“Let me give you a nice strong cup of tea,” said Mrs. Driffield.
“I’ve already had tea.”
“Have some more,” said Lord George, speaking as though he owned the
place (that was just like him). “A big fellow like you can always tuck
away another piece of bread and butter and jam and Mrs. D. will cut you
a slice with her own fair hands.”
The tea things were still on the table and they were sitting round it. A
chair was brought up for me and Mrs. Driffield gave me a piece of cake.
“We were just trying to persuade Ted to sing us a song,” said Lord
George. “Come on, Ted.”
“Sing, ‘All Through Stickin’ to a Soljer,’ Ted,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I
love that.”
“No, sing ‘First We Mopped the Floor with Him.’”
“I’ll sing ’em both if you’re not careful,” said Driffield.
He took his banjo, which was lying on the top of the cottage piano,
tuned it, and began to sing. He had a rich baritone voice. I was quite
used to people singing songs. When there was a tea party at the
vicarage, or I went to one at the major’s or the doctor’s, people always
brought their music with them. They left it in the hall, so that it
should not seem that they wanted to be asked to play or sing; but after
tea the hostess asked them if they had brought it. They shyly admitted
that they had, and if it was at the vicarage I was sent to fetch it.
Sometimes a young lady would say that she had quite given up playing and
hadn’t brought anything with her, and then her mother would break in and
say that _she_ had brought it. But when they sang it was not comic
songs; it was “I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby,” or “Good-Night, Beloved,”
or “Queen of My Heart.” Once at the annual concert at the Assembly
Rooms, Smithson, the draper, had sung a comic song, and though the
people at the back of the hall had applauded a great deal, the gentry
had seen nothing funny in it. Perhaps there wasn’t. Anyhow, before the
next concert he was asked to be a little more careful about what he sang
(“Remember there are ladies present, Mr. Smithson”) and so gave “The
Death of Nelson.” The next ditty that Driffield sang had a chorus and
the curate and Lord George joined in lustily. I heard it a good many
times afterward, but I can only remember four lines:
_First we mopped the floor with him;_
_Dragged him up and down the stairs;_
_Then we lugged him round the room,_
_Under tables, over chairs._
When it was finished, assuming my best company manners, I turned to Mrs.
Driffield.
“Don’t you sing?” I asked.
“I do, but it always turns the milk, so Ted doesn’t encourage me.”
Driffield put down his banjo and lit a pipe.
“Well, how’s the old book getting along, Ted?” said Lord George
heartily.
“Oh, all right. I’m working away, you know.”
“Good old Ted and his books,” Lord George laughed. “Why don’t you settle
down and do something respectable for a change? I’ll give you a job in
my office.”
“Oh, I’m all right.”
“You let him be, George,” said Mrs. Driffield. “He likes writing, and
what I say is, as long as it keeps him happy why shouldn’t he?”
“Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about books,” began George Kemp.
“Then don’t talk about them,” interrupted Driffield with a smile.
“I don’t think anyone need be ashamed to have written _Fairhaven_,” said
Mr. Galloway, “and I don’t care what the critics said.”
“Well, Ted, I’ve known you since I was a boy and _I_ couldn’t read it,
try as I would.”
“Oh, come on, we don’t want to start talking about books,” said Mrs.
Driffield. “Sing us another song, Ted.”
“I must be going,” said the curate. He turned to me. “We might walk
along together. Have you got anything for me to read, Driffield?”
Driffield pointed to a pile of new books that were heaped up on a table
in the corner.
“Take your pick.”
“By Jove, what a lot!” I said, looking at them greedily.
“Oh, it’s all rubbish. They’re sent down for review.”
“What d’you do with them?”
“Take ’em into Tercanbury and sell ’em for what they’ll fetch. It all
helps to pay the butcher.”
When we left, the curate and I, he with three or four books under his
arm, he asked me:
“Did you tell your uncle you were coming to see the Driffields?”
“No, I just went out for a walk and it suddenly occurred to me that I
might look in.”
This of course was some way from the truth, but I did not care to tell
Mr. Galloway that, though I was practically grown up, my uncle realized
the fact so little that he was quite capable of trying to prevent me
from seeing people he objected to.
“Unless you have to I wouldn’t say anything about it in your place. The
Driffields are perfectly all right, but your uncle doesn’t quite approve
of them.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s such rot.”
“Of course they’re rather common, but he doesn’t write half badly, and
when you think what he came from it’s wonderful that he writes at all.”
I was glad to know how the land lay. Mr. Galloway did not wish my uncle
to know that he was on friendly terms with the Driffields. I could feel
sure at all events that he would not give me away.
The patronizing manner in which my uncle’s curate spoke of one who has
been now so long recognized as one of the greatest of the later
Victorian novelists must arouse a smile; but it was the manner in which
he was generally spoken of at Blackstable. One day we went to tea at
Mrs. Greencourt’s, who had staying with her a cousin, the wife of an
Oxford don, and we had been told that she was very cultivated. She was a
Mrs. Encombe, a little woman with an eager wrinkled face; she surprised
us very much because she wore her gray hair short and a black serge
skirt that only just came down below the tops of her square-toed boots.
She was the first example of the New Woman that had even been seen in
Blackstable. We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she
looked intellectual and it made us feel shy. (Afterward we all scoffed
at her, and my uncle said to my aunt: “Well, my dear, I’m thankful
you’re not clever, at least I’ve been spared that”; and my aunt in a
playful mood put my uncle’s slippers which were warming for him by the
fire over her boots and said: “Look, I’m the new woman.” And then we all
said: “Mrs. Greencourt is very funny; you never know what she’ll do
next. But of course she isn’t quite quite.” We could hardly forget that
her father made china and that her grandfather had been a factory hand.)
But we all found it very interesting to hear Mrs. Encombe talk of the
people she knew. My uncle had been at Oxford, but everyone he asked
about seemed to be dead. Mrs. Encombe knew Mrs. Humphry Ward and admired
_Robert Elsmere_. My uncle considered it a scandalous work, and he was
surprised that Mr. Gladstone, who at least called himself a Christian,
had found a good word to say for it. They had quite an argument about
it. My uncle said he thought it would unsettle people’s opinions and
give them all sorts of ideas that they were much better without. Mrs.
Encombe answered that he wouldn’t think that if he knew Mrs. Humphry
Ward. She was a woman of the very highest character, a niece of Mr.
Matthew Arnold, and whatever you might think of the book itself (and
she, Mrs. Encombe, was quite willing to admit that there were parts
which had better have been omitted) it was quite certain that she had
written it from the very highest motives. Mrs. Encombe knew Miss
Broughton too. She was of very good family and it was strange that she
wrote the books she did.
“I don’t see any harm in them,” said Mrs. Hayforth, the doctor’s wife.
“I enjoy them, especially _Red as a Rose is She_.”
“Would you like your girls to read them?” asked Mrs. Encombe.
“Not just yet perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “But when they’re married I
should have no objection.”
“Then it might interest you to know,” said Mrs. Encombe, “that when I
was in Florence last Easter I was introduced to Ouida.”
“That’s quite another matter,” returned Mrs. Hayforth. “I can’t believe
that any lady would read a book by Ouida.”
“I read one out of curiosity,” said Mrs. Encombe. “I must say, it’s more
what you’d expect from a Frenchman than from an English gentlewoman.”
“Oh, but I understand she isn’t really English. I’ve always heard her
real name is Mademoiselle de la Ramée.”
It was then that Mr. Galloway mentioned Edward Driffield.
“You know we have an author living here,” he said.
“We’re not very proud of him,” said the major. “He’s the son of old Miss
Wolfe’s bailiff and he married a barmaid.”
“Can he write?” asked Mrs. Encombe.
“You can tell at once that he’s not a gentleman,” said the curate, “but
when you consider the disadvantages he’s had to struggle against it’s
rather remarkable that he should write as well as he does.”
“He’s a friend of Willie’s,” said my uncle.
Everyone looked at me, and I felt very uncomfortable.
“They bicycled together last summer, and after Willie had gone back to
school I got one of his books from the library to see what it was like.
I read the first volume and then I sent it back. I wrote a pretty stiff
letter to the librarian and I was glad to hear that he’d withdrawn it
from circulation. If it had been my own property I should have put it
promptly in the kitchen stove.”
“I looked through one of his books myself,” said the doctor. “It
interested me because it was set in this neighbourhood and I recognized
some of the people. But I can’t say I liked it; I thought it
unnecessarily coarse.”
“I mentioned that to him,” said Mr. Galloway, “and he said the men in
the colliers that run up to Newcastle and the fishermen and farm hands
don’t behave like ladies and gentlemen and don’t talk like them.”
“But why write about people of that character?” said my uncle.
“That’s what I say,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “We all know that there are
coarse and wicked and vicious people in the world, but I don’t see what
good it does to write about them.”
“I’m not defending him,” said Mr. Galloway. “I’m only telling you what
explanation he gives himself. And then of course he brought up Dickens.”
“Dickens is quite different,” said my uncle. “I don’t see how anyone can
object to the _Pickwick Papers_.”
“I suppose it’s a matter of taste,” said my aunt. “I always found
Dickens very coarse. I don’t want to read about people who drop their
aitches. I must say I’m very glad the weather’s so bad now and Willie
can’t take any more rides with Mr. Driffield. I don’t think he’s quite
the sort of person he ought to associate with.”
Both Mr. Galloway and I looked down our noses.