preserve the likenesses throughout. In the case of "The Elegant Girl" it
has been fairly successfully overcome, but Laura, who at her orisons
looks years older than when becomingly trousered, is never again so
charming a child as in the library before breakfast; while, in the Plate
which we have now reached, her mother's severe Greek profile, so
noticeable at that frugal meal, has completely vanished. But, take it
all round, the series is maintained with credibility and a sprightly
realism.
In Plate No. 10 the mother is sufficiently recovered to play the harp
while Laura bounds light on agile feet. In No. 11 Laura visits the
impoverished sick, and, by reading the "sacred page,"
Dries up the widow's scalding tears,
Exalts her hopes and calms her fears.
And finally, in crimson, she is presented by her mother with the guerdon
of her day's good conduct, which consists of several boxes of odds and
ends labelled "Gifts for the Poor," including a large number of top
hats--
Gifts for the Poor her own Reward,
For Laura felt and understood
The Luxury of doing Good.
Such is the pretty, unobtrusive didactic scheme of "The Elegant Girl."
That it is now all out of date I am only too well aware; but it would do
no great harm if a reprint of the book found its way into a few modern
homes.
THOUGHTS AT THE FERRY
My acquaintance among ferrymen is not extensive, but I cannot remember
any that were cheerful. Perhaps there are none. The one over there at
this moment, on the other side, for whom we are waiting and who is being
so deliberate--he certainly has no air of gaiety.
There is a wealth of reasons for this lack of mirth. To begin with, a
boat on a river is normally a vehicle of pleasure; but the ferryman's
boat is a drudge. Then, the ordinary course of a boat on a river is up
or down, between banks that can provide excitement, and around bends,
each one of which may reveal adventure; but the ferryman's boat must
constantly cross from side to side, always from the same spot to the
same spot and back again, which is subversive of joy. All that the
ferryman knows of the true purposes of a river he gains from observation
of others, who gaily pass him, pulling with the stream or against it,
and singing, perhaps, as they row. Did a ferryman ever sing? There was,
when I was a boy, a pretty song about Twickenham Ferry, but my
recollections of it are that it was the passenger who sang: not, I
fancy, in the boat, but before he entered it. If my memory is right, the
fact is significant. In the company of such taciturnity and gloom who
could carol?
The ferryman, again, must never leave his post. All the world may go
wayfaring, but not he. To cross a river is in itself nothing; but to
come, from somewhere unknown, to the bank of the river, cross it, and
pass on to unknown bournes on the other side--that is an enterprise, and
that is what every one but the ferryman is doing. I have written
elsewhere--it is a recurring theme of sympathy--of the servants of the
traveller who live by helping him on his eventful way but never
participate in any wanderings--railway porters, for example--and the
ferryman is perhaps chief, because so much of the very matter of
romance--a running stream--comes into his daily routine. There he is, in
the open air, with the breeze to fan and lure him, and the racing clouds
to lift his thoughts, and the exciting sound of water in his ears: all
the enticements to rove, but he must not be a rover. For the rest of us
(as it must seem to him), exploration; for himself, the narrow confines
of the known!
And it is a peculiarity of ferrymen that when you want them they are
(like this reluctant fellow) always on the other side. Not from any
natural desire to annoy, but through a whim of the gods; yet to have to
come over empty, how it must add fuel to their misanthropic fire! If
every journey were with a fare the ferryman might be a shade more
cheerful, even though the payment is so trifling. Was there ever a rich
ferryman? Has a whimsical millionaire ever played at being a ferryman?
Has a Carnegie ever left a ferryman a legacy?
And then the brevity of their companionships! Not that most ferrymen
seem to desire human intercourse; but perhaps they did once, before the
monotony of their task soured them. Down to the boat come the strangers
from the great world--young or old, forbidding or beautiful, ardent or
pensive--and howsoever the ferryman would like to hold them and talk
with them, no sooner does the boat touch the farther bank than they are
off again! Does not that make for a certain moroseness?
And what was the ferryman before he was a ferryman? For seldom, I should
guess, is his an hereditary post. Some kind of failure normally
precedes; and there again is cause for reticence.
Such friends as ferrymen possess are usually dumb animals. I have known
more than one who carried his dog with him; and once, on the Wye, I met
one whose companion was a goose. No matter how often the crossing had to
be made, the goose made it too. I used the ferry several times, and we
were never without this escort; and the ferryman (who, I am bound to
remark, humiliating though it be, propelled his boat from side to side,
not with honest oars, but by means of a rope) emerged sufficiently from
his apathy to praise the bird's fidelity. "Here," thought I, "is surely
the material for a pertinent apologue. 'The Ferryman and the Goose': the
very title is AEsopian. Or--to be more satirical--the title might be 'The
Ferryman and the Swan,' the point being that he thought it was a swan,
but in reality it was only a goose." But I had no further inspiration.
And yet, by a practised homilist, a good deal could be done with it with
which to score off poor human nature. "Ah! my friends"--surely it is
fittest for the pulpit, after all--"ah! my friends may not each of us be
as much in error as that poor deluded ferryman? Let us search our hearts
and answer truthfully the questions: Do we know our friends as we ought?
Does not their flattery perhaps blind us to their mediocrity? In short,
are they swans or geese?"
Ferrymen----
But here is our man at last! On close inspection how dismal he looks!
[Illustration: LAURA'S MUSIC LESSON. _See "The Innocent's
Progress"--Plate 4_]
A LITTLE CHILD
The decision that the governess-cart must be given up meant that a new
owner for Polly must be found.
Polly is a roan pony; very round in the barrel, and particularly so of
late, when there has been no food but meadow-grass. She had been with us
(this is my neighbour's story, as told to me during the War: a very
charming neighbour who keeps her temper at croquet)--Polly had been with
us so long as to become, as ponies peculiarly can, a member of the
family, so that to part with her savoured of treachery. Necessity,
however, knows no law and sanctifies no memory, and the distasteful
preparations were therefore begun. The first was the framing of the
advertisement; which is not the simple matter that it might appear to
be, because so much depends upon the choice of adjective: the selected
word must both allure and (in our case) keep within the bounds of truth.
What are the qualities most valued in a pony, we had to ask ourselves.
Celerity? Polly was fixed in her determination not to exceed the speed
limit, at any rate on outward journeys. Willingness? Polly could be
desperately stubborn. Strength? Yes, she was strong. Youth? Well, she
came to us ten years ago and she was no foal then. After much serious
deliberation, compared with which Versailles Conferences are mere
exchanges of persiflage, it was decided to describe Polly either as
"strong useful pony" or "useful strong pony." Further deliberations
fixed the phrase as "Pony, strong, useful," and the advertisement was
despatched to the local rag, as our very worthy county chronicle is too
often called.
Next came the question of what price was to be asked. Here expert
opinion was resorted to, in the shape of Mr. Edmead, the butcher. No one
knows more about ponies than butchers do, and Mr. Edmead is
exceptionally wise.
"Taking everything into consideration," he said, "I think that
twenty-five pounds would be a fair price."
We clung to each other for support. Twenty-five pounds! And we had given
only nine pounds all those years ago. Why had we not made pony-breeding
a hobby? The War, Mr. Edmead went on to explain, had rendered ponies
more valuable. Yes, taking everything into consideration, twenty-five
pounds was a fair price. We ought to get that. In fact, if he had been
in need of a pony he would have given that himself; but just then he was
well supplied, and Polly was, he feared, not quite fast enough for him.
Good morning.
Men who want to buy a pony have a strong resemblance to each other. They
are clean-shaven and wear hard round hats, and the collars of their
overcoats are carelessly treated so that they are half up and half down.
They carry sticks. Also, although they want a pony, they don't want one
at quite such a figure. All the men who came to see Polly were
furthermore alike in agreeing that she was no doubt a useful strong
pony, even a strong useful pony, but she was not for them. Day after day
Polly was examined. They opened her mouth and shook their heads, they
felt her knees and her hocks, they looked at her with narrow eyes from
near by and from far, they rattled their sticks in their hard hats, they
gave her sudden cuts and prods. But they didn't buy.
We began to get desperate. Much as we esteemed Polly, now that she was
to be sold we wanted to be rid of her. Things should be done quickly.
And then came a market gardener, a large, rubicund, genial man named
Fox. And Polly was again led forth and again subjected to every test
known to pony-buyers. All was going well, and would have gone well, but
for Vivian.
Who, you ask, is Vivian? We should be better prepared for the irruption
of new characters. True, but this is not my story, but my nice
neighbour's.
Vivian is a small boy who had known Polly all his life, and who by some
mischance wandered out from his lessons in the morning-room at the
precise moment when Mr. Fox, who obviously was attracted by Polly, was
making up his mind to pay the full money. Vivian, I should explain, is
one of those ingratiating little boys who look upon the world as a
sphere existing solely to provide them with friends, and who attach
themselves with the strongest bands to open-air manual labourers. No
sooner did Vivian see Mr. Fox's benevolent features than he added him to
his collection.
"Run away, Vivian," I said. "It's not play-time yet, and we're busy."
"Are you going to buy Polly?" Vivian asked Mr. Fox by way of a suitable
rejoinder to my command.
"I was thinking about it," said Mr. Fox, adding to me, "How old do you
call her, ma'am? She looks to me about twelve."
The figure was so low that I nodded assent, but Vivian spoilt it by
exclaiming, "Oh, mother, and Mr. Brooks says she's seventeen if she's a
day, and I'm sure she's a day."
Mr. Fox became thoughtful. "Mr. Brooks said that, did he?" he remarked.
I felt that I couldn't tell Vivian again to go in, because it would look
as though I feared his frankness; which, to be candid, I did. All I
could do was to hope for the best.
"She's quiet enough; used to traffic and all that?" Mr. Fox asked.
Then Vivian began to laugh. This trick of laughter over
retrospection--chewing the cud of old jokes--we have always rather
admired in him; his chuckles are very engaging; but now I trembled, and
not without reason.
"Don't you remember, mother," he began, "that day when she was
frightened by the traction engine and ran into the grocer's shop?"
Mr. Fox, in whose large hand my son's minute one was now reposing,
looked grave.
"That's against her in my business," he said.
"Oh, but," I explained, "that was a very long time ago. She's quite
steady now. Don't you remember, Vivian, it was on your fifth birthday?"
"No," said Vivian, "that was on my seventh birthday--something funny
always happens on my birthdays," he explained to Mr. Fox--"it was on my
fifth birthday that Polly fell down."
"She's been down, has she?" said Mr. Fox ominously.
The rest of it is too tragic. I had no intention of concealing anything;
Mr. Edmead knew the pony's whole history when he valued her; but
Vivian's presence made me nervous, painfully self-conscious; I felt my
face burning and knew that I must suggest duplicity.
Mr. Fox, I will admit, played the game. He asked Vivian no questions;
indeed he talked of other things than defective ponies; but I could see
his mind working; I could see pound after pound dropping away from the
grand total.
Well, that's the story. Mr. Fox led Polly away some ten minutes later,
leaving in her stead a cheque. But it was not for twenty-five
pounds--Vivian saw to that.
The moral? The moral is: when your husband is in Mesopotamia and the
time comes to sell the pony, lock your cherubic son in the nursery.
A DEVONSHIRE INN
To enter a strange town on foot and unencumbered--leaving one's bag at
the station or sending it on in advance--is a prudent course, for it
liberates the traveller to select his inn at his ease. A man carrying
luggage is not free; the bag in a way pledges him, at any rate proclaims
the fact that he is a traveller and will probably need a bed, and makes
it the more difficult for him to extricate himself from the hostel that
within doors has failed to come up to the promise of the exterior--as
too often is the hostel's habit.
All unburdened, then, I entered Kingsbridge at lunch-time at the top of
its steep main street, and as I walked down it I cast my glances this
side and that to see which inn seemed most promising. The woman who, at
Yealmpton, had given me some bread and cheese, had named the "Anchor" as
the best. A man who had beaten me at billiards at Devonport had
mentioned another; and, left to myself, I found myself more taken by the
facade of a third.
I did, however, nothing rash; I looked carefully at all, and then I
entered the one with the agreeable facade and asked for lunch.
Never have I done a wiser thing.
It is odd how trifling are the determining factors in some of the most
momentous decisions that face us in life. Here was I alone, and tired,
and in a strange part of the country, with the necessity before me of
finding "a home from home" for three or four days, and yet, even without
entering any of the other inns, I agreed to stay in this one. And why?
Well, a little because the landlord (a big, strong, leisurely man with a
white beard and a massive head), who himself did the waiting, was
pleasant and attentive, and a little because his daughter, who had
charge of the bar, was attentive and pleasant. But the real reason was
pickled onions. Such was the excellence of these divine roots that I let
everything else go. Nights might be bad, but lunches and dinners would
be good: for were there not these onions, pickled according to a recipe
of the host's mother, now with God, in her day famous for the best ways
of preserving and curing and, indeed, of doing everything that a good
housewife should? The enthusiasm displayed by this patriarchal Boniface
for his mother was perfectly charming, its novelty being part of its
charm. Very big landlords with white beards and footfalls that shake
the house do not, as a rule, talk about their mothers at all. Should
they, through strange martial vicissitudes, come, as this one had done,
to wait at table, they wait and go. But this one hovered, and talked
reverently of his mother's household genius, giving me the while such
delicious proofs of it that I could not have torn myself away.
To those exquisite esculents I shall be eternally grateful, for they
brought me into knowledge of one of the most interesting of inns. It is
a survival; indeed, to my great satisfaction, the word "posting"
occurred in my bill, for a journey by wagonette to a distant village was
thus ennobled. The stables are immense, and contained one horse. The
coach-house is immense, and contained seventeen carriages of various
kinds, from omnibus to dogcart, but chiefly broughams, all in a state of
mouldiness. Coming by degrees to be recognised as a member of the little
family which, by ceaseless activity, ran this unwieldy place--father,
daughter, a superb cook, a maid-servant, and an ostler--I was free to
wander as I would, and exploring the various floors and passages I came
upon a billiard table whose cushions belonged to the Stone Age, and an
assembly-room with a musicians' gallery. In the kitchen I watched at her
mysteries the admirable lady who cooked and carried on the noble
traditions of the landlord's mother as set forth in a manuscript book in
her own hand. In the bar parlour I watched the landlord, according to
the new regulations, water down his spirits, and heard instalments of
his long life, spent wholly, in this "house" and that, in ministering to
the wants of his fellow-creatures--tired, or hungry, or thirsty, but
chiefly thirsty. Then later in the evening the little cosy room would
fill, and I would quietly take my place as one of the best listeners
that its habitues had ever talked to. Listening is an old accomplishment
of mine, and here, amid the friendliest of strangers, I gave it full
play; and you would be surprised to know how much I know of Kingsbridge
life. Probably their surprise would be even greater.
And still I have not really begun to describe this most alluring inn. In
the cellar, for example, there was some '47 port....
ON SHOPS AND STALLS
Most people who do not keep shops have, I suppose, at one time or other
thought that to keep a shop might be fun; of course, keeping it their
own way, selling only what they liked, to whom they liked. No vulgar
trade notions at all! The fact that there is no nursery game so popular
as keeping shop probably proves this. And none is more popular, except,
perhaps, among French country children, who prefer the game of
market--each one presiding over a different stall, stocked with the most
ingenious miniature counterfeits of vegetables and fruit fashioned
chiefly from wild flowers and leaves, and all shouting against each
other with terrific French volubility and not a little French wit.
We seldom go so far as actually to open an establishment, but we play
with the idea. One of my friends has for years projected a London centre
for all the most interesting and vivid European pottery, and if only she
could assemble it and maintain the supply, I have little doubt of her
success. But the chances are that it will never materialize, the people
who _do_ things being so rare. Another is at this moment excitedly
planning a restaurant in a neighbourhood where one seems peculiarly to
be needed, as it is chiefly populated by dwellers in flats, the slogan
of which is to be "Where to dine when cook goes out"; but that, too,
will probably end in talk.
One would say, on the face of it, that a shop opened in a locality where
that kind of shop did not previously exist would have a better chance
than a shop opened next door to another shop of the same kind--apart
from any unpleasantness that such contiguity might produce. But the
methods of business are inscrutable, and there seem to be countless
ways, often in direct opposition to each other, of conducting it
successfully. One would, at the first blush, have called this principle
of scientific selection and segregation the soundest; and yet that of
congregation seems to be just as sensible; so that while one man
succeeds because he is the only tailor in the street, another man can be
even more successful because he is in a street where every other
establishment is a tailor's too. There are also the antagonistic
principles of ostentation and self-effacement, each again apparently
satisfactory: so that one hatter, for example, succeeds because he
inhabits a palace of light, and another because you can hardly see
through the grimy panes of his old-fashioned and obsolete windows. There
are, furthermore, the antipodal theories of singularity and plurality:
so that one draper makes as good a thing as he wants out of a single
shop, and another rises to wealth by dint of opening twenty shops at
once.
And then there are the business people who thrive by apparently doing no
business. We all know of shops which no one was ever seen to enter;
while at the opposite pole are the mandarins of trade who disdain to
disclose their identity to strangers--such as Altman and Tiffany,
serenely secure in their anonymous stores.
But to select one's line...?
There was once a man who, without any special training, decided that he
would start business in London; and he came to town to prospect and make
up his mind, which was curiously blank and receptive. In his walking
about he was struck by the number of old curiosity shops in the
neighbourhood of the British Museum and South Kensington Museum, which
led to the inference, hitherto unsuspected by him, but known to the
dealers, that there is something exciting in the air of those places, so
that the visitor, having seen many odd things, wishes to acquire some
for himself. All his plans to establish himself in London failed,
however, because he could not obtain a site for a monumental mason's
yard opposite Westminster Abbey.
My own ambition, if ever I took to keeping a shop, would be merely to be
in a congenial line of business. Some things are interesting to sell,
and some most emphatically are not. Old books would appear to be an
ideal commodity; but this is far from the case, because I should want
not to sell them but to keep them. Pictures, too--how could one part
with a good one? And, equally, how permit a customer to be so misguided
as to pay money for a bad one? A fruit-shop would be a not unpleasant
place to move about in, were it not that it is one of my profoundest
beliefs that fruit ought not to be sold at all, but given away. The
tobacconist's was once an urbane and agreeable career; but it is so no
longer. To-day the tobacconist is a mere cog in a vast piece of
machinery called a Trust; and the tobacco-shop is as remote from the old
divan, where connoisseurs of the leaf met and tested and talked, as the
modern chemist's, with its photograph frames and "seasonable gifts," is
remote from the home of Rosamund's purple jar.
That ingenious and adventurous tobacconist, Mr. Godall, revisiting the
London which he found, or made, so like Baghdad, would have to discover
a new kind of headquarters. Perhaps he would open an oyster-bar (it was
in an oyster-bar near Leicester Square that the young man proffered the
cream tarts); more likely an American bar. But if he really wanted to
observe human nature at its most vulnerable and impulsive--that is, at
night--he would take a coffee-stall. After ten o'clock, the coffee-stall
men are the truest friends that poor humanity has. There is a
coffee-stall within a few yards of my abode; and no matter at what hour
I return, the keeper of it is always brisk and jovial, with the hottest
beverages that ever were set to timid lips. His stall is surrounded by
hungry and thirsty revellers, chiefly soldiers, not infrequently
accompanied by the fair. Every one calls him by his Christian name, and
every one talks and is jolly. And no matter at what hour in the night I
wake, or from what disconcerting dream, I am always at once secure in my
mind that the old recognisable world is still about me and I have not
passed over in my sleep, because the voices and laughter about the
coffee-stall fill the air. "Good," I say, "I am still here." Now it
would be a pleasant thing, and prove one's life not to have been lived
in vain, to be able to minister in the small hours gaily to so many
heroes, and incidentally to impart to wakeful and disquieted neighbours
reassurance of stability.
THIRD THOUGHTS
It is my destiny (said my friend) to buy in the dearest markets and to
sell--if I succeed in selling at all--in the cheapest. Usually, indeed,
having tired of a picture or decorative article, I have positively to
give it away; almost to make its acceptance by another a personal favour
to me. But the other day was marked by an exception to this rule so
striking that I have been wondering if perhaps the luck has not changed
and I am, after all, destined to be that most enviable thing, a
successful dealer.