AUGUSTUS CARP, ESQ.
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[Illustration:
_Myself at the age of 21 from a photograph now in the possession of
the Reverend Simeon Whey_
]
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AUGUSTUS CARP, ESQ.
BY HIMSELF
BEING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
A REALLY GOOD MAN
With
Illustrations by
ROBIN
BOSTON & NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1924
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Printed in Great Britain
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DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR FATHER
AUGUSTUS CARP
OF CAMBERWELL
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
No apology for writing this book. An 1
imperative duty under present
conditions. Description of my parents
and their personal appearances.
Description of Mon Repos, Angela
Gardens. Long anxiety prior to my
birth. Intense joy when at last this
takes place. My father’s decision as
to my Xtian name. Early selection of
my first godfather
CHAPTER II
Trials of my infancy. Varieties of 9
indigestion. I suffer from a local
erythema. Instance of my father’s
unselfishness. Difficulty in providing
a second godfather. Unexpected
solution of the problem. The ceremony
of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it
culpable carelessness? My father
transfers his worship to St.
James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye
CHAPTER III
My parents’ studies in the upbringing of 18
children. A successful instance of
non-vaccination. Further example of my
father’s consideration for others. My
mother’s ill-health. My parents engage
a charwoman. Her appearance and
character. Physical characteristics of
her son. Deplorable social result of
the war. Continued presumption of
charwoman’s son. I rebuff him.
Affection for grey rabbit. Charwoman’s
son’s cannon and the use made of it by
him. Scenes of violence, and
intervention of my father.
Intervention of charwoman. A lethargic
vicar. Was he also immoral? My father
transfers his worship to St.
James-the-Least-of-All
CHAPTER IV
Further years of boyhood and additional 30
crosses. Progress in study and music.
I excel at the game of Nuts in May. I
am to go to Hopkinson House School.
But Providence again intervenes. I
become a victim of the ring-worm.
Devastating effect of an ointment. Mr.
Balfour Whey and his sons. A brutal
County Court judge. But my father
obtains damages
CHAPTER V
First experiences at Hopkinson House 46
School. It is amongst the masters that
I hope to find spiritual
companionship. I do not do so. Apology
of Mr. Muglington. I am struck by a
football. Subsequent apology of Mr.
Beerthorpe. Degraded habits of my
fellow-scholars. A fearful discovery
and its sequel. Amazing ineptitude of
Mr. Lorton. Concerted assault upon my
person. I am rescued by my father, who
procures a public apology
CHAPTER VI
Reasons for remaining at Hopkinson House 60
School. I pass from boyhood to early
young manhood. Expeditions both urban
and rural in the company of my dear
father. An excellent and little-known
diversion. Youthful adventures by sea
and land. But what is to be my career
on leaving school? Various
alternatives prayerfully considered. A
vision is vouchsafed to us by
Providence. A commercial Xtian. My
first razor
CHAPTER VII
A further vision is vouchsafed to us by 73
Providence. Mr. Chrysostom Lorton and
the sources of his wealth. The debt
owed to me by Mr. Septimus Lorton.
Interview with Mr. and Mrs. Septimus
Lorton. Mr. Septimus Lorton’s
disgraceful attitude. My father is
compelled to be frank with him. What I
discovered in Greenwich Park
CHAPTER VIII
Second interview with Mr. Septimus 89
Lorton. But now the tables are turned.
A pitiful exhibition. My father
demands guarantees. He will write a
letter to Mrs. Chrysostom Lorton. My
father’s ordeal. When it was dark
CHAPTER IX
Effect upon my father of his disclosure. 95
My Xtian confidence in journeying to
Enfield. Paternoster Towers and its
mistress. Unfortunate detachment of my
posterior trouser-buttons. Triumphant
success of my interview. A kindly
parlourmaid and her male friend. I
secure a position under Mr. Chrysostom
Lorton. Melancholy death of Silas Whey
CHAPTER X
Precautionary measures on entering 111
commercial life. I join the _N.S.L._
and the _S.P.S.D.T._ A crying need in
the conduct of prayer-meetings. I join
the _A.D.S.U._ Personal appearance of
Ezekiel Stool. Personal appearance of
his five sisters. Predicament of
Ezekiel Stool on the fifth of
November. A timely instance of
presence of mind. I am invited to a
meal at the Stools’ residence. A
foreshadowing of sinister events
CHAPTER XI
Design for my grandfather’s tomb. Death 125
and interment of Mrs. Emily Smith and
the aunt that had stood with my
mother’s mother at the bottom of the
stairs. Effect upon my father’s
health. Alexander Carkeek and his
sons. Arrival home from the Stools.
First tidings of the new lectern. My
father’s interview with the vicar.
Curious instance of transposition of
consonants. My father rehearses his
denunciation. Arrival of Simeon Whey.
My father repeats his denunciation
CHAPTER XII
Breakfast finds us calm but grave. My 144
mother is allowed to accompany us to
church. My father’s clothing and
general demeanour. Remarks of Simeon
Whey on my father’s hat. First
impressions of the new lectern.
Unmistakable evidences of guilt. The
vicar’s feeble apologia. A devilish
device and its disastrous results. I
race with Corkran for half-a-crown. My
poor father is three times dropped
CHAPTER XIII
Description of the injuries sustained by 158
my father. A supremely difficult
medical problem. Legal assistance of
Mr. Balfour Whey. Infamous decisions
and public comments. A quiet church
and obliging clergy. Surprising
character-growth of Ezekiel. A
distasteful proposition generously put
forward. Disgusting behaviour of a
show-room manager
CHAPTER XIV
Person and character of Mr. Archibald 170
Maidstone. Irreverent attitude towards
the firm’s publications. Would-be
laxity of two constables. Their tardy
performance of an obvious duty.
Deplorable condition of my Sunday
trousers. Their effect on Miss
Botterill and Mr. Chrysostom Lorton.
The arrival and influence of the
Reverend Eugene Cake. Mr. Maidstone is
dismissed and I succeed him. Complete
discomfiture of his three elder
children
CHAPTER XV
Happy years. A typical day. Simeon Whey 185
is at last ordained. His first sermon
at St. Sepulchre’s, Balham. Intensive
campaign of the _A.D.S.U._ I meet Miss
Moonbeam and call her Mary. Affecting
appeal not to leave her in darkness. I
promise not to do so. A face to lean
on. Will I come again? Adventure on
the stage of the Empresses Theatre
CHAPTER XVI
Disappointing attitude of Ezekiel. 204
Suggested nuptials of Miss Moonbeam.
An occasion for tact and postponement.
I am obliged to write a letter.
Ezekiel accompanies me to the
Empresses Theatre. We are a little
taken back by the numbers to be
rescued. An apparently delightful
beverage. I address Miss Moonbeam’s
friends on the subject of temperance.
Ezekiel addresses them on the evils of
the drama. We arrange a meeting.
Description of meeting
CHAPTER XVII
Profound depression subsequent to 234
port-poisoning. An iniquitous plot and
its consequences. Insubordination of
Miss Botterill. I retire from the firm
of Mr. Chrysostom Lorton. A crushing
rejoinder and its repetition. Second
journey to Enfield. Transformation of
Mrs. Chrysostom’s boudoir. Unexpected
repentance of Mrs. Chrysostom.
Unfortunate results of this for
myself. Fruitless termination of
interview
CHAPTER XVIII
Physical reaction following my interview 252
with Mrs. Chrysostom. Reception of a
wreath from the Maidstones. Moving
excerpt from Simeon’s diary. I decide
to marry one of Ezekiel’s sisters.
Interview with Ezekiel and his
deplorable language. Tact is selected
to become my bride. Tragic return to
Mon Repos. I fall unconscious,
parallel to my father
CHAPTER XIX
Commencement of my life’s afternoon. My 264
father’s eight sisters-in-law return
to Wales. Astounding attitude of my
mother. Physical effect thereof on
myself. I move to Stoke Newington.
Further parochial activities. Simeon
Whey obtains a living. I move to
Hornsey and become a Churchwarden.
Complete decline of Ezekiel Stool.
Birth of my son. A happy augury
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
page
MYSELF AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE _Frontispiece_
(_From a photograph now in the
possession of the Reverend Simeon
Whey._)
MY DEAR FATHER IN HIS PRIME 28
(_Taken from a group of sidesmen of St.
James-the-Less._)
FROM A PORTRAIT OF THE AUNT WHO STOOD 40
WITH MY MOTHER’S MOTHER AT THE FOOT OF
THE STAIRS
MR. CHRYSOSTOM LORTON 108
ALEXANDER CARKEEK AND HIS TWO SONS 130
EZEKIEL STOOL 168
(_Drawn from a portrait once in the
possession of the_ A.D.S.U.)
THE REV. SIMEON WHEY 192
(_From a photograph in my possession._)
THE TWIN SISTERS OF EZEKIEL STOOL 256
(_The right-hand one became my wife._)
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CHAPTER I
No apology for writing this book. An imperative duty under present
conditions. Description of my parents and their personal
appearances. Description of Mon Repos, Angela Gardens. Long anxiety
prior to my birth. Intense joy when at last this takes place. My
father’s decision as to my Xtian name. Early selection of my first
godfather.
IT is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to
preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely
the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary. In
an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down
or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily
reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls
smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature
women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece
bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer
the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed—then it is
obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher
example before the world.
For some time—I am now forty-seven—I had been feeling this with
increasing urgency. And when not only my wife and her four sisters, but
the vicar of my parish, the Reverend Simeon Whey, approached me with the
same suggestion, I felt that delay would amount to sin. That sin, by
many persons, is now lightly regarded, I am, of course, only too well
aware. That its very existence is denied by others is a fact equally
familiar to me. But I am not one of them. On every ground I am an
unflinching opponent of sin. I have continually rebuked it in others. I
have strictly refrained from it in myself. And for that reason alone I
have deemed it incumbent upon me to issue this volume.
A glance at the frontispiece will show me as I appeared at the age of
twenty-one. But I propose in the first instance to deal with my earliest
surroundings and the influence exerted upon me by my father. Believing
as I do that every man (and to a lesser extent every woman) is almost
entirely the product of his or her personal endeavours, I cannot
pretend, of course, to attach much importance to merely paternal
influence. Nevertheless in the lives of each one of us it undoubtedly
plays a certain part. And although my father had numerous faults, as I
afterwards discovered and was able to point out to him, he yet brought
to bear on me the full force of a frequently noble character.
That such was his duty I do not of course deny. But duty well done is
rare enough to deserve a tribute. And in days such as these, when
fatherhood is so lightly regarded, and is so frequently, indeed,
accidental, too much attention can surely not be given to so opposite an
instance.
At the time of my birth, then, and until his death, my father was a
civic official in a responsible position, being a collector of
outstanding accounts for the Consolidated Water Board. In addition, he
was one of the most respected and trustworthy agents of the Durham and
West Hartlepool Fire and Burglary Insurance Company, a sidesman of the
Church of St. James-the-Less in Camberwell, and the tenant of Mon Repos,
Angela Gardens. This was one of some thirty-six admirably conceived
houses of a similar and richly ornamented architecture, the front door
of each being flanked and surmounted by diamond-shaped panes of blue and
vermilion glass; and though it was true that this particular house had
been named by the landlord in a foreign tongue, it must not be assumed
that this nomenclature in any way met with my father’s approval. On the
contrary, he had not only protested, but such was his distrust of French
morality that he had always insisted, both for himself and others, upon
a strictly English pronunciation.
Somewhat under lower middle height, my father, even as a boy, had been
inclined to corpulence, a characteristic, inherited by myself, that he
succeeded in retaining to the end of his life. Nor did he ever lose—or
not to any marked extent—either the abundant hair that grew upon his
scalp, his glossy and luxurious moustache, or his extraordinarily
powerful voice. This was a deep bass that in moments of emotion became
suddenly converted into a high falsetto, and he never hesitated, in a
cause that he deemed righteous, to employ it to its full capacity.
Always highly coloured, and the fortunate possessor of an exceptionally
large and well-modelled nose, my father’s eyes were of a singularly
pale, unwinking blue, while in his massive ears, with their boldly
outstanding rims, resided the rare faculty of independent motion.
My mother, on the other hand, presented hardly a feature that could, in
the strictest sense, have been called beautiful, although she was
somewhat taller than my father, with eyes that were similar in their
shade of blue. Like my father’s, too, her nose was large, but it had
been built on lines that were altogether weaker, and the slightly
reddish down upon her upper lip might even by some people have been
considered a disfigurement. She had inherited, however, together with
five hundred pounds, an apparently gentle disposition, and was a scion
or scioness of the Walworth Road branch of the great family of Robinson.
Herself the eldest of the nine daughters of Mortimer Robinson, a
well-known provision merchant, my father had claimed relationship for
her, albeit unsuccessfully, with Peter Robinson of Oxford Street, while
he used half humorously to assert her connection with the fictional
character known as Robinson Crusoe. Clean in her habits, quiet about the
house, and invariably obedient to his slightest wish, he had very seldom
indeed, as he often told me, seriously regretted his choice of a wife.
With sufficient capital, therefore, not only to furnish his house, but
to pay its first year’s rent and establish an emergency fund, my father
might well have been supposed by an ignorant observer to be free from
every anxiety. Such was not the case, however, and he was obliged,
almost immediately, to face one of the sternest ordeals of his married
life. Ardently desiring increase, it was not for nine and a half months
that Providence saw fit to answer his prayers, and as week succeeded
week and the cradle still remained empty, only his unfaltering faith
saved him from despair. But the hour came at last, and so vividly has my
father described it to me that I have long since shared its triumphant
joy.
Born at half-past three on a February morning, the world having been
decked with a slight snow-fall, it was then that my mother’s aunt, Mrs.
Emily Smith, opened the bedroom door and emerged on the landing. My
father had gone outside to lean over the gate, and was still leaning
there when she opened the door, but my mother’s mother, with another of
my mother’s aunts, were standing with bowed heads at the foot of the
stairs. Prone in the parlour, and stretched in uneasy attitudes, five of
her eight sisters were snatching a troubled sleep, while two
fellow-members of my mother’s Mothers’ Guild were upon their knees in
the back kitchen. But for the fact, indeed, that two of my mother’s
sisters had not, at that time, had their tonsils removed, the whole
house would have been wrapped in the profoundest stillness.
My mother’s mother was the first to see Mrs. Smith, though she only saw
her, as it were, through a mist. Mrs. Smith was the first to speak, in a
voice tremulous with emotion.
“Where’s Augustus?” she said. Augustus was my father’s name.
“He’s just gone outside,” said my mother’s mother.
Something splashed heavily on the hall linoleum. It was a drop of
moisture from Mrs. Smith’s forehead.
“Tell him,” she said, “that he’s the father of a son.”
My mother’s mother gave a great cry. My father was beside her in a
single leap. Always, as I have said, highly coloured, his face at this
moment seemed literally on fire. The two fellow-members of my mother’s
Mothers’ Guild, accompanied by my father’s five sisters-in-law, rushed
into the hall. Mrs. Smith leaned over the banisters.
“A boy,” she said. “It’s a boy.”
“A boy?” said my father.
“Yes, a boy,” said Mrs. Smith.
There was a moment’s hush, and then Nature had its way. My father
unashamedly burst into tears. My mother’s mother kissed him on the neck
just as the two fellow-members burst into a hymn; and a moment later, my
mother’s five sisters burst simultaneously into the doxology. Then my
father recovered himself and held up his hand.
“I shall call him Augustus,” he said, “after myself.”
“Or tin?” suggested my mother’s mother. “What about calling him tin,
after the saint?”
“How do you mean—tin?” said my father.
“Augus-tin,” said Mrs. Emily Smith.
But my father shook his head.
“No, it shall be tus,” he said. “Tus is better than tin.”
Then his five sisters-in-law resumed the singing, from which the two
fellow-members had been unable to desist, until my father, who had been
rapidly thinking, once again held up his hand.
“And I shall give the vicar,” he said, “the first opportunity of
becoming Augustus’s godfather.”
Then he took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, tilted his chin,
and closed his eyes; and with the full vigour of his immense voice, he
too joined in the doxology.
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