their inheritance, 
 he was speaking ironically (as he often must 
 have been), and the earth they were to inherit 
 was a piece six feet by two." 
 
 Miss Gold liked that. "You should write a 
 commentary," she said. "We want every point
 
 172 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 of view to be expressed, whether it's right or 
 wrong; and I imagine," she added, "that no 
 honest point of view can possibly be wholly wrong." 
 "As to temptation," I said, "take my own 
 case. In the ordinary usage of the word, I am from 
 temptation almost wholly free. I have the good 
 or ill fortune to possess a mind that can occupy 
 itself happily almost without a break, like a bee 
 in that herbaceous border out there. Vice does 
 not beckon me with any alluring finger; I am ill 
 at once if I over-eat; I am ill the next day if I 
 drink too much; and I care more for health than 
 for the immediate pleasure of such excesses. I 
 have a sufficient income; I do not desire more. 
 I have no tendency to be a scandal-monger. The 
 result is, that I am accounted a good man; the 
 nice gentleman over Bemerton's, they probably 
 call me in the neighbourhood; very likely mothers 
 point me out as a model. But I am not deceived. 
 I know perfectly well that the certificate is based 
 not as it should be on what I do but on what I 
 do not do. It is a negative honour that I enjoy 
 or endure. Every time a wretched, besotted 
 tippler tramples down the craving to have another 
 drink, and thus saves twopence for his wife, he 
 is a better man than I, who have no craving to 
 conquer except the craving (if I can apply to 
 it so strong a word) not to have any craving; 
 and that I submit to. Do you remember, Trist, 
 that we were discussing this very question some 
 years ago at Bentley's, and I claimed to have no 
 temptations, when a shrewd being who knew me
 
 EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH 173 
 
 well remarked, 'Oh yes, you have, Falconer; your 
 temptation is to be tolerant; you can find little 
 twopenny-halfpenny faults with things, but you 
 can't condemn.' Do you remember that? It was 
 true then, and it is even more true now, when I am 
 many years older. If a man can't condemn at 
 twenty-five, he certainly will not at fifty, when 
 he knows so much more of life and more than 
 ever is conscious of the other side. Angels have 
 their advocate as well as the devil, and both 
 perhaps are unfair. The superficial may call 
 me good, but before God I am only amiable." 
 
 "And yet," said Trist, "there was a fallacy hi 
 the criticism, for to be tolerant or intolerant is not a 
 matter of will. When the drunkard tightens his 
 fist on his twopence, and walks resolutely away 
 from the public-house, he is deliberately resisting 
 temptation at the command of his own will. 
 Similarly, when a reviewer refrains from saying 
 too hard a thing, for justice, about a book by a 
 man whom he dislikes, or too kind a thing, for 
 justice, about a book by a man whom he likes, 
 he is deliberately resisting temptation at the 
 command of his own will. But it is not a 
 matter of will with you to be tolerant. It is 
 temperament. And you are tolerant because you 
 never made up your mind as to right and 
 wrong." 
 
 "And never shall," I said. "As a child I had 
 no doubts; but now? Take, for instance, telling 
 the truth. I was brought up to believe that one 
 should do that, and I knew a lie a mile off.
 
 174 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 But now I see that mendacity, or at any rate 
 the suppression of one's real feelings and opinions, 
 is the cement that binds society together." 
 
 "And yet truth," said Miss Gold, "is the only 
 really interesting thing. But I have had enough 
 ethics for one day, particularly as everything that 
 Mr. Trist says is directed against the usefulness 
 of the only hobby I possess. Tell me, Mr. 
 Trist," she went on, "would you think this a 
 dangerous scheme? to hang one good picture, 
 not an original, of course, but a really fine 
 reproduction, in every common room of every 
 workhouse in England." 
 
 "No," he said, "not even with a microscope 
 could I find peril in that." 
 
 "Well," she said, "if I give you carte blanche, 
 will you do that for me and so get back a little 
 belief as to your usefulness? Will you find the 
 pictures and arrange for their framing? I will 
 communicate with the Guardians, because I know 
 you could never bring yourself to do that. But 
 will you help me over the pictures?" 
 
 And Trist said he would. 
 
 "I shall have a little work for you very soon, 
 Kent," Miss Gold said to me as we left "It is 
 time you did something."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WE ASSIST AT A FUNCTION IN THE 
 MODERN SMITHFIELD, BUT NOT 
 QUITE TO THE DEATH 
 
 come at once. Drusilla has been 
 arrested." 
 
 So ran the frenzied pencil note in Naomi's 
 hand, on the fly-leaf of a new novel, which was 
 brought to me one morning by the boot and knife 
 boy at Queen Anne's Gate. 
 
 I went immediately, accompanied by the boy, 
 who evidently knew what was wrong. 
 
 "Miss Drusilla and the other Sufferagettes," he 
 said, "have been having another turn-up with the 
 Prime Minister. They keep the pot boiling, don't 
 they, sir?" 
 
 "Do you think women ought to have the vote?" 
 I asked him. 
 
 "My mother says," he replied, "that all the 
 clever women have it already." 
 
 "Has she got it?" I asked. 
 
 He grinned. "I should rather say she had," 
 he answered. 
 
 75
 
 176 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Drusilla's mother was in a state of profound 
 dejection and semi-collapse. "I don't know -what 
 Alderley will say," was the burden of her lament. 
 
 I told her it was very fortunate he was away. 
 He would have time to think it over and take a 
 kindly view. 
 
 "A daughter of mine in prison," said my sister. 
 "The shame of it." 
 
 "Oh no," I said, "not at all. There is no 
 shame in political offence. The fight for freedom, 
 you know. Think of Joan of Arc. Think of 
 of Jael and Sisera. Some one must always 
 suffer before justice is done." 
 
 This cheered the poor mother a little, but all 
 my good efforts were undone by Lionel, who 
 rushed in at this moment, pale with fury. Neither 
 Naomi nor I could check his ravings for some 
 minutes, and his mother accepted them as a true 
 picture of the case. Naturally. Was he not her 
 son, while I was only her step-brother twice his 
 age? 
 
 Lionel, I need hardly say, disregarded the 
 seriousness of the cause of female enfranchise- 
 ment. His principal concern was the name of 
 Wynne, and L. Wynne in particular, and the 
 effect of Drusilla's martyrdom upon it. How 
 could he walk to the wicket, in the Middlesex 
 and Surrey match to-morrow, with the knowledge 
 of this outrage not only in his own mind but only 
 too evidently in that of every spectator at the 
 Oval? How could he do himself justice as a 
 bat under such a humiliation? And think of
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 177 
 
 the report the next day " Wynne, the brother 
 of the notorious Suffragette, secured a well- 
 merited duck," or, "To be 'caught out' seems 
 just now to run in the Wynne family." Lionel's 
 fancy played with the theme like a comic 
 journalist in an evening paper. He covered 
 himself with gratuitous ridicule. 
 
 "My dear boy," I said at last, "how extra- 
 ordinarily out of date you are. You are making 
 two of the least pardonable mistakes of your age 
 you are taking something seriously and you are 
 disregarding the benefits of advertisement." 
 
 He turned on me like a tiger. "Oh yes," he 
 said, "you never find fault with anything. You 
 just smile and enjoy it." 
 
 "I can't find much fault with Drusilla," I said 
 humbly, "because she is sincere. There is no 
 harm in wanting to be considered more important 
 than you are: it is not wrong to want to vote. 
 Personally I hope I shall never vote again, but 
 that is not virtue in me it is deplorable, un- 
 patriotic weakness. Drusilla takes a passionate 
 interest in public affairs and wants to be allowed 
 to participate in them, and considers it an 
 injustice that she should not be allowed to 
 because she is a woman and not a man. In 
 her excitement for this cause she and her 
 friends seem to have gone a little too far and 
 have come into collision with a law and the 
 police. That is all. There is no disgrace; on 
 the contrary, it is a merit in any one to-day to 
 be ready to suffer for any cause." 
 
 N
 
 178 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Seeing that I might as well be talking to a 
 pillar box, I stopped there, although it also 
 occurred to me to say that I could imagine an 
 intelligent Japanese looking with more admira- 
 tion upon sisters who wanted votes than brothers 
 who struck and pursued a ball all day. 
 
 I did, however, add, "Instead of ranting about 
 your own reputation as a cricketer, you ought to 
 be hurrying as fast as you can to the police court, 
 to bail her out if she will let you, which I doubt 
 and be rather proud to think that you have so 
 determined and plucky a sister. I will come with 
 you if you like." 
 
 Lionel, I regret to say, replied briefly that he 
 would be damned if he did anything of the kind, 
 and so I went alone, as Naomi could not leave 
 her mother. 
 
 What nice people the police are! To the 
 well-to-do and law-abiding they have a quiet, 
 gentle, paternal way that soothes and reassures. 
 They write things in books like recording angels. 
 They hold out hope. 
 
 "Miss Drusilla Wynne? Oh yes," said the 
 officer in charge. "Taken into custody for creat- 
 ing a disturbance in Downing Street with other 
 females. The magistrate will hear the case in 
 about half an hour. A special sitting." 
 
 Yes, he added, I might see her; but they 
 were all very excited, and had been singing their 
 war-song. 
 
 A policeman led me to Drusilla' s cell and 
 told me the story on the way. It seemed that
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 179 
 
 the Prime Minister had made an announcement 
 unpalatable to the sisterhood, whose knife, the 
 officer added, had been in him for some time, and 
 certain picked heroines among them had paid him 
 a call of protest. 
 
 "No harm in that," said A-27, "but they 
 wouldn't go away when told, and created a dis- 
 turbance, so we had to bring them to the station. 
 Very voilent they were, too, some of them; but 
 not your young lady, I hope. Let me see, what 
 did you say her name was?" 
 
 I told him. 
 
 "Oh yes. Wynne," he said (and my thoughts 
 flew instantly to poor Wragg in Arnold's preface), 
 "Wynne. No, she was all right went like a 
 lamb. In point of fact, I apprehended her myself. 
 A pretty little piece hi green and terra-cotta. 
 Seemed to me she was doing what she was told, 
 more than what she wanted to." 
 
 Poor Drusilla if she could have heard that! 
 Nothing so enrages as truth. 
 
 I was allowed to talk to her in the presence 
 of the constable, who, with his helmet off, had 
 quite the air of a man and a brother a far more 
 sympathetic brother than Lionel, indeed. 
 
 "I'm very sorry," she said, "but I can't pay 
 the fine. None of the others will, and I'm not 
 going to desert them." 
 
 "Does that mean Holloway?" I asked the 
 policeman. 
 
 "That's right," he said: "Holloway." 
 
 "In Black Maria?" I asked.
 
 i8o OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "That's right: Black Maria," he said. 
 
 "How long do you think it will be?" I asked. 
 
 "A week or ten days for the first offenders," 
 he said; "a fortnight for the old parliamentary 
 hands." 
 
 I told Drusilla about her mother; but it did 
 not move her. "It is mother's battle we are 
 fighting as well as our own," she replied. 
 "Women should hang together." 
 
 "Not hang," I said: "it's not as bad as that." 
 
 A-27 laughed, and Drusilla turned on him 
 furiously. 
 
 "Why should policemen be men?" she cried. 
 "That's another injustice. If women have to be 
 arrested, they ought to be arrested by their own 
 sex." 
 
 "I quite agree with you, miss," said the con- 
 stable. "And so would all my mates, very 
 heartily. Yes, and all our missuses too. It's no 
 bean-feast taking a woman to the station, I can 
 tell you. The police have their feelings as well 
 as any one else, and they never feel so little like 
 men as they do when they're apprehending a 
 female offender. Now you, miss, as I was telling 
 this gentleman here, came along quiet and peace- 
 able; but do you think I was proud of having 
 my hand on you? Not a bit of it. I could have 
 sunk into the earth for shame. Votes for women 
 I don't believe in, and never shall; but police- 
 women for women I would plump for." 
 
 At this moment a messenger came to say that 
 the magistrate was ready, and I had to leave
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 181 
 
 Drusilla and enter the court. The hearing took 
 only a short time. There were several offenders, 
 some of whom had been in similar meltes before. 
 They all refused to pay the fine and received vary- 
 ing sentences, as A- 2 7 had foretold. 
 
 Drusilla, however, was discharged with a caution, 
 a result due partly to her pacific behaviour with 
 her constable, and partly, I have no doubt, to her 
 father's standing at the Bar; for although there 
 may not be (as some aver) one law for the rich 
 and one for the poor, there is certainly one law 
 for a colleague and one for a stranger, and so 
 there always will be. As Trist says, the human 
 organism presents few attractions as a resting- 
 place to the bacillus of impartiality. 
 
 In discharging her (to her very obvious distress), 
 the magistrate made some kind if antiquated 
 remarks. He pointed out that there were other 
 rights to be considered as well as the right to 
 vote. There were, for example, the parents' 
 right to be free from anxiety as to what their 
 daughters were doing; the right to be exempted 
 from such annoyance and grief as the imprison- 
 ment of their daughters would bring; and so 
 forth. He meant well, but Drusilla was white 
 with disagreement and indignation. 
 
 "If every one thought about others like that," 
 she said, on the way home, "there would be no 
 progress whatever. Progress is based on dis- 
 regard of old-fashioned feelings." (Where did 
 she get that?) 
 
 "True enough," I agreed. "But progress also
 
 182 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 comes from independence. I take it for granted 
 that all those other brave ladies who have refused 
 to pay their fines, and have gone to Holloway, 
 have their own homes and incomes. They are 
 in a position to defy the law. But where is 
 your income? where is your home?" 
 
 This hit Drusilla rather hard. "If it came 
 to that," she said, "I would leave home at once 
 and earn my own living." 
 
 "But you have not done so," I said, "and one 
 cannot have it both ways. One cannot enjoy 
 both the sheltered advantages of the dependent 
 and the fierce joys of the independent. You 
 have been a gambler this morning. You were 
 playing a game which might cost you money you 
 did not possess and would have to be paid by some 
 one who disapproved of the whole thing." 
 
 "But I was prepared to go to prison," said 
 Drusilla. 
 
 "Quite true," I said. "But what about your 
 time there? It does not belong to you. Your 
 father paid for you to be at the Slade. No," I 
 said, "you are a dependent and must behave 
 accordingly. But when you earn your own 
 living, there is nothing you cannot do. If you 
 still want the vote, and there is no other way of 
 getting it but by encamping on the Prime Min- 
 ister's doorstep, why, you must encamp there 
 and I will help you. But so long as you are 
 taking your father's money, and living under his 
 roof, I fancy you must behave." 
 
 And so I restored her to her mother.
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 183 
 
 My next step was to return swiftly to the 
 police court to try a little corruption and bribery; 
 but I am not good at this, and my suggestion 
 that Wing was the correct spelling of Brasilia's 
 surname (I had not only her father's comfort but 
 her grandmother's hi mind) failed dismally. In 
 this world, although deceptions are welcomed 
 everywhere, it is only on certain conditions, one 
 of which is that they must be carried through 
 with a high hand. I did not comply with this 
 rule; and when I began to fumble for a sove- 
 reign, the inspector's cold eye paralysed my fingers. 
 So Wynne it remained Drusilla Wynne, aged 
 twenty-two. 
 
 Alderley, as it happened, said nothing, but he 
 acted promptly. He told Drusilla very kindly 
 but decisively that he did not want her to go 
 to the Slade any more. He would find her 
 private instruction, he said, or perhaps she might 
 join a class hi a studio, but he wanted the Slade 
 lessons to cease. This was very hard, and I 
 sympathised with her; but, as I pointed out, and 
 I am sure Naomi did too, her father had the right 
 to dictate, and one cannot expect to be a revolu- 
 tionary on plum cake, so to speak. 
 
 So Drusilla fared to Gower Street no more; 
 and as for the little bearded men with the blue 
 shirts, they gradually disappeared and no doubt 
 found other comrades, as artists and socialists 
 quickly do. 
 
 The chief cause of anxiety at Queen Anne's 
 Gate that then remained was old Mrs. Wynne.
 
 184 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Could the news be kept from her? We wondered 
 for a few days, and then at last her daughter-in- 
 law knew the worst, for a letter from Ludlow 
 arrived with reference to the matter. 
 
 "How strange," the old lady wrote, "that there 
 should be two girls of the same age named 
 Drusilla Wynne, for Drusilla is by no means a 
 common name, and there has been a Drusilla 
 Wynne in our family for generations. My eye 
 caught it in a report of the deplorable incident 
 proceeding from this new outcry. Another strange 
 thing is that this other Drusilla Wynne is de- 
 scribed as the daughter of a well-known barrister; 
 but life is full of coincidences. You must remind 
 me, when I see you next, to tell you of a very re- 
 markable one which has just happened to me in 
 connection with a knitting-needle and dear Canon 
 Hoadley." 
 
 "So that's all right," said Drusilla's mother. 
 
 "Yes, and jolly lucky," said Lionel. 
 
 "I think," said Drusilla, "it's all wrong. You 
 talk as if I were ashamed of it as well as all the 
 rest of you, but I'm not, and I think it's horrible 
 to deceive Grandmamma like that. In fact I shall 
 blame myself as long as I live for letting Kent 
 interfere at all." 
 
 "You couldn't help it," I said meekly. 
 
 "If you hadn't gone to the court," said Drusilla, 
 "to see the police and talk the magistrate over" 
 (the woman's view of the English law!) "I should 
 have gone to prison, and then Grandmamma would 
 certainly have known. I wish I had stopped you.
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 185 
 
 The next time I shall go through with it, I 
 promise you, so you'd better all look out. Mean- 
 while, I shall write to Grandmamma and tell her 
 every thing." 
 
 "Don't be such an ass," said Lionel. 
 
 "My dear child," said her mother, "do you 
 really think that is necessary?" 
 
 "Really," replied Drusilla firmly. 
 
 "Oh, Kent," said her mother to me, "do con- 
 vince her how unnecessary that is. Poor 
 Grandmamma at her age too ! Surely there 
 is no need. I don't want ever to interfere in a 
 case of conscience, but surely there are times . . . 
 Truth. . . . Surely now and then silence . . . 
 and it's too difficult. Kent, you know what I 
 mean, do tell her." 
 
 "I'm awfully sorry," I said, "but I'm afraid 
 Drusilla is right. There was not, as you say, the 
 slightest need to inform old Mrs. Wynne off her 
 own bat; but I don't see how she can let the pres- 
 ent misunderstanding continue and retain that 
 admiration of herself which is needful for us all 
 to get through life decently." 
 
 I did not mean this to be cruel, but Lionel, 
 who cannot forgive his sister for entertaining 
 views so uncomfortable to himself at his club 
 (and who is, moreover, a Turk at heart, like most 
 Englishmen) added the poison. 
 
 "No," he said, "martyrs must advertise or they 
 won't keep going. It is by letting every one 
 know about their courage that they get it and 
 keep it."
 
 186 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Poor Drusilla! this is the hardest cut of all, for 
 there was just enough truth to sting her revolt 
 being largely imitative. She flung out of the room 
 in a rage. 
 
 Naomi, who had taken no part in the dis- 
 cussion except to try to stop Lionel, followed 
 her. 
 
 Alderley, when told about it, took, I think, a 
 wise course. "Certainly she must unburden, if she 
 wishes to," he said; "but she must go to Ludlow 
 and tell the story in person. I won't have it done 
 by letter." 
 
 And so Drusilla, very unwillingly, when the 
 time came (our moral duty being often a con- 
 foundedly uncomfortable thing, which it is far 
 simpler to neglect) was packed off to Ludlow 
 with her poor little history of revolt, which (as 
 her father had foreseen) was becoming a good 
 deal of a bore. 
 
 The old lady, like her son, took it very well, 
 Drusilla' s honesty in the matter pleasing her far 
 more than the unwomanliness of the conduct 
 displeased her. Moreover, very old people rather 
 like a little dare-devil in the young. But Drusilla 
 had her punishment too. 
 
 "Well, well," Grandmamma said, "we won't say 
 any more about it. What we must do for you 
 now, my dear, is to find you a nice husband;" 
 the result being a series of garden-parties and 
 picnics at which curates and youthful squires 
 were shamelessly paraded before our little fire- 
 brand, almost as if she had been a marriageable
 
 IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD 187 
 
 South Sea islander, as indeed she practically was. 
 When it comes to marriage we are all savages. 
 
 Drusilla, however, to use a phrase of Lionel's, 
 was not taking any. She frightened the squires 
 with her politics, and the curates with her theology, 
 or the want of it. 
 
 "My dear Grandmamma," she said, "I don't 
 want to marry." 
 
 "Nonsense, child," said the old lady; "of course 
 you want to marry. All women do. What you 
 mean is, you don't want to marry any one that 
 you don't want to marry." 
 
 Drusilla did not acquiesce, but the chorus of 
 Alf Pinto's latest song, as repeated far too often 
 by Dollie Heathcote and Lionel, ran through her 
 head 
 
 "Mr. Right! Mr. Right! 
 
 He may not have knocked just yet; 
 But cheer up, girls, he is putting on his boots, 
 And he'll soon be here, you bet." 
 
 Mr. Right ! Mr. Right ! Was there a Mr. Right 
 for every one? she wondered; for obviously the 
 music-hall philosophy was a little too general. 
 Statistics alone proved that. 
 
 As it turned out but we shall see.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SOME MODERN CHILDREN ARE PRO- 
 VIDED WITH SOME VERY CONGE- 
 NIAL MATERIAL FOR LAUGHTER 
 
 ON a fine Sunday afternoon Naomi and I 
 walked through three parks and Kensing- 
 ton Gardens to have tea with the Estabrooks. 
 On Sunday they have a sit-down tea round the 
 schoolroom table: a meal notable for cake and 
 noise. 
 
 I put into my pocket a recent discovery at 
 Bemerton's a little manual for children belong- 
 ing to the early eighteenth century, entitled The 
 Polite Academy, or School of Behaviour for Young 
 Gentlemen and Ladies, intended as a foundation for 
 good manners and polite address in Masters and 
 Misses. 
 
 "Do you want to hear me read something?" I 
 asked after tea, and in response to a by no means 
 frenzied appeal (for reading aloud is not the joy 
 it was in my childhood) I began, after first ex- 
 plaining the purpose of the book. 
 
 I wish the original authors could have been 
 1 88
 
 CHILDREN ANCIENT AND MODERN 189 
 
 present, not for their happiness, I fear, but for 
 their amazement at the change that has come 
 over children and parents; for I have no doubt 
 they wrote it quite earnestly and believed in its 
 rightness, and to hear Kenneth's comments alone 
 would have startled them more than it would 
 startle that modern boy if the family Aberdeen 
 terrier stood up and publicly said grace in a loud 
 voice. 
 
 The perfect child, as formed by this book, would 
 be unbearable, and probably never existed; but 
 we must suppose that such works had their place, 
 and not so long ago either, although it is difficult 
 to project the imagination to that period, certain 
 lines of thought having so completely gone out. 
 For example, what point is there now in such a 
 counsel as this: 
 
 "Be not proud because you are above the 
 vulgar, for there are others above you." 
 
 It is probable that not even the poor put the 
 case so baldly any more, while as for what are 
 called the middle-classes (if such exist, but one can 
 never find any one to admit belonging to them), 
 they certainly do not agree that they owe homage 
 to any one, whatever they may do in the presence 
 of the titled. 
 
 The fact probably is that there is no longer 
 any accessible aristocracy. The old nobility is in 
 hiding, while the new increases so swiftly and 
 apparently so capriciously that the ordinary citizen 
 no longer accepts it with the uncritical reverence 
 as of old, but looks the gift horse, so to speak, in
 
 190 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the mouth. A lord is no longer, as he used to be, 
 a lord: he is a law-lord, or a life-peer, or an 
 ennobled brewer; something devilish like our- 
 selves we know his woof and texture. 
 
 Again, with money now able to do so much 
 more than blood, aristocrats lose in that way too, 
 to say nothing of their loss through blood doing 
 as much to get money as it has sometimes had 
 to do. 
 
 England is still largely feudal, but it no longer 
 includes among its instructions to the young a 
 section entitled, "Of Behaviour to Superiors." 
 
 "Take off your hat when any great person 
 passes by, though you do not know him; it is a 
 respect due to his rank." 
 
 That is meaningless to-day, and very happily 
 so, I think; but I would rather see it restored 
 to the curriculum than such a disgusting counsel 
 as the following: 
 
 "Be always pliable and obliging; for obstinacy 
 is a fault of vulgar children." 
 
 The next section treats of "Behaviour to 
 Equals " who again are no longer mentioned 
 among English people and cannot easily be found. 
 It is an odd position to recognise neither superiors 
 nor equals; but we can, most of us, fill it with dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 "Love all your equals and they will all love 
 you." 
 
 "Always speak to them with respect, that they 
 may treat you with respect again." 
 
 "If any of them are cross, be you civil never-
 
 CHILDREN ANCIENT AND MODERN 191 
 
 theless: his churlishness will disgrace him, while 
 your good nature will gain you love and 
 esteem." 
 
 The section, "Of Behaviour at School," made 
 Kenneth and Christopher, the two Westminsters, 
 very merry : 
 
 "Behave to your teachers with humility and 
 to your schoolfellows with respect." 
 
 "Make your bow or courtesy when you enter, 
 and walk straight to your seat." 
 
 "Never quarrel at school, for it shows idleness 
 and bad temper." 
 
 "When the master speaks to you, rise up to 
 hear him, and look him in the face as he speaks, 
 with modesty and attention. Begin not to 
 answer him before he has done speaking, then 
 bow to him with respect and answer him with 
 humility." 
 
 "If you have occasion to complain of a school- 
 fellow, first speak to him softly and desire him to 
 desist. If he will not, then rise up and wait an 
 opportunity; and when the master's or usher's 
 eye is upon you bow and say softly, and in a few 
 words, what your complaint is." 
 
 This was too much. 
 
 "Did they really ever behave like that?" 
 Kenneth asked. 
 
 "I suppose so," I said. "This is a book that 
 seems to have been popular, for it has gone into 
 many editions." 
 
 Kenneth stated himself to be jiggered. 
 
 I went on :
 
 192 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "If you see your play-fellows do anything 
 wrong, tell them of it." 
 
 "Return a jest with another, but always with 
 good manners." 
 
 "Never call anyone by a reproachful name." 
 
 It is odd to think that anybody at any period 
 could seriously have set down such mandates; 
 but there they are in black and white a kind of 
 Sermon on the Mount by a dancing-master. It is 
 when one reads counsels of something more than 
 perfection counsels of pedantic priggishness, 
 shall we say to natural, healthy children, that 
 one realises how necessary compromise is to daily 
 life and how far removed perfection is from the 
 natural human being. 
 
 This little book may of course have been, even 
 in its own day, excessively proper and inhuman: 
 but I have seen others hardly less so. We have 
 to remember that children, as creatures of de- 
 light, are of comparatively recent discovery. They 
 were for many years merely the young of man, 
 to be broken in like dogs. Not even the men of 
 imagination knew any better. No child was, as 
 far as I have read, thought a fit subject for intro- 
 duction into a novel until Henry Brooke's Fool 
 of Quality , and even there, although there are the 
 high spirits of the two schoolboys, there are no 
 infant-like tendernesses and natural gaiety. A few 
 poets had praised the young very gaily Prior 
 and Ambrose Phillips, for example but rather 
 as courtiers than human beings: it was left for 
 Blake first to see that the child was not merely
 
 CHILDREN ANCIENT AND MODERN 193 
 
 the young of man but a separate creature, filled 
 with fugitive and exquisite charm. 
 
 To-day, of course, we are overdoing the dis- 
 covery. The child is set in the midst, and we sit 
 around worshipping and applauding and vying 
 with each other in detecting and celebrating 
 darlingnesses. 
 
 I went on to the section on "Behaviour to 
 Parents and the Family " : 
 
 "As soon as you come into the room to your 
 parents and relatives, bow, and stand near the 
 door till you are told when to sit." 
 
 "Never sit down till you are desired, and then 
 not till you have bowed, and answered what was 
 asked of you." 
 
 "When in the room with your parents and 
 relatives, never slip out privately, for that is 
 mean and unhandsome." 
 
 "If you have sisters or brothers it is your 
 duty to love them: they will love you for it and 
 it will be pleasing to your parents and pleasure 
 to yourselves." 
 
 "Be ready to give them anything they like, and 
 they will give you what you desire." 
 
 "Will they?" said Norah, with bitter sarcasm; 
 for Norah, as I have said, is the nursery drudge. 
 
 "If you think they are cross to you, be silent 
 and gentle: and if that does not make them kind, 
 complain to your father, mother, and relatives." 
 
 "Never revenge yourself, for that is wicked; 
 your relatives will always take your part, when 
 you behave with quietness."
 
 194 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 If the child has been allowed to become 
 human and individual, it is no less true that the 
 parents and relatives have lost their godhead too. 
 At the time of this book, parents could make no 
 mistake, and every child had to be like every 
 other child. No wonder -that anthropomorphism 
 crept in: it began with the first child; it began 
 with Cain. Ever since then, God has been merely 
 a larger man and a father. 
 
 But as fathers, under the new regime, become 
 more companionable (as I see them becoming 
 every day), this old ideal must weaken, for God 
 will smile again or rather will begin to smile. 
 
 The contrast between the unimaginative joyless- 
 ness of these counsels of perfection and the 
 laughter with which they were received brought 
 home to one with curious vividness the differ- 
 ence, not only between the children of a hundred 
 and fifty years ago and to-day, but between the 
 parents too. Where the old parent admonished, 
 the modern parent jokes. A kind of light banter 
 has become the language of fathers and children 
 in place of the ancient minatory formality. 
 
 Next came "Behaviour at Meals" : 
 
 "Nothing shows the difference between a young 
 gentleman and a vulgar boy so much as their 
 behaviour in eating." 
 
 "Sit patiently till the company are helped, and 
 you will not be forgotten." 
 
 "Do not ask till you see the company are all 
 helped: then if it happens you have been forgot, 
 you will be served."
 
 CHILDREN ANCIENT AND MODERN 195 
 
 "Whatever is given you, be satisfied it is good, 
 and desire no other." 
 
 "In eating fruit, do not swallow the stones, but 
 lay them and the stalks on one side of your plate, 
 laying one of the leaves that came with the fruit 
 over them." 
 
 "Mightn't they see who they were going to 
 marry?" Winifred asked. 
 
 "Never regard what another has on his plate: 
 it looks as if you wanted it." 
 
 "When you drink, bow to some one of the 
 company and say Sir or Madam." 
 
 This set them all shouting. 
 
 "Chew your meat well before you swallow it; 
 but do this decently, without making faces." 
 
 "One for you, Sam," said Winifred. 
 
 The next section took us Into the street : 
 
 "When the school hours are over go out, as 
 you came in, quietly, softly, and decently." 
 
 "When you come near a mob, walk to the 
 other side of the street, and never concern yourself 
 what's the matter." 
 
 "Oh, I like that!" said Kenneth. "What 
 about a horse down?" 
 
 "I saw a chap being run in the other day," 
 said Christopher. 
 
 "Never whistle or sing as you walk alone; for 
 these are marks of clownishness and folly." 
 
 My own childhood is not so very remote, but 
 it is far enough away for vast changes to have 
 occurred in the relations of parents and children. 
 We were all happy and familiar enough, but
 
 196 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 there was none of the freedom of speech between 
 young and old that is now encouraged. Dignity 
 and age are equally out of fashion. We are all 
 young to-day and almost more terrified of being 
 out of things than of being accused of a want of 
 humour. The last thing to go is juvenility. 
 
 Afterwards, I told the children a little about 
 the Chinese pride in their parents and the high 
 honour in which good sons are held in China. 
 Not the least entertaining part of my Chinese 
 book deals with filial piety, of which that people 
 have Twenty-four Examples for the edification of 
 youth. I told them about Lao Lai Tzu, of the 
 sixth century B.C., who "at seventy was still 
 accustomed" "still" is good "to divert his aged 
 parents by dressing himself up and cutting capers 
 before them." 
 
 Christopher at once said that they did that very 
 often, but he had to admit that the prime object 
 was to divert themselves. 
 
 Huang Hsiang, another of the Twenty-four 
 Examples, who died A.D. 122, greatly delighted 
 their sense of the ridiculous, for he "used to fan 
 his parents' pillow in summer to make it cool, and 
 get into their bed in winter to take the chill off." 
 
 Other examples I kept to myself, such as 
 Tsing Tsan of the fifth century B.C., who maintained 
 that one should remain single, since "with the 
 possession of wife and children, the earnestness of 
 a pious son would be likely to wane." None the 
 less he married, but regained consistency by 
 divorcing his wife "for serving up to his mother-
 
 CHILDREN ANCIENT AND MODERN 197 
 
 in-law some badly-stewed pears." This would 
 have been beyond them; but I sent Kenneth into 
 roars of laughter by the story of the youthful 
 Emperor who amused himself by shooting blunted 
 arrows at the stomach of the sleeping Regent 
 an indiscretion which led to a speedy succession. 
 
 There was a beautiful evening light when 
 Naomi and I walked back: the light that always 
 makes me sad, and I was sad too to think of 
 the contrast between that noisy, happy home, 
 so very full of life and high spirits, and my 
 own solitary silent rooms; yes, and Naomi's too. 
 There is something wrong in a civilisation which 
 makes it so easily possible for so sweetly maternal 
 a woman never to have children of her own. 
 
 I slipped my arm through hers and we walked 
 without speaking.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE LEADS TO 
 PLANS OF TRAVEL, AND NAOMI 
 AND I ACCEPT A RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 " T DON'T suppose you've heard the news," I 
 
 J- said, as we settled down to our soup. 
 
 "Do you mean about the Traffic Bill?" said 
 Alderley. 
 
 "Or Notts and Yorkshire?" said Lionel. 
 
 "Or the Queen of Spain?" said my sister. 
 
 "Or John's portrait of Mrs. Grundy?" said 
 Drusilla. 
 
 " Or Mr. Bemerton's latest find ? " said Naomi. 
 
 "No," I said, "none of these. You couldn't 
 really have guessed if you had gone on all 
 night. The news is, that I am going to take 
 you on the Continent for a month as many of 
 you as want to go." 
 
 Naomi spoke first. "But, Kent," she said, 
 "how ?" 
 
 "Hush!" I said. Then I took my pocket- 
 book out of my pocket, opened it, extracted a 
 slip of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on the 
 
 198
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE 199 
 
 table before her. "There," I said, "is a cheque 
 for 483 los. 36. It came to me this morning 
 all unexpectedly, being the payment of a debt 
 which I had long since given up hope of ever 
 receiving. In other words, it is sheer profit, 
 like all repaid loans. 
 
 "If we can all go to' the Continent for a 
 month on that amount," I continued, "let us 
 do so. If not, let us go for three weeks or 
 a fortnight. But I intend to take some of 
 you, if not all. 
 
 "The question is," I went on, "where shall 
 we go? We must debate the point with great 
 care, and the majority will decide. I, I may 
 say at once, have no preference. All I want 
 to do is go to the Continent for a month and 
 pay everything, provided of course that some one 
 else will carry the purse. That I could never do." 
 
 "Dollie would love it," said Drusilla. "Besides, 
 he can talk French like a " 
 
 "Like a french polisher," said Lionel, who "has 
 a turn for mechanical wit. 
 
 "Ah !" I said, "you lean towards France." 
 
 "Does he know Italian?" asked my step- 
 sister. 
 
 " We seem to be crossing the Alps," I said. 
 
 "But, my dear Kent," Naomi remarked very 
 earnestly, "you don't really mean to spend all 
 that money on a holiday?" 
 
 "Why not," I asked, "if it comes from 
 a clear sky? Let us consider it manna and 
 quails, and consume it."
 
 200 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "I certainly should not dream of going," 
 Naomi replied, "unless you promised at least 
 to halve the amount and use the other half 
 for some other purpose helping some of my 
 poor people, for example." 
 
 I threw the cheque to Naomi. "There," I 
 said, "put it in the bank, and when we are 
 ready to go, give us exactly half of it, and 
 we will stay away until it is spent or we are 
 all tired of seeing each other at table d'hote. 
 The other half you must do with exactly as 
 you will." 
 
 "You dear thing!" Naomi cried. 
 
 All through dinner we discussed the merits of 
 Continental resorts. 
 
 We began with France. Lionel suggested 
 Trouville; but his sisters would have none 
 of it. 
 
 "Then I can't go," he said. "I couldn't 
 possibly be away for more than a few days 
 until the season closes. We've got several 
 matches yet." 
 
 Drusilla also remarked that she did not want 
 to be away for so long as a month, but would not 
 explain why. 
 
 Alderley wanted Brixen. He had heard so 
 much of it from a Judge. No one else had 
 heard of it at all, and he became very plaintive 
 about money foolishly flung away on the educa- 
 tion of the young. "Brixen," he said, "is in 
 the Tyrol a mountainous district of Austria." 
 
 After a short sharp passage with Drusilla he
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE 201 
 
 admitted to having first met the name and 
 fame of Brixen only a fortnight ago. 
 
 My sister voted for the Juras. She had seen 
 a picture in the Academy, of a valley of wild 
 flowers there, by MacWhirter, and she had 
 always longed to visit them. 
 
 But against Switzerland rose the universal 
 voice. 
 
 Norway was excluded on account of the sea 
 voyage; Rome for its heat; Spain for ignorance 
 of the language and (on Mrs. Wynne's account) 
 prevalence of anarchists and bombs; the Black 
 Forest for its want of civilised apparatus; the 
 Tyrol for its steepnesses. 
 
 And then Naomi hit the nail on the head. 
 "Venice," she said. 
 
 Of course. 
 
 Later in the evening Dollie Heathcote came 
 in. He had looked round the dancing rooms 
 to which he had been invited, had disapproved, 
 and, disapproving, had with a bachelor's lofty 
 privileges done what he called a guy. 
 
 "Besides," he said, not in excuse, for he admits 
 to no errors, but in further explanation of a 
 perfectly rational line of conduct, "there were 
 crowds of men over oceans." 
 
 "What do you know of Venice?" Naomi 
 asked him. 
 
 "Venice," he said, "I know all about Venice. 
 It is a suburb of New York, the streets are 
 flooded, and there is nothing to eat except for 
 mosquitoes, and they eat you."
 
 202 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "Very good," I said. 
 
 "Don't encourage the ass," said Lionel. 
 
 "Very good," I said, "but now be practical." 
 
 "Oh, as for that," said Dollie, "I know nothing 
 of Venice except that the wise are said to stay 
 at the Lido, where there is ripping bathing and 
 no mosquitoes, and go over to Venice when they 
 want to. It is quite close much closer than 
 the Isle of Wight is to Portsmouth and much jollier. 
 I hate the Isle of Wight." 
 
 "Will you come with us?" I asked him. "As 
 my guest?" 
 
 But he could not. He had arranged a series 
 of visits for the Long Vacation, and he obviously 
 wanted to pay them, or he would have accepted 
 my invitation instantly. His duty always lies 
 along the primrosiest path. 
 
 "Then it is you who will have to pay the bills 
 and tip the waiters," I said to the K.C. 
 
 "Alderley loves that," said his wife. 
 
 And so it was settled: we were to go to Venice 
 and go very soon. 
 
 I wrote to Miss Gold to tell her of the pro- 
 jected journey, and she replied instantly, asking 
 me to come down at once and to be sure to bring 
 Naomi with me. 
 
 She received us very warmly and got to busi- 
 ness almost instantly. 
 
 "I have been making a new will," she said, 
 " and I want you to be my executors you, Kent, 
 and Miss Wynne. It is, I know, unusual for one 
 to ask one who is outwardly a total stranger, as
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE 203 
 
 Miss Wynne may feel herself to be, to take such 
 a post; but lying here and thinking, I seem to 
 know you so very well, my dear, quite as well as 
 I know many people whom I see, and I want you 
 to humour an old sick woman who has so long 
 been a friend of your friend Mr. Falconer. 
 
 "Besides," Miss Gold continued, "my will is not 
 a very personal affair. There will be no grasping 
 relations to deal with. I merely want to leave 
 the money in trust to you two, to go on with cer- 
 tain schemes that I should not wish at once to 
 be interrupted just because I was no longer lying 
 here as usual. You will be business people 
 that is all." 
 
 "Tell us," I said, "what some of the schemes 
 are." 
 
 "Well," she began, "for one thing I have a 
 seaside home for London children a mixture of 
 seaside and country. It is in Sussex. I bought 
 an old farmhouse and windmill, about a mile 
 inland, and added to them until we can accom- 
 modate twenty children and three or four people 
 to look after them. The farm goes on all the 
 time, but the mill is idle. They play hi that. 
 There are very good sands there, I am told, and 
 woods too. It seems to be an ideal spot. The 
 children go down in twenties for ten days each 
 from April till the middle of October that means 
 about four hundred children." 
 
 "But how do you choose the children?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Well, that is of course a difficulty. A Poor
 
 204 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Law Inspector in Clerkenwell helps me. They 
 are all Clerkenwell children. One must be local 
 or one is lost. He tells me the best cases. 
 
 "I have good helpers in Sussex," she con- 
 tinued. "The farmer's wife was my father's cook. 
 She and two or three girls do the house work. 
 There is also a lady in charge with some 
 assistants. It all goes perfectly smoothly. 
 
 "That is one thing. Then there is my home 
 of rest for horses," she added. "That might be 
 transferred to Sussex, since this house will be sold. 
 For another thing, I have got a paper." 
 
 "What kind of a paper?" 
 
 "Oh, a straightforward critical paper that tries 
 to see the truth and tell it. It's rather expensive 
 because we won't have any advertisements, but I 
 don't mind that." 
 
 I began to see daylight. "I think I know it," 
 I said. "Is it The Balance?" 
 
 "Yes. Do you think it is worth the money?" 
 
 "Oh yes," I said, "quite." 
 
 "And Mr. Dabney?" 
 
 "He's all right. At any rate, you'll never get 
 a better man." 
 
 "He really does seem to have no axe to 
 grind," Miss Gold remarked. 
 
 "No; except the angels'," I said. "His fault 
 or foible," I added, "is a tendency to scold; but 
 that is, of course, a defect of a quality, and 
 after all it is to a large extent mitigated by the 
 other contributions to the paper by gentler hands. 
 Naomi's brother writes for it," I said.
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE 205 
 
 "I should want," Miss Gold said, "to leave 
 you absolute discretion as to keeping these things 
 on or stopping them whenever you thought best. 
 A time comes when the usefulness of almost all 
 charities seems to be exhausted. The difficulty, 
 of course, is to keep one's helpers keen. The 
 transmission of enthusiasm is the hardest of all 
 operations. 
 
 "And then," she continued, "there would be 
 a sum for minor needs. Every one knows of 
 small wants 'deserving cases,' as the phrase 
 is. Mr. Falconer has told me of two people I 
 should like to do something for, although it is 
 a question, as Mr. Trist says, if it is possible to 
 help failures. I mean that poor old cataloguer 
 at Bemerton's and the waterman at the corner. 
 I believe that one ought to be able to think 
 out something even for them; but I know how 
 difficult it is, because I have tried. I have given 
 just such a man as the waterman an overcoat, 
 but he pawned it at once. 
 
 "And I have a great belief, rarely shaken," 
 Miss Gold went on, "in the value of surprise 
 gifts. I lie here longing to project five-pound 
 notes, ten-pound notes, even twenty-pound notes 
 (if there are such things) on to the breakfast- 
 tables of poor clerks' wives who know what a 
 holiday is but cannot take one, and brave typists 
 who live on tea and bread and butter, and ladies 
 in reduced circumstances who retain a little vanity 
 but have no means to gratify it." 
 
 "Oh yes!" Naomi exclaimed, with shining eyes.
 
 206 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "But how can I learn about such needs, lying 
 here as I do?" said my dear generous Agnes. 
 "One can apply money well in that way only 
 after making inquiries and moving much among 
 people, observing and observing. But you two 
 will have to do it," she added triumphantly, "be- 
 cause I am setting apart a sum the interest of 
 which is solely to be used in that way." 
 
 I gasped, and Naomi looked at me and laughed. 
 
 "But tell me," Miss Gold said to Naomi, "some- 
 thing about your poor people." 
 
 And Naomi kept us laughing by her droll 
 descriptions laughing and sympathising too. 
 Most of her stories unite the comic and the 
 pathetic in perfectly equal proportions. There is 
 an old lady in reduced circumstances in North 
 London, for example, who lives in a large house 
 (her own) with one small servant, and lets a few 
 rooms. She was lately, when Naomi called on 
 her, out of lodgers and all alone, her little servant 
 being on a brief holiday. "But aren't you very 
 lonely?" Naomi asked. "I am, rather," she ad- 
 mitted. "In fact, I don't know what I should 
 do if it wasn't for this" pointing to a pill-box 
 at her side "but I hear it moving now and 
 then, and it seems to be company." The pill- 
 box contained a jumping bean. 
 
 Just before we left, Naomi went into the 
 paddock to take to the horses a bag of little 
 carrots which she had brought on purpose. 
 
 "What a dear girl!" said Miss Gold. 
 
 "Yes," I said.
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE 207 
 
 We were silent for a little while. 
 
 "She should marry," then said Miss Gold. 
 "Some man much older than herself. What about 
 Herbert Trist?" 
 
 Why did I feel so annoyed? 
 
 "Trist," I said, "Trist is not likely to marry 
 any one." 
 
 "We must bring them together," Miss Gold 
 replied. 
 
 "I don't think that is at all necessary," I said. 
 "I hate match-making or any kind of interference 
 with people." 
 
 Miss Gold smiled. 
 
 "Well," she said, as Naomi returned, "good-bye. 
 I am so glad I can count on you. Now I can 
 die more happily."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 WE ARE WHIRLED AWAY BY THE 2.20 
 FROM CHARING CROSS AND MEET 
 THE QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC 
 
 WE went straight through, leaving Charing 
 Cross by the 2.20 which has carried 
 so many happy travellers away from London 
 through the smiling valleys of Kent. Were I 
 a poet, I would address an ode to that romantic 
 liberating train. 
 
 It was after midnight on the following day 
 when we drew up at last at Venice, tired and 
 dusty and hungry and stained and not a little 
 wondering why we had left London. But the 
 next few minutes set that right, for all our 
 weariness rolled away as we sat in the gondola 
 under a soft starry sky, and watched the lights 
 in the water, and heard the porters in fluent 
 altercation, and at last got away and began to 
 thread the narrow canal to Danieli's, where we 
 were staying for that night. 
 
 The next morning we moved on, by Dollie's 
 advice, to the large hotel by the landing-stage 
 
 208
 
 WE MEET THE QUEEN OF ADRIATIC 209 
 
 at the Lido. I will not say that there are no 
 mosquitoes zanzare there, but I am prepared 
 to admit that the manager's theory is correct, 
 and that we brought them with us from Venice. 
 
 The secret of the peculiar buoyancy of the 
 Lido waters I do not know; but they are 
 wonderful. "Like bathing in champagne," 
 Alderley said; and that, though a vile so- 
 phisticated simile, comes near the mark. Other 
 sands may be gayer; but for its gift of exuberant 
 gladness the Lido comes first. 
 
 Drusilla's face, as we met, on our way to the 
 sea down the wooden gangway, on the first 
 afternoon, an Italian gentleman clad almost 
 entirely in his own hair, was worth its weight in 
 kodak films. 
 
 "Why can't he wear a bath towel like Kent 
 and father?" she asked indignantly. 
 
 "Because he's an Italian," was Naomi's unan- 
 swerable reply, which, however Drusilla may have 
 resented its insufficiency then, she was bound to 
 agree with later; for the sea was full of such 
 shameless happy monsters and their ladies, 
 gambolling in the waves with both feet planted 
 firmly and frankly on the bed of the ocean, and 
 none of the Briton's shame at being found out 
 no swimmer or any of his acrobatic efforts to 
 convey to the shore an illusion of buoyancy. 
 
 Perhaps, when all is said, the profoundest 
 difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the 
 Latin is the Latin's indifference to public 
 opinion. There is no true civilisation without
 
 2io OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 it if by civilisation is meant the art of en- 
 joying life. 
 
 As a general rule, after our bathing was done 
 we lunched and then crossed to Venice, where 
 we spent the rest of the day very lazily and 
 very happily. Venice indeed imposes laziness. 
 Even Americans doing Europe approach restful- 
 ness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier. 
 
 My stepsister, who had not sketched for years, 
 once more produced her paint-box and block, 
 and we used to establish her comfortably in a 
 corner and leave her for an hour or so; Drusilla 
 and Alderley paired off, and Naomi and I. 
 Drusilla had of course to see all the pictures, 
 and we let her and her father find them for us 
 and take us only to those which they thought 
 very good. Venice is not rich in good pictures; 
 the best work of the Venetian school is elsewhere. 
 Venice has the sprawling Tintorettos hi abund- 
 ance, some of which are magnificent and all 
 miracles of virility; but she has few portraits 
 from his hand to set, for example, against the 
 old Admiral and the warrior hi armour at Vienna, 
 and nothing quite like the " Origin of the Milky 
 Way," in our own National Gallery. Titian, 
 again, after the "Assumption," may now be 
 better studied away from his old home than hi 
 it, and there are more exquisite Guardis in 
 London. In the Museo Civico, however, we found 
 a great collection of Guardi's pen and pencil 
 sketches, light as air. Giovanni Bellini, again, 
 save for the little glowing allegories in the
 
 WE MEET THE QUEEN OF ADRIATIC 211 
 
 Accademia, is not represented in Venice by 
 anything so beautiful as his best pictures in 
 Trafalgar Square; but for his brother Gentile 
 (if you want him), as for Carpaccio, a journey to 
 Venice is indispensable. Nor does one any longer 
 see a Venetian maturing into a Robusti or Vecellio. 
 The Venetians that throng the piazza of San 
 Marco when the band is playing are not like that. 
 Shrewd they seem to be, self-contained, masters 
 of their narrow lives: but no more. Perhaps they 
 account for the appalling deterioration of modern 
 Venetian art. 
 
 As for Naomi and me, we preferred the real 
 life of Venice to its show life, and we spent most 
 of the time, after reaching the city, on foot. For 
 one may walk about Venice all day, and by fol- 
 lowing the little narrow paths and bridges at ran- 
 dom not only get lost but come upon fascinating 
 little squares and churches, family groups at 
 the doorsteps, and richly coloured fruit baskets. 
 Being lost is, however, no inconvenience, for the 
 Grand Canal is never far away, with some adjacent 
 pier where one can board a steamer that will in 
 time come to the Molo again. 
 
 We did not even see all the show places. 
 The Doges' Palace spread its nets for Naomi 
 and me in vain; but I cannot say how many 
 times we found our way to the statue of Barto- 
 lommeo Colleoni on horseback in the Campo SS. 
 Giovanni e Paolo, and more than twice did we 
 cross to San Giorgio Maggiore to be taken round 
 the choir stalls by a courtly priest and hear him
 
 212 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 explain in fascinating broken English the carved 
 scenes in the crowded life of St. Bernard; and 
 more than twice did we glide on from San Giorgio 
 to the Redentore, where a tall monk with a long 
 grey beard unveiled one after the other the 
 treasured paintings of the sacristy, and set us, 
 with all the solicitude of an enthusiast, in the 
 best light for each, enlarging earnestly, in easy, 
 companionable Latin, on their beauties. A simple, 
 kindly creature, who surely will be seated high in 
 heaven after a life thus spent. 
 
 Meeting some English friends one day, we 
 heard that the angel with a flaming sword no 
 longer stood at the gate of the Edens' garden, but 
 instead, the family being away, their compatriots 
 were admitted on the presentation of a visiting 
 card, and off we voyaged thither, across the canal 
 della Giudecca into the narrow rio whence this 
 paradise is gained: a tangled tropical place, 
 lacking no charm but undulation. One walks 
 on the flat between flowers and fruit along paths 
 that seem never-ending, beneath a sun whose 
 beams carry a fragrance of their own to add to 
 that of the vegetation. The south-west boundary 
 is the still and magical lagoon. 
 
 Here we loitered careless as man in his first 
 state, while the lizards darted between our feet, 
 flashing in and out of the beds and the stone- 
 work by thousands. That is the ultimate 
 impression conveyed by this Venetian garden 
 lizards. Large lizards and small, green and yellow, 
 swift as arrows on the wing, and stopping as
 
 WE MEET THE QUEEN OF ADRIATIC 213 
 
 suddenly as arrows in the target, bright-eyed, 
 wary, daring, silent as shadows, clear and radiant 
 as jewels. Lizards. Oranges and peaches, figs 
 and nectarines may grow here like weeds; but 
 it remains in the mind a garden of lizards. 
 
 On the days when we did not cross to Venice 
 we would have tea either at the casino or in our 
 hotel, watching the steamers empty and fill, and 
 the arrival or departure of that prince in exile, 
 Don Carlos, Duke of Madrid, whose habit it was 
 every afternoon to visit the Lido in his motor 
 launch with the ensign of Spain, accompanied, 
 like a figure in the Arabian Nights, by a lady, 
 a huge dog, and a black page. Tall and massive 
 and bearded, I see him still, as he returned to 
 his boat, pausing to open his purse and distribute 
 alms, as a prince should, to all the beggars of the 
 quay. 
 
 Usually in the evening we returned to Venice 
 again to hear the music and eat an ice and recognise 
 our countrymen. For Venice between eight and 
 ten is concentrated into so small a space that it 
 becomes a mere annexe of Piccadilly and Broad- 
 way. 
 
 When we had pored over Baedeker in Queen 
 Anne's Gate, we had planned a score of excursions 
 to neighbouring places to Verona and Treviso, 
 even to Bergamo; but Venice was too much for 
 us. We had no such energy. Life was too 
 sweet for sight-seeing, and we said, "If we make 
 an expedition, let it be to-morrow and not to- 
 day," and loafed and loafed.
 
 2i 4 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 One afternoon we had a very unexpected 
 meeting. Naomi and I were in the last room 
 in the Accademia, where Bellini's Madonna of the 
 Two Trees hangs; and who should be already 
 there studying the little gay series of allegories 
 but Mr. Dabney of The Balance? He looked up 
 with a face radiant with pleasure not a trace 
 for the moment of his usual critical discontent. 
 
 "At last!" he said. 
 
 "Then you have been expecting to find us?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I have been to all the hotels," he replied, 
 "and no one had ever heard of you. I found I 
 could snatch a fortnight, and I came right out 
 at once." 
 
 From that time Mr. Dabney was constantly 
 near us or with us, and was good company in the 
 mass, but I found him no particular addition on 
 such rambles as Naomi and I had been accus- 
 tomed to take together. He had, however, not 
 been in Venice before, and we, with our brief 
 familiarity with it, being in the very agreeable 
 position of comparatively oldest inhabitants, 
 found a certain pleasure in showing him the 
 sights. 
 
 In France he would have been, I think, a sad 
 bore, for there he would have discovered so many 
 points of superiority to the English: but not 
 even so keen a censor of his own country and 
 countrymen as Mr. Dabney could find aught in 
 Venice, except such forgivable and inimitable ad- 
 vantages as crumbling and picturesque architecture
 
 WE MEET THE QUEEN OF ADRIATIC 215 
 
 and clear skies, to hold up as a model for home 
 adoption. 
 
 And so, although a few walks with Naomi were 
 ruined, I did not think hardly of Mr. Dabney or 
 suspect danger, until one evening, after he had 
 returned to the city in the last steamer, Drusilla 
 remarked that he was evidently hard hit. 
 
 "What do you mean?" I asked. 
 
 "By Naomi," she answered; and straightway 
 the soft languorous moon left the sky and the 
 delicate stars were blotted out. . . . 
 
 Of course. . . . 
 
 Why had I been so blind? 
 
 Returning to the hotel, I said good-night to 
 the others, and again walked out. I sat on the 
 quay and looked over towards the mainland, 
 and realised, as one can realise only on very 
 beautiful nights, how empty life is if it holds not 
 one's desire. 
 
 What was my desire? 
 
 Did I want Naomi? 
 
 I had never put the question to myself in so 
 many words; I hardly put it now. But I knew, 
 as I had known when Miss Gold made that 
 remark about Trist and Naomi just before we 
 came away, that I did not want any one else to 
 want her. 
 
 Eternal dog in the eternal manger, that will 
 not claim for itself, and equally dislikes others to 
 claim! 
 
 I was not a philanderer: I had hated philan- 
 dering almost more than any of the selfish vices;
 
 216 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I was not a coward, or at any rate I was suffi- 
 ciently a fatalist to have no fear of the future. 
 These things I knew. What, then, was it that I 
 suddenly recognised was making me loathe myself 
 and my kind? 
 
 Could I really be one of those hesitants in 
 love who had so puzzled me, and against whom I 
 had in my perplexity, my imperfect knowledge, 
 directed so many a hard adjective? 
 
 Strange how gradually one has to come to the 
 understanding not only of other men but of 
 oneself ! In a flash now I realised their tragedy 
 and felt for them a great sorrow, none the less 
 intense for its inclusion of myself. 
 
 They truly are food rather for our sympathy 
 than contempt, who have not loved enough to 
 demand, but have loved too much or have too 
 much hated the thought of others loving, to 
 be able to renounce. How that worm must 
 gnaw! 
 
 There is no end to the subtle tortures which 
 civilisation has devised and is devising, but surely 
 not the least is this modern hesitancy, which 
 increases and will increase as we become more 
 complex and believe less in another world and 
 therefore more in enjoying this: this terror lest 
 the step we are taking should produce anything 
 less than the maximum of happiness. In one 
 life, so short, to make a false move, how can one 
 bear to contemplate it ? and thus terrified, we 
 make none at all. 
 
 Was I like that? I asked myself, and repudiated
 
 WE MEET THE QUEEN OF ADRIATIC 217 
 
 the charge. No: I was not like that; nor must 
 I be. 
 
 I grew calmer as I decided thus, and calmer 
 still as I realised that such fears, such panics, 
 were common to those on the brink of a passion. 
 
 As I was ? 
 
 Was I? Is it possible to reach one's first 
 passion at the age of fifty-five? I laughed 
 aloud at the use of such a novelist's word. But 
 one thing was certain, and that was that Naomi 
 was the dearest companion I could ever know, I 
 who had never much wanted a companion at all 
 
 Naomi's quiet presence and alert interest, 
 Naomi's serene face, Naomi's atmosphere. I 
 could not indeed think calmly of life without 
 Naomi at all. 
 
 And she? Had she any such thoughts of me 
 as a companion? I knew nothing, less than 
 nothing. How should I know? I had never 
 studied women. I had got on with them very 
 well; had had a few friends among them in the 
 Argentine: but always, I realised now, with the 
 gloves on. Naomi was my first frank companion 
 
 since Agnes Gold those many years ago. 
 Agnes Gold. What was she thinking, as she 
 
 lay there on her poor back, about Naomi and 
 me? She had mentioned Trist as the ideal 
 husband, but it was Naomi and me whom she 
 had invited to control her affairs. 
 
 That thought gave me comfort, and I braced 
 myself under it. I drew a long breath and turned 
 my back on the soft stars and the lights of
 
 218 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Venice and the pitiless, lovely, still lagoon, and 
 went to bed convinced of two things: one being 
 that it was fortunate our visit to this accursed 
 beauty-spot was nearly done, and the other that 
 I would do all I could to keep out of the black 
 pit of melancholia, for I saw swiftly down a vista 
 of very dark possibilities.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 
 SOLACES ME WITH THE ODD AND 
 HUMANE HUMOURS OF STUARTS 
 AND TUDORS 
 
 JOHN AUBREY, whose Brief Lives Mr. 
 Bemerton has sent me with a strong 
 recommendation, and to whom I turned that 
 night, is a man after my own heart. He 
 had an eye for character, if you like, and his 
 interest in the picturesque foible was at least as 
 great as his interest in virtue. To read his con- 
 cise little summaries of Elizabethan and Stuart 
 personalities is to be made free of a most con- 
 versible company very near real life. 
 
 He knows his value as a land of footpage to 
 the Muse of Biography. He admits it in the 
 following passage: "About 1676 or 5, as I 
 was walking through Newgate-street, I sawe 
 Dame Venetia's bust standing at a stall at the 
 Golden Crosse, a brazier's shop. I perfectly 
 remembered it, but the fire had gott-off the 
 guilding: but taking notice of it to one that was 
 
 219
 
 220 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 with me, I could never see it afterwards exposed 
 to the street. They melted it downe. How 
 these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such 
 idle fellowes as I am putt them downe!" The 
 italics are mine. 
 
 Then again in the following passage in the 
 notes on John Hoskyns : "He lies buried under 
 an altar monument on the north side of the 
 choirs of Dowre Abbey in Herefordshire. (In 
 this abbey church of Dowre are two frustums or 
 remaynders of mayled and crosse-legged monu- 
 ments, one sayd to be of a Lord Chandois, 
 th' other the lord of Ewy as-lacy. A little before 
 I sawe them a mower had taken one of the 
 armes to whett his syth.)" That is the seeing 
 eye. 
 
 All sorts and conditions of men, provided they 
 had some merit or station, appear in his pages, 
 just as in my Chinese book; but Aubrey kept 
 a special corner for mathematicians and merry 
 ladies. His chief mathematician and perhaps 
 greatest hero was Hobbes of The Leviathan; but 
 there are many others. Here, for example, is the 
 description of one: "He is of little stature, 
 perfect; black haire, of a delicate moyst curie; 
 darke eie, but of great vivacity of spirit. He is 
 of a soft temper, of great temperance (amat 
 Venerem aliquantum), of a prodigious invention, 
 and will be acquainted (familiarly) with nobody." 
 Who was that? A thousand guesses. I will 
 tell you. Do you remember at the beginning of 
 atlases a map of the world with the hemispheres
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 221 
 
 flattened out, entitled Mercator's projection? Well, 
 that is a description of Mercator Mr. Nicholas 
 Mercator. Philip Melancthon, says Aubrey, was 
 Mercator's great-grandmother's brother. 
 
 For the merrier ladies, Aubrey's own pages 
 must be consulted, since one may no longer write 
 all one would; but here is his account of the wife 
 of the great Falkland : " At length, when she 
 [Letice Gary] could not prevaile on him [her hus- 
 band], she would say that, 'I warrant you, for all 
 this, I will obtaine it of my lord; it will cost me 
 but the expence of a few teares.' " 
 
 Aubrey's pen now and then could etch almost 
 like Rembrandt. Here is Sir John Birkenhead : 
 "He was exceedingly confident, witty, and very 
 grateful to his benefactors, would lye damnably. 
 He was of middling stature, great goggli eies, not 
 of a sweet aspect"; and Sir John Denham's eye 
 is made again to shine too, though it has been shut 
 these many years : " His eie was a kind of light 
 goose grey, not big; but it had a strange piercing- 
 ness, not as to shining and glory, but (like a 
 Thomas) when he conversed with you he look't 
 into your very thoughts." It was Sir John 
 Denham (author of Cooper's Hill) who wrote to 
 King Charles n. begging for George Wither's 
 life to be spared, because "whilest G. W. lived 
 he (Denham) should not be the worst poet in 
 England." 
 
 Aubrey indeed had a special gift for the salient 
 trait. Thus, of my dear Thomas Fuller, of the 
 Worthies, he writes: "He was of a middle
 
 222 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 stature; strong sett; curled haire; a very working 
 head, in so much that, walking and meditating 
 before dinner, he would eate-up a penny loafe, 
 not knowing that he did it." That tells more 
 than chapters might. 
 
 Whether or not Aubrey told the truth, we shall, 
 I suppose, never know, but he reads like fact. 
 One sees, at any rate, that he wanted the truth; 
 other things did not interest him. His account 
 of Milton may be taken as an example. One did 
 not quite expect it, and yet one believes it : 
 "His harmonicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in 
 a beautifull and well-proportioned body. . . . He 
 had abroun hayre. His complexion exceeding 
 faire he was so faire that they called him the 
 lady of Christ's College. Ovall face. His eie a 
 darke gray. He had a delicate tuneable voice, and 
 had good skill. His father instructed him. He 
 had an organ in his howse; he played on that 
 most. Of a very cheerfull humour. He would 
 be chearfull even in his gowte-fitts, and sing." 
 One does not think of the blind Milton as cheer- 
 fully singing; and yet I believe it if Aubrey 
 says so. 
 
 Milton's friend, Andrew Marvell, comes very 
 engagingly out of these pages : " He was of 
 a middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish 
 faced, cherry cheek' t, hazell eie, browne haire. 
 He was in his conversation very modest, and of 
 very few words; and though he loved wine he 
 would never drinke hard in company, and was 
 wont to say that he would not play the good fellow
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 223 
 
 in any man's company in whose hands he would 
 not trust his life. He kept bottles of wine at 
 his lodgeing, and many times he would drinke 
 liberally by himselfe to refresh his spirits, and 
 exalt his muse." 
 
 Aubrey on Shakespeare has one very interest- 
 ing detail: "Mr. William Shakespear was born 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of War- 
 wick. His father was a butcher, and I have been 
 told here before by some of the neighbours, that 
 when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, 
 but when he kill'd a calfe he would do it in a 
 high style, and make a speech. There was at 
 that time another butcher's son in this towne that 
 was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall 
 witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed 
 young." Now, the gods stand up for butchers; 
 but what a thing it would have been had this 
 other lad grown up too, and written plays too! 
 Two Swans of Avon. For the rest, Shakespeare 
 "was a handsome, well-shap't man; very good 
 company, and of a very readie and pleasant 
 smooth witt." 
 
 Between Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, 
 says Aubrey, "there was a wonderfull consimility 
 of phansey which caused that deareness of friend- 
 ship between them." 
 
 I find that the famous story of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh and his son is Aubrey's. The boy, who 
 was a bit of a firebrand and by no means hi the 
 paternal favour, was taken by his father, much 
 against his will, to dine with a great distinguished
 
 224 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 company. "He sate next to his father, and was 
 very demure at least halfe dinner-time. Then 
 sayd he, ' I, this morning, not having the feare of 
 God before my eies but by the instigation of the 
 devill, went . . .' Sir Walter being strangely 
 surprized and putt out of his countenance at so 
 great a table, gives his son a damned blow over 
 the face. His son, as rude as he was, would 
 not strike his father, but streches over the face 
 of the gentleman that sate next to him and 
 sayd, ' Box about : 'twill come to my father 
 anon.'" 
 
 Of Nicholas Hill there is this good story, which 
 I must remember to tell Miss Gold: "In his 
 travells with his lord (I forget whether Italy or 
 Germany, but I think the former), a poor man 
 begged him to give him a penny. 'A penny!' 
 said Mr. Hill, 'what dost say to ten pound?' 
 'Ah! ten pound!' (said the beggar) 'that would 
 make a man happy.' N. Hill gave him im- 
 mediately 10 li, and putt it downe upon account, 
 ' Item, to a beggar ten pounds, to make him 
 happy.' " 
 
 One of Aubrey's friends old Thomas Tyndale 
 (whom he put into his comedy, The Country Revel, 
 as Sir Eubule Nestor) reminds me of Mr. 
 Dabney. Tyndale survived long into the Stuart 
 age from that of Elizabeth, and he was for ever 
 looking fondly back. Aubrey quotes some of his 
 lamentations : "Our gentry forsooth in these 
 dayes are so effeminated that they know not how 
 to ride on horseback. Tho when the gentry
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 225 
 
 mett, it was not at a poor blind sordid alehouse, 
 to drinke up a barrell of drinke and lie drunke 
 there two or three days together; fall together by 
 the eares. They mett tho in the fields, well- 
 appointed, with their hounds or their hawkes; 
 kept up good hospitality; and kept a good 
 retinue, that would venture that bloud and spirit 
 that filled their vaines which their masters' tables 
 nourisht; kept their tenants in due respect of 
 them. We had no depopulacion in those 
 dayes. 
 
 "You see in me the ruines of time. The day 
 is almost at end with me, and truly I am glad of 
 it: I desire not to live in this corrupt age. I 
 foresawe and foretold the late changes, and now 
 easily foresee what will follow after. Alas! O' 
 God's will! It was not so in Queen Elizabeth's 
 time: then youth had respect to old age." And 
 so forth. I suppose there have always been 
 such deplorers of the present, from the days of 
 Cain. 
 
 I have always had a warm feeling for the author 
 of "The Farewell to the Fairies," certain lines of 
 which recur so exquisitely again and again, like 
 a refrain in music, in Mr. Kipling's Puck of Pock's 
 Hill: 
 
 "Farewell, rewards and fairies, 
 
 Good housewives now may say, 
 For now foul sluts in dairies 
 
 Do fare as well as they; 
 And though they sweep their hearths no less 
 
 Than maids are wont to do, 
 Yet who of late for cleanliness 
 
 Finds sixpence in her shoe?" 
 Q
 
 226 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Dan and Una knew it all by heart: 
 
 "At morning and at evening both, 
 
 You merry were and glad, 
 So little care of sleep and sloth 
 
 These pretty ladies had. 
 When Tom came home from labour, 
 
 Or Ciss to milking rose, 
 Then merrily went their tabor, 
 
 And nimbly went their toes." 
 
 "Witness these rings and roundelays 
 
 Of theirs which still remain, 
 Were footed in Queen Mary's days, 
 
 On many a grassy plain, 
 But since of late Elizabeth, 
 
 And later James, came in, 
 They never dance on any hearth 
 
 As when the time hath bin." 
 
 Isn't it charming? Could it ever have been done 
 better, before or since? 
 
 "By which we note the fairies 
 
 Were of the old profession, 
 Their songs were Ave Mary's, 
 
 Their dances a procession; 
 But now, alas, they all are dead, 
 
 Or gone beyond the seas, 
 Or farther for religion fled, 
 
 Or else they'd take their ease." 
 
 Of Bishop Corbet, of Oxford and Norwich, who 
 wrote that somewhere shall we say about the year 
 1612 at about the time that William Shakespeare, 
 having finished his own dealings with the fairies, 
 settled down as a gentleman of leisure at New 
 Place, Stratford-on-Avon, Aubrey has much to 
 tell. 
 
 A bishop who will go to the trouble of lamenting
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 227 
 
 the loss of fairies at all is something of a rara avis, 
 especially when he admits their Romish tendencies; 
 but to be the only begetter of such a story as 
 "Dymchurch Flit" (even at an interval of three 
 hundred years), that is the true road to gratitude. 
 
 Witty bishops are always good company just 
 as a joke in a serious paper gives one more 
 pleasure than a joke in a comic paper. In fact, 
 so much is this the case that a bishop to gain a 
 reputation for wit need not, as one too often 
 blushingly discovers, really be witty at all: a very 
 thin imitation of the real thing will suffice. It is 
 the same with Judges: laughter holding both its 
 sides (hi parenthesis) will pursue their mildest 
 faceticE. Richard Norwich, however, was a true 
 wit, although, as he lived at a time before biography 
 was much practised, we have few enough of his 
 good sayings. 
 
 Whatever happened we should have the Bishop's 
 verses; but had it not been for John Aubrey we 
 should know little of his spoken jests, some of 
 which are very modern in spirit. Here is Aubrey: 
 "After he was doctor of divinity, he sang ballads 
 at the Crosse at Abi-ngdon. On a market-day he 
 and some of his comrades were at the taverne by 
 the Crosse (which, by the way, was then the 
 finest in England: I remember it when I was a 
 freshman: it was admirable curious Gothicque 
 architecture, and fine figures hi the nitches, 'twas 
 one of those built by king ... for his queen). 
 The ballad-singer complayned he had no custome 
 he could not put off his ballads. The jolly
 
 228 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Doctor puts off his gowne, and puts on the ballad- 
 singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome 
 man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a 
 great many. 
 
 "His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. 
 Stubbins was one of his cronies; he was jolly 
 fat doctor, and a very good housekeeper. As Dr. 
 Corbet and he were riding in Lob Lane in wet 
 weather ('tis an extraordinary deepe dirty lane), 
 the coache fell, and Corbet said that Dr. S. was 
 up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the 
 elbows in Stubbins." Sydney Smith might have 
 said that. I know of no better fat-man joke, 
 industrious as the humorists have always been on 
 that promising topic. 
 
 Aubrey continues: "A.D. 1628, he was made 
 Bishop of Oxford; and I have heard that he had 
 an admirable grave and venerable aspect. One 
 time as he was confirming, the country people, 
 pressing in to see the ceremonie; said he, 'Beare off 
 there, or I'll confirm ye with my staffe!' Another 
 time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man 
 very bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, 
 'Some dust, Lushington,' to keepe his hand from 
 slipping. 
 
 "There was a man with a great venerable 
 beard; said the Bishop, 'You, behind the beard.'" 
 That is quite in a modern comedian's manner: 
 "You, behind the beard!" 
 
 Aubrey ends with this convivial memory: 
 "His Chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very 
 learned and ingenious man, and they loved one
 
 MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK 229 
 
 another. The Bishop would sometimes take the 
 key of the wine cellar, and he and his chaplaine 
 would go and lock themselves in and be merry; 
 then first he layes down his episcopal hood, 
 'There layes the doctor'; then he puts off his 
 gowne, 'There layes the bishop'; then 'twas 
 'Here's to thee, Corbet'; 'Here's to thee, 
 Lushington !' ' Bishops and then chaplains are not 
 like that now; and perhaps it is as well. But 
 those were more spacious days. And, after all, 
 when a chaplain is named Lushington . . . ! 
 
 I find one excellent and more serious saying of 
 Corbet recorded by another acquaintance, for I 
 have been looking into his history. On a public 
 occasion the visit of King James to Cambridge 
 in 1614-5, * ne Bishop, who was present, was much 
 beset by his companions to indulge his satirical 
 vein, for the employment of which there was no 
 lack of material. But he refrained, saying that 
 "he had left his malice and judgment at home, 
 and came there only to commend." 
 
 Next to the Farewell, the Bishop's prettiest 
 verses are to his son Vincent, on his third birth- 
 day: 
 
 "I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth, 
 Both bodily and ghostly health: 
 Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee; 
 So much of either may undo thee. 
 I wish thee learning, not for show, 
 Enough for to instruct, and know; 
 Not such as gentlemen require, 
 To prate at table, or at fire. 
 I wish thee all thy mother's graces, 
 Thy father's fortunes, and his places.
 
 2 3 o OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 I wish thee friends, and one at court, 
 Not to build on, but support; 
 To keep thee, not in doing many 
 Oppressions, but from suffering any. 
 I wish thee peace in all thy ways, 
 Nor lazy not contentious days; 
 And when thy soul and body part, 
 As innocent as now thou art. " 
 
 How many a wish in verses to a child has been 
 falsified in this sad world ! Poor little Vincent 
 Corbet grew into a wastrel, and after his father's 
 death was to be seen begging in the streets of 
 London. The Bishop was perhaps a wiser man 
 than parent. Many wits are. He died in 1635; 
 his last words were, "Good night, Lushington."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MISS AZURE VERITY AND MR. DABNEY 
 OF THE BALANCE CONTINUE TO 
 KEEP MY MIND TO A SINGLE 
 SUBJECT 
 
 I RATHER liked my own rooms once, but 
 Miss Verity's have made me discontented. 
 What is the secret of femininity? Can it be 
 reduced to a word? Not by me. But a literary 
 exquisite a Flaubert or a Maupassant in search 
 of it might do worse than await inspiration at 
 Azure's flat. 
 
 She reads everything that she ought, and by 
 some subtle influence compels publishers to bind 
 attractively everything that she ought to read. 
 If I buy a new book it is as likely as not dingy 
 in hue; but if Azure buys one it is like herself, 
 winning and gay. Her shelves smile. She likes 
 little books, and has a dozen little table-stands 
 for them. 
 
 Her flowers are perfection just a few in each 
 glass. On the larger table is a dwarf Japanese 
 tree spreading its gnarled and venerable branches 
 for a Liliputian smithy to shelter beneath; it is 
 
 231
 
 232 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 a hundred and fifty years old. On the walls are a 
 few coloured wood blocks, a water colour or so, 
 a Japanese print here and there, and the mask of 
 the dead girl from the Morgue. 
 
 Azure was not there when I entered. The 
 cleverest women are not. Having given me time 
 to look round and catch the note, she came in, 
 or at least suddenly she was in the room. Had 
 I been blind and deaf I should have known it. 
 She has a presence: she vibrates. 
 
 Sancho Panza the wise, who, it is on record, 
 liked a man to be a man and a woman a 
 woman, would have liked Azure Verity; but he 
 would have marvelled too at the fine flower 
 that civilisation has produced. For art has 
 gone to her making as much as nature. Indeed, 
 it is not the natural woman that she makes 
 one think of, but this other and more formidable 
 creation, the woman evolved from luxurious modern 
 conditions: the woman who sets Greenlanders 
 hunting rare arctic creatures that she may be 
 warm, and brown peasants toiling in the vine- 
 yards about Rheims that she may drink bubbling 
 wine and be gay, and chemists distilling perfumes 
 from flowers that she may exhale fragrance, and 
 Persian divers plunging for pearls that she may 
 emphasise the beauty of her neck. 
 
 But Azure, though her salary and her wealthy 
 spoiling friends can bring all those luxuries to her 
 slender white hand, is in no way the victim of 
 them. She accepts them naturally, but she keeps 
 herself simple too impulsive and ardent in her
 
 MISS VERITY AND MR. DABNEY 233 
 
 sympathies, very generous, and so ready for an 
 adventure that she would be prepared to go through 
 with it entirely on bread and cheese. 
 
 "Now," she said, after tea had been taken 
 away and the room had gained the composure 
 necessary for more intimate talk, "now teli me 
 about your Naomi." 
 
 "What am I to say?" I replied. 
 
 "She is very attractive," said Azure. 
 
 "Do you think so?" I said diffidently. (I 
 certainly think so, but I was not particularly 
 anxious to hear others say so too.) 
 
 "Why isn't she married?" was Azure's next 
 question. 
 
 "She has not been asked, I suppose," I said. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me that no one has pro- 
 posed to her? It's not conceivable." 
 
 "Not to my knowledge," I said. 
 
 "How absurd!" she answered reflectively. 
 "There is a girl born to be a wife, and no one 
 has the sense. . . . While I ..." she broke off. 
 
 "Naturally," I said. 
 
 "Well," she exclaimed, "what are we to do?" 
 
 "Do?" 
 
 "Yes, how are we to get her married?" 
 
 "But why?" I said as bravely as I could. 
 
 "Why? Because she is far too sweet and too 
 sensible to die an old maid." 
 
 "She is very happy," I said. 
 
 "Relatively happy, perhaps." 
 
 "Are you so convinced that every one should 
 marry?"
 
 234 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "Oh no, not every one; but certainly Miss 
 Wynne." 
 
 "But you don't know her!" I said. 
 
 "Know her! Of course I do. I saw her at 
 the theatre." 
 
 "Only for a moment." 
 
 "Well, that's the way to see people. I never 
 need to see any one twice to know them. My 
 first impressions are always right. Sometimes I 
 go back on my first impressions, but it is always 
 a mistake to do so." 
 
 "And looking at her like that, you saw that 
 she wanted to marry?" 
 
 "Certainly. It is fearfully plain to any one but 
 a selfish uncle. What a pity," she added after a 
 pause, "that you are her uncle." 
 
 My heart beat horribly. "But I'm not," I 
 said. 
 
 "Not her uncle?" said Azure. "I thought 
 you were. What are you then?" 
 
 I told her that Mrs. Wynne was my step-sister. 
 
 She said nothing for quite a long while, and 
 I tried to think of something entirely different to 
 say, but could not. 
 
 All I could say was, "To change the subject a 
 little, how is it that you, with such belief in 
 marriage ..." 
 
 "Oh, I'm not a marrying woman," she said. 
 "I have no courage to face a loss of liberty. I 
 must be my own mistress." 
 
 "As you would always be," I said. 
 
 "I daren't risk it," she replied.
 
 MISS VERITY AND MR. DABNEY 235 
 
 "And yet, ..." I said. 
 
 "Oh yes, I know what you mean. I have been 
 engaged, and I let myself be run after. It's quite 
 true, but I can't help it. I get so fond of them, 
 and they are so nice to me; but they will spoil it 
 all. It's all rubbish to say that marriages are 
 made in heaven; they're not. It is courtship 
 that is made in heaven. The dreadful thing 
 about marriage to me is that it means the end 
 of the engagement. The engagement is so 
 beautiful: people are so kind to such, so under- 
 standing and sympathetic and generous and 
 patient. And then they marry and everything is 
 over." 
 
 "And yet you want Naomi to marry." 
 
 "Oh, Naomi is different. Naomi is a born wife; 
 I am a born fiancte. Naomi would not see half 
 the things I did. Naomi would love her husband 
 all the more because he was ill; I should hate 
 him. Naomi would love to have babies; I should 
 be terrified and ashamed." 
 
 "I am afraid you are a bad citizen," I said. 
 
 "Very," she replied; "but I have the honesty 
 to admit it; and I spend a lot of time trying to 
 get good citizenship into others." She smiled 
 with adorable mischief. 
 
 "Well," I said, "here we have been talking 
 for an hour, and what have we done? You 
 invited me to come and tell you about Venice, 
 and I have not mentioned the place; nor have 
 you asked me to. All we have talked about is 
 other persons' lives."
 
 236 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "Well," she retorted, "and what did you ex- 
 pect? Aren't we in London? That is the only 
 subject here. No matter how a conversation 
 between a man and woman begins, it is bound, 
 sooner or later, to reach some one else's domestic 
 complications. As for me, I love it. One may 
 talk books and plays and pictures and travel now 
 and then, but the only real interest is other people 
 their hearts or their want of heart, their follies 
 and their pockets." 
 
 "Much better," I replied, "have some interest 
 in your own heart." 
 
 "Not I," she answered firmly. "That would 
 be too serious." 
 
 On the doorstep whom should I meet but 
 Mr. Dollie Heathcote, a picture of cool tailoring, 
 carrying a bouquet. For the first time in our ac- 
 quaintance, his expression of perfect contentment 
 and serenity was dimmed by a passing cloud. 
 
 "What ho!" he said. 
 
 "What ho!" I replied. "I thought you were 
 at Cromer." 
 
 "You would not have me remain idle and 
 frivolous on the East Coast," he said, "while 
 the funeral of my aunt is in progress in the 
 metropolis?" 
 
 "Certainly not," I answered. 
 
 He still looked the least bit abashed. 
 
 "It's all right," I said, perceiving his thought, 
 "I shan't mention it. For some time now I have 
 entirely given up the habit of remembering that 
 I ever saw any one anywhere."
 
 MISS VERITY AND MR. DABNEY 237 
 
 He laughed quite comfortably again. 
 
 "Pip, pip!" he said, and disappeared up the 
 stairs. 
 
 So Dollie was among the suitors! A very 
 good thing, too. 
 
 I walked home rather thoughtfully by way of 
 the Green Park and St. James's Park. It was 
 a golden afternoon, and there were many lovers, 
 and their happiness made me happy and made 
 me sad. What would have been the result, I 
 wondered, if steady happiness had been set on 
 the throne of this world instead of uncertainty 
 and change and disappointment? How would 
 life have developed had we been born happy 
 and well, and lived happily, and loved happily, 
 and then, when our days were fulfilled, had 
 suddenly died happily? 
 
 Would it have harmed the race? Have mis- 
 fortune and disease and frustration and insecurity 
 been necessary to man's ingenuity and industry? 
 Without sorrow should we have had no telegraph? 
 without tears, no camera? Have all the benefits 
 of civilisation been wrung from us in some effort 
 to escape from the blows of fate? And even if 
 so, might not happiness, without the advantages 
 of progress, have still been better? 
 
 I stood on the bridge and watched the birds 
 for a long while. They too had been in love, 
 and would be again next spring, most of them, 
 and it was just as real to them as to the youths 
 and maidens on the seats and in the boats, and 
 to me?
 
 238 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Tome. 
 
 I walked home in a brown study. 
 
 Azure Verity had sufficiently disturbed my 
 mind, but I was destined to receive a worse 
 shock before the day closed. I dined at Queen 
 Anne's Gate, and we had a very amusing evening, 
 trying over a number of folk-songs from Somer- 
 set, which the morris-dancers are making popular. 
 I left at about eleven, and Alderley said he would 
 walk with me as he had something to tell me. 
 
 Briefly it was that Mr. Dabney had asked if 
 he might pay his addresses to Naomi. He would 
 not, he said, say anything to her until he had 
 the parents' permission; which is punctilious of 
 him if not romantic. I think, however, I see his 
 point of view, which is that, being practically a 
 Republican at heart, and certainly rather anti- 
 English, he might be too repugnant a son-in-law 
 for a public man like Mr. Wynne to consider, 
 and it was therefore only honest to begin by 
 giving the father the chance of refusal. 
 
 Alderley, however, has no such objection to 
 him; the objection comes from Naomi herself, 
 who informed her father that she could never 
 love Mr. Dabney and so settled the matter at 
 once. And since one cannot think of him as 
 precisely the build of a blighted and suicidal lover, 
 the matter ends. 
 
 But why should my heart again stand still as 
 Alderley told me about it?
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 WITH MR. BEMERTON'S ASSISTANCE I 
 TAKE REFUGE AMID A GALLANT 
 COMPANY OF SEA DOGS 
 
 MR. BEMERTON again stood my very good 
 friend, for he had sent up during the day 
 a book which he thought would do something 
 for my thirst for character; and indeed it did. 
 It was a recent volume of the Navy Records 
 Society a full-blooded work entitled by its editor 
 Recollections by James Anthony Gardner, but by 
 this same Gardner, an officer in Nelson's day, 
 Naval Recollections in Shreds and Patches, with 
 Strange Reflections above and under Hatches. 
 
 Being old enough to remember very vividly 
 the shock that followed after that other James 
 Anthony's rending of the Cheyne Row veil, I 
 was not unwilling to get a new connotation for 
 those two Christian names. And certainly James 
 Anthony Gardner is a find. 
 
 He was born in 1770, in what he thought the 
 best of all lands Ireland ; and he came home 
 from the sea in 1802, but he did not take his pen 
 
 239
 
 240 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 in hand until 1836, during which time his memory 
 had purged itself of inessentials. He wrote them 
 not for the cold eye of a publisher's reader but 
 (like a gentleman) for his own family's entertain- 
 ment. The result is a narrative of extraordinary 
 directness, full of careless human qualities, naked 
 and unashamed, and some pretty exercises in 
 objurgation, prefaced by the following ingenious 
 verses : 
 
 "I know nothing of grammar; 
 At school they never could hammer 
 
 Or beat it into my head. 
 The bare word made me stammer, 
 And turn pale as if I were dead. 
 But here I may as well be telling, 
 I'm often damned out in my spelling. 
 And this is all the apology 
 I offer for my chronology 
 And biographical sketches 
 Of mighty men and lubberly wretches, 
 From seventeen hundred and seventy-seven, 
 Their rank, their titles, and their names all given." 
 
 The last line contains nothing more nor less 
 than the truth, for Gardner, although so many 
 years had passed, and he had served in as many 
 as twelve vessels, as midshipman, master's mate, 
 and lieutenant, remembered every man, and when 
 the time came for appraisement was all ready 
 with his summary. It is these summaries, so 
 vivid and searching and kindly and understanding, 
 to which it interests me to draw attention: for 
 such things are new to me, and may be new 
 to others; by their vigour and candour they take
 
 A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS 241 
 
 their place with more ambitious anthropological 
 efforts. 
 
 For swift and vivid summary it would be hard 
 to beat some of the following entries in Gardner's 
 book of memory : 
 
 Charles Buchan, purser. Dead. A most worthy gentleman. 
 
 Jack Swanson, gunner. Dead. A very good man but had a 
 very bad wife. 
 
 Thomas Floyd, third lieutenant. Dead. A dandy. 
 
 W. Colt, midshipman. Dead. A very good fellow. We used 
 to call him "Old Owl." 
 
 George Rule Bluet, midshipman. Dead. A good-natured 
 fellow, with good abilities, but drank hard. I recollect being 
 of a party at Gosport when Bluet wanted to make love to a young 
 lady, but did not know how to begin. At last he took out of 
 his pocket a plan of the Edgar's hold, which he begged her to 
 accept, and hoped she would keep it for his sake. 
 
 Sol Saradine. Dead. A droll, wicked fellow. 
 
 How Stevenson and Henley would have rejoiced 
 in this name! Sol Saradine. It breathes piracy 
 and lawlessness. 
 
 Ben Forester, captain of marines. Dead. As brave and 
 generous a soul as ever lived, but thoughtless and died un- 
 fortunate. 
 
 Cook, Carpenter. Dead. A good man; no dandy. 
 
 Edward Forster, midshipman. Dead. Herculean Irishman; 
 a terror to the dockyard maties. 
 
 Thomas Watson, midshipman. Dead. A glorious noisy 
 fellow. 
 
 Is not that an epitaph indeed, one to be proud 
 of? I wish I was a glorious noisy fellow. 
 
 Joseph Loring, third lieutenant. Dead. A good sailor, very 
 passionate, and swore like the devil. 
 
 The Parson (I forget his name). Dead. Had no dislike to 
 grg- 
 
 R
 
 242 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Edward Dowdall, gunner. Dead. Lethargic; always dozing 
 in the forecastle ; a sleepy, good man. 
 
 John Sandford, midshipman. Dead. A member of the Hell- 
 Fire Club; a dandy, and a droll fellow. 
 
 Thomas James Skerret, midshipman. This fellow wanted to be 
 a tyrant, but was too great a fool. 
 
 Robert Manning, midshipman. Dead. Bob was a good 
 fellow. 
 
 Henry Batt, midshipman. Dead. An old schoolfellow of 
 mine. Harry was passionately fond of grog, which made him an 
 ungrateful return by taking him out of this world before it was 
 agreeable. Nicknamed "Ram," "Cat," "Batt," and "Rammon 
 the Butcher." 
 
 Alexander Proctor, surgeon's assistant. Proud as the devil. 
 
 Hugh Land, clerk. A clever little pedant. 
 
 William Nowel, second lieutenant. Dead. Gloomy and fiery, 
 but a good officer and gentleman. 
 
 John Irwin, fourth lieutenant. Dead. A very good fellow, 
 always smiling. 
 
 John Roskruge, master. Dead. A very good man, one that 
 was better acquainted with rope-yarns and bilge-water than with 
 Homer or Virgil. He said a man's ideas should go no further than 
 the jib-boom end. 
 
 John Tursides, midshipman. A droll old guardo. 
 
 Henry Foularton, midshipman. Dead. Very religious, and 
 remarkably neat in his dress: but at last drank very hard, and 
 died regretting that a keg of gin (alongside of him) should see him 
 out, which was really the case. 
 
 Billy Culmer, mate. Dead. Everyone has heard of Billy. 
 
 Thomas H. Tidy, midshipman. Dead. Poor Tom. 
 
 John Nazer, mate. A very good and very ugly fellow. 
 
 Peter M'Kinnon, gunner. A good sailor, but used to damn his 
 poor eyes so. 
 
 I could go on indefinitely thus, calling forth 
 from their graves these hard-bitten sea dogs; 
 but that is enough. It is literature in its way, 
 is it not? 
 
 Are there the same or kindred characters in 
 the Navy to-day, one wonders. Let us hope so.
 
 A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS 243 
 
 But as time goes on and sophistication spreads, 
 the outstanding eccentricities are apt to decrease; 
 there is a general planing down of the harder 
 knots. Gardner's book, however, is in the main 
 narrative. It is only at the end of the chapters 
 that he prints these critical lists. Many of his 
 old messmates come in for more detailed descrip- 
 tion Mr. Stack, for example. Mr. Stack was 
 "cursed surly and disagreeable, but I believe 
 meant well. . . . When in good temper (which 
 was seldom) he would say 'my son' when he 
 addressed any of us; but generally Til split your 
 ear.'" 
 
 Mr. Stack had no richness; he was simply a 
 testy officer; not like Mr. Quinton, with whom 
 grog agreed so happily (among other things, 
 "making his flesh firm") that he took twenty- 
 six tumblers of good Hollands and water a day. 
 "I must in justice declare, however," adds 
 Gardner, "that Mr. Quinton was no drunkard; 
 I never saw him disguised with liquor." On the 
 same ship, the Orestes, was Mr. Stevens. When 
 Sir Roger Curtis came to inspect the vessel Mr. 
 Stevens was the first to go aloft, and was heartily 
 commended by Sir Roger for his activity. 
 "You're a fine fellow, Mr. Stevens," he called 
 up, "a most active officer, Mr. Stevens; you are 
 a wonder, Mr. Stevens." But Sir Roger spoke 
 too soon, for Mr. Stevens was in reality a slacker, 
 and was the last left on the yard. Sir Roger 
 soon put things right. "I recall all my compli- 
 ments, Mr. Stevens," he bawled; "you're a damned
 
 244 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 lubber, Mr. Stevens; a blockhead, Mr. Stevens; 
 come down, Mr. Stevens." 
 
 Lieutenant Morgan deserves to be better 
 known, for he accepted one of man's little 
 difficulties with fortitude and humour. One day 
 a midshipman named Millar joined the ship, 
 and Morgan, giving him a quick glance, sprang 
 towards him and asked him to dine that evening. 
 Millar was bewildered, for he had never seen 
 Morgan before, but he accepted. When dinner 
 was over Morgan declared that he was under a 
 great obligation to his guest, and should at all 
 times be happy to acknowledge it. Poor Millar 
 was quite at a loss. "Well then," said Morgan, 
 "I'll tell you. It is this. I was considered the 
 ugliest son of a bitch in the fleet until you came 
 on board, but you beat me dead hollow; and 
 surely you can't wonder at my being sensible of 
 the obligation." Millar took it well, and all was 
 harmony. Three months later, who should join 
 the ship but MacBride. No sooner had he 
 stepped on board than Millar was sent for by his 
 first lieutenant. "Millar," he said, "you are a 
 happy dog for being relieved so soon. I was the 
 ugliest son of a bitch in the whole fleet for 
 fully a year before you relieved me; and here 
 are you relieved in only three months, for there 
 stands one" pointing to MacBride "that 
 beggars all description, and if they were to rake 
 hell they could not find his fellow." Then, 
 going up to MacBride, he shook his hand and 
 asked him to dine that evening with himself and
 
 A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS 245 
 
 Millar, "to celebrate the happy event." That 
 seems to me to be something very like the best 
 philosophy. 
 
 These reminiscences prepare the reader to find 
 that Gardner and his friends, when in Pisa for a 
 night or so during the carnival, were not precisely 
 a band of reverent Ruskinites. "One of our 
 midshipmen pelted Lord Hervey in his coach, 
 and when told it was the British ambassador, 
 and that he looked very angry, immediately hove 
 another volley at Lady Hervey, observing that 
 she looked better tempered than his Excellency." 
 Returning to Leghorn, they had a strong party of 
 English officers to dinner, which was completed 
 by rolling a waiter in the table-cloth along with 
 the plates and dishes. A midshipman then took 
 a loaf and let it fall from the second-floor window 
 upon the jaw of an Italian in the street; which 
 floored him. No one, however, minded. "Would 
 this," asks Gardner, " have been the case in England, 
 where every hole and corner has a board threaten- 
 ing prosecution, and if you pass two or three 
 stopping in the street, their conversation will be 
 about law, hanging, or trade?" 
 
 Gardner's last ship was the Brunswick, on 
 which one Rea was captain of marines. "Rea," 
 says Gardner, "although a very worthy fellow, had 
 a great antipathy to the West Indies, and was 
 always cursing Venables and Perm for taking 
 possession of Jamaica, and was sorry Oliver 
 Cromwell did not make them a head shorter 
 for their pains. I have often heard him repeat
 
 24 6 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 the following lines as a morning and evening 
 hymn : 
 
 '"Venables and Perm, 
 Two bloody-minded men, 
 In an evil hour 
 Those seas did explore, 
 And, blundering about, 
 This cursed hole found out; 
 And for so doing 
 The devil has them stewing; 
 And with him they may remain 
 Till we come this way again, 
 Which we think, howsomdever, 
 (As our boatswain says) will be never, 
 And let all the men say Amen.'" 
 
 On one glad morning, however, news at last 
 came that peace was declared and the Brunswick 
 was to return home and its crew paid off. The 
 master brought the glad tidings, thundering at 
 Gardner's door at five in the morning, and singing 
 this lusty song : 
 
 '"Jolly tars, have you heard the news? 
 
 There's peace both by land and by sea; 
 Great guns are no more to be used, 
 Disbanded we all are to be.' 
 
 'Oh,' says the admiral, 'the wars are all over.' 
 Says the captain, 'My heart it will break.' 
 
 'Oh,' says the bloody first lieutenant, 
 'What course of life shall I take?'" 
 
 But the news was false, and the Brunswick was 
 sent back to Jamaica again, and so dispirited was 
 he that Gardner then left the sea for ever. 
 
 It is our gain that he carried away from it a 
 marvellous memory. But I think he knew he
 
 A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS 247 
 
 had made a mistake in leaving, for there is much 
 wistfulness between the lines of his story. In 
 one place he writes: "We used to fit a tarpaulin 
 in the weather fore-rigging as a screen, and many 
 a pleasant hour have I passed under its lee, with 
 a glass of grog, and hearing long-winded stories. 
 Alas ! how dead are times now." 
 
 Is not that one of the themes the plaintive 
 melody of which runs through most middle-aged 
 and older lives: "Alas! how dead are times 
 now?" This is my comment, not the brave 
 Gardner's.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS AND 
 HAVE THE BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR 
 CONTRASTING THE GRAVE AND 
 GAY 
 
 T IFE has just been varied by two wed- 
 J ' dings two : one serious and the other 
 most distinctly the reverse. I attended both. 
 
 The first wedding was that of Alf Pinto and 
 Bonnie Birdie Twist; the second but let us 
 take them in order. 
 
 Bonnie Birdie Twist, as her name may suggest, 
 is in the profession too, a sprightly lady vocalist 
 with a high kick and a wink of such calibre that 
 it can carry with deadly effect to the uttermost 
 standing-room. 
 
 She has not long entered her kingdom, but is 
 firmly established there now, hardly less pro- 
 fitably than Alf himself. Her particular line of 
 song is the confidential, involving responses from 
 an audience only too ready to oblige, her latest 
 success being entitled, "Is there room in your 
 lap for me?" a question that produces in every 
 248
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 249 
 
 Hall where she sings an Everlasting Yea that lifts 
 the roof. 
 
 Such a lady would hardly have an ordinary 
 wedding; and the ceremony to which I was 
 invited by Mrs. Duckie, and from which I felt 
 I could not abstain without hurting that good 
 woman's feelings, was as far removed from the 
 ordinary as a naphtha lamp is removed from an 
 altar candle. 
 
 The wedding was I can hardly say solemnised 
 but achieved under difficulty by a patient and 
 tenacious Islington Registrar in the Maltravers 
 Assembly Rooms, which had been taken for the 
 occasion by Birdie's father. That gentleman, 
 who is now a thriving publican and a very 
 assiduous racing man, was once a heavy-weight 
 champion boxer, while Mrs. Twist, whose plush 
 gown sent the thermometer up five degrees, had 
 her triumphs years ago as Polly Pearl the Coster 
 Queen. 
 
 The Assembly Rooms were crowded with 
 warm-hearted professionals in every kind of 
 clothes but the expected, and jovial bookmakers 
 and licensed victuallers all accompanied by 
 their ladies, and all very gay from the 
 moment they arrived, and gayer still as the 
 day advanced, and the ceremony became 
 more vivacious, and the ex-bruiser's generous 
 flow of wine got to work, and appropriate 
 excerpts from Alf and Birdie's repertoires rose 
 in chorus: so appropriate indeed, that it seemed 
 as if they had been singing all their lives
 
 250 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 only by way of preparation for this exuberant 
 festival. 
 
 Birdie's bridesmaids were her own sisters, both 
 of whom are budding soubrettes, and four other 
 friends with yellow hair. Be-trice had been 
 implored by Alf to serve too, but she declined, 
 partly on an impulse of natural prudence and 
 partly because the legitimate drama, to which 
 she is affiliated, must not be too friendly with the 
 variety stage. 
 
 Alf's best men were a pair of famous knock- 
 abouts who took their duties very seriously, and, 
 to the exquisite enjoyment of the father-in-law, 
 insisted on treating Alf as a boxer in need of 
 minute and exhaustive seconding. They fanned 
 him with red handkerchiefs as he sat back in a 
 state of hilarious exhaustion, and every one else 
 within reach offered him refreshments from a 
 black bottle, and generally and genially did all 
 they could to relieve matrimony from the stigma 
 of holiness. 
 
 The Registrar at first seemed a little scandalised, 
 but after a while he resigned himself to the tide 
 of facetiousness and was carried along upon its 
 bosom as buoyantly as any. 
 
 The only uncomfortable people there were 
 Mr. and Mrs. Duckie and myself: but it was 
 easy for me, being a mere spectator, to retire into 
 the background, whereas they, simple, affectionate 
 creatures, were perforce in the very forefront of 
 the battle. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Duckie was, I fear, more than
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 251 
 
 uncomfortable, she was shocked and sorrowful. 
 The marriage of her eldest son, I doubt not, had 
 been in her thoughts these many years: and in 
 her visions she had been present with dignity 
 and pride, Mr. Duckie beside her in his very 
 best, and Be-trice so captivating as to make the 
 possibility of the second wedding the wedding 
 that grows from a wedding, as of course one 
 always should a certainty. The reality, in 
 which she found herself an alien hi a new world 
 (but her son's) of light-hearted laxity, must have 
 been very disturbing. 
 
 Mr. Duckie's discomfiture, as charming duettists 
 and dashing serios with gamboge locks patted 
 his cheeks and pulled his whiskers and compli- 
 mented him on his new daughter-in-law, was 
 more physical, and was another proof of the 
 importance to their importance of important 
 persons keeping to their own natural environ- 
 ment. Here was the autocrat of the Fleet Street 
 grill-room and countless City dinners visibly 
 abashed in broad day. There is, I suppose, no 
 potentate so powerful that skilful transplantation 
 could not make small. 
 
 Bonnie Birdie Twist, so soon to be Bonnie 
 Birdie Pinto, or rather Duckie, had a smile 
 for every one, and she continued to recognise 
 her friends, with appropriate greetings, such as 
 "Cheer-O Alice!" "What-ho, Bill!" even while 
 the Registrar was reciting the most compro- 
 mising of his sentences, which he did to a 
 muffled rendering by most of the company of
 
 252 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 Alf's famous chorus, adapted by a quick-witted 
 colleague : 
 
 "Mr. Right! Mr. Right! 
 
 Our Birdie and he have met; 
 So cheer up, girls, and wish them lots of luck, 
 And there'll soon be . . ." 
 
 but I must not transcribe further. 
 
 Could there be a scene more different from 
 that provided on similar occasions by the Establish- 
 ment ? and yet, I daresay, the knot will last as 
 long and be as honourably respected as if it had 
 tied under even episcopal auspices. Certainly it 
 could not last a shorter time than many that date 
 from the chancel steps. 
 
 After the formality what fussing and congratu- 
 lations! There was room for a few minutes on 
 every one's lap for the bride; and room on hers 
 for every one. Alf meanwhile was not idle, em- 
 bracing and being embraced; while funny men 
 flung their arms round Mrs. Duckie's neck and 
 reduced her to a mass of scarlet confusion. Mr. 
 Duckie meanwhile was finding his bearings at the 
 buffet; Be-trice was the centre of an admiring 
 circle of lion comiques; and Ern was becoming 
 the firm friend of a boy contortionist (known to 
 the world as Ernesto, the Human Serpent), and 
 rapidly losing his hold on the allurements of 
 chauffing. 
 
 I moved among these strange impulsive confi- 
 dent creatures with the deepest interest. All were 
 jolly, all were ready to give and take chaff, there 
 was no faltering in repartee even if there was no
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 253 
 
 subtlety. And all were fairly hard-working 
 honest-living folk, whose efforts were mainly 
 directed to keeping the ball of pleasure rolling; 
 that is to say, all were in a way unnecessary. 
 I refer particularly to the professionals and the 
 bookmakers; for I suppose that the licensed 
 victuallers, even in times of great national stress, 
 when one can imagine music halls closing all 
 around and race meetings neglected, would still 
 be busy hi their shirt sleeves. 
 
 Whether the professionals, the bookmakers, or 
 the publicans interested me most, I cannot say; 
 but all were a very curious society, living completely 
 within their own boundaries, so very differently 
 from ordinary persons, and to the casual observer 
 so lawlessly, and yet obeying their own laws too; 
 wholly independent of religion, and yet getting 
 through life with certainly no less kindliness and 
 forgiveness and practical generosity to their names 
 than professedly religious people, if not more; all 
 English, and yet so thoroughly un-English ; all busy, 
 or at any rate living fatiguing lives, making money 
 easily and spending it easily, living practically only 
 for to-day. I was glad that I went; I was equally 
 glad to escape. 
 
 I moved outside as soon as it seemed time for 
 the couple to leave. They were to be driven off 
 in a taxi-cab, with a comic driver and a string of 
 boots trailing behind it like the tail of a kite. 
 The ordinary bridegroom is careful to remove 
 such appendages as soon as he can. It will give 
 a vivid idea of the character of the Pinto-Twist
 
 254 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 wedding when I say that Alf spent some time in 
 helping to fix this one to the cab. 
 
 Among the crowd outside I perceived Miss 
 Wagstaff, who, seeing me, joined me, and we 
 chatted together for awhile. 
 
 "What do you think of it all?" I asked, as her 
 mouth curled sarcastically at the sight of the 
 string of old boots and the comic men on the 
 Assembly Room steps affecting to faint with grief 
 into each other's arms. 
 
 "Very little," she said bitterly. "They're too 
 much alike. A quieter kind of girl would have 
 done him more good." 
 
 I stole a glance at her. Had she been nursing 
 a tenderness for Alf herself? One knows so little 
 of one's fellow-creatures. 
 
 "And I'm tired of weddings anyhow," she said. 
 
 At this point the crowd raised three cheers and 
 then again broke into the chorus of Alf's great 
 song, but in its original form : 
 
 "Mr. Right! Mr. Right! 
 
 He may not have knocked just yet; 
 But, cheer up, girls, he's putting on his boots, 
 And he'll soon be here, you bet I" 
 
 This they followed with Bonnie Birdie Twist's 
 phenomenal success : 
 
 "Is there room in your lap for me?" 
 
 to which Alf replied by thrusting his head out of 
 the window with a thundering "No!" and so 
 bride and bridegroom disappeared from view.
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 255 
 
 The point of Miss Wagstaff's nose soared 
 higher in the air as we took a last look of the scene, 
 and we then turned away together. 
 
 "After a wedding, a funeral," she said. "I'm 
 going to see how old Glendinning is. He was 
 so bad on Monday that they had to take him to 
 the hospital. That means getting another cata- 
 loguer, I suppose." 
 
 "Can't he recover?" I asked. 
 
 "Recover! There's nothing to recover on. 
 He's just skin and bone. He's eaten nothing for 
 years; nothing but gin." 
 
 I went with her to the hospital, and we were 
 allowed to see the old man. By an extraordinary 
 chance, one of the staff had been a pupil of his in 
 the days of his prosperity as a schoolmaster, and 
 there had been a recognition. The circumstance 
 had turned Mr. Glendinning' s thoughts again to 
 that happier period. He was voluble, but quite 
 unconscious of his surroundings. 
 
 Miss Wagstaff, with a tenderness of which I 
 had not suspected her, sat by his side and held 
 his hand. He did not recognise her, but called 
 her Ellen and stroked her hair. Where was the 
 real Ellen, I wondered. Never to see him again 
 or be seen by him; that was certain. 
 
 As he became more delirious he identified him- 
 self more and more with his old post of authority. 
 The weak tremulous lip of the tippler took on a 
 firmness, his watery eye almost flashed. At one 
 moment he was hi class construing Xenophon, at 
 another at the nets; but everywhere the instructor
 
 256 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 in command. "Don't shift your feet!" he cried 
 to an imaginary batsman. "The ball won't hurt 
 you!" So the old man had been a cricketer 
 too! 
 
 We left him still raving, as the nurse called it, 
 but to my thinking happier and nearer his right 
 mind than he had been for many a long year. 
 
 And the other wedding? 
 
 For that, I must go back a little into time. I 
 told you about old Mrs. Wynne's efforts to find 
 Drusilla a husband among the eligible young 
 men of Ludlow and district. In vain. But a 
 capricious chance can do on its head, as Dollie 
 would say, that which not all the old ladies in 
 Shropshire can compass with bell, book, and 
 candle. 
 
 Drusilla, her visit ended, returned to London 
 with a glad heart. She took her place in the ex- 
 press at Shrewsbury, in a third-class compartment 
 with three other persons in it, and settled down 
 to her novel, on excellent terms with herself and 
 the world. She had done her duty and might 
 now do something pleasant a perfect foundation 
 for peace of mind. 
 
 At Wolverhampton two of the three other pas- 
 sengers left, and no other coming in, Drusilla 
 found herself sitting opposite a clean-shaven, 
 grey-eyed young man of determined but agree- 
 able aspect, who was reading The British Medical 
 Journal. 
 
 Being merely a man, and not obviously a male 
 reformer, this creature naturally had no possible
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 257 
 
 interest for Drusilla, or should not have had; but 
 our little Drusilla, although still veneered with 
 Purpose and Campaign and all the rest of it, was 
 yet akin to the old Eve too; and, after all, his 
 eyes really were very clear and direct, and his 
 mouth was at once firm and tender, and his hands 
 looked strong and capable and were not wholly 
 shapeless either. There had been worse hands at 
 the Slade, where hands were supposed to mean so 
 much. 
 
 It was easy to observe these, for they were 
 holding up The British Medical Journal before his 
 face. 
 
 Drusilla's thoughts left her novel. 
 
 It is a pity that Socialists have such indifferent 
 tailors. 
 
 Why should they? 
 
 Surely it is possible to be interested in the higher 
 ideals, and also go to a good barber and keep one's 
 knees from bagging? 
 
 At any rate, every one knows that there are 
 exceptions to every rule. 
 
 No one would read The British Medical Journal 
 unless he had some kind of intellect, even if one 
 of the papers on the seat beside him was rather 
 violently pink. 
 
 At Leamington the unexpected happened. A 
 Japanese spaniel fell down between the train and 
 the platform just before they stopped, and had a 
 paw crushed by the wheel of Drusilla's carriage. 
 She uttered a cry of anguish as she learned of 
 the accident, and her companion leaped out and,
 
 258 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 extricating the little animal, examined the wound 
 and comforted its owner. 
 
 Drusilla loved dogs, and the incident led to 
 conversation. He was a doctor at Thomas's. 
 They talked all the way to London. 
 
 Where and when Drusilla met her doctor again 
 I do not know, but she lost no time in doing 
 so on our return from Venice, and electrified the 
 family one evening very shortly after by announc- 
 ing that she was giving up art and intended to 
 be a hospital nurse. 
 
 It is an ordeal which many families have to 
 undergo, and it brings forth in most the same 
 blend of resignation, admiration, impatience, and 
 satire. Naomi, who suspected nothing, defended 
 and supported her sister; Alderley was vexed, in 
 part, I think, at the conventionality of the decision 
 from such an independent girl as his second 
 daughter, and in part at the sacrifice of her paint- 
 ing lessons; Mrs. Wynne took it as it came, and 
 hoped for the best, liking moreover the old- 
 fashionedness of a step that seemed to involve 
 a little drudgery and self-sacrifice; while Lionel 
 said something about the uniform "Not quite so 
 fetching perhaps as the Salvation Army bonnet, 
 but a jolly sight prettier than dingy Slade greens 
 and browns." 
 
 All innocently I put my foot into it by saying 
 that I hoped that her Hospital would be Bart's, 
 because I had an uncle who used to be on the 
 staff there, and the circumstance had given me a 
 kind of proprietary interest in the place; but
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 259 
 
 Brasilia declared for Thomas's, and Thomas's 
 alone, so emphatically as almost to give away 
 her secret. 
 
 Lionel, who, for a thoughtless youth, has 
 diabolical luck in his sharpshooting, went on to 
 remark that girls who wished to be hospital 
 nurses had always marked down their doctor first. 
 Naomi told him not to be unkind; but Brasilia's 
 cheeks confessed his accuracy. 
 
 As it happened, however, Brasilia never donned 
 the uniform. There was no need. 
 
 By an odd chance I was the first person to 
 whom she confided her secret. I say odd chance, 
 because, although we have been happy enough 
 together, I am not exactly a favourite with her. 
 But young women in love when they want a 
 thing done can make exceptions; and, as it 
 happened, I was in the way of being useful to 
 her conquering Adonis. 
 
 It seemed that suddenly, out of a clear sky, 
 had dropped the offer of a medical post in Buenos 
 Ayres, at a high salary, the condition being that 
 it was accepted at once. To me, therefore, as an 
 old Argentinian, came Brasilia to asl^ if I advised 
 it, and what was the hospital like, and would I 
 give introductions if it was accepted speaking 
 vaguely of some one she was interested in, a 
 friend of a friend, and so on: mystifications so 
 time-worn as to wear every sign-manual of truth. 
 
 I disguised my divination of her secret and 
 advised in favour of her friend's friend accepting 
 the appointment, and promised to write any
 
 260 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 number of letters of introduction if she would tell 
 me what name to call him by. 
 
 She blushed and was silent for a minute, and 
 then she told me all and expressed their inten- 
 tion, contingent apparently upon my opinion being 
 favourable, of being married at once, as she had 
 resolved to bear him company to the new post 
 as his wife. 
 
 "Very well," I said, "but kindly let me 
 know when the bomb is to be exploded in 
 the family circle, and I will be careful to dine 
 elsewhere." 
 
 If I smiled a little as she told her story, Heaven 
 forgive me, for I would not willingly wound a 
 young and ardent heart; but to have Drusilla's 
 altruistic zeal to be a hospital nurse so suddenly 
 laid bare was more than flesh and blood at 
 any rate the flesh and blood of my tell-tale lips 
 could stand. She took it very well, though, as 
 we can take things when we are preoccupied or 
 they make us happy. 
 
 Mrs. Duckie came in just as I was ready 
 for Drusilla's wedding, and looked me over 
 approvingly. 
 
 "It will be a nicer wedding than ours the other 
 day," she said a little wistfully. "I can't forget 
 those comic men. The idea of comicalities at a 
 wedding! But there, one never knows what the 
 world's coming to! I shan't get my peace of 
 mind back till Be-trice goes off. No comicalities 
 then, I promise you. I mean to write to Canon 
 Lyme to ask him as a great favour to oblige.
 
 I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS 261 
 
 His wedding sermons are beautiful. Not a dry 
 eye." 
 
 The good woman, she is quite right. Wed- 
 ding are for tears: only those guests who can cry 
 really enjoy them. 
 
 I did not myself cry at Drusilla's, at least 
 I produced no tears, but it was a melancholy 
 occasion. Such was the haste that the two 
 families had had no time to become acquainted, 
 and we seemed to be engaged rather in some 
 ceremony of hostility than of fusion. We fell 
 naturally into sides, Montagus, almost, and 
 Capulets. 
 
 To add to the difficulty, the father and 
 mother of the bridegroom were so much like 
 several other members of their party that slights 
 were of constant occurrence; but this is a 
 common experience at weddings, where the 
 newness of clothes cancels personality. 
 
 However, even weddings come to an end, and 
 by four o'clock we were cheering a departing 
 brougham on its way to Waterloo for South- 
 hampton and South America. There was no 
 singing of "Mr. Right," but I felt very little 
 uneasiness as to Drusilla's future. None the less, 
 the more I revolved the matter that evening the 
 more did I wonder that affectionate parents can 
 ever give their consent to their children's marriage 
 at all. I can understand a father having no 
 particular objection to his son's wife, and a 
 mother to her daughter's husband; but how a 
 father can ever even tolerate his daughter's
 
 262 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 husband or a mother the wife of her son, that is 
 beyond my imagination. And that night as I 
 watched Alderley's gallant efforts to be gay at 
 dinner I realised my perplexity more than ever. 
 Life can be very hard on parents.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MR. DABNEY AGAIN SUFFERS, AND 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION DOES 
 NOT KNOCK AT THE DOOR, BUT 
 WALKS RIGHT IN AND TALKS EX- 
 TRAORDINARY STRANGE TALK 
 
 OLD Mrs. Wynne, who in spite of the 
 failure of her own plans, persists in 
 considering this match her own making, and 
 who came all the way from Ludlow to attend 
 the wedding, paid us a call the next morning, to 
 my great surprise. 
 
 While she was sitting in my best chair, who 
 should dash in but Mr. Dabney on his way 
 downstairs. On catching sight of Mrs. Wynne, 
 he was for a swift retreat; but the old lady 
 stopped him and compelled him to sit down 
 and be courteous if not courtly. 
 
 As they conversed, her eye, by malignant 
 chance, alighted upon my copy of the Pick- 
 wick Papers, and she asked me to hand it to 
 her. 
 
 "Ah, yes," she said, "Pickwick I what a 
 263
 
 264 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 wonderful book! You, Mr. Dabney," she con- 
 tinued, "being a literary man, will be interested 
 in hearing that I once met the author of this 
 work." 
 
 Mr. Dabney shot me a tragic look. 
 
 "Did you indeed?" he said, adding quickly, 
 "but, of course, you told me about it when I 
 had the pleasure of meeting you at dinner in 
 Queen Anne's Gate." 
 
 "I don't think so," said Mrs. Wynne. "I 
 don't remember it. " 
 
 "Assuredly," said Mr. Dabney, "I remember 
 it very vividly." 
 
 "Very strange that I should not," replied the 
 old lady; "but it happened in this way. I was 
 at Manchester with me dear husband some time 
 in the sixties. I forget the exact year. Me 
 husband was there on business, and it happened 
 that Mr. Dickens was giving one of his inimitable 
 readings. We all stayed in the same hotel, and 
 Mr. Dickens breakfasted at the same table as 
 ourselves. The toast was not good, and I re- 
 member that Mr. Dickens ..." 
 
 At this point I stole gently from the room, 
 for Mr. Dabney, I felt, must be rescued at any 
 cost. Hastily scribbling a note I gave it to Ern, 
 who was bending himself into a hoop on the 
 landing, and telling him to count ten and then 
 bring it to my room, I returned. 
 
 Mrs. Wynne had just reached Mr. Thackeray. 
 "It was," she was saying, "at a conversazione at 
 the Royal Society. Me dear husband and I
 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION 265 
 
 were leaving at the same time as the great 
 man . . ." 
 
 Here came a rap at the door. 
 
 "A letter for Mr. Dabney," said Em, "marked 
 urgent." 
 
 "Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Dabney, and 
 took it. He read it gravely, cast me a glance 
 of intense gratitude, and murmuring something 
 about a very important matter, bade Mrs. Wynne 
 a cordial farewell and hurried away. 
 
 I heard a jingling of coins outside, and as Ern 
 immediately afterwards descended the stairs four 
 at a time, I guessed that for the moment bulls' 
 eyes superseded contortions. 
 
 "A nice man," says Mrs. Wynne, "but not a 
 good listener. His thoughts seem inclined to 
 wander. I hope he is clever in proportion. Did 
 you say he wrote novels? I must read one." 
 
 The next day Mrs. Wynne returned to Ludlow, 
 taking the Queen Anne's Gate family, with the 
 exception of Lionel, with her. I was left alone. 
 
 It was the first time that Naomi had not been 
 within call ever since I returned to England; and 
 I was lost. 
 
 I found that I had nothing to do. Even 
 London withdrew its fascination. I went down 
 to Norfolk to see our old home, and hurried 
 back plunged hi melancholy. I drove to 
 Paddington early one morning, intending to go 
 to Ludlow and stay at The Feathers; but at the 
 station I thought better of it, and returned. 
 
 In a kind of despair I became a clubman
 
 
 266 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 again, and with the utmost regularity for a few 
 days sat in arm-chairs and read papers and novels 
 and permitted cowed waiters to approach me and 
 supply my needs. I am no clubman by nature, 
 but my father having years and years ago paid 
 my entrance fee to a Pall Mall monastery, I had 
 felt it a pious duty to keep up the subscriptions. 
 
 Poor little Drusilla, I thought, how much more 
 efficacious than fines or imprisonment it would be 
 if the magistrates had sentenced the suffrage 
 revolutionaries to spend a few hours observing 
 through a grill the daily routine of a club life! 
 Never would they revolt again. Such a hope- 
 lessness would settle on their hearts and brains 
 as would crush out every emotion save despair. 
 Woman's chance in England will come only 
 when she has destroyed the Club. 
 
 The evening before the Wynnes returned I 
 went home desperately tired. There had been 
 a heavy thundercloud over London most of the 
 day, and the city was without air. I could easily 
 have slept on an Embankment seat, I was so 
 weary. 
 
 On lighting my lamp I had a shock; for in my 
 chair was sitting a young man. Perfectly silent 
 he sat, with an ease of manner, a quiet sug- 
 gestion of possession, that I resented intensely. 
 He wore a loose tweed suit, and held a pipe in 
 his hand. I could not see his face. 
 
 As he gave no sign of observing my entrance 
 I coughed, and then asked if he were waiting for 
 me, and what could I do for him. He replied
 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION 267 
 
 that he was waiting for me, but that whether or 
 not I could do anything for him remained to be 
 seen. His voice sounded strangely familiar too, 
 but still he did not move his head, which was a 
 young head with plenty of brown hair not too 
 orderly. 
 
 I had a feeling of fear. It seemed uncanny. 
 I advanced nearer, wondering what to do next, 
 when he got up lazily, stretched himself, yawned, 
 and looked round. 
 
 I saw his face for the first time, and held to the 
 table or I should have fallen. 
 
 "Don't you know me?" he asked. 
 
 Know him? Of course I did. It was myself. 
 
 Not myself as I am to-day, but myself of 
 twenty-one. I now remembered the suit perfectly 
 too. 
 
 I continued to hold on to the table and I felt 
 a little sick. I hate and dread the supernatural. 
 But he soon put me at my ease, or thereabouts. 
 
 "How are you?" he said. "I can see it is 
 time I called. Let me look at your face. Yes," 
 he said, after a long scrutiny, "selfish. You think 
 too much of your comfort. You don't believe in 
 anything: there is a self-satisfied superior hard- 
 ness in your eyes. You have not cried for years. 
 You profess to feel sorry for people, but your 
 philosophy is stronger than your pity. When 
 did you last do an impulsive thing?" 
 
 "Impulse," I said, "is largely a matter of in- 
 experience. I have seen a deal of the world." 
 (At the same time I felt that he was doing me a
 
 268 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 vile injustice. I really was, I remember thinking, 
 a very kind man.) 
 
 "Also," he added, "you're getting fat." 
 
 "No," I said, "not fat. That's merely the 
 solidity of age. Remember, I'm getting on." 
 
 "Remember," he said bitterly. "How can I 
 forget it? That is why I'm here." 
 
 "What do you mean?" I asked him. 
 
 "Mean! My dear fellow, I have been watching 
 you for years ever since you dropped me, hi fact, 
 and I've longed to get a good straight talk with 
 you; but I wasn't allowed. Nothing can happen 
 till it is time." 
 
 "And why," I asked, trembling and chilling a 
 little, "is it time to-night?" (But I knew why.) 
 
 "I can't say," he replied, "but here I am. 
 Let's see, how old exactly are you?" 
 
 "Fifty-five." 
 
 "Is it so long? How do you spend your 
 time? What do you do?" 
 
 "Oh," I said, "I've retired. I read a good 
 deal. I visit my friends. I walk about and talk 
 to people. What should I do ? " 
 
 "Do you ever get drunk?" he asked. 
 
 "Certainly not," I said. 
 
 "No, I thought not," he replied, with a sneer. 
 "Nothing so enterprising. You keep on the safe 
 side. But don't forget your old views as to the 
 value of the occasional lapse let me see, what 
 were the words ? ' the humanising influence of 
 the orgy.' You've grown out of all that, I 
 suppose."
 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION 269 
 
 "One's health does not admit it at my age," 
 I said. 
 
 "Health!" he echoed. "Of course. I had 
 forgotten that. Or rather, I have laughed 
 at it so long. But tell me, don't you re- 
 member me at all? We were very happy, 
 weren't we?" 
 
 "Fairly," I said. 
 
 "Have you gone back on everything?" he 
 continued. "All those old schemes over the red 
 wine in Soho? We were to do such things! 
 We were to be so keen for the best, and the best 
 only. The best work and the best emotions. 
 We were to help so frankly. We were to do 
 so much to break down the bad barriers between 
 men and women; and now, tell me, what have 
 you to show for it all?" 
 
 I didn't feel very comfortable. 
 
 "What have you ever done for any one?" 
 
 How can one answer questions like that? I 
 had not been so utterly unhelpful, I knew, but 
 I could not begin a catalogue of my benefi- 
 cences; it was too ridiculous. 
 
 "What have you done for any one to-day?" 
 he went on. 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 "Where did you dine to-night?" 
 
 "To-night I dined at my club." 
 
 "What did you do after?" 
 
 "I smoked a cigar, read the papers and skimmed 
 a novel, and then came back." 
 
 "Did you speak to any one?"
 
 270 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "No one, except a waiter." 
 
 "What did you do all day?" 
 
 "I was at my tailor's this morning; after lunch 
 I went to Lord's." 
 
 "And you call that life?" 
 
 "Well, it passed the time." 
 
 "With all the world at your feet?" 
 
 "I have been busy enough in my day." 
 
 "Yes, in a Buenos Ayres counting-house. Did 
 you make money?" 
 
 "I have enough." 
 
 "Enough for what?" 
 
 "For security; for my simple needs, and a 
 little over." 
 
 " Your simple needs ! Heavens, man, you make 
 me furious. How dare you speak to me of your 
 simple needs and your scrubby little club routine 
 me, with the old abundant programme still on my 
 lips! Can't you put yourself in my place for a 
 moment and think what it means to see every 
 fine generous resolve gone wrong? How do you 
 suppose it can strike me yourself at twenty-one, 
 remember to see such a miscarriage of idealism 
 as you ! You, who began so well, and promised 
 to rise so high above the petty ruck; you, who 
 were famous for your fearlessness as a critic of 
 conventions and shams. And now, how do I find 
 you ? an old, timid, selfish clubman, por- 
 ing over the papers in a cold sweat for fear of los- 
 ing any of the dirty little dividends that give 
 you the hogwash you call comfort and security. 
 Security! To think that I should ever hear you
 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION 271 
 
 use such a word. It was not in your dictionary 
 in my day. 
 
 "Oh yes," he hurried on, "I know you're a 
 gentleman, and all that; but that's what's wrong. 
 You weren't going to be a sterile gentleman, you 
 were going to be a real man; you were going to 
 help put things right. And now what do I find 
 you doing?" 
 
 He paused for a moment. Then he continued 
 his catechism. "Why didn't you come home now 
 and then from Buenos Ayres?" 
 
 "I couldn't, there was no one else to take my 
 place." 
 
 "Why didn't you throw it up, then?" 
 
 "One does not throw things up." 
 
 "No, one does not. One clings to one's little 
 pettifogging habits and one's little mean salary, 
 even in a foreign land, while all that is most real 
 and beautiful and best worth doing is beckon- 
 ing one away. Prudence dictates the course, 
 expediency controls. And so you turned your 
 back on England and your home for over thirty 
 years. Friends and relations died; it was 
 nothing to you." 
 
 "It was everything to me." 
 
 "And yet you did not come home. You 
 went on languidly and happily driving some one 
 else's quill in that state of apathetic indolence 
 which denationalisation seems to carry with it, and 
 quietly allowed all that was best in life to slip from 
 you. I know, because I was there." 
 
 "Then why didn't you stop me !" I cried.
 
 2 7 2 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "Ah! I have touched you," he said; "you 
 have admitted all. I did not stop you because 
 those are the things we have to do without help. 
 I am here to-night not on your account in the 
 least, you have passed beyond my interest, but 
 on account of some one else. Why aren't you 
 married?" he said swiftly. 
 
 I began to see what was coming. 
 
 "Why?" he repeated. "Have you never 
 loved?" 
 
 "Not sufficiently, I suppose." 
 
 "Don't you love any one now?" 
 
 "How dare you?" 
 
 "I am here to dare; remember, I've never 
 grown up; daring is natural enough to me. / 
 don't ask for security. Do you love any one 
 now?" 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 "You love Naomi," he said. 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 "You love her," he repeated, "and God 
 knows why she loves you." 
 
 "Say that again!" I said. 
 
 " She loves you." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "I know." 
 
 I felt horribly giddy again. 
 
 "Now listen," he said, and his voice had 
 become kinder. "This is your last chance. 
 Be a man; give up this amiable idling and do 
 something decisive. Marry her; she's the best 
 woman you'll ever meet, and she'll make you
 
 THE YOUNGER GENERATION 273 
 
 work. Marry her, old chap; ask her to-morrow, 
 and begin to live again. You've been dead too 
 long." 
 
 "Does she really love me?" I asked him; but 
 he had disappeared. 
 
 When I woke up I found I was still in my 
 clothes on the sitting-room floor. I crept to bed 
 in a daze.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY 
 
 I NEED hardly say that I did not sleep more 
 that night. I had two matters of the 
 gravest importance to ponder upon: the shock 
 to my complacency, and the state of my heart. 
 
 As to the charges of wasted time, I was bound 
 to admit their general truth; and I did so not only 
 by temperament, for it is my natural tendency to 
 believe in the soundness of an adversary's case, 
 being usually more ready to admit the error than 
 to repulse the accusation, a poor retrograde 
 frame of mind enough, you will say, but my own, 
 but also after thought on the subject. I had, 
 there was no doubt, vegetated rather than lived. 
 
 But it was not too late to begin; and with that 
 brave piece of optimism for a halter, I gently led 
 the first part of the indictment into the back- 
 ground and left it there. 
 
 But then? 
 
 Look where I would I saw nothing but the 
 sweet face of Naomi. 
 
 That I was never happy away from her, I had 
 274
 
 MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY 275 
 
 proved ; that I thought of her continually, I knew ; 
 that if she were to go away, or, worse, marry 
 another, I should live in a world of darkness, I 
 knew. But did this give me the right to ask her 
 to marry me, and would she say yes? How 
 did that young devil know that she loved me? 
 
 The whole thing was an absurd dream, realistic 
 enough, but as ridiculous as other dreams. 
 
 Having reached this point I began all over 
 again. 
 
 At six I got up and walked to Covent Garden 
 and drifted about among the flowers and 
 vegetables. Then I had a Turkish bath, and 
 after breakfast I took a train to Esher. The 
 only person in the world to comfort my wounded 
 spirit and perplexed brain was Miss Gold. 
 
 I began with the young man's ultimatum upon 
 myself. I told her everything that had been said 
 on both sides; and I had no difficulty in doing 
 so, for the memory was burnt into my brain. Can 
 it have been a dream? It seemed too real. 
 
 "My dear Kent," she said, "why are you so 
 incorrigibly hard on yourself? Don't you see 
 that you are merely the victim of the eternal 
 impatience and illogical cruelty of youth? As 
 far as I can understand, the charge was that you 
 at fifty-five or so no longer act up to the ideals 
 you had at twenty-one. Is it not so? Well, why 
 on earth should you? You would indeed cut a 
 rather absurd figure if you did. What are years 
 for?" 
 
 "Ah, yes," I said, "that is the case right enough,
 
 276 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 broadly speaking; but of course he had a lot of 
 right on his side. There are many ideals of a 
 young man which it were better not to forget." 
 
 "Maybe a few, but the world is a great 
 leveller, and every year brings with it certain 
 modifying influences. I like a man to be his 
 age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very 
 partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and 
 cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none 
 the less. Forty makes better company: when a 
 man knows how little he knows, and how little 
 life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued. 
 
 "My dear Kent," she went on, "do you suppose 
 there is a living creature who would not be 
 vulnerable to the reproaches of his dead selves 
 even the busiest and most philanthropical of us?" 
 
 "Ah," I said, "but my theory is that I should 
 not feel so bad about it if there was not a deal 
 of truth. I am lazy no one can deny that. I 
 do nothing for any one." 
 
 "Not consciously, perhaps," said the dear 
 comforting lady, "but unconsciously, yes. You 
 don't lose your temper. You have pleasant 
 words for those you meet. You write kind 
 letters. You pay cheering calls. You make 
 no one unhappy." 
 
 "Oh, that," I said, "that is all natural, and 
 besides it pleases me to be like that." 
 
 "And why not?" she answered. "You are 
 not a saint, I know, and you never will be; 
 you will never make any great sacrifice; but 
 that isn't because you would shrink from it if
 
 MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY 277 
 
 you had to, but because it is not given to your 
 kind to hear such calls. You are not a saint; 
 but neither are you a humbug. It is not lovely to 
 believe in nothing, but it is far less unlovely than 
 to pretend to believe in something or to make 
 money out of religion. You set an example of 
 intellectual honesty that I personally would put 
 in the balance against a good deal of violent 
 charity and the higher busy-bodiness." 
 
 "My dear Agnes," I said, "I did not come 
 here to be flattered, but to arrive at the truth. 
 You are making me as uncomfortable on this 
 side as that young man in my dream made 
 me on the other. I want to hit the middle 
 way." 
 
 But I knew what she was driving at; I knew 
 that she knew that I had to be on good terms 
 with myself if I was to unbosom without reserve. 
 Hence her over-kindness. 
 
 "Is that all he said to you?" she asked after 
 a while. 
 
 "Practically all," I said. 
 
 "Nothing in the nature of advice in so many 
 words?" 
 
 "It was all advice and scolding," I said. 
 
 "Yes," she persisted, "but did he say anything 
 about about marrying, for example?" She 
 shot a keen glance at me. 
 
 I smiled acquiescence. 
 
 "Well?" she said. 
 
 "Well," said I. 
 
 "And why not?" said she; adding sweetly,
 
 278 OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 "My poor Kent, will you never learn not to be 
 tender-hearted? Will you never give up your 
 bad habit of being sorrier for others than they 
 are for themselves? Let me tell you something: 
 you have never mentioned marriage or love to 
 me because you thought it would be cruel because 
 you thought that having lost all that, I cannot bear 
 to consider it. My dear Kent, you don't know 
 much about men, but you know nothing about 
 women. Women aren't like that. Women have 
 not that kind of selfishness." 
 
 I kissed her poor thin hand, so white and 
 frail. 
 
 "Kent, dear," she said, "Kent, dear, how much 
 do you love her?" 
 
 "I don't know," I said, or tried to say. 
 
 "Enough to ..." 
 
 "I don't know," I said. "I only know that I 
 think of nothing else. But look at the difference 
 in age," I added, for I have never learned to 
 have mercy on myself. 
 
 "Now," she answered, drawing her hand away, 
 "now you are talking rubbish. Naomi's years 
 may be only twenty-nine, but she is quite as old 
 as you in many ways, and you are quite as young 
 as she in others." 
 
 "But," I said, "I am such a dull, unenter- 
 prising ..." 
 
 "Oh, Kent, Kent!" she cried, "when will you 
 learn sense? You are all alike, you men. Your 
 vanity has got to be satisfied. You must assure 
 your own judgment of your own merits. When
 
 MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY 279 
 
 will you learn that women don't analyse and 
 appraise; women love. That is enough for them 
 they love. You may want to know the why 
 and wherefore of your feeling for her, and make 
 catalogues of her merits and beauties, and apply 
 the right adjectives in order to find out and 
 support your line of action and prove your good 
 taste; but all the while you are doing that, the 
 woman is loving. She doesn't love you because 
 of anything she loves. She doesn't care whether 
 you are handsome or ugly, or old or young, or 
 cruel or kind, or strong or weak, or conceited 
 Or humble, whether you drop your h's, or have 
 nothing in the bank those things are beside the 
 mark, because she loves. 
 
 "And to think that you," she continued, "you, 
 moving in the world as you have done, Kent, 
 should come to an old bedridden woman to find 
 out this patent secret! Oh, I'm ashamed of 
 you!" 
 
 "Perhaps I was not quite so ignorant as all 
 that," I said, "but there are certain things that 
 one knows and yet that one's humility won't let 
 one know. But do you mean," I continued, "that 
 men cannot really love at all?" 
 
 "Not as women can," she replied. "They can 
 desire, they can possess, they can admire, they 
 can serve; but it is not the same thing." 
 
 "Then " I began. 
 
 "Oh no," she hurried on, "not that. It is all 
 as it should be. There is nothing wrong really. 
 Men think they are loving, and therefore it's all
 
 28o OVER BEMERTON'S 
 
 right. But they're all householders and slave- 
 drivers at heart. It's a law of life." 
 
 "I too?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, you too, although you're more of a 
 mixture than most. But it doesn't matter; 
 that is the thing you must understand. It is all 
 in the scheme. 
 
 "Listen, Kent," she went on. "I am glad this 
 dream came to you. It was time. It would be 
 well if such a dream could come to every man. 
 But you must not be unhappy about it, because it 
 refers to the past, and the fault was not yours. It 
 is given to some persons to develop, to grow up, 
 very slowly. Their youth is stretched out to its 
 utmost length, and perhaps it never ends at all; 
 not always through their own natural immaturity, 
 but by the accidental absence of any crisis in 
 their lives, any event grave enough to pull them 
 together. It has been so with you. You have 
 escaped the grand emotions. I could see directly 
 you came in for the first time in the spring that 
 you had not grown up. You knew a good deal. 
 You had observed closely, but you had felt 
 nothing. You had been waiting. Well, you can't 
 help that: no harm is done; but great harm will 
 be done if you don't behave now. You grew up 
 last night: now live." 
 
 "I think if you don't mind I'll go into the 
 garden for a little," I said. 
 
 I walked about for some time, and then I 
 came back. She was lying exactly as I had left 
 more or less as she had been lying for thirty
 
 MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY 281 
 
 years. What a life ! She smiled at me very 
 beautifully. 
 
 "But you said one day," I reminded her, "that 
 Naomi and Trist ought to be brought together." 
 
 "True," she answered. "But that was my guile. 
 I wanted to sting you into doing something." 
 
 "Well, you have," I replied.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 REACHING A POINT WHERE MY HIS- 
 TORY BEGINS TO BE WORTH RE- 
 CORDING, I CEASE TO NARRATE IT 
 
 " TNI AOMI >" * said > that evenin g- " Dear 
 -J- ^ Naomi, shall we go into partnership?" 
 She gave me her hand. 
 
 282
 
 Also by E. V. LUCAS 
 
 A Wanderer 
 in Holland 
 
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 the association be personal or historical or critical." Herald.
 
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 Anthologies of Varied Charm Collected by E. V. LUCAS 
 
 The Gentlest Art 
 
 A Choice of Letters by Entertaining Hands 
 
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 others of Mr. Lucas's books, this is attractively bound and decorated.
 
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