A London Home in the Nineties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  My mother used to call him Don Quixote, the greatest compliment she could bestow on anyone. And indeed the parallel was fairly close, for he was always ready to go to any length for anyone in trouble, and give or lend as much as he could. I think I was the only one who never came in for his indulgence, for he was as severe with me as he was with himself. I had become so much a part of himself that I seemed to be included in Tacitus’ sui. The realization of this afforded me deep satisfaction, for I felt that I had something that the ordinary love-story didn’t know about.

  § 2

  Our poor financial prospects had induced me to do my utmost to save a little money, and I had been working hard to get my degree to improve my market value. I had already taken the Intermediate B.A. and was in the thick of preparing for the Final when mother died. She had taken the most intimate interest in every subject, and for some time after her death I could hardly bear the look of the books. But my holiday in Devon and Cornwall put new life into me and I was able to get through the Final in the autumn. My headmistress, who was one of the best, was very pleased, gave me more responsibility, and raised my salary.

  All would have been well had it not been for my so-called home conditions. My post was a non-resident one, and I could have lived where I liked, but mother and I and a fellow teacher, Miss Williamson, had consented (much against the grain) to live at a house that had been started to accommodate a few pupils of the school who wanted to be boarders—just to help the scheme along. As long as mother’s jolly presence enlivened the household it was bearable enough, but it was badly run, and the pupils who wanted to board there began to dwindle. Soon a quite different type of boarder was imported—several music students. There may be worse companions than music students, but, if so, I have yet to meet them. Singly, and for occasional social intercourse, they are probably delightful, but to live with in bulk! It was, of course, to their credit that they practised, but there was no close time for it. Practice, instrumental and vocal, would go on at any hour, frequently simultaneously in separate rooms, and the performers were never all out of the house at the same time. One advantage I gained from this was a lifelong ability to work through any noise. Worse than the practising nuisance was the talk at meal-times. Music must surely be an elevating business, but it seemed to have left these students untouched. Their conversation consisted almost exclusively of gossip and low jokes about the masters at the Academy of Music. If it’s really funny I can enjoy a low joke with the best, but these were entirely humourless, and Miss Williamson and I didn’t ‘hear’ them. Our failure to be shocked annoyed the tellers and spurred them to fresh efforts. Oddly enough it never occurred to us that we might go to live somewhere else, but we escaped from that house whenever we could, and as soon as my examination was over I had more time for outings.

  Seeing one day by chance that Much Ado was on at the Lyceum, I was seized by the idea that it would be fun to go to see it. The main attraction was that mother had always loved that play, chiefly the gaiety of Beatrice and the absurdity of Dogberry. ‘But oh, you should see it acted’, she would add. I had never inquired where she herself had seen it, and wish now that I knew what famous actors had made the play live for her. Another attraction for me was the Lyceum and Irving. From childhood I had heard enough of Irving from my brother Charles to arouse the keenest expectation, so that to see him in Much Ado would be a link with both him and mother. All this about a visit to the theatre! Well, at the age of twenty-four I had been to a play only some half-dozen times, and in each case I had been taken by a brother who managed it all. Was it possible, I wondered, to arrange such an outing without being ‘taken’? I approached Miss Williamson. Did she think that we might venture together one Friday night when there would be no school the next day? She did most decidedly, and when we saw that we could go there and back by omnibus, and that the gallery was only a shilling, we hesitated no longer.

  It was like tasting blood, or some exciting drug, for our first experience was so delightful that we missed no play that Irving put on, and as he was giving a rotation of them we were able to see something different nearly every week. But it was an endurance test, and I can quite understand why it was usual in those days for a girl to be ‘taken’ to a theatre. To get anything like a good seat in the gallery (and we could afford no better) we had to be there at least two hours before the doors opened. This meant standing on the stone staircase, which was lit here and there by a gas-jet in a wire cage, and smelt of orange-peel and stale perspiration. The light wasn’t good enough to read by, so we amused ourselves by talking over the play and watching the human nature surging around us. As soon as the glad sound of the pushing of a bolt told us that the doors were being opened, the insidious gentle pushing that had been going on all the time became less gentle, and we had to use our elbows to avoid being crushed, and sometimes a group of youths would make a concerted rush…. How glad we were to get past the paying-barrier and be free to leap ahead. Then followed a race, as we jumped over the low benches to reach the front row. There were no backs to the seats or divisions between them, so we were thankful to find ourselves in front of a kindly woman who would let us lean against her knee. In those days of gas-lighting and poor ventilation the atmosphere of the gallery didn’t bear thinking about. But all discomforts were forgotten as soon as the curtain went up.

  Among the plays we saw I best remember these: The Bells, The Lyons Mail, The Corsican Brothers, Olivia (an adaptation or The Vicar of Wakefield), Charles I, and, above all, Much Ado, which we saw three times. Ellen Terry was Beatrice as one might always imagine her, a mixture of impishness and deep feeling, from the moment when the play springs to life with her ‘I wonder you will still be talking, Signior Benedick; nobody marks you’, right through till her lightning flash ‘Kill Claudio’ is followed by Benedick’s thunder-clap reply. Surely no two lovers were more interesting. Most of the people around us seemed ignorant of the story and engrossed in its development. In the one tantalizingly short love-scene, interrupted by Beatrice’s being summoned to her uncle, a woman behind me exclaimed, ‘Oh, bother the uncle!’

  In this play, too, Irving was at his best, for he knew how to bring out the humour of Benedick by a score of little gestures and facial expressions. In his tragic roles I was fascinated by the curious drag of the leg—a trait that Charles used to imitate with great effect. But on looking back I get little pleasure in retrospect from his treatment of tragedy, and even at the time much of it seemed exaggerated, and even ridiculous. The worst was Lear. In this Irving was so doddering and silly to begin with that he left no room to get much madder, and his wild efforts at it were so tiresome that when he fell asleep in the hut it was a sheer relief, and I nearly called out to Edgar, ‘Don’t wake him.’

  It is difficult to imagine Irving playing the part of Jingle—a not only farcical but subsidiary role. Yet Arthur actually saw this and said it was one of the funniest things he had ever seen on the stage. He was convinced that Irving’s real genius lay in acting comic parts and that it was his itch to play Hamlet that had been his undoing.

  These excursions cost little, considering the amount of pleasure we got from them, for eighteenpence usually covered our expenses. However, there was another indulgence that I allowed myself as a rare treat. Of this I was rather ashamed, and kept it quiet. Ever since my childhood a ride in a hansom had been a thing of bliss, and it still held some quality of fairyland for me. With a half-crown to waste I would walk along Kensington High Street, eyeing the crawlers, as the empty cabs were called. Drivers, expectant, would hold up a whip hopefully as I looked about. But I waited till I had seen a cab with all the right points: india-rubber tyres, good horse, cheery-looking cabby with a grey top hat and a flower in his buttonhole. Then my raised finger was enough to bring him up to my side. In a blasé voice I would mention some entrancing spot as a destination, such as the Abbey, or Romano’s. The reins would be elegantly lifted for me to get in, and I would sit back and float away, enjoying the London streets
as Providence intended them to be enjoyed. Reaching my destination I would quietly return by omnibus. I liked to choose a restaurant for the cab to put me down, because of a story my brother Charles told me. As he was strolling along Oxford Street one evening a cabby drew up and said to him, ‘Going to the Cri, Sir? I’ll take you there for nothing.’ When Charles looked surprised he added in an undertone, ‘We aren’t allowed to crawl there, but if we drive up with a fare, we are bound to get another.’ ‘Right,’ said Charles, got in, and as he jumped out at the Criterion pretended to pay a fare to the grateful cabby.

  So often has it seemed to happen in my life that the worst things have been fruitful of the best, and here was an instance. The disagreeable conditions of our boarding-house drove us to the real enlargement of life that the theatre gave us. And on summer afternoons they drove us to long country walks, to Richmond Park or to Kew Gardens. We used to start forth by a tram, whose progress along the single line was so slow, with stops for change of passengers and long waits on loop lines for another tram to pass, that once I remember being disgusted to notice that a hay-cart with its steady plod was actually gaining on us. But, as in the gallery, when we reached the Gardens all tedium was forgotten, and we made for the Arboretum and spent happy hours stretched under the trees, reading and talking.

  It was on one of our reluctant journeys back to the hated boarding-house that Miss Williamson made the bold suggestion that we should break loose and set up in rooms by ourselves. Taking fire at this, I made the bolder suggestion that we should make a completely fresh start by looking for new posts. ‘Well, you begin,’ said Miss Williamson, and urged me on before I had time to cool. So that same evening I went: round to our headmistress, Miss Bennett, broached the idea and asked her advice. She was certainly taken aback, but was most generous in manner and deed, pressing upon me that it was time I took a post with wider scope than she could offer me, and promising me all the backing-up she could give.

  ‘Let me see, how old are you now?’

  ‘I’m twenty-four, but I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Quite time you made a change. And don’t mind me, dear. I shall write to the Cambridge Training College and ask Miss Hughes to send me another Miss Thomas.’

  So kind was she that I returned in the mood to give up all idea of leaving her. But Miss Williamson kept me up to the mark, thrust note-paper at me, and advised me to write at once to my old school, the North London Collegiate, to see whether I could get a post there. So I appealed to my ever-revered friend, Mrs. Bryant, ran out with my letter, and dropped it in the pillar-box with that Rubicon feeling one often experiences at these little red perils.

  II. A New Venture

  § 1

  ‘COME and see me tomorrow.’

  This was the tantalizing reply to my letter. I started for Camden Town in the afternoon, telling myself not to hope for anything immediate. It was probably only to be a visit of friendly interest and promise for the future. But it was with real eagerness added to her wonted affection that Mrs. Bryant received me. Speaking hurriedly she told me that on getting my letter she had intended to give me a post in the school, but that something odd had just happened. Shortly before my arrival there had rushed upon her a member of the Council of Bedford College, full of a scheme for opening a training department for teachers, as a branch of the College. Their students, who were intending to teach, either started without any training or were going off to Cambridge for it. ‘She seemed a bit incoherent,’ said Mrs. Bryant, ‘but clearly the main obstacle is the difficulty of finding anyone who can undertake to run the scheme, and she hoped that I might know of someone. So I told her that I had got the very one that would do, actually wanting new work, and coming to see me, and I promised to send you on to her as soon as you came.’ ‘Me!’ I gasped. ‘Yes, you, and don’t stop to talk but run down the road after her, towards the station. She’s very tall and big, and dressed in black. Run.’

  I ran, and soon saw my quarry nearing the station. She seemed very pleased when I touched her arm and said that I had been sent by Mrs. Bryant. Confused as I had been by Mrs. Bryant, I was still more so by the vague ideas poured forth on me as the Camden Road trams went by, but I gathered that the College was in London, not Bedford (as I had imagined), that the new work would not begin for some months, that I must send in some testimonials, and come for an interview later in the year. It all seemed a nice long time off, so I readily agreed, half hoping that some other candidate for the post would be preferred. However, I set about gathering some testimonials. Miss E. P. Hughes, of Cambridge, sent me a splendid one, but added that she hoped I wouldn’t get the post as she wanted me to come to Cambridge as her vice-principal.

  I know now that there was no other candidate on the horizon, but the appearance of ‘appointment’ and ‘choice’ had to be gone through, and in the autumn term I was summoned to Bedford College for an interview. It was a murky afternoon when I reached York Place, Baker Street, precisely at the appointed hour of 3.30. Councils are like dentists, far too dignified to receive the poor wretch at the actual time named, and I was shown into a kind of large office to wait. I was in the best possible condition for the ordeal, since I didn’t care a rap whether they appointed me or not. Also I had a splitting headache which checked my usual tendency to smile, and lent me a temporary dignity. Presently a dear old lady in a cap (whom I discovered later to be the Principal) sailed in with a cup of tea for me. She belonged to that incredible period of women’s education when an older lady of some kind, either the Principal or a ‘Lady Visitor’, had to sit through lectures given by male professors, as a chaperone. Sharp criticism by a young professor, of a poor answer or essay, would often unnerve a girl and reduce her to tears; so the Lady Visitor was present to prevent such a break-down, or to calm the student with smelling-salts.

  ‘Don’t you be nervous, dear,’ said this kind Principal in an undertone, as she ushered me into the large board-room.

  There, seated at a vast round table, were the Council—about a dozen men and women of mature age. In full view of them all, at the respectful distance of a yard from the table, a chair had been pulled out for me. What with the cup of tea and my don’t-care mood, I felt completely mistress of the situation and very soon sensed that it was the Council who were worried, having not the faintest idea what my work was to be and what intelligent questions they could put to me. ‘This is a very anxious and responsible undertaking, is it not?’ was the general tone of the chairman and several other kindly men, and to all these noble thoughts I assented freely. But there was one old woman waiting her chance and crouching to spring. I have never seen anyone so ugly in face, so repellent in manner. She had a constant feud (as I learnt afterwards) with the member of the Council who had originated this idea of a Training Department, and had prepared herself to damn it if possible. As soon as the men had exhausted their rather pointless questions, she took the floor. Eyeing me fiercely, she opened her speech with the statement that she had personally inspected this so-called training work. Then she described with vivid detail, diverting illustrations, and great relish, the unpractical rubbish that went on, the outrageous nonsense that was being taught, and the utter waste of time of the whole concern. When she had used up all her facts and epithets, she sat back and glared, pausing for a reply. Meanwhile I had had leisure to note the embarrassment of the other members, and the uncomfortable fidgeting of the men at her bullying rudeness. So I looked at her dreamily for a moment or two in silence, and then said slowly: ‘You seem to have had a very narrow, and a very unfortunate experience of training work.’ An outbreak of scarcely checked delight rippled round the assembly, and to cover the awkwardness the kindly chairman made some pleasant and non-committal remarks to me, and I was allowed to depart without further question. A few days later I received notice that I was appointed, and that I was to begin work in the following January. It was a blow to find that for this ‘anxious and responsible undertaking’ I was to receive £100, non-resident. Even in tho
se days, when money went farther than it does today, it was almost a starvation salary. Cambridge would be far better than this, thought I, and I wrote to the Bedford College authorities to this effect, pointing out that Miss Hughes was anxious to have me. But I had such an indignant letter from the member who had started the scheme, accusing me of breaking my promise to her, that I gave way to her insistence, although I knew perfectly well that I had made no promise at all. She admitted then that I had been the only candidate for the post, and I thought she might have appealed to me more suitably than by accusing me of perfidy. But she was too masterful to be gainsaid, and I comforted myself with the reflection that though I should have little money I should have an absolutely free hand to do what I liked.

  All my spare time was now spent in planning my campaign. My students were presumed to have had a good education, with a degree or other qualification, and required only professional training for one year. In other words, I could assume that they knew the subject they were to teach, and only needed to be helped to teach it effectively and to see its relation to education as a whole. Even this vague idea was not suggested to me by Bedford College authorities, who left me to do exactly as I liked. Even my men friends, my ‘pillars’ in all emergencies, my brothers and Arthur, didn’t seem likely to be much use here. To Tom and Dym the training of a teacher seemed merely funny. But a holiday spent at Arthur’s home in Aberdovey enabled me to pin him down for help. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘the great thing for whatever you set about, is to start with a skeleton.’ ‘Oh I’ve got my skeleton,’ said I, ‘it’s this: first term, some simple psychology in very close relation to actual lessons; second term, special school subjects; third term, bigger educational problems. Then I’ve got to edge in some hygiene, some logic, and some history of great educators.’