THE HOME OF BOYHOOD
So from that day there was no more dingy boarding-house for me: my
betrothed took me to his parents’ house at Clapham, where I well
remember the courtly words: “I hear I have to congratulate my son
Joe” with which I was received by his father.
Small blame would it have been to parents, ambitious for the
advancement of their children, had they only seen in me a foreign
adventuress without credentials coming to snatch one of the flowers of
their flock; yet instead of that, most generously was I welcomed to a
home of which I have never seen the like; and if sometimes bewildered
and always non-plussed by the free-and-easy give and take and the
wonderful argumentative capacity of that large and variously gifted
family--I felt out of it--my lover was always unobtrusively protecting,
and the artist-sister who had always shared his tastes and sympathized
with his ambitions, often held out a kindly hand to help me up the
steep places.
But they were few: the sunny places, full of real romance, of utter
confidence in our future--rash as it might appear to prudent
elders--bright with his radiant enthusiasms and his fine ambitions, are
the things that cannot fade from my memory.
In those days much verse was written not then intended for publication,
but some of which has seen the light since.
The typical gathering, of the large family, presided over by the wise
father whose “Landmarks, boys”! from the head of the table
generally calmed any storm, was most often one of obstinate argument
and fierce word-fights, and stands out now as the proper school where
the keen critical faculty and the gift of ready repartee for which many
friends now remember Joe Carr, were first forged and perfected.
And, be it noted, that however sanguinary the fight, there was never
any malice, never any after ill-will among the combatants: generous
natures and a Celtic sense of humour prevented that--not a little
helped by the complete freedom of arena left by the parents.
The mother ruled her household as Victorian mothers did, and spared
neither pains nor expense for her son’s ambitions and her
daughters’ proper advancement in the world; she welcomed
their friends with courteous Irish welcome, however little many of
their tastes might be in harmony with her own; but she let them
talk unmolested and was content to keep her own counsel, while she
ministered lavishly to their creature comforts; and the father--a man
of few words but of strong character and clear insight--kept his own
views undisturbed. He had nevertheless more deeply, though probably
unconsciously, impressed them on his children, than his children then
guessed. He was a broad Liberal, and it is interesting to note that, in
days when we were even more insular than we are now, no fighter in the
cause of freedom was forbidden his house because he was a foreigner.
Under the auspices of Mr. Adam Gielgud--the son of a great Polish
refugee--patriots from many lands who had sought our shelter, found
their way to that hospitable roof. Pulski and Riciotti Garibaldi are
the only other names that recur to me, but there were more and they
were all welcome. Men of after note in the art world and in journalism
came also as friends of Joe’s or of his sister’s--shaken
together with charming Irish and hard-headed North country cousins.
Many were the times when dinner had been ordered for six, and sixteen
would sit down at the long mahogany table, the polishing of which Mrs.
Carr supervised daily, laden with homely but abundant fare.
But Joe made many other friends in town who never found time to
visit Clapham. In spite of his recent appointment as dramatic critic
to _The Echo_ his new friends were less among actors than among
painters--Burne-Jones and perhaps chiefest just then, Rossetti,
whose friendship he describes himself in _Some Eminent Victorians_.
Nevertheless he had met Henry Irving through the son of the Lyceum
manager, Mr. Bateman, and had often passionately praised him.
To the girl fresh from the small English colony abroad it was all
vastly entertaining, though I did not realize then how much of a
figure my betrothed already was among the men of his time. Even the
gayer part of my girlhood--the summers spent at S. Moritz, which
my father had discovered, as a homely village in his yearly Alpine
tramp--bore little resemblance to London excitements. I had but rarely
seen the inside of a theatre and never a fine English actor, and my
first vision of Henry Irving in “The Bells,” is a haunting
memory still.
This was in July, 1873.
But this engrossing first season of mine had to be interrupted; for
Joe, having at last obtained a commission from one of the dailies for
holiday articles which would bring in a sum just sufficient to pay
his expenses, was whirled off to the Engadine by my brother to be
introduced to my parents as my suitor.
In some ways a strange meeting on both sides: to Joe the restrictions
of a parson’s home--though greatly modified by the manner of
a foreign life--must have seemed a contrast to the methodical yet
easy-going Clapham household; to my parents the reckless courage
of my lover’s plan of life, his bold enthusiasms and gay
self-confidence must have been--to my father, at all events--somewhat
startling. But my brother was a bit of an autocrat in the family
circle and knew the position which Joe was likely to win in the London
world of letters; my sister, a very young girl, kept the ball rolling
merrily on the lighter side, while my mother quickly discovered deep
points of sympathy with her would-be son-in-law, and the two would sit
on the terrace of our mountain home, looking on the green lake with
the snow-capped peaks cleaving an indigo sky, and quote Wordsworth
contentedly. To the end of her life they understood one another; but
even my father came to recognise the value of a fine character above
creeds. Certain it is that Joe was as much pleased with the Italian
cooking of the maid who sat on the sofa with the dish in her hands
while waiting for him to ask for a second helping, as he was surprised
at my brother advising him not to borrow a postage stamp when five
minutes later my father proposed to settle a small yearly sum upon me
which would enable us to marry as soon as Joe had any fixed income
whatsoever.
As often later, his personality had won, his incurable optimism and
self-confidence had inspired the confidence of my parents, and it was
not misplaced. They made the speedy marriage which, he insisted, could
alone lead him to success, just possible: economy and courage did the
rest--the courage which never forsook him. For as I look over his
letters--written to me in later years when some one of his many bold
ventures had not succeeded like another--I find the cheerful phrase
recurring: “Don’t be afraid; there’s a lot of fight left in me yet.”
Upon that--safest and most enduring of all incomes--we set sail without
a vestige of misgiving upon the sea of life; and I’m thankful to
say that I never was “afraid.”
But it was this early marriage that led Joe for a second time, as he
tells in his _Reminiscences_, to change his profession, and gradually,
and to the distress of his legal friends, to forsake the Bar for the
more immediately remunerative work of literature. I well recollect his
joyful announcement to me of his appointment as Art Critic to the _Pall
Mall Gazette_--the beginning of a long period of many-sided association
with Frederick Greenwood; and that slender certainty of income provided
the condition imposed by my father: our wedding day was fixed.