month was up she had decided that Mullins could hardly give her, as
yet, the comforts to which she was accustomed, therefore the marriage
was postponed. Still, I was conscious henceforth of the sword over my
head, and it was all Tom’s fault.
He had already annoyed us all by not being born on the day originally
fixed. He seemed preoccupied and in a hurry when he arrived, and of
course the house was all upset. He made the best of things, waiting
patiently on the sofa as if we had made the muddle, whereas, in
fact, he was entirely to blame. Anne, two years later, behaved
quite differently. She entered the date in her pocket-book, stopped
glory-trailing when the clock struck, and came down buttoning on a pink
skin several sizes too large.
I was sorry for Tom from the bottom of my heart. He had some natural
dignity, which he needed in the presence of the women who preyed upon
his person and searched mercilessly for his soul. They commented upon
his personal appearance, his habits, and his human weaknesses, until I
blushed for them and for him. They made him look absurd in the street,
dressed in a shawl pinned tightly round him in the shape of a Virginia
Ham, and a drunken-looking bonnet that lay cocked over one eye, leaving
a draughty space at the back of the neck. When he laughed they either
attributed it to a defective digestion, or put feeble jokes in his
mouth.
“I’m a bad boy,” he says, Nurse Boswell interpreted, “and I’m going to
kick my little heels, I am, and splash the soapy water in their faces!”
When he broke down and wept from sheer despair of ever making them
understand, they took him to the blinding glare of a sunny window and
threw him about until he was obliged to feign indisposition in order to
make them put him down. He came to me about it sometimes, and I said:
“All right, just lie down quietly, and I will say you are resting if
they come.”
Just as he was comfortably settled a cheerful voice and clapping of
hands was heard at the door, and in came nurse.
“Well, I never,” she exclaimed, “the idea! Who took him up? Now then,
master, you just come with me and get dressed, and we’ll go off and get
a mouthful of fresh air,” and out would come the rickety bonnet with
the draught, and the Virginia Ham shawl, and off they went to harden
themselves in a biting east wind. Tom told me afterwards that they
met half a dozen women, all of whom went into the grossest personal
details about his anatomy, his weight, and what he ate. The men
tactfully avoided him, for which he thanked them. Those who had sons of
their own knew about the bonnet and were sorry, whilst those who had
not just saw him as a sort of egg, and put off his acquaintance until
he should be in a fit state to be recognised.
Anne was quite different even as a baby. She humped her back and made
faces at the ladies. Soon she and I combined to protect Tom in his
encounters with the female sex. We exposed their folly and duplicity in
a shameless way for fear lest they should take possession of his heart
with their forged certificates of high-mindedness. That our claims to
integrity were no better was not to the point. We, at least, loved him
and should only mislead him for his good.
Tom, like the rest of his sex, was disposed to respect the authority
against which he battled so long as he believed in it. He often said,
“Yes, nurse,” quite respectfully, until Anne came. She soon settled
that.
“You go and ask nurse if she loves you,” she said, “it’s all rot her
saying the sweets are eaten up, they’re in her drawer.”
Of course Tom came back with a handful of chocolates to divide between
himself and Anne, having left another illusion behind him.
We had great difficulty at first with nurses. Personally I cannot
bear the popsy-wopsy nurse who is so popular with good mothers. When
I was interviewing nurses for Tom, I brought him into the room and
left him to decide. He soon weeded out the sheep from the goats. If
the woman exclaimed “Bless him! where is he?” I caught Tom’s eye,
and we said we were so sorry but we were already in treaty with some
one whom we thought would be suitable. We dismissed dozens in that
way for the same fault. I have been in other people’s nurseries, and
seen children huddled and poked and blessed and poppeted into their
clothes, marched off giggling, and brought back pouncing, their words
overridden by ejaculations and clatter. Their upbringing reminds me of
the comic pudding in the pantomime that is tossed up and beaten down,
rolled in a dish with the cat, and thrown at the policeman, all to the
accompaniment of a blaring orchestra and incessant conversation. I
chose my present nurse on account of her opening remark to Tom. “Come
here, boy,” she said, and Tom went, and has remained ever since.
There were a great number of things she “didn’t hold with,” but they
were not matters I was tenacious about myself, neither was Tom, so we
let them drop. Later on I found that a certain amount of compromise
was effected, such as a pair of dried ears exchanged for a short story
before the fire, or some real tea offered for a quiet afternoon with
a scrap-book; that was on days when Tom had Satan in one pocket and
an Angel of Goodness in the other. He was a simple creature, and but
for Anne would have kept his illusions much longer than he did. He
thought that when he gave up his time to help in laying the nursery
tea, things got on quicker than they would otherwise have done; that
it saved nurse trouble to hand the spoons to him one by one and put
them straight afterwards. Anne found for herself an occupation that she
preferred.
One of nurse’s articles of faith was that children should have their
own place in the household and keep to it. There was a place for every
one in her picture. The servants in the kitchen, the children in the
nursery, the master in his study, and the mistress in the drawing-room,
also pervading the whole house as, in a landscape, the sun and the
blizzard pervade fields, lakes, woods, and mountains alike. To have
the children the centre of general attention or running about the
house would have seemed to her as revolutionary as trees planted on a
dinner-table or poultry at large on a cricket-field. Tom’s instincts
led him to fall very easily into his place in the domestic world. He
was always a mere nut in a vast mechanism whose existence he dimly
apprehended; he was of importance inasmuch as the great machinery might
go out of gear for want of the trustworthy service of the least of
its parts. Anne thought of herself--so far as she thought at all--as
a spark from a divine fire, sent to illumine the musty darkness in
which parents, domestic servants, visitors, and tradesmen had hitherto
lived. This divine spark must be kept alive. She encouraged us all to
blow, and herself pirouetted helpfully in the draught of our exertions.
Nurse never devised things for the children to do, any more than the
nervous system of the body devises occupations for the other parts. I
understand that it allows some activities to pass unnoticed, inhibits
others, and encourages some, but it does not suggest much. We all
had our work to do, and when nurse was out of order, whether through
ill-health or disapproval, strange distempers appeared in our conduct.
Tom and Anne quarrelled. Ruth took to sending up twice a week “that
sloppy hotpot which I can’t think is good for the children.” Clara
left the clean things from the wash downstairs, “getting in all the
way of the dust, and I with the stockings yet to darn.” Even the fish
surpassed itself in evil-doing. Of course it “never came,” we were used
to that; but on these fatal occasions it was full of bones when it did
come, and “had nothing on it.”
The children never got on with the efficient female, Tom the least
of the two, owing to his illusions. Not that he disliked her, he was
always patient with women, and prepared to think they were doing their
best (until Anne explained to him just what they were doing), but the
efficient female got in his way, and made him hot. She brought him
occupations when he was already busy with string. They were always
in boxes labelled “The Young So-and-so” (none of them people whom he
liked to be). He never wanted to be a young designer or penman or
weaver. If she had brought materials for the young plumber--a pound
of lead for instance, or that delightful gas thing on a stick that
makes a flame when you blow--it would not have been so bad; he could
have mended the hole in nurse’s boot, or stopped up the place under
the coal-scuttle where the mouse came. The efficient female believed
in Madame Montessori’s Kindergarten apparatus in the same spirit as
the poor believe in the efficacy of a “bottle from the doctor’s.” She
brought us puzzles over which we all tore our hair in the evenings.
Matching colours became an obsession, and James began to button and
unbutton his waistcoat at dinner until I had to speak to him on account
of Clara. Finally nurse came to the rescue, as usual, and inhibited our
desire to cultivate our senses. She complained that Tom had awakened
her by trying to fit each of his fingers successively into her open
mouth, and that he was quite feverish because none of them fitted
exactly. The efficient female told me what a great success the system
had been with her children; but the truth is that I do not like her
children. They have their hair tied in an unbecoming way, they can
tell you the names of all the flowers in the garden--even the flowering
shrubs which no decent person ever remembers--they know what makes
the hen lay eggs, and why their own tears are salt. When I was young,
we knew less about ourselves and more about other people. We ranged
over the whole field of history, picking out gems of character here
and there. Quintus Curtius, Noah, Henry the Eighth and his six wives,
Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow (there was a picture of it in the
nursery, with snow, and vultures, and corpses lying across broken
cannon), Marius amongst the ruins of Carthage, the Queen of Sheba,
King Alfred, Livingstone, Cardinal Wolsey. We remembered none of their
dates, neither was their history correlated with other subjects, but we
shall have to mix them up in heaven. So why not now? One has friends
of various ages, yet it never occurs to me to mention: “Of course
you were born before the death of Gladstone, were you not? I want to
introduce Mrs. Ingram, born 1856, contemporary with Mrs. Maybrick,
the famous poisoner; in politics, Churchill, Chamberlain, and Balfour;
science, Marconi and the close of the reign of Lister; saw the dawn of
motor-cars, and remembers the introduction of the telephone.” Or, “Miss
Black, born shortly before the accession of Lloyd George, witnessed
the ascent of the first aeroplane, and took a prominent part in the
famous raid by Suffragettes on the House of Commons.” A correlated
introduction would, I imagine, be made like this: “Miss Black, a
descendant of the Black Prince, has crossed the Black Sea twice, wears
black stockings, and is interested in nigger minstrelsy.”
My whole sympathy is with that little boy who, having learned the
anatomy of the snowdrop, washed-in the snowdrop in bold outline,
modelled the snowdrop, sung a song about the snowdrop, found on the
map the different countries where it grew, and learned the best of
those passages in literature where it is mentioned, at last flung the
detestable little flower to the ground, exclaiming heartily, “Damn the
snowdrop!”
_CHAPTER IX_: THE SCHOOLROOM
When Tom was seven and Anne nine, I decided to engage a governess. I
had never lost the feeling of--shall we call it respect--that I had
felt for my own governess; one does not lose a feeling like respect in
ten years. Therefore, when I found myself interviewing a governess for
some one else, I felt rather like a sheep engaging a butcher. You can
picture the scene. A small office adjoining the shambles. The sheep,
arrayed in all the panoply of its natural wool unshorn for many years,
the place where the branded mark had been covered with a self-possessed
growth, seated at a small table writing. The pen a fancy article in the
humorous disguise of a knife.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” says the trembling, bleating voice. “Do you kill
yourself, or do you purchase the--er--the carcasses? You were in your
last shop how many years? Precisely--very painful--thank you. You
left on account of an outbreak of anthrax amongst the lambs--quite
so. Yes, you would have the dip to yourself after ten o’clock. The
slaughter-house is next door to your room, and there is a convenient
tannery within ten minutes’ walk kept by an excellent ogre with
moderate charges; we are devoted to him. I will send the cart to the
station for you on Tuesday, and you will be able to begin your rounds
at once.”
I lost this feeling after I had been to one or two agencies, and I felt
instead like the man with a whip, who took over the plantation from the
kind master in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Innocent old ladies with white wool
on their heads and Bibles in their pockets came to offer their services
as educational drudges, prepared to expose their pathetic cashmere
backs to the lash of childish criticism and motherly arrogance. I
wanted to engage them all just to ensure their being out of reach of
some women I knew. I would then leave them my house, and fly with Tom
and Anne to some desert island where we never need employ anyone or
improve our minds again.
But it was impossible to engage them all, so I tossed up in the end
between two; “heads,” Miss Mathers, “tails,” Miss Cook, and Miss
Mathers had it. Miss Cook was young and modern, very pretty and
charming, with all the drawbacks of a boy and a few of his advantages.
I knew the children would get on with her, but I had a secret fear
that she would think me “quaint,” and perhaps develop an enthusiasm
for my vices, which would have bothered me. Miss Mathers was above all
things a gentlewoman, which I thought would be good for Anne because I
was not. She liked refinement and regular hours, and, especially, her
attitude towards “gentlemen” was such a delight to me.
“Have you ever had brothers, Miss Mathers?” I asked her once, to which
she replied: “Oh, yes, I have a brother I am extremely fond of; he is a
most delightful man, so honest, generous, and witty. We have been the
greatest of friends ever since our childhood.”
“But, then, surely, you must have seen him in his shirt-sleeves
sometimes,” I suggested, “you know he is a human being and not a
strange animal. Didn’t you ever sit on his knee?”
“No, Mrs. Molyneux,” she said after some thought, “I don’t remember
ever doing so; I doubt whether he would have cared for it. But, of
course, if anything of the kind had been necessary I should not have
hesitated.”
I found great tonic properties in Miss Mathers’ conversation, for I
had never seen men and women separated in the way she did it. It made
exquisitely amusing so much in our social life that had been dull
before. To her mind, so far as I understand, a man’s position in the
scheme of creation is like that of the architect when a house is to be
built. The only person who really matters is the lady who lives in the
house when it is complete. The architect (it is disagreeable of course
to have to employ one) merely sees that it is there. He is the man who
does all the necessary and unpleasant part, what Miss Mathers called
in every branch of art “the mechanical part.” I have heard her say of
a picture that the “mechanical part was very nicely done.” I think her
opinion of James was high, inasmuch as she considered his share in the
establishment--the mechanical part--was very nicely done. That is,
there was enough money to live on, the servants were well looked after,
his children healthy, affectionate, and not too numerous.
But, while I was looked upon as a fellow-creature, James was to her a
thing as utterly remote as the driver of a train in which she might be
travelling, or, as I said, the architect of our house or the Archbishop
of Canterbury. No, I think that is wrong. The Archbishop would be
thought more human being a clergyman, because clergymen are almost like
ladies they are so sensible--we will say, rather, the Pope, because
being a Roman Catholic he was, of course, not a clergyman, though no
doubt an excellent man according to his lights.
Miss Mathers was full of pleasant surprises. I found that she
enjoyed music-halls, approved of divorce (which she called a capital
arrangement if two people could not agree), and disliked the idea of
Women’s Suffrage. I pointed out that she was inconsistent in approving
of divorce notwithstanding her religious principles, and she explained
her reasons over some hot buttered toast before retiring to bed.
“My brother divorced his wife,” she said, “for reasons which are
warranted by Scripture, and I hold him to be in the right. It was
far better than if he had compelled her to live with him under false
pretences of affection.”
“But if she ran away,” I suggested.
“In that case,” said Miss Mathers, “she would have continued to bear
his name, and would therefore have been living in open sin. My
brother, by taking the course he did, gave her the opportunity to
retrieve her character by becoming respectably married. The Church is
perfectly right in refusing to sanction divorce, because persons who
place themselves in such a position ought to be outside the pale of
religion, but I think the law acts wisely in providing for legitimate
separation.”
On another buttered toast night I asked her why she disliked Women’s
Suffrage. If I had had any knowledge of character I might have guessed
her reason, but Miss Mathers was not like anyone I had met before.
“My dear Mrs. Molyneux,” she said, “the poet Byron has most truly
observed that
‘_Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;
’Tis woman’s whole existence._’
It is true that it does not fall to the lot of all of us to love in
that sense, but the possibility can never be lost sight of. What
could you conceive more ludicrous and unsuitable than that the whole
existence of one of our rulers should be merged in passionate feelings
for a fellow-creature? Public life demands whole-hearted devotion to
the State.”
“But great statesmen often fall dreadfully in love,” I said.
“A thing apart, Mrs. Molyneux, believe me,” the romantic creature
said with assurance. “When my brother’s nose is in his books or his
inkpot or wherever else it may happen to be, it is _there_; temporarily
perhaps, but he gives his whole mind to it. When he emerges he may
be the slave of any woman, only not at the time. But I assure you I
have seen women attempt to transact the business of an office, when
they were in love, with deplorable results. I do not say they are
incapable of renouncing their private passions for the sake of what
they apprehend to be their duty, but I maintain that their services to
that duty will not be worth a pin so long as the renouncement is in
progress. And the public service cannot wait while they recover.”
“A great many people will disagree with you, Miss Mathers,” I said.
“A great many people have not loved,” she replied. “I speak from
observation only.”
Tom and Anne were as devoted as I was to Miss Mathers. Of course Anne
never became a gentlewoman, but she learned to sew, and to write
without inking her fingers, not to come into a room head first and feet
last nor to trail a vanishing hand across the door before she shut it;
not to giggle, not to finger the spoons and forks before the next dish
came in, not to sit still when she ought to stand up, not to frown and
show her teeth in the sun, not to fall into habits of speech, and--most
valuable and delightful accomplishment--not to argue about anything
that had to be done. Tom said Miss Mathers was very restful because she
saved them so much trouble. He explained that so long as there was any
chance of altering an order by discussion it would be unsporting not to
have a shot at it, but the argument was, on the whole, more fatiguing
than it was worth, even to gain a slight concession.
I do not know whether she returned our affection, but when she left
because Anne grew up, she said she did not intend to teach any more.
It was very up-hill work in the present state of affairs. Parents of
breeding were dying out, and modern education appeared to become daily
more medical and less moral. She could never acquire the requisite
knowledge for turning out a child’s stomach to examine its character.
She should, therefore, retire and live with her brother, who really
needed a lady to look after him.
_CHAPTER X_: THE CHARWOMAN
Two-and-sixpence a day is what it costs me to have the pleasure of Mrs.
Muff’s society. She came at half-past eight and began at once on a bit
of breakfast.
“I beg pardon, m’m,” said Ruth, when Mrs. Muff had been with us for a
week (she came on Mondays and Tuesdays and did the rough washing), “but
do I understand that Mrs. Muff is to have anything special ordered in
for her breakfast?”
“It depends,” I said. “Is a charwoman fed on special food like a
gold-fish? Won’t she thrive unless we give her ant’s eggs or boiled
Indian meal?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, m’m.” Ruth glanced angrily in the direction
of the washhouse where Mrs. Muff was urging us in quavering tones to
abide with her. “She had an egg this morning like the rest of us, but
she said she wouldn’t be responsible if it happened again, as they
always disagreed with her.”
“Ah, but these are fresh ones,” I said. “Did you explain it to her?
Perhaps she had never tried them before; it makes all the difference.”
Ruth suggested that I had better speak to her myself, so I gathered up
my skirts and “webbed it,” as an elegant friend of mine puts it, over
the wet floor to Mrs. Muff and touched her on the shoulder.
“Good morning, Mrs. Muff,” I shouted. The song ceased. An amiable
little cherry face with a sharp nose, vegetable eyes, and four teeth,
by no means whole, whisked round upon me out of the steam.
“I can only abide with you for a minute, dear Mrs. Muff,” I bawled,
“but I came to ask whether you had everything you wanted.”
“Oh, yes, thank you, m’m, indeed--unless it were that you could see
your way to a new wash-tub; this one leaks something awful. If you
thought of getting a man in to see to it he would tell you.”
“I know what he would tell me,” I replied, “I say--I know what he would
tell me. I have heard it before.”
“And what was that, m’m?” Mrs. Muff inquired intelligently with one
dripping hand behind her ear.
“I can’t explain,” I shouted, “it would take too long, but it made him
whistle a great deal, and I don’t think the whistling did the tub any
good, so we got a new one, and that is the one you are using--it is
quite new--I can’t get another just yet.”
“Oh, quite so, m’m, quite so, I only thought I would mention it. I can
manage splendidly, but this soap don’t seem to get up much of a lather.
Where I was in my last place I did all the master’s shirts, and the
table-cloths, and the sheets, and the pillow-cases. I made a splendid
job of it; got a fine lather we did, and all with Cross and Blackwell’s
soap, nothing else; I never put nothing to it, no soda nor chemicals;
I don’t hold with them. Just the plain soap. Now I’ll just show you
this soap if you can be troubled--beg pardon, it’s me left ear--if
you’ll excuse me I’ll turn round--now then, what was it, m’m?”
“By and by,” I screamed, “but what about your breakfast?”
“Oh, don’t you trouble about that, m’m,” she assured me, “anything will
do for me. Just what you are having yourselves, m’m. A bit of bread
is all I need. I always say so long as we ’ave bread we’ve no need to
complain. It’s a pity you don’t ’appen to have a better drying ground,
isn’t it, m’m? You could do with a nice field. Always seems to make the
things sweeter to my mind with plenty o’ fresh air; but, bless you, I
can manage. I’ll give them an extra rub and they’ll look every bit as
well. I’m accustomed to make things do as best I can, with me ’usband
being an invalid. I was a splendid cook at one time, used to cook every
bit of what ’e ’ad, I did indeed, and wash too--washed everything
for the children--and in me last place we ’ad everything to do, the
table-cloths, and the sheets, and the----”