This was the day appointed, after considerable discussion, for our
visit to London, and at an early hour Frederick and I were ready for
the journey. Frederick, who is tending slowly, as it seems to me,
towards an as yet sufficiently remote ninth birthday, had been
vigorously and successfully scrubbed till he shone with an unwonted
absence of grime; his hair had been temporarily battened down; his
Eton collar was speckless, and his knickerbocker suit, while not
aggressively new, was appropriate and free from visible rents. I
cannot say he was impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, but he
was eager and fully determined to purchase as many stamps as could be
secured for the generous prize of money bestowed upon him by a lady
who had observed his progress in the study of Nature--beetles, moths,
tadpoles and the like--and had noted his ever-growing passion for
postage-stamps.
London he looked upon as one gigantic repository of stamps. I spoke to
him of Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Column and the Landseer Lions.
He replied by informing me that there was a certain issue of Mauritius
which was valued at L1,200. "If," he said, "I could get that some day
I shouldn't want to collect any more."
"It seems," I said, "a lot of money to pay for a small piece of
paper."
"Yes," he agreed, "it is; but perhaps I could get it cheap in some old
shop which didn't know much about it."
I then tried to divert his attention to the prospect of having
luncheon with me at the Rhadamanthus Club, but he begged me not to
interrupt him, as he was endeavouring to calculate how many years it
would take him to get together the sum if he could manage to save
two-pence a week out of his pocket-money. After a short mental
struggle, however, he gave it up and banished the blue Mauritius, or
whatever it is, from his ambitions and his conversation.
Before we started Francesca addressed a few earnest words to me about
the proper care of a boy in London.
"Be sure," she said, "to see that he keeps his hands clean. I should
hate to think that he was wandering about Piccadilly and Pall Mall
with dirty hands."
"He'll have to wander," I said, "with such hands as Nature provides
for him. No little boy can ever keep his hands clean anywhere for more
than half a minute at a stretch."
"But you might give him an occasional wash, you know."
"I will do everything," I said, "that may become a father, short of
carrying about a wash-hand basin and a jug of water and a piece of
soap and a towel through Piccadilly and Pall Mall."
"And his hair," she said,--"you'll not let it got too untidy, will
you?"
"I'll brush it when I can," I said; "but you must remember that a
little boy without a Catherine-wheel of hair on the back of his head
is only fit for a museum. I must insist on his keeping his
Catherine-wheel substantially intact."
Well, at last we got off in the train on our adventure, I with a
morning paper, and Frederick deep in a stamp-catalogue, from which he
occasionally brought forth things old and new. In due time we reached
our destination and stood triumphant in the stamp-shop. It was not a
large shop, but it was a rich shop, owning countless valuable
varieties, and Frederick, whose hands were now of the subfuse hue
which Cambridge insists on for the garments of her candidates, was
soon engaged in an animated discussion with the affable and amused
proprietor. At last the five shillings were exhausted and the deal was
complete, the last item consisting of a perfectly terrific set of
Gaboon stamps, each decorated with the fuzzy head of a spear-bearing
native warrior. It speaks volumes for the power and courage of our
French allies that they should have been able to overcome these savage
and formidable tribesmen, and reduce them to the order that is implied
by the existence of a post-office and the possession of stamps.
We now found that we had about forty minutes to spare. It is hardly
necessary to say that, being in the immediate neighbourhood of the
Strand, we devoted the time to a Cinema. The change from the Gaboon
and its truculent inhabitants to a highly sentimentalised
fishing-village was something of a wrench, but Frederick, clutching
his purchases and his catalogue as if his life depended on stamps, was
equal to it. He bore without flinching the storms and the wrecks, and
the bodies of drowned men tossed upon the shore. Nor did he audibly
disapprove when one fisherman, rescued from death, lost his memory for
many years, and eventually regained it in extreme old age amid the
rejoicings of his relatives and neighbours.
Thence we passed by a happy change to the detached and melancholy
malice of Mr. CHARLES CHAPLIN, of whom I can now say, _Vidi tantum_.
Mr. CHAPLIN'S victim on this occasion was a well-dressed foreign
gentleman of perfect manners but fiery temper, who was compelled to
suffer a series of dreadful indignities. We left him struggling
silently but furiously against an adhesive lobster salad which Mr.
CHAPLIN had, in an absent-minded moment, plastered over his face.
We now went on to the Rhadamanthus. Here the rite of washing and
brushing was duly performed, Frederick remarking with obvious regret
that if it had only been on the Cinema he would have had to throw the
soap at me and splash the water in my face. "But," he added, "I shall
be able to do it to Alice when I get home." He was not at all
overwhelmed by the marble and gilded splendours of our palace, but sat
himself down to luncheon as if he had an immemorial right to be there.
General Wilbraham (in khaki), Mr. Justice Black, and Mr. Trevor, the
eminent publisher, kind old gentlemen, my friends and contemporaries,
came up to us and were introduced to the little boy and smiled at him
and patted his head, where the indomitable Catherine-wheel still
whirled in triumph, and all declared that it was hardly tolerable in
another to be so young, and asked him what it felt like, and said that
growing up was the great mistake.
And then a strange thing happened. The luncheon-room suddenly became a
hall filled with boys. The General and the Judge and the Publisher
dwindled and changed. The long-lost hair came back to their heads in
great untidy tufts; they put on Eton jackets and collars and grubby
hands. In fact, they were little boys again; and Master Wilbraham said
he was keeping _Cave_, and Master Black said something was a regular
chouse, and Master Trevor declared violently that somebody was a sneak
and that somebody else must have tweaks for new clothes. It lasted for
a moment, and then, as with a puff of air, it all changed back, and we
were again in the luncheon-room of the club, four time-worn veterans
and one eager little boy tightly grasping a catalogue of stamps.
R. C. L.
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[Illustration: _Subaltern (proudly, as devastating motor-cyclist
dashes by)._ "ONE OF 'OURS.'"]
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