“What does he write?” I asked. “Books?”
“I believe so,” said the curate, “and articles. He had a novel published
last spring. He’s promised to lend it me.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time on rubbish in your place,” said my uncle, who
never read anything but the _Times_ and the _Guardian_.
“What’s it called?” I asked.
“He told me the title, but I forget it.”
“Anyhow, it’s quite unnecessary that you should know,” said my uncle. “I
should very much object to your reading trashy novels. During your
holidays the best thing you can do is to keep out in the open air. And
you have a holiday task, I presume?”
I had. It was _Ivanhoe_. I had read it when I was ten, and the notion of
reading it again and writing an essay on it bored me to distraction.
When I consider the greatness that Edward Driffield afterward achieved I
cannot but smile as I remember the fashion in which he was discussed at
my uncle’s table. When he died a little while ago and an agitation arose
among his admirers to have him buried in Westminster Abbey the present
incumbent at Blackstable, my uncle’s successor twice removed, wrote to
the _Daily Mail_ pointing out that Driffield was born in the parish and
not only had passed long years, especially the last twenty-five of his
life, in the neighbourhood, but had laid there the scene of some of his
most famous books; it was only becoming then that his bones should rest
in the churchyard where under the Kentish elms his father and mother
dwelt in peace. There was relief in Blackstable when, the Dean of
Westminster having somewhat curtly refused the Abbey, Mrs. Driffield
sent a dignified letter to the press in which she expressed her
confidence that she was carrying out the dearest wishes of her dead
husband in having him buried among the simple people he knew and loved
so well. Unless the notabilities of Blackstable have very much changed
since my day I do not believe they very much liked that phrase about
“simple people,” but, as I afterward learnt, they had never been able to
“abide” the second Mrs. Driffield.