bestowed, sometimes proves misleading, common rumour is far more
prolific of things which would have been better expressed differently.
It is now (thank goodness!) a good many years since "spelling-bees" were
a favourite amusement in London drawing-rooms. The late Lady Combermere,
an octogenarian dame who retained a sempiternal taste for _les petits
jeux innocents_ kindly invited a young curate whom she had been asked to
befriend to take part in a "spelling-bee." He got on splendidly for a
while, and then broke down among the repeated "n's" in "drunkenness."
Returning crestfallen to his suburban parish, he was soon gratified by
hearing the rumour that he had been turned out of a lady's house at the
West End for drunkenness.
Shy people are constantly getting into conversational scrapes, their
tongues carrying them whither they know not, like the shy young man who
was arguing with a charming and intellectual young lady.
_Charming Young Lady._ "The worst of me is that I am so apt to be run
away with by an inference."
_Shy Young Man._ "Oh, how I wish I was an inference!"
When the late Dr. Woodford became Bishop of Ely, a rumour went before
him in the diocese that he was a misogynist. He was staying, on his
first round of Confirmations, at a country house, attended by an
astonishingly mild young chaplain, very like the hero of _The Private
Secretary_. In the evening the lady of the house said archly to this
youthful Levite, "I hope you can contradict the story which we have
heard about our new bishop, that he hates ladies." The chaplain, in much
confusion, hastily replied, "Oh, that is quite an exaggeration; but I do
think his Lordship feels safer with the married ladies."
Let me conclude with a personal reminiscence of a "Thing one would
rather have left unsaid." A remarkably pompous clergyman who was an
Inspector of Schools showed me a theme on a Scriptural subject, written
by a girl who was trying to pass from being a pupil-teacher to a
schoolmistress. The theme was full of absurd mistakes, over which the
inspector snorted stertorously. "Well, what do you think of that?" he
inquired, when I handed back the paper. "Oh," said I, in perfectly good
faith, "the mistakes are bad enough, but the writing is far worse. It
really is a disgrace." "Oh, _my_ writing!" said the inspector; "I copied
the theme out." Even after the lapse of twenty years I turn hot all over
when I recall the sensations of that moment.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] 1897.
XXX.
THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS.
It was "A.K.H.B.," if I recollect aright, who wrote a popular essay on
"The Art of Putting Things." As I know nothing of the essay beyond its
title, and am not quite certain about that, I shall not be guilty of
intentional plagiarism if I attempt to discuss the same subject. It is
not identical with the theme which I have just handled, for "Things one
would rather have expressed differently" are essentially things which
one might have expressed better. If one is not conscious of this at the
moment, a good-natured friend is always at hand to point it out, and the
poignancy of one's regret creates the zest of the situation. For
example, when a German financier, contesting an English borough, drove
over an old woman on the polling-day, and affectionately pressed five
shillings into her hand, saying, "Never mind, my tear, here's something
to get drunk with," his agent instantly pointed out that she wore the
Blue Ribbon, and that her husband was an influential class-leader among
the Wesleyans.
But "The Art of Putting Things" includes also the things which one might
have expressed worse, and covers the cases where a dexterous choice of
words seems, at any rate to the speaker, to have extricated him from a
conversational quandary. As an instance of this perilous art carried to
high perfection, may be cited Abraham Lincoln's judgment on an
unreadably sentimental book--"People who like this sort of thing will
find this the sort of thing they like"--humbly imitated by two eminent
men on this side of the Atlantic, one of whom is in the habit of writing
to struggling authors--"Thank you for sending me your book, which I
shall lose no time in reading;" while the other prefers the less
truthful but perhaps more flattering formula--"I have read your blank
verse, _and much like it_"
The late Mr. Walter Pater was once invited to admire a hideous
wedding-present, compact of ormolu and malachite. Closing his eyes, the
founder of modern aesthetics leaned back in his chair, and waving away
the offending object, murmured in his softest tone, "Oh, very rich, very
handsome, very expensive, I am sure. But they mustn't make any more of
them."
Dexterities of phrase sometimes recoil with dire effect upon their
author. A very popular clergyman of my acquaintance prides himself on
never forgetting an inhabitant of his parish. He was stopped one day in
the street by an aggrieved parishioner whom, to use a homely phrase, he
did not know from Adam. Ready in resource, he produced his pocket-book,
and, hastily jotting down a memorandum of the parishioner's grievance,
he said, with an insinuating smile, "It is so stupid of me, but I always
forget how to spell your name." "J--O--N--E--S," was the gruff response;
and the shepherd and the sheep went their several ways in mutual
disgust. Perhaps the worst recorded attempt at an escape from a
conversational difficulty was made by an East-end curate who specially
cultivated the friendship of the artisans. One day a carpenter arrived
in his room, and, producing a photograph, said, "I've brought you my
boy's likeness, as you said you'd like to have it."
_Curate_ (rapturously). "How awfully good of you to remember! What a
capital likeness! Where is he?"
_Carpenter_. "Why, sir, don't you remember? He's dead."
_Curate._ "Oh yes, of course, I know that. I mean, where's the man that
took the photograph?"
The art of disguising an unpleasant truth with a graceful phrase was
well illustrated in the case of a friend of mine, not remarkable for
physical courage, of whom a tactful phrenologist pronounced that he was
"full of precaution against real or imaginary danger." It is not every
one who can tell a man he is an arrant coward without offending him. The
same art, as applied by a man to his own shortcomings, is exemplified in
the story of the ecclesiastical dignitary who gloried in his Presence of
Mind. According to Dean Stanley, who knew him well, he used to narrate
the incident in the following terms:--
"A friend invited me to go out with him on the water. The sky was
threatening, and I declined. At length he succeeded in persuading me,
and we embarked. A squall came on, the boat lurched, and my friend fell
overboard. Twice he sank; and twice he rose to the surface. He placed
his hands on the prow and endeavoured to climb in. There was great
apprehension lest he should upset the boat. Providentially, I had
brought my umbrella with me, I had the _presence of mind_ to strike him
two or three hard blows over the knuckles. He let go his hold and sank.
The boat righted itself, and we were saved."
The art of avoiding conversational unpleasantness by a graceful way of
putting things belongs, I suppose, in its highest perfection, to the
East. When Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India, he had a "shikarry," or
sporting servant, whose special duty was to attend the visitors at the
Viceregal Court on their shooting excursions. Returning one day from one
of these expeditions, the shikarry encountered the Viceroy, who, full of
courteous solicitude for his guests' enjoyment, asked: "Well, what sort
of sport has Lord----had?" "Oh," replied the scrupulously polite Indian,
"the young Sahib shot divinely, but God was very merciful to the
birds." Compare this honeyed speech with the terms in which an English
gamekeeper would convey his opinion of a bad shot, and we are forced to
admit the social superiority of Lord Salisbury's "black man."
If we turn from the Orient to the Occident, and from our dependencies to
the United Kingdom, the Art of Putting Things is found to flourish
better on Irish than on Scotch or English soil. We all remember that
Archbishop Whately is said to have thanked God on his deathbed that he
had never given a penny in indiscriminate charity. Perhaps one might
find more suitable subjects of moribund self-congratulation; and I have
always rejoiced in the mental picture of the Archbishop, in all the
frigid pomp of Political Economy, waving off the Dublin beggar with "Go
away, go away; I never give to any one in the street," and receiving the
instantaneous rejoinder, "Then where would your reverence have me wait
on you?" A lady of my acquaintance, who is a proprietress in County
Galway, is in the habit of receiving her own rents. One day, when a
tenant-farmer had pleaded long and unsuccessfully for an abatement, he
exclaimed as he handed over his money, "Well, my lady, all I can say is
that if I had my time over again it's not a tenant-farmer I'd be. I'd
follow one of the learn'd professions." The proprietress gently replied
that even in the learned professions there were losses as well as gains,
and perhaps he would have found professional life as precarious as
farming. "Ah, my lady, how can that be then?" replied the son of St.
Patrick. "If you're a lawyer--win or lose, you're paid. If you're a
doctor--kill or cure, you're paid. If you're a priest--heaven or hell,
you're paid." Who can imagine an English farmer pleading the case for an
abatement with this happy mixture of fun and satire?
"Urbane" is a word which etymologically bears witness that the ancient
world believed the arts of courtesy to be the products of the town
rather than of the country. Something of the same distinction may
occasionally be traced even in the civilization of modern England. The
house-surgeon of a London hospital was attending to the injuries of a
poor woman whose arm had been severely bitten. As he was dressing the
wound he said, "I cannot make out what sort of animal bit you. This is
too small for a horse's bite, and too large for a dog's." "O sir,"
replied the patient, "it wasn't an animal; it was _another lydy._"
Surely the force of Urbanity could no further go. On the other hand, it
was a country clergyman who, in view of the approaching Confirmation,
announced that on the morning of the ceremony the young _ladies_ would
assemble at the Vicarage and the young _women_ at the National School.
"Let us distinguish," said the philosopher, and certainly the arbitrary
use of the term "lady" and "gentleman" suggests some curious studies in
the Art of Putting Things. A good woman who let furnished apartments in
a country town, describing a lodger who had apparently "known better
days," said, "I am positive she was a real born lady, for she hadn't the
least idea how to do hanything for herself; it took her hours to peel
her potatoes." Carlyle has illustrated from the annals of our criminal
jurisprudence the truly British conception of "a very respectable man"
as one who keeps a gig; and similarly, I recollect that in the famous
trial of Kurr and Benson, the turf-swindlers, twenty years ago, a
witness testified, with reference to one of the prisoners, that he had
always considered him a "perfect gentleman;" and, being pressed by
counsel to give his reasons for this view, said, "He had rooms at the
Langham Hotel, and dined with the Lord Mayor."
On the other hand, it would seem that in certain circles and
contingencies the "grand old name of Gentleman" is regarded as a term of
opprobrium. The late Lord Wriothesley Russell, who was for many years a
Canon of Windsor, used to conduct a mission service for the Household
troops quartered there; and one of his converts, a stalwart trooper of
the Blues, expressing his gratitude for these voluntary ministrations,
and contrasting them with the officer-like and disciplinary methods of
the army chaplains, genially exclaimed, "But I always say there's not a
bit of the gentleman about you, my lord." When Dr. Harold Browne became
Bishop of Ely, he asked the head verger some questions as to where his
predecessor had been accustomed to sit in the Cathedral, what part he
had taken in the services, and so on. The verger proved quite unable to
supply the required information, and said in self-excuse, "Well, you
see, my lord, his late lordship wasn't at all a church-going gentleman;"
which, being interpreted, meant that, on account of age and infirmities,
Bishop Turton had long confined his ministrations to his private chapel.
Just after a change of Government not many years ago, an officer of the
Royal Household was chatting with one of the Queen's old coachmen (whose
name and location I, for obvious reasons, forbear to indicate). "Well,
Whipcord, have you seen your new Master of the Horse yet?" "Yes, sir, I
have; and I should say that his lordship is more of an indoors man." The
phrase has a touch of genial contempt for a long-descended but effete
aristocracy which tickles the democratic palate. It was not old
Whipcord, but a brother in the craft, who, when asked, during the
Jubilee of 1887, if he was driving any of the Imperial and Royal guests
then quartered at Buckingham Palace, replied, with calm self-respect,
"No, sir; I am the Queen's Coachman. I don't drive the riff-raff." I
take this to be a sublime instance of the Art of Putting Things.
Lingering for a moment on these back stairs of History, let me tell the
tragic tale of Mr. and Mrs. M----. Mr. M---- was one of the merchant
princes of London, and Mrs. M---- had occasion to engage a new
housekeeper for their palace in Park Lane. The outgoing official wrote
to her incoming successor a detailed account of the house and its
inmates. The butler was a very pleasant man. The _chef_ was inclined to
tipple. The lady's-maid gave herself airs; and the head housemaid was a
very well principled young woman--and so on and so forth. After the
signature, huddled away in a casual postscript, came the damning
sentence, "As for Mr. and Mrs. M----, they behave as well as they know
how." Was it by inadvertence, or from a desire to let people know their
proper place, that the recipient of this letter allowed its contents to
find their way to the children of the family?
As incidentally indicated above, a free recourse to alcoholic stimulus
used to be, in less temperate days, closely associated with the culinary
art; and one of the best cooks I ever knew was urged by her mistress to
attend a great meeting for the propagation of the Blue Ribbon, to be
held not a hundred miles from Southampton, and addressed by a famous
preacher of total abstinence. The meeting was enthusiastic, and the Blue
Ribbon was freely distributed. Next morning the lady anxiously asked her
cook what effect the oratory had produced on her, and she replied, with
the evident sense of narrow escape from imminent danger, "Well, my lady,
if Mr. ---- had gone on for five minutes more, I believe I should have
taken the Ribbon too; but, thank goodness! he stopped in time."
So far, I find, I have chiefly dealt with the Art of Putting Things as
practised by the "urbane" or town-bred classes. Let me give a few
instances of "pagan" or countrified use. A village blacksmith was
describing to me with unaffected pathos the sudden death of his very
aged father; "and," he added, "the worst part of it was that I had to go
and break it to my poor old mother." Genuinely entering into my friend's
grief, I said, "Yes; that must have been terrible. How did you break
it?" "Well, I went into her cottage and I said. 'Dad's dead.' She said,
'What?' and I said, 'Dad's dead, and you may as well know it first as
last.'" Breaking it! Truly a curious instance of the rural Art of
Putting Things.
A labourer in Buckinghamshire, being asked how the rector of the village
was, replied, "Well, he's getting wonderful old; but they do tell me
that his understanding's no worse than it always was"--a pagan synonym
for the hackneyed phrase that one is in full possession of one's
faculties. This entire avoidance of flattering circumlocutions, though
it sometimes produces these rather startling effects, gives a peculiar
raciness to rustic oratory. Not long ago a member for a rural
constituency, who had always professed the most democratic sentiments,
suddenly astonished his constituents by taking a peerage. During the
election caused by his transmigration, one of his former supporters said
at a public meeting, "Mr. ---- says as how he's going to the House of
Lords to leaven it. I tell you, you can't no more leaven the House of
Lords by putting Mr. ---- into it than you can sweeten a cart-load of
muck with a pot of marmalade." During the General Election of 1892 I
heard an old labourer on a village green denouncing the evils of an
Established Church. "I'll tell you how it is with one of these 'ere
State parsons. If you take away his book, he can't preach; and if you
take away his gownd, he mustn't preach; and if you take away his screw,
he'll be d----d if he'll preach." The humour which underlies the
roughness of countrified speech is often not only genuine but subtle. I
have heard a story of a young labourer who, on his way to his day's
work, called at the registrar's office to register his father's death.
When the official asked the date of the event, the son replied, "He
ain't dead yet, but he'll be dead before night, so I thought it would
save me another journey if you would put it down now." "Oh, that won't
do at all," said the registrar, "perhaps your father will live till
to-morrow." "Well, I don't know, sir; the doctor says as he won't, and
he knows what he has given him."
The accomplished authoress of _Country Conversations_ has put on record
some delightful specimens of rural dialogue, culled chiefly from the
labouring classes of Cheshire. And, rising in the social scale from the
labourer to the farmer, what could be more lifelike than this tale of an
ill-starred wooing? "My son Tom has met with a disappointment about
getting married. You know he's got that nice farm at H----; so he met a
young lady at a dance, and he was very much took up, and she seemed
quite agreeable. So, as he heard she had Five Hundred, he wrote next day
to pursue the acquaintance, and her father wrote and asked Tom to come
over to S----. Eh, dear! Poor fellow! He went off in such sperrits, and
he looked so spruce in his best clothes, with a new tie and all. So next
day, when I heard him come to the gate, I ran out as pleased as could
be; but I see in a moment he was sadly cast down. 'Why, Tom, my lad,'
says I, 'what is it?' 'Why, mother,' says he, 'she'd understood mine was
a harable; _and she will not marry to a dairy_.'"
From Cheshire to East Anglia is a far cry, but let me give one more
lesson in the Art of Putting Things, derived from that delightful writer
Dr. Jessopp. In one of his studies of rural life the Doctor tells, in
his own inimitable style, a story of which the moral is the necessity of
using plain words when you are preaching to the poor. The story runs
that in the parish where he served his first curacy there was an old
farmer on whom had fallen all the troubles of Job--loss of stock, loss
of capital, eviction from his holding, the death of his wife, and the
failure of his own health. The well-meaning young curate, though full of
compassion, could find no more novel topic of consolation than to say
that all these trials were the dispensations of Providence. On this the
poor old victim brightened up and said with a cheerful smile, "Ah yes,
sir; I know that right enough. That old Providence has been against me
all along; but I reckon _there's One above_ that will put a stopper on
him if he goes too far." Evidently, as Dr. Jessopp observes,
"Providence" was to the good old man a learned synonym for the devil.
XXXI.
CHILDREN.
The humours of childhood include in rich abundance both Things which
would have been better left unsaid, and Things which might have been
expressed differently. But just now they lack their sacred bard. There
is no one to observe and chronicle them. It is a pity, for the "heart
that watches and receives" will often find in the pleasantries of
childhood a good deal that deserves perpetuation.
The children of fiction are a mixed company, some lifelike and some
eminently the reverse. In _Joan_ Miss Rhoda Broughton drew with
unequalled skill a family of odious children. Henry Kingsley look a more
genial view of his subject, and sketched some pleasant children in
_Austin Elliot_, and some delightful ones in the last chapter of
_Ravenshoe_. The "Last of the Neros" in _Barchester Towers_ is admirably
drawn, and all elderly bachelors must have sympathized with good Mr.
Thorne when, by way of making himself agreeable to the mother, Signora
Vesey-Neroni, he took the child upon his knee, jumped her up and down,
saying, "Diddle, diddle, diddle," and was rewarded with, "I don't want
to be diddle-diddle-diddled. Let me go, you naughty old man." Dickens's
children are by common consent intolerable, but a quarter of a century
ago we were all thrilled by Miss Montgomery's _Misunderstood_. It is
credibly reported that an earlier and more susceptible generation was
moved to tears by the sinfulness of Topsy and the saintliness of Eva;
and the adventures of the _Fairchild Family_ enjoy a deserved popularity
among all lovers of unintentional humour. But the "sacred bard" of
child-life was John Leech, whose twofold skill immortalized it with pen
and with pencil. The childish incidents and sayings which Leech
illustrated were, I believe, always taken from real life. His sisters
"kept an establishment," as Mr. Dombey said--the very duplicate of that
to which little Paul was sent. "'It is not a Preparatory School by any
means. Should I express my meaning,' said Miss Tox with peculiar
sweetness, 'if I designated it an infantine boarding-house of a very
select description?'"
"'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs. Chick,
with a glance at her brother."
"'Oh! exclusion itself,' said Miss Tox."
The analogy may be even more closely pressed, for, as at Mrs. Pipchin's
so at Miss Leech's, "juvenile nobility itself was no stranger to the
establishment." Miss Tox told Mr. Dombey that "the humble individual who
now addressed him was once under Mrs. Pipchin's charge;" and, similarly,
the obscure writer of these papers was once under Miss Leech's. Her
school supplied the originals of all the little boys, whether greedy or
gracious, grave or gay, on foot or on pony-back, in knickerbockers or in
nightshirts, who figure so frequently in _Punch_ between 1850 and 1864;
and one of the pleasantest recollections of those distant days is the
kindness with which the great artist used to receive us when, as the
supreme reward of exceptionally good conduct, we were taken to see him
in his studio at Kensington. It is my rule not to quote at length from
what is readily accessible, and therefore I cull only one delightful
episode from Leech's _Sketches of Life and Character_. Two little chaps
are discussing the age of a third; and the one reflectively remarks,
"Well, I don't 'zactly know how old Charlie is; but he must be very
old, for he blows his own nose." Happy and far distant days, when such
an accomplishment seemed to be characteristic of a remotely future age!
"Mamma," inquired an infant aristocrat of a superlatively refined
mother, "when shall I be old enough to eat bread and cheese with a
knife, and put the knife in my mouth?" But the answer is not recorded.
The vagueness of the young with respect to the age of their elders is
pleasingly illustrated by the early history of a nobleman who recently
represented a division of Manchester in Parliament. His mother had a
maid, who seemed to childish eyes extremely old. The children of the
family longed to know her age, but were much too well-bred to ask a
question which they felt would be painful; so they sought to attain the
desired end by a system of ingenious traps. The future Member for
Manchester chanced in a lucky hour to find in his "Book of Useful
Knowledge" the tradition that the aloe flowers only once in a hundred
years. He instantly saw his opportunity, and accosting the maid with
winning air and wheedling accent, asked insinuatingly, "Dunn, have you
often seen the aloe flower?"
The _Enfant Terrible_, though his name is imported from France, is an
indigenous growth of English soil. A young husband and wife of my
acquaintance were conversing in the comfortable belief that "Tommy
didn't understand," when Tommy looked up from his toys, and said
reprovingly, "Mamma, oughtn't you to have said that in French?"