3 rt/n r C. FICTION THE PRINCE AND THE UNDERTAKER jfND WHAT THEY UNDERTOOK By RICCARDO STEPHENS Price SHADOWED BY THE GjODS A Tale of Old Mexico By CHARLES EDWARDES Price 61- THE SCARLET CITY d Novel of London Life By E. WELLS & H. P. STEPHENS Price 61- A PINK 'UN AND A PELICAN By A. M. BINSTEAD & ERNEST WELLS Price 61- A DEPARTURE FROM TRADITION And Other Stones By ROSALINE MASSON Price 61- THE SPIRIT IS WILLING By PERCIVAL PICKERING Price 61- ONE CROWDED HOUR By A. BERESFORD RYLEY Price 6/- fMILITARY DIALOGUES By HEUT.-COLONEL NEWNHAM DAVIS Illustrated by R. CATON WOODVILLE & Louis EDWARDS Price 3/6 A SOUL ON FIRE By FLORENCE MARRYAT Price 3/6 HIS FORTUNATE GRACE By GERTRUDE ATHERTON Price 216 GAL'S GOSSIP UNW, OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES GAL'S GOSSIP BY ARTHUR M. BINSTEAD Otherwise known as the fink 'f7n's " PITCHER" LONDON SANDS & COMPANY MDCCCXCIX GAL'S GOSSIP " If I were you, I would certainly turn the mauve and pea-puce reseda, and re-trim it with heliotrope ribbons for evening wear. A jaunty hat of some bright colour would go well with it. Your bump of amativeness may be rendered more prominent by a few vigorous welts with an ordinary rolling-pin. The recipe for making lincrusta wall-decorations from cold chitter- lings was given in No. 1227." The Lady's Letter in the Fashion Paper. 2126004 BY THE WAY UP to now, the hundreds aye, thousands of columns of epistolary literature which |the ladies of the furbelow press have from time to time indited to " Dearest Maude," have elicited no response from that young lady. How wisely has somebody said that there is no day like Sunday for writing letters, nor Monday for forgetting to post them ! Still, rescued [.from the oblivion of various ridiculous reticules and writing-cases, here they are, and not the less welcome " Maude" hopes for arriving all together. A. M. B. CONTENTS JANVIER ....... 13 FEVRIER .. ..... 27 MARS . . 40 AVRIL . ..... 53 MAI . . . . . . . 70 JUIN . ....... 81 JUILLET ... ... 95 Aotjx . . . . . . . .107 SEPTEMBRE . . . . . . .120 OCTOBRE . . -135 NOVEMBRE . . . . ... . .151 DECEMBRE ....... 165 GAL'S GOSSIP JANVIER HALF MOON STREET, NEW YEAR'S DAY. BON JOUR, PETITE MADGE ! So many thanks, dearest, for your pretty New Year's card, and for the season- able enquiries inscribed upon it. Do you know, dear, it has quite cheered me up. I am essentially a creature of the sunshine. I yearn for the warmth and fragrance of June, for the garden parties, and the water picnics and the races. Alas ! this is la morte saison ; the garden lies beneath the stodgy snow, the river is frozen over, whilst as for the racehorses, even the sporting papers do not mention them, but fill 13 14 GAL'S GOSSIP up their columns instead with such items as this : " CODDAM " RETURN OF THE LAMBETH CHAMPION. "A well-deserved testimonial breakfast was tendered at the early hour of 8 A.M., on Wednesday morning last, by a few old friends and admirers, to Mr 'Blower' Bannister, to celebrate his re-joining society. The dejeuner took place at the Warders' Arms Coffee Tavern, Caledonian Road, N., each guest ordering what he liked, and paying for it. The bcnlficiaire, well-known in Coddam circles, seemed in excellent spirits, and was nothing loth to tackle a ' bowl o' brown, two steps and a boiled nest 'un.' During the meal he spoke in very feeling terms of the Governor of Her Majesty's Prison opposite, and alluded to the little entertainment he would like to tender that gentleman were he able to do so. Mr Bannister will play, on dit, in the coming match for the championship to be held on Saturday next at the ' Shah and Stomach- Warmer,' Upper Ground Street, S.E. Motto : Fair Play, Civility, and Sparkling Ales." As I say, dear, out-door sport is quite at a stand- still, and in these deplorable circumstances, and the concomitant absence of "exes," many a gentleman-jockey is I was going to write " on the verge of starvation," but as that term would be singularly inapplicable to the case I am going to relate, I will say instead " reduced to desperation." It happened on Christmas Eve that Charlie was giving me supper at the Saveloy, where they have the most wonderful chef in town. JANVIER 15 Though the regular diners call him, with un- becoming familiarity, "Joe," Charlie tells me he is a cordon bleu, and indeed sports the blue ribbon in his button-hole whenever he appears in his coat. Well, at a near-by table was seated "Bobbie" Armstrong, who used to train his own jumpers at Lewes, and on the opposite side of the room was a well-known beauty of the season before last from Redcliffe Gardens. Between these two a furious flirtation of shy looks and subtle glances had been going on all through supper, and the celebrated horseman only waited judiciously until the young lady from Redcliffe Gardens had paid her bill, to step across the room, and ask Charlie to give him an introduction to her. This Charlie was fortunately able to do. As it subsequently transpired that we were all driving the same way, "Bobbie" invited the young lady to share his hansom, and when her door was reached he joyfully fell in with her suggestion to step inside and take a "binder," at which he de- clared he felt as happy as a buck-rat in an old sink. She showed him her pretty boudoir, with its Louis the XVth furniture all upholstered in amber satin so as not to " clash " with her corsets, 16 GAL'S GOSSIP her Salon Japonais, all decorated even to the lid of the coal-hod with gold-braided, reversible- necked storks, and the steps leading to the attic-chamber, where the distressed gentlewoman, who acted as her mere de theatre, morosed her days away. Then she took "Bobbie" into a delightful little Oriental apartment on the ground floor, in the centre of which stood a red-legged, brass-topped Benares table, on which was a huge earthenware pan, containing about half a hundred weight of the sticky mahogany-coloured dough, of which the festive season makes a leading article. "Now, then," she said, "this is where you have to stir my Christmas pudding," and with that, she grabbed the long wooden spoon that was sticking out of the dough, and joggled it about. "Everybody who stirs it has to drop a piece of gold into it," she continued, handing him the spoon, and " Bobbie's " countenance fell like July quotations for coal. All the money he had got in his trousers (which included every other part of the known world) consisted of one half- sovereign, one sixpenny-bit and a half-penny ; yet he well knew that to disobey the lady meant instant investiture in the order of the street to even hesitate was to risk her displeasure, but to JANVIER 17 comply meant a foodless, drinkless Christmas Day. His heart well-nigh stopped beating, and his breath came in short, quick gulps as he dragged the half-jimmy his little ewe-lamb ! out of his jeans, and chucked it, with an assumed air of recklessness, into the sickly compound. "Aha!" he laughed with ill-simulated gaiety, as he gave the stuff a vicious stir ; then, realis- ing his penurious state, he said : " I s'pose you couldn't give me such a thing as a cigarette, could you, little woman ? " Oh yes, she could ; she had some upstairs, and would go and fetch them. The instant she left the room, a strange, weird light shone in the horseman's eyes : the expression on his face was one composed of mad hope mixed with dauntless determination. It was a time for action, not for thought, and, with a muffled cry of joy, he bent over the big pan and buried his face in the pudding ! Once ! twice ! thrice ! he withdrew it, his jaws chewing vigorously. Now and again his teeth closed on an unseen something that gave a metallic chink, whereupon he would hurriedly expectorate that "something" into his right palm, and again duck his features into the un- i8 GAL'S GOSSIP boiled, indigestible mass, for all the world like a well-trained hound rooting for truffles. Thanks to the time it took his delightful hostess to find the cigarettes, and thanks also to the number and the liberality of her previous pudding-stirrers, " Bobbie " found, when the sound of "Mrs Redcliffe's " returning footsteps on the stairs warned him that it was time to " cease firing," and clean up his features on the cardinal silk lining of the heavy tapestry portiere, that he was no less than four pounds ten ahead of the game ! But, reverting to the smart people we saw at the Saveloy, who do you think came in late ? Guess, dear? But, there, you never could, so I will tell you: Captain "Algy" Boundah, positively! He can't be a day less than fifty, and is as bald as a Radical election lie, but he's got another mash for all that. It's not a chorister this time, Madge choristers are not fin de siecle but a "living picture"; all the gilt-edged old chappies in the really best sets now run a " living picture." I had to be coldly polite to her, as Charlie and Algy are such very old chums ; but though all her talk was about what "we" did " in Society," it was precious little that she knew of the habits of the monkeys in that tree ! JANVIER I9 Algy told Charlie that he'd made up his mind to have a go for a divorce against the woman he foolishly led to the altar of St George's, eleven years ago, but found she'd found out all about the "living picture," and thus spiked his battery. Did you go to the ball at Covent Garden on Monday ? Maggie Rutter did, and enjoyed it immensely. The character she chose to represent was Diane de Poicters, the " favourite " of Henry II., which was hardly an appro- priate character, I thought, seeing that Maggie has been the "favourite" of three or four thou- sand people, rather than of one, during the last quarter of a century ! Ethel Walters, who went as Bessie Wentworth in the pickaninny costume, scored a distinct success, although her "get-up" cost her next door to nothing. As she did not wish to go to great expense, we went over together on the morning of the ball to borrow the flannel things of a male cousin of hers, who has a bachelor flat in Pall Mall Place. He most good-naturedly handed them out at once, and then gazed out of the window at the kitchen-maids at the Marlborough while Ethel tried them on. She looked so nicely in them, although I had to give her an inch or two 20 GAL'S GOSSIP in the back seam. Another striking "divided" costume was worn by Doris Bainbridge, who went as a dtbardeuse, a sort of Parisian female bargee, although her picture hat, smothered with humming-birds and pink crysanthemums, was a trifle out of character. Still she always carries herself well in male costume, which may be accounted for by the fact that she has almost always " got 'em on," being a perfectly indefatigable cyclist. Which reminds me that she was out on her bicycle in a fearfully out- of-the-way part of Derbyshire the other day when she noticed that, by a landslip, a great quantity of rock had fallen across the metals of the railway. She rode forward with all her might, hoping to reach the signalman's box in time to avert an accident ; but ere she had covered a mile, she espied an on-coming train. Thinking of nothing but saving life, she literally tore off her red satin knickers and waved them before the approaching locomotive. The engine rocked from side to side for a moment, then fell over on the tender, rolled down an embank- ment, and buried itself in a ditch, killing the fireman and seriously injuring the stoker. Included in the hosts of smart people I noticed were Mr " Roddy " Menzies, who came as " A JANVIER 21 Fried Whiting," a recent bride from Lupus Street looking awfully well in amber and ver- milion, the irrepressible "Tommy" Small as " An American Kitchener," whilst the blonde beauty from Upper Gloucester Place, looking very chic in emerald green and gold, with salmon chiffon bows, came on from the Empire. But quite the success of the night in the way of toilettes was a robin's-egg satin, with alternate rows of violet and silver pompoms round the corsage. I saw this on a tall girl, who wore tiger-lilies in her auburn hair. I fancy the back of the bodice was finished a la Watteau, but could hardly make out distinctly, as it was somewhat disarranged where Mr Neil Forsyth and a constable were grabbing it as they hurried its wearer outside. So much time did I spend in jotting down all these things for your edification, Madge, that we were quite late for supper, and encountered a fearful crush in the feeding-room so much so, indeed, that all I could get was a hot plate and an orange, and as I had previously had fourteen sherries and bitters to cultivate an appetite, this was not very satisfying. I was consoled, how- ever, by meeting Harold Osborne, that tall, good-looking boy, who went out to Old Calabar 22 GAL'S GOSSIP just about the time that I left Somerset Street. He had changed greatly, dear, and had, moreover, a " secret sorrow," all about which he insisted on telling me. "It is nearly two years ago now," he began, *' and we were camped many miles above Sapele, on the Benin River, in a place called Alligator Creek. To a little woman like yourself, who has not spent much time in the tropics, it is hard to convey an accurate idea of the awful climate out there. From sunrise to sunset the blistering heat bakes and shrivels up every living thing, and there's no getting away from it. Exertion of any kind is quite out of the question in that stifling, weakening, humid " " But your nights were cool ? " I interrupted. He took the well-meant hint, scarcely with the good grace of one who would become a successful raconteur in noisy or crowded places, and proceeded in a practised manner, that told me he had already unbosomed himself to some- body before I came along " Our nights were cool," said he ; " and then it was that I reflected on the motif, as it were, of the second chapter of Genesis ' It is not good that man should be alone.' Now, amongst the friendly tribes that fattened on our flour in JANVIER 23 consideration of leading our blue-jackets in circles in the surrounding dense forests, was the seven- teen-year-old daughter of a great chief. They called her Ym, which means, in the native dialect, ' Can -take-as -much -cuddling-as -a - wooden -leg-'ll- stand poulticing." To see her was to love her, and I will admit that, in more than one sense, I saw a good deal of her." Here he paused for a moment, as though to let the sunshine of the recollection disperse some of his present civilised gloom. Presently he con- tinued " I went and saw her father, who might have picked up the art of trading in Middlesex Street itself ; he was a real bit of hard shell ! Finally I got her for two cows, a suit of light thread pyjamas that needed dry-docking, an old bezique- marker (now a valued ju-ju and much sacrificed over), the latchkey of a maisonnette, Pelham Crescent way, and a blue glass soda-water syphon. And she was mine all mine ! " Again he pulled up and hugged himself. Then he went on " My joy for a year was more than I could find words to describe ; at last it became obvious that my little Ym was about to become a mother. There was no concealment about it ; in that land 24 GAL'S GOSSIP of brilliant sunshine coming events threw large shadows before. In her own savage fashion she prayed that it might be a boy, in which case the child would grow up to be a great chief, as her father was. Out there, a woman who has given birth to a son feels her dignity considerably, nor does her male partner consider her overbearing if she weighs in with twins, so long as they are of the right sex. Girl babies, on the other hand, have an odd knack of disappearing suddenly." Here he gave a deep sigh, and I felt that the worst was coming. " When little Ym's affair became imminent, she disappeared mysteriously, as a duck that wishes to lay vanishes into a bed of rhubarb, and many days went by before I encountered a warrior of her tribe, and learned that the interesting event was over. I feared somehow to ask him about the sex of the child, but when I did, the redskin rolled up his eyes and put moist clay upon his head. In a frenzy of apprehension I started for the savage encampment. Can you imagine for one moment the sight that met my gaze ? " " Not by a sight," said I. " My little daughter my first born was roasting on a spit, and little Ym was basting it ! " Shocking, dear, was it not ? And now to JANVIER 25 answer your many queries. The dull neck pain which you "find it so hard to describe" tells me very plainly that you did not take to your flannelettes at the time that I advised you to. It is sheer waste of time for me to give advice if you do not act upon it. Remember, Madge, I am older than you, and seniores priores, as the ploughed young 'un from Oxford said, when his irate parent told him to go to Hades. You had better try the following : Take a pound and a half of unsalted lard, put it in a small saucepan, and let it gently simmer. Add three or four good Spanish olives you can drop some into your reticule first time you are in the Glasshouse Street Bodega some nut- meg, two tablespoonfuls of the liquor out of a piccalilli bottle, a gill of brown sherry, two teaspoonfuls of Nepaul pepper, a plate of grated Parmesan cheese, half a pint of rum, and a gill of salad dressing. Flavour to taste, and serve hot. Until you told me that it was so, I was not aware that the bath-rooms of the flats in Ridge- mount Gardens were overlooked by the back windows of the houses in Gower Street, but your cousin Belle should certainly provide her apart- ment with a curtain. Her contention that it does not matter, as the rude young fellows at 26 GAL'S GOSSIP the opposite windows are "only medical students," is very flimsy. As regards the other matter, much as I dislike doing it, I cannot help saying that you must place no reliance whatever in your father. The young person you met him with is no more your cousin than the man in the moon is ; but she lives in Woronzow Road, and if he doesn't buy you the set of furs that you want, drop me a line, and I'll write you out a list of the latest names she has been going under. The little coiffeur from South Audley Street has just come round to do my hair, so, for the present, dear, believe me, Ever your loving cousin, MAUDE. FEVRIER THE FLAT, HALF MOON STREET. MY DARLING MADGE, Isn't this weather quite too awful for words? I fancy I can hear you reply "Oh, jigger it!" as a sweet girl friend of mine, who is too lady-like to swear, and yet felt too wicked to let it alone, remarked on Wednesday afternoon, when she stepped on a loose paving- stone outside the Blue Posts, and jerked about three pints of rain-water up her pink silk stockings. And how you can endure it in Hampshire I can't think, though, as you say, there's some rough fun to be got out of putting clean blotting-paper in the bachelors' bedrooms over night, and reading what they've been writing to their best girls in town by the aid of a looking-glass in the morning. Charlie Culpepper, the celebrated cattle-painter, 27 28 GAL'S GOSSIP of whom I think I have told you, dropped in on me last evening, and insisted on taking me out to dinner. We strolled as far as Piccadilly Circus, uncertain where to dine. A long series of dinners at the most fashionable restaurants had worn him out, both physically and financially, he said. "A fig for fashion and dalliance with many dishes ! " cried he, "let us eat at a place where it is not considered singular, or even vulgar, to enjoy one's food." "And where may that be?" I asked, a little nervously I may confess. The hoarse voice of a man in a shabby suit of tweed and a broken billycock hissed in our ears as he brushed past: "Harris's, the sausage shop ! " So strange and sudden was this reply that it momentarily startled us both. " Good Heavens ! " ejaculated Culpepper, " it's Joskin Joskin who came to grief in the Ninety- Sixth ! " and without another word we went after him. " Ah, Charlie! ah, Maude! I didn't think you'd have recognised me. I must pull this old bowler further over my eyes in future, or it'll be Katie- bar-the-door for Augustus Joskin ! " he said when we caught him up and laid friendly hands on him. FEVRIER 29 Odd as we thought his words, we did not press him for an explanation there and then, but, deeming the excellent Sausageries too far, bore him, not unwillingly, across the busy roadway, through the asphalted courtyard, and into the grand salon of the Cafe" Monico. I had not set eyes on the place in ten long years, and still all seemed the same. The pier- glasses reaching to the ceiling, with the film of a humid evening still upon them, the familiar click-click of many dominoes being mixed up on the marble tables, the obese old gentleman smoking the elongated cigarro with the spinal column of straw how intimate I was with all of it! A waiter, who would have looked well in gold ear-bobs, accepted our order, which was, to begin with, hors cfceuvres, one portion consisting of many capers and a fillet of the gregarious and social anchovy between three ; and while, with seeming unconcern, he dismissed our contemplated meal from his memory, in order to make out the "addition" of a beautiful lady who had been outside, presumably to see what had won the first race, and was now pulling on her dainty su^de gloves, Joskin gave us an explanation of his mysterious conduct. 3 o GAL'S GOSSIP "Ah, incomparable Cote d'Or at three bob!" he soliloquised, replenishing his glass from the bottle I had ordered as a sample. " Oh, insidious tipple of the Bourgogne, it is on thy account that I pull my hat across mine eyes as I traverse the narrow boulevard called Sherwood and the Rue Denman ! " We watched him raise the goblet to his lips and drain it to the dregs. " Mine is a hard case," he went on, "far more indurate and flinty than any that Tommy Bowies' readers have been called upon to solve. It happened like this " But at this juncture our Swiss garfon returned with one of our three plates in his left hand, and the other two spread up his left arm. On each was a delicious gas-heated and glazed chop, nestling amongst eighteen or twenty brunette chips of oil-fried potatoes, and Joskin, who is fairly quiet save when partaking of meals, fell to with a will. I don't know that I don't like Joskin's style of eating ; it dissipates the silence and renders the poverty of the conversation less apparent. In these days a dinner may often be remembered, not for its bon mots or the tooth- someness of the appttissant and luisant salad, but because Smith or Jones had a style of eating, or FEVRIER 31 a new way of whistling up waiters with the fingers, that attracted attention. "As I was telling you," said Joskin presently, bolting his last chip of potato and wiping up the superfluous Worcester sauce on his plate with a fragment of roll, " I was making my way to my unfashionable lodging in Bloomsbury in the dark- ness the other morning, when a feminine voice hailed me with : ' Shar-lee ! Shar-lee ! ' and though, as you may know, my front names are Augustus Havelock Simperson, I felt impelled to stop. I cannot truthfully say I was acquainted with the lady in pink and pearl-grey satin who then appeared, but she seemed a hospitable soul, suggested that a glass of the bon vin you remember the old chant" and Joskin sang softly : " ' Venez, venez, sages et fous, Venez, venez, boire avec nous Le bon vin a quat' sous ' " ' Oh yes," we asserted, " but go on." " Well," continued Joskin, " we ascended a dark staircase hard by, and entered an elegant apartment on the first floor. I will not attempt to describe the artistic arrangement of the furniture, but there were two elegant, long- necked, China vases, that stood on either side 32 GAL'S GOSSIP of a doubtless costly shade of wax flowers on the plush mantel, that particularly attracted my attention. My amiable hostess produced a bottle of the bon vin from a curious pedestal cupboard, and we sat down to talk of Montmartre, and I even recalled stray bits of Be"ranger and other authors. Now the bon vin was strong, the room was very warm, and I am not quite clear as to what happened, but I do know that I dozed in an armchair, and, that whilst so dozing, my hostess dipped the lily fingers of her right hand into the watch-pocket of my waistcoat, where reposed three half-sovereigns my very last. For some inexplicable reason I did not resent this, didn't even open my half-closed eyes till she turned her back, crossed the salon more than ever on the pointed toes of her varnished bottes, and dropped my gold down the neck of one of the queer vases that mounted sentinel over the wax flowers. Oho ! thought I, this is an emergency that calls for strategy. I awoke, drowsily, lazily. I apologised to my charming hostess for going to sleep the bon vin never did agree with me. I ought not to have touched it, for my grandfather was gouty, and I begged the favour of a glass of water. Aha ! She left the room ! Hastily grabbing the long-necked FEVRIER 33 vase from the mantel, I inserted its mouth into my trousers' pocket and inverted it. A merry jingle followed ; then I replaced the vessel, and fell back into the armchair, just as the charming mademoiselle returned with a little water in a breakfast-cup." " So you recovered your thirty bob ? " the cattle-painter and I enquired in one breath. "That's just the point," responded Joskin sadly; " I recovered twenty-seven pounds ten, the poor girl's savings of a lifetime, maybe ! " There was a pained pause, rendered all the more so by the appearance of the garfon with his tablet of accounts. " What should /do? " asked Joskin, as though he were Vanity Fair itself. " Endeavour to meet the lady again," said I. " Return twenty-six pounds by some means at once," said the cattle-painter decisively. " Alas ! " cried the unhappy Joskin, " I took it to Sandown on Saturday." " All togezzer? " asked the waiter. Charlie re- plied in the affirmative, and this, as " Autolycus " says in the Pall Mall, was the bill : " Hors dccuvres, 6d.\ three chop au pouuncs frit, 3.?. ; one bottle cote (Cor, 35. ; three rolls and butters, bd.\ total, 75." 34 GAL'S GOSSIP Ethel Kingsford and Johnny Branson are friends again, which I am sure you will be de- lighted to hear, for, as Johnny doesn't drop his h's, and certainly isn't a teetotaler, there is always the chance that he may turn out to be a gentleman when we get to know him better. Curiously enough, the reunion was effected through the unconscious instrumentality of the Salvation Army. Johnny learned at the Continental that Ethel had moved to the Avenue Road, but nobody knew her number ; also he discovered when he got there that the Avenue Road was a very long road, and to knock up the inhabitants one by one was out of the question. So, mindful of having encountered the Salvation Army as he came along, he borrowed a tin tea-tray of a waiter at the Swiss Cottage, and started down the thoroughfare that held his lost darling with a "Bang! Bang!! Biff!! Bang!! Hally-looyer! Hally-looyer ! ! " Every individual female in that road came flying to the window to see what the ruction was, and in less than two minutes Johnny had spotted the object of his visit, looking charming in a tea-gown of purple crpe de chine, with an orange plush butterfly caught in her auburn hair, and FEVRIER 35 had resigned his commission in the Army and the tea-tray most cheerfully. I know, dear, how an absolutely exclusive item of Court Intelligence always delights you, and I have saved you one. Let me tell you that during the service of dinner at Windsor Castle the band of the Coldstreams plays on the terrace, just outside the dining-room window, and Her Majesty has remarked that the cornet solos are frequently slurred. It transpires that the side-table from which the courses are served is directly in the line of sight of the cornet-bands- man, and as he avers that he can't help his mouth watering, he has been given the option of playing in blinkers or handing in his band- parts. How beautiful a thing is sympathy, and how blessed it is to be able to tender it to one in distress ! Even a man's sympathy for other men is goodly and helpful at times, but, of course, what men really need is women's sympathy sympathy in their work, sympathy in their bereavements, sympathy in their physical ailments, sympathy when they are too late in the betting-market, sympathy in their spiritual anxieties, sympathy in their baldness, sympathy in their amorous eccentricities, 36 GAL'S GOSSIP sympathy in the time of senile decay wide, deep, enduring, womanly sympathy. Oh ! there is something beautiful in sympathy in manly sympathy, in motherly sympathy, in wifely sympathy ! Let him tell the story who, when all his fortunes were gone and all the world was against him, came home and found in that home a wife who, in his absence, had dressed up as a widow, and raised a bill of sale on the furnished apartments, in order that "her boy" should have an evening meal of lamb's heads and brain sauce. Who will put that weary head upon the clean, white pillow, and wonder wonder, through the long, long night, why a man who has partaken of raw onions in a Russian salad should imagine that he can remove all traces of the same by the free use of the Pollok Blend who, who, I ask, but a sweet, sympathetic wife ? But let us not rest at being mere theorists in the matter ; the greatest crime in the criminal code of Heaven, brethren, is a man living unto self. I have just had a visit from a very nice boy, whom you have not yet met, I think, for he has only recently left Oxford. He came to see me dressed in the deepest of mourning, and looking oh, so sad ! He seemed fearfully depressed, and FEVRIER 37 I secretly admired him for it, as it is not often nowadays that a boy shows so much grief at the death of his grandmother. "It is very terrible indeed," I said, "very, very sad." "It is," he replied, and a greater feeling of admiration for him arose within me, which would have lasted had he not continued : " For I can't go to the Empire to-night, nor the Tivoli, but I shall have to take my cabman out to the Star, Bermondsey, or the Washington, Battersea, where nobody'll know me ! " His grandmother died quite peacefully and comfortably, he told me, being crushed to death by blacklegs against the corner of a tramcar at the Parliament Hill terminus, in trying to take a penny ride, during the first day of the Strike. I was overjoyed to hear that her end was tranquil and undisturbed, because the circumstance en- abled me to tell him of quite a different sort of passing-away I remembered seeing when quite a girl. The person being scurried over the bar was a poor gentleman who got what religion he needed at a Hall of Science. For years he had made it a practice to go out on a Saturday night with, let me say, a comparatively virgin mind and a jug, and bringing home with him enough 38 GAL'S GOSSIP doctrine to enable him to hold out till the follow- ing Saturday, and all the bitter beer he was likely to want till the public-houses opened at mid-day on Sunday. Finally a chill or something laid him by the heels, and, whilst lying in hospital, he got his call. And he didn't want to go a little bit. I never saw a more reluctant man in my life ; the earnest way in which he tried to think of any excuse to wriggle out of his last appoint- ment was distressing. There was more eloquence in the light-hearted way in which he referred in his last moments, the while he tore up his bed- clothes, to some of the leading lights of Atheism than in a hundred modern sermons ; and I fancy that his brother, who with the bank and building societies' books, belonging to the gentleman who was sustaining the principal role, in his pocket stood by, formed a hurried resolution to have another look at the book form ere he went on as an Amalgamated Acrostic, or whatever the name of the sect was. You ask very kindly after Ursula. I am afraid, poor girl, she is in a very bad way. They dis- charged her as cured from the private "pay" hospital, after she had coughed down three sixteen- and-sixpenny iron bedsteads, but she has de- veloped sad symptoms since she has been at FEVRIER 39 Ventnor. Every time she sneezes she fills her boots with sand, and I am greatly afraid she is going to " chuck in her knife and fork," as Charlie says. It is very dreadful when one looks back and recalls her in her best days tall, brunette, commanding, with that delicate tracery of dark hair on her upper lip, although I never quite thought she was justified in removing her boot in the Cafe" Monico to take a swat at a foreign waiter because he inadvertently brought her chocolate in a moustache-cup. Toujours a toi, darling. MAUDE. MARS HOTEL METROPOLE, BRIGHTON. SWEET COUSIN, It is wicked, no doubt, for me, still in the bloom and fluff of life's young morn, to find fault with the weather, but I freely confess that the present sample is a trifle too " brass-monkey." As one result of slipping down the beach steps here after treading on an icicle, I am nursing a bruised knee-pan and a nasty bump as nearly as possible over the organ of firmness. Still, there is plenty of cheery company here. Aubrey Plantagenet has only just gone out. What a delightful man he is ! Language is to him a gift, and he spoke so correctly, so fluently, and so grammatically, that it was almost a relief to hear the plumber's man, who is at work just outside my chamber window, violate one or other of Lindley Murray's rules with a coarse but refresh- ing oath, as he spilled a gill or so of white hot solder into his shoe-top. 40 MARS 41 After dinner last evening Charlie and I and four or five other guests, who could find nothing in Brighton worth the trouble of going out to see, sat in the big wicker chairs on the hotel steps and chatted. Two great characters we have here are a certain Doctor Foxton (a little bantam of a medico, who retired a few years back on a fortune left him by a grateful spinster who had been a patient), and a fine old salt, a Captain Stripp, on the half-pay list. Little Doctor Foxton had been describing, with daring but delightful minuteness, some handsome Algerian women he had seen in a dancing-hall in Tunis, and just as he wound up by declaring that they were the finest women in the world, old Captain Stripp jumped in and punctuated the exordium with the bluff monosyllable : " Rats ! " The captain is not as a rule a rude man, so we attributed his vehemence to the probability of his having a good case of his own to state ; nor were we wrong, as it turned out. " Out in the Bahamas only two years ago," he said, " I came across a group of the loveliest women I have ever seen, an' they didn't have no muslins, nor silks, nor, indeed, a cool stitch of anything to set them off, for they were just bathin' in a creek. I went out there as an expert in 42 GAL'S GOSSIP fibres. The woods of the Bahamas yield just the varieties of fibres required by electrical engineers, and I'd got a nailin' good payin' appointment to go out there and make a complete collection an' report on 'em. You see, with fibres " "We'll take the fibres as read," interrupted little Doctor Foxton, who began to show un- mistakable signs of getting deeply interested. " Oh, you will ? All right ; then we'll give the pannerammer another twist. The Bahamas, you may know, have been almost depopulated by the Spanish buccaneers under Don Ricardo Colorado y Maduro, but I was forcin' my way well up into the wooded districts, where the giant gums wave to and fro, and you hardly ever hear a sound save when a bird cries out to its mate in the great canebrake, or the plash of a birch canoe being rowed through the clear water. When I say clear water, I'm not speakin' strictly by the chart, for it's tinted slightly by the roots of juniper and cypress " "Just so, just so," interrupted the doctor, rather sharply, "but er get on to the story." " You can hardly call it a story," quibbled old Stripp ; "it would be more appropriate to call it an incident." MARS 43 " Call it an incident, then," grunted the doctor " dammit, call it an incident ! " "Very well, we will. These Bahama people have a sort of natural odour about 'em. I dunno whether it's from bathin' in the water impregnated with the juniper " "They don't bathe at all!" declared Charlie, starting in and dropping his eyeglass from its orbit ; " nobody ever heard of a Bahaman takin' a bath, but he rubs himself with oil all over, till he stinks worse than a burning boot ! " " I didn't say a Bahaman," cried the captain, "but the Bahama maidens, girls of eighteen or so " "That's right or, at least, it's probable," chipped in Billie Winn. " Sir Edwin Arnold has written of the delicious natural odour of the Japanese girls ; don't you remember the rhyme somebody wrote : " ' Oh, the Tokio maid is in sweetness arrayed From her little pink toe to her cranium, With eyes black as sloes, and a breath like a rose, And a ' er oh, dammit " " ' And a cough like a lemon geranium.' " Charlie suggested. 44 GAL'S GOSSIP "Yes, yes -or words to that effect," assented Billy. " Pardon these interruptions, Captain." "Oh, that's all right," said old Stripp good- naturedly; "if you've quite done, I'll go on. One day I was out fibrein', when, at a sudden turn in the path, I beheld such a bevy of beautiful girls as I'd never seen before they were simply copper- coloured angels ! I heard subsequently that they were a renowned band of Amazons, whose mothers had got up a little sort o' smokin' concert one night for Colorado-Maduro's buccaneers. They were walking along at a smartish pace, which caused quite a rustle, for you must know that their only clothes a sort of loose jacket and short drawers are made of a sort ofmanilla paper, as fine, and bleached as white, as a bishop's lawn sleeves. I skirts along at the side o' the wood " "Yes, go on," said the little doctor, giving his chair a hitch. "Till they comes to a little creek," continued the captain, "and here, amidst a good deal o' laughin', they begins to undress. Their jackets only appeared to have one button, just on the left shoulder, whilst the er that is the other things " "What things?" said the little doctor peevishly. MARS 45 " Why, what I told you before, were off in a jiffey. Smoly Hoke ! thinks I " " Never mind what you thought," said the doctor. " Go on." " Right. Well, never had I seen girls so perfectly formed, and I was just speculatin' as to what I ought to do " "Good Heavens!" ejaculated the doctor impetuously. "W T hen," went on old Stripp, unheeding the excited medico, "when they caught sight o' me! Led by the tallest girl o' the lot b'gosh, she was a picture ! they came running up to me, puttin' their arms, some round me neck, some round me legs, an' kissin' me for all they were worth. They were literally on all sides o' me " " Well ? " demanded the impatient doctor. "With a desperate effort," cried the old captain, throwing his arms about dramatically as though struggling with an unseen foe, " I dis- engaged myself, and, throwing the hoydens right and left, took to my hee " "It's a lie!" fairly shouted the excited doctor, jumping up and kicking over his chair. " It's a foul, contemptible, mean, despicable lie ! " and he bounced into the hotel. Strangely enough, when Charlie went inside a few minutes later to get my 46 GAL'S GOSSIP sables, he overheard one of the hotel clerks, who held a Bradshaw in his hand, replying to some query of Doctor Foxton's. " There appear to be two or three routes, sir," said the clerk, "via Cuba or Puerto Rico, and the fares are about the same. When do you wish to start?" But just then the fiery little disciple of /Esculapius caught sight of Charlie. " I I I I'll think it over," he said to the clerk, and, without stopping at the flower-stall for his customary buttonhole, he hurried out. Brighton seems very full, if not exactly of smart people, certainly of children and dogs. November and December babies, each attended by two nurses and a boy in buttons, are extremely fashionable, whilst slightly older children look awfully well when wearing sun-bonnets hanging down their backs. The dogs, largely attracted I presume, by the laxity of the muzzling laws down here, could well be dispensed with on the beach, where they have amply demonstrated themselves to be cake-and-bun-stealers, ch ild- biters, feeding-bottle suckers, and everything else that is abominable. Mrs Switchley-Danvers is here, being pulled about on the front (this reads curiously, some- MARS 47 how) in a bath-chair, as she says, for " acute nervous prostration." Nonsense ! How could the wife of a mere ex-fire insurance agent have such a disease? It is a plain bilious attack. Another visitor, looking really ill, poor girl, is Henrietta Treadwater. She has been endeavour- ing to support herself and her aged mother, who is about to celebrate her golden wedding by becoming a barmaid at the Criterion, by writing bright little poems for the papers. She sought to submit this one " What is the use of breaking a heart, If you don't intend to tarry? What is the use of wooing a ' tart ' . If you never intend to marry ? What is the use of a novelette If you don't intend to read it ? What is the use of a bassinette If you never intend to need it ? " to the cultured editor of The Gentlewoman, but was told at his office that he had gone to Coomassie to arrange about some new composition for the printing-ink rollers. She still has good friends who will help her, however ; and if a girl can retain her friends during her periods of prolonged poetical thought, she need not fear of losing them should she 48 GAL'S GOSSIP contract scarlet fever or the small-pox. She only regrets, now that she seems likely to be temporarily prostrated on a bed of sickness, that she so rashly tore up her pretty old-rose silk night-dresses and hemmed them into handkerchief squares for "that bounder" (as she expresses herself) with whom she was pleased to consider herself in love last summer. It is somewhat consoling to her to know that whenever he blew his nose he was so filled with distracting emotions, that he generally ran amuck, and was, in consequence, eventually dispensed with by the Frost-bitten Race-course and Postponed Irish- Stew Syndicate, of which he was to have had the managing directorship when it " came out." It would be odd, indeed, if Brighton had not a little scandal of some sort afoot, and just now the ultra-respectable residents in Cavendish Place are greatly exercised in their minds by the conduct of a young lady visitor who has no blind to her bedroom window. The Siissex Evening Nark has devoted several columns to it, so the other night Charlie and I walked round to the locality shortly after 11.30, and got into conversation with an intelligent Brighton police-constable, who was leaning languidly against the iron railings of a house opposite to " the show." " Oh yes, sir," MARS 49 he replied to Charlie's enquiry, " it's just precisely the same every night, but I don't see much harm in it. She always douses the glim before it gets too sensational." Raising our eyes to the second floor front window we gazed in horror at the shadow of the young lady, evidently unbuttoning her outer garments. She next removed her hat and feathers, and discarded her hair-net. We plainly discerned her in the act of hanging a scarlet cotton " improver " over the bust of General Booth, which stood upon the mantelpiece, and heard her throw her corsets into the coal- scuttle. At this juncture she approached the window, and, with a merry, decisive laugh, blew out the rushlight. Candidly, I think too much fuss is being made about the matter, especially by the railway people, who contemplate, if the young lady intends stopping here another fortnight, putting on a late train to Hassocks, Burgess Hill, Preston Park, and Bramber. Poor Mrs and Miss Smith, with whom I used to stay in German Place, are, I observe, to be sold up under the bill-of-sale, on the proceeds of which they started. Frail little Mrs Smith, with her widow's bands and her gentle, ingenuous ways, ought never to have started a "board-and- residence " menagerie, and that, too, with such a 50 GAL'S GOSSIP tiny capital, raised at such a ruinous rate. Not hers the power to cope with the wily milk- pudding-fattened boarder, and wring from him the hard-held scudi with which to appease a clamorous sixty-per-center. One of the first prospective patrons to pull their visitors' bell was a Mr Solomon Hyams, and it was on a dire day, one on which Mrs Smith's little cherub had left off sitting up aloft, and gone to see his arrows-maker, for Mr Hyams was so well pleased with the "board and residence," that he forthwith installed himself for the full course at forty shillings a week. Now, it appears that as he came downstairs on the second evening after his arrival, in all the glory of evening dress, he encountered the graceful daughter of the house, and in a studied tone of indifference to expense, which jarred somewhat with the surroundings, asked : " Oh er Mith Thmith I'm er dinin' out to-night. I forgot to athk vhen I come 'ere, but er vhat deducthion d'yer make vhen a guetht thtays out ? " Miss Smith was, for a second, embarrassed. Neither she nor her mamma had anticipated the raising of such a point. However, she would ask, and she ran downstairs to do so, the while MARS 51 Mr Myer Solomon Hymans dreamily dipped his fingers into the ticket-pockets of the other boarders' overcoats for loose coppers, for, as he said, " italvayth gitth put down to the dithonethty o' th' thervanth." When Miss Smith returned she said, quite with a blush, poor girl, that her mamma thought it was unusual to make such allowances, never- theless, if Mr Hyams wished it, she would deduct two shillings for each meal missed, and two shillings for each night's lodging. From that night forward the seventeen other nincompoops, who ate to repletion at seven, and burnt the gas till one, in their endeavours to raise the " Parlour Game " of " Tiddleywinks," or jerking the cardboard to the level of the sciences, saw rather less than usual of Mr Myer Hyams, though, to do them justice, they filed no objections on that head. And when three whole weeks had passed, Miss Smith made out a little bill and left it on Mr Hyams' dressing-table " Three weeks' board and residence, as arranged, 6." It was then that Mr Hyams, who must have been the gold-medal mathematician of the Ghetto, weighed in with his little centra-account. Out of a possible eighty-four meals he had eaten only 52 GAL'S GOSSIP fourteen, whilst on eleven nights he had slept out ; thus seventy meals at 2s. represented 7, and eleven lodgings at a similar rate i, 2s., which left a balance in his favour of two guineas ! To say that the widow and her daughter were somewhat flummuxed when the lodger sent O down his bill would be to put the matter very mildly, and if they did not say a great deal, it was principally because, being ladies, and used to nothing stronger than the Commination Service, they had not the flow of language on hand that would have done justice to the subject. And, after all, as Mr Hyams very truly put it, a business arrangement is a business arrangement, though he magnanimously added : " Seem' that it'th unpertected vimin I've got to deal vith, I don't vish to preth yer for the balanth in money ; I'll take it out in board!" Charlie has just come round from the livery stable in Cannon Place with such a spirited pony in such a beautiful yellow Ralli cart, and declares I am to drive him to Rottingdean and back. Where's the old brandy? Au revoir, cherie. MAUDE. AVRIL THE FLAT, TUESDAY. MY DARLING MADGE, You have to thank a pair of cerise and primrose garters neither more nor less for this billet. They caught my eye this afternoon as I wandered through the Burlington, and the ticket affixed to them, " For the Epsom Week," awakened quite a train of delightful old memories in my head, dear, as it certainly should do in yours, too. Gazing critically at the silk lingerie displayed in the self-same window, was that Aldershot fellow, Jocelyn- Johnson, I think they call him we remarked, you may remember, that he parted both his hair and his name in the middle and he carried me off to the dear old " Blue Posts" to tell me the latest bit of news. He's going to marry positively marry Minnie Godden ! Certain things happened, it appears, after which she found out all about his guv'nor and his 68 54 GAL'S GOSSIP people, and, as he cannot stand an exposd at home, he is taking the unpleasant alternative. As he very tersely put it, gazing sadly into his tumbler the while, she's "got him where his hair's short." Poor devil ! Yet Dolly Dixon, who used to share the same dressing-room at the Gaiety as Minnie, tells me he's a very poor catch which I'm sorry to hear, for they say that Minnie used to throw rolling-pins, crockery, or anything that came to hand, at her first mash. What will a girl not take on in order to get hitched to a man in the regulation way ? Will she stop at anything ? Let me give you an instance. The youngest daughter of the wife of a very very dear friend of mine, received a proposal of marriage the other day, but before giving her answer, determined to visit her four married sisters. The eldest, who had been the belle of her year at home, she found in a garret in Lisson Grove, slaving at dressmaking to support herself and an anonymous baby, which slept blissfully upon some straw bottle-envelopes in an otherwise empty champagne case in a corner ; the second, who had made a bad match for one who gets married altogether without display, would have been up the river with her husband and a portable cottage piano, but that he was wearing a chunk of AVRIL 55 fresh rump-steak over one eye, as the result of an argument with a gentleman, who played on a harp, as to a right of pitch outside Tagg's Hotel at Molesey ; the third (whose husband had gone to Doncaster with a white hat turned up with green, a satchel, a book and an ashplant) was taking iron for her blood at a French Laundresses in Shaftesbury Avenue ; and the fourth was hanging about the Law Courts waiting till her decree nisi was done. Upon this she wired to the young fellow to say that she'd be ready by the ist of May ! I daresay you remember me telling you that Lenore Lennox had taken a sweetly pretty villa one in a terrace of about twenty at South Hampstead. She has a regular allowance now ; and her little boy such a darling little fellow ! being just six years old, she passes as the wife of a cavalry officer who is away with his regiment. He is such a delightful little cherub, too, with long golden curls clustering round his baby brow. Oh, how hateful the thought that he may grow up and some day become, perhaps, a bookmaker ! How sickening the reflection that, say twenty years hence, his baby legs may be employed in taking him across Ascot Heath at a 4-i2f gait and a lead of about fifteen yards of an angry 56 GAL'S GOSSIP Jaquemart mob, on whom he has tried to ring a Knight of the Thistle argument in lieu of settle- ment ! However, I called on poor Lenore the other afternoon, and called at a most unfortunate moment, as it happened, for I found her in a swoon, with her fair head in an ormolu coal-vase, and her two maids busily unlacing her corset parfait and applying restoratives. It appears that in one of his baby excursions all over the house, little Hector found a packet of mamma's old letters tied round with a cherry ribbon, and an ingenious idea entered his infant mind that he would play at "postman." This consisted in stealing outdoors with the packet, giving double knocks at the neighbours' doors, and delivering the letters with " Tuppence to pay, p'ease." Of course the letters were old, old ones of Charlie Throatlash's, and if you knew anything of Charlie's breezy style of correspondence with a woman he loves, you'd agree with me that none who paid "tuppence" fora billet-doux^'^, want any more ripe fruit this year. Charlie, in writing, generally let the tail go with the hide, and, when he was much smitten, illustrated ! Periodically one hears an impassioned feminine wail about the dearth of good domestic servants AVRIL 57 or even of unclassified domestics and I must say that I do not wonder at it when one hears of mistresses like Mrs Hynton-Budbrooke. She has a weakness, you must know, dear, for taking criminals by the hand " giving them another chance" she calls it, and is never so happy as when she discovers a parlour-maid at a lying-in hospital or a footman at a thieves' supper. She has just taken one of the last-named into her house, and her coachman came here in tears yesterday poor man ! to see if I could recommend him for a vacancy anywhere. It appears that the terrible creature Mrs Budbrooke has just put into livery was some sort of racecourse microbe, and hadn't been in the house two hours before he was thump- ing the butler in his own pantry (the Hynton- Budbrookes were out at dinner) because he wouldn't "find the lady." Nor did Mrs Budbrooke turn him instantly from the doors when she came in. Certainly she spoke seriously to him, but begged the butler to assist her in reforming the " social outcast " a thankless task to a man who has already incurred a bump on the temple of the size of a roc's egg, and a splodge of colour like a Lotofen sunset under the left eye. The very next day the creature " gamdiddled " (that was the coachman's word) 58 GAL'S GOSSIP the stableman out of his corn money, and wound up on the Saturday by taking the page-boy's few shillings off him, teaching him how to play a game called "Crusoe." Is not such a fad deplorable ? Speaking of servants, by the way, I called on dear Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush the other day in her charming suite at the Hotel Lofty at Brighton, and while I was there her bell was answered by one of the most diminutive and cherub-like page-boys I think I have ever seen. He was new to Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush, too, for she asked him, as she passed her jewelled left hand over his smooth golden hair, how old he was. " Thirteen, ma'am," said the boy. " And what is your name ? " " Joseph, ma'am." " Whatt " she asked again. "Joseph, ma'am." " Oh, nonsense ! " she cried, " I shall call you William ; you are entirely too young at present for a Joseph ! " Then she drew the little fellow to her and imprinted on his lips one of those hot, passionate, blistering kisses she knows so well how to give. And what an art kissing is, dear Madge, AVRIL 59 and how many volumes of meaning may be crowded into what Oliver Wendell Holmes called a "lisping consonant." It was with a kiss that, hundreds of years ago, Cleopatra won Marc Antony ; it was with a kiss that, only the other day, King Prempeh resigned his kingdom. And though somebody in Parlia- ment observed, with regard to the submission of poor Prempeh, that there was a differ- ence of opinion between the two front benches as to the portion of Sir F. Scott's person which the monarch kissed, the fact remains that a kiss it was. Perhaps it is just as well that modern men rarely take the trouble to become proficient, for as soon as a man shows that he knows how to kiss, a woman begins to think he has a lurid "past." And yet we have a whole day annually devoted to the pastime, for it fell on Tuesday last. I must tell you that I had just settled down for my post-breakfast read, and was rapidly be- coming absorbed in that chaste and beautiful hotel story of a young man who ascended in his stockinged feet a _d the dead of night to the head barmaid's bedroom, in order to discuss with her the spiritual advantages to be gained by adopt- ing a purely vegetable diet as an aid to leading 60 GAL'S GOSSIP the higher life, all so artlessly related in " A Pink 'Un and a Pelican," when that pretty boy I told you I met in Piccadilly on St Valentine's day as a matter of fact our bodies did meet, physically, and with a positive crash that started my nose bleeding, for he was looking behind him, and I was admiring the set of my new grey and pervenche blue costume reflected in a shop window dropped in and begged me to go with him to the " Hocktide " kissing ceremonies at Hungerford, where a couple of middle-aged " tutty-men," decked out in ribbons and laurels like Ritualistic churches at Christmas, go all round the town demanding kisses from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. Revolting ! But he is one of those simple, free-trade-in-everything sort of boys that see no harm in anything, and he even told me in confidence as he might have done a slightly elder sister that he jolly well knew that his girl at the Gaiety was being mashed by another Johnnie, but he didn't mind, because the other fellow was " such an awfully decent old chappie, don't you know, and the joke of it is, that we are both getting our chips from the same money- lender ! " Between doing the society gossip for The AVRIL 61 Hostess At Home and dashing off short, im- passioned stories for one or other of the ladies' magazines, Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush gets along very nicely, although having no family of her own causes her to write odd paragraphs in her " home " notes occasionally. For instance, she said the other day in The Hostess: "Little boys' suits now consist of three pieces instead of two, as formerly, which is an excellent arrange- ment, as it enables the parent to get at the little boy more readily whenever occasion requires." Her short stories, however, are above all criticism, as I think you will admit after read- ing one of her latest, which she calls "A BRIGHTON ARCH. "'Only five minutes more,' soliloquised the beautiful brunette in the purple velvet and silver fox-fur toilette, as she replaced her tiny gold and diamond-encrusted watch in its clasp, and gazed out over the purring indigo waves, ' and my Adolphus will be with me.' " From the bosom of her dress she drew a crumpled envelope an envelope addressed to her own initials, care of a wily circulating librarian in 62 GAL'S GOSSIP the Western Road, and, drawing a sheet of note- paper from within, read : '"To MY QUEEN. " ' Oh ! how I miss your sweet kisses, and your fond caressing, Which somehow seem to set my soul athirst to drink from your soul, From that bubbling fountain of love which seems to be squirting its blessing Into my life's Sahara, my life, my whole ! ' ' From SYLVIA'S SABREUR.' " As she thrust the note back into its hallowed receptacle she walked uneasily to the railing of the roof-terrace of the Pier Pavilion, muttering passionately to herself: " ' Oh, optimistic fool that I am, to go on with this ! It is not possible for two persons of our passionate and artistic temperament to maintain a platonic correspondence, and, though my husband is not strict with me, should one of Adolphus's billets but some one approaches.' " There appeared as she spoke at the top of the iron staircase a tall, aristocratic man of soldierly bearing, not the blustering trooper of the camp, but the romantic subaltern who loves to accompany a girl to her corsetieres, or her boot- makers, to tell her how her things should fit her. AVRIL 63 He was in evening dress, save for the snuff-brown deerstalker which Brighton allows. He stepped quickly across to Sylvia,and slipped his right arm round her waist." "' My own!' " ' My Dolphy ! ' During the next three minutes they kissed but twice two long-drawn kisses that died away with a sound like the tearing off of a porous plaister. Then he said : "'And the Ogre, where is he to-night, little one?' " ' The creature,' she said, her beautiful nostrils dilating with disgust, "wires me that in celebration of the rise in Chilians, whatever they may be, a " lot of fellows in the House " are dining together at Romano's, and going on to " The Belle of New York," so that he'll sleep in town.' " ' Then my angel is my own till ' " ' Ten, dearest, not a moment after. The brougham will be at the Dome at ten the Elisha concert is on to-night but we can walk there leisurely, lovingly, partly by way of the beach, but you may not kiss me at parting.' " His countenance fell a little at these words. After all, it was prudence and not indifference that prompted them. 64 GAL'S GOSSIP "Still, wise and necessary as they were, they only served to remind him of the hopelessness of their joint love. He had a little to live on, enough to support them in comfort, but there was the insurmountable object of her wretched stock- broking husband ; it was a stile that there seemed no prospect of getting over. " ' Sylvia, my darling,' he said sadly, ' only you know how much I love you, and yet it is im- possible for me to go on pouring out my very soul to you, either under the eyes and noses of the natives and their visitors, or through the medium of the post. I cannot go on writing to you for ever about the desert, the fountains, and the meteorological outlook ; moreover, this love is making our lives one continual yearn. If we only had some nook, some bower where, unseen by vulgar eyes ' " ' Why not take an arch ? ' said she. " An arch one of the cosy little nooks beneath the unrivalled asphalt promenade is well nigh indispensable to a single man's outfit in Brighton. It is a warm, cosy, and secluded little stronghold, to which he can retire when the attractions of the Old Ship pall and his acquaintances in the smoking- room at the Metropole become a bore. AVRIL 65 " So it fell that my Strephon took an arch, and furnished, decorated, and lighted it after the fashion of these archers ; and every afternoon through that mellow October did his Phyllis come down there to brew tea in a little Wedgwood pot, and sit by his side the while he wrote verses to her eyes, her lips, her hair verses which would have made a sick elephant leave his buns. Then, as twilight came on, he would draw her a little closer, and, with his right arm around her waist, he would tell her passionately, earnestly of his great and inconquerable love for her, until the quick- silver mounted to the top of the thermometer and rattled at its glass roof to be let out. " How all this sort of thing might have balled up, as dear old Socrates says, it is difficult to con- jecture, but one day a great thing happened. Chilians fell fell with the dull, sickening thud of the young gentleman who leaned too far over the Whispering Gallery. The sharp, authentic report of a pistol rang through Throgmorton Avenue, E.G., and Sylvia Isabel Eugenie Butterworth was a widow ! " Some said she might have waited till the headstone was up ; others smiled meaningly and shook their heads. Sylvia only remained a widow 66 GAL'S GOSSIP for a week or just long enough to have a new frock and tear up a clandestine correspondence she'd been carrying on with a cycle company promoter. For the rest, let the old registry-office attendant, where, by special license, Sylvia and Adolphus ' did the rest,' speak. " ' I never see sich a go, sir,' said he. ' No sooner 'ad they got out on to the front step than she turns to 'im, an' she says : " Adolphus, now that we are one I want the key o' that arch." " The devil you do !" says he. "And what do you want with it ?" " Nothink," says she. " But I don't mean for you to have it. Now we're married," she says, " we don't want any funny business." " Well," says he, " fair play is good sport ; neither of us shall have it. Theo Wade, the house agent, shall sell the lease and the fittings, and the whole bag of tricks. Will that suit you?" And then, sir, she kissed him, an' the first place they stopped at on their 'oneymoon was at the 'ouse agent's ! ' ' Quite romantic, is it not ? Whom do suppose I met coming out of the little oyster-shop this morning ? Guess ? But there, you never would Mabel Morrison, positively ! She really couldn't stand Westgate she told me, there were too many invalids there. AVRIL 67 Every one you meet, she says, asks you what you are "down here for." The poor creatures, she added, stand and shrug their shoulders, not so much from discontent at the fare at their respective boarding-houses, as from all-prevailing affection of the cuticle. As the hansom cabman remarked to poor Bettina de Bellevodini, when, at the end of the journey, she struggled vainly to find the hidden pocket which her dressmaker had put in some impossible back width : " When you're done scratchin' yerself, I'll thank you for my fare." Mabel seemed very despondent although the poor little baby only lived three days and she said as true as Heaven made little apples, if she could only steer up against some sordid but straightforward Johnnie, hanged if she wouldn't be taken to church and turn respectable, even though the bridegroom was only marrying to save money. A pretty new boot-tree, the name of which I may possibly tell you next week, was amongst the novelties I saw in East Street this afternoon. The patentee explained to me that it entirely filled out the boots without unduly stretching them in parts, which is, I think, better than wearing the boots all night for the same purpose, and spending the price of the trees on other 68 GAL'S GOSSIP things, a policy which is advocated, I see, in " How to be Happy though Poor," now selling in thousands. By the way, dearest, talking about books, be sure and get " The Sin of the Strawberry Blonde," which is just out. Oh, I do assure you, it's real! The chapter where Madeleine, an orphan and penniless, walks from Powick to London, and, just in sight of the lights of the metropolis, secretly divests herself of her brocaded bodice to offer it in pledge, and where the sordid pawn-broker thrusts it back across the counter with the brutal remark, " Don't take things in hot," is alone worth the six shillings at which it is published. Though the weather is not all that could be wished, there are still many smart people to be encountered on "the Front." I noticed one well- known Supper Club blonde this morning, who would have looked distinguished in a skirt of toile de Jouey, had she not been reduced to hitching herself up against Reuben Sassoon's railings while an obliging boatman hunted round for a pearly button that had left its moorings ; whilst another charming mondaine looked awfully well in a bright-coloured surah, made in the early Victorian style, with a hem of half-dried macadam round the full skirt. Unwilling to AVRIL 69 give credence to the rumour circulated by a rival that one of her buckles had "gone back on her," she inclines to the Jin de siecle fad of wearing a yellow satin garter over the left boot-heel. But, taken altogether, it was a damp, poor morning for finery. Toujoiirs, Madge darling, yours devotedly, MAUDE. MAI THE GABLES, BOTTOMBARLEY. SWEET LITTLE Coz, That your last letter has re- mained so long unanswered I very much regret, but I have been idling away a fortnight in a country house, dear, and heartily glad am I to be back in town again. Breeding establishments, and village schools, and pattern cottages with pattern cottagers inside them, including the tedious old granny, who wears a sunbonnet and an iron-grey moustache, who walked all the way to London in the Jubilee week, and takes quite a personal interest in the Queen, because " Her Ted an' my Willie was born the same day, miss " soon pall on one. It may be perfectly true that no place so fully realises the idea of home as a country mansion, but little Mrs Merridew is not an ideal hostess by a jugful. She lacks repose. Then, too, everybody's comfort is sacri- 70 MAI 71 ficed to the well-being of her precious children ; she is like the Belgravian mother who was always sacking her nursery governesses. " You do not pay proper attention to the dear mites, you seem utterly incapable of looking after them," she cried pettishly, as she proceeded to invest the thirteenth nursery-maid of the season with the ancient order and insignia of the boot ; " here's Master Alexander gone and bitten his tongue again ! " The guest should be intuitively aware, I think, that the hostess keeps a watchful eye over her comfort, without in the least degree trying to circumscribe her liberty of action, and somehow I quite failed to realise this, when Mrs Merridew asked me if I would object to having little Dorothy in my bed, as the house was so full. I do declare that child passed the night in thirty- three different positions, for I counted them eighteen on the bed, and fifteen on the floor ! It was positively awful indeed I only dozed off from the sheer exhaustion of being kept awake, just as Saint Peter was blowing out the last little star and day was breaking. And yet the whole country-side literally swarms with the little pests ; the whole village was kept awake on the night of my arrival by the latest "event" in the curate's 72 GAL'S GOSSIP family, which took the form of twins. This cut the sixteenth and seventeenth notches in his little quiver, thirteen of which represent children still living, and the poor man whose stipend is only eighty pounds a year was quite distracted about it, especially as he had backed a bill, or cashed a snide cheque, or done something equally horrible and commercial, in the very reasonable expecta- tion of his wife receiving the Queen's Bounty. Poor fellow ! the steady unchecked growth of his family bids fair to become the ultimate ruin of him. He spoke quite pathetically of his early married days, when he had but two little " olive-branches," called respectively "Alpha" and "Omega." But, unfortunately, they did not end there, so, w r ith a heavy heart and many misgivings, he christened his third by the somewhat odd cog- nomen, " Errata." One could not help feeling pity anyway / could not when sitting listening to him preaching so beautifully about the im- mortals reposing on high, on beds of amaranth and of moly, and knowing all the time that nothing but the charitable pulpit concealed the fact that his poor, dear broadcloth trousers had been more than once patched in the postern gate. Have you ever noticed, Madge, how lament- ably poor is the library of the average country MAI 73 house? All that the bookcases at Seven Beeches contained were Bailys Magazine up to 1874, Vol. II. of "Veterinary Remedies," a dog-eared " Ought We to Visit Her," and some permanganate crystals for making sheep-dip. Newspapers there were well, scarcely any, though the one that I did come across interested me hugely, as I had never seen anything like it before. Its literary matter was contributed almost entirely by persons who desired to swap articles for which they had no further use for others of which they stood in need. Here are a few examples : MOURNING. Young widow offers handsome black silk and crepe walking dress, Directoire style, waist 18, only worn once, and slightly soiled by clay round bottom of skirt, for pair glace" kid lo-button boots, high heels, small 3*5, or imitation Crown Derby five o'clock tea-set; or would exchange lease of cheer- ful vault, Abney Park, room for seven, for sapphire and diamond engaged ring ; or would swap ' late lamented's P.G.M. masonic jewels and a recipe for banana fritters, for crushed strawberry, box-cloth Empire cape. Letters only "Poppets," Jelly's Library, Shaftesbury Avenue. ARTISTIC. Advertiser offers a drum of boiled oil in exchange for litho., " Meeting of Wellington and Blucher," or would give a firkin of treacle for engrav- ing, "Magdalene." " Artisticus," Box 67. 74 GAL'S GOSSIP LITERARY. Two vols. "Secrets of Courtship," one vol. " Dame aux Camelias," one vol. " Nana's Daughter," offered by attractive young person (twenty- two, blonde) for loan of double perambulator three afternoons per week. Reply, "Blighted Emma," office of this paper. FREEHOLD. Cemetery allotment, airy situation, one minute's walk from the catacombs. Will be ex- changed for brass door-plate, " Goods Removed," or small hand-truck, owner having recovered. "Bill," I79A, Seymour Place, Stingo Lane, Marylebone. MEDICAL. "Medicus" offers eight-ounce bottle Hydrochlorate of Hyoscin, Dr Kelly's " Notes on a Case of a Button-Hook in the Intestines," and a " Treatise on Erythro-Melalgia," for a she-goat in milk and six pairs of socks; or would give a Casella's Clinical Thermometer and a tame wallaby for a forequarter of lamb. " W. A. M.," London Hospital Coffee House, E. BICYCLE. Humber racer, all latest improvements, but hind wheel off. Will exchange for week's rest at a farmhouse. Letters to J. B., care of Bob Watson, Sporting Life. SECRETS. Octavo copy of" Mysteries Unravelled " offered for address of respectable woman who would adopt a child. Address in first instance "Peter Simple," Poste Restante, Charing Cross. Mental pabulum of this vintage doubtless satisfies the peaceful, simple mind that can MAI 75 tolerate existence in a country house, where the news of the outer world is taken down in weekly dozes like brimstone and treacle, and the narration of the most commonplace events never fail to create surprise and evoke rustic comment, but it makes a town mouse extremely tired. For instance, one evening over the dinner-table the conversation had gradually turned to matters dramatic, and from thence to disturbances during a performance. Then simple little Mrs Merridew recalled an interruption to " The Bells," goodness knows how many years before. " Do you know, " said she, " I think children at the theatre are a great nuisance. I was at the Lyceum one evening, and a woman had a baby in the pit " And the simple old Master of Foxhounds, who was the honoured guest that evening, was so overcome that the stud-groom, who was waiting at the table, had to lead him outside and bathe his temples with vinegar. One great regret I experienced in leaving the country was that my coming to town tem- porarily broke off an acquaintance I had formed with the village postmistress, a very dear and delightful girl, who let me read all the telegrams and postal cards that came through the office, 76 GAL'S GOSSIP and in many other ways afforded me endless amusement. She had a naijf& unofficial way of dealing with the customers, too, that often made me laugh till the tears ran down my cheeks and I had to hold my sides to save my stay-busk breaking. On the very day that I came away, for instance, one of the village maidens who had only recently become engaged, came into the little post-office to send off her first billet-doux to her bumpkin sweetheart, who had gone "oop to Lunnon " on some agricultural errand. "An' please, miss," she asked, as she rolled her long and deliciously healthy pink tongue all over the little adhesive stamp, "hoo long will it be afoor I get a aa'nswer to this ? " y ou incandescent gillie, where are ye steering to ? " Making myself known to her she told me her life's story. The old, old chestnut, with a long white beard on it. And she told it all with the bitter air of the cynic who has seen the whole of the elephant, has tasted every pleasure, and now only wanders about seeking a suitably dramatic death. " I've seen what I've seen. Oh my lost youth ! " she exclaimed, not knowing, of course, that Mr Henery Arthur Jones had used up that speech in The Tempter. And only to think that a few years ago, more particularly on the night of Foxhall's Grand Prix, she was caressed as the idol of the most noble routs in the most elaborately gilded saloons of the gay city, when the ridiculously wealthy Baron Stoomvaart filled the grand piano at Bignon's with priceless Steinberg cabinet, and the Marquis Mahoney steeped his unmatchable pearl shirt-stud in NOVEMBRE 15^ Kummel, and then swallowed it. And she, the companion of Dues, and the Saturday-to-Monday ruler of princes, should come down to positive penury ! Poor Millicent ! How utterly wretched is her lot ; and yet, in the great human hive we must all be, or do, something. Which reminds me, dear, of an old school- fellow of mine who has recently turned her attention to what do you think ? burglary ! nothing less, I assure you. Her name is Minnie Pettifer ; she comes of a really good family, and received an expensive education on the Continent. She had thoughts at one time of becoming a lady dentist, and in fact took the L.D.S. of the College of Surgeons, but found, on attempting to practice, that public prejudice was against her. She tried in various ways to earn her own living painted terra-cotta plaques, became amanuensis to a dermatologist, canvassed the City offices with fountain pens, made a small "silver" book in a ladies' tea-and- crumpet club but, bless you, the poor girl couldn't get bread and butter at any of them, and then it was that she conceived the idea of taking up burglary in an aesthetic and artistic way. She adopted the rational costume, and, as far as she could regulate it, "worked" only i 5 6 GAL'S GOSSIP bachelors' flats. As you may easily imagine, it came near being racy once or twice, but Minnie generally got away in time, or she says she did. One of the " tightest places " she was in was a medical students' flat, somewhere in Bloomsbury, which she broke into one moonlight night. The poor young medico, it appears, had changed his last half sovereign much earlier in the day, and had only gone to bed because he couldn't afford to go anywhere else. Halfway through his beauty sleep Minnie came in through the window and disturbed him by falling over something on the bedroom floor a mortar probably. The budding /Esculapius opened first one eye and then the other, and gazed with unmixed satisfaction on Minnie, who is a takingly handsome brunette, and must have looked prettily in her natty get-up, poising her electro-plated jimmy. " Hullo, my little Tootsie," cried the awakened sawbones, " what is it you are looking for ? " Minnie glared at him with her dark eyes as though she would freeze the very marrow in his bones, and hissed : " Your money and your valuables ! " " The first," said the young man sadly, " is absolutely tee-totally tuckered out ; as for the valuables well, there's a silver buttonhook and a gun-metal ticker, and a new Balls- Headley's NOVEMBRE 157 * Diseases of Women,' and my onyx sleeve-links, and my chum's new aseptic instruments, and all sorts of chattels lying about somewhere. Pack up everything that takes your fancy, and then give me a kiss. I haven't had a kiss for a fort- night!" What did she do? Why, just as the merry young medico started to get up she jumped out of the window it was on the first floor, too ! and if those young students are at all senti- mental, they are still keeping as a cherished memento the back width of Minnie's petunia cloth pyjamas, which caught on a nail as she went down. The outdoor billing and cooing season being now well over, poor old Mr Billinger-Jenkins the Sad Old Man with the Six Fair Daughters, as we always call him has had the big umbrella- tent in his back garden taken down and put away till next year. The carpenter who was employed to do the job found, round and about the spot where the tent stood, thirteen pearl shirt-buttons, twenty-nine half-smoked cigarettes, eleven tooth- picks, one Cromwellian shoe-buckle, three Hinde's curlers, a packet of " buck-up cachous," twenty- eight hairpins, a season-ticket for the Marguerite, three chocolate-creams, a shave check, a pencil- case, and an artificial tooth, but none of the girls 158 GAL'S GOSSIP are yet married, nor even engaged. Suitors were at one time as easy to accumulate as empty sardine-tins on the Kew foreshore, but none of them stayed in, as they say in poker. And this sets me thinking of sweet little Miriam Isaacs, than whom no Hebrew maiden ever angled harder to land a mate. Poor girl ! I heard from her only yesterday. She and her husband, who was once a Christian of some loosely organised denomination, are living on a fifth floor in Marylebone and a distant relative. He promised, it appears, at his con- (or per-) version to become a devout Jew and " keep " everything. " Every- thing," according to his present notion, consists of late hours and a hutched badger, for baiting. Poor girl ! when I called upon her this afternoon she was keeping some fast or other, during which she was not allowed to eat, wash, comb, or scratch, and the only article in her apartment, exclusive of a Kosher lard-tub she was seated upon, was a large bull spider reclining in a natural cobweb on the wall. Had a delightful long letter from dear Wilhelmina this morning ; she is staying with her marital incubus at Hastings. He has been up in Scotland shooting, it appears, and wherever it was that he stayed, they put him into a bed NOVEMBRE 159 that already had occupants, and, as Wilhelmina says, the horrid things must have been on the verge of starvation to judge by the appearance of Samuel's back. It looked, for all the world, like the fortifications and raised earthworks round Santiago de Cuba. Even now, she says, he sometimes leaves the table in the middle of a meal to agitate his punctuated body against the sharp corners of the sideboard. Terrible, is it not? She tells me, too, that there has been little or no sport this autumn over the Earl of Joceline's once estate, unless a harmless occasional game of "shove-halfpenny " between the men-in-possession can be so termed. Owing, unfortunately, to the earl's heavy losses on the turf, it is even said that the costly piano- organ, with which he is at present elevating the musical profession, is also heavily encumbered, and some gossips go as far as to hint that a first-charge has also been given on the monkey. Still, this may be the "darkest hour that comes before the dawn," for his lord- ship, as all the world knows, has marked literary abilities, and also possesses influence in the right quarter to secure him the much-sought-after post of dramatic critic to Perry s Weekly Gazette. Thus " Hope tells a flatterin' tale," as the 160 GAL'S GOSSIP aquatic young butterman remarked when the cheap hosiers told him they could rig him out in boating flannels to look like a puffick gentle- man for seventeen and nine. " Hettie " asks me if I can recommend her some cheery songs and books, now that the long evenings are commencing, and I am only too pleased to be able to do so. The back-end crop of ballads is somewhat disappointing, though Signor Herberto Campobello's "You've brought yer tea-things with yer," deserves mention : also the rondel which runs : Strolling last evenin' I chanced to meet Disy, Disy, She lives with her mother in Stamford Street, Sweet little Disy Bell. We 'ad a stroll and some drops of " Scotch ; " 'Ow many I'm sure I can't tell. Early this morning I missed me watch, An' the young lidy as well Oh CHORUS Disy, Disy, send me th' tombstone do. I'm 'arf crisy besides it's no use to you. My missis will raise a beano Sich as York Road's not yet seen o, And I'll wait hard by while the fun runs high With a funeril car for two ! With regard to the books, she should certainly NOVEMBRE 161 get " Not in Stock, or the Suicide of the Shopwalker," a very thrilling work ; also " Shocked ! or the Dead Policeman at the Drinking Fountain." Another one is " Gone Away, or the Whipper-in and the Banker's Daughter," although it is rather "advanced," perhaps, for a girl who has seen so little of the seamy side of life. The characters are drawn with a lack of force, too. I would particularise the passage where the hero is discharged from Millbank after serving seven years for a copper coal-scuttle. His penitence and determination to lead a decent, Christian life, is drawn with the pen of a Hall Caine or a Grant Allen, but when, with the view of carrying this intention into effect, he advertises in Gales Mirror for a situation as a billiard marker, the effect upon the sympathetic reader is somewhat marred. How often is it seen, dear, that the very persons who are the first to spike the domestic batteries of others, are themselves absurdly "touchy" on the question of their own conjugal rights? This is not a conundrum, but a philo- sophical reflection bid for by the earliest and latest evidences of Mabel Macmunro's versatility. I daresay you remember her at the High School at Bourneminster ? She used to relieve the L 162 GAL'S GOSSIP tedium of term time, and sink half her pocket- money by writing notes on scented, lace-edged paper to all the good-looking curates in the town, in each of which billets she used the single sentence, couched in an apparently agitated feminine hand " All is discovered fly / " She used to send off three or four of these every Saturday, and then turn up at the corres- ponding churches on the Sunday, to gloat over the spectacle of the assembled sheep, all a-wondering what had become of the shepherd. Well, she's married now, and, after leading the poor, inoffensive young fellow whom she suc- ceeded in literally roping in, a perfect dog's life for nearly a twelvemonth, she is applying for a divorce, making a former parlourmaid of their's, who slept in the top attic of their little West Hampstead bungalow, the co-respondent. She reminds me somewhat of the idiotic young doll- wife who was unusually morose at the breakfast- table one morning, and who, on being inter- rogated about it by her fool of a husband, pouted out, "It's because I had a nasty dream about you, Doady, and if I dream once more that you nave kissed another woman, I will never, never NOVEMBRE 163 speak to you again, as long as I live ; " because Mabel is relying entirely upon a single " admission of unfaithfulness " (as she calls it) of her husband's making. He was rather given to astrology, it appears, and she met him one evening going upstairs with a new fifteen-and- sixpenny telescope he had just purchased. Asking imperiously why he ascended towards the parlourmaid's private apartments, he replied that he would be "Nearer to Heaven in Jane's room ! " Of course, Mabel's decree will depend largely on what construction a common jury will put upon this sentence. He is a perfect martyr to insomnia, according to Mabel's account, but many young wives bring this on their husbands. I have known young men who, before marriage, would sweetly and placidly sleep in a boiler foundry within range of five-score of steam hammers, yet r after six months of matrimony, these same young fellows have started up in bed like frightened fawns at hearing the tinkle of a few coppers being abstracted from their trousers pockets. In a letter I had from Clare Duff this morning, I observe that she uses a fresh surname, " Stanley," and frequently refers to " the captain and I." Well ! well ! Let me see this is the 164 GAL'S GOSSIP sixth. From the contents of her letter, however, I fear she has bitten off more than she can masticate. It appears that "the captain and I" went on a visit to the country place of some recently-made, but distinctly high-toned, friends. Upon the Sunday morning, at the breakfast table, their host, whose blue china teapot to be lived up to, was " Burke's Landed Gentry," remarked grandiloquently : " Now, Captain, I don't know what your custom of a Sunday morning is, but I propose that we join the ladies at church. We've a delightful old church here, and I think you'll appreciate it." " My dear lad," blurted the captain, kindly enough, " if you wish to make me feel like a stray cat in a strange garret, rope me into a church ! Why, Great Spurgeon ! I haven't seen the inside of a church since I was christened ! " There was a painful silence, Clare says, in which one might have heard one's hair growing, and their visit came to an end the same evening. Now, dear, in the language of Vanity Fair, what should Vere do ? I fear she has an adult pachyderm, of the order elephas africamis, on her hands. I remain, dearest, yours always, MAUDE. DECEMBRE MY DARLING MADGE, I had a great mind to be very, very cross with you after keeping me so long without a letter, but as you tell me you are going to get married, I suppose I must forgive you. Only fancy, dear ! I am positively dying to know who he is and what he is like, for the only detail you vouchsafe me is that he has an income of ^400 a year. According to an old Japanese custom, of which you probably are aware, a bride's play- things are all burned on her wedding-day, typifying the end of her frivolous childhood, but as it is not usual in this country to cremate living toys, I suppose your old friend, the middle-aged widower will, like the red-skin, " lie low" temporarily, anyway. Of course you would be simply mad to give him the irrevoc- 165 166 GAL'b GOSSIP able mitten, for, with an assured income of only ^400, how can you live up to the rate of ^2000 a year if you frighten away Monsieur Juggins the J ? In affairs of this kind some women are apt to be criminally thoughtless indeed it makes me quite hot and irritable to even relate to you an example of this carelessness. It is only twenty months ago since Fanny Bobitwell's "elderly stick-in-the-mud," as she invariably calls her hubby, allowed her to let out a floor in her pretty new house in Redcliffe Gardens, and her tenant, a Colonel Moppit, died of an overdose of bi-chloride of gold last week. Of course it is very sad, but, at the same time, Fanny's excessive and hysterical grief, and the fact that she has put her youngest baby into deep mourning, is causing no end of unfavourable comment. As that horribly horsey woman, Mrs Blew-Blunt, re- marked, coming back from Gatwick Steeple- chases : " If the odds were ten to one on the lodger, what was a fair price about the two coupled ? " Of course, dear, I am always rejoiced to be of the least service to you, and will certainly tell you " what is the swagger wear for a December bride " ; but, though much depends upon local DECEMBRE 167 customs, I wouldn't ask the " dear fellow " any more rhyming riddles such as When is Mrs Colonel Gilbert Like a walnut or a filbert ? if I were you, for, though, as you say, he laughed aloud during the sermon, and was reprimanded by the vicar, he will think of it afterwards, and it may shake his childish confidence in you. As regards the colour of your dress, you can hardly make a mistake this winter. Colours bright, loud, resonant colours and the more hideous the combination the better. Bloomers are not much worn ; but then, dear, they are cut so full that the wear rarely shows. A well- known November bride went away in emerald- green accordion-pleated bloomers of mousseline- de-soie, cut en tablier, and came back with a piece of fresh, raw beef-steak over the left eye. Pray, dear, banish altogether your fearfully antique idea of giving a wedding breakfast. Fin de siecle people give receptions, which consist of petits fours, claret cup (Castle U P is good enough), tinned pineapple, and cigarettes (which they bring with them). But wedding guests especially rustic wedding guests will eat and drink anything and everything you set before 1 68 GAL'S GOSSIP them ; indeed, I have known them, where the glasses were filled too full, to inhale priceless Perrier Jonet through the nostrils, so that they had to be pounded on the back by an equerry, groom, or best man. It really is nonsensical of you, Madge, to pretend to be offended because we didn't invite you up for Fridoline's wedding : not a soul was there at the registry office save Pa, Ernest's parents (of course), Charlie, and myself. Ernest's parents, no doubt, had done all they could to dissuade him from the match at the last moment, but Charlie, as the bride's favourite brother, took the groom in hand, and showed him, out of the registrar's window, four of the " Panton Street gang" (I think they are called) who were to "put him through" in the event of his hesitating. It was very pathetic at the last moment when the father of the bridegroom-elect called Pa aside, and, in a voice broken by emotion, said, that he thought it only right, before cementing such a close relationship, to mention that he had once had a little unpleasantness, which involved the loss of his liberty for seven years ; that during that time his wife had been guilty of more than one indiscretion ; that his youngest daughter DECEMBRE 169 had been deeply wronged by the man he once called friend ; and that his only other son had to get out of the 27th Hussars and the country in a bit of a hurry for writing his colonel's and lieutenant-colonel's names on an eighteen- penny bill-stamp. But, as Pa said, in his cheery, inimitable way : " Don't mention it, cully, don't mention it ; you should see our family record !" Ernest's behaviour at the altar reminded me of the young and bibulous undergraduate, who, having to read the lessons after a very late night, was observed to be holding on to the lectern for dear life, and who subsequently explained that he would have fallen head over heels "if it hadn't been for the blessed duck " ! He was certainly well "oiled." Now they're married they get on together much better than I expected they would, although he has once or twice said that he hates positively hates sitting up and trying to keep awake through the long vigils of the night waiting for Fridoline to come home. Already there has been one outcome of the wedding breakfast (Not yet settled for, by the way, which is all the more hard on the contractor, since he told me that he had cut down his estimate to an almost profitless figure on the strength of Pa's assurance that the wedding 170 GAL'S GOSSIP guests were mostly strangers to each other, in which case about forty per cent, less is eaten than where all are well acquainted) in the shape of a betrothal between young Conrad Comeoff, of the Bays, and the still youthful widow of the late Lieutenant Lashins, who is still reported to be lost in the Soudan. It is rumoured that the charming bride-elect will leave Aldershot for town as soon as a few outstanding matters are settled with her landlady, whilst the gallant captain is overwhelmed with offers from his brother officers, who wish to have the honour of giving the lady away. So far, however, nothing has been settled including the landlady. The in- teresting little widow claims to be an old Girton girl, though I should hardly have thought it after hear- ing her render the familiar old ballad as " What are the wild waves a-saying of." One of the guests, who was a young doctor with a very small practice, did hardly right, I thought, in distribut- ing his business cards, but he gave an interesting scientific production to the effect that 1899 would be a great year for babies. He did not say how he arrived at that conclusion, but he probably felt it in the atmosphere ; science is full of marvellous manifestations. By the way, Clare Fraser has just got a baby, DECEMBRE 171 and I went yesterday to see it. It is quite too droll for anything, dressed in its little Scotch clothes, with a kilt and a horn for snuff. It is to be christened to-morrow, being two days old, and I, being chosen its godmother, had to give it a present. I bought it a charming little spittoon at Mortlock's, and a manicure set. The beautiful mother looked exceedingly interesting in a transparent white lace chemise de mtit, but I thought perhaps it was a little early to have the Brothers Griffiths, Tom Costello, and Bessie Wentworth giving a music-hall entertainment in the bedroom. No prettier picture of domesticity can be found, I think, than a sweet young mother lying in bed with her first-born ; its quiet beauty, its mute pathos, must appeal even to those who have dropped in morals to the level of the poultry yard. And Clare Fraser has at least one sister who may be included in this category. The wretched girl for she is only nineteen left her husband in order to go glimmering with her " soul's affinity," as she called a large, coarse, alcoholic corporal-of-horse in the Life Guards, with whom she now shares a single furnished apartment over a Danish butter shop in Albany Street. Her poor young husband was positively 1 72 GAL'S GOSSIP distracted about it, and he wrote her a most pathetic letter, begging her to return to him, concluding with : " This separation is absolutely insupportable, and death seems the only alterna- tive. O Irene", Irene", I cannot live without you ! " "You cannot live with me, that's a dead cert," the heartless creature wrote back, " for my only apartment at above address is so very small that, after the corporal and I are in it as we generally are when he's not on view at Whitehall in his tin waistcoat there positively wouldn't be room for you ! " Charlie generally starts his Christmassing about the Cattle Show week, by putting on his most rustic clothes, some old leather leggings, mixing hayseed in his hair, carrying a carter's whip in one hand, and going up to High Street, Islington, to be "picked up" by thieves and sharpers. He says it is really great fun. Men who have suddenly come into huge fortunes, which they wish to place at the disposal of some utter stranger with an honest face to do good with, seafaring persons who have "just picked up this ring, cap'en," and don't know what it is worth or what to do with it, and many other cunning creatures who simulate simplicity, whereas they are quite familiar with every wrinkle in the old DECEMBRE 173 pachyderm, as poor dear Socrates used to say, are deceived by Charlie's make-up into taking him in tow and buying beer for him. They drag him into tavern bars, stick large rolls of the paper obligations of the Bank of Enjoyment into his hand, and then go out into the crowd for five minutes, during which Charlie generally goes out also, but by another door, and again lingers in the street waiting for some other crook to come along, pump-handle his arm, and recognise him as honest Farmer Thongleathers. He wished me to go with him, but I have always found the odour of the Agricultural Hall on these occasions a trifle omnipotent which reminds me of a pretty idea they showed me yesterday afternoon at Thorndale's. It is a charming little silver clothes- pin, to be worn on the nose at the cattle shows and other crowded assemblies where the atmosphere is liable to become too demonstrative. Just as Charlie was ready to start, dear little Emmeline Kettlewell, who used to live just above me in Ridgmount Gardens, dropped in, looking so very chic in a vermilion serge skirt and a Liberty tea-gown, the pattern on which represented the growth and development of the vegetable-marrow plant upon a sky-blue background, and as she seemed very anxious to go with Charlie, and I i 74 GAL'S GOSSIP was half expecting a visit from Freddie Fitzgibbet, I raised no objection. At the same time, I was not prepared for them making such a very alcoholic outing of it, that they should be detained all night at the Upper Street Police Station where, Charlie assures me, they divide the sexes. And now, dear, comes the season when the pretty little Robin Riding Hoods, or whatever it is they call them, hop about in the snow the season when it should be our earnest endeavour to gladden the hearts of our fellow-creatures less favourably circumstanced than ourselves. Charlie has hit upon a splendid plan. In his clubs, and his restaurants, and divers other places, he remarks in a loud tone of voice : " Shortly before Christmas, I shall give tips to all those who have waited on me well and carefully during the year." And no one seems to get better service than he after uttering this generous statement. Waiters bring him the best dishes ; wine stewards neglect other customers to attend to him ; managers say pleasantly one day is as good for paying his bill as another ; uniformed outside-porters not only call him the smartest cabs, but carefully put him into them and tell the drivers his address all this until the time comes for the disbursement of his tips, when it transpires, that one is Hermiston DECEMBRE 175 for the Lincoln Handicap and the other Flying Fox for the Derby. This sort of prudence clearly comes from his mother's side indeed direct from his maternal uncle, who regularly starts his Christmas preparations proper somewhere about the middle of October by roundly and vehemently abusing the parcels post, the carting delivery people, and railway companies and carriers generally. Nobody quite understands why, but everybody concludes that the old boy has just cause. On Christmas Eve there comes a wire from him : " Have sent you turkey and a dozen, with my heartiest good wishes for Merry Christmas. UNCLE CHARLIE." And when subsequently informed that the package has not been seen, he only replies in a burst of indignation : " There, what did I tell you?" In this way he acquires a record reputa- tion for liberality and open-handedness at the cost of an eightpenny-halfpenny telegram. My own preparations for Christmas are of a most simple character. As Captain Jack Swisher, who was my first flame in the long, long ago, has put in an appearance in town, and persists in giving his little drawing-room enter- tainment of the Warrior's Return (which con- 176 GAL'S GOSSIP sists in his being struck with joyous, alcoholic astonishment whenever he sees me, and exclaim- ing : "WHAT, my little braided Jane!" in allusion to the way I then wore my hair, "Oh! COME TO ME ARMS!" etc., etc.) in the East Room, the Trocadero, Romano's, and, in fact, anywhere and everywhere when he feels in the humour, my preparations entirely consist of a determination to get out of town anywhere, in fact, where the captain is not. But just as intoxication is loathsome, so is total sobriety a terrible curse, especially in the society of women. Every little blemish in the belle of the evening is easily beheld by sober eyes, so that no ambitious girl can afford to forget that an ounce of old brandy will do more than a pound of pearl powder. And now, dear little cousin, I charge my glass to you. Here's the old toast. Ever yours affectionately, MAUDE. FINIS. THIS WAY OUT I SELECTION MESSRS SANDS & CO.'S CATALOGUE A PINK 'UN AND A PELICAN By A. M. B INSTEAD (" TALEPITCHER") Author of " GAL'S GOSSIP" ERNEST WELLS ("SWEARS") NOW IN ITS FOURTH LARGE EDITION PRICE 6/- A few Copies of the Large Paper Edition still remain for Sale. Price, 1, Is. net. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH. This volume, the maddest, merriest book, full of irresponsible fun and reckless frivolity. . . . Wonderful collection of reminiscences of late nights, early mornings, and riotous days, in which race-courses, deep potations, prize-fights, the Pelican Club, and all the easy fashions of Bohemia hold uproarious revel, without one touch of ill-temper or malice. . . . We take leave of the book with genuine regret. . . . But it is full of good spirits and facile bonhomie, spiced, too, with salt which, if not precisely Attic in flavour, is good, representative Bohemian. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS Continued. PALL MALL GAZETTE. This is one of the raciest books you are likely to strike. ... " Pitcher " introduces us ... to more sides of life than are dreamt of in the philosophy of Clapham, and uncommonly picturesque ones. There is the bygone racing press-room of the days of Joe Capp and of Reginald Shirley Brooks. . . . 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