he mostly was. He was fond of his glass, sociable-like, and with his
week's wages in his pocket, could not keep away from his pals in the
public. Trimmer's objection to beer was accounted for when I discovered
that Trim's fondness for it often kept the little house without bread
and filled it with curses. There were never blows. Trim was good, she
reminded me, and the liquor never made him wicked,--only made him leave
his wife to starve, and then curse her for starving. She was tearful
with gratitude when she remembered his goodness in not beating her; but
when her story reached the day of his tumbling off a high ladder--the
beer was in his legs--and being brought back to her dead, it seemed to
me a matter of rejoicing. Not to her, however, for she had to give up
the little house and go into service again, and she missed Trim and his
curses. She did not complain. She always found good places, and she
adopted a little boy, a sweet little fellow, like a son to her, whom she
sent to school and started in life, and had never seen since. But young
men will be young men, and she loved him. She was very happy at the
corset and petticoat shop, where she lived while he was with her. After
business hours she was free, for apparently the responsibility of being
alone in a big house all night was as simple for her as braving a
burglar in our chambers. The young ladies were pleasant, she was well
paid. Then her older brother's wife died and left him with six children.
What could she do but go and look after them when he asked her?
He was well-to-do, and his house and firing and lighting were given him
in addition to high wages. He did not pay her anything, of course,--she
was his sister. But it was a comfortable home, the children were fond of
her,--and also of her cakes and puddings,--and she looked forward to
spending the rest of her days there. But at the end of two years he
married again, and when the new wife came, the old sister went. This was
how it came about that, without a penny in her pocket, and with nothing
save her old twisted hands to keep her out of the workhouse, she was
adrift again at an age which made her undesirable to everybody except
foolish people like ourselves, fresh from the horrors of our experience
with 'Enrietter. It never occurred to Trimmer that there was anything to
complain of. For her, all had always been for the best in the best of
all possible worlds. That she had now chanced upon chambers and two
people and one dissipated cat to take care of, and more to do than ought
to have been asked of her, was but another stroke of her invariable good
luck.
She had an amazing faculty of turning all her little molehills into
mountains of pleasure. I have never known anything like the joy she got
from her family, though I never could quite make out why. She was
inordinately proud of the brother who had been so ready to get rid of
her; the sister-in-law who had replaced her was a paragon of virtue; the
nieces were so many infant phenomena, and one Sunday when, with the
South London world of fashion, they were walking in the Embankment
Gardens, she presumed so far as to bring them up to our chambers to show
them off to me, and the affectionate glances she cast upon their
expansive lace collars explained that she still had her uses in the
family. There was also a cousin whom, to Trimmer's embarrassment, I
often found in our kitchen; but much worse than frequent visits could
be forgiven her, since it was she who, after Jimmy's inglorious end,
brought us William Penn, a pussy then small enough to go into her
coat-pocket, but already gay enough to dance his way straight into our
hearts.
Trimmer's pride reached high-water mark when it came to a younger
brother who travelled in "notions" for a city firm. His proprietor was
the personage the rich Jew always is in the city of London, and was made
Alderman and Lord Mayor, and knighted and baroneted, during the years
Trimmer spent with us. She took enormous satisfaction in the splendour
of this success, counting it another piece of her good luck to be
connected, however remotely, with anybody so distinguished. She had
almost an air of proprietorship on the 9th of November, when from our
windows she watched his Show passing along the Embankment; she could not
have been happier if she herself had been seated in the gorgeous
Cinderella coach, with the coachman in wig and cocked hat, and the
powdered footmen perched up behind; and when J. went to the Lord
Mayor's dinner that same evening at the Guildhall, it became for her
quite a family affair. I often fancied that she thought it reflected
glory on us all to have the sister of a man who travelled in "notions"
for a knight and a Lord Mayor, living in our chambers; though she would
never have taken the liberty of showing it.
Trimmer's joy was only less in our friends than in her family, which was
for long a puzzle to me. They added considerably to her already heavy
task, and in her place, I should have hated them for it. It might amuse
us to have them drop in to lunch or to dinner at any time, and to gather
them together once a week, on Thursday evening. But it could hardly
amuse Trimmer, to whose share fell the problem of how to make a meal
prepared for two go round among four or six, or how to get to the front
door and dispose of hats and wraps in chambers so small that the weekly
gathering filled even our little hall to overflowing. There was always
some one to help her on Thursdays, and she had not much to do in the way
of catering. "Plain living and high talking" was the principle upon
which our evenings were run, and whoever wanted more than a sandwich or
so could go elsewhere. But whatever had to be done, Trimmer insisted on
doing, and, moreover, on doing it until the last pipe was out and the
last word spoken; and as everybody almost was an artist or a writer, and
as there is no subject so inexhaustible as "shop," I do not like to
remember how late that often was. It made no difference. She refused to
go to bed, and in her white cap and apron, with her air of old retainer
or family nurse, she would waddle about through clouds of tobacco-smoke,
offering a box of cigarettes here, a plate of sandwiches there, radiant,
benevolent, more often than not in the way, toward the end looking as if
she would drop, but apparently enjoying herself more than anybody, until
it seemed as if the unkindness would be not to let her stay up in it.
More puzzling to me than her interest in all our friends was her choice
of a few for her special favour. I could not see the reason for her
choice, unless I had suspected her of a sudden passion for literature
and art. Certainly her chief attentions were lavished on the most
distinguished among our friends, who were the very people most apt to
put her devotion to the test. She adored Whistler, though when he was in
London he had a way not only of dropping in to dinner, but sometimes of
dropping in so late that it had to be cooked all over again. She was so
far from minding that, at the familiar sound of his knock and ring, her
face was wreathed in smiles, she seemed to look upon the extra work as a
privilege, and I have known her, without a word, trot off to the
butcher's or the green-grocer's, or even to the tobacconist's in the
Strand for the little Algerian cigarettes he loved. She went so far as
to abandon certain of her prejudices for his benefit, and I realized
what a conquest he had made when she resigned herself to cooking a fowl
in a casserole and serving it without bread-sauce. She discovered the
daintiness of his appetite, and it was delightful to see her hovering
over him at table and pointing out the choice bits in every dish she
passed. She was forever finding an excuse to come into any room where
he might be. Altogether, it was as complete a case of fascination as if
she had known him to be the great master he was; and she was his slave
long before he gave her the ten shillings, which was valued
sentimentally as I really believe a tip never was before or since by a
British servant.
Henley was hardly second in her esteem, and this was the more
inexplicable because he provided her with so many more chances to prove
it. Whistler then lived in Paris, and appeared only now and then. Henley
lived in London half the week, and rarely missed a Thursday. For it was
on that evening that the "National Observer," which he was editing, went
to press, and the printers in Covent Garden were conveniently near to
our chambers. His work done, the paper put to bed, about ten or eleven
he and the train of young men then in attendance upon him would come
round; and to them, in the comfortable consciousness that the rest of
the week was their own, time was of no consideration. Henley exulted in
talk: if he had the right audience he would talk all night; and the
right audience was willing to listen so long as he talked in our
chambers. But Trimmer, in the kitchen, or handing round sandwiches,
could not listen, and yet she lingered as long as anybody. It might be
almost dawn before he got up to go, but she was there to fetch him his
crutch and his big black hat, and to shut the door after him. Whatever
the indiscretion of the hour one Thursday, she welcomed him as cordially
the next, or any day in between when inclination led him to toil up the
three long flights of stairs to our dinner-table.
Phil May was no less in her good graces, and his hours, if anything,
were worse than Henley's, since the length of his stay did not depend on
his talk. I never knew a man of less conversation. "Have a drink," was
its extent with many who thought themselves in his intimacy. This was a
remark which he could scarcely offer to Trimmer at the front door, where
Whistler and Henley never failed to exchange with her a friendly
greeting. But all the same, she seemed to feel the charm which his
admirers liked to attribute to him, and to find his smile, when he
balanced himself on the back of a chair, more than a substitute for
conversation, however animated. The flaw in my enjoyment of his company
on our Thursdays was the certainty of the length of time he would be
pleased to bestow it upon us. Trimmer must have shared this certainty,
but to her it never mattered. She never failed to return his smile,
though when he got down to go, she might be nodding, and barely able to
drag one tired old foot after the other.
She made as much of "Bob" Stevenson, whose hours were worse than
anybody's. We would perhaps run across him at a press view of pictures
in the morning and bring him back to lunch, he protesting that he must
leave immediately after to get home to Kew and write his article before
six o'clock. And then he would begin to talk, weaving a romance of any
subject that came up,--the subject was nothing, it was always what he
made of it,--and he would go on talking until Trimmer, overjoyed at the
chance, came in with afternoon tea; and he would go on talking until
she announced dinner; and he would go on talking until all hours the
next morning, long after his last train and any possibility of his
article getting into yesterday afternoon's "Pall Mall." But early as he
might appear, late as he might stay, he was never too early or too late
for Trimmer.
These were her favourites, though she was ready to "mother" Beardsley,
who, she seemed to think, had just escaped from the schoolroom and ought
to be sent back to it; though she had a protecting eye also for George
Steevens, just up from Oxford, evidently mistaking the silence which was
then his habit for shyness; though, indeed, she overflowed with kindness
for everybody who came. It was astonishing how, at her age, she managed
to adapt herself to people and ways so unlike any she could ever have
known, without relaxing in the least from her own code of conduct.
Only twice can I remember seeing her really ruffled. Once was when Felix
Buhot, who, during a long winter he spent in London, was often with us
on Thursdays, went into the kitchen to teach her to make coffee. The
inference that she could not make it hurt her feelings; but her real
distress was to have him in the kitchen, which "ladies and gentlemen"
should not enter. Between her desire to get him back to the dining-room
and her fear lest he should discover it, she was terribly embarrassed.
It was funny to watch them: Buhot, unconscious of wrong and of English,
intent upon measuring the coffee and pouring out the boiling water;
Trimmer fluttering about him with flushed and anxious face, talking very
loud and with great deliberation, in the not uncommon conviction that
the foreigner's ignorance of English is only a form of deafness.
On the other occasion she lost her temper, the only time in my
experience. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Whistler, appearing while she
was out and staying on to supper, got Constant, his man, to add an onion
soup and an omelet to the cold meats she had prepared, for he would
never reconcile himself to the English supper. She was furious when she
got back and found that her pots and pans had been meddled with, and her
larder raided. She looked upon it as a reproach; as if she couldn't
serve Mr. Whistler as well as any foreign servant,--she had no use for
foreign servants anyhow,--she would not have them making their foreign
messes in any kitchen of hers! It took days and careful diplomacy to
convince her that she had not been insulted.
I was the more impressed by this outbreak of temper because, as a rule,
she gave no sign of seeing, or hearing, or understanding anything that
went on in our chambers. She treated me as I believe royalty should be
treated, leaving it to me to open the talk, or to originate a topic. I
remember once, when we were involved in a rumpus which had been
discussed over our dinner-table for months beforehand, and which at the
time filled the newspapers and was such public property that everybody
in the Quarter--the milkman, the florist at the Temple of Pomona in the
Strand, the Housekeeper downstairs, the postman--congratulated us on our
victory, Trimmer alone held her peace. I could not believe that she
really did not know, and at last I asked her:--
"I suppose you have heard, Trimmer, what has been going on these days?"
"What, mum?" was her answer.
Then, exasperated, I explained.
"Why yes, mum," she said. "I beg your pardon, mum, I really couldn't
'elp it. I 'ave been reading the pipers, and the 'ousekeeper she was
a-talking to me about it before you come in, and the postman too, and I
was sayin' as 'ow glad I was. I 'ope you and the Master won't think it a
liberty, mum. Thank you, mum!"
I remember another time, when some of our friends took to running away
with other friends' wives, and things became so complicated for
everybody that our Thursday evenings were brought to a sudden end,
Trimmer kept the same stolid countenance throughout, until, partly to
prevent awkwardness, partly out of curiosity, I asked her if she had
seen the papers.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, mum," she hesitated, "thank you, mum, I'm sure.
I know it's a liberty, but you know, mum, they've all been 'ere so often
I couldn't help noticing there was somethink. And I'm very sorry, mum,
if you'll excuse the liberty, they all was such lidies and gentlemen,
mum."
And so, I should never have known there was another reason, besides the
natural kindness of her heart, for her interest in our friends and her
acceptance of their ways, if, before this, I had not happened to say to
her one Friday morning,--
"You seem, Trimmer, to have a very great admiration for Mr. Phil May."
"I 'ope you and Master won't think it a liberty, mum," she answered, in
an agony of embarrassment, "but I do like to see 'im, and they allus so
like to 'ear about 'im at 'ome. They're allus asking me when I 'ave last
seen 'im or Mr. Whistler."
Then it came out. Chance had bestowed upon her father and one of the
great American magazines the same name, with the result that the
magazine was looked upon by her brothers and herself as belonging
somehow to the family. The well-to-do brother subscribed to it, the
other came to his house to see each new number. Through the
illustrations and articles they had become as familiar with artists and
authors as most people in England are with the "winners," and their
education had reached at least the point of discovery that news does not
begin and end in sport. Judging from Trimmer, I doubt if at first their
patronage of art and literature went much further, but this was far
enough for them to know, and to feel flattered by the knowledge, that
she was living among people who figured in the columns of art and
literary gossip as prominently as "all the winners" in the columns of
the Sporting Prophets, though they would have been still more flattered
had her lot been cast among the Prophets. In a few cases, their interest
soon became more personal.
It was their habit--why, I do not suppose they could have said
themselves--to read any letter Whistler might write to the papers at a
moment when he was given to writing, though what they made of the letter
when read was more than Trimmer was able to explain; they also looked
out for Phil May's drawings in "Punch"; they passed our articles round
the family circle,--a compliment hardly more astonishing to Trimmer
than to us. As time went on they began to follow the career of several
of our other friends to whom Trimmer introduced them; and it was a
gratification to them all, as well as a triumph for her, when on Sunday
afternoon she could say, "Mr. Crockett or Mr. 'Arold Frederic was at
Master's last Thursday." Thus, through us, she became for the first time
a person of importance in her brother's house, and I suspect also quite
an authority in Brixton on all questions of art and literature. Indeed,
she may, for all I know, have started another Carnegie Library in South
London.
It is a comfort now to think that her stay with us was pleasant to her;
wages alone could not have paid our debt for the trouble she spared us
during her five years in our chambers. I have an idea that, in every
way, it was the most prosperous period of her life. When she came, she
was not only without a penny in her pocket, but she owed pounds for her
outfit of aprons and caps and dresses. Before she left, she was saving
money. She opened a book at the Post Office Savings Bank; she
subscribed to one of those societies which would assure her a
respectable funeral, for she had the ambition of all the self-respecting
poor to be put away decent, after having, by honest work, kept off the
parish to the end. Her future provided for, she could make the most of
whatever pleasures the present might throw in her way,--the pantomime at
Christmas, a good seat for the Queen's Jubilee procession; above all,
the two weeks' summer holiday. No journey was ever so full of adventure
as hers to Margate, or Yarmouth, or Hastings, from the first preparation
to the moment of return, when she would appear laden with presents of
Yarmouth bloaters or Margate shrimps, to be divided between the old
charwoman and ourselves.
If she had no desire to leave us, we had none to have her go; and as the
years passed, we did not see why she should. She was old, but she bore
her age with vigour. She was hardly ever ill, and never with anything
worse than a cold or an indigestion, though she had an inconvenient
talent for accidents. The way she managed to cut her fingers was little
short of genius. One or two were always wrapped in rags. But no matter
how deep the gash, she was as cheerful as if it were an accomplishment.
With the blood pouring from the wound, she would beam upon me: "You 'ave
no idea, mum, what wonderful flesh I 'as fur 'ealin'." Her success in
falling down our little narrow stairway was scarcely less remarkable.
But the worst tumble of all was the one which J. had so long expected.
He had just moved his portfolios to an unaccustomed place one morning,
when a letter, or a message, or something, sent her stumbling into the
studio with her usual impetuosity, and over she tripped. It was so bad
that we had to have the doctor, her arm was so seriously strained that
he made her carry it in a sling for weeks. We were alarmed, but not
Trimmer.
"You know, mum, it _is_ lucky; it might 'ave been the right harm, and
that would 'ave been bad!"
She really thought it another piece of her extraordinary good luck.
Poor Trimmer! It needed so little to make her happy, and within five
years of her coming to us that little was taken from her. All she asked
of life was work, and a worse infirmity than age put a stop to her
working for us, or for anybody else, ever again. At the beginning of her
trouble, she would not admit to us, nor I fancy to herself, that
anything was wrong, and she was "bonny," though she went "cutting about"
at a snail's pace and her cheerful old face grew haggard. Presently,
there were days when she could not keep up the pretence, and then she
said her head ached and she begged my pardon for the liberty. I
consulted a doctor. He thought it might be neuralgia and dosed her for
it; she thought it her teeth, and had almost all the few still left to
her pulled out. And the pain was worse than ever. Then, as we were on
the point of leaving town for some weeks, we handed over our chambers to
the frowzy old charwoman, and sent Trimmer down to the sea at Hastings.
She was waiting to receive us when we returned, but she gave us only the
ghost of her old smile in greeting, and her face was more haggard and
drawn than ever. For a day she tottered about from one room to another,
cooking, dusting, making beds, and looking all the while as if she were
on the rack. She was a melancholy wreck of the old cheerful, bustling,
exasperating Trimmer; and it was more than we could stand. I told her
so. She forgot to beg my pardon for the liberty in her hurry to assure
me that nothing was wrong, that she could work, that she wanted to work,
that she was not happy when she did not work.
"Oh, I'm bonny, mum, I'm bonny!" she kept saying over and over again.
Her despair at the thought of stopping work was more cruel to see than
her physical torture, and I knew, without her telling me, that her fear
of the pain she might have still to suffer was nothing compared to her
fear of the workhouse she had toiled all her life to keep out of. She
had just seven pounds and fifteen shillings for her fortune; her family,
being working people, would have no use for her once she was of no use
to them; our chambers were her home only so long as she could do in them
what she had agreed to do; there was no Workmen's Compensation Act in
those days, no old-age pensions, even if she had been old enough to get
one. What was left for a poor woman, full of years and pain, save the
one refuge which, all her life, she had been taught to look upon as
scarcely less shameful than the prison or the scaffold?
Well, Trimmer had done her best for us; now we did our best for her,
and, as it turned out, the best that could be done. Through a friend, we
got her into St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Her case was hopeless from the
first. A malignant growth so close to the brain that at her age an
operation was too serious a risk, and without it she might linger in
agony for months,--this was what life had been holding in store for
Trimmer during those long years of incessant toil, and self-sacrifice,
and obstinate belief that a drunken husband, a selfish brother, an empty
purse, were all for the best in our best of all possible worlds.
She did not know how ill she was, and her first weeks at the hospital
were happy. The violence of the pain was relieved, the poor tired old
body was the better for the rest and the cool and the quiet; she who had
spent her strength waiting on others enjoyed the novel experience of
being waited on herself. There were the visits of her family on visiting
days, and mine in between, to look forward to; some of our friends, who
had grown as fond of her as we, sent her fruit and flowers, and she
liked the consequence all this gave her in the ward. Then, the hospital
gossip was a distraction, perhaps because in talking about the
sufferings of others she could forget her own. My objection was that she
would spare me not a single detail. But in some curious way I could not
fathom, it seemed a help to Trimmer, and I had not the heart to cut her
stories short.