My parents’ studies in the upbringing of 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.
APART from the ill-health to which I have previously made reference, but
which was punctuated with intervals of comparative well-being, I have
always regarded my first five or six years as a particularly fruitful
period. At my father’s desire, almost in this case a command, my mother
began to study various books on childhood, such as Dr. Brewinson’s
_Childish Complaints_, Mrs. Edward Podmere’s _Diet in Infancy_, the
Reverend Ambrose Walker’s _First Steps in Religion_, Wilbur P. Nathan’s
_The Babe and the Infinite_, Mrs. Wood-Mortimer’s _Clothes and the
Young_, and Jonathan and Cornwall’s _Dictionary of Home Medicine_. Each
of these, with the exception of the _Dictionary_, was borrowed in turn
from the nearest public library, and it became my mother’s custom to
consecrate her afternoon rest hour to the perusal of these volumes.
According to an arrangement suggested by my father, she would study one
chapter each afternoon, or alternatively three and a half pages of the
_Dictionary of Home Medicine_. On his return from work, and after she
had washed up the supper dishes—for my father at this time did not
employ a domestic—he would put her through a searching examination upon
what she had read earlier in the day. If, as was frequently the case,
since my mother was not naturally scholastic, she failed to satisfy her
examiner, he would playfully impose upon her the little penalty of again
going through her task before she went to bed. And on such occasions, if
he had not fallen asleep, he would re-examine her when she came to bid
him good-night. If, on the other hand, her replies had been judged
adequate, it was an understood thing that she might claim an extra kiss.
So seriously, indeed, did my mother apply herself that she began to grow
unattractively thin; and once, when she had failed in her examination on
three successive nights, she actually burst into tears. For this
feminine weakness, when she had asked his pardon, my father of course
readily forgave her, merely pointing out that, with my future at stake,
he was obviously unable to relax his standards.
Regarding me thus, from the very first, as a sacred trust committed to
their charge, this is but a small example of the immense and unremitting
care with which my parents undertook me. But it will at least suffice to
show that they had not underrated the high task to which they had been
called. To my father especially, as the months slipped all too quickly
by, I became inexpressibly dear; and it was for that reason among others
that I escaped the torments of vaccination. Though Jonathan and
Cornwall’s _Dictionary of Home Medicine_ advocated this operation on
historical grounds, my father had an instinctive, but none the less
well-reasoned, horror of the knife. Himself the subject of frequent
boils, he would never permit these to be lanced, invariably giving
orders that they should be poulticed until Nature herself brought about
their evacuation. Nor can I say that, in my own case, he has been other
than completely justified. It is true that I have suffered, and still do
suffer, apart from the indigestion previously referred to, from several
forms of neurasthenia, a marked tendency to eczema, occipital headaches,
sour eructations, and flatulent distension of the abdomen. But from
smallpox, although entirely unvaccinated, I have always remained
singularly immune.
A similar prescience, too, sufficed to protect me from the anguish and
indignity of personal chastisement. For although in principle my father
was an ardent supporter of this, and indeed had administered it to
several of his relatives’ children, he had never required it, he said,
in his own case, and did not propose to have it inflicted on me. And it
was the abrogation of this rule, although not until my seventh year, by
the son of a powerful Hibernian charwoman that first revealed to me, in
a never-to-be-forgotten flash, some of the profoundest depths of human
iniquity.
It was soon after my sixth birthday that my father was first compelled
to employ a charwoman, owing to an attack of unconsciousness on the part
of my mother. For several months she had been complaining of
breathlessness, incident upon certain of her domestic duties, such as
floor-scrubbing, home laundry-work, cleaning the front steps, and
polishing the boots and shoes. With his usual consideration my father
had instantly remitted various other tasks proper to her position, such
as the baking of bread twice a week, and the knitting of the family
socks and stockings; and he had further excused her from my own daily
tuition in both Latin and arithmetic. Involving, as these subjects did,
considerable previous preparation, this was of course a sensible relief,
obtained though it was at some hazard to my own intellectual future. But
despite all these concessions, she continued to be unwell, and finally,
as I have said, lapsed into unconsciousness.
For a brief period, therefore, and after medical advice, my father
resolved to employ extraneous aid, and at a very considerable financial
sacrifice engaged a person called Mrs. O’Flaherty. The widow of a
colour-sergeant, and one of the church scrubbers, she was highly
recommended by the vicar of St. James-the-Lesser-Still, and was not
devoid, in certain deceptive respects, of the superficial charm of her
race. Ominously developed as she was, both below and above the waist,
her features were informed with an unintelligent but specious
cheerfulness; and these, together with a not unattractive complexion,
sufficed for some time to impose upon my mother.
My father, from the beginning, had his doubts of her character, but in
view of the vicar’s recommendation, decided to employ her; and for the
first month or two, apart from her habit of singing, found no cause for
particular complaint. He even went so far, upon my mother’s
intercession, as to allow the woman to bring her youngest child with
her, a somewhat gross and over-exuberant lad a few months younger than
myself.
That this youth, practically a gutter-snipe, and afterwards a private in
the army, should have become a Brigadier-General in the late war, and
even have received, as I understand, some kind of decoration, was one of
the most deplorable of the many social upheavals for which that disaster
was responsible.
From the very outset, with that sensitiveness of vision granted by
Providence to certain children, I regarded this new intruder with the
deepest suspicion. Obviously inheriting the physique of his mother, and
as it seemed the proclivities of his father, his chief article of
amusement appeared to be a small cannon, equipped with a spring for
purposes of propulsion. This he offered to lend me on the occasion of
his first visit, but declining his advances I moved to another room,
where I continued my study of a book upon the apostles, written for the
young by a Somersetshire clergyman.
Undeterred, however, by a reticence that should have been more than
sufficient for a boy with the least good feeling, Desmond, for that was
his pretentious name, made a similar offer on his second visit. Again I
declined and removed myself, subsequently mentioning the matter to my
father, who instantly gave orders that for the future Mrs. O’Flaherty’s
boy was to be confined to the kitchen.
“You will kindly make it clear,” he said, “to your son that I cannot
have my own son disturbed, and that admission to my house does not
necessarily include admission to my social circle.”
Unfortunately, owing to a very natural slip due to the rapidity of his
elocution, my father pronounced these words as sershle soakle; and I
have never forgotten the vulgar and ill-concealed grin with which Mrs.
O’Flaherty promised to attend to the matter.
Upon the following Saturday, however, a beautiful day in June, with the
gerania in the front garden in full bloom, Desmond O’Flaherty again
began to make overtures to me through the open door of the kitchen. The
parlour door being again ajar, I was of course visible to him as I
reclined on the sofa; and I instantly observed that he had brought his
cannon with him and that its muzzle was pointing towards myself.
Informing me that his pocket was full of peas, suitably dried for the
purposes of ammunition, he then invited me to become his companion in a
game of definitely military character.
This I refused, and I can still recall every detail of all that
followed. Happily employed combing a grey rabbit, to which I was deeply
attached, and which I had named, but a day or two previously, after the
major prophet Isaiah, I heard a faint click and the next moment was
violently struck upon the back of my hand. Unable to suppress a cry of
pain, I involuntarily tightened my grip on Isaiah, who suddenly turned
his head and made a movement as if about to bite my index finger.
Realizing as I did, from my knowledge of the _Dictionary of Home
Medicine_, the fatal consequences that might possibly have ensued, I
flung him from me and sprang to the floor, almost beside myself with
fear and anguish. With an expression of reproach that cut me to the very
heart Isaiah then retreated behind the harmonium; and at the same moment
I heard a raucous laugh proceeding from the direction of Desmond.
But for Desmond and his mother I was alone in the house, yet I did not
hesitate to advance towards the kitchen and grind the cannon beneath my
foot. Twice I stamped upon it in what still seems to me a wholly
righteous indignation, and in a couple of seconds I had reduced it to an
irreparable wreck. For a moment Desmond said nothing. I had taken him by
surprise. But then he rushed towards me with a kind of snort, and
fiercely hit me on a face already suffused with tears. I turned away
from him shaken with sobs. But his bestial appetites were still unsated.
A second and a third time he hit me, on both occasions on the neck, and
followed this up by an assault with his foot upon the lower portion of
my back. But my cries, now almost amounting to shrieks, had by this time
attracted Mrs. O’Flaherty, and at the same instant my father, returning
early, unlocked the front door. In a flash I was in his arms and had
sobbed out to him the whole pitiful tale. I felt him quiver and then
control himself, as he gently placed me to one side. Then he advanced to
Desmond, pointing to the crumpled cannon.
“Pick that up,” he said, “and leave this house for ever.”
Desmond replied insolently that he would not do so, whereupon my father
struck him smartly upon the cheek. For a moment Desmond glared at him,
and then, lowering his head, he rushed at my father, beating him with
both fists. Taken unawares, my father was obliged to sit heavily down
upon an entirely unpadded hall chair, and once again I observed a
malignant smile upon the face of Mrs. O’Flaherty. But it was only
momentary. For, thrusting the little savage away from him, my father hit
him twice with the handle of his walking-stick.
As well aimed as they were richly deserved, these blows took instant
effect, the first knocking the evil lad sideways, and the second
dividing the integument of his forehead. Suffering though he was, my
father then rose to his feet and was once more about to address Desmond,
when Mrs. O’Flaherty, revealed in her true character, ferociously caught
him by the shoulders. As I have already recorded, she was a woman of
repulsively over-developed physique, and she now began to shake my
father so violently that his upper denture fell to the ground.
“You little whelp!” she cried with incredible blasphemy, “you little
whelp of a bullying puff-ball!”
Then to my horror, no less than to his own, she lifted him bodily from
the ground. For a brief moment, or so it seemed to me, I was on the
verge of a merciful oblivion, but the next instant I beheld Mrs.
O’Flaherty thrusting my father’s head into her pail. It was a commodious
pail, very nearly full with incompletely clean water, and containing in
addition the saturated garment with which it was her habit to wash the
linoleum. Three separate times she immersed his head in this, even
submerging the backs of his ears, and when at last she released him, and
he had regained his breath, he was more moved than I had ever seen him.
Always eloquent, his denunciation of her conduct, deservedly attuned to
the level of her understanding, was of a severity that has scarcely been
equalled even in the writings of my rabbit’s namesake. Time after time,
with a holy passion that repeatedly interfered with his respiration, he
felt it obligatory to adjure his Creator to consign such a soul to its
just perdition. And when Mrs. O’Flaherty handed him his upper denture he
dashed it once more to the ground. Finally he commanded her to leave the
house instantly, frankly informing her that he should prosecute her for
assault.
“Yes, it’ll look real nice,” she said, “in the local papers, chippin’ a
child’s ’ead open and ’avin’ yer own in a pail.”
[Illustration:
_My dear Father in his prime taken from a group of sidesman of St.
James-the-Less_
]
The malevolence with which she said this was almost inconceivable. But,
as my father pointed out to me when she had gone, it raised issues of
the profoundest importance that would demand his most serious
consideration. For while in his own person—_in propria persona_[1]—it
might be his duty to bring her before the magistrates, it might be no
less important, as a sidesman of the Established Church, to avoid the
contingent publicity. This indeed was the decision to which he
ultimately came, and as an instance of what may be called, perhaps, his
sanctified statesmanship, it has always seemed to me to shed a peculiar
radiance upon one of the sublimest aspects of his character. With
regard, however, to the lethargy, little less than criminal, of the
vicar of St. James-the-Lesser-Still, I have always been at a loss; and I
cannot help suspecting, as indeed my father openly suggested to him,
that his relations with Mrs. O’Flaherty were not at all what they should
have been. For not only did he deprecate, having heard my father’s
narrative, what he weakly described as any precipitate action, but she
was actually observed by an acquaintance of my father’s scrubbing the
church floor upon the following evening.
Footnote 1:
In his own person.
Under such circumstances my father had no choice but to hasten instantly
to the vicarage, where he confronted the vicar with the suggestion—an
extremely natural one—already referred to. But his reply, as my father
has often assured me, was neither Xtian nor even gentlemanly, and my
father was obliged therefore, with the deepest reluctance, once more to
transfer his worship. It was a serious step, but he had been fortified
with the experience previously forced upon him at St. James-the-Less,
and in less than five months he had become one of the foremost sidesmen
at St. James-the-Least-of-All, Kennington Oval.
------------------------------------------------------------------------