such a wonderful experience of watchfulness over me I shall never worry
again—I should be a monster of ingratitude if I did. Because all the
time my guardian angel was working for me. For when I had dressed and
started out to get to the Elysian punctually, what do you think?—there
was a cordon of police all round it, to keep me and every one away, and
thousands of people looking on. The restaurant had caught fire and was
gradually but surely burning to the ground! Wasn’t that an extraordinary
piece of luck, or rather, not luck but intervention? Of course it was no
good looking for Stella among such a crowd, so I went off to the Club and
dined alone.
A religious fellow would make a tract about an experience of this kind.
I’m afraid I can’t be called religious exactly, but I have learnt my
lesson.
I am still having bad nights thinking about my future.—Your affectionate
nephew,
ROY
LXXXIX
CLEMENCY POWER TO PATRICIA POWER
PAT, MY ANGEL,—I am comfortable enough here but I wish I could hail
an aeroplane and drop in on you all for a few hours. Some day we shall
be able to do impulsive and impossible things like that. Miss Raby is
certainly getting stronger, and could very well do her own reading, but
she seems to like me. I am saving money too—because there’s nothing to do
with it—and when my time is finished you must come to London to meet me
and I’ll stand you some nice dinners and theatres before we go back.
I hope I’ve done the school children a little good, but it’s
heartbreaking to be a teacher, because one is fighting nature most of the
time. “Be thoughtful, be good, be considerate,” we say, by which we mean
“Behave so that the comfort of older people, who own the world, may be as
little disturbed as possible.” But oh the little poets and rebels we are
suppressing and perhaps destroying!
We’re all women here, except the Doctor and the Rector, who are both
old and oh so polite. The Doctor’s wife, Mrs. Ferguson, is the affable
arch type who tells anecdotes and is “quite sure God has a sense of
humour”—you know the kind I mean. The Rector’s wife is soft and clinging
and full of superlative praise. But I mustn’t be critical, because every
one here is kind and nice, and as for Miss Raby I’d do anything for her.
Give Herself my love and say I’ll write very soon. Adela ought to write
to me, tell her.—Your devoted
CLEM.
XC
HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY
DEAR AUNT,—As you know, there is great need of a revival in all kinds of
home industries if we are to regain, or rather to hold, our place among
the nations, and I am far too keen a political economist not to be giving
much thought to the matter. What I am at the moment most interested in
is the carpet manufacture. I have heard of a firm in the West of England
which merely needs a little more capital to do the most astonishing
things, and I wonder if you would advance me a thousand or so to invest
in it. I ask as a loan—no speculation at all.
One of the reasons why I have a leaning towards this industry—apart from
the fact that carpets must always be needed—is that the other day when
I was in the South Kensington Museum, looking about for inspiration, I
noticed an ancient rug, hanging on the wall, which represented a map.
It at once struck me that it would be a first-class notion to make map
carpets for sale in this country. Think of the enormous success that a
carpet-map of the Western Front would have been during the late War.
Conversation need never have faltered, and if you had a real soldier
to tea or dinner he could have made his story extraordinarily vivid by
walking about the room and illustrating the various positions. Or take
a carpet-map of Ireland—how that would help in our understanding of the
Irish question! In nurseries too, the carpet could teach geography.
Children crawling over it from one country to another could get a most
astonishing notion of boundaries and so forth.
The more I think of the scheme, the more I am taken by it; and I hope,
dear Aunt, that you will see eye to eye with me. Trusting that you
are progressing favourably towards a complete recovery—I am, your
affectionate nephew,
HORACE MUN-BROWN
_P.S._—I never see Hazel now, but still live in hopes.
XCI
VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN
MY DEAR FRIEND AND PHILOSOPHER,—How wise you are! On paper. When I meet
you and see your dear old face I know you are capable of quite as many
incautious impulses as most of us; but when I read your cool counsels and
generalizations you seem to assume a white beard of immense proportions
and to be superior to all human temptations or foibles.
Now, tell me, don’t you think there is any way in which a little
money might help to get England back to a sense of orderliness and
responsibility again? Nesta and I have been wondering if lecturers
could be employed, perhaps with cinema films, to excite people about
England—the idea of England as the country that ought to set a good
example, that always has led and should lead again. A kind of pictorial
pageant of its greatness. Or there might be illustrated lives of its
greatest men, to stimulate the ambition of the young and their parents.
It is all very vague in my mind, but don’t you think there is something
in it? The Rector, I confess, is very cold. He says that what is needed
is more faith, more piety, and anything that I could do to that end would
be the best thing of all; but when I ask him how, all he can suggest is a
new peal of bells here and a handsome donation to the spire fund of the
church at Bournemouth where he was before he came here, which was left
unfinished. Nesta says that, according to her recollection, Bournemouth
has too many spires as it is. I know you are usually sarcastic about the
Church, but do tell me candidly what you think.
In exchange for all yours, I must give you the last verse of a
consolatory poem written for me by a young sympathizer aged nine:—
How we watch the feeble flicker,
Watch the face so wan!
Day by day she groweth weaker,
Soon she will be gone.
Apropos of children—Nesta’s Lobbie said a rather nice thing the other
day. There was a wonderful sunset and she went out into the garden to
see it. Then she said—“Mother, I can’t think how God made the sky. I can
understand His making nuts”—here she rubbed her thumb and finger together
as though moulding something—“and even flowers. But the sky—no!”—Your
grateful
V.
XCII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR VERENA, you have hurt me this time. I never thought you had it in
you to do so, but you have. You tell me to tell you something “candidly.”
Now, when have I ever done anything else?
As for the Church, I don’t think this the best time to give it spires.
It is not architecturally that it needs help, and I never thought so
with more conviction than when, at a State banquet the other night, to
which I was bidden, I saw a Bishop in purple evening dress. He looked an
astonishingly long way from Bethlehem.
As for the cinema scheme, it is ingenious and might serve; but I think
I should wait a little until the present fermentation subsides. You
would never get a Picture Palace manager to put it on now, when every
one is thoughtless and lavish with money and only excitement is popular.
I remember seeing an Italian cinema audience go wild over a film about
Mameli, who wrote their national song and joined Garibaldi; but that was
just before a war—with Turkey—and not after. Before a war you can do
wonders with people; but after—no. It is then that the big men are needed.
I don’t often send you anything really wicked, but the temptation to-day
is too great to be resisted. You are fond, I know, of those lines by T.
E. Brown called “My Garden.” Well, in the magazine of Dartmouth Royal
Naval College some irreverent imp once wrote a parody which I can no
longer keep to myself. By what right an embryonic admiral should also be
a humorous poet I can’t determine; but there is no logic in life. Here is
his mischief:—
A garden is a loathsome thing—eh, what?
Blight, snail,
Pea-weevil,
Green-fly such a lot!
My handiest tool
Is powerless, yet the fool
(Next door) contends that slugs are not.
Not slugs! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have some brine;
’Tis very sure they shall not walk in mine.
—That of course is sacrilege, and I haven’t the heart to add anything
serious to it.
Here’s a nice thing said recently by an old French general, retired, in
charge of the Invalides Hospital. “Heroes—yes; a hero can be an affair of
a quarter of an hour, but it takes a life-time to make an honest man.”
Morpheus calls.
R. H.
XCIII
NICHOLAS DEVOSE TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAREST SERENA,—I rejoiced to have your letter. I was afraid that you
might not be well enough to write; I was afraid that you might not wish
to write. I am on my way back and you shall know when I reach London. I
will do as you say: you would be wiser than I.
N.
XCIV
LOUISA PARRISH TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR VERENA,—It is too long since I wrote to you. The reason is that
the trouble about maids has been so constant and distressing. I am sure
that there could not be a house where more consideration is shown, but we
cannot get any to stay. I don’t understand it in the least. I have even
offered to buy a gramophone for the kitchen, but it is useless. I brought
myself to this step very reluctantly, because some of the records with
what I believe is called “patter” in them are so vulgar, and too many of
the songs too. Our last cook stayed only four days and vanished in the
night. She seemed such a nice woman, but you never can tell, they are
so deceitful. When we came down in the morning there was a note on the
kitchen table and no breakfast. She had actually got out of the window
after we had gone to bed.
I now have one coming from the North with an excellent character but she
wants £45 a year. Isn’t it monstrous? The housemaid has been here for
three weeks, but I wake several times every night and fancy I hear her
making off. Life would be hardly worth living, under such circumstances,
but for our friends.
I hope your news is good. My own constant ailment does not show any
improvement and if only I could feel any confidence about the house I
should go to Buxton. I heard from a visitor at the Vicarage yesterday of
another case of spinal trouble which seems very like your own. That too
was the result of a fall. It was many years ago and the poor sufferer is
still helpless; but we all hope better things for you.—Your sincerely
loving friend,
LOUISA
_P.S._—My brother Claude has had another stroke.
XCV
ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST MUMMIE,—I had a funny dream last night. I dreamt about you and
me going to see the Queen and I had a hole in my stocking. The Queen
didn’t see the hole but you made me cross by drawing attention to it and
apologizing. I said to the Queen, “I suppose you never wear the same
stockings again, Queen Mary,” and she said, laughing, “Oh, yes, I do but
you mustn’t call me Queen Mary, you must call me Ma’am.” Wasn’t it funny?
When you come home you will find new curtains in the drawing-room which
Daddy has had put up for a surprise for you. I oughtn’t to have told you,
but you must pretend you didn’t know and be tremendously excited. My cold
has gone. I used four handkerchiefs a day.—Your very loving
TONY
x x x x x
XCVI
ROY BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY
_Dear Aunt Verena_,—I am feeling very run down and depressed, because my
star has set. What I mean is that Margot has gone. Her people have taken
a place in Scotland and of course she had to go too. As I believe I told
you, she never intends to marry, but all the same she was a jolly good
sort and we had some topping walks together. We used to go to the Zoo
too, and as her father is a Fellow all the keepers know her and show her
the special things. Being cooped up in London is rotten and I wondered if
I might come to you for a few days for some country air and perhaps cheer
you up a bit. You must be very dull lying there all the time with nothing
but women about you. I should be out most of the day, and I daresay there
are some people to play tennis with and a golf course not too far off.
Margot has been to Herefordshire and she says it’s ripping, and what she
doesn’t know about the country isn’t worth knowing. Of course if all this
bores you, you’ll say so, won’t you?—Your affectionate nephew,
ROY
_P.S._—I haven’t seen Stella since that awful Elysian business.
XCVII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR, I have to confess to a sad failure. You must know that I am
always hoping for an adventure that shall be worth narrating in a letter
to you, and sometimes I even strive for them. My latest deliberate
flirtation with the Goddess of Chance occurred this afternoon; and being
deliberate it failed. At least there is nothing in it for the immediate
and sacred purpose: but one never knows how long an arm can be.
It happened this way. I had invited Anna—you know, Fred Distyn’s
sister—to a matinée; and she was to meet me in the lobby five minutes
before the rise of the curtain. I was there even earlier and stood
waiting and watching the eager faces of the arriving audience for fully
ten minutes after the play had begun. This eagerness to be inside a
theatre and witness rubbish is (as you know) a terrible commentary on
life and the intellectual resources of civilization; but that is beside
the point.
Having waited for a quarter of an hour I then deposited with the
commissionaire a minutely-painted word-portrait of Anna, together with
her ticket, and took my seat.
When the first Act was over and there was still no Anna, I told the
commissionaire to find some one in the street who looked as though a
theatre would amuse him—or, if need be, her—and invite him or her to
occupy the empty place.
Now could one set a better trap for Fortune than that?
But it was a hopeless fiasco. Instead of playing the Haroun Al Raschid
and going out into the highways and byways, the commissionaire gave the
ticket to his wife, who happened to be calling on him for some of his
Saturday wages. My own fault, of course, for I ought to have gone myself.
One should never delegate the privileges of romance.
Here is an old favourite, for a change:—
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me.
I suppose you know that the Jenny of this poem was Jane Welsh
Carlyle?—Your devoted
R. H.
XCVIII
NICHOLAS DEVOSE TO VERENA RABY
[_Telegram_]
Am at Garland’s Hotel, tell me what to do.
NICHOLAS
XCIX
NESTA ROSSITER TO ROY BARRANCE
DEAR ROY,—Aunt Verena asks me to say that she will be delighted if you
will come for a few days next week, but she warns you that you will find
things very slow here. We are a small party, the liveliest of us being
my little Lobbie, whom I don’t think you have seen. As she is now six,
this shows that you have neglected your kith and kin. If you care for
fishing you had better bring your rod, as the Arrow is not far off. And I
wish you would go to that shop in the Haymarket just above the Haymarket
Theatre and get one of those glass coffee machines—medium size. I should
also like a biggish box of Plasticine for Lobbie.—Your affectionate
cousin,
NESTA
C
VERENA RABY TO NICHOLAS DEVOSE
DEAR,—I have thought much since your last letter and more still since
the telegram came. Please do not come yet. I could not bear it. Old as
the rest of me has become, all that appertains to you is preserved, as
though in some heart-cell apart, and as fresh as yesterday. I am not
equal to the emotion of seeing you just yet, nor am I sure that I want
to. The you that I know is no longer the you that others see—he is young
and ambitious and often masterful and yet with such strange fits of
misgiving. But I should love to have a portfolio of your sketches, if you
could trust them to the railway. Choose those that you think the best or
that you made under the happiest conditions. No, let there be one or two
when you were least happy.
Are you grey? I am.
SERENA
CI
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR, I hope that this heat isn’t too much for you, but perhaps your
circumambient heights promote a breeze. London has been stifling. The
War has certainly broken down many of our old conventions. Who, even
in the hottest summer, ever before saw bathing in the Trafalgar Square
fountains? Or stark naked boys careering round Gordon’s statue. But I
saw them to-day—a score of them—with a policeman after them; for against
bathing there is a law to break, apparently. The constable did not run,
he merely advanced; but they scampered before him, all gleaming in the
evening sun, dragging their scanty clothes behind them, and those who
were leading paused now and then to get a leg into their trousers,
hesitated, failed, and were away again. It is astonishing how little
space can intervene between what appears to be a sauntering policeman and
a naked fleeing boy. This constable was like Fate.
I once read somewhere that clever women always tell men that they look
overworked. Yesterday I made the discovery of a form of words even more
soothing when proceeding from feminine lips: another weapon in the clever
woman’s verbal armoury—should she need any assistance that way. The
solicitous phrase “You are looking overworked,” is unction perhaps more
for the young than the middle-aged and elderly. No young man, however
conscious of his own abysmal laziness, can resist it, or want to resist
it. But the maturer man—the man to whom Father Time’s chief gift is an
increase of girth—must be differently handled. He may be overworked, but
to be told about it, however seducingly, does not much interest him.
Besides he knows when it is not true: when what looks like the effect of
overwork (supposing the lady to have something to go upon) is really due
to late hours or a glass too many. In short, he is a little too old for
any flattery but the kind of flattery he is not too old for. Therefore
the clever woman, in dealing with him, must do otherwise. Taking him by
the hand, she must look at his features with a close and careful scrutiny
which, although it is assumed, can be extremely comforting, and then say,
in a tone almost of triumph, “You’re getting thinner.”
Isn’t it about time that you sent me another medical report? Here is a
passage in Swift’s letters that I hit upon last night:—
“And remember that riches are nine parts in ten of all that is good in
life, and health is the tenth; drinking coffee comes long after, and
yet it is the eleventh; but without the two former, you cannot drink it
right.”
And here is to-day’s poem:—
If on a Spring night I went by
And God were standing there,
What is the prayer that I would cry
To Him? This is the prayer:
O Lord of Courage grave,
O Master of this night of Spring!
Make firm in me a heart too brave
To ask Thee anything!
Who do you think wrote that? It is a very fine specimen of what I call
“Novelists’ poetry”—the poetry which men known for their prose and
romance now and then produce. Most of them occasionally try their hand,
and often very interestingly. One of the best short poems in the language
is an epitome of the life of man by Eden Phillpotts. Grant Allen wrote
some remarkable lines. The author of _The Children of the Ghetto_ has
published a volume of his verses which is full of arresting things.
Thomas Hardy, of course, has become poet altogether, and Maurice Hewlett
seems to be that way inclined. But still I don’t tell you who wrote the
lines just quoted: John Galsworthy.
R. H.
CII
VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN
MY DEAR RICHARD,—I have come to the conclusion that the immediate
need is to get my will properly fixed up. If you won’t accept the
responsibility of distributing money according to your own judgment I
must make some definite bequests. I calculate that after relations and
friends and certain dependants are provided for or remembered, there
ought to be as much as £50,000 to leave for some specific useful purpose.
It might go to build and endow alms-houses, it might form a benevolent
fund of some kind. Please concentrate on this question, even though it
tends towards that pernicious evil “interference.”
I am in momentary fear of losing Miss Power because her mother has been
ill; but hope for the best. I don’t know what we should do without her.
V.
CIII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
Now, Verena, you’re talking. The interest on £50,000 at five per cent,
with income-tax at present rate deducted, would be, say, £1750. Well, you
can do lots of things with £1750 a year.
Have you ever heard of the National Art Collections Fund? This is a
society of amateurs of art who collect money in order to acquire for the
nation pictures and drawings and sculptures which the nation ought not
to miss but which it has no official means of purchasing. For although
we have a National Gallery of the highest quality, the Treasury grant
for buying new masterpieces for it is so small that, unless private
enterprise assists, everything goes to America. How would you like your
£1750 a year to assist the purchase of pictures for the nation—whether
hung in London or elsewhere—for ever?
And then have you ever heard of the National Trust for the Preservation
of Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty? This was founded by
the late Octavia Hill with the purpose of acquiring for the nation, for
ever, beauty spots and open spaces and old comely buildings. Isn’t that
a good and humane idea? To preserve a piece of grass land, with all its
trees intact, in the midst of a new building estate! All kinds of parks
and commons and hill-tops are now inviolate through the activities of
this Society. Would you like your money to strengthen their hands? No one
with money to spare who followed Octavia Hill could go wrong.
That is enough for the present; but I will supply further hints.
You want stories, you say. Here is one which was told yesterday, at Mrs.
Beldham’s, by a very attractive and humorous woman. We had been talking
of jewels; apropos, I think, of Lady Crowborough’s pearl necklace which
she took off and allowed me to hold. Nothing more exquisite than the
temperature and texture of them could I imagine; only about twenty-five
thousand pounds’ worth, that’s all. I wonder that the psychic quality
of jewels has not appealed more to novelists, for there can be no doubt
that they are curiously sympathetic. Pearls in particular, which grow
the finer the more constantly and intimately they are worn by congenial
wearers, but which languish and decline in lustre as their wearer loses
health, and worn on some necks refuse to glow and shine at all. I can see
a Hawthorney kind of story in which the living pearls of a dead mistress
play a subtle part.
Anyway, we were talking about precious stones, and this Mrs. Dee told
us her hard case. For she is the owner of some of the most beautiful
emeralds that exist in this country: the owner, but she cannot get at
them. They belonged, she said, to her Aunt Emily, and it was always
understood that upon the death of that estimable and ageing lady they
were to descend to her. It was, indeed, in the will. And so they would
have done, had not the too officious layers-out neglected to remove them
from the old lady’s neck.
“Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’,” said Mrs. Dee, “is a
melancholy poem, but its sadness is as nothing compared with mine, when I
sit beside Aunt Emily’s grave in the Finchley Road cemetery and think of
all my jewels growing dim only six feet or so below me.”
R. H.
_P.S._—Behold to-day’s poem:—
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows.
CIV
ROY BARRANCE TO HIS SISTER HAZEL