Chapter I: Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh (2)

But—and this is the point—I needn’t have worried at all; and after such a wonderful experience of watchfulness over me I shall never worry again—I should be a monster of ingratitude if I did. Because all the time my guardian angel was working for me. For when I had dressed and started out to get to the Elysian punctually, what do you think?—there was a cordon of police all round it, to keep me and every one away, and thousands of people looking on. The restaurant had caught fire and was gradually but surely burning to the ground! Wasn’t that an extraordinary piece of luck, or rather, not luck but intervention? Of course it was no good looking for Stella among such a crowd, so I went off to the Club and dined alone.

A religious fellow would make a tract about an experience of this kind. I’m afraid I can’t be called religious exactly, but I have learnt my lesson.

I am still having bad nights thinking about my future.—Your affectionate nephew,

ROY

LXXXIX

CLEMENCY POWER TO PATRICIA POWER

PAT, MY ANGEL,—I am comfortable enough here but I wish I could hail an aeroplane and drop in on you all for a few hours. Some day we shall be able to do impulsive and impossible things like that. Miss Raby is certainly getting stronger, and could very well do her own reading, but she seems to like me. I am saving money too—because there’s nothing to do with it—and when my time is finished you must come to London to meet me and I’ll stand you some nice dinners and theatres before we go back.

I hope I’ve done the school children a little good, but it’s heartbreaking to be a teacher, because one is fighting nature most of the time. “Be thoughtful, be good, be considerate,” we say, by which we mean “Behave so that the comfort of older people, who own the world, may be as little disturbed as possible.” But oh the little poets and rebels we are suppressing and perhaps destroying!

We’re all women here, except the Doctor and the Rector, who are both old and oh so polite. The Doctor’s wife, Mrs. Ferguson, is the affable arch type who tells anecdotes and is “quite sure God has a sense of humour”—you know the kind I mean. The Rector’s wife is soft and clinging and full of superlative praise. But I mustn’t be critical, because every one here is kind and nice, and as for Miss Raby I’d do anything for her.

Give Herself my love and say I’ll write very soon. Adela ought to write to me, tell her.—Your devoted

CLEM.

XC

HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR AUNT,—As you know, there is great need of a revival in all kinds of home industries if we are to regain, or rather to hold, our place among the nations, and I am far too keen a political economist not to be giving much thought to the matter. What I am at the moment most interested in is the carpet manufacture. I have heard of a firm in the West of England which merely needs a little more capital to do the most astonishing things, and I wonder if you would advance me a thousand or so to invest in it. I ask as a loan—no speculation at all.

One of the reasons why I have a leaning towards this industry—apart from the fact that carpets must always be needed—is that the other day when I was in the South Kensington Museum, looking about for inspiration, I noticed an ancient rug, hanging on the wall, which represented a map. It at once struck me that it would be a first-class notion to make map carpets for sale in this country. Think of the enormous success that a carpet-map of the Western Front would have been during the late War. Conversation need never have faltered, and if you had a real soldier to tea or dinner he could have made his story extraordinarily vivid by walking about the room and illustrating the various positions. Or take a carpet-map of Ireland—how that would help in our understanding of the Irish question! In nurseries too, the carpet could teach geography. Children crawling over it from one country to another could get a most astonishing notion of boundaries and so forth.

The more I think of the scheme, the more I am taken by it; and I hope, dear Aunt, that you will see eye to eye with me. Trusting that you are progressing favourably towards a complete recovery—I am, your affectionate nephew,

HORACE MUN-BROWN

_P.S._—I never see Hazel now, but still live in hopes.

XCI

VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN

MY DEAR FRIEND AND PHILOSOPHER,—How wise you are! On paper. When I meet you and see your dear old face I know you are capable of quite as many incautious impulses as most of us; but when I read your cool counsels and generalizations you seem to assume a white beard of immense proportions and to be superior to all human temptations or foibles.

Now, tell me, don’t you think there is any way in which a little money might help to get England back to a sense of orderliness and responsibility again? Nesta and I have been wondering if lecturers could be employed, perhaps with cinema films, to excite people about England—the idea of England as the country that ought to set a good example, that always has led and should lead again. A kind of pictorial pageant of its greatness. Or there might be illustrated lives of its greatest men, to stimulate the ambition of the young and their parents. It is all very vague in my mind, but don’t you think there is something in it? The Rector, I confess, is very cold. He says that what is needed is more faith, more piety, and anything that I could do to that end would be the best thing of all; but when I ask him how, all he can suggest is a new peal of bells here and a handsome donation to the spire fund of the church at Bournemouth where he was before he came here, which was left unfinished. Nesta says that, according to her recollection, Bournemouth has too many spires as it is. I know you are usually sarcastic about the Church, but do tell me candidly what you think.

In exchange for all yours, I must give you the last verse of a consolatory poem written for me by a young sympathizer aged nine:—

How we watch the feeble flicker,
Watch the face so wan!
Day by day she groweth weaker,
Soon she will be gone.

Apropos of children—Nesta’s Lobbie said a rather nice thing the other day. There was a wonderful sunset and she went out into the garden to see it. Then she said—“Mother, I can’t think how God made the sky. I can understand His making nuts”—here she rubbed her thumb and finger together as though moulding something—“and even flowers. But the sky—no!”—Your grateful

V.

XCII

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR VERENA, you have hurt me this time. I never thought you had it in you to do so, but you have. You tell me to tell you something “candidly.” Now, when have I ever done anything else?

As for the Church, I don’t think this the best time to give it spires. It is not architecturally that it needs help, and I never thought so with more conviction than when, at a State banquet the other night, to which I was bidden, I saw a Bishop in purple evening dress. He looked an astonishingly long way from Bethlehem.

As for the cinema scheme, it is ingenious and might serve; but I think I should wait a little until the present fermentation subsides. You would never get a Picture Palace manager to put it on now, when every one is thoughtless and lavish with money and only excitement is popular. I remember seeing an Italian cinema audience go wild over a film about Mameli, who wrote their national song and joined Garibaldi; but that was just before a war—with Turkey—and not after. Before a war you can do wonders with people; but after—no. It is then that the big men are needed.

I don’t often send you anything really wicked, but the temptation to-day is too great to be resisted. You are fond, I know, of those lines by T. E. Brown called “My Garden.” Well, in the magazine of Dartmouth Royal Naval College some irreverent imp once wrote a parody which I can no longer keep to myself. By what right an embryonic admiral should also be a humorous poet I can’t determine; but there is no logic in life. Here is his mischief:—

A garden is a loathsome thing—eh, what?
Blight, snail,
Pea-weevil,
Green-fly such a lot!
My handiest tool
Is powerless, yet the fool
(Next door) contends that slugs are not.
Not slugs! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have some brine;
’Tis very sure they shall not walk in mine.

—That of course is sacrilege, and I haven’t the heart to add anything serious to it.

Here’s a nice thing said recently by an old French general, retired, in charge of the Invalides Hospital. “Heroes—yes; a hero can be an affair of a quarter of an hour, but it takes a life-time to make an honest man.”

Morpheus calls.

R. H.

XCIII

NICHOLAS DEVOSE TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAREST SERENA,—I rejoiced to have your letter. I was afraid that you might not be well enough to write; I was afraid that you might not wish to write. I am on my way back and you shall know when I reach London. I will do as you say: you would be wiser than I.

N.

XCIV

LOUISA PARRISH TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR VERENA,—It is too long since I wrote to you. The reason is that the trouble about maids has been so constant and distressing. I am sure that there could not be a house where more consideration is shown, but we cannot get any to stay. I don’t understand it in the least. I have even offered to buy a gramophone for the kitchen, but it is useless. I brought myself to this step very reluctantly, because some of the records with what I believe is called “patter” in them are so vulgar, and too many of the songs too. Our last cook stayed only four days and vanished in the night. She seemed such a nice woman, but you never can tell, they are so deceitful. When we came down in the morning there was a note on the kitchen table and no breakfast. She had actually got out of the window after we had gone to bed.

I now have one coming from the North with an excellent character but she wants £45 a year. Isn’t it monstrous? The housemaid has been here for three weeks, but I wake several times every night and fancy I hear her making off. Life would be hardly worth living, under such circumstances, but for our friends.

I hope your news is good. My own constant ailment does not show any improvement and if only I could feel any confidence about the house I should go to Buxton. I heard from a visitor at the Vicarage yesterday of another case of spinal trouble which seems very like your own. That too was the result of a fall. It was many years ago and the poor sufferer is still helpless; but we all hope better things for you.—Your sincerely loving friend,

LOUISA

_P.S._—My brother Claude has had another stroke.

XCV

ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER

DEAREST MUMMIE,—I had a funny dream last night. I dreamt about you and me going to see the Queen and I had a hole in my stocking. The Queen didn’t see the hole but you made me cross by drawing attention to it and apologizing. I said to the Queen, “I suppose you never wear the same stockings again, Queen Mary,” and she said, laughing, “Oh, yes, I do but you mustn’t call me Queen Mary, you must call me Ma’am.” Wasn’t it funny?

When you come home you will find new curtains in the drawing-room which Daddy has had put up for a surprise for you. I oughtn’t to have told you, but you must pretend you didn’t know and be tremendously excited. My cold has gone. I used four handkerchiefs a day.—Your very loving

TONY

x x x x x

XCVI

ROY BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY

_Dear Aunt Verena_,—I am feeling very run down and depressed, because my star has set. What I mean is that Margot has gone. Her people have taken a place in Scotland and of course she had to go too. As I believe I told you, she never intends to marry, but all the same she was a jolly good sort and we had some topping walks together. We used to go to the Zoo too, and as her father is a Fellow all the keepers know her and show her the special things. Being cooped up in London is rotten and I wondered if I might come to you for a few days for some country air and perhaps cheer you up a bit. You must be very dull lying there all the time with nothing but women about you. I should be out most of the day, and I daresay there are some people to play tennis with and a golf course not too far off. Margot has been to Herefordshire and she says it’s ripping, and what she doesn’t know about the country isn’t worth knowing. Of course if all this bores you, you’ll say so, won’t you?—Your affectionate nephew,

ROY

_P.S._—I haven’t seen Stella since that awful Elysian business.

XCVII

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR, I have to confess to a sad failure. You must know that I am always hoping for an adventure that shall be worth narrating in a letter to you, and sometimes I even strive for them. My latest deliberate flirtation with the Goddess of Chance occurred this afternoon; and being deliberate it failed. At least there is nothing in it for the immediate and sacred purpose: but one never knows how long an arm can be.

It happened this way. I had invited Anna—you know, Fred Distyn’s sister—to a matinée; and she was to meet me in the lobby five minutes before the rise of the curtain. I was there even earlier and stood waiting and watching the eager faces of the arriving audience for fully ten minutes after the play had begun. This eagerness to be inside a theatre and witness rubbish is (as you know) a terrible commentary on life and the intellectual resources of civilization; but that is beside the point.

Having waited for a quarter of an hour I then deposited with the commissionaire a minutely-painted word-portrait of Anna, together with her ticket, and took my seat.

When the first Act was over and there was still no Anna, I told the commissionaire to find some one in the street who looked as though a theatre would amuse him—or, if need be, her—and invite him or her to occupy the empty place.

Now could one set a better trap for Fortune than that?

But it was a hopeless fiasco. Instead of playing the Haroun Al Raschid and going out into the highways and byways, the commissionaire gave the ticket to his wife, who happened to be calling on him for some of his Saturday wages. My own fault, of course, for I ought to have gone myself. One should never delegate the privileges of romance.

Here is an old favourite, for a change:—

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me.

I suppose you know that the Jenny of this poem was Jane Welsh Carlyle?—Your devoted

R. H.

XCVIII

NICHOLAS DEVOSE TO VERENA RABY

[_Telegram_]

Am at Garland’s Hotel, tell me what to do.

NICHOLAS

XCIX

NESTA ROSSITER TO ROY BARRANCE

DEAR ROY,—Aunt Verena asks me to say that she will be delighted if you will come for a few days next week, but she warns you that you will find things very slow here. We are a small party, the liveliest of us being my little Lobbie, whom I don’t think you have seen. As she is now six, this shows that you have neglected your kith and kin. If you care for fishing you had better bring your rod, as the Arrow is not far off. And I wish you would go to that shop in the Haymarket just above the Haymarket Theatre and get one of those glass coffee machines—medium size. I should also like a biggish box of Plasticine for Lobbie.—Your affectionate cousin,

NESTA

C

VERENA RABY TO NICHOLAS DEVOSE

DEAR,—I have thought much since your last letter and more still since the telegram came. Please do not come yet. I could not bear it. Old as the rest of me has become, all that appertains to you is preserved, as though in some heart-cell apart, and as fresh as yesterday. I am not equal to the emotion of seeing you just yet, nor am I sure that I want to. The you that I know is no longer the you that others see—he is young and ambitious and often masterful and yet with such strange fits of misgiving. But I should love to have a portfolio of your sketches, if you could trust them to the railway. Choose those that you think the best or that you made under the happiest conditions. No, let there be one or two when you were least happy.

Are you grey? I am.

SERENA

CI

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR, I hope that this heat isn’t too much for you, but perhaps your circumambient heights promote a breeze. London has been stifling. The War has certainly broken down many of our old conventions. Who, even in the hottest summer, ever before saw bathing in the Trafalgar Square fountains? Or stark naked boys careering round Gordon’s statue. But I saw them to-day—a score of them—with a policeman after them; for against bathing there is a law to break, apparently. The constable did not run, he merely advanced; but they scampered before him, all gleaming in the evening sun, dragging their scanty clothes behind them, and those who were leading paused now and then to get a leg into their trousers, hesitated, failed, and were away again. It is astonishing how little space can intervene between what appears to be a sauntering policeman and a naked fleeing boy. This constable was like Fate.

I once read somewhere that clever women always tell men that they look overworked. Yesterday I made the discovery of a form of words even more soothing when proceeding from feminine lips: another weapon in the clever woman’s verbal armoury—should she need any assistance that way. The solicitous phrase “You are looking overworked,” is unction perhaps more for the young than the middle-aged and elderly. No young man, however conscious of his own abysmal laziness, can resist it, or want to resist it. But the maturer man—the man to whom Father Time’s chief gift is an increase of girth—must be differently handled. He may be overworked, but to be told about it, however seducingly, does not much interest him. Besides he knows when it is not true: when what looks like the effect of overwork (supposing the lady to have something to go upon) is really due to late hours or a glass too many. In short, he is a little too old for any flattery but the kind of flattery he is not too old for. Therefore the clever woman, in dealing with him, must do otherwise. Taking him by the hand, she must look at his features with a close and careful scrutiny which, although it is assumed, can be extremely comforting, and then say, in a tone almost of triumph, “You’re getting thinner.”

Isn’t it about time that you sent me another medical report? Here is a passage in Swift’s letters that I hit upon last night:—

“And remember that riches are nine parts in ten of all that is good in life, and health is the tenth; drinking coffee comes long after, and yet it is the eleventh; but without the two former, you cannot drink it right.”

And here is to-day’s poem:—

If on a Spring night I went by
And God were standing there,
What is the prayer that I would cry
To Him? This is the prayer:
O Lord of Courage grave,
O Master of this night of Spring!
Make firm in me a heart too brave
To ask Thee anything!

Who do you think wrote that? It is a very fine specimen of what I call “Novelists’ poetry”—the poetry which men known for their prose and romance now and then produce. Most of them occasionally try their hand, and often very interestingly. One of the best short poems in the language is an epitome of the life of man by Eden Phillpotts. Grant Allen wrote some remarkable lines. The author of _The Children of the Ghetto_ has published a volume of his verses which is full of arresting things. Thomas Hardy, of course, has become poet altogether, and Maurice Hewlett seems to be that way inclined. But still I don’t tell you who wrote the lines just quoted: John Galsworthy.

R. H.

CII

VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN

MY DEAR RICHARD,—I have come to the conclusion that the immediate need is to get my will properly fixed up. If you won’t accept the responsibility of distributing money according to your own judgment I must make some definite bequests. I calculate that after relations and friends and certain dependants are provided for or remembered, there ought to be as much as £50,000 to leave for some specific useful purpose. It might go to build and endow alms-houses, it might form a benevolent fund of some kind. Please concentrate on this question, even though it tends towards that pernicious evil “interference.”

I am in momentary fear of losing Miss Power because her mother has been ill; but hope for the best. I don’t know what we should do without her.

V.

CIII

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

Now, Verena, you’re talking. The interest on £50,000 at five per cent, with income-tax at present rate deducted, would be, say, £1750. Well, you can do lots of things with £1750 a year.

Have you ever heard of the National Art Collections Fund? This is a society of amateurs of art who collect money in order to acquire for the nation pictures and drawings and sculptures which the nation ought not to miss but which it has no official means of purchasing. For although we have a National Gallery of the highest quality, the Treasury grant for buying new masterpieces for it is so small that, unless private enterprise assists, everything goes to America. How would you like your £1750 a year to assist the purchase of pictures for the nation—whether hung in London or elsewhere—for ever?

And then have you ever heard of the National Trust for the Preservation of Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty? This was founded by the late Octavia Hill with the purpose of acquiring for the nation, for ever, beauty spots and open spaces and old comely buildings. Isn’t that a good and humane idea? To preserve a piece of grass land, with all its trees intact, in the midst of a new building estate! All kinds of parks and commons and hill-tops are now inviolate through the activities of this Society. Would you like your money to strengthen their hands? No one with money to spare who followed Octavia Hill could go wrong.

That is enough for the present; but I will supply further hints.

You want stories, you say. Here is one which was told yesterday, at Mrs. Beldham’s, by a very attractive and humorous woman. We had been talking of jewels; apropos, I think, of Lady Crowborough’s pearl necklace which she took off and allowed me to hold. Nothing more exquisite than the temperature and texture of them could I imagine; only about twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth, that’s all. I wonder that the psychic quality of jewels has not appealed more to novelists, for there can be no doubt that they are curiously sympathetic. Pearls in particular, which grow the finer the more constantly and intimately they are worn by congenial wearers, but which languish and decline in lustre as their wearer loses health, and worn on some necks refuse to glow and shine at all. I can see a Hawthorney kind of story in which the living pearls of a dead mistress play a subtle part.

Anyway, we were talking about precious stones, and this Mrs. Dee told us her hard case. For she is the owner of some of the most beautiful emeralds that exist in this country: the owner, but she cannot get at them. They belonged, she said, to her Aunt Emily, and it was always understood that upon the death of that estimable and ageing lady they were to descend to her. It was, indeed, in the will. And so they would have done, had not the too officious layers-out neglected to remove them from the old lady’s neck.

“Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’,” said Mrs. Dee, “is a melancholy poem, but its sadness is as nothing compared with mine, when I sit beside Aunt Emily’s grave in the Finchley Road cemetery and think of all my jewels growing dim only six feet or so below me.”

R. H.

_P.S._—Behold to-day’s poem:—

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows.

CIV

ROY BARRANCE TO HIS SISTER HAZEL

BEST OF BEANS,—I am having quite a good time here, after all. One of the carriage horses isn’t at all a bad hack and there’s some ripping country. At the end of Hargest Ridge there’s an old race-course which hasn’t been used for centuries, where you can gallop for miles. Aunt Verena looks perfectly fit but she has to keep still. She is awfully decent to me and really wants to set me on my feet. Why is it that Aunts and Uncles can be so much jollier and more sympathetic than fond parents? One of Nesta’s kids is here too—Lobbie—and we have a great rag every bed-time. Aunt Verena doesn’t seem to think that I am cut out for the Diplomatic Service. Perhaps not. Personally I should prefer to manage an estate. If it comes to the worst, there’s always the stage, but after the Stella incident the very thought of singing musical-comedy songs makes me shudder. There’s rather a nice Irish girl here, who reads to Aunt Verena, named Clemency Power. She was in a canteen in France during the War. I never met a Clemency before. She’s got a heavenly touch of brogue.

Tell me all about things and how the home-barometer reads. Is it still “Stormy”?—Yours till Hell freezes,

ROY

CV

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR, with a view to getting assistance towards the solution of the great testamentary problem, I went yesterday to see Bemerton the bookseller and inquire about the literature of charity (for, as that witty cleric, the late Dean Beeching, wrote:—

It all comes out of the books I read
And it all goes into the books I write

—or, more accurately, the letters I write, for I have never touched authorship proper) and he produced from those inexhaustible shelves a report on alms-houses and kindred endowments published in 1829 under the title _The Endowed Charities of the City of London_. This exceedingly formidable tome I am going to peruse and send you the results; and really I don’t think I could do a more disinterested thing, for none of your money is coming to me, and it consists of nearly eight-hundred double-column pages of the kind of small type into which the Editor of the _Times_ puts the letters of the most insignificant of his correspondents.

Bemerton, by the way, told me a very nice ghost story which, when I can find an hour or two, I am going to write out for you. It was told him by a distinguished Orientalist, and he believes it and I should like to.

There’s a threat of Prohibition coming to England too, but I hope against it. There is too much of “Thou shalt not” in the world. If people were trusted more, there would probably be less excess and folly. So far as I can gather from those who know America, one effect—and by no means a desirable one—of the dry enactment is to increase trickery and mendacity. The illicit sale of alcoholic beverages still goes on, but as it is illegal it must be done secretly and lies must be told to cover it. Personally I would rather think of a nation too convivially merry than of one systematically deceptive.

Omar should be arrayed against Prohibition at once:

A blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a curse, why then Who set it there?

—that wants some answering. All the same, there are probably more people who would be better for less drink than those who would be improved by more; but the second class exists. I have met several of them.

One of the best commentaries on abstinence by compulsion is that of Walter Raleigh, the Professor of Literature. During the War there was a movement at Oxford to prevent Freshers’ Wines and keep all intoxicants out of the Colleges; and a petition to the Vice-Chancellor to this effect was signed by a large number of persons, chiefly in Holy Orders. Walter Raleigh, however, wouldn’t sign it, and this is part of the letter in which he gave his reasons:—

“I cannot think it wise to ask the resident members of the University to adopt rules drafted for them by a body of petitioners the bulk of whom are neither responsible for the discipline of the Colleges nor well acquainted with the life of the undergraduates.

“A certain amount of freedom to go wrong is essential in a University, where men are learning, not to obey, but to choose.

“Thousands of the men whose habits you censure have already died for their people and country. Virtually all have fought. Why is it, that when the greatest mystery of the Christian religion comes alive again before our eyes, so many of the authorized teachers of Christianity do not see it or understand it, but retire to the timid security of a prohibitive and negative virtue? Your petition is an insult to the men who have saved you and are saving you.”

—That’s pretty good, don’t you think?

R. H.

CVI

ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER

DEAREST MUMMY,—I hope you will come home soon. We are not having much fun, nurse is so stubbern. Topsy brought in a mole yesterday and you never saw such darling little hands as it has. Daddy has promised to have a coat made up for you if we get a thousand of them.

I wish you would write to nurse to say that I needn’t have cod liver oil. A telegram would be better and I will pay you back for it out of my money box.

Uncle Hugh has sent Cyril a toy theatre and we are going to do Midsummer Night’s Dream which Daddy says was by bacon. He won’t tell us what he means.

When you come home you will find a surprise in the garden. I mean you will if it comes up. We have sown Welcome in mignonette in the bed under your sitting-room window but there are such lots of slugs that we can’t count on it.

Daddy says that he is much more important than Aunt Verena.—Your loving

TONY

x x x x x x
x x x x

CVII

NICHOLAS DEVOSE TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAREST SERENA,—I am sending a selection, and an easel with them. I suggest that you adopt the Japanese custom and change them periodically. The Japanese make each picture the King of the Wall for a week or so in turn, but I should like you to have a fresh one of my drawings on the easel every day—for the whole day. That is, of course, if you like them. I cannot tell you how happy I am to be allowed to do this. I feel that I am again in your life, but with perfect safety: vicariously, so to speak, but with the fullest fidelity too. Let some one advise me of safe arrival. I am sending you sixty picked things—so you must be well again in sixty days! But I daresay that if you did the picking you would make a totally different choice. One of the tragic things in an artist’s life—and I don’t mean by artist only a painter—is the tendency of people to admire what he thinks his least worthy efforts.

N. D.

CVIII

CLEMENCY POWER TO PATRICIA POWER

ANGEL PAT,—I am so sorry about Herself. Of course I’ll come directly, if it’s necessary. I have told Miss Raby and she agrees. Let me have a telegram anyhow directly you get this. I’ll tell you a secret, Pat. I have an admirer, and at any moment he may sue for my hand! Or such is my unmaidenly guess. It’s this plaguey Kerry voice of mine. Every one says sweet things about it, but for this boy—Miss Raby’s nephew who has been staying here—it’s been too much entirely. That he will propose I feel certain and I wish he wouldn’t. I was bothered enough in France, but one doesn’t take War proposals seriously, especially when the men are away from their own country. But this boy is as eager as a trout stream.—Yours,

CLEM.

CIX

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR VERENA, I now send you some notes collected from the perusal of the gigantic volume on the Endowed Charities of London as they were examined by a commission early in the last century. It is a monument to the public-spirited dead. In London the benefactions run chiefly to free schools, alms-houses, subsidized sermons and doles of bread and coal—“sea coal,” as it is usually called. Now and then there is an original touch, as when one Gilbert Keate gave to the parish of St. Dunstan’s in the East—you know, the church with the lovely spire built on flying buttresses—“£60, to be lent gratis, yearly, during the space of four years, to three young men inhabitants of this parish (one of them to be of the Dolphin precinct), by the vestry, to each £20 on good security, by bond for repayment at four years’ end, as the inhabitants in vestry should think fit.”

Samuel Wilson did even better, his will, dated October 27th, 1766, containing this clause: “And my mind and will further is, that the said sum of twenty thousand pounds, or whatever sum be so paid by my said executors to the said chamberlain, shall be and remain as a perpetual fund, to be lent to young men who have been set up one year, or not more than two years, in some trade or manufacture, in the city of London, or within three miles thereof, and can give satisfactory security for the repayment of the money so lent to them; ... and further my mind and will is, that no part of this money shall be lent to an alehouse keeper, a distiller or vendor of distilled liquors.”

That seems to me to be a very excellent disposition of money; but probably it is not in your line. The Corporation of London was appointed to manage the charity, but as a rule these rich City men left their money to their Chartered Companies for distribution. Where alms-houses, for example, are built and endowed there must obviously be some organization to carry them on; and the City Companies, who are commonly supposed to devote their time to eating and drinking, really exist largely for this admirable purpose. So do churchwardens; carrying round the plate is but a small part of their duties.

Here is a pretty compliment, to take the taste of all that away:—

If I were a rose at your window,
Happiest rose of its crew,
Every blossom I bore would bend inward:
They’d know where the sunshine grew.

A letter from an old friend making his first long voyage reaches me to-day from Aden. He says, “Why don’t artists oftener paint circular pictures? Nothing could be more beautiful than the views of water and sky, and now and then of scenery or buildings, that I have been getting through my porthole. I would almost go so far as to say that round pictures are the only ones—at any rate of the open air. You should get one of the Galleries to arrange a Porthole Exhibition and start the fashion.”—Good night,

R. H.

_P.S._—Here is the latest definition of appendicitis. “The thing you have the day before your doctor buys a Rolls-Royce.”

CX

HAZEL BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY

DEAR AUNT VERENA,—Since Roy has come back from his visit, I seem to know so much more about you. I don’t mean that he tells us anything, but he answers questions. I want to thank you for your kindness to him, which was just what he was needing to pull him together, because father never has time to take any real interest in him and is impatient too. Fathers and sons so often, it seems to me, are the last people who ought to meet. Mothers and daughters can hit it off badly enough and misunderstand each other thoroughly, but I don’t think there is so much real hostility between them as between those others. I don’t think hostility is the word; it is a kind of rivalry, particularly as the mother usually takes the boy’s side. Anyway, if you are going to be as much interested in poor old Roy as he says, I am sure he will buck up and do something worth while, because he has lots of ability and makes friends too. In fact, when it comes to the other sex he makes them too easily. His chief trouble is that he had just enough Army life to unsettle him and not enough to give him discipline. The War came for him at the wrong time: he ought to have been younger and escaped it or older and have gone properly into it.

I was much more lucky, for I shall never regret a moment of my V.A.D. work. But I wish I could be busy again. So does nearly every girl I know. We all miss the War horribly; which sounds a callous and selfish thing to say, but isn’t really. It shows, however, that there must be something very wrong with our civilization if it needs a ghastly thing like that to give thousands and thousands of girls their only chance to be useful!—Your loving

HAZEL

_P.S._—A hospital nurse I know said a funny thing yesterday. She said that one of the tragedies of nursing is that the officer you restore to life is so seldom the officer you want to dine out with; and another tragedy is that that is what he can’t understand.

CXI

PATRICIA POWER TO CLEMENCY POWER

DEAREST CLEM,—Herself is herself again.

Your news is very exciting. Of course you were bound to have a proposal at Kington, because you have them everywhere. I rather like the sound of the boy. Do tell me some more about him and how you yourself feel. There seem to be no boys here, except the Luttrells and the Hills, and they are not very luscious; but there’s to be a dance at Kenmare and perhaps we shall see a new face or two then. O Lord for some new faces! (The maiden’s prayer.)

What about that Doctor out in France? Where does he come in? You mustn’t be a heart-breaker, you know, darling.

Dilly and Dally grow in beauty day by day and go on giving amazing supplies of milk. Old Biddy Sullivan has been drinking again. Mrs. O’Connor’s little girl the other day was overheard laying it down as a maxim, to her brother, that one should always tell the truth, not because it is right, but because “you can be sure your friends will find you out.” They do, don’t they?—Your loving and jealous

PAT

CXII

RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY

DEAR VERENA, I return to the Charity Book. Behold the case of Peter Symonds, which may, or may not, offer suggestions. “Peter Symonds, by will, dated 4th April, 1586, gave to the parson and churchwardens of All Saints, Lombard Street, yearly, for ever, £3, 2s. 8d., to be received of the churchwardens and socialty of the Company of Mercers, to be employed by the said parson and churchwardens in manner following, viz. to pay 30s. thereof yearly, on Good Friday, to the children of Christ’s Hospital, in London, on condition that the same children, or threescore of them at least, should, on the same Good Friday, in the morning, yearly, for ever, come into the said church of All Saints ... and he directed that the said parson and churchwardens should bestow 3s. 4d. in the purchase of good raisins, which should be divided in threescore parts, in paper, and one part given to each child; and he gave 16d. of the said £3, 2s. 8d. to the beadles of the hospital, who should come with the children.”

Peter Symonds was a man, and perhaps you would rather be guided by a woman. If so, observe the example of Margaret Sharles:—

“By will, dated 2nd September, 1600, Margaret Sharles bequeathed £20 unto such a learned man as her overseers should think good, to preach every week in the year, in the parish of Christ Church ... she also bequeathed to the vicar and churchwardens, £5 a year, to be employed for ever, towards the relief of the vicar, curate, clerk, and sexton by the discretion of the churchwardens there; she also gave unto and amongst her poor tenants within the said parish, £6 yearly, for ever, to be bestowed in manner following: £1, 6s. 8d. for a load of great coals; 16s. for a thousand billets, to be distributed amongst her said tenants, three days before Christmas, and the residue thereof to be spent upon a dinner for her said poor tenants on Christmas Day, at the sign of the Bell, in Newgate-market.”

Even better, for your purpose, is the example of Jane Shank:—

“By will, dated 7th July, 1795, Mrs. Jane Shank directed that the Painter-stainers’ Company should divide the interest on her fortune into twelve equal parts, and shall apply eleven-twelfth parts thereof in payment of pensions of £10 a year, to indigent blind women, and retain the remaining twelfth part as a compensation for their trouble and expenses. Jane Shank requested that the Company would advertise for proper objects of the charity in two morning and two evening papers, three times each, as often as any vacancies should happen; and she directed that the persons to be elected should be of the age of 61 years at the least, should have been blind three years, should be widows or unmarried, and unable to maintain themselves by any employment, should be in distressed circumstances, born in England, not in Wales or Ireland, have lived three years in their present parish, have no income for life above £10 a year, never having received alms of any parish or place, never having been a common beggar, and being of sober life and conversation.”

Jane, you see, was a forerunner of Sir Arthur Pearson of St. Dunstan’s, who would, I am sure, have no difficulty in recommending a suitable destination for any spare funds of your own.

But I must not weary you (or myself) with these testaments.

Here is a story that was told by my friend, Mrs. Torwood Leigh. Towards the end of the War she gave a party to an Officers’ mess stationed in the neighbourhood, and almost every guest exceeded. The next day, when they called to return thanks, each one in turn took her aside to apologize—for another!

And here is the poem: something lighter for a change:—

I recollect a nurse called Ann
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fair young man
Came up and kissed the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection,
Thinks I “Ha ha!
When I’m grown up I’ll tell mamma.”
And that’s my earliest recollection.

That is a poem by a man pretending to infancy. Here is a genuine child-product, one of the lyrics of a little American girl named Hilda Conklin. Don’t you think it rather beautiful?

WATER

The world turns softly
Not to spill its lakes and rivers,
The water is held in its arms
And the sky is held in the water.
What is water,
That pours silver,
And can hold the sky?

Good night,

R. H.

CXIII

VERENA RABY TO NICHOLAS DEVOSE

DEAR,—They are beautiful, and so like you. I shall set them up daily, one by one, as you wish—and it is a charming idea and will make the nights so exciting, for some one else will choose them for me and it will be all a surprise! But I had to go through the whole sixty first. How could I wait? Why, I might die!

How wonderful a world it is, and how fortunate are those who can travel about and feast their eyes on it—and yet how sad you rovers must be! Especially at sunset! Some of your painted sunsets are almost more than I can bear, but what they must have been to you I can only guess. And how more than fortunate are those, like you, who can capture so much of all this beauty and preserve it for others!

None the less I don’t envy the traveller. “East, west, home’s best”; and yet perhaps home should rightly be where oneself is; perhaps we are too prone to surround ourselves with comforts in one spot and disregard the big world. But after lying here so long it seems as if there would be no joy in any travel to equal one brief walk round the garden.—Thank you again.

SERENA.

CXIV

HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY

MY DEAR AUNT,—You will begin to think of me as a business man and nothing else, even although so many of my schemes have come to nothing. But I assure you I am quite human too and often think of your illness with sincere regret. If I have had bad luck with my schemes, it is due to the fact, which is no disgrace, that they are before their time. I have been, in a way, too far-sighted. I have seen the public needs too soon, before even the public is conscious of them; which commercially is a mistake. One cannot, however, change one’s nature. My great distress is that I have as yet failed to convince you of my general acuteness, at any rate to the point of support. Without a little capital a young experimentalist can do nothing, and I have only my brains.

The project which I am now about to lay before you is, however, so different from the others, and so romantic and picturesque, that I feel sure you will be interested. It also offers chances of rich returns.

There is somewhere in Mexico a lake with which is associated a very remarkable religious ceremony. On a certain day in the year the priest of the community, accompanied by thousands of worshippers, proceeds to the shore of this lake, where, after some impressive rites, he enters the water. The others remain outside. The priest wades steadily out into the lake, the bottom of which slopes very gradually, until his head alone is visible.

(All this may sound very odd to you, but you must remember, dear Aunt, that the Mexicans are a strange race and that foreign religions can often appear grotesque to us. My informant, a very cultivated man, assures me that, in this lake business, the comic element is lacking, such is the fervour of the multitude.)

Very well then, the priest, having reached the farthest point, remains standing there while the people set to work to tear off their jewels and ornaments, which were brought for the purpose, and to fling them at him. The idea is that if the article thrown reaches him or goes beyond him, the thrower’s sins are forgiven. _But the point for you and me is that whether you throw far or throw short, the jewels and ornaments fall into the water and sink._

Now this has been going on for ages, and since it would be impious for the Mexican believers to attempt to recover any of the treasure it follows that it is there still. My plan is very simple—merely to form a small company and to drain the lake. I can give you no particulars at the moment—I have not even ascertained how big the lake is—but I am being very active about it and am already on the track of a first-class engineer. As he, however, requires a financial guarantee, I am hoping that you will see your way to invest, say, £1000 at once and perhaps more later.—I am, your affectionate nephew,

HORACE MUN-BROWN

_P.S._—How interesting it would be if I could spend my honeymoon visiting the place with Hazel and making inquiries! But alas! that is probably too rosy a dream.

CXV

ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER

DARLINGEST MUMMY,—Thank you for being such an angel about the cod liver oil. I like Ovaltine much better but Daddy says it is to make you lay eggs.

Sarah was so funny yesterday. Daddy told her to bring him last week’s _Punch_ from the library and she brought a much older one. When he was cross with her she said “O I never look at dates.” You should have seen Daddy’s face. And to-day when she was telling us about the butcher being rude to her she said “But I don’t mind, I always treat him with ignorance.”

Nurse’s young man, Bert Urible, has been here. He has come back from Messupotamia. Cyril saw him kiss her in the kitchen. He bought us some pear drops and nurse took some of his War relics upstairs to show Daddy and Daddy sent for him and gave him a whisky and soda. When I asked him if he had killed many Turks he said “Not half.”—Your loving

TONY

x x x x
x x x x

CXVI

ROY BARRANCE TO CLEMENCY POWER

DEAR MISS POWER,—I hope you won’t think it awful cheek of me to write to you but you were saying the other day that you wondered if it was necessary to get a passport to go to Ireland now. I thought you would like to know that it isn’t. I inquired about it at Cook’s. But I hope you are not going home just yet, for I am sure my aunt can’t spare you. I wish all the same that when you do go I could be there, for Ireland is one of the places I have always wanted to see, and I have always felt that the only decent thing to do is to give them Home Rule and have done with it. A fellow I know in the Air Force who came from Kerry says it is ripping.—I am, yours sincerely,

ROY BARRANCE

_P.S._—If you are going to Ireland and would send me a wire I would meet you and help you through London.

_P.S. 2._—The evening papers are full of more Irish outrages. I don’t think you ought to travel alone.

CXVII

CLEMENCY POWER TO ROY BARRANCE

DEAR MR. BARRANCE,—It was very kind of you to trouble about the passport. I hope not to be leaving Miss Raby until she has really done with me, but my Mother, who lives near Kenmare, is sometimes not very well and I might be sent for and should not like to have to be delayed by red tape. Yes, Kerry is very lovely and I find myself longing for it most of the time. But I doubt if you would care for a country that is so wet. English people are so often disappointed to find only grey mists and rain. For fine weather June is the best month in our parts, but I like it all—grey mists and rain hardly less than the sunshine. Lobbie has been very naughty since you left and goes to bed in the dumps instead of in the highest spirits. I am reading Miss Raby the loveliest Irish book—indade and it’s more than that, it’s a Kerry book—just now, called _Mary of the Winds_, and sometimes I am so homesick I can’t go on at all at all. It’s destroyed I am with the truth of it!—I am, yours sincerely,

CLEMENCY POWER

CXVIII

ROY BARRANCE TO CLEMENCY POWER