A GREAT many other people were going to Aldershot the day we went
there--so many that the train, which we were almost too late for, had
nowhere two spare seats together. Just at the last minute, after Lady
Torquilin had decided that we must travel separately, the guard unlocked
the door of a first-class carriage occupied by three gentlemen alone.
It afforded much more comfortable accommodation than the carriage Lady
Torquilin was crowded into, but there was no time to tell her, so I got
in by myself, and sat down in the left-hand corner going backward,
and prepared to enjoy the landscape. The gentlemen were so much more
interesting, however, that I am afraid, though I ostensibly looked at
the landscape, I paid much more attention to them, which I hope was
comparatively proper, since they were not aware of it.
Original They were all rather past middle age, all very trim, and all dressed to ride. There the similarity among them ended; and besides being different from one another, they were all different from any American gentlemen I had ever met. That is the reason they were so deeply interesting.
One, who sat opposite me, was fair, with large blue eyes and an aquiline
nose, and a well-defined, clean-shaven face, all but his graceful
moustache. He was broad-shouldered and tall, and muscular and lean, and
he lounged, illuminating his conversation with a sweet and easy smile.
He looked very clever, and I think he must have been told all his life
that he resembled the Duke of Wellington. The one in the other corner,
opposite, was rosy and round-faced, with twinkling blue eyes and a grey
moustache, and he made a comfortable angle with his rotund person and
the wall, crossing his excellent legs.
The one on my side, of whom I had necessarily an imperfect view, was
very grey, and had a straight nose and a pair of level eyes, rather pink
about the edges, and carefully-cut whiskers and sloping shoulders. He
did not lounge at all, or even cross his legs, but sat bolt upright and
read the paper. He looked like a person of extreme views upon propriety,
and a rather bad temper. The first man had the 'Times,' the second the
'Standard,' and the third the 'Morning Post.' I think they all belonged
to the upper classes.
They began to talk, especially the two opposite, the lean man throwing
his remarks and his easy smiles indolently across the valises on the
seat between them. He spoke of the traffic in Piccadilly, where 'a brute
of an omnibus' had taken off a carriage-wheel for him the day before.
He was of opinion that too many omnibuses were allowed to run through
Piccadilly--'a considerable lot' too many. He also found the condition
of one or two streets in that neighbourhood 'disgustin,' and was 'goin'
to call attention to it.' All in cool, high, pleasant, indolent tones.
'Write a letter to the "Times,"' said the other, with a broad smile, as
if it were an excellent joke. 'I don't mind reading it.'
The first smiled gently and thoughtfully down upon his boot. 'Will
you guarantee that anybody else does?' said he. And they chaffed. My
neighbour turned his paper impatiently, and said nothing.
'What'r'you goin' to ride to-day?' asked the first. His voice was
delightfully refined.
'Haven't a notion. Believe they've got something for me down there.
Expect the worst'--which also, for some unknown reason, seemed to amuse
them very much.
'You've heard 'bout Puhbelow, down heah year befoh last--old Puhbelow,
used to c'mand 25th Wangers? A.D.C. wides up t' Puhbelow an' tells him
he's wanted at headquahtehs immediately. "That case," says Puhbelow,
"I'd better walk!" An' he did,' said my vis-à-vis.
'Lord!' returned the other, 'I hope it won't come to that.'
'It's the last day I shall be able to turn out,' he went on, ruefully.
'For w'y?'
'Can't get inside my uniform another year.'
'Supuhfluous adipose tissue?'
'Rather! Attended the Levée last week, an' came away black in the face!
At my time o' life a man's got to consider his buttons. 'Pon my word, I
envy you lean dogs.' He addressed both his neighbour and the pink-eyed
man, who took no notice of the pleasantry, but folded his paper the
other way, and said, without looking up, that that had been a very
disastrous flood in the United States.
'They do everything on a big scale over thayah,' remarked the man across
from me, genially, 'includin' swindles.'
The round-faced gentleman's eye kindled with new interest. 'Were you let
in on those Kakeboygan Limiteds?' he said. 'By Jove!--abominable! Never
knew a cooler thing! Must have scooped in fifty thousand!'
'It was ve'y painful,' said the other, unexcitedly. 'By th' way, what
d'you think of Little Toledos?'
'Don't know anything about 'em. Bought a few--daresay I've dropped my
money.'
'Wilkinson wanted me to buy. Lunched the beast last week, expectin'
to get a pointer. Confounded sharp scoundrel, Wilkinson!' And this
gentleman smiled quite seraphically. 'Still expectin'. I see Oneida
Centrals have reached a premium. Bought a lot eight months ago for a
song. Cheapah to buy 'em, I thought, than waste more money in somethin'
I knew as little about! There's luck!' This stage of the conversation
found me reflecting upon the degree of depravity involved in getting
the better of the business capacity which made its investments on these
principles. I did not meditate a defence for my fellow-countrymen, but I
thought they had a pretty obvious temptation.
The talk drifted upon clubs, and the gentlemen expressed their
preferences. 'Hear you're up for the Army and Navy,' said the rosy-faced
one.
'Ye-es. Beastly bore getting in,' returned he of the aquiline nose,
dreamily.
'How long?'
''Bout two years, I believe. I'm up again for the United Service, too.
Had a fit of economy in '85--year of the Tarantillas smash--you were in
that, too, wehn't you?--an' knocked off five o' six o' my clubs. They
make no end of a wow about lettin' you in again.'
'Well, the Rag's good enough for me, and the Lyric's convenient to
take a lady to. They say the Corinthian's the thing to belong to now,
though,' said the round gentleman, tentatively.
'If you have a taste for actresses,' returned the other, with another
tender glance at his boot.
Then it appeared, from a remark from the pink-eyed one, that he dined
at the Carlton four nights out of seven--stood by the Carlton--hoped
he might never enter a better club--never met a cad there in his life.
Fairly lived there when he wasn't in Manchester.
'D'you live in Manchester?' drawled the thin gentleman, quite agreeably.
Now, what was there in that to make the pink-eyed one angry? Is
Manchester a disreputable place to live in? But he was--as angry as
possible. The pink spread all over, under his close-trimmed whiskers
and down behind his collar. He answered, in extremely rasping and
sub-indignant tones, that he had a 'place near it,' and retired from the
conversation.
Then the rotund gentleman stated that there were few better clubs
than the Constitutional; and then, what a view you could get from the
balconies! 'Tremendous fine view,' he said, 'I tell you, at night, when
the place is lighted up, an' the river in the distance----'
'Moon?' inquired his companion, sweetly. But the stout gentleman's
robust sentiment failed him at this point, and he turned the
conversation abruptly to something else--a 'house-party' somewhere.
'Have you got what they call a pleasant invitation?' the other asked;
and the portly one said Yes, in fact he had three, with a smile of great
satisfaction. Just then the train stopped, and we all changed cars, and
I, rejoining Lady Torquilin, lost my entertaining fellow-passengers.
I was sorry it stopped at that point, because I particularly wanted to
know what a house-party and a pleasant invitation were--they seemed to
me to be idiomatic, and I had already begun to collect English idioms
to take home with me. In fact, I should have liked to have gone on
observing the landscape from my unobtrusive corner all the way to
Aldershot if I could--these gentlemen made such interesting incidents
to the journey--though I know I have told you that two or three times
before, without making you understand in the least, I am afraid, how or
why they did. There was a certain opulence and indifference about them
which differed from the kind of opulence and indifference you generally
see in the United States in not being in the least assumed. They did not
ignore the fact of my existence in the corner--they talked as if they
were not aware of it. And they had worn the conventionalism of England
so long that it had become assort of easy uniform, which they didn't
know they had on. They impressed you as having always before them,
unconsciously, a standard of action and opinion--though their perception
of it might be as different as possible--and as conducting themselves in
very direct relation to that standard. I don't say this because none of
them used bad language or smoked in my presence. The restraint was
not to be defined--a delicate, all-pervasive thing; and it was closely
connected with a lack of enthusiasm upon any subject, except the
approach to it the rounded gentleman made with reference to the
Constitutional view. They could not be considered flippant, and yet
their talk played very lightly upon the surface of their minds, making
no drafts upon any reserve store of information or opinion. This was odd
to me. I am sure no three Americans who knew each, other could travel
together in a box about six by eight without starting a theory and
arguing about it seriously, or getting upon politics, or throwing
themselves into the conversation in some way or other.
But I have no doubt that, to be impressed with such things as these,
you must be brought up in Chicago, where people are different. Lady
Torquilin was unable to tell me anything about the gentlemen from my
description of them; she said they were exactly like anybody else,
and as for gambling in stocks, she had no sympathy with anybody who
lost--seeming to think that I had, and that that was what had attracted
my attention.
The young officer was at Aldershot Station to meet us, looking quite a
different person in his uniform. I can't possibly describe the uniform,
or you would know the regiment, and possibly the officer, if you are
acquainted with Aldershot--which he might not like. But I may say,
without fear of identifying him, that he wore a red coat, and looked
very handsome in it--red is such a popular colour among officers in
England, and so generally becoming. He was a lieutenant, and his name
was Oddie Pratte.
By the time I found this out, which was afterwards, when Mr. Pratte had
occasion to write two or three letters to me, which he signed in
that way, I had noticed how largely pet names cling to gentlemen
in England--not only to young gentlemen in the Army, but even to
middle-aged family men. Mr. Winterhazel's name is Bertram, and I should
be interested to hear what he would say if any one addressed him as
'Bertie.' I think he would be mad, as we say in America. If I had ever
called him anything but Mr. Winterhazel--which I have not--I would do
it myself when I return, just for an experiment. I don't think any
gentleman in the United States, out of pinafores, could be called
'Bertie' with impunity. We would contract it into the brutal brevity
of 'Bert,' and 'Eddie' to 'Ed,' and 'Willie' to 'Will,' and 'Bobby'
to 'Bob.' But it is a real pleasing feature of your civilisation, this
overlapping of nursery tenderness upon maturer years, and I hope it will
spread. What 'Oddie.' was derived from I never got to know Mr. Pratte
well enough to ask, but he sustained it with more dignity than I
would have believed possible. That is the remarkable--at any rate a
remarkable--characteristic of you English people. You sustain everything
with dignity, from your Lord Mayor's Show to your farthing change. You
are never in the least amused at yourselves.