ENGLAND ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR
Our fathers, a degenerate race,
Begot us scoundrels, to give place
To something meaner yet unborn.
HORACE, tr. STAPLETON.
I suppose it is inevitable that those of us who have lived through a
great world-crisis, such as the late war, should ask themselves or
should be asked by others what it was like just before the crisis
happened? How postured did the time of reckoning find us? Were we
playing on, all unconscious, at the brink of a volcano? Or were we
prepared—materially, morally, spiritually prepared—for what was to come
upon us? The question is obviously not an easy one to answer. It is not
easy to wipe out, even in imagination, the impressions left by nearly
three years of war atmosphere and war strain. But, if only because there
are not many of us left whose birth dates right back to the Five Years’
War, the last occasion when Europe became an armed camp, I feel that I
ought to try and give my answer to that question, before I close these
memoirs and bow myself out, to make way for younger authors with other
messages.
I do not intend, however, to say anything much about our merely material
preparation for the war. It is, after all, a question for experts: and
the event proved that all the combatant countries were far better
prepared for hostilities than the general public had ever supposed they
would be. It is a commonplace that in any war either the offensive or
the defensive arm is the better equipped, in advance of its rival. In
this case, there can be no doubt at all that our defensive had outrun
our offensive preparations. This was not generally known; indeed in our
own country and in many others the comparatively small results achieved
by our striking force became the subject of severe and quite undeserved
criticism. The truth is, that Science does not lightly forget her
humanitarian purpose; and (it is important to remember) the amazing
efficiency of the Secret Service work done in the interests of the
various belligerents in the long period between 1919 and 1972 had made
it easy for the authorities in each country to know what was in store
for them and to prepare against it. For the heroic and self-sacrificing
work done by that noble body of men, the Secret Service Agents (mostly
of Japanese origin, I believe), Europe and humanity itself can never be
too grateful.
What was the effect of it? Why, that Mars, as in the old Greek legend,
found himself in fetters. We, like the enemy, had put our faith in the
invincible quality of our heavy artillery, not realizing that they, like
us, had prepared a system of mine defences for their troops which made
heavy artillery a back number. We told ourselves that our aerial fleet,
superior both in numbers and in efficiency to any Continental fleet, was
bound to make life insupportable in the larger enemy towns: the
calculations of our enemy were exactly similar. Neither of us could
foresee that long deadlock which resulted from the “stranglehold” we
exercised over the enemy’s dispositions; neither of us could foresee
that both sides would come out of the war with their air fleet
practically untouched. Again, the typhus-germs from which we expected so
much proved utterly ineffective against nations which had inoculated
their children against typhus from infancy: and similarly, their
dastardly plan (contrary to all the rules of civilized warfare) of
infecting London with bubonic plague came too late when Milling’s
discovery had made the bubonic plague a matter of three days in bed. In
fact, if it had not been for the hitherto unrealized strength of British
propaganda, it is difficult to see how the war could have resulted in
anything but a complete stalemate.
But the question, Were we prepared for the war? involves deeper and more
spiritual issues than this. What manner of men were we when that sudden
strain was put upon our moral fibre? That is what posterity will want to
know. And first of all, let me say that it is of England, not of the
other belligerents, that I intend to speak. After all, on the admission
of her enemies and even of her allies, it was she who bore the brunt of
the conflict. Going into it with less, I suppose, of religious
inspiration than France, with a Government less efficient, because less
autocratic, than that of the United States, and with material resources
not capable of competing with those of Brazil, she has achieved such a
measure of victory as is indicated by the fact that her war indemnity,
if it is ever paid, will amount to little less than a tenth of her war
debt. It is not, then, simply because England is my own country, and
because, a stay-at-home by nature, I have little inside information
about other peoples, but because it was upon Great Britain that, in
those fateful three years, the eyes of the world were centred, that I
confine myself in this chapter to a survey of English conditions and
English ideals.
“Show me,” that great philanthropist Peterson used to say, “how the poor
of a nation live, and I will tell you whether that nation is alive.” In
this respect, it must be confessed, the record of England at that time
was indeed a black one. Huddled together in slums and rookeries, whose
“model” flats often had to contain two families where only one could
live with comfort, the poor were stifled from the first by overcrowding.
It must be remembered that the poorer classes had, as usual, larger
families than the rich, and it was no uncommon thing to find four or
five children living in the same tenement with their parents. Many of
these poor little mites got no more than a fortnight’s holiday at the
seaside every year, and had nowhere to play in except the public parks.
In return for their school attendance they were paid a mere pittance,
and only the simplest possible fare was provided for them by the school
authorities. It was piteous, as one moved about the poorer parts of
London, to see their untidy hair, their crumpled collars and dirty
handkerchiefs. Small wonder that disease spread quickly in such
surroundings, and it was estimated that child-mortality in the poorer
quarters of the large towns was fully one in a thousand. For a time, of
course, the influence of the school kept them out of harm’s way, but at
seventeen or eighteen, just at the most impressionable period of life,
their schooling must perforce come to an end, and, hardly more than
boys, they were thrust out into the world to shift for themselves.
Often, of course, drink or gambling would be responsible for the worst
cases of poverty; but often, too, it would be mere ill-luck or imprudent
under-insurance that left them stranded when they were out of work. Too
proud to accept relief from any of the thirty-eight organizations that
offered it, these unfortunates would drag out a wretched existence on
such doles as their Union and the National Beneficent Fund could afford
them. It is true, and fortunately true, that we have now done much to
remedy this terrible state of things; but in 1972 it was no exaggeration
to say that the conditions of life in our great cities stood up in
witness against us.
As usual, overcrowding in the towns went hand in hand with, and was
partly caused by, rural depopulation. In all the country districts it
was the same story—you could not get the young people to remain on the
land. It was difficult to blame them; wages were so low that an
unskilled agricultural labourer was hardly paid on the same scale as a
governess; the cottages for the most part were mere eight-roomed hovels,
and the deafening noise and incessant whirr of the machinery made the
farmyard a good imitation of the Inferno. Machinery was continually
replacing human labour, almost faster than the diminution in the
birth-rate could keep pace with the process. Besides, there were few
amusements which could make the country towns and villages compare in
amenity with the large manufacturing centres: the cinemas often had no
afternoon performances, and such dances as there were seldom lasted
later than midnight. It was no wonder that the lure of the great cities
continued to exercise its spell over the young and the ambitious.
The effect of these bad conditions on the health of the nation was
plainly shown during the war itself, when the various “classes” came up
for medical examination. Of the total manhood of Great Britain,
one-tenth were liable to vertigo, such as prevented them either from
going up in aircraft or else from going down into the pits. Something
like 13 per cent. suffered from Pollock’s inhibition, either in the form
of actonism (reluctance to kill) or of athanism (reluctance to die).
Eight per cent. were declared unfit through psophophobia, which made
them unable to stand loud noises. Another six per cent. had taxiphobia,
and could not serve in the ranks. Ochlophobia, capnophobia, pyrophobia,
zophophobia, atenxipodia, and other more ordinary nervous diseases, such
as Blast’s inhibition, swelled the total of non-combatants. In all it is
doubtful whether 40 per cent. of the men who were of military age could
have been called upon to fight. Happily, most of the unfit were
available for the much needed work of propaganda, since only a small
percentage were troubled with pseudophobia, which alone was treated as
ground for exemption from this class of work.
But, it hardly needs to be said, these same causes produced moral
results as well as physical. Just before the outbreak of hostilities, we
were all very much concerned about the attitude of organized Labour,
which had never indeed been in power since Ropes’s ill-fated Government,
but had always been a strong political, and a still stronger economic
influence, in the counsels of the country. There had not for some time
been any actual strike on a large scale, the “secret service” both of
employers and of labourers being sufficiently well informed to prevent
any miscalculation: threats of strikes and of lock-outs were common, but
it seldom proved necessary to call your adversary’s bluff. Still, the
Unions were an important power. Ever since the thirties it had been
illegal for any manual worker not to belong to the union of his trade;
and this fact had strengthened the numerical force of the unions without
in any way moderating their counsels since the time when (I think in the
fifties) shop stewards began to be appointed by examination instead of
election. The hot-heads were always in the controlling positions: what
would the effect of this be in the event of the country going to war?
The International Labour Convention held at Innsbruck in ’67 had passed
a series of unanimous resolutions designed to render all future war
impossible by means of concerted sabotage. Fortunately, the alleged
violation of Article 259 by the British workers, and the suspected
violation of Article 283 by the U.S. workers, had the effect of
rendering the whole compact nugatory. But the temper of Labour in all
countries was, throughout the war, distrustful and frequently menacing.
At the other end of the scale, there can be no doubt that the paying
classes, by the luxury and frivolity of their lives, showed equally
little preparedness for a great emergency. Mere wealth seemed to be the
only passport to Society, and blood counted for nothing: the old
hereditary aristocracy who could trace their honours back to the
beginning of the century were swamped by a crowd of new creations. No
doubt in many ways we were more civilized than our fathers; the coarse
old type that would fill a quarter of a glass with whisky, or motor at
breakneck speed along country lanes, had disappeared; it was hard to
imagine the rude days (which I can just remember) when the ladies left
the dinner-table half an hour or so before the men, “leaving the
gentlemen,” as it was called, “to their wine.” But if we had lost some
of the coarseness, we had also lost much of the salutary sternness and
moral earnestness of my young days. In the twenties and thirties the
Divorce Court, although it was already fairly busy, did still carry with
it, even for non-Catholics, a certain savour of impropriety. The novels
and the plays of the period, although many of them offend our modern
taste by the coarseness of their expression, must, by comparison with
our own, be freed from the charge of suggestiveness. We gambled in those
days, but you still had to go abroad to do it on a large scale; there
was no wireless installation to report the winning numbers on the tape
machines of our West-End Clubs.
Family life, too, meant far more to us in the early part of the century
than it did in the sixties and seventies. Even in London, husband and
wife would share the same flat and entertain each other’s friends. When
they paid visits of pleasure, to hunt, or to fish or to shoot deer (they
were not content to photograph them as we do!), they often travelled
together; and there would have been something ludicrous in the idea of a
husband and wife meeting one another unexpectedly at a country-house
party or at a dinner. Fathers would take an active interest in the
education of their children, and sometimes even be called in to reprove
them for a fault. Girls, until the age of seventeen or eighteen, usually
lived with their parents, and did not go about without somebody to take
care of them. Boys did not expect to be provided with latch-keys until
they were twenty-one! For myself, I never had one until I set up my own
establishment; nor did I feel aggrieved at the deprivation. I do not
mean that all these things are particularly important; and indeed, the
old tradition seems fussy and unnecessary to us nowadays; but this
strictness of guardianship did stand for symbol of a certain orderliness
and discipline of behaviour, which I miss sometimes, I am afraid, among
the young ladies and the young gentlemen of a later generation! There
was something to be said, after all, for the rugged old Puritan school
which wore dark suits on Sundays, thought chewing unladylike, and held
that night-clubs were “not the thing” for young girls.
How much this difference of outlook is the result of a decline in the
matter of religious conviction, I cannot feel any certainty. As I see
things, religion does not so often dictate to the world its standards of
behaviour—a morality, or even a hypocrisy, can sometimes do that with
equal effect—as help men and women to live up to the standards of the
time and to rise above them. But I am afraid there is no doubt that in
the sixties and seventies we had lost, in great measure, the unclouded
faith and simple piety of the twenties and thirties. The religious
revival in the Nonconformist Federation, which took place early in the
sixties, was marked by no less extraordinary indications of spiritual
exaltation than the revivals of earlier centuries; but alas! the total
numbers of those who were affected by any movement within this body was
no longer very considerable. The secession of the “Enthusiasts” in ’53
had drained the Anglican Church of all the elements in its own body
which might have responded to a call of this kind. The Westernizers
seemed to have no energy but for Church politics; they achieved, indeed,
for a few years the long-cherished dream of reunion with the crumbling
relics of Byzantine Christianity, but it was only in the character of
Little Bo-peep that they were able to do so. The bulk of what had been
the “good-will” of the Anglican connexion remained with the Relativist
Party, the historical descendant of the old Liberal school of thought.
The relativists were men of considerable intellectual force and deeply
religious temperament, but hampered, as any religious body must be, by a
total absence of belief in the supernatural. In the generation that had
intervened between my girlhood and my old age Catholicism indeed had
spread, but England had ceased to be a Christian country.
Whether or no decline in religion was the cause of it, it is certain
that during that same generation the rigid virtues of the mid-Georgian
era had been dissipated or obscured. A statesman of that earlier period
would have resented the imputation of openly using his official
knowledge to secure a business deal: we think of such an attitude as
quixotic, but there was a certain nobility about it. The Press of that
earlier period would have scorned to hush up a public scandal just
because influential people were implicated in it: we call that a
sentimental prejudice, but at least it was an error in the right
direction. A divine of that earlier period would have felt a delicacy
about subscribing to a formula of belief with which he found himself in
total disagreement; it was a scruple, perhaps, but surely a scruple
which did him honour. Men thought strenuously in those days, and lived
earnestly, and worked without thought of reward. “Bliss was it in that
dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven”—I can never read
those lines of Wordsworth without being reminded of my girlhood’s days;
and of more than one figure in the public life of that time I am tempted
to say, with the regretful tone of one who has outlived her generation:
“He was a man, take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like
again.”
I cannot resist quoting, while I am on this subject, some words from the
very last letter I ever received from my friend Lady Polebridge.[16]
“You and I, my dear Opal,” she typed, “belong to a generation that is
disappearing, and will not regret us (for who ever does really regret
us?) when we are gone. Nothing so strongly affects me, when I look back,
as the strong sense of the mutability of human things. We poor creatures
choose our own friends, make our own groups round us, only for the rude
hand of circumstance to redistribute and rearrange us when it wills. No
illusion lasts, no experience is other than transitory. And yet when we
look back upon our young days, we can surely say that there was more of
stability and permanence about those peaceful, slow-going times than we
can find in the bustle and hurry of to-day. Our youth belongs to the
last generation of English life that really saw life steadily and saw it
whole; that really had its innermost core rooted in the hard rock of
purposeful, strenuous living. I shall not be sorry to go, when my turn
comes, to a world full of the shadows of my old companions, where I
shall perhaps find peace at last.”
Those words were written in 1971, only a year before the war actually
broke out, and when, of course, we all saw that it was coming. Such then
were the impressions of us older folk; and now let me leave it to my
younger readers to say whether since then, with all the good resolutions
we made when the crisis was upon us, we have really gone forward or gone
back? Have we really fulfilled the promise of those desperate moments
when, under the shadow of a world-catastrophe, we thought we had for
once seen ourselves as we would like to be? Let me quote, though they
have been often quoted, the words of Mrs. Bisset, in the early part of
1975, that rang like a trumpet-call throughout the theatrophones of the
civilized world:
“We shall not lightly forget the lessons of the recent conflict. If we
have learned that human nature, even in its degradation, can rise in its
might and throw off its old evil habits under the stimulus of a great
emergency, we will tell ourselves, in the years to come, that this human
nature is worth labouring for and worth fighting for. If we have seen,
at the same time, that the ideals which once satisfied and the
conditions which once contented us were ideals which ambition should
have despised, and conditions which dignity should have resented, we
will remember in the days to come that we must never again let ourselves
be duped by the ignoble lure of a false peace. We have fought for
honour, for civilization, for high aims and pure enthusiasms: we have
met the powers of evil, and forced upon them the conditions of a not
dishonourable peace. And the power which has been generated by these
years of relentless friction will, if we but canalize it aright,
galvanize through centuries to come the failing dynamos of humanity.”
So it looked to us in ’75; I leave it to the consciences of my readers
to determine whether we have lived up to those heroic sentiments.
And now I must unslip the catch, and put the lid upon my well-worn
typewriter. I cannot tell what verdict will be passed on my poor
efforts. In the old days, when reviewers held themselves bound to read
through a book before they recorded their impressions of it, I should no
doubt have had my weak points discovered by the eye of unfriendly
criticism; to-day, one can still hope that one’s deficiencies will pass
unobserved! I am afraid, now I come to look back over the record, that
after all it is a chronicle of small doings; if I had known that I was
to write reminiscences in my old age, perhaps I would have travelled
further in search of impressions, and striven higher so as to satisfy my
readers with the story of greater things. As it is, it must pass for an
old woman’s gossip; and as such, let us hope that it will be lightly
judged.
I have sometimes thought that it would be a pleasant occupation for the
fancy to throw oneself forward into the future, and to write the
imaginary reminiscences of an old lady, one’s granddaughter, who was
putting print to paper in 2050! What a strange picture she would give of
ourselves! How often she would hit the mark, how often miss it by a
hair’s-breadth! She would let us see ourselves, I suppose, as a race of
almost legendary heroes, to be spoken of with bated breath: ours would
be the rugged virtues and the quaint, old-world ways! But the author who
should attempt such a flight of the imagination would, no doubt, be
accused not only of fantasy in his forecasts of the future, but of
misrepresentation in the picture he gave of his own times. It would be a
perilous task; let me present the idea to anyone who will make use of
it!
And so let me close my story, with a kindly thought for all my readers,
and a tranquil regard for my own approaching end. That regard I cannot
express better than in some old lines which I found in a book of
travels[17]—the identity of the original author is uncertain:
Look upward, for the sky is not all cloud.
Look forward, think not of the dismal shroud.
No lane but has a turning, and no road
That leads not somewhere to a warm abode.
Take courage. If the day seems rather long,
The cooling dew will fall at evensong.
Believe, and Doubt is sure to slink away;
Doubt is a cur, and Fear is but a fool;
Rely upon yourself and let your stay
Be the observance of the heavenly rule.
Never say die; and do not be afraid;
At eventide the wages will be paid.
INDEX OF PERSONS REFERRED TO
Adgate, Sir Mark, his curious watch, 133
Albert, H.R.H. Prince (afterwards King Albert I), 202
Amboise, Mademoiselle, 21
“Antoinette,” her prescription, 80
Archdale, Leonard, the actor, 95
Banks, Wynefryde, 30, 118
Bates, Sir Arthur, his intrepid candidature, 151
Billericay, Lord, 129, 147, 177, 184, 187, 207
Birkenhead, Bishop of, amusing anecdote told by, 208
Bisset, Mrs., on War-aims, 238
Blisworth, Lady, 1, 10, 22, 25, 43, 73, 183
Blisworth, Lord, 1, 4, 11, 14, 16, 25, 81, 82
Bowles, Dr., 74
Brede, Marquis of, 166‒168, 211
Breder, Dr., on raw tomatoes, 137
St. Briavel’s, Countess of, 129
de Brignard, Comtesse, _see_ Tarporley.
Burstall, the “Futurist” artist, 173, 202
Bythorpe, Lord, his versatility, 41
Cheadle, Lord, his speech at Oxford, 41
Combe, Lady, 88‒92, 112‒114, 126, 180
Combe, Sir Richard, 88, 127
Crawshall, “Dick,” rides a bicycle, 131
Cubitt’s house at Eton, 183
Dives, Canon, 45‒47, 50, 51, 119‒122, 188, 212, 213‒221, 225
Dolman, Dr., chest specialist, 158
Drake, Mrs., _see_ Lushcombe.
Druce, Mr., Superintendent of the Berthellot Institute, 77‒79
Drysdale, Lady Jacynth, her coloured teeth, 131
Drywater, Professor, of Aberdeen, on travelling expenses, 162
Ducie, John, his reckless feats, 134
Engelberg, Baroness, _see_ Sholto.
Engelstein, Lady, 131, 188
Farnham, the Hon. Mrs., 151
Fearon, Hon. Algernon, his unusual accomplishment, 130
Feilding, Dr., of Christ Church, a popular lecturer, 36
ffynes, Sir Hugh, 211
Fitzgerald, the actor, 95
von Fleissing, Landgrab, on religion, 60
Forres, Lady Anne, 38
Fothergill, Professor, the younger, 194
Frodsham’s house at Eton, 183
Garvice, Miss, on the Absolution, 44
Geraghty, Daniel, Prime Minister of Ireland, 194
Goodge, Dame Beatrice, 205
Grant, the late Mrs., 133
Griggs, Holbeach, 138‒142
Grosheim, Lady Georgina, 131, 139, 140, 187
Gunter, Sir Hubert, 145, 165, 166
Hammond, George, the historian, 146, 207
Harkness, Francis, 128, 158, 177, 179, 190, 191, 211
Harkness, Gervase, 128, 157, 158, 177, 185, 190, 211
Harkness, Wilson, _see_ Porstock, Lord.
Hawkesley, Tulip, 30
Hazelbright, Sir Philip, 157
Henricourt, the novelist, 196‒197
Hodges, James, 122‒124, 127, 176
Hodgkins, Trevor, his breakfast at the Zoo, 135
Holbrook, the actor, 95
Holly, Lady Frances, does “knitting”, 131
Holroyd, The Right Hon. James, 155‒157, 162, 166, 168‒170, 210, 211
Hopedale, Viscount, 145, 147, 150, 152, 163, 188
Hopgood, Frank (afterwards White-Elephant-at-Arms), 106, 130
Hopgood, Irene, an exacting guest, 130
Hopkins, _see_ Engelberg.
Hopps, Adèle, and her hair, 132
Hoskyns, of B.N.C., the geographer, 35, 42, 43, 119
Humbledon, Lady, 139
Krausenberg, Dr., his theory of education, 180
Labadie, 95
Leek, Sapphire: Countess of, 137, 195
Lennox, the artist, 186, 202
Lestrange, General, 14
Lieberts, “Tommy”, 129, 153, 188
Linklater, Sybil, Lady, her revolving ball-room, 136
Linthorpe, Miss, 12, 13, 43, 51, 65, 66‒71, 122, 123, 191, 224
Linthorpe, _see also_ Blisworth, Lady.
Lock, “Archie”, 132, 135, 140, 142, 175, 177, 187, 207
Lushcombe, Lady, _see_ Stockdale.
Macdonald, “Fatty”, 30
McGillivray, the comic artist, 208
McGinnis, His Grace Duke, 100
McKechnie, Mrs., her “Reminiscences Edwardian and Albertian”, 148, 149
Mainwaring, the poet, 189
Margate, Esther, her acute feminism, 206‒207
Marrett, Lady, 204
Massachussets, Lady, 109, 110
Merewether, Dame Louise, her recklessness and caution, 135, 137
Mersham, Miss, numismatics mistress, runs away, 29
Michigan, Duke of, 131
Millthorpe, Viscount, 150
Montrose, Miss, Head Mistress, 18‒20, 165
Murchison, General, 102
van Murphy, Mr. and Mrs., 104‒105
Myslok, the novelist, 63
Nuneaton, Angela Lady, 135, 138, 139
O’Leary, the actor, 95
O’Leary, the K.C., 192‒193
O’Shaugnessy, President (U.S.A.), 9
Palliser, Capt. Jane, 30
Partridge, Mrs. Justice, 193
Perse, Lord, 169
Peterson, the philanthropist, 229
Philpotts, Dame Horatia, 154‒155
Pirbright, Edgar, the poet, 185, 199
Polebridge, Lady, 78, 93, 116‒118, 126, 175, 186, 198, 237
Poltwhistle, Lord Chief Justice, 192
Porstock, Wilson Lord, 100, 109‒111, 124‒127, 142, 170, 189
Poughkeepsie, Lord and Lady, 103‒105
Pulbrooke, Countess of (in her own right), 167, 174, 187
Rivers, Mrs., on chewing, 107
Ropes, Charles, 99, 147, 148
Rowlands, Rev. Agape, 86, 87, 89‒92, 108, 109, 114‒116, 124, 127, 158,
176
Rowlands, Rev. Didymus, 85, 87, 90, 91, 213
Rymer, Sir Alexander, 74
Sanderson, the Præteritist portrait-painter, 201‒205
Sandham, Lord, wears “starched” collars, 133
Sandridge, Dr., Head-Master of Eton, 185
Savage, Juliet, 30, 31, 39, 41, 52, 77, 79, 86, 118, 119, 122, 125,
144, 172, 177, 187, 188, 206, 225
Schultz, Herr, the pædagogist, 178‒180
Shanks, Dr., 73
Sholto, Mrs., _see_ Drake.
Sitwell, Dame Mary, the scalp specialist, 132
Smith, H.E., Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster, 189, 209, 221, 222
Sonnenschein, Miss, 77
Spink, Mrs., authoress of _Eugenics for Lower Forms_, 137
Stockdale, Lady, _see_ de Brignard.
Tarporley, Mrs., _see_ Travers-Grant, Lady.
Tonks, Arthur, Regius Professor of Statistics, 163
Toogood, Ena, 37
Townshend’s house at Eton, 183
Travers, Eustace, his versatility, 41
Travers-Grant, Lady, _see_ Polebridge.
Trecastle, Lady, 13, 14, 224
Trecastle, Lord, the last of the beavers, 133
Tremayne, James, his solution of the exchange problem, 98
Tryer, Dr., her methods, 75, 76
Winterhead, _see_ Blisworth, Lord.
Woollcombe, Miss, the bowler, 24
Wrightman, the sculptor, 173
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
-----
Footnote 1:
Meaning, of course, the Five Years’ War.
Footnote 2:
Miss Linthorpe’s record did not seem so extraordinary then as it
would now; even as late as the fifties I remember a few young men
of thirty or thirty-five who had still some of their own teeth
left.
Footnote 3:
Previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 4:
Previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 5:
Previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness
Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 6:
Curiously enough, this hymn was written by a lady who afterwards
became a Catholic, early in the century.
Footnote 7:
This was Augustus Hemmerde, afterwards famous as a dramatist.
Footnote 8:
This, it will be remembered, actually happened, and the raising of the
premium to £7,500 was one of the chief counts against the Tory Party.
Footnote 9:
My father always used to speak of this as “the Coalition Government.”
The name Cabal was invented by later historians to distinguish it from
the 1974 Coalition; the names that suggested it were those of
Churchill, Arthur (Balfour), Birkenhead, Austen (Chamberlain) and
Lloyd (George).
Footnote 10:
The records are, however, somewhat scratched as the result of the fire
at Cippenham in ’73.
Footnote 11:
Previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs.
Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 12:
The boys did not get any fees at all for staying at the school during
the holidays, which, as it was against the rules, they nearly always
did.
Footnote 13:
Previously Lady Stockdale, previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs.
Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née
Hopkins.
Footnote 14:
Previously Mrs. Tarporley, previously Mme de Brignard, previously Lady
Stockdale, previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake,
previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 15:
The title distinguishes him from the Ecumenical Bishop of Norwich, Dr.
Bridler.
Footnote 16:
Previously Lady Travers-Grant, previously Mrs. Tarporley, previously
Mme. de Brignard, previously Lady Stockdale, previously Lady
Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously
Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.
Footnote 17:
_ap._ Baring, Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 231. The attribution of the
lines to Wordsworth is now generally discredited.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together
at the end of the last chapter.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Memories of the Future, by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox