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MARGE ASKINFORIT
BY BARRY PAIN
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
1921
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE 7
I. THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY 9
II. EBULLIENT YOUTH 18
III. GLADSTONE--LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR.
BENGER HORLICK 26
IV. THE SOLES 40
V. MISFIRES 50
VI. TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL APPRECIATION 64
VII. SELF-ESTIMATE 78
LATE EXTRA 83
"And every week you opened your hoard
Of truthful and tasteful tales--
How you sat on the knees of the Laureate Lord,
How you danced with the Prince of Wales--
And we knew that the Sunday Times had scored
In Literature and Sales."
_To Margot in Heaven._
BY CLARENCE G. HENNESSY (circa 1985).
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book was suggested by the reading of some extracts from the
autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number
of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which
seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait
for posterity and perspective will pardon a little contemporary
distortion.
In adding my humble wreath to the flatteries--in their sincerest
form--which she has already received, I should like to point out that a
parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people
biographed--some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have
lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring
it within the compass of the executant, but also to make a distinction.
I have increased the remoteness from real life--which was sometimes
appreciable in the original--to such an extent that it should be
impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is
intended for anybody in real life. Nobody in the parody is intended to
be a representation, or even a misrepresentation, of any real person
living or dead. For instance, Inmemorison is not intended to be a
caricature of Tennyson, but the passage which deals with him is intended
to parody some of the stuff that has been written about Tennyson.
No doubt the author of the original has opened to the public several
doors through which it is not thinkable that a parodist would care to
follow her. Apart from that, parody should be brief, just as
autobiography should be long--_ars brevis, vita longa_.
BARRY PAIN.
_October_ 8, 1920.
_The quotations are from the articles which appeared in "The Sunday
Times." It does not of course follow that these passages will appear in
the same form, or will appear at all, when the complete autobiography is
published._
MARGE ASKINFORIT
FIRST EXTRACT
THE CATASTROPHIC FAMILY
I was christened Margarine, of course, but in my own circle I have
always been known as Marge. The name is, I am informed, derived from the
Latin word _margo_, meaning the limit. I have always tried to live right
up to it.
We were a very numerous family, and I can find space for biographical
details of only a few of the more important. I must keep room for
myself.
My elder sister, Casein--Casey, as we always called her--was supposed to
be the most like myself, and was less bucked about it than one would
have expected. I never made any mistake myself as to which was which. I
had not her beautiful lustrous eyes, but neither had she my wonderful
cheek. She had not my intelligence. Nor had she my priceless gift for
uttering an unimportant personal opinion as if it were the final verdict
of posterity with the black cap on. We were devoted to one another, and
many a time have I owed my position as temporary parlour-maid in an
unsuspicious family to the excellent character that she had written for
me.
She married Moses Morgenstein, a naturalized British subject, who showed
his love for his adopted country by trading as Stanley Harcourt. He was
a striking figure with his coal-black hair and nails, his drooping
eye-lashes and under-lip, and the downward sweep of his ingratiating
nose. The war found him burning with enthusiasm, and I give here one
verse of a fine poem which he wrote and, as I will remember, recited in
Mrs. Mopworth's _salon_:
I vos in Luntun since t'ree year,
In dis lant I holt so tear,
Inklant, my Inklant!
Mit her overbowering might
If she gonquer in der fight,
M. Morgenstein vill be all right--
_Nicht?_--
Inklant, my own!
He was a man of diverse talents, and I used to regret that he gave to
the tripe-dressing what was meant for the muses. Alas, he was, though
indirectly, one of the many victims of the Great War. His scheme for the
concealment of excess profits was elaborate and ingenious, and practised
with assiduity. His simple mind could not apprehend that elemental
honesty was in process of modification. "Vot I maig for myself, dat I
keeb, _nicht?_" he often said to me. And then the blow fell.
However, he has earned the utmost remission to which good conduct could
entitle him, and we are hoping that he will be out again by Christmas.
My next sister, Saccharine, was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was
sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin--our mother, of course, was a
Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the
moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the
equal of my own. But about her beauty there was no doubt. In those
days--I am speaking of the 'nineties--it was quite an ordinary event for
my sister, inadvertently, to hold up an omnibus. The horses pulled up as
soon as they saw her, and refused to move until they had drunk their
fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the
horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and
refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of
the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints
of the passengers, and direct police intervention.
She was a sweet girl in those days, and I loved her. I never had any
feelings of jealousy. How can one who is definitely assured of
superiority to everybody be jealous of anybody?
She married a Russian, Alexis Chopitoff. He was a perfect artist in his
own medium, which happened to be hair. It is to him that I owe what is
my only beauty, and I am assured that it defies detection. At one time
life's greatest prizes seemed to be within his reach. During the war his
skill in rendering the _chevelure_ of noted pianists fit for military
service attracted official attention, and if he had been made O.B.E. it
would have come as no surprise to any of us. Unhappily his interest in
the political affairs of his own country led him to annex at Waterloo a
despatch-case which, pedantically speaking, did not belong to him. The
case unfortunately happened to contain a diamond tiara, and this led to
misunderstandings. Nothing could have exceeded the courage of dear
Saccharine when she learned that at the end of his sentence he was to be
deported.
"It will leave me," she said, with perfect calm and in words that have
since become historical, "in a position of greater freedom and less
responsibility."
But I knew how near she was to a nervous breakdown. Indeed, nervous
breakdown was her successful defence when, a week later, she was
arrested at Whiteridge's with a tin of sardines, two cakes of
super-cream toilet-soap, and a bound copy of Keble's "Christian Year" in
her muff. The malice and animosity that Whiteridge's showed in the
prosecution are but partly excused by the fact that dear Saccharine had
pinched the muff first.
Another sister, Chlorine, in later years became well known as a medium.
She communicated with the hereafter, or at the very least professed to
do so, by telephonic wireless. It used to be rather weird to hear her
ring up "Gehenna, 1 double 7, 6." I have not the least doubt that she
would have convinced a famous physicist who, curiously enough, is weak
on facts, or a writer of detective stories who, equally curiously, is
weak on imagination. I am sorry to say that she would never give me the
winner of the next Derby, nor do I remember that she ever used this
special and exclusive information for her own benefit. But, like other
mediums, she could always give a plausible reason for avoiding any test
that was really a test; and now that she has doubled her fees owing to
the increased cost of labour and materials, she ought to do very well,
particularly after the friendly boost that I have just given her.
Then there was Methyll--this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She
was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I
remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been
somewhat restricted: "One cocktail doesn't make a swallow." Modern
biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of
her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if
she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike
a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who
supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An
offer to let her share one with the cassowary--_missionara
timbuctana_--was refused.
I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief.
However, there is a skeleton in every fold--I mean to say, a black sheep
in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic
postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a
weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the "Frivolity,"
and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking
_mesalliance_. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than
once appeared on the back page of the "Daily Mail," but that is not
everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears
to my eyes when I think what she is missing.
My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home.
They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally
were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my
name, and he will tell you.
There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four
survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little
irritable--I wonder why.
My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the
same sex. But that so often happens, don't you think?
My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent
winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always
practical; nor is it--the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the
sex which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is
unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would
absolutely preclude any betting on one of our classic races; it would
probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in
the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear
it will never happen--so few men have dear papa's wonderful foresight.
Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of
Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and
unassuming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed
the winner in all the principal races. But such was veritably the case.
"There's nothing in it, Marge," he said to me one evening. "There's only
one sure way to win--back every horse in the race with another man's
money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known
trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all
I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the
process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks
covered. I know it's old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing
but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong."
But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known
trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint
had never shaved before. By a disastrous coincidence it happened that
the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to
think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to
resent it.
Spearmint did not lose the sight of the left eye, as was at one time
feared, but his looks have never been quite the same since his nose was
broken.
My next brother, Orby, was born in 1870. He could do the most graceful
and charming things. When his namesake won the Derby in 1907, he
immediately acquired a complimentary Irish accent, and employed it in
the narration of humorous stories. An accent acquired at the age of
thirty-seven is perhaps liable to lack conviction, and I always thought
that my brother was over-scrupulous in beginning every sentence with the
word "Bedad." Like myself, he simply did not know what fear was, and in
consequence told his Irish stories in his own Irish accent to a real
Irishman. However, now that he has got his new teeth in you would never
know that he had been hit. It was said of him by a great legal
authority--I forget in which police-court--that he had the best manners
and the least honesty of any taxi-driver on the Knightsbridge rank.
Another brother, Sunstar, acquired considerable reputation by his skill
in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his
hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when you
had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not
absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where he was known
the pewter from which he drank was always chained to the bar. He had
something of my own quixotic nature, and would probably have taken the
rest if he had wanted it. One day at Ascot he made a stranger's watch
disappear. When he came to examine his newly-acquired property he was
disappointed to find that the watch was a four-and-sixpenny American
Everbright--"Puts you wrong, Day and night." He was on the point of
throwing it away when the kindly thought came to him that perhaps the
stranger attached some sentimental value to that watch; indeed, there
seemed to be no other possible reason for wearing it. Sunstar determined
to replace the watch in the stranger's pocket. He did his best, but he
was far more practised in removing than in replacing. The stranger--a
hulking, cowardly brute--caught my brother with his hand in his pocket,
and failed to grasp the altruism of his motives, and that is why poor
Sunnie walks a little lame.
He is not with us at present. He had made quite a number of things
disappear, and a censorious world is ever prone to judge by
disappearances. It became expedient--and even necessary--for my brother
to make himself disappear, and he did so.
The Second Extract, as they say on the film, will follow immediately.
SECOND EXTRACT
EBULLIENT YOUTH
I have been studying the beautiful pages of the autobiography of my
Great Example--hereinafter to be called the G.E. It is wonderful to be
admitted to the circle of the elect, week after week, at the low rate of
twopence a time. Why, I've paid more to see the pictures.
Considering the price, one ought not to carp. The G.E. says in one
extract that she has lost every female friend she ever had, with the
exception of four. In a subsequent extract she names six women whose
friendship has remained loving and true to her since girlhood. She
speaks of a four-line stanza as a couplet. She imputes a "blasphemous
tirade" to a great man of science who certainly never uttered one. She
says that she had a conversation with Lord Salisbury about the fiscal
controversy, in which he took no part, the year after his death. But why
make a fuss about little things like this? If you write in bed at the
rate of one thousand words an hour, accidents are sure to happen.
But there is just one of the G.E.'s sentences that is worrying me and
keeping me awake at night. Here it is--read it carefully:
"I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same stuff,
top-boots, a cover-coat, and a coloured scarf round my head."
And all very nice too, no doubt. But consider the terrific problem
involved.
She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
same kind of stuff_. If she had, I could have understood it, and my
natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion
to the subject.
What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
same stuff_. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.
Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the
skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured
scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean
that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!
No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits.
Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties
of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.
All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct
account of my ebullient girlhood.
I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours
called it the Warren, but I can't think why. The Post Office said it was
No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish Town, and dear papa--who always had the
_mot juste_--sometimes said that it was hell.
We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating
voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don't you
wish you were like that?
All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times
there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger--I
shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels,
baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried
bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a
restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa
went. He would make for Regent's Park, and find repose in the old-world
calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.
But there is always room on the top--it is a conviction on which I have
ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the
Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my
nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically.
The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied
by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit
all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things
complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a
nasty letter from the landlord's agent. I had a long interview with
mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped and fell I
should probably make a nasty dent in the pavement, and with many tears I
promised to relinquish the practice.
I used to ride on the Heath when I had the opportunity, but I cannot
pretend that I was up to the standard of the G.E. I do not think I ever
rode up a staircase. I certainly never threw my horse down on the marble
floor of the hall of the Warren. There were several reasons for this.
Firstly, the Warren had not got a hall, and if it had had a hall, the
hall would not have had a marble floor. Secondly, the horses I rode were
likely to be wanted again, being in fact the ponies that unsuspecting
tradesmen stabled at Catley Mews. Bogey Nutter looked after them, and I
could always do what I liked with Bogey. He was perhaps the most profuse
proposer I ever met. At one time he always proposed to me once a day and
twice on Bank holidays. I was such a dashing, attractive creature, what?
As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education.
The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made
little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that
an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a
profit of three-and-five--provided that the horse won and the man at the
fishmonger's round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same
talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note,
he could always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for
himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying
to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly
shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit
him with anyhow.
For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a
gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you
so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had
been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their
dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance
when it was thrown at me.
My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not
wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient
proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life.
The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and
dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I
thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for
languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and
bought a monkey.
I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru
attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory
in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He
found another chapel that seemed more promising, but he attended it
only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly
rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.
My sisters and myself had a fascination for the other sex that was
almost incredible. At one time we had a Proposal Competition every week;
each of us put in sixpence, and the girl who got the greatest number of
proposals took the pool. Casey or I generally won. Then one week I
encountered on the Heath the annual beanfeast of the Pottey Asylum for
the Feeble-minded, and won with a score of a hundred and seven, and I
think the others said it was not fair. Anyhow, the competitions were
discontinued.
Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his
absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought
that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were
on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We
could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other
quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the
milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it
would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.
He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said
that I would accompany him.
"Better not," he said. "Looks to me like rain."
"But you have an umbrella," I pointed out.
"Aye," he said, "and when two people share one umbrella, they both get
all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice
book and read for a bit."
"No," I said. "I'm coming with you, and though it's Leap Year, I
definitely promise not to propose to you."
"Well," he said, "that makes a difference."
I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately
unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.
"I was once told by a palmist," I said, "that I had a mysterious and
magnetic attraction for men."
"Those palmists will say anything," he said. "It's just the other way
round really."
"Perhaps," I said. "I know I have an unlimited capacity for love--and
nobody seems to want it."
"Ah," he said, "it's a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article.
It means parting with it at a loss."
What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect
me.
"I wish," I said, "that you'd look if I've a fly in my eye."
"If you had, you'd know," he answered. "The fly sees to that."
Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.
He looked down and said that it was not undone.
I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be
insulted.
However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he
sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an
Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.
Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.
The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It
made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.
On leaving home I took an indeterminate position in a Bayswater
boarding-house. At any rate, my wages and food were determined, but my
hours of work were not.
A boarding-house is a congeries of people who have come down. The
proprietoress never dreamed that she would have to earn her own living
like that--though she gets everything to a knife-edge certainty in the
first week. Then in the drawing-room you have military people who have
thundered, been saluted, been respected--and superseded. And nobody can
make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she's not in
Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in
places where pace was not everytink. If you're out looking for
depression, try a boarding-house.
I stayed there a week and then said I was going. The lady said she knew
the law and I couldn't. So I said I would stay, and was sorry that the
state of my nerves would mean a good deal in breakages.
I left at the end of the week.
THIRD EXTRACT
GLADSTONE--MR. LLOYD GEORGE--INMEMORISON--DR. BENGER HORLICK.
After this I had a long succession of different situations. It is
possible for a girl to learn the work of any branch of domestic
service in a week, if she wishes to do it, with the exception of the
work of a cook or a personal maid. But then, it is quite possible to
take a situation as a cook, and to keep it, without knowing anything
appreciable about the work. Thousands of women have done it, and
are still doing it. I never went as personal maid--I dislike
familiarity--but with that exception I played, so to speak, every
instrument in the orchestra.
I acquired an excellent stock of testimonials, of which some were
genuine. The others were due to the kindly heart and vivid imagination
of my sister Casey, now Mrs. Morgenstein.
I rarely kept my places, and never kept my friends. The only thing I
did keep was a diary. A diary is evidence. So if you see anything
about anybody in these pages, you can believe it without hesitation.
Do, please. You see, if you hesitate, you may never believe it.
I well remember the first and only time that I met Gladstone. I was
staying with Lady Bilberry at the time at her house in Half Moon
Street. She was a woman with real charm and wit, but somewhat irritable.
Most of the people I've met were irritable or became so, and I can't
think why. I may add that I only stayed out my month as too much was
expected. Besides, I'd been told there was a boy for the rough work and
there never was.
But to return to Gladstone. I wrote down every precious word of my
conversation with him at the time, and the eager and excited reader may
now peruse it in full.
GLADSTONE: Lady Bilberry at home?
MARGE: Yes, sir.
GLADSTONE: Thanks.
MARGE: What name, please?
He gave me his name quite simply, without any attempt at rudeness or
facetiousness. I should say that this was typical of the whole character
of the man. With a beautiful and punctilious courtesy he removed his
hat--not a very good hat--on entering the house. I formed the impression
from the ease with which he did this that the practice must have been
habitual with him.
The only thing that mars this cherished memory is that it was not the
Gladstone you mean, nor any relative of his, but a gentleman of the same
name who had called to see if he could interest her ladyship in a scheme
for the recovery of some buried treasure. He did not stay long, and Lady
Bilberry said I ought to have known better.
About this time I received by post a set of verses which bear quite a
resemblance to the senile vivacity of the verses which the real
Gladstone addressed to my illustrious example of autobiographical art.
The verses I received were anonymous, and as a matter of fact the
postmark on the envelope was Beaconsfield. Still, you never know, do
you?
MARGE.
When Pentonville's over and comes the release,
With a year's supervision perhaps by the p'lice,
Your longing to meet all your pals may be large,
But make an exception, and do not ask Marge.
She's Aspasia, Pavlova, Tom Sayers, Tod Sloan,
Spinoza, and Barnum, and Mrs. Chapone;
For a bloke that has only just got his discharge,
She's rather too dazzling a patchwork, is Marge.
Never mind, never mind, you have got to go slow,
One section a year is the most you can know;
If you study a life-time, you'll jest on the barge
Of Charon with madd'ningly manifold Marge.
By the way, whenever we change houses a special pantechnicon has to be
engaged to take all the complimentary verses that have from time to time
been addressed to me. Must be a sort of something about me somehow,
don't you think?
I cannot pretend that I was on the same terms of intimate friendship
with Mr. Lloyd George. I spoke to him only once.
It was when we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us
there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I
gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, as loudly as I could:
"Lloyd George! Lloyd George!"
Most of the others in the crowd said the same thing with equal force.
Then an uneducated policeman came up to me and asked me to pass along,
please, adding that Mr. Lloyd George was not in London. So, simply
replying "All right, face," I passalongpleased.
However, in spite of all that bound me so closely to the great political
world, I could not help feeling the claims of literature. I am sensitive
to every claim. It is the claim of history, for example, that compels me
to write my autobiography. I seem to see all around me a thousand human
arts and activities crying for my help and interest. They seem to say
"Marge, Marge, more Marge!" in the words that Goethe himself might have
used. And whenever I hear the call I have to give myself.
I doubt if any girl ever gave herself away quite as much as I have done.
One day in November I met Chummie Popbright in the neighbourhood of
Cambridge Circus. He was a man with very little _joie de vivre_, _ventre
a terre_, or _esprit de corps_. He had fair hair and no manners, and was
very, very fond of me. He held a position in the Post Office, and was,
in fact, emptying a pillar-box when I met him. I record the
conversation.
CHUMMIE: Blessed if it ain't Marge! And what would you like
for a Christmas present?
MARGE: I want to spend a week or so at the house of the
great poet, Lord Inmemorison. If you really wish to please me, you
will use your influence to get me a job there. Your uncle being
Inmemorison's butler, you ought to be able to work it.
CHUMMIE: Might. What would you go as?
MARGE: Anything--but temporary parlour-maid is my strong suit.
CHUMMIE: And what's your game?
MARGE: I'm sick of patronizing politicians and want to patronize a
poet. When all's said and done, Inmemorison is a proper certificated
poet. Besides, I want to put something by for my rainy
autobiography.
CHUMMIE: Oh, well. I'll try and lay a pipe for it. May come off or
may not.
Chummie managed the thing to perfection. My sister Casey wrote me one of
the best testimonials I have ever had, and by Christmas I was safely
installed for a week. Chummie's uncle treated me with the utmost
consideration, and it is to him that I owe many of the thrilling details
that I am now able to present to the panting public. Although there was
a high leather screen in the drawing-room which was occasionally useful
to me, my opportunities for direct observation were limited.
Lord Inmemorison had a magnificent semi-detached mansion (including a
bath-room, h. and c.) in one of the wildest and loneliest parts of
Wandsworth Common. The rugged beauty of the scenery around is reflected
in many of his poems.
There were, as was to be expected, several departures from ordinary
convention in the household. Dinner was at seven. The poet went to bed
immediately after dinner, and punctually at ten reappeared in the
drawing-room and began reading his poems aloud.
The family generally went to bed at ten sharp.
I heard him read once. There were visitors in the house who wished to
hear the great man, and it was after midnight before a general
retirement could take place. He had a rich, sonorous, over-proof,
pre-war voice, considerable irritability, and a pretty girl sitting on
his knee. The last item was, of course, an instance of poetical licence.
The girl had asked him to read from "Maud" and he had consented. He
began with his voice turned down so low that in my position behind the
screen I could only just catch the opening lines:
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert..."
He opened the throttle a little wider when he came to the passage:
"His head was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand."
He read that last line "was serried in the band," but immediately
corrected himself. And the poignant haunting repetition of the last
lines of the closing stanza were given out on the full organ:
"And everywhere that Mary went--
And everywhere that Mary went--
And everywhere that Mary went--
The lamb was sure to go."
It was a great--a wonderful experience for me, and I shall never forget
it.
I have spoken of his irritability. It is not unnatural in a great poet.
He must live with his exquisite sentient nerves screwed up to such a
pitch that at any moment something may give.
For example, one evening he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had
just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing
the cuckoo call.
INMEMORISON (_gruffly and suddenly_): What bird says cuckoo?
GIRL (_with extreme nervous agitation_): The rabbit.
INMEMORISON: No, you fool--it's the nightingale.
The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think
she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it
meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong--it has never been right
yet--and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl
should have said was: "Now it's your turn to go out, and we'll think of
something."
Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed
was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.
"Which?" said Inmemorison.
I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed
this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young
man's face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the
question.
"Which?" repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a
young man's funeral.
The young man made a wild and misjudged effort, and got right off the
target.
"Well," he said, "one of my greatest favourites of course is
'Kissingcup's Race.'"
"Is it, indeed?" said the Poet. "If you turn to the left on leaving the
house, the second on the right will take you straight to the station."
The young man never forgave it. And that, so I have always been told, is
how the first Browning Society came to be founded.
It was a meeting with this undergraduate--purely accidental on my
part--in the romantic garden of the poet's house that first turned my
mind towards the university town of Oxbridge. I had no difficulty in
finding employment as a waitress there in a restaurant where knowledge
of the business was considered less essential than a turn for repartee
and some gift for keeping the young of our great nobility in their
proper place. It was not long before I had made the acquaintance of
quite a number of undergraduates. Some of them had a marked tendency
towards rapidity, but soon learned that the regulation of the pace would
remain with me.
One Sunday morning I had consented to go for a walk with one of my young
admirers--a nice boy, with more nerve than I have ever encountered in
any human being except myself. It happened by chance that we encountered
the Dean of his college. The Dean, with an unusual condescension--for
which there may possibly have been a reason--stopped to speak to my
companion, who without the least hesitation introduced the Dean to me as
his sister.
That was my first meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick, the celebrated Dean
of Belial.
No social occasion has ever yet found me at a loss. The more difficult
and dramatic it is, the more thoroughly do I enjoy its delicate
manipulation. I could not deny the relationship which had been asserted,
without involving my young friend. The only alternative was to play up
to it, and I played up. The perfect management of old men is best
understood by young girls.
I told him that I was staying with mamma, and mentioned a suitable
hotel, adding that I was so sorry I had to return to town that
afternoon, as I had begun to love the scholastic peace of Oxbridge and
valued so much the opportunity of meeting its greatest men. I was bright
and poetical in streaks, and every shy--if I may use the expression--hit
the coco-nut. Sometimes I glanced at Willie, my pseudo-brother. His face
twitched a little, but he never actually gave way to his feelings. The
Dean had ceased to pay much attention to him.
For about a quarter of an hour the Dean strolled along with us. At
parting, he held my hand--for a minute longer than was strictly
necessary--and said:
"You have interested me--er--profoundly. May I hope that when you get
back to Grosvenor Square, you will sometimes spare a few moments from
the fashionable circles in which you move, and write to me?"
I said that it would be a great honour to me to be permitted to do so.
"I hope," he added, "that you will visit Oxbridge again, and that you
will then renew an acquaintance which, though accidental in its origin,
has none the less impressed me--er--very much."
After his departure Willie became hilarious and I became very angry
with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a
fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt
write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie assured me that he had his
father's butler on a string, and that the butler sorted the letters. I
would receive the Dean's epistles at any address I would give him, and
would reply on the Grosvenor Square notepaper.
"I've got chunks of it in a writing-case at my rooms," he said, "and
I'll send it round to you."
I had to consent to this. However, the next day I skipped for London,
somewhat to the disappointment of the restaurant that I adorned, and
still more to the disappointment of Willie. But, as I wrote to him, he
had brought it on himself. I could not take the risk of another
accidental meeting with Dr. Benger Horlick.
Nor, as a matter of fact, did we ever meet again. But for three years we
corresponded with some frequency; it was a thin-ice, high-wire business,
but I pulled it through.
No doubt the task was made easier for me by the fact that the Dean was a
singularly simple-minded man. Reverence for the aristocracy had become
with him almost a religion. When he was brought--or believed himself to
be brought--in contact with the aristocracy, his intellectual vision
closed in a swoon of ecstasy. Snob? Oh, dear, no! Of course not. What
can have made you think that? It was simply that the aristocracy
appealed to him very much as romance did--he was outside it, but liked
to get a near view.
The G.E. found that letters, however delightful, bored her when they
were scattered through a biography. For that reason she gave one set of
letters all together. I do not see myself why, if a thing bores you when
you get a little of it at a time, it should bore you less when you get a
lot of it. But, determined to follow my brilliant model with simple
faith and humility, I now append extracts from the letters I received
from Dr. Benger Horlick.
"I wish I could persuade you to be less precise in your language.
If you say what your opinion is, you should take care to be
beautiful but unintelligible. Commit yourself to nothing. Words
were given us to conceal our thoughts, and with a little practice
and self-discipline will conceal them even from ourselves. A candid
friend once complained to me that in my translation from the Greek
it was sometimes impossible for him to know which of two different
_lectiones_ I was translating. As a matter of fact, though I did
not tell him this, I did not know either. Especially useful is this
when one is confronted with a rude, challenging, direct question as
to any point in religion or politics; I reply with a sonorous and,
I hope, well-balanced sentence, from which the actual meaning has
been carefully extracted, and so escape in the fog. It is indeed
from one point of view a mercy that most people are too cowardly
or too ashamed to say that they have failed to comprehend. Yet if
they had my passion for truth it might be better. Truth is very
precious to me--sometimes too precious to give away.
"It is good of you to say that the fourteen pages of good advice
did not bore you. Can it have been that you did not read them? No
Dean--and perhaps no don--who has been in that portentous position
as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice.
It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated
with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception
with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make more use of
your noble gifts for dancing, amateur theatricals, and general
conversation? And yet I'm not grumbling. Only I mean to say, don't
you know? Of course, they all do it--the people in the great world
to which you, and occasionally I, belong. Still, there it is, isn't
it? And you write me such soothing full-cream letters with only an
occasional snag in them. So bless you, my child. I do trust that
the report which comes to me that you are going with the Prince of
Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts to shoot kangaroos in
Australia is at least exaggerated. These marsupials, though their
appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest the conscientious
objector, will--I am credibly informed--fight desperately in
defence of their young. If I may venture to suggest, try rabbits.
"I am delighted to hear that you are not the author of the two
articles attacking Society. The fact that they happen to be signed
with the name of another well-known lady had made me think it
possible that this might be the case. Society? It is a great
mystery. I can hardly think of it without taking off my boots and
prostrating myself orientally. To criticize it is a mistake; it is
even, if I may for once use a harsh word, subversive. It is the
only one we've got. Oh, hush! Only in whispers at the dead of night
to the most trusted friend under the seal of secrecy can we think
of criticizing it. But holding, as I do, perhaps the most important
public position in the Continent of Europe, if not in the whole
world--responsible, as I am, for what may be called the sustenance
of the next generation--I do feel called upon to carry out any
repairs and re-decoration of the social fabric that may be
required. You with your universal influence which--until Einstein
arrives--will be the only possible explanation of the vagaries in
the orbit of Mercury, can do as much, or nearly as much. Do it. But
never speak of it. Oh, hush! (Sorry--I forgot I'd mentioned that
before.)
"In reply to your inquiry, I never read 'Robert Elsmere,' but
understand from a private source that it saved many young men from
reading 'David Grieve.' Your second inquiry as to the lady-love of
my first youth is violent--very violent. Suppose you mind your own
business."
FOURTH EXTRACT
THE SOLES
I do not know why we were called the Soles. Enemies said it was because
we were flat, fishy, and rather expensive.
Our set comprised the upper servants of some of the best houses in
Mayfair. Looking back at it now, I can see that no similar body ever had
such a tremendous influence. It may not have been entirely due to us
that gravity varies inversely as the square of the distance, but at
least we acquiesced. And what we did in home and foreign politics has
scarcely yet been suspected.
The reason for our influence is sufficiently obvious. Our great leader,
James Arthur Bunting, was perhaps the most perfect butler that the world
has yet seen; his magnificent presence, plummy voice, exquisite tact,
and wide knowledge made him beyond price. We had other butlers whom it
would have been almost equally difficult to replace. We had chefs who
with a chain of marvellous dinners bound their alleged employers to
their chariot-wheels. Nominally, Parliament ruled the country, but we
never had any doubt who ruled Parliament.
To take but one instance, the sudden _volte face_ of Lord Baringstoke on
the Home Rule Question. This created a great sensation at the time, and
various explanations were suggested to account for it. Nobody guessed
the truth. The fact is that Mr. Bunting tendered his resignation.
Lord Baringstoke was much distressed. An increase of salary was
immediately suggested and waved aside.
"It is not that, m'lord," said Bunting. "It is a question of principle.
Your lordship's expressed views as to Ireland are not, if I may say so,
the views of my friends and of myself. And on that subject we feel
deeply. Preoccupied with that difference, if I remained, I could no
longer do justice to your lordship nor to myself. My wounded and
bleeding heart----"
"Oh, never mind your bleeding heart, Bunting," said Baringstoke. "Do I
understand that this is your only reason for wanting to go?"
"That is so, m'lord."
"Then, supposing that I reconsidered my views as to Ireland and found
that they were in fact the opposite of what I had previously supposed,
you would remain?"
"With very great pleasure."
"Then in that case you had better wait a few days. I'm inclined to think
that everything can be arranged."
"Very good, m'lord."
Less than a week later, Lord Baringstoke's public recantation was the
talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he showed how the
merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience
had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up.
Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is
merely a question of what facts you will select and what you will
suppress.
Mr. Bunting is, I believe, still with Lord Baringstoke. This was,
perhaps, one of the principal triumphs of the Soles. There were many
others. We had our own secret service, and I should here acknowledge
with respect and admiration the Gallic ingenuity of two of the Soles,
Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Normand, in reconstructing fragmentary
letters taken from the waste-paper baskets of the illustrious.
Naturally, we had to suffer from the jealousy and malice of those who
had not been asked to join us, and a rumour even was spread abroad that
we played bridge for sixpence a hundred. There was no truth in it. There
have been, and still are, gambling clubs among the younger men-servants
of the West-end, but we never gambled. Mr. Bunting would not have liked
it at all. We were serious. We did try to live up to our ideals, and
some of our members actually succeeded in living beyond their incomes.
Our principal recreation was pencil-games, mostly of our own invention.
In this connection I have rather a sad incident to relate. On one
occasion we had a competition to see which of us could write the
flattest and least pointed epigram in rhyme. The prize for men consisted
of two out-size Havannah cigars, formerly the property of Lord
Baringstoke, kindly presented by Mr. Bunting.
Percy Binder, first footman to the Earl of Dilwater, was extremely
anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the
sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably
bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have
certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpassed for
clumsy and laboured imbecility. The last two ran:
"But when for aid he ceased to beg,
The wily devil broke his leg."
And then came a terrible discovery. Percy Binder had stolen these lines
from the autobiography of my own G.E. She says, by the way, that their
author was "the last of the wits." But how can you be last in a race in
which you never start? It is always safe to say what you think, but
sometimes dangerous to give your reasons for thinking it.