ON A VERY DIFFERENT PLANE OF INterest I regard my experience of two delightful old people whom I found living, the one a mile or two on the Brindlington side of Thurswell, the other on the Broadminster side, “where the Dean lives.” The former is an old general who once commanded a regiment of Sikhs and spent fifty years in India. He is now eighty-three years of age, and has two sons with the rank of colonel, a grandson who is a captain of Sappers, and two who are lieutenants in the navy. The old man has nothing of the bristling retired general about him—not even the liver. He is of a gentle, genial nature, not very anxious to hear the latest news, and not at all eager to make his visitors acquainted with his experiences in India or his views as to the exact degree of decadence reached by “the sarvice.” He speaks in a low and an almost apologetic tone, and is interested in old Oriental china and tortoiseshell tea-caddies. One could never believe that this was the man whose sobriquet of Shire-i-Iran (Lion of Persia) was once a household word along the turbulent northwest frontier, or that he had been the most brilliant exponent of all the dash which one associates with the cavalry leader. His reputation on that long frontier was that of an Oriental equivalent of the Wild Huntsman of the German ballad. People had visions of him galloping by night at the head of his splendid Sikhs to cut off the latest fanatical insurrectionary from his supports, and then sweep him and his marauders off the face of the earth. Certainly no cavalry leader ever handled his men with that daring which he displayed—a daring that would have deserved to be called recklessness had it once failed.... And there he sat at dinner, talking in his low voice about the fluted rim of one of his tea-caddies, and explaining how it was quite possible to repair the silver stringing that beautified the top. Once I fancied I overheard him telling the person who sat by him at dinner about the native regiments—I felt sure that I heard the word “Sepoy,” and I became alert. Alas! the word that I had caught was only “tea-poy”—he was telling how he had got a finely cut glass for a deficient caddie out of an old nineteenth-century mahogany tea-poy. That was the nearest approach he made to the days of his greatness.
But I noticed with satisfaction that he partook of every dish that was offered to him—down to the marmalade pudding. At dessert he glanced down the table and said that he thought he would have an apple. “No, dear,” said his daughter, gently but firmly removing the dish beyond his reach. “You know that you are not allowed to touch apples.”
“Why, what harm will an apple do me—just one—only one apple?” he inquired, and there were tears in his voice—it had become a tremulous pipe, the tone of a child whose treat had been unjustly curtailed. “No, dear, not even one. It is for your own good: you should have an apple if it agreed with you; but it doesn't.”
“I want an apple—I can't see what harm an apple would do me,” he cried again. But his daughter was firm. It was very pathetic to witness the scene. The Lion of Persia becoming plaintive at being denied a rosy-cheeked apple. The man who, with a force of only six hundred sabres behind him, had ridden up to Mir Ali Singh with the three thousand rebels supporting him, and demanded his sword, and got it, not being able to get his apple when he had asked for it nicely, seemed to me to be a most pathetic figure. I pleaded for him as one pleads for a child in the nursery: he had been a good boy and had eaten all that had been set before him quite nicely—why might he not have an apple to make him happy?
But the daughter was inexorable. She told me that I did not know her father, while she did. An apple would be poison to him; and so the old hero was left complaining, with an occasional falsetto note, upon the restrictions of his commissariat. I am pretty sure that there was no falsetto note in any of his complaints in regard to commissariat forty years ago.
He was a noble old warrior, however, for when his daughter had, with the rest of the ladies, left us after dinner, he never put out a hand to the apple dish, though there was no man at the table who would have interfered with him had he done so; the Newtown Pippins remained blushing, but not on account of any disloyalty on his part to the duty he owed to the daughter who had his welfare at heart.
The aged lady who lives in a lovely old moated house a few miles out of Thurswell is one of the youngest people I ever met. She is the mother of two distinguished sons and the grandmother of a peeress. She takes an interest in everything that is going on in various parts of the world, and even points out the mistakes made by the leader-writers in the London papers—some of the mistakes. But she does so quite cheerfully and without any animus. She still sketches en plein air, and in her drawings there is no suggestion of the drawing-master of the early Victorians. Any elderly person who could hold a pencil and whose moral character could bear a strict investigation was accounted competent to teach drawing in those days; for drawing in those days meant nothing beyond making a fair copy of a lithograph of a cottage in a wood with a ladder leaning against a gable and a child sitting on a fence—a possible successful statesman in the future—with a dog below him. She never was so taught, she told me: she had always held out against the restrictions of the schoolroom of her young days, and had never played either the “Maiden's Prayer” or the “Battle of Prague.” Thalberg's variations on “Home Sweet Home” she had been compelled to learn. No young lady in that era of young ladies could avoid acquiring at least the skeleton of Thalberg's masterpiece: and I was glad that this particular old lady, who had once been a young lady, had mastered it; for it enabled her to give me the most delightful parody upon it that could be imagined.
Only once did I hear her speak with bitterness in referring to any one; but when she began upon this occasion, she spoke not only bitterly, but wrathfully—contemptuously as well. She was referring to the Emperor Napoleon III. in his relations with the unhappy Maximilian of Mexico. She had known the latter intimately. My own impression is that she had been in love with him—and tears were in her eyes when she talked of how he had been betrayed by the man whom she called a contemptible little cad. Sedan represented, in her way of thinking, the cordial agreement with her views by the Powers above. To hear her talk of those tragedies of more than forty years ago, as if they were the incidents of the day before yesterday, was inspiriting. I never inquired what was her age, but one afternoon when I called upon her I found that a birthday party was going on—a double party; for it was her birthday as well as her youngest grandchild's. Two fully iced cakes, with pink and white complexions, were being illuminated in the customary way, and each had been made a candelabrum of eight tapers. When I ventured to suggest that there must be an error in computation in some direction, it was the younger of the beneficiaries who explained to me that about seventy years or so ago Granny had become too old to allow of her birthday cake holding the full amount of the candles to which she was entitled, so it had been agreed that she should have only one candle for every ten years of her life. The little girl confided in me that she thought it was rather a shame to cheat poor Granny out of her rights, but of course there was no help for it: any one could see that no cake could be made large enough to accommodate, without undue crowding, eighty-one candles.
I looked at the sweet old Granny, and thought, for some reason or other, of the night of the first January of the century when I had stood listening to the tolling of the eighty-one strokes of the church bell in Devonshire, when every belfry in the kingdom announced the age of the good Queen who had gone to her rest. I wondered...
This dear lady of the eight-candle birthday cake—of which, by the bye, she partook heartily and apparently without the least misgiving—had been married at the age of seventeen, and this, she thought, was exactly the right age for a girl to marry, not, as might be supposed, because it admitted of her period of repentance being so much the longer, but simply because she considered grandchildren so interesting. She was not inclined to be tolerant over the prudent marriages of the present day, when no girl is unreasonable enough to expect a proposal before she is twenty-five, or from a man who is less than thirty-five. It almost brought me back to Shakespeare's England to hear her express such opinions. That stately old lady, Juliet's mother, as she appears in every modern production of the play, was made by the author to be something between twenty-six and twenty-seven, her daughter being some months under fourteen, but certainly forward for her age. We used to be informed by sage critics of this drama “of utter love defeated utterly” that Shakespeare made Juliet so young because it was the custom in Italy, where girls developed into womanhood at a much earlier age than in England, for a girl to marry at Juliet's time of life. It so happens, however, that early marriage was the custom in England and not in Italy in the sixteenth century. When a girl was twelve her parents looked about for a promising husband for her, and usually found one when she was thirteen.
Only a few months ago I came upon an unpublished letter, written in the beautiful Gothic hand of Queen Elizabeth, in response to the inquiry of an ambassador respecting a wife for an amiable young prince. The Queen suggested two names of highly eligible young women, and mentioned that one of them was twelve and the other thirteen!
The most flagrant example of unbridled centenarianism which I have yet come across in the course of my investigations in the neighbourhood of Thurswell was that of a lady who had won quite a literary aureole for her silver hair owing to the accident of her being actually the original “Cousin Amy” of Tennyson's “Locksley Hall.” For years she had worn this honourable distinction, and, so far as I could gather, her title to it had never been disputed. Even in the Cathedral Close of Broadminster the tradition had been accepted, and she had been pointed out to strangers, who doubtless looked at her with interest, saying, “Not really!” or “How perfectly sweet!”
I ventured to ask the prebendary who had told me that the poet had been in love with her and consequently “greatly cut up” when she married some one else—as might be inferred from some passages in the poem—what was the present age of the lady, and he assured me that she was seventy-four. She did not look it, but she really was seventy-four. I had not the heart to point out that twenty-three years had elapsed since Tennyson published his sequel—“Sixty Years After”—to his “Locksley Hall,” so that this “Cousin Amy” must be at least a centenarian if she had not died, as described in the sequel, between eighty and ninety years ago. She was, however, a nice old lady and her name was really Amy, and she had known Alfred Tennyson when she had been very young and he a middle-aged gentleman whom it was a great privilege to know.
THURSWELL IS UNDOUBTEDLY AN IDeal English village situated in the midst of an agricultural county, and far away from the unhealthy and demoralising influences of trade. It prides itself on being “select”—so does every other English village, even when it lies deep embowered among the striking scenery of a coal-mining district. But Thurswell is really “select.” A strange family may come to one of the best houses—one of the four or five that have entrance gates with lodges and carriage drives—and yet remain absolutely ignored by the older residents. Of course the shopkeepers pay the newcomers some little attention, and the ladies who collect for the various charities and the various churches are quite polite in making early calls; but the question of calling formally and leaving cards simply because the people are newcomers, requires to be thoroughly threshed out before it is followed by any active movement on the part of the senior residents. It has been called unsocial on this account; but everybody in the world—at least, everybody in Thurswell—knows that to be called unsocial is only another way of being called select The Rector must pronounce an opinion on the strangers, and—more important still—the Rector's wife. The example of the Barnaby-Granges, who have lived for centuries at the Moated Manor House, must be observed for what it is worth. It is understood that people like the Barnaby-Granges may call upon strangers out of a sense of duty; but every one knows how far astray from the path trod by the “select” a sense of duty may lead one, so that the fact of the Manor House people having called upon the newcomer is not invariably regarded as conferring upon the latter the privilege of a passport to the most representative Society at Thurswell. The strangers must wait until Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer have decided whether they are to be called on or ignored. Mrs. Lingard is the widow of a captain of Sappers, and Miss Mercer is the middle-aged daughter of a previous rector, and for years these ladies have assumed the right of veto in respect of the question of calling upon newcomers. Within the past year, however, this question, it should be mentioned, has developed certain complications, owing to the strained relations existing between the two ladies. Previously they formed a sort of vigilance committee to determine what should be done, but since the breaking off of diplomatic relations between them the poor people who had previously looked to them jointly for guidance are now compelled to consult them severally as to the course they mean to pursue, and all this takes time, and the loss of time in the etiquette of first calls may be construed into actual rudeness by sensitive people.
That is how we stand at present; and although many well-meaning persons—not invariably belonging to clerical circles—have endeavoured to bring about a rapprochement for the good of the whole community between Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer, hitherto every effort of the kind has failed.
When the particulars of the incident that brought about the friction between the two ladies are known, it will easily be understood that a restoration of the status quo ante is not to be accomplished in a moment.
It was all due to the exceptionally dry summer. People who retain only the pleasantest recollections of that season of sunlight and balmy breezes will probably find reason to modify their views respecting it when they hear how it led to the shattering of an old friendship and, incidentally, to the complication of the most important social question that can come before such a community as is represented by Thurs-well.
The facts of the matter are simple enough in their way. Each of the ladies occupies a small house of her own, fully, and not semi-detached, with a small patch of green in front and a small garden at the back; but the combined needs of front and back are not considered sufficiently great to take up all the time of a gardener working six days in the week during the summer. There is enough work, however, to take up three days of the six, with window-cleaning thrown in, in slack seasons. As the conditions of labour are identical in the case of the gardens of both ladies—only Miss Mercer throws in the washing of her pug to balance Mrs. Lingard's window-cleaning—John Bingham, the jobbing gardener of Thurswell, suggested several years ago that he should divide his time between the two gardens, and this plan, to all appearances, worked very satisfactorily in regard to every one concerned.
Only John Bingham was aware of the trouble involved in keeping both gardens on precisely the same level of “getting on”—only John Bingham was aware of the difficulty of preventing either of the ladies from seeing that anything in the garden of the other was “getting on” better than the same thing in her own patch. It might have been fancied that as they were in complete agreement respecting the necessity for a strict censorship upon the visiting lists of the neighbourhood as regards strangers, there could not possibly exist any rivalry between them on so insignificant a matter as the growth of a petunia or the campanile of a campanula; but John Bingham knew better. It had been his task year by year to minimise to the one lady his success with the garden of the other—to say a word of disparagement on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of all that he had been praising on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. But sometimes Nature is stronger even than her greatest enemy, a jobbing gardener, and so it was that when Mrs. Lingard chanced to pay a visit to Miss Mercer on a Thursday, she found the garden of the latter, just recovering from the hand of John Bingham's attention on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, obviously superior in some respects to her own, and John found his diplomatic resources quite unable to meet with the demand for an explanation when she got home. It was in vain that he tried to make her understand, what she certainly should have known already from her experience of the ministrations of John—namely, that not he, but the superior soil and aspect of Miss Mercer's herbaceous border, should be regarded accountable for the marvellous growths which had attracted her attention in the garden of her rival. His Thursday, Friday, and Saturday patron declared herself far from satisfied with such an explanation. Soil! Had she ever shown herself to be close-fisted in the matter of soil? she inquired. And as for aspect—had he not chosen the aspect of the herbaceous border at which he was now working? No, she knew very well, she affirmed, that what made a garden beautiful was loving care. She professed herself unable to understand why John should lavish all his affection upon Miss Mercer's border rather than upon her own; all that she could do was to judge by results, and, viewed from this basis, it could not but be apparent to every unprejudiced observer that he had been giving Miss Mercer's borders such loving touches as he had never bestowed upon her own: the flowers spoke for themselves.
John had heard of the Language of Flowers, but he had never mastered the elements of their speech. As a matter of fact, he took no interest in flowers or their habits. He had “dratted” them times without number for their failure to do all that the illustrated catalogues declared they would do, and now he found reason to drat those of Miss Mercer for having done much more than he had meant them to do. It was with a view to restore the balance of mediocrity between the gardens, which had been through no fault of his, disturbed by a sudden outbreak of “Blushing Brides” in Miss Mercer's parterre, that he gave some extra waterings to Mrs. Lingard's verbinas, trusting to convince her that he was a thoroughly disinterested operator in both the gardens—which was certainly a fact. But in that arid summer the response of the verbinas was but too rapid, and Miss Mercer, calling upon her friend (and rival), was shown the bed with the same pride that she had displayed when exhibiting her petunias.
She said nothing—the day was Saturday—but she perceived, with that unerring intuition which in some persons almost takes the place of genius, that petunias had been supplanted (literally) by verbinas in the affections of John Bingham.
She spent the Sunday rehearsing an interview which she had arranged in her mind to have with John Bingham when he should arrive the next day.
But Monday came, and John Bingham failed to arrive. She waited at the back entrance to the garden until ten o'clock, but still he did not appear. Then she sent a messenger to his cottage to inquire the cause of his absence. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were her days for his services, and never once had he failed her. She could not guess what was the matter. She had always regarded him as a sober man and one for whom Monday morning had no terrors. The mystery of his first failure was rendered all the more unfathomable when the tweeny maid returned saying that Mrs. Bingham had told her positive that John had gone out to work as usual that same morning, and that Mrs. Bingham had taken it for granted that he was in Miss Mercer's garden.
For a quarter of an hour Miss Mercer pondered over the whole incident, and then she suddenly put on another hat, discarding the garden specimen with which she had begun the day, and went down the road and round by the Moated Manor House to where Mrs. Lingard's villa was situated, just beyond the knoll of elms. The hall door was wide open to the morning air, and through the glass door at the farther end of the hall she distinctly saw Mrs. Lingard standing on the edge of one of the beds of the garden with John Bingham kneeling at her feet.
And this on a Monday morning!
John Bingham had actually attended morning ser-vice in the church the day before—Miss Mercer had seen him there—and yet on Monday he had broken faith with her, and now, at ten-thirty, he was engaged in planting out the contents of the capacious basket which Mrs. Lingard was doling out to him.
And Mrs. Lingard was wearing her garden hat just as if the day was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, when she was entitled to his services.
And Mrs. Lingard had also been at church the previous day and had repeated the responses in her ordinary tone of voice, and without faltering, though beyond a doubt her heart had been full of this scheme of suborning a faithful, if somewhat weak, servant from his allegiance to the mistress who had an undisputed claim to his services the next day!
Without a moment's hesitation Miss Mercer passed into the hall, opened the glass door beyond, and stood beside the guilty pair before either of them was aware of her presence. She saw that the man was planting asters—the finest aster cuttings she had ever seen.
“John Bingham, are you aware that this is Monday morning?” she said in an accusing voice, and so suddenly that a cry of surprise—it may have been with guilt—came from Mrs. Lingard, and John Bingham let drop his trowel and wiped his forehead.
“Good gracious, Lucy! Where did you drop from without warning?” cried the lady in the garden hat.
“I am addressing John Bingham, madam,” said Miss Mercer in icy tones. “And once again I ask John Bingham what he means by being here when his place should be in my garden.”
“I can easily explain, my good woman,” said Mrs. Lingard, lapsing, under the “madam” of the other, into the tone of voice she had found effective with the native servants in the West Indian island of St. Lucia when her husband had been stationed there.
“I am not addressing you, madam,” said Miss Mercer hotly: her glacial period had passed and had given place to the volcanic—the suppressed volcanic. “I wish to be informed why this man—this traitor—this—this——”
“Don't be a greater fool than you are by nature, my good creature,” said Mrs. Lingard. “But I might have known that you could be disagreeable over even such a trifle as my sending to John Bingham to assist me for an hour in planting out the asters which were only delivered this morning when they should have been here on Saturday. If I had not begged him to come to my help for a couple of hours the lot would have been spoiled. In justice to him I will say that he was very unwilling to come.”
“And what does that mean, pray?” asked Miss Mercer sneeringly.
“It means that he knew you better than I did,” responded Mrs. Lingard. “He has had more experience of your narrow-mindedness than I have had. Now, go on with your work, John. Don't mind her.”
But John did not go on with his work. He touched his forehead with the drooping aster that he held rather limply, saying, in the direction of Miss Mercer—“I can easy make up the extra however, ma'am—mortal easy, in the evenin', and so I thought or I wouldn't be here now.”
“There, let that satisfy you, make your mind easy; you'll not be defrauded of the shilling for his two hours,” said Mrs. Lingard.
“You will be good enough to dictate to your inferiors, if such exist, madam; you need not dictate to me. You may keep your John Bingham now that you have him; I have made other arrangements for the future of my garden.”
She turned with a mock courtesy. Mrs. Lingard also turned.
“Lucy Mercer, go back to your—your—your hen-run,” she cried, pointing dramatically to the place of exit. “Go on with your work, John Bingham. Mrs. Hopewell will only be too glad to take on your Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. She has a garden—a garden.”
That is the true and circumstantial account of how Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer ceased to be on speaking terms, and that is how it is that many people are becoming more hopeful of the future of Thurswell as the centre of a social neighbourhood. Each lady still arrogates to herself the right of veto in respect of the claims of any strange family to be visited on taking up their residence within reasonable visiting distance of Thurswell; but the people who formerly had been ready to accept the dictum of the two in such social matters are now beginning not only to assert their own independence of action, but even to dictate to others on all points on which they themselves had been dictated to—in no mild way—by Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer. But a mistake that was recently made by one of these immature dictators has done much to chasten their longing to take up the responsibilities attached to such a position. She had spoken with that definiteness which marks the amateur on the subject of the visiting of a certain Mrs. Judson Hyphen Marks who had taken Higham Lodge for a year, and accordingly quite a number of people left cards upon her. But suddenly the name of Judson Hyphen Marks appeared rather prominently in the columns devoted to the Law Court proceedings in the daily papers, and some curious information respecting the ménage of the Judson Hyphen Marks was brought under the notice of the people of Thurswell and, indeed, of England generally; and those who had left cards upon them consulted together as to whether it was possible or not for them to ask for their cards to be returned to them.
The general opinion that prevailed after several long discussions on this question was that no social machinery existed by which so desirable an object might be effected, and no move was made in that direction; but ever afterward the dictation of the feeble amateur who thought to take the social reins out of the hands of Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer when it was found that they were pulling them in opposite directions, threatening to upset the social apple-cart, was received for what it was worth, not for what it claimed to be worth.
The instance just recorded of horticulture playing a prominent part in the breaking up of friendships is by no means unique. When one comes to think of it, one cannot be surprised that as the earliest serious quarrel recorded in the history of the world was over a purely horticultural question—namely, whether or not the qualities of beneficent nutrition attributed to a certain fruit had been accurately analysed—there should be many differences of opinion among the best of friends on the same subject.
It was my old gardener—not-the oldest of all, but the second oldest—who told me how it was that the annual prize given by the Moated Manor House people for the best floral display of the cottage order was very nearly withdrawn for ever, owing to the bad blood that was made by the award, no matter in what direction it was made. It seemed that the prize-winner invariably found himself compelled to accept the challenge to fight of all the disappointed aspirants to the prize, and before nightfall there was a general distribution of black eyes and front teeth; in some cases both got inextricably mixed up, and this was no pleasure to anybody, my informant assured me, and the wives of the men who were keen to compete for the prize discouraged them from it, with the warning that if they continued to spend their time over the cultivation of the blooms they might some day actually find themselves awarded the prize. That warning, founded as it was upon sound sense and reason, was beginning to produce its effects upon the better class of flower growers; but there were still a number of young fellows who went into training at the punch ball at the Church Institute club-room the day they sowed their flower seeds, and so were at the top of their form when the award was made in the early autumn, so that if one of them got the prize he thought if a pity that his training and practice at the punch ball should be wasted, and thus he was ready to prove to all disputants that the prize had gone to the best man; while it was only to be expected that those who had only had the cold consolation of honorary mention were only too ready to dispute his ability to maintain such an attitude for any length of time.
The result of this joint cultivation of bulbs and biceps was not just what the givers of the prize intended to achieve, and twice, when there had been arrests and summonses to petty sessions, a formal warning was issued to all whom it might concern that if the connection between the two cultures were not severed, the prize, which was only meant for success in the one, would be withdrawn.
Happily, however, it was not found necessary to enforce this ultimatum, and a modus vivendi, founded upon one which had been understood to work very satisfactorily in the case of the Chrysanthemum Society of Mallingham, was adopted, and up to the present this had made for peace. The annual Battle of Flowers at Thurswell has become a thing of the past, and “Midge” Purcell, the ex-lightweight champion of the county, who rents the Lion and Lamb Inn, and to whom the candidates for the prize applied for advice on the biceps side of the joint contest, affirms with regret that Englishmen are becoming degenerate.
It was a peace-loving florist at Mallingham, the honorary secretary to the Chrysanthemum Society, who explained the system upon which his committee had agreed to make their awards, and urged its adoption by the Thurswell people. Its operation was not intricate. Its fundamental principle may best be defined on the analogy of the rotation of crops as the rotation of awards. Like the award of the Garter, merit had nothing to do with its scheme. The prizes were awarded strictly in turn to the professional competitors—the others did not matter. Mr. Johnson got the chrysanthemum cup one year, Mr. Thompson the medal for the best twelve cut lilies, Mr. Cardwell the Malmaison salver, and Mr. Prior the vase for the best display of greenhouse ferns. The next year it was arranged that the vase should go to Mr. Johnson, the salver to Mr. Thompson, and so forth. By the adoption of this admirable plan the judges were saved a large amount of trouble, and there never was any friction between the competitors, for it was understood that if it was Prior's year for the lily medal, but he had a liking for any other prize, he could nearly always negotiate an exchange with the man whose turn had come for the award that he fancied. This principle of give and take, live and let live, had made the Mallingham Society one of the most popular floricultural organisations in the country, and its adoption by the Thurswell Committee of the Manor House prize brought about, as has been said, an entire cessation of that ill-feeling which led to the use of language that was certainly not the language of flowers, and to many-discreditable scenes even when there were no arrests made. The cause of peace has triumphed, though some people say that floriculture languishes through the lack of heal thy rivalry; for when every man is certain of the prize when his turn comes for it, he does not trouble about the flowers. There may be something in this suggestion.
Taking one consideration with another, it really does seem a pity that the rotation system is not more widely accepted by those societies which have been established for the encouragement of sundry excellent objects, such as the breeding of bull-dogs (for symbolic purposes), of pugs (of no use to any one when they are bred), of pigs (of which the prize-winner is invariably the most uneatable), and of pets (in various forms). In our neighbourhood such organisations are to be numbered by the dozen, and after every prize distribution the air is murmurous with the complaints of disappointed competitors. It was a shrewd farmer who suggested to me the principle on which the awards are made at our local dog show. “The reason why there's so much grumbling, sir, is because the judges look at the wrong end of the leash,” he said, and I understood what he meant.
I know that the impression is very general that the pedigree of the exhibitor rather than that of the exhibit influences the local judges.
But I must confess that I could not bring myself to sympathise with one of our new residents who, after living in London all his life, bought Harley Croft House, a 40 h.p. motor-car and six pairs of gaiters, and set up as a country gentleman. It must be acknowledged that at times he looked a colourable imitation of one. He hoped that his starting of the breeding of cattle and fowl would consolidate his position. But his researches in the literature of both subjects at the same time resulted in some confusion. Of course his pointing out some drab-tinted cows to the steward of the Manor and alluding to them definitely as Buff Orpingtons was a slip that any one might make; but to hope to win sympathy for a wrong done to him by the judges at the poultry show by affirming that his bantam cock was really twice the size of the one to which the prize had been awarded was, I think, a strategical mistake of a flagrant character.
Much more in the spirit of the country gentleman was the remark made to me by a neighbour who hunts five days a week in winter and talks about hunting seven days a week in the summer, on a purely literary subject. He had been at the Military Tournament in London the year that The Merchant of Venice was being played at Her Majesty's Theatre, and he confided in me that he thought on the whole it was very fine indeed, though for his part he enjoyed The Runaway Girl at the Gaiety more fully. He could not quite understand the point of some of the jokes in The Merchant of Venice, he said. For instance, he should like to know what there was to laugh at in the chap's saying to the Jew that some one had shown him a turquoise which he had bought from the Jew's daughter for a monkey. Any one who knew anything about precious stones knew that to pay a monkey for a single turquoise, even though set in an 18-carat ring, was to pay a fair price. Of course you couldn't get much of a diamond ring for twenty-five pounds; but you could get a first-rate turquoise for half the money. But there were some people, he knew, who would laugh at any joke if they were only told it was in a play of Shakespeare's. I agreed with him, and laughed.
That was not the sort of man who would make a fool of himself over Buff Orpingtons or cherish his bantams in proportion to their size and weight.
IT WAS THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE second generation of one of the shirt-sleeves families of the midlands who took a lease of Nethershire Castle, the finest mansion in our neighbourhood. The Court of Chancery had decreed that it might be let for a term of years, the length of which was fixed by certain Commissioners in Lunacy, for Sir Ralph Richards had been in the care of a specialist in mental diseases for a long time, and it was understood that there were little hopes of his ever being able to enjoy his own again. Higgins was the name of the lessee from the north, and with his wife and family he had occupied the Castle for close upon ten years. He was a simple enough man as regards his tastes: he could not appreciate the beauty of the cedar wood ceiling of the banqueting hall or the Renaissance carved panels of the library. The splendid Gainsboroughs and Romneys of the Long Gallery made no more appeal to him than did the Van Dycks in the great hall or the three Fragonards of the drawing-room. He was quite satisfied with the reputation of having sufficient money to pay for the privilege of living in the midst of these masterpieces and of keeping about an acre and a half of roof in good repair: he knew more about the advantages of close-fitting slates than of the methods of eighteenth-century English artists or of fifteenth-century Italian carvers.
His wife, however, valued to the full the artistic privileges of living in so splendid a house, and she was not one to shrink before the searching glances of Frances Anne, the wife of the first baronet of the house of Richards, as painted by Sir Joshua, sacrificing to Venus, or to assume that Lady Elizabeth had turned aside from making a libation to Hymen—Hymen demanded quite as many sacrifices as Venus on eighteenth-century canvases—to ask her what right she had to sit in the seats of the Richards of Nethershire Castle. She knew what her husband paid in the way of rent, and she felt that the same was large enough to avert from her any indignant look that a sentimentalist might imagine on the face of the most malevolent family portrait. In fact, Mrs. Higgins considered the sum large enough to allow of her assuming the attitude of the patroness in regard to the pictures: she had actually been heard by a friend of the Richards to express a critical opinion respecting the pose of the daughter of the second baronet—the one who became well known as the Countess of Avonwater—in Romney's picture of her as Circe, and to suggest that the charger of Lieut.-Colonel Jack Churchill Richards—he was called after his father's great commander—in the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller was scarcely large enough to make a polo pony. It was, however, clearly understood that these criticisms were offered by the lady only by way of establishing her rights over the contents of the mansion so long as her husband paid so handsomely as he did for the privilege of such an entourage. She had probably heard of certain rights-of-way being maintained by a formal walking over the ground to which they referred, by the claimant, once a year, and so she thought it well to walk over the pictures, so to speak, now and again to show that she understood the rights of her position. She really felt the greatest pride in everything, and in the course of a few years her feeling in regard to them was that of a conscientious descendant from illustrious ancestors. She was much prouder of them than the modern Major-General in Patience was of his ancestors acquired by purchase.
A visit that I paid to the Castle in the temporary possession of the family of Higgins was illuminating. I went not because I had ever met either Mr. or Mrs. Higgins, but because I was acquainted with Miss Richards, a charming old lady who was the sister of the unhappy baronet, and had been born in the Castle and lived there for twenty-five or thirty years, only leaving for the dower-house on the death of her mother.
Miss Richards was on the friendliest terms with the tenants of her old home, and I could see that they were pleased to welcome all the friends whom she might bring with her to see the wonders of the Castle. But it was Mrs. Higgins who “did the honours” of the picture gallery, when we went thitherward after tea one lovely afternoon in sum mer shortly after I had come to Thurswell. It was Mrs. Higgins who assumed the rôle of Cicerone and told me all about the pictures, and gave me duodecimo biographies of the originals with all the familiarity that one would expect only from a member of the family. Miss Richards stood by smiling quite pleasantly, even when Mrs. Higgins looked at her, saying something about a pink-coated Captain Richards by Raeburn, and I was disposed to laugh at the comedy of Mrs. Higgins of Lancashire telling Miss Richards of Nethershire something confidential about Captain Richards, her great-granduncle!
I admired the picture, but not nearly so much as I did the coolness of Mrs. Higgins and the kindly toleration of Miss Richards.
“And this is the portrait by Thornhill of Miss Esther Richards, who afterwards married General Forster, who took part in the American War, and to avenge the murder of poor André—he called it murder, though, of course, some people think that André was really a spy,” said Mrs. Higgins. “Doesn't it seem strange to think of that sweet little girl-”
“Oh, pardon me,” cried Miss Richards, “you are not quite right. That is Lotitia Richards by North-cote. She married Sir Charles Brewster, who was killed at Waterloo.”
“Oh no,” said the tenant, “you are quite wrong. I assure you that this is Esther. Your Lotitia is the girl in Oriental costume in the library.”
“My dear Mrs. Higgins, how could I possibly be mistaken over such a matter?” said Miss Richards. “My dear mother told me how Letty Brewster came here one day when she was eighty-two years of age, and how pathetic it was to see her stand before her own picture done when a girl; but my mother said that really some of the charm of the picture—she had lovely eyes, as you can see—was apparent on the face of the dear old lady of eighty-two.”
“I am afraid that you are mixing this picture with another,” said Mrs. Higgins quite good-naturedly.
And then Miss Richards gave a laugh.
“We had better pass this picture and look at one which could not possibly be mixed up with another,” she said. “I hope you will agree with me in believing that this is Hoppner's Lady Charlotte Richards, Mrs. Higgins.”
“Oh yes, you are quite right about that one,” said Mrs. Higgins as graciously as a governess commending the right answer given by an errant pupil. “Oh yes, that is Lady Charlotte. I believe she became pious and wrote a hymn. You have heard that, I suppose, Miss Richards?”
“I do believe I did,” replied Miss Richards. “In fact, I have the tiny volume of hymns which she wrote. She was under the influence of Lady Huntingdon.”
But Mrs. Higgins clearly took very little interest in Lady Huntingdon, and she went down the gallery making mistake after mistake; but Miss Richards never attempted to correct her—only once she caught my eye. Mrs. Higgins had attributed the Master Richards of Lawrence to Sir Peter Lely!
We were far away from the Castle before we had our laugh.
“Wasn't it really funny?” said Miss Richards.
“I think that you must be the most even-tempered person in the county, if not in all England,” said I.
The friendly relations existing between the two ladies were not at all changed by the persistent patronage of the picture gallery by the one who was the tenant, and Mrs. Higgins was always ready to offer a hearty welcome to any of Miss Richards' friends and to do the honours of the Castle. I did not, however, trespass upon her hospitality a second time.
A year or two later I met a curious sort of gentleman who bore the same name as that of a family of considerable importance—county importance, I should say, for outside a ten-mile radius they are, as is usually the case, absolute nonentities. I had heard some say, however, that the family grounds included a rather wonderful fountain which I thought I should like to see. I asked the man if he was any relation to the family, and he replied, brightening up wonderfully, that they were his cousins.
“I believe they have a nice place,” said I. “Isn't there a fountain that came from the Villa Borghese? I am greatly interested in that sort of thing.”
“You must mean the one with the mermaids,” said he.
“I dare say that is the one,” said I.
“If you go in for things like that you should certainly see it,” he cried. “Let me see how I can manage it.”
“You are very kind,” said I. “But I could not think of bothering you in the matter. I dare say that some day I shall have a chance——”
“I have it,” he cried. “The family are going away for a fortnight at Easter, and when they are gone I could easily show you over the grounds. I'll just make sure of the day they leave, so that there may be no mistake.”
In spite of a promise of such lavish hospitality, I resisted the temptation of being shown over the grounds in the way that was proposed: the fact being that I had no confidence in my own ability to act the part of the housekeeper's nephew or the second footman's uncle who are admitted to the great house when the family are away.
I trust, however, that I convinced the enterprising cousin of the great house that I fully appreciated his spirited offer to allow me a peep at the Borghese fountain through a chink in the back door, as it were.
I learned subsequently that the great family started in a tannery in Mallingham a hundred and twenty years ago. It was no wonder that any one in my station of life could only be expected to approach their demesne by a back way.