The Days Before Yesterday Part 8

and c.i.f. ceased to have any mysteries for me. Let the inexperienced beware of "Swedish Punch," a sickly, highly-scented preparation of arrack. I do not speak from personal experience, for I detest the sweet, cloying stuff; but it occasionally fell to my lot to guide down-stairs the uncertain footsteps of some ventripotent Kommerzien-Rath, or even of Mr. Over-Inspector of Railways himself, both temporarily incapacitated by injudicious indulgence in Swedish Punch. "So, Herr Ober-Inspector, endlich sind wir glucklich herunter gekommen. Jetz konnen Sie nach Hause immer aug gleichem Fusse gehen.

Naturlich! Jedermann weisst wie abscheulich kraftig Schwedischer Punsch ist. Die Stra.s.se ist ganz leer. Gluckliche Heimkehr, Herr Ober-Inspector!"

It was difficult to attend the Club without becoming a connoisseur in various kinds of German beer. Brunswick boasts a special local sweet black beer, brewed from malted wheat instead of barley, known as "Mumme"--heavy, unpalatable stuff. If any one will take the trouble to consult Whitaker's Almanac, and turn to "Customs Tariff of the United Kingdom," they will find the very first article on the list is "Mum."

"Berlin white beer" follows this. One of the few occasions when I have ever known Mr. Gladstone nonplussed for an answer, was in a debate on the Budget (I think in 1886) on a proposed increase of excise duties.

Mr. Gladstone was asked what "Mum" was, and confessed that he had not the smallest idea. The opportunity for instructing the omniscient Mr.

Gladstone seemed such a unique one, that I nearly jumped up in my place to tell him that it was a sweet black beer brewed from wheat, and peculiar to Brunswick; but being a very young Member of the House then, I refrained, as it looked too much like self-advertis.e.m.e.nt; besides, "Mum" was so obviously the word. "White beer" is only made in Berlin; it is not unlike our ginger-beer, and is pleasant enough. The orthodox way of ordering it in Berlin is to ask the waiter for "eine kuhle Blonde." I do not suppose that one drop of either of these beverages has been imported into the United Kingdom for a hundred years; equally I imagine that the first two Georges loved them as recalling their beloved Hanover, and indulged freely in them; whence their place in our Customs tariff.

One of the members of the English and French Club was a Mr. Vieweg, at that time, I believe, the largest manufacturer of sulphate of quinine in Europe. Mr. Vieweg was that rara avis amongst middle-cla.s.s German business-men, a born sportsman. He had already made two sporting trips to Central Africa after big game, and rented a large shooting estate near Brunswick. In common with the other members of the Club, he treated me very kindly and hospitably, and I often had quaint repasts at his house, beginning with sweet chocolate soup, and continuing with eels stewed in beer, carp with horseradish, "sour-goose," and other Teutonic delicacies. Mr. Vieweg's son was one of Hentze's pupils, and was the thin, silent boy I have already noticed. I remember well how young Vieweg introduced himself to me in laboured English, "Are you a friend to fis.h.i.+ng with the fly?" he asked. "I also fish most gladly, and if you wish, we will together to the Harz Mountains go, and there many trout catch." As the Harz Mountains are within an hour of Brunswick by train, off we went, and young Vieweg was certainly a most expert fisherman. My respect for him was increased enormously when I found that he did not mind in the least how wet he got whilst fis.h.i.+ng.

Most German boys of his age would have thought standing in cold water up to their knees a certain forerunner of immediate death.

Vieweg told me, with perfect justice, that he knew every path and every track in the Northern Harz, and that he had climbed every single hill.

He complained that none of his German friends cared for climbing or walking, and asked whether I would accompany him on one of his expeditions. So a week later we went again to the Harz, and Vieweg led me an interminable and very rough walk up-hill and down-dale. He afterwards confessed that he was trying to tire me out, in which he failed signally, for I have always been, and am still, able to walk very long distances without fatigue. He had taken four of his fellow-pupils from Hentze's over the same road, and they had all collapsed, and had to be driven back to the railway in a hay-cart, in the last stages of exhaustion. Finding that he could not walk me down, Vieweg developed an odd sort of liking for me, just as I had admired him for standing up to his knees in very cold water for a couple of hours on end whilst fis.h.i.+ng. So a queer sort of friends.h.i.+p sprang up between me and this taciturn youth. The only subject which moved Vieweg to eloquence was quinine, out of which his father had made his fortune.

I confess that at that time I knew no more about that admirable prophylactic than the Queen of Sheba knew about dry-fly fis.h.i.+ng, and had not the faintest idea of how quinine was made. Vieweg, warming to his subject, explained to me that the cinchona bark was treated with lime and alcohol, and informed me that his father now obtained the bark from Java instead of from South America as formerly. He did his utmost to endeavour to kindle a little enthusiasm in me on the subject of this valuable febrifuge. When not talking of quinine, he kept silence. This singular youth was obsessed with a pa.s.sionate devotion to the lucrative drug.

The Harz Mountains are pretty without being grand. The far-famed Brocken is not 4000 ft. high, but rising as these hills do out of the dead-flat North German plain, the Harz have been glorified and magnified by a people accustomed to monotonous levels, and are the setting for innumerable German legends. The Brocken is, of course, the traditional scene of the "Witches Sabbath" on Walpurgis-Nacht, and many of the rock-strewn valleys seem to have pleasant traditions of bloodthirsty ogres and gnomes a.s.sociated with them. There is no real climbing in the Harz, easy tracks lead to all the local lions. As is customary in methodical Germany, signposts direct the pedestrian to every view and every waterfall, and I need hardly add that if one post indicates the Aussichts.p.u.n.kt, a corresponding one will show the way to the restaurant without which no view in Germany would be complete.

Through rocky defiles and pine-woods, over swelling hills and past waterfalls, Vieweg and I trudged once a week in sociable silence, broken only by a few sc.r.a.ps of information from my companion as to the prospects of that year's crop of cinchona bark, and the varying wholesale price of that interesting commodity. At times, before a fine view, Vieweg would make quite a long speech for him: "Du Fritz! Schon was?" using, of course, the German diminutive to my Christian name, after which he would gaze on the prospect and relapse into silence, and dreamy meditations on sulphate of quinine and its possibilities.

I think Vieweg enjoyed these excursions, for on returning to Brunswick after about four hours' un-broken silence, he would always say on parting, "Du Fritz! War nicht so ubel;" or, "Fritz, it wasn't so bad,"

very high praise from so sparing a talker.

Mr. Vieweg senior invited me to shoot with him on several occasions during the winter months. The "Kettle-drive" (Kessel-Treib) is the local manner of shooting hares. Guns and beaters form themselves into an immense circle, a mile in diameter, over the treeless, hedgeless flats, and all advance slowly towards the centre of the circle. At first, it is perfectly safe to fire into the circle, but as it diminishes in size, a horn is sounded, the guns face round, back to back, and as the beaters advance alone, hares are only killed as they run out of the ring. Hares are very plentiful in North Germany, and "Kettle-drives" usually resulted in a bag of from thirty to forty of them. To my surprise, in the patches of oak-scrub on the moor-lands, there were usually some woodc.o.c.k, a bird which I had hitherto a.s.sociated only with Ireland. Young Vieweg was an excellent shot; in common with all his father's other guests, he was arrayed in high boots, and in one of those grey-green suits faced with dark green, dear to the heart of the German sportsman. The guns all looked like the chorus in the Freischutz, and I expected them to break at any moment into the "Huntsmen's Chorus." Young Vieweg was greatly pained at my unorthodox costume, for I wore ordinary homespun knickerbockers, and sported neither a green Tyrolese hat with a blackc.o.c.k's tail in it, nor high boots; my gun had no green sling attached to it, nor did I carry a game-bag covered with green ta.s.sels, all of which, it appeared, were absolutely essential concomitants to a Jagd-Partie.

In these country districts round Brunswick nothing but Low German ("Platt-Deutsch") was talked. Low German is curiously like English at times. The sentence, "the water is deep," is identical in both tongues.

"Mudder," "brudder," and "sister" have all a familiar ring about them, too. The word "watershed," as applied to the ridge separating two river systems, had always puzzled me. In High German it is "Wa.s.ser-scheide,"

i.e. water-parting; in Low German it is "Water-shed," with the same meaning, thus making our own term perfectly clear. "Low" German, of course, only means the dialect spoken in the low-lying North German plains: "High" German, the language spoken in the hilly country south of the Harz Mountains. High German only became the literary language of the country owing to Luther having deliberately chosen that dialect for the translation of the Bible. The Nibelungen-Lied and the poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were all in Middle-High German (Mittel-Hoch Deutsch).

I remember being told as a boy, when standing on the terrace of Windsor Castle, that in a straight line due east of us there was no such corresponding an elevation until the Ural Mountains were reached, on the boundary between Europe and Asia. This will give some idea of the extreme flatness of Northern Europe, for the terrace at Windsor can hardly be called a commanding eminence.

I am sorry to say that for over forty years I have quite lost sight of Vieweg. My connection with quinine, too, has been usually quite involuntary. I have had two very serious bouts of malarial fever, one in South America, the other in the West Indies, and on both occasions I owed my life to quinine. Whilst taking this bitter, if beneficent drug, I sometimes wondered whether it had been prepared under the auspices of the friend of my youth. So ignorant am I of the quinine world, that I do not know whether the firm of Buchler & Vieweg still exists. One thing I do know: Vieweg must be now sixty-three years old, should he be still alive, and I am convinced that he remains an upright and honourable gentleman. I would also venture a surmise that business compet.i.tors find it very hard to overreach him, and that he has escaped the garrulous tendencies of old age.

One of the curses of German towns is the prevalence of malicious and venomous gossip. This is almost entirely due to that pestilent inst.i.tution the "Coffee Circle," or Kaffee Klatsch, that standing feature of German provincial life. Amongst the bourgeoisie, the ladies form a.s.sociations, and meet once a week in turn at each others' houses.

They bring their work with them, and sit for two hours, eating sweet cakes, drinking coffee, and tearing every reputation in the towns to tatters. All males are jealously excluded from these gatherings. Mrs.

Spiegelberg was a pretty, fluffy little English woman, without one ounce of malice in her composition. She had lived long enough in Germany, though, to know that she would not be welcomed at her "Coffee Circle" unless she brought her budget of pungent gossip with her, so she collected it in the usual way. The instant the cook returned from market, Mrs. Spiegelberg would rush into the kitchen with a breathless, "Na, Minna, was gibt's neues?" or "Now, Minna, what is the news?"

Minna, the cook, knowing what was expected of her, proceeded to unfold her items of carefully gathered gossip: Lieutenant von Trinksekt had lost three hundred marks at cards, and had been unable to pay; it was rumored that Fraulein Unsittlich's six weeks' retirement from the world was not due to an attack of scarlet fever, as was alleged, but to a more interesting cause, and so on, and so on. The same thing was happening, simultaneously, in every kitchen in Brunswick, and at the next "Coffee Circle" all these rumours would be put into circulation and magnified, and the worst possible interpretation would be given them. All German women love spying, as is testified by those little external mirrors fixed outside almost every German window, by which the mistress of the house can herself remain unseen, whilst noting every one who pa.s.ses down the street, or goes into the houses on either side.

I speak with some bitterness of the poisonous tongues of these women, for I cannot forget how a harmless episode, when I happened to meet a charming friend of mine, and volunteered to carry her parcels home, was distorted and perverted.

One of Hentze's pupils, a heavy, bovine youth, invited me to Hamburg to his parents' silver wedding festivities. I was anxious to see Hamburg, so I accepted. Moser's parents inhabited an opulent and unimaginably hideous villa on the outskirts of Hamburg. They treated me most hospitably and kindly, but never had I pictured such vast eatings and drinkings as took place in their house. Moser's other relations were equally hospitable, until I became stupid and comatose from excessive nourishment. I could not discover the faintest trace of hostility to England amongst these wealthy Hamburg merchants. They had nearly all traditional business connections with England, and most of them had commenced their commercial careers in London. They resented, on the other hand, the manner in which they were looked down on by the Prussian Junkers, who, on the ground of their having no "von" before their names, tried to exclude them from every branch of the public service. The whole of Germany had not yet become Prussianised.

These Hamburg men were intensely proud of their city. They boasted, and I believe with perfect reason, that the dock and harbour facilities of Hamburg far exceeded anything to be found in the United Kingdom. I was taken all over the docks, and treated indeed with such lavish hospitality that every seam of my garments strained under the unwonted pressure of these enormous repasts. Hamburg being a Free Port, travellers leaving for any other part of Germany had to undergo a regular Customs examination at the railway station, as though it were a frontier post. Hamburg impressed me as a vastly prosperous, handsome, well-kept town. The attractive feature of the place is the "Alster Ba.s.sin," the clear, fresh-water lake running into the very heart of the town. All the best houses and hotels were built on the stone quays of the Alster facing the lake. Geneva, Stockholm, and Copenhagen are the only other European towns I know of with clear lakes running into the middle of the city. The Moser family's silver wedding festivities did not err on the side of n.i.g.g.ardliness. The guests all a.s.sembled in full evening dress at three in the afternoon, when there was a conjuring and magic-lantern performance for the children. This was followed by an excellent concert, which in its turn was succeeded by a vast and Gargantuan dinner. Then came an elaborate display of fireworks, after which dancing continued till 4 a.m., only interrupted by a second colossal meal, thus affording, as young Moser proudly pointed out, thirteen hours' uninterrupted amus.e.m.e.nt.

As I felt certain that I should promptly succ.u.mb to apoplexy, had I to devour any more food, I left next day for Heligoland, then, of course, still a British Colony, an island I had always had the greatest curiosity to see. A longer stay in Hamburg might have broadened my mind, but it would also unquestionably have broadened my waist-belt as well.

The steamer accomplished the journey from Hamburg in seven hours, the last three over the angry waters of the open North Sea. To my surprise the steamer, though island-owned, did not fly the British red ensign, but the Heligoland flag of horizontal bars of white, green, and red.

There is a local quatrain explaining these colours, which may be roughly Englished as--

"White is the strand, But green the land, Red the rocks stand Round Heligoland."

Heligoland is the quaintest little spot imaginable, shaped like an isosceles triangle with the apex pointing northwards. The area of the whole island is only three-fourths of a square mile; it is barely a mile long, and at its widest only 500 yards broad. It is divided into Underland and Overland; the former a patch of sh.o.r.e on the sheltered side of the island, covered with the neatest little toy streets and houses. In its neatness and smallness it is rather like a j.a.panese town, and has its little theatre and its little Kurhaus complete. There are actually a few trees in the Underland. Above it, the red ramparts of rock rise like a wall to the Overland, only to be reached by an endless flight of steps. On the green tableland of the Overland, the houses nestle and huddle together for shelter on the leeward side of the island, the prevailing winds being westerly. The whole population let lodgings, simply appointed, but beautifully neat and clean, as one would expect amongst a seafaring population. There are a few patches of cabbages and potatoes trying to grow in spite of the gales, and all the rest is green turf. There is not one tree on the wind-swept Overland. I heard nothing but German and Frisian talked around me, and the only signs of British occupation were the Union Jack flying in front of Government House (surely the most modest edifice ever dignified with that t.i.tle), and a notice-board in front of the powder-magazine on the northern point of the island. This notice-board was inscribed, "V.R.

Trespa.s.sers will be prosecuted," which at once gave a homelike feeling, and made one realise that it was British soil on which one was standing.

The island had only been ceded to us in 1814, and we handed it over to Germany in 1890, so our tenure was too brief for us to have struck root deeply into the soil. Heligoland was a splendid recruiting ground for the Royal Navy, for the islanders were a hardy race of seafarers, and made ideal material for bluejackets. There was not a horse or cow on the island, ewes supplying all the milk. As sheep's milk has an unappetising green tinge about it, it took a day or two to get used to this unfamiliar-looking fluid. There being no fresh water on Heligoland, the rain water from the roofs was all caught and stored in tanks. On that rainswept rock I cannot conceive it likely that the water supply would ever fail. Some-how the idea was prevalent in England that Heligoland was undermined by rabbits. There was not one single rabbit on the island, for even rabbits find it hard to burrow into solid rock.

Professor Gatke's books on the migrations of birds are well known.

Heligoland lies in the track of migrating birds, and Dr. Gatke had established himself there for some years to observe them, and there was a really wonderful ornithological museum close to the lighthouse. The Heligoland lighthouse is a very powerful one, and every single one of these stuffed birds had committed suicide against the thick gla.s.s of the lantern. The lighthouse keepers told me that during the migratory periods, they sometimes found as many as a hundred dead birds on the external gallery of the light in the morning, all of whom had killed themselves against the light.

From 1830 to 1871 there were public gaming-tables in Heligoland, and the Concessionaire paid such a high price for his permit that the colonial finances were in the most flouris.h.i.+ng condition. In 1871, Downing Street stopped this, with disastrous effect on the island budget. Fortunately, Germans took to coming over in vast numbers for the excellent sea-bathing, and so money began to flow in again. The place attracted them with its glorious sea air; it had all the advantages of a s.h.i.+p, without the s.h.i.+p's motion.

I paid a second visit to Heligoland three years later, when I was Attache at our Berlin Emba.s.sy. Sir Fitzhardinge Maxse, the uncle of Mr.

Leo Maxse of the National Review, was Governor then. Sir Fitzhardinge had done his utmost to anglicise the island, and the "Konigstra.s.se" and "Oststra.s.se" had now become "King Street" and "East Street." He had induced, too, some of the shop-keepers to write the signs over their shops in English, at times with somewhat eccentric spelling; for one individual proclaimed himself a "Familie Grozer." How astonished the Governor and I would have been to know that in twenty years' time his much-loved island would be transformed into one solid concreted German fortress! Sir Fitzhardinge had a great love for the theatre. He was, I believe, the only person who had ever tried to write plays in two languages. His German plays had been very successful, and two one-act plays he wrote in English had been produced on the London stage. He always managed to engage a good German company to play in the little Heligoland theatre during the summer months, and having married the leading tragic actress of the Austrian stage, both he and Lady Maxse occasionally appeared on the boards themselves, playing, of course, in German. It looked curious seeing a bill of the "Theatre Royal on Heligoland," announcing Shakespeare's tragedy of Macbeth, with "His Excellency the Governor as Macbeth, and Lady Maxse as Lady Macbeth."

There is a fine old Lutheran Church on Heligoland. It is the only Protestant church in which I have ever seen ex votos. When the island fishermen had weathered an unusually severe gale, it was their custom to make a model of their craft, and to present it as a thank-offering to the church. There were dozens of these models, all beautifully finished, suspended from the roof of the church by wires, and the fronts of the galleries were all hung with fis.h.i.+ng nets. The singing in that church was remarkably good.

It was a pleasant, unsophisticated little island; a place of fresh breezes, and red cliffs with great sweeping surges breaking against them; a place of suns.h.i.+ne, and huge expanses of pale dappled sky.

Lady Maxse told me that it was impossible for any one to picture the unutterable dreariness of Heligoland in winter; when little Government House rocked ceaselessly under the fierce gales, and the whole island was drenched in clouds of spindrift; the rain pounding on the window-panes like small-shot, and the howling of the wind drowning all other sounds. She said that they were frequently cut off from the mainland for three weeks on end, without either letters, newspapers, or fresh meat, as the steamers were unable to make the pa.s.sage. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to speak to. It must have been a considerable change for any one accustomed to the life of careless, easy-going, glittering Vienna in the old days. Even Sir Fitzhardinge confessed that during the winter gales he had frequently to make his way on all fours from the stairs from the Underland to Government House, to avoid being blown over the cliffs. Lady Maxse hung an extra pair of pink muslin curtains over every window in Government House, to shut out the sight of the wintry sea, but the angry, grey and white rollers of the restless North Sea a.s.serted themselves even through the pink muslin.

I am glad that I saw this wind-swept little rock whilst it was still a sc.r.a.p of British territory. When my time came for leaving Brunswick, I was genuinely sorry to go. I confess that I liked Germany and the Germans; I had been extremely well treated, and had got used to German ways.

The teaching profession were only then sowing broadcast the seed which was to come to maturity thirty years later. They were moulding the minds of the rising generation to the ideals which find their most candid exponent in Nietzsche. The seed was sown, but had not yet germinated; the greater portion of Germany in 1875 was still un-Prussianised, but effect followed cause, and we all know the rest.

CHAPTER VII

Some London beauties of the "seventies"--Great ladies--The Victorian girl--Votaries of the Gaiety Theatre--Two witty ladies--Two clever girls and mock-Shakespeare--The family who talked Johnsonian English--Old-fas.h.i.+oned tricks of p.r.o.nunciation--Practical jokes--Lord Charles Beresford and the old Club-member--The shoe-less legislator--Travellers' palms--The tree that spouted wine--Celyon's spicy breezes--Some reflections--Decline of public interest in Parliament--Parliamentary giants--Gladstone, John Bright, and Chamberlain--Gladstone's last speech--His resignation--W.H. Smith--The a.s.sistant Whips--Sir William Hart-d.y.k.e--Weary hours at Westminster--A Pseudo-Ingoldsbean Lay.

The London of 1876 boasted an extraordinary constellation of lovely women. First and foremost came the two peerless Moncreiffe sisters, Georgiana Lady Dudley, and Helen Lady Forbes. Lady Dudley was then a radiant apparition, and her sister, the most perfect example of cla.s.sical beauty I have ever seen, had features as clean-cut as those of a cameo. Lady Forbes always wore her hair simply parted in the middle, a thing that not one woman in a thousand can afford to do, and glorious auburn hair it was, with a natural ripple in it. I have seldom seen a head so perfectly placed on the shoulders as that of Lady Forbes. The Dowager Lady Ormonde and the late Lady Ripon were then still unmarried; the first, Lady Leila Grosvenor, with the face of a Raphael Madonna, the other, Lady Gladys Herbert, a splendid, slender, Juno-like young G.o.ddess. The rather cruelly named "professional beauties" had just come into prominence, the three great rivals being Mrs. Langtry, then fresh from Jersey, Mrs. Cornwallis West, and Mrs.

Wheeler. Unlike most people, I should myself have given the prize to the second of these ladies. I do not think that any one now could occupy the commanding position in London which Constance d.u.c.h.ess of Westminster and the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester (afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re) then held. In fact, with skirts to the knee, and an unending expanse of stocking below them, it would be difficult to a.s.sume the dignity with which these great ladies, in their flowing Victorian draperies, swept into a room. The stately Dutchess of Westminster, in spite of her ma.s.sive outline, had still a fine cla.s.sical head, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester was one of the handsomest women in Europe. London society was so much smaller then, that it was a sort of enlarged family party, and I, having six married sisters, found myself with unnumbered hosts of relations and connections. I retain delightful recollections of the mid-Victorian girl. These maidens, in their airy clouds of white, pink, or green tulle, and their untouched faces, had a deliciously fresh, flower-like look which is wholly lacking in their sisters of to-day. A young girl's charm is her freshness, and if she persists in coating her face with powder and rouge that freshness vanishes, and one sees merely rows of vapid little doll-like faces, all absolutely alike, and all equally artificial and devoid of expression. These present skimpy draperies cause one to reflect that Nature has not lavished broadcast the gift of good feet and neat ankles; possibly some girls might lengthen their skirts if they realised this truth.

In the "seventies" there was a wonderful galaxy of talent at the old Gaiety Theatre, Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan, Edward Terry, and Royce forming a matchless quartette. Young men, of course, will always be foolish, up to the end of time. Nellie Farren, Kate Vaughan and Emily Duncan all had their "colours." Nellie Farren's were dark blue, light blue, and white; Kate Vaughan's were pink and grey; Emily Duncan's black and white; the leading hosiers "stocked" silk scarves of these colours, and we foolish young men bought the colours of the lady we especially admired, and sat in the stalls of the Gaiety flaunting the scarves of our favourite round our necks. As I then thought, and still think, that Nellie Farren was one of the daintiest and most graceful little creatures ever seen on the stage, with a gaminerie all her own, I, in common with many other youths, sat in the stalls of the Gaiety wrapped in a blue-and-white scarf. Each lady showered smiles over the footlights at her avowed admirers, whilst contemptuously ignoring those who sported her rival's colours. One silly youth, to testify to his admiration for Emily Duncan, actually had white kid gloves with black fingers, specially manufactured for him. He was, we hope, repaid for his outlay by extra smiles from his enchantress.

Traces of the witty early nineteenth century still lingered into the "seventies," "eighties," and "nineties." Lady Constance Leslie, who is still living, and the late Lady Cork were almost the last descendants of the brilliant wits of Sydney Smith and Theodore Hook's days. The hurry of modern life, and the tendency of the age to scratch the surface of things only, are not favourable to the development of this type of keen intellect, which was based on a thorough knowledge of the English cla.s.sics, and on such a high level of culture as modern trouble-hating women could but seldom hope to attain. Time and time again I have asked Lady Cork for the origin of some quotation. She invariably gave it me at once, usually quoting some lines of the context at the same time. When I complimented her on her wonderful knowledge of English literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she answered, "In my young days we studied the 'Belles Lettres'; modern women only study 'Belle's Letters,'" an allusion to a weekly summary of social events then appearing in the World under that t.i.tle, a chronicle voraciously devoured by thousands of women. When the early prejudice against railways was alluded to by some one who recalled the storms of protest that the conveyance of the Duke of Suss.e.x's body by train to Windsor for burial provoked, as being derogatory to the dignity of a Royal Duke, it was Lady Cork who rapped out, "I presume in those days, a novel apposition of the quick and the dead." A certain peer was remarkable alike for his extreme parsimony and his unusual plainness of face. His wife shared these characteristics, both facial and temperamental, to the full, and yet this childless, unprepossessing and eminently economical couple were absolutely wrapped up in one another; after his death she only lingered on for three months. Some one commenting on this, said, "They were certainly the stingiest and probably the ugliest couple in England, yet their devotion to each other was very beautiful. They could neither of them bear to part with anything, not even with each other. After his death she was like a watch that had lost its mainspring." "Surely,"

flashed Lady Constance Leslie, "more like a vessel which had lost her auxiliary screw." The main characteristic of both Lady Cork and Lady Constance Leslie's humour was its lightning speed. It is superfluous to add, with these quick-witted ladies it was never necessary to EXPLAIN anything, as it is to the majority of English people; they understood before you had finished saying it.

Many years after, in the late "eighties," Lady Constance Leslie's two elder daughters, now Mrs. Crawshay and Lady Hope, developed a singular gift. They could improvise blank verse indefinitely, and with their father, Sir John Leslie, they acted little mock Shakespearean dramas in their ordinary clothes, and without any scenery or accessories. Every word was impromptu, and yet the even flow of blank verse never ceased.

I always thought it a singularly clever performance, for Mrs. Crawshay can only have been nineteen then, and her sister eighteen. Mrs.

Crawshay invariably played the heroine, Lady Hope the confidante, and Sir John Leslie any male part requisite. No matter what the subject given them might be, they would start in blank verse at once. Let us suppose so unpromising a subject as the collection of railway tickets outside a London terminus had been selected. Lady Hope, with pleading eyes, and all the conventional gestures of sympathy of a stage confidante, would at once start apostrophising her sister in some such fas.h.i.+on as this:--

"Fair Semolina, dry those radiant orbs; Thy swain doth beg thee but a token small Of that great love which thou dost bear to him. Prithee, sweet mistress, take now heart of grace, At times we all credentials have to show, Eftsoons at Willesden halts the panting train, Each traveller knows inexorable fate Hath trapped him in her toils; loud rings the tread Of bra.s.s-bound despot as he wends his way From door to door, claiming with gesture rude His pound of flesh, or eke the pasteboard slip, Punched with much care, all travel-worn and stained, For which perchance ten ducats have been paid, Granting full access from some distant spot. Then trembles he, who reckless loves to sip The joys of travel free of all expense; Knowing the fate that will pursue him, when To stern collector he hath naught to show."

To which her sister, Mrs. Crawshay, would reply, without one instant's hesitation, somewhat after this style:--

"Sweet Tapioca, firm and faithful friend, Thy words have kindled in my guilty breast Pangs of remorse; to thee I will confess.

Craving a journey to the salt sea waves Before this moon had waxed her full, I stood Crouching, and feigning infant's stature small Before the wicket, whence the precious slips Are issued, and declared my years but ten.

Thus did I falsely pretext tender age, And claimed but half the wonted price, and now Bitter remorse my stricken conscience sears, And hot tears flow at my duplicity."