The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lighter Side of English Life, by Frank Frankfort Moore This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Lighter Side of English Life Author: Frank Frankfort Moore Illustrator: George Belcher Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51927] Last Updated: March 13, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ENGLISH LIFE *** Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by the Internet Archive THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ENGLISH LIFE By Frank Frankfort Moore Author Of “The Jessamy Bride” Illustrated in Colour by George Belcher T. N. Foulis, London & Edinburgh 1913 0001 0008 0009 CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE—THE VILLAGE I—THE ABORIGINES II.—THE CENTENARIANS III. THE POINT OF VIEW CHAPTER TWO.—OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE I.—THE GENERAL II.—THE DEAR OLD LADY CHAPTER THREE—THE VILLAGE VILLAS I.—THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY II.—THE SHATTERING OF THE PILLARS III.—FLOWERS AND FRIENDSHIPS CHAPTER FOUR—THE COMEDIES OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE I.—LESSEES FROM THE MIDLANDS II.—THE LEGENDS OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE III.—FATE OF THE FAMILY PORTRAITS CHAPTER FIVE—THE COUNTY, OLD AND CRUSTED I.—THE STRANGERS II.—THE INSECT AND THE MAMMOTH CHAPTER SIX—THE OLD COUNTY TOWN I.—IN THE HIGH STREET II.—PRECIOUS PANELLING III.—THE AMENITIES OF THE HIGH STREET IV.—THE TWO ICONOCLASTS V.—THE SOCIAL “SETS” VI.—THE CASE OF MR. STANWELL CHAPTER SEVEN—THE PEOPLE OF MALLINGHAM I.—THE MAYOR II.—THE FIRST FAMILIES III.—MISS LATIMER'S MARRIAGE LINES IV.—THE ENTERPRISE OF MALLINGHAM CHAPTER EIGHT—THE PUSHING PROVINCIAL TOWN I.—THE MODERN METHODS II.—LIBRARIANS WHILE YOU WAIT III.—ARCHÆOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE CHAPTER NINE—RED-TILED SOCIETY I.—THE ILLUSTRIOUS STRANGER II.—THE PRINCE'S PARADE CHAPTER TEN—LESSER ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWNS I.—STARKIE AND THE STATES II.—OUR FATHERS' FOOTSTEPS CHAPTER ELEVEN—THE CATHEDRAL TOWN I.—IN THE SHADOW OF THE MINSTER II.—THE NEW PALACE III.—ANTE-MORTEM GENEROSITY IV.—THE BLACK SHEEP CHAPTER TWELVE—A CLOSE CORPORATION I.—TROLLOPE'S MRS. PROUDIE II.—THE INNOVATORS III.—THE PEACEMAKERS IV.—THE VOX HUMANA V.—THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS VI.—THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE MINSTER CHAPTER THIRTEEN—AMONG THE AMATEURS I.—MR. BARTON'S HIGH NOTE II.—THE MUSICAL TABLEAUX III.—THE DRAMA CHAPTER FOURTEEN—THE LIGHTER SIDE OF CLERICAL LIFE I.—THE FRANK CANON II.—THE “CHARPSON” III.—THE BIBLE CLASS IV.—THE ENCYCLOPÆDIC PARSON V.—THE ALMONERS CHAPTER FIFTEEN—THE CROQUET LAWNS I.—A CONGENIAL PURSUIT II.—THE PLAYERS CHAPTER SIXTEEN—ART & THE ARTFUL IN THE PROVINCES I.—THE ARTISTIC OUTLOOK II.—ART AND THE SHERIFF III.—THE COUNTRY PICTURE SALE IV.—HUMOURS OF THE ROSTRUM V. THE ARTFUL AND GOLDSTEIN VI.—TRICKS AND TRICKS O CHAPTER ONE—THE VILLAGE NE MORNING A FEW MONTHS AGO A foreigner under the influence of an aeroplane descended somewhat hurriedly in a broad and—as he ascertained—a soft meadow in Nethershire; and while he was picking up his matches preparatory to lighting his cigarette—he has always a cigarette in his waistcoat pocket, for a man with a Kodak may be lurking behind the nearest tree—an agricultural labourer on his way to his work looked over the hedge at him. The foreign person noticed him, and after trying him in vain with German, French, and Hungarian, fell back upon English, and in the few words of that language which he knew, inquired the name of the place. “Why, Bleybar Lane, to be sure,” replied the man, perceiving the trend of the question with the quick intelligence of the agricultural labourer; and when the stranger shook his head and lapsed into Russian, begging him to be more precise (for the aviator had not altogether recovered from the daze of his sudden arrival), the man repeated the words in a louder tone, “Bleybar Lane—everybody knows Bleybar Lane; and that's Thurswell that you can't see, beyond the windmill,” and then walked on. Happily our parson, who had watched the descent of the stranger and was hastening to try if he could be of any help to him, came up at that moment and explained that he was in England, where English was, up to that time at least, spoken in preference to German or, indeed, any other language, and that breakfast would be ready at the Rectory in an hour. I—THE ABORIGINES It was the Rector who told me the story, adding in regard to the labourer—— “Isn't that just like Thurswell—fancying that a Czech who had just crossed the Channel, and believed himself to be in Belgium, should know all about Thurswell and its Bleybar Lane?” I thought that it was very like Thurswell indeed, and afterwards I made it still more like by talking to the agricultural labourer himself about the incident. “Ay, he spoke gibberish with a foreign accent, and I told him plain enough, when he had swept his arms and cried 'Where?' or words to that effect, that he was by Bleybar Lane, and that the place he couldn't see for the windmill was Thurswell; but it were no use: foreigners be in the main woeful ignorant for Christian persons, and I could see that he had no knowledge even of Thurswell when he heard the name.” 0023 That is our village down to the ground. You could not persuade one of the aborigines that there is any place in England or outside it of greater importance than Thurswell, because there is no place of greater importance to the Thurswellian. An aged inhabitant was taken by his son to see the coronation procession, and when he was asked what it was like, replied, after a suitable pause, that it ran Thurs-well's Day very hard—Thurswell's Day is the name given to the First Sunday after Trinity, when the Free Foresters and Ancient Shepherds march to church in sashes, with a band made up of a fife, three flutes, a drum, a concertina, and a melodion. “Ay, neighbours, it ran Thurswell's Day hard,” he affirmed, and did not flinch from his statement in spite of the incredulous murmur that arose from the bench nearest the door, which was immediately suppressed by the landlord, who was apprehensive of a riot. Thurswell is a village of antiquity. Its name occurs in Domesday Book, where you may look in vain for any mention of Brindlington, that mushroom town of 60.000 inhabitants, which is nine miles to the north, or even of Broadminster, the Cathedral town, which is seven miles to the west. “Broadminster is where the Dean lives,” I was told by the landlord of the Wheatsheaf at Thurswell when I was making inquiries about the district, “and Brindlington is where the brewery is; but my father got his ale at Pipstone, and I get mine there too, though it's a blow to Brindlington, for in harvest the best part of a cask goes within a week.” There are several other villages within a mile or so of Thurswell, and the inhabitants of some are infatuated enough to believe that they are on a social, as well as a commercial, level with the people of Thurswell. This singular hallucination caused a good deal of friction on all sides in years gone by, and the rapprochement that was eventually brought about between Thurswell and its neighbours by the thoughtfulness of a Rector, who preached a sermon on the vision of St. Peter and enjoined upon his hearers to remember that even though people have not been born in Thurswell they are still God's creatures, was a purely sentimental one, and did not last. Some years ago an article appeared in the Topographical Gazette from the pen of an eminent archaeologist affirming that Thurswell must originally have been Thor's Well, so that the place dated back to the time of the worship of the Scandinavian god Thor; but while this evidence of its antiquity was received by some of us with enthusiasm—having been a resident in the village for a whole year I was naturally an ardent Thurswellian—it was, when reproduced in the East Nethershire Weekly, generally regarded as the invention of some one anxious to give the enemies of the village some ground for their animosity toward it. For the suggestion that it had a heathen origin was not one, it was felt, to which its people could tamely submit. There was some talk of a public meeting to protest against the conclusions come to by the archaeologist, and the Rector was considered in some quarters to be but a half-hearted champion of the Faith when he refused to lend the schoolhouse—sixty people could be crowded into it—for this purpose, his M argument that the more heathen Thurswell had been in the past, the more marked should be its display of the Christian virtue of charity in the present, being criticised as savouring of Jesuitry. For months the matter was the leading topic of the neighbourhood, and the Hearts of Oak Habitation of the Ancient Shepherds drew up a resolution protesting in this connection against “archaeology and every form of idolatry.” It was the misprint in the Gazette that changed “Hearts of Oak” into “Heads of Oak” in publishing the proceedings that quenched the violence of the discussion, and now it is considered bad taste to refer to it at all. II.—THE CENTENARIANS ore recently still another busybody endeavoured to deprive the village of the reputation which it had long enjoyed as the centre of English longevity. Now it would be impossible for any one to study the dates on the tombstones in the churchyard without noticing how great was the number of centenarians who died within the first fifty years of the nineteenth century in the parish of Thurswell. There were apparently eighteen men and fourteen women interred after passing their hundredth year; indeed, one woman was recorded to have reached her hundred and twenty-seventh year, which is a good age for a woman. The people were naturally very proud of the constant references made in print to their longevity; but one day there came down to the village a member of the Statistical Society, and after busying himself among the musty parish registers for a month, he announced his discovery that in every case but one the date of the birth of the alleged centenarians was the date of the birth of their parents. The investigator had noticed that all the alleged centenarians had “departed this life” during the rectorship of the Rev. Thomas Ticehurst, and centenarianism had always been his fad. He had preached sermon after sermon on Methuselah and other distinguished multi-centenarians, and he spent his time travelling about the country in search of evidence in confirmation of the theory that Methuselah, though somewhat beyond the average in respect of age, might yet have been exceeded on his own ground by many people living in the country districts of England. Nothing was easier, the investigator tried to show, than for a clergyman in charge of the registers, who had such a hobby, to assume, when any very old man or woman died in his parish, that he or she actually was twenty years or so older; and as the Christian names were nearly always hereditary, in nine cases out of ten he accepted the registry of the birth of the father as that of the lately deceased man, and the date of the birth of the mother in regard to the aged woman, the result being a series of the most interesting inscriptions. I must confess that I myself felt that I had a personal grievance against this busybody statistician. There is nothing so comforting to the middle-aged as a stroll through a cemetery of centenarians; and I had the most uncharitable feelings against the person who could make such an attempt to deprive me of the pleasant hope of living another sixty or seventy years. But while we were still talking about the danger of permitting strangers to have access to the registers, I was told one morning that a man who had once been the gardener at the place which I had just acquired would like to see me. Now, I had had already some traffic with the superannuated gardener of my predecessor, and so I was now surprised to find myself face to face with quite a different person. “You were not the gardener here,” I said. “I saw him; his name is Craggs, and he still lives in the hollow.” “Oh ay, Jonas Craggs—young Joe, we called him; I knew his father,” replied my visitor. “He was only here a matter of six-and- thirty years. I was superann'ated to make way for him. Young-Joe, we called him, and I was curious to see how things had come on in the garden of late.” “You were superannuated thirty-six years ago,” said I. “What age are you now?” “I'm ninety-eight, sir,” he replied with a smirk. 0008 I showed him round the garden. He said he could see that the things he had planted had grown summut; and I walked through the churchyard the next Sunday with the greatest complacency. When I told the Rector that my experience of this grand old gardener tended to make me take the side of Thurswell and the neighbourhood against scientific investigation in regard to longevity, he assured me that if I paid a visit to a certain elderly lady who lived with a middle-aged granddaughter in a cottage on the road to Cransdown I should find ample confirmation of the faith for which I had a leaning. The lady's name was, he said, Martha Trendall, and she really was, he thought, a genuine centenarian, for she had a vivid recollection of events which had happened quite ninety years ago; and, unlike most reputed centenarians, she remembered many details of the historical incidents that had taken place in her young days; she was a most intelligent person altogether, and had evidently been at one time a great reader, though latterly her eyesight had shown signs of failing. I made up my mind to pay a visit to this Mrs. Trendall, and thought that perhaps I might get material for a letter to the Times that should not leave the scientific investigator a leg to stand on. A month, however, elapsed before I carried out my intention, though the Rector thought this was not a case for procrastination: when a lady is anything over a hundred her hold upon life shows a tendency to relax, he said, for even the most notorious centenarians cannot be expected to live for ever. But when I managed to make my call I must confess that I was amply repaid for the time I spent in the company of Mrs. Trendall. I found her sitting in her chair in what is called the chimney corner when it exists in its original condition in a cottage, but is termed the “ingle nook” in those red brick imitation cottages which are being flung about the country by those architects who concern themselves in the development of estates. I saw at once that such a figure would be out of place anywhere except in the chimney corner of a cottage kitchen, with immovable windows, but a “practicable” iron crane for the swinging of pots over the hearth fire. The atmosphere—thanks to the immobile casements—was also all that it should be: it was congenially centenarian, I perceived in a moment. It had a pleasant pungency of old bacon, but though I looked about for a genuine flitch maturing in the smoke, I failed to see one—still, the nail on which it should be hanging was there all right. The old woman was quite alert. There was nothing of the wheezy gammer about her. Only one ear was slightly deaf, she told me when I had been introduced by her granddaughter—a woman certainly over fifty. She smiled referring to her one infirmity, and when she smiled the parchment of her face became like the surface of the most ancient palimpsest: it was seamed by a thousand of the finest lines, and made me feel that I was looking at an original etching by Rembrandt or Albert Dürer—a “trial proof,” not evenly bitten in places; and the cap she wore added to the illusion. She was, I could see, what might be called a professional centenarian, and so might retain some of those prejudices which existed long ago against “talking shop” and therefore I refrained from referring in any way to her age: I felt sure that when the right moment came she would give me an opening, and I found that I had not misjudged her. I had scarcely told her how greatly we all liked our house before she gratified me by a reminiscence of the antepenultimate owner: he had died, I happen to know, thirty-eight years ago, and Mrs. Trendall remembered the morning he first rode his black horse to hounds—that was the year before he married, and his son was now a major-general. “A long time ago,” I remarked, and she smiled the patronising smile of the professional at the feeble effort of an incompetent amateur. “Long ago? Oh no; only a bit over sixty years—maybe seventy.” The difference between sixty and seventy years ago was in her eyes not worth taking any account of. Her treatment of this reminiscence gave me warning of what she could do when she had her second wind and got into her stride. “You must have a great memory, Mrs. Trendall,” I remarked. “Was there much stir in this neighbourhood when Queen Victoria got married? I heard something about a big bonfire on Earl's Beacon.” “'Twere no more'n a lucifer match in compare with the flare up after Waterloo,” was her complacent reply; and I felt as if I had just had an audacious pawn taken by my opponent's Queen. “Ay, Thurswell lost three fine youngsters at Waterloo. There was Amos Scovell, him with the red hair.” “The one they used to call Carrots?” I suggested. She brightened up. “The very same—Carrots they called him sure enough,” she said, nodding. “But you couldn't have knowed'un; you're no more'n a stripling as yet. Doan't you list to all that you hear from them that calls theirselves ancient old venerables; there's not a one of'un that's truthfully old—I'm the only one; take my word for it, sir.” I gave her to understand (I hope) by my confidential smile and shake of the head that I was aware of the many fraudulent claims to longevity advanced by some of our friends about Thurswell. “Age? Age is an empty thing without a memory,” I remarked. “But what a memory you have, Mrs. Trendall! I shouldn't wonder if you recollected the news of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar arriving in England—oh no: that was too long ago even for you.” She bridled up in a moment. “Too long ago for me?—too long, quotha! Don't I mind it as if it happened no earlier'n last week? It were before I married my first. It were my father that came a-bustling hasty like and wi' a face rosy wi' beer and hurry, and says he, 'Nelson has broke the Frenchies on us—broke them noble, and we may look for'un coming home any day now,' says he; and there wasn't a sober man in the five parishes that night—no, not a one. Ay, those was times!” “Surely—surely,” I acquiesced. “But now that you can look back on them quite calmly in the afternoon of your life, would you really say that they were more lively times than when the Duke of Marlborough was doing his fighting for us? You've heard your mother speak of Marlborough, I'm sure.” “My mother—speak! Why, I see'un for myself wi' these very eyes when he come home from the wars—a nice, well-set-up gentleman, if so be that I know what'tis to be a gentleman. It was when he come to pay his respex to Squire Longden at Old Deane— the squire that married thrice, as they said, the first for love, the second for lucre, and the third for—for—now was it for liquor or learning?—Well, 'twere one of the two. Ay, sir, those was the times—before there was any talk about Prince Albert and the Christian Palace in London.” “I should rather think so. And if you are old enough to remember seeing the great Duke of Marlborough, I am sure that you may remember seeing Oliver Cromwell when he came through Thurswell with his army?” “Oliver Cromwell? You've spoke the truth, sir. I see'un once—on'y once, to be exact. I mind'un well.'Twere in the mid o' hay harvest, and father come up to us in a mortial great haste, and says he, 'Martha lass, throw down that rake and I'll show you the greatest sight o' your life—Cromwell hisself on a mighty skewbald.' And, sure enough, there he was a-galloping at the head of a fine army o' men, with guns a-rumbling and the bugles blowing—grand as a circus—ay, Batty's Circus with all the fun about Jump Jim Crow and Billy Barlow and the rest. Oh, I saw'un sure.” “And Queen Elizabeth—I wonder if you ever chanced to see her?” “Never, sir—never! 'Twere always the sorrow o' my life that the day she passed through Ticebourne, where I was living with my grand-aunt Martha—her that I was named after—I had been sent with a basket o' three dozen eggs—one dozen of'em turkeys—to the big house, and her ladyship not being at home I had to wait the best part of a whole hour, and by the time I got back the Queen had driven away, so I missed the chance o' my life; for being since my early years noteworthy for speaking the truth to a hairs-breadth, I couldn't bring myself to say that I had seen a royal person when I hadn't. But what I can say is that I on'y missed seeing of her by twenty minutes, more or less.” O I began to feel that I might be overwhelmed if I were borne much farther in the current of the pellucid stream of Mrs. Trendall's veracity; so I rose and thanked the good woman for her courtesy, and expressed the hope that the efforts she had made on my behalf to be rigidly accurate had not fatigued her. She assured me that all she had said was nothing to what she could say if I had a mind to listen to her. When I acknowledged to the Rector that the memory of Martha had surpassed my most sanguine hopes, he was greatly delighted. I thought it well, however, to neglect the opportunity he gave me of going into the details of her interesting recollections. Before we dropped the subject, he said what a pity it was that an historian of the nineteenth century could not avail himself of the services of Martha to keep him straight on some points that might be pronounced of a contentious nature. Not many days after my interesting interview with Martha, the professional centenarian, the decease of an unobtrusive amateur was notified to me. It came about through the temporary disorganisation of our bread service, which I learned was due to the sudden death of the baker's mother. Entering his shop a week or two later, I ventured to say a word of conventional condolence to him, and this was responded to by him with a mournful volubility that made me feel as if I had just attended a funeral oration, or an inefficient reading of “In Memoriam.” It was a terrible blow to him, he said—a cruel blow; and he went on to suggest that it was such an apparently gratuitous stroke that it made even the most orthodox man doubt the existence of mercy in the Hand that had inflicted it. “No doubt, no doubt,” I acquiesced. “But, after all, we must all die some day, Martin, and your good mother could scarcely be said to have been cut off long before she had reached the allotted span. You know you can hardly call yourself a young man still, Martin.” He shook his head as if to hint that he had heard this sort of thing before. I think it very probable that he had: I know that I had, more than once. But I thought that there was no occasion for him to suggest so much, so I boldly asked him what age his mother had reached. He shook his head, not laterally this time, but longitudinally, and distributing the flies more evenly over a plate of jam tarts with a mournful whisk of his feather duster, he replied— “She was a hundred and four last February, sir.” I turned right about and left him alone with his irreparable grief. III. THE POINT OF VIEW n the subject of age, I may say that it has always seemed to me that it is the aim of most people to appear as young as possible—and perhaps even more so—for as long as possible—and perhaps even longer; but then it seems gradually to dawn upon them that there may be as much distinction attached to age as to youth, and those who have been trying to pass themselves off as much younger than they really are turn their attention in the other direction and endeavour to make themselves out to be much older than the number of their years. It is, of course, chiefly in the cottages that the real veterans are to be found—old men and women who take a proper pride in having reached a great if somewhat indefinite age, and in holding in contempt the efforts of a neighbour to rival them in this way. One of the peculiarities of these good folk is to become hilarious over the news of the death of some contemporary. I have seen ancient men chuckle at the notion of their having survived some neighbour who, they averred with great emphasis, was much their junior. The idea seems to strike them as being highly humorous. And so perhaps it may be, humour being so highly dependent upon the standpoint from which it is viewed. In the cottages the conversation frequently turns upon the probability of an aged inmate being gathered unto his fathers before next harvest or, if in autumn, before the first snow, and the utmost frankness characterises the remarks made on this subject in the presence of the person who might be supposed to be the most interested in the discussion, though, as a matter of fact, he is as little interested in it as the Tichborne claimant acknowledged he was in his trial after it had passed its fortieth day. I was fortunate enough to reach the shelter of a farm cottage before a great storm a few years ago, and on a truckle bed in the warm side of the living room of the family there lay an old man, who nodded to me and quavered out a “good marn.” I asked the woman, who was peeling potatoes sitting on a stool, if he was her father or her husband's father. “He's Grandpaw Beck; but don't you take any heed o' him, sir, he's dying,” she replied, with the utmost cheerfulness. “Doctor's bin here yestereve, and says he'll be laid out afore a week. But we've everything handylike and ready for'un.” 0033 She pointed to a chair on which some white garments were neatly laid. “I run the iron o'er'em afore settin' to the bit o' dinner,” she explained. I glanced at the old man. He nodded his approval of her good housekeeping. He clearly thought that procrastination should be discountenanced. O The flashes of lightning and the peals of thunder seemed to me to be by no means extravagant accompaniments to this grim scene (as it appeared in my eyes). I have certainly known far less impressive scenes on the stage thought worthy of the illumination of lightning and the punctuation of thunder claps. This familiar treatment of the subject of the coming of the grim figure with the scythe prevails in every direction. A friend of mine had a like experience in a cottage in another part of the country. The man of the house—he was a farm labourer—was about to emigrate to Canada, and was anxious to get as good a price as possible for some pieces of old china in his possession, and my friend had called to see them by invitation. He was brought into a bedroom where the plates were to be seen on a dresser; and by way of making conversation on entering the room, he asked the man when he thought of leaving England. “Oh, very shortly now,” he replied. “Just as soon as feyther there dies” (jerking his head in the direction of a bed), “and he's far gone—he's dying fast—Doctor Jaffray gives us great hope that a week'll finish'un.” He then went on to talk about the china, explaining that three of the pieces had been brought by his grandmother from the Manor House, where she had been still-room maid for twenty-six years. “Twenty-eight years—twenty-eight years, Amos,” came a correcting falsetto from the bed. “You know nowt o' the matter,” cried the son. “This is no business o' yours. We doan't want none o' your jaw. Go on wi' your dying.” CHAPTER TWO.—OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE I.—THE GENERAL N A VERY DIFFERENT PLANE OF INterest I regard my experience of two delightful old people whom I found living, the one a mile or two on the Brindlington side of Thurswell, the other on the Broadminster side, “where the Dean lives.” The former is an old general who once commanded a regiment of Sikhs and spent fifty years in India. He is now eighty-three years of age, and has two sons with the rank of colonel, a grandson who is a captain of Sappers, and two who are lieutenants in the navy. The old man has nothing of the bristling retired general about him—not even the liver. He is of a gentle, genial nature, not very anxious to hear the latest news, and not at all eager to make his visitors acquainted with his experiences in India or his views as to the exact degree of decadence reached by “the sarvice.” He speaks in a low and an almost apologetic tone, and is interested in old Oriental china and tortoiseshell tea-caddies. One could never believe that this was the man whose sobriquet of Shire-i-Iran (Lion of Persia) was once a household word along the turbulent northwest frontier, or that he had been the most brilliant exponent of all the dash which one associates with the cavalry leader. His reputation on that long frontier was that of an Oriental equivalent of the Wild Huntsman of the German ballad. People had visions of him galloping by night at the head of his splendid Sikhs to cut off the latest fanatical insurrectionary from his supports, and then sweep him and his marauders off the face of the earth. Certainly no cavalry leader ever handled his men with that daring which he displayed—a daring that would have deserved to be called recklessness had it once failed.... And there he sat at dinner, talking in his low voice about the fluted rim of one of his tea-caddies, and explaining how it was quite possible to repair the silver stringing that beautified the top. Once I fancied I overheard him telling the person who sat by him at dinner about the native regiments—I felt sure that I heard the word “Sepoy,” and I became alert. Alas! the word that I had caught was only “tea-poy”—he was telling how he had got a finely cut glass for a deficient caddie out of an old nineteenth-century mahogany tea-poy. That was the nearest approach he made to the days of his greatness. But I noticed with satisfaction that he partook of every dish that was offered to him—down to the marmalade pudding. At dessert he glanced down the table and said that he thought he would have an apple. “No, dear,” said his daughter, gently but firmly removing the dish beyond his reach. “You know that you are not allowed to touch apples.” “Why, what harm will an apple do me—just one—only one apple?” he inquired, and there were tears in his voice—it had become a tremulous pipe, the tone of a child whose treat had been unjustly curtailed. “No, dear, not even one. It is for your own good: you should have an apple if it agreed with you; but it doesn't.” “I want an apple—I can't see what harm an apple would do me,” he cried again. But his daughter was firm. It was very pathetic to witness the scene. The Lion of Persia becoming plaintive at being denied a rosy-cheeked apple. The man who, with a force of only six hundred sabres behind him, had ridden up to Mir Ali Singh with the three thousand rebels supporting him, and demanded his sword, and got it, not being able to get his apple when he had asked for it nicely, seemed to me to be a most pathetic figure. I pleaded for him as one pleads for a child in the nursery: he had been a good boy and had eaten all that had been set before him quite nicely—why T might he not have an apple to make him happy? But the daughter was inexorable. She told me that I did not know her father, while she did. An apple would be poison to him; and so the old hero was left complaining, with an occasional falsetto note, upon the restrictions of his commissariat. I am pretty sure that there was no falsetto note in any of his complaints in regard to commissariat forty years ago. He was a noble old warrior, however, for when his daughter had, with the rest of the ladies, left us after dinner, he never put out a hand to the apple dish, though there was no man at the table who would have interfered with him had he done so; the Newtown Pippins remained blushing, but not on account of any disloyalty on his part to the duty he owed to the daughter who had his welfare at heart. II.—THE DEAR OLD LADY he aged lady who lives in a lovely old moated house a few miles out of Thurswell is one of the youngest people I ever met. She is the mother of two distinguished sons and the grandmother of a peeress. She takes an interest in everything that is going on in various parts of the world, and even points out the mistakes made by the leader-writers in the London papers—some of the mistakes. But she does so quite cheerfully and without any animus. She still sketches en plein air, and in her drawings there is no suggestion of the drawing-master of the early Victorians. Any elderly person who could hold a pencil and whose moral character could bear a strict investigation was accounted competent to teach drawing in those days; for drawing in those days meant nothing beyond making a fair copy of a lithograph of a cottage in a wood with a ladder leaning against a gable and a child sitting on a fence—a possible successful statesman in the future—with a dog below him. She never was so taught, she told me: she had always held out against the restrictions of the schoolroom of her young days, and had never played either the “Maiden's Prayer” or the “Battle of Prague.” Thalberg's variations on “Home Sweet Home” she had been compelled to learn. No young lady in that era of young ladies could avoid acquiring at least the skeleton of Thalberg's masterpiece: and I was glad that this particular old lady, who had once been a young lady, had mastered it; for it enabled her to give me the most delightful parody upon it that could be imagined. Only once did I hear her speak with bitterness in referring to any one; but when she began upon this occasion, she spoke not only bitterly, but wrathfully—contemptuously as well. She was referring to the Emperor Napoleon III. in his relations with the unhappy Maximilian of Mexico. She had known the latter intimately. My own impression is that she had been in love with him—and tears were in her eyes when she talked of how he had been betrayed by the man whom she called a contemptible little cad. Sedan represented, in her way of thinking, the cordial agreement with her views by the Powers above. To hear her talk of those tragedies of more than forty years ago, as if they were the incidents of the day before yesterday, was inspiriting. I never inquired what was her age, but one afternoon when I called upon her I found that a birthday party was going on—a double party; for it was her birthday as well as her youngest grandchild's. Two fully iced cakes, with pink and white complexions, were being illuminated in the customary way, and each had been made a candelabrum of eight tapers. When I ventured to suggest that there must be an error in computation in some direction, it was the younger of the beneficiaries who explained to me that about seventy years or so ago Granny had become too old to allow of her birthday cake holding the full amount of the candles to which she was entitled, so it had been agreed that she should have only one candle for every ten years of her life. The little girl confided in me that she thought it was rather a shame to cheat poor Granny out of her rights, but of course there was no help for it: any one could see that no cake could be made large enough to accommodate, without undue crowding, eighty-one candles. I looked at the sweet old Granny, and thought, for some reason or other, of the night of the first January of the century when I had stood listening to the tolling of the eighty-one strokes of the church bell in Devonshire, when every belfry in the kingdom announced the age of the good Queen who had gone to her rest. I wondered... This dear lady of the eight-candle birthday cake—of which, by the bye, she partook heartily and apparently without the least misgiving—had been married at the age of seventeen, and this, she thought, was exactly the right age for a girl to marry, not, as might be supposed, because it admitted of her period of repentance being so much the longer, but simply because she considered grandchildren so interesting. She was not inclined to be tolerant over the prudent marriages of the present day, when no girl is unreasonable enough to expect a proposal before she is twenty-five, or from a man who is less than thirty-five. It almost brought me back to Shakespeare's England to hear her express such opinions. That stately old lady, Juliet's mother, as she appears in every modern production of the play, was made by the author to be something between twenty-six and twenty-seven, her daughter being some months under fourteen, but certainly forward for her age. We used to be informed by sage critics of this drama “of utter love defeated utterly” that Shakespeare made Juliet so young because it was the custom in Italy, where girls developed into womanhood at a much earlier age than in England, for a girl to marry at Juliet's time of life. It so happens, however, that early marriage was the custom in England and not in Italy in the sixteenth century. When a girl was twelve her parents looked about for a promising husband for her, and usually found one when she was thirteen. Only a few months ago I came upon an unpublished letter, written in the beautiful Gothic hand of Queen Elizabeth, in response to the inquiry of an ambassador respecting a wife for an amiable young prince. The Queen suggested two names of highly eligible young women, and mentioned that one of them was twelve and the other thirteen! The most flagrant example of unbridled centenarianism which I have yet come across in the course of my investigations in the neighbourhood of Thurswell was that of a lady who had won quite a literary aureole for her silver hair owing to the accident of her T being actually the original “Cousin Amy” of Tennyson's “Locksley Hall.” For years she had worn this honourable distinction, and, so far as I could gather, her title to it had never been disputed. Even in the Cathedral Close of Broadminster the tradition had been accepted, and she had been pointed out to strangers, who doubtless looked at her with interest, saying, “Not really!” or “How perfectly sweet!” I ventured to ask the prebendary who had told me that the poet had been in love with her and consequently “greatly cut up” when she married some one else—as might be inferred from some passages in the poem—what was the present age of the lady, and he assured me that she was seventy-four. She did not look it, but she really was seventy-four. I had not the heart to point out that twenty- three years had elapsed since Tennyson published his sequel—“Sixty Years After”—to his “Locksley Hall,” so that this “Cousin Amy” must be at least a centenarian if she had not died, as described in the sequel, between eighty and ninety years ago. She was, however, a nice old lady and her name was really Amy, and she had known Alfred Tennyson when she had been very young and he a middle- aged gentleman whom it was a great privilege to know. CHAPTER THREE—THE VILLAGE VILLAS I.—THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY HURSWELL IS UNDOUBTEDLY AN IDeal English village situated in the midst of an agricultural county, and far away from the unhealthy and demoralising influences of trade. It prides itself on being “select”—so does every other English village, even when it lies deep embowered among the striking scenery of a coal-mining district. But Thurswell is really “select.” A strange family may come to one of the best houses—one of the four or five that have entrance gates with lodges and carriage drives—and yet remain absolutely ignored by the older residents. Of course the shopkeepers pay the newcomers some little attention, and the ladies who collect for the various charities and the various churches are quite polite in making early calls; but the question of calling formally and leaving cards simply because the people are newcomers, requires to be thoroughly threshed out before it is followed by any active movement on the part of the senior residents. It has been called unsocial on this account; but everybody in the world—at least, everybody in Thurswell—knows that to be called unsocial is only another way of being called select The Rector must pronounce an opinion on the strangers, and—more important still—the Rector's wife. The example of the Barnaby-Granges, who have lived for centuries at the Moated Manor House, must be observed for what it is worth. It is understood that people like the Barnaby-Granges may call upon strangers out of a sense of duty; but every one knows how far astray from the path trod by the “select” a sense of duty may lead one, so that the fact of the Manor House people having called upon the newcomer is not invariably regarded as conferring upon the latter the privilege of a passport to the most representative Society at Thurswell. The strangers must wait until Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer have decided whether they are to be called on or ignored. Mrs. Lingard is the widow of a captain of Sappers, and Miss Mercer is the middle-aged daughter of a previous rector, and for years these ladies have assumed the right of veto in respect of the question of calling upon newcomers. Within the past year, however, this question, it should be mentioned, has developed certain complications, owing to the strained relations existing between the two ladies. Previously they formed a sort of vigilance committee to determine what should be done, but since the breaking off of diplomatic relations between them the poor people who had previously looked to them jointly for guidance are now compelled to consult them severally as to the course they mean to pursue, and all this takes time, and the loss of time in the etiquette of first calls may be construed into actual rudeness by sensitive people. That is how we stand at present; and although many well-meaning persons—not invariably belonging to clerical circles—have endeavoured to bring about a rapprochement for the good of the whole community between Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer, hitherto every effort of the kind has failed. When the particulars of the incident that brought about the friction between the two ladies are known, it will easily be understood that a restoration of the status quo ante is not to be accomplished in a moment. It was all due to the exceptionally dry summer. People who retain only the pleasantest recollections of that season of sunlight and balmy breezes will probably find reason to modify their views respecting it when they hear how it led to the shattering of an old friendship and, incidentally, to the complication of the most important social question that can come before such a community as is represented by Thurs-well. T II.—THE SHATTERING OF THE PILLARS he facts of the matter are simple enough in their way. Each of the ladies occupies a small house of her own, fully, and not semi- detached, with a small patch of green in front and a small garden at the back; but the combined needs of front and back are not considered sufficiently great to take up all the time of a gardener working six days in the week during the summer. There is enough work, however, to take up three days of the six, with window-cleaning thrown in, in slack seasons. As the conditions of labour are identical in the case of the gardens of both ladies—only Miss Mercer throws in the washing of her pug to balance Mrs. Lingard's window-cleaning—John Bingham, the jobbing gardener of Thurswell, suggested several years ago that he should divide his time between the two gardens, and this plan, to all appearances, worked very satisfactorily in regard to every one concerned. 0051 Only John Bingham was aware of the trouble involved in keeping both gardens on precisely the same level of “getting on”—only John Bingham was aware of the difficulty of preventing either of the ladies from seeing that anything in the garden of the other was “getting on” better than the same thing in her own patch. It might have been fancied that as they were in complete agreement respecting the necessity for a strict censorship upon the visiting lists of the neighbourhood as regards strangers, there could not possibly exist any rivalry between them on so insignificant a matter as the growth of a petunia or the campanile of a campanula; but John Bingham knew better. It had been his task year by year to minimise to the one lady his success with the garden of the other—to say a word of disparagement on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of all that he had been praising on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. But sometimes Nature is stronger even than her greatest enemy, a jobbing gardener, and so it was that when Mrs. Lingard chanced to pay a visit to Miss Mercer on a Thursday, she found the garden of the latter, just recovering from the hand of John Bingham's attention on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, obviously superior in some respects to her own, and John found his diplomatic resources quite unable to meet with the demand for an explanation when she got home. It was in vain that he tried to make her understand, what she certainly should have known already from her experience of the ministrations of John—namely, that not he, but the superior soil and aspect of Miss Mercer's herbaceous border, should be regarded accountable for the marvellous growths which had attracted her attention in the garden of her rival. His Thursday, Friday, and Saturday patron declared herself far from satisfied with such an explanation. Soil! Had she ever shown herself to be close-fisted in the matter of soil? she inquired. And as for aspect—had he not chosen the aspect of the herbaceous border at which he was now working? No, she knew very well, she affirmed, that what made a garden beautiful was loving care. She professed herself unable to understand why John should lavish all his affection upon Miss Mercer's border rather than upon her own; all that she could do was to judge by results, and, viewed from this basis, it could not but be apparent to every unprejudiced observer that he had been giving Miss Mercer's borders such loving touches as he had never bestowed upon her own: the flowers spoke for themselves. John had heard of the Language of Flowers, but he had never mastered the elements of their speech. As a matter of fact, he took no interest in flowers or their habits. He had “dratted” them times without number for their failure to do all that the illustrated catalogues declared they would do, and now he found reason to drat those of Miss Mercer for having done much more than he had meant them to do. It was with a view to restore the balance of mediocrity between the gardens, which had been through no fault of his, disturbed by a sudden outbreak of “Blushing Brides” in Miss Mercer's parterre, that he gave some extra waterings to Mrs. Lingard's verbinas, trusting to convince her that he was a thoroughly disinterested operator in both the gardens—which was certainly a fact. But in that arid summer the response of the verbinas was but too rapid, and Miss Mercer, calling upon her friend (and rival), was shown the bed with the same pride that she had displayed when exhibiting her petunias. She said nothing—the day was Saturday—but she perceived, with that unerring intuition which in some persons almost takes the place of genius, that petunias had been supplanted (literally) by verbinas in the affections of John Bingham. She spent the Sunday rehearsing an interview which she had arranged in her mind to have with John Bingham when he should arrive the next day. But Monday came, and John Bingham failed to arrive. She waited at the back entrance to the garden until ten o'clock, but still he did not appear. Then she sent a messenger to his cottage to inquire the cause of his absence. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were her days for his services, and never once had he failed her. She could not guess what was the matter. She had always regarded him as a sober man and one for whom Monday morning had no terrors. The mystery of his first failure was rendered all the more unfathomable when the tweeny maid returned saying that Mrs. Bingham had told her positive that John had gone out to work as usual that same morning, and that Mrs. Bingham had taken it for granted that he was in Miss Mercer's garden. For a quarter of an hour Miss Mercer pondered over the whole incident, and then she suddenly put on another hat, discarding the garden specimen with which she had begun the day, and went down the road and round by the Moated Manor House to where Mrs. Lingard's villa was situated, just beyond the knoll of elms. The hall door was wide open to the morning air, and through the glass door at the farther end of the hall she distinctly saw Mrs. Lingard standing on the edge of one of the beds of the garden with John Bingham kneeling at her feet. And this on a Monday morning! John Bingham had actually attended morning ser-vice in the church the day before—Miss Mercer had seen him there—and yet on Monday he had broken faith with her, and now, at ten-thirty, he was engaged in planting out the contents of the capacious basket which Mrs. Lingard was doling out to him. And Mrs. Lingard was wearing her garden hat just as if the day was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, when she was entitled to his services. And Mrs. Lingard had also been at church the previous day and had repeated the res...