Woman Suffrage? It's surprising to me how light some folks will talk--
with a Providence, for all they know, waiting round the corner to take
them at their word. I put my head in at the Working Man's Institute
last night, and there was the new Coastguard officer talking like a book,
arguing about Woman Suffrage in a way that made me nervous. "Look 'ee
here," he was saying, "a woman must be either married, or unmarried, or
otherwise. Keep they three divisions clear in your heads, and then I'll
ask you to follow me--" And all the company sitting round with their
mouths open. I came away: I couldn't stand it. It put me in mind how my
poor mother used to warn me against squinting for fun. "One of these
days," she'd say, "the wind'll take and change sudden while you're doing
it; and there you'll be fixed and looking fifty ways for Sunday until we
meet in the land of marrow and fatness."
And here in Ardevora, of all places!--where the womenkind be that
masterful already, a man must get into his sea-boots before he can call
his soul his own. Why, there was a woman here once that never asked for a
vote in her life, and yet capsized an Election for Parliament--candidates,
voters, and the whole apple-cart--as easy as you might turn over a plate.
Did you ever hear tell of Kitty Lebow and her eight tall daughters?
No; I daresay not. The world's old and losing its memory when it begins
to talk of Woman Suffrage.
This Kitty, or Christian, or Christiana Lebow was by birth a Bottrell: and
a finer family than the Bottrells, by their own account, you wouldn't find
in all England. Not that it matters whether they came over with William
the Norman, nor whether they could once on a time ride from sea to sea on
their own acres. For Kitty was the last to carry the name, and she left
it in Ardevora vestry the day she signed marriage with Paul Lebow (or, as
he wrote it, Lebeau--"b-e-a-u,"): and the property had gone generations
before. As she said 'pon her death-bed, "five-foot-six of church-hay will
hold the only two achers left to me," she being a little body and very
facetious to the last, and meaning her legs, of course.
Now the reason I can't tell you: but the mischief with the Bottrells was
this: That for generation after generation all the spirit of the family
went to the females. The men just dandered away their time and their
money, fell into declines, or had fits and went out like the snuff of a
candle. But the women couldn't be held nor bound, lived to any age they
pleased, and either kept their sweethearts on the hook or married them
and made their lives a burden. Oh, a bean-fed sex, sir, and monstrous
handsome! And Kitty, though little, was as handsome as any, and walked
Ardevora streets with her eight daughters, all tall as grenadiers and
terrible as an army with banners.
Her father, old Piers Bottrell, had been a ship's captain: a very tidy old
fellow in his behaviour, but muddled in mind, especially towards the end;
so that when he died (which he did in his bed, quite peaceful) he must
needs take and haunt the house. There wasn't a ha'porth of reason for it,
that anyone could discover; and Kitty didn't mind it one farthing.
But some say it frightened her husband into his grave: though I reckon he
took worse fright at Kitty presenting him with eight daughters one after
the other. With a woman like that, you can't say where accident ends and
love of mischief begins. And for that matter, there was no telling why
she'd married the man at all except for mischief: his father and mother
being poor French refugees that had come to Ardevora, thirty years before,
and been given shelter by the borough charity in the old Ugnes House[1]--
the same that old Piers Bottrell afterwards bought and died in: and Lebow
himself, though born in the town and a fisherman by calling, never able to
get his tongue round good plain English until the day he was drowned on
the whiting-grounds and left Kitty a widow-woman.
All this, as you'll see by-and-by, has to do in one way or another with
the Great Election, which took place in the year '68. (The way I'm so
glib with the date is that Kit Lebow was so proud of her doings on that
day, she had a silver cup made for a _momentum_ and used to measure out
her guineas in it: and her great-great-gran'daughter, Mary Ann Cocking,
has the cup to this day in her house in Nanjivvey Street, where I've seen
it a score of times and spelled out the writing, "C. L."--for Christian
Lebow--"1768"). And concerning this Election you must know that "the
Duke's interest," as they called it--that's to say, the Whigs--had ruled
the roost in Ardevora for more than fifty years; mainly through the Duke's
agent, old Squire Martin of Tregoose, that collected the rents, held
pretty well all the public offices inside his ten fingers, and would save
up a grudge for time-out-of-mind against any man that crossed him.
Two members we returned in those days, and in grown men's memories scarce
a Tory among them.
There was grumbling, you may be sure: but the old gang held their way, and
thought to carry this Election as easy as the others, until word came down
that one of the Tory candidates would be Dr. Macann, the famous Bath
physician; and this was a facer.
What made this Dr. Macann such a tearing hot candidate was his having been
born at Trudgian, a mile out of town here to the west'ard. The Macanns
had farmed Trudgian, for maybe a hundred years, having come over from
Ireland to start with: a poor, hand-to-mouth lot, respected for nothing
but their haveage,[2] which was understood to be something out of the
common. But this Samuel, as he was called, turned out a bright boy with
his books, and won his way somehow to Cambridge College; and from College,
after doing famously, he took his foot in his hand and went up to walk the
London hospitals; and so bloomed out into a great doctor, with a
gold-headed cane and a wonderful gift with the women--a personable man,
too, with a neat leg, a high colour, and a voice like a church-organ.
The best of the fellow was he helped his parents and never seemed ashamed
of 'em. And for this, and because he'd done credit to the town, the folks
couldn't make too much of him.
Well, as I said, this putting up of Macann was a facer for the Duke's men,
and they met at the George and Dragon Inn to talk over their unpopularity.
There was old Squire Martin, as wicked as a buck rat in a sink; and his
son Bob that had lately taken over the Duke's agency; and his brother Ned,
the drunken Vicar of Trancells; and his second cousin John Martin,
otherwise John a Hall, all wit and no character; and old Parson Polsue,
with his curate, old Mr. Grandison, the one almost too shaky to hold a
churchwarden pipe while the other lighted it; and Roger Newte, whose
monument you see over the hill--a dapper, youngish-looking man, very
careful of his finger-nails and smooth in his talk till he got you in a
corner. Last but not least was this Roger Newte, who had settled here as
Collector of Customs and meant to be Mayor next year; a man to go where
the devil can't, and that's between the oak and the rind.
Well, there they were met, drinking punch and smoking their clays and
discussing this and that; and Mr. Newte keeping the peace between John a
Hall, with his ill-regulated tongue, and the old Parson, who, to say
truth, was half the cause of their unpopularity, the church services
having sunk to a public scandal; and yet they durstn't cast him over, by
reason that he owned eight ramshackle houses, and his curate a couple
besides, and by mock-sale could turn these into as many brand-new voters.
"There's nothing for it but pluck," said Mr. Newte. "We must make a new
Poor Rate. They've been asking a new one for years; and, bejimbers!
I hope they'll like the one they get."