THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE IS ILLUSTRATED, AND I BECOME A MONEY-LENDER
One of the strangest phenomena in this life of ours, I often think,
is the way in which one thing leads to another. We million mortals
may live alone, each in his sea of life enisled, but our influence on
each other is continuous and remarkable, and--and this is the thought
that pulls one up so suddenly--very often unconscious. It is not
every pebble, so to speak, that we drop into the water that makes
rings: the water is often already too restless to feel it; but the
widening circumference of the rings that even an idler's stone can
produce are almost terrifying to think of. The facile moralist would
say that this being so, people of strong or attractive personality
must be very careful: but to be careful is useless. A capricious
fate more powerful than the vigilant self-protectiveness of any human
being is in command.
I am led to these reflections by something that happened at
Bemerton's in the afternoon on that summer day. It was about a
quarter to three, and Mr. Bemerton was due back at three exactly,
when a nice-looking schoolboy of about fourteen, with a frank and
courageous countenance, walked in carrying a book.
This he handed me, a little self-consciously, with a request to know
if I could give him a shilling for it. It was _Hall and Knight's
Algebra_, and inside was written Estabrook I.
Now I am no censor, but I have certain fixed theories as to the law
of _meum_ and _tuum_ and the training of boys, and also some undimmed
recollections of the financial straits of my own schooldays;
moreover, I liked this boy's ingenuous face.
So I said, "The book is yours to sell, of course?"
"Oh yes," he replied.
"You bought it with your own money?" I continued Socratically.
"Well, I didn't exactly buy it with my own money," he admitted. "But
it's mine: that's my name in it."
"A schoolbook," I said: "one that you use in your lessons?"
"I shan't want it again," he replied; "I go into another form next
term."
"But you think you have a right to sell it, as it was brought for you
and you only?"
"Oh yes, of course I do," he answered; "and I want a bob to-day most
fearfully. We've got a half-holiday, and it's the Yorkshire match at
the Oval."
"You think your father would like to know that you are raising money
on a schoolbook to go to a cricket match?" I asked.
"But I've done with it," he repeated.
"You think your father would like to know? That is the whole point.
If you can assure me that he would not mind your selling the
school-book like this just for an afternoon's pleasure, I will give
you a shilling for it at once."
He thought a little while and shuffled his feet, and his fine face
clouded.
"No," he said at last, "he wouldn't like it," and he put out his hand
to take the book back.
"How much pocket-money do you get?" I asked, as I gave it to him.
"Threepence a week," he said.
"Well," I said, "I will lend you the shilling, and you can pay me
back as soon as it is convenient."
"Oh, I say, how frightfully decent of you!" he exclaimed.
So I handed him the shilling, and he crammed the book into his pocket
and rushed off, being joined just outside by a smaller boy whom I
guessed to be Estabrook II.
Estabrook! Now you see the conjunction of ideas, for one of my
closest companions at school forty years ago had been an Estabrook,
and it is not a common name. Could this boy, I wondered, be the son
of my old friend? I had not long to wait to discover, for an
unexpected tip from an uncle made it possible for him to discharge
his debt quickly, and he was back within a week with the shilling in
his hand.
Bemerton sent him upstairs to me, after having explained that I was
not really the bookseller, but an eccentric gentleman masquerading as
such; and I asked him at once about his father, and soon ascertained
that it was really my old school-fellow; and so I gave Kenneth, which
was the debtor's name, a message to the effect that I should give
myself the pleasure of calling upon him next Sunday afternoon. We
agreed that nothing should be said as to the circumstances under
which Kenneth and I had originally met: all we were to say was that
we had come upon each other accidentally in Bemerton's. This
harmless compact of secrecy made, as must so often have been the
case, a very firm foundation of our friendship--a friendship which
led to some very agreeable afternoons.
But see how it came about. The Rev. Ephraim Pye-Lipwood, tiring of
horses, buys a motor-car of one of his parishioners. He goes for his
first ride and forgets to put on enough wraps. He catches a cold,
which develops into double pneumonia, and he dies. His widow wishes
to sell his library, and asks a friend to recommend a good dealer.
The friend recommends Mr. Joseph Bemerton of Westminster, and Mr.
Bemerton arranges to go down by the 10.7 from Victoria on Tuesday.
He does so, leaving the shop in the capable hands of Miss Ruth
Wagstaff. Meanwhile what does Miss Wagstaff's mother do? For a long
time she has not been quite herself: ever since, in fact, she ate
that pork chop at her sister's husband's aunt's. Nothing somehow has
seemed to agree with her since; and her dyspepsia came to a head this
very morning, at about half-past ten, just as Mr. Bemerton in his
third-class compartment had finished _The Daily Telegraph_.
Hence the summons to Miss Wagstaff, and cause of my finding myself
stationed in the shop all ready to deal with Master Kenneth
Estabrook, and thus resume acquaintance with an old friend and make
acquaintance with a delightful family. We never know when we are
moulding destiny.
The Estabrooks have six children, for they belong to a generation
that was not afraid of such liabilities. Estabrook is a stockbroker
in a comfortable way, and they live in a large house in the Cromwell
Road almost opposite the Natural History Museum, which is a regular
Sunday afternoon resort in winter. The children are four boys and
two girls. Kenneth is the eldest; then comes John, who is at
Osborne, and has the proud privilege of calling Prince Edward of York
"Sardines" (which is, I am told, the very natural nickname of one
destined later to take his title from Wales, _i.e._ whales in
schoolboy humour); then comes Christopher, who is at Westminster
(Estabrook II); then Norah, aged ten; Winifred, aged eight; and Sam,
aged six.
They seem to me very nice children, but a shade over-sophisticated,
and with the modern touch of mockery. In my innocence I offered the
youngest a beautiful piece of silver paper from a packet of tobacco,
such as would have made me, at his age, feel something like a
millionaire. But it had no attractions for him. His toys are
ready-made, I imagine, and cost money.
After Kenneth, I think that my favourite is Norah, whom the others
rather impose upon (it is ill to be the first girl in a family that
already numbers three boys), and Norah, I think, likes me. I have
already taken her to the Hippodrome, to the Zoo, and to the
Exhibition; and I don't in the least see why she should not have a
pony and ride straddle-legged in the Park as the little girls now do.
Little girls are little girls for so short a time: they have such a
way of leaving the room frank, loving, uncalculating creatures, and
returning in a few moments (so to speak) as women, with their hair up
and their skirts down and views on art and music; that it behoves
their elderly admirers to take advantage of all the opportunities of
enjoying their society while they are still children.
Life is strangely suspicious and impatient of youth and candour and
innocence and _naïveté_. Hardly does it perceive these exquisite
qualities to exist than it rubs away their bloom with a rough finger.
How often one longs for an arrested progress--for a little girl to go
on being a little girl a little longer; for the perpetual kitten of
our dreams! But no; the Creator is not that kind of artist.
I took upstairs with me a fine copy of _Paterson's Roads_, a book I
had not seen since the sixties, when I used often to pore over my
father's copy and set forth on imaginary journeys from London to
Truro, London to Norwich, London to Dover, London to Everywhere, with
Paterson's aid. I remember how proud I used to be to find our own
ancestor in the margin--John Murray Falconer, Esq., of West Wolves
House, Long Melton, five miles north of Cirencester, my father's
grandfather; and Wilmington Oakes, Esq., of Masters Hall, just to the
west of Evesham, grandfather of my mother. I had, indeed, an
ambition at that time some day to be in Paterson myself, not knowing
that the book was already outmoded, and that I was doomed to spend
most of my life in a country where roads are chiefly tracks.
Paterson's noble book, once in every country house and most town
houses, is now rare, but it remains the best outline account of
England in existence. Publishers may vie with each other in bringing
out guide-books, and highway-and-byway books, and atlases and
gazetteers; but _Paterson's Roads_ still conquers. Everything about
the best edition of it is right: its arrangement, its type, its
spaciousness, its interest in gentlemen's places, its little pictures
of turnpike gates, its careful information; but most of all its
period, before rails came in, when horses were still honoured, and
postboys never died, and innkeepers flourished.
Paterson may be said to pair off with Fielding. He is Fielding's
courier, so to speak. Fielding has the romance; Paterson finds the
roads and looks after the luggage and the horses. He is a companion
to Pickwick, too: a serious, methodical Sam Weller. Spend an hour
with Paterson, and you will have the England of Tom Jones and Samuel
Pickwick before you; you will know it through and through. The
period between these two books was Paterson's period. _Tom Jones_
was published in 1749, _Pickwick_ in 1837; Daniel Paterson was born
in 1739 and died in 1825, living towards the end so quietly that
Edward Mogg, who brought out a sixteenth edition in 1822 and
dedicated it to George iv., referred to its true author as "the late."
Of Daniel Paterson little--far too little--is known, save that he was
an officer and a gentleman. I have been looking him up. He was
successively ensign, lieutenant, captain, major, and
lieutenant-colonel of infantry. For a long time he was assistant to
the Quartermaster-General at the Horse Guards, and in 1771 his road
book was first published and dedicated to his superior officer. In
1812 he was made Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, a post he still held
at his death. There's a melancholy fate for the author of the best
English road book. Quebec! It was probably due to this enforced
exile that to Edward Mogg fell the task of bringing the great work up
to date; but he certainly ought to have known that its author was
still living. Daniel Paterson's grave is at Clewer, near Windsor;
but where he was born I know not.
One can open Paterson at random, sure to alight on some name that
will quicken and kindle the memory. For example, I opened it last
night at page 524--and had good luck, coming at once upon the great
name of John Warde. Page 524 is in the Cross-Roads section, and the
gallant Colonel (assisted by Edward Mogg) is taking us from Maidstone
to Guildford, by Westerham, Reigate, and Dorking. Against Westerham,
a quiet Kentish town with some significance for himself, since it was
there that Wolfe was born,--destined in time to make Quebec a city
requiring a Lieutenant-Governor,--against Westerham he draws our
attention to Squerryes, the seat of John Warde, Esq.; and is not John
Warde of Squerryes one of Nimrod's heroes? "Whoever," says that
large-hearted man, "heard him utter an ill-natured word respecting
any one, living or dead? Where was there a kinder friend or a better
neighbour? And, above all things, where was his equal as a
companion?" That was the whole-hearted way in which sportsmen used
to write of each other in the forties, before _Paterson's Roads_ was
quite out of date. "Rough as was his exterior, Mr. Warde was
accomplished and well informed, and capable of adapting his
conversation to any society into which he might be thrown. In short,
it is a matter of doubt whether there has existed a man whose name
has not been long before the public either in the capacity of a
senator, a soldier, a sailor, or an author, so universally known as
Mr. Warde of Squerryes, in Kent, was to all Englishmen in all
quarters of the globe." Such was John Warde, for fifty-seven years a
Master of Foxhounds, and known as "The Father of the Field."
Mr. Warde did a little in the way of La Rochefoucauld and
Vauvenargues, but his maxims rarely departed from sport, although, of
course, a man who is qualified to write sound maxims for sportsmen is
automatically qualified also to sum up life. Here are some of the
sententiæ of John Warde, Esq., of Squerryes, Master of the Pytchley
and other Hunts, as reported by Nimrod's pen:--
"Half the goodness of a horse goes in at his mouth."
"Never buy a horse from a rich man who hunts, or from a poor man till
you have tried him."
"Never believe a word any man says about a horse he wishes to
sell--not even a bishop."
"Never refuse a good dinner from home, unless you have a better at
home."
"Never keep a drinking man--nor a very pretty maid-servant."
Most of the successful conduct of life could be secured by careful
obedience to these five counsels.
Paterson's was by no means the first road-book; but it is the best.
Mr. Bemerton showed me the other day _Ogilvy's_, a delightful series
of copper-plates, fourth edition, dated 1753. Every word in it is
engraved, which makes reading sometimes a little difficult, but the
effort is worth making. The great charm of the book is that all the
journeys start from London, and the road is pictured the whole way.
Every mile is marked. Thus the journey from London to Berwick, 260
computed and 339 measured miles, takes ten pages of three columns
each. Nothing is needed but gradients and a few technical
particulars to make it still perfect for the motorist. It would be
an agreeable task to bring one of these books into line with the
present day of machinery and petrol,--agreeable, although tinged with
melancholy.