I
AND now the Addingtons came into our lives. For the next few
years they were part of all we did and thought. They were part
of our life. It used to seem odd, during those next years, to
realize we had known them so short a time. As soon as we knew
them it seemed as though we had always been friends. I think
that the Addingtons were about the best people I have known.
They were so dear, too, and so true.
Of most people, even people I love very much, I feel that they
might in certain circumstances act wrongly or from some bad motive;
but with George and Mollie one felt from the beginning absolutely
sure that they never would. There was a sort of solid nobility
in them both that nothing could shake or alter. They were unlike
each other in a great many ways. George was much cleverer than
Mollie, much more amusing and more whimsical, but in this essential
quality they were the same, and it was this, I think, that attracted
Hugo so strongly to them first, and then Guy, and then me. I
suppose we three in our different ways all rather lacked this
quality. But Guy lacked it less than Hugo and me.
George had been at Winchester with Guy and Hugo, but they had
hardly known him there, for he was a scholar, and they were not.
It was when they met again at New College that they became friends,
chiefly Hugo and George at first, and then Guy too; and Mollie
was at college too in Oxford at that time.
The first time I met them was in Hugo’s room at New College.
He had a room that looked out on the old wall and a wonderful
double cherry tree. It was a clear spring day, and the cherry
tree was in full bloom.
It was a big room, and Hugo had had it redecorated. It had white
walls and grey paint and no pictures at all (that was a phase
that Hugo went through; later on he had pictures again). There
were books in a long grey bookcase, and a plain grey carpet,
and in one corner a big bronze cast of the Delphic Charioteer.
The whole room was planned to suit that, and I think it did.
There was a sort of plainness about it, an absence of ornamentation
and extras of any sort, that was like the straight folds of the
charioteer’s drapery. That was Hugo’s idea, as he explained it.
The curtains were bright Egyptian blue, and the only other colour
was from flowers, sometimes blue, sometimes red, as the mood
took him, in two tall glass vases on the chimney-piece. Hugo
delighted in his room. It was the first time he had designed
one for himself, for his room at Yearsly had evolved itself gradually,
and was not planned out as a whole.
There were grey arm-chairs, plain to look at but very comfortable,
and an oval table of dark mahogany with a blue bowl in the middle.
Later, his pianola was there too, and the room modified its severity
a little, but in essentials it remained the same, Even afterwards
in London his room was very like it, and I think in its later,
more modified form, the room was like Hugo.
Their grandfather had left a special £100 each, to be given to
Guy and Hugo on their twenty-first birthdays. Guy had bought
a hunter with his; Hugo bought a pianola. He used to play on
it a great deal, chiefly Mozart. About the time he was twenty-one
Hugo had a passion for Mozart. He would go up to London for Mozart
concerts, and sometimes got into trouble for this, and he read
everything he could about him. It used to remind me of Sophia
Lane Watson and her passion for Shelley. I never had passions
of that sort, nor did Guy.
All this, however, was later. That day when I met the Addingtons
was in his first year, and he was not yet twenty. Old furniture
and Donne, and George Addington, were his chief interests at
this time.
I had come up to stay with a Mrs. Peters who had known my mother.
Mr. Peters was a Don and had been coaching Guy. It was the first
time I had been to Oxford, for before this I had always been
at school, and it seemed to me a wonderful place. I don’t know
how it is that it seems so different now. Guy and Hugo had been
to lunch at the Peters’. Then they took me out and showed me
places, and we walked about colleges, and in New College Cloister,
and I felt it a place like a dream. It always used to seem like
that when I visited Guy and Hugo, and I was often there during
the next few years.
Now I try sometimes to see it like that again, but I cannot.
I can only remember as a fact that I once felt it so, and I wonder
how it was.
Hugo had talked about George Addington at Christmas, and I longed
to see him.
‘He is such a splendid fellow,’ he had said, ‘and such a wonderful
mind.’
‘And such jolly good company,’ said Guy.
I was rather disappointed when I first saw him. He and Mollie
were waiting for us in Hugo’s room when we came in. There was
a big fire burning, and hot cakes standing down in covered dishes
on the hob, and tea all waiting on the round polished table.
Outside the sun was shining, a thin, cold sun, and it slanted
in through the window and mixed with the firelight.
The china teapot with the birds on it was there on the table,
and there was a feeling of warmth and comfort in the room. I
believe now that it was Mollie who made it feel so comfortable,
but then I only thought ‘What a delightful room!’
She was doing something to the kettle when we came in. I think
it had boiled over and she was setting it back again on the coals.
Her back was to us, and I saw George first. He jumped up from
the grey arm-chair.
‘Late again, of course, Hugo. We had almost left in a rage!’
Hugo laughed and said:
‘Here is my cousin Helen, and you can’t be cross with me.’
George came forward and shook hands. He was smiling, and I thought
he had a pleasant face, but I had expected some one more striking
and impressive, and so I was disappointed.
George was too short, and beside Guy and Hugo he looked still
shorter. He had grey eyes, not dark romantic grey like Guy and
Cousin Delia, but an ordinary blue grey colour, and his hair
was mouse colour, rather fair than dark. He had a broad forehead
and very straight eyebrows, rather close over his eyes. He was
not at all what I had expected.
Of Mollie I had heard less, but I liked her as soon as she spoke.
She had a pretty voice, very sweet, and like herself.
She struck me as much bigger than George. I believe she was actually
about an inch taller, but she had the same forehead and level
eyebrows and grey eyes. These straight brows were characteristic
of them both. Her hair was fairer than his, and there was more
colour in her face. It has often puzzled me to define why Mollie
was not pretty. Her features were well cut and even, and her
colouring very pleasant, yet she did not strike one as pretty.
One got to love her face and her charming, rather boyish smile,
but with both her and George you did not see at first how special
they were. Some people never saw, and that used to make me angry.
She was dressed in blue that afternoon. I think it was a blue
homespun. I know it seemed just the right colour in that room.
I made the tea in the coloured teapot, and we all sat round the
fire and had tea.
Later Mrs. Peters came in. She had to be there as a chaperone,
or Mollie would not have been allowed to come. I thought they
were joking when they said this, but it was true. It seemed to
me a funny idea.