Relations used to be for the most part a bore, and, unless rich, it was
well that they were disregarded. But the war has altered all that. The
war has brought relations, no matter how humble, into fashion.
Not all, but some. I have as a matter of fact myself one brother in the
Fusiliers, in camp, and another who is a special constable and three
times has reported an airship by telephone; but these do not count. It
is fathers, brothers, cousins, sons, uncles and nephews at the Front who
count.
Anyone who can refer to a real relation at the Front is just now
conversationally on velvet, while, if a letter from this relation can be
produced and read, everyone else must give way. SYDNEY SMITHS, THEODORE
HOOKS, RICHARD PORSONS, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAYS even, would be
three-a-penny to-day as against one obscure individual who happened to
have a brother in the trenches and a letter in his handwriting.
But that is not all. There is reflected glory too. To know a person who
has a relation at the Front is to be immeasurably promoted socially, and
most of the conversations which one overhears in trains and elsewhere
have some such opening as this: "A friend of my brother's has seen a
Belgian...." "A cousin of my wife's who is a doctor in a field hospital
says...." "I know a man who was talking with a wounded Tommy, and
he...." "An undergraduate friend of my boy's who is just back from
France...." Once stories begun in this way would empty a room; but not
so now. Now they no longer devastate but fascinate. It does not matter
what the stories are about, the fact remains that an opening gambit
which three months ago would stamp a man as a triple bore now holds
everyone breathless. In short, relations at last have come to their own.
Another achievement of WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN!
For the most part they bear upon German atrocities, just as a little
while ago they were the preliminaries to unmistakable evidence of the
presence in this country of thousands of Russians travelling from
Scotland to Southampton by underground passage and other mysterious
ways. I myself believed in those Russians absolutely, and relinquished
them with pain and sorrow; and all because they were attested to by
other people's relations. This helps to show what a hold the relation is
getting on us. In fact no story of the war is now possible without some
kith and kin in it.
Personally I am much out in the cold. Those two brothers I told you of
may serve to fill a gap now and then--a gap left by other more
entertaining raconteurs--but they are not, as I said, any real good.
Both are in England, and one will never leave it. But if things were
different.... If only that soldier brother had joined earlier and had
written to me from Rheims, say, or Compiègne, how my stock would fly up!
Or if that other one would even now fling away his truncheon, enlist in
time to share the march to Berlin, and then sit down to tell me all
about it, what a swell I should become! How dinner-parties would
assemble to hear me!
As it is, I have to-day to do the best I can either with the tame
home-keeping exploits of these two, or, by listening with excessive
sympathy or by other parasitical endeavour, acquire a reversionary
interest in someone else's relation's narrative. I have even, in order
to cut some sort of a figure in a company where relations were being
used with dashing success--I have even gone so far as to appropriate the
gardener's boy's uncle, last heard of from Cambrai, as a personal and
communicative friend, and claim an intimate association with his letter
home.
And how splendid if all that could be changed!
"My brother," I could say boldly and with truth,--"my brother has sent
me a few lines from Berlin, the substance of which you might care to
hear." Of course they would be falling over each other to hear, but that
is my artful way. "He camped out," I should go on, "in the Thiergarten.
He says that to see the French waving their arms and cheering on the top
of the Brandenburg Gate was one of the finest things possible to
imagine. He had one bit of special luck: he was chosen to be one of the
guard to protect the removal of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum pictures
which are coming to London. He says that among these is the famous
portrait of ALEXANDER DEL BORRO (No. 413A) which is among our little
lot."
That would be worth living for--the triumph of that relation's letter!
It cannot, I fear, be mine; but surely it will be somebody's....
* * * * *
Illustration: _Sergeant_ (_looking for likely talent_). "DOES YOUR
HORSE JUMP AT ALL?"
_Recruit._ "OH NO, SIR, THANK YOU. HE'S A VERY NICE HORSE!"
* * * * *