by Unknown
The alphabetical biscuits are not the shabbiest. Each of them has a letter on it, which is meant to catch your eyes before you can get it into your mouth. With a little care, however, you can pop in the biscuits without looking, unless your nurse or mother insists on your saying the letter before she lets you eat it. There are mothers who do this; and if you give way at first, they have you into biscuits in one syllable in no time. The only safe course is to shut your eyes and be stubborn. It is no use looking one way and eating another, for unless you shut them you are bound to look at something, and you can’t look anywhere in an educational nursery without being caught. Say you slide the biscuit in at the left side of your mouth and keep your eyes fixed on the wall to the right; the result is that you are learning pictorally who signed Magna Charta, and what was the beastly date of it.
It is very doubtful whether a biscuit, unless perhaps at bedtime, is worth all this bother. These biscuits are ‘graded.’ That is to say, you pass from alphabetical biscuits to biscuits in one, two, and even three syllables; and then there are names-of-countries biscuits. One would expect the biscuits to become bigger as they become more difficult, but they don’t. I gave up biscuits at the second syllable, perferring to go into animal gingerbread. And then look at those instructional milk-mugs. Surely it is a little hard that a child cannot take a drink of milk without also absorbing the names of the many kinds of cows.
I know all about Shakespeare and Milton and Rare Bill Jonson, drat them. It is not my fault; it comes of not being surspicious. My little sister who brags that she will live two years after me because she is two years younger has a box of bricks that make into worldly houses on weekdays and Westminster Abbey on Sundays. You get a picture of the Abbey on the lid, showing how to build the bricks, and it is good enough fun so long as you think it is nothing else. No sooner, though, have we built the Abbey than our guardians pounce and have us in that awful Poets’ Corner. The royal ninepins are just as bad. As soon as we stick them up our governess asks who can tell her which is the fifth or the tenth Henry. You get only one mark for knocking him down but four if you can say when he was drowned in a bath of mulberry wine. The prize is varable. Sometimes it is a poetry lozenge, or it may be a toy for teaching you the months of the year. We are young and guileless, so no one has the sense to see that we are being taken advantage of except me.
There is a Latin proverb, which no boy should know before he is fourteen, about the Greeks being most to be kicked when they bring presents to you. But our own fathers and mothers are not a bit better than the Greeks about this, and I would strongly advise all children into whose hands this impeachment may fall not to accept a present from anybody without having a good look at it behind the door first. I got a ship on my last birthday that takes to pieces and packs away in a box. Do you think that was an honest present? It sounds like it; but it wasn’t. If it hadn’t been for that box I might not have known to this day how many ounces there are in a pound.
Children may be warned against squares, which are among the nastiest things I know of. Before taking them from anybody make sure that they don’t squeak. If they do, and you take them, you are in for Equatorial Africa. I am, however, incline to think that the most invidiuous thing we have in our nursery is the money-box. The old style of money-box was plain and honest, and you could always get the pennies back with a knife. Ours, however, is a very different affair. It consists of a box with a donkey standing near it, and if you put a penny on the donkey’s tail it kicks up one of its hind legs and knocks the penny into the box. It is a great joke to see the donkey doing this a few times, but there is no way of getting the money back, so of course it is a swindle. You may announce that we should know better; but we are innercent and at the mercy of designing parents. Why, if any of them were to see me writing these reflections, what do you think they would say? They would badger me till I told them what ink was composed of and what other ingreduents besides linen rags entered into the composition of paper. There is not, I suppose, anything I don’t know, and if there is, father will be bringing it home on Saturday. I do wish I was growed up.”
I DARESAY Greenwood had letters from parents saying they refused to believe that a child of six had written this paper with so many long words in it. I am sure Anon was never in an Educational Nursery, indeed though I knit my brows in thought I cannot recall his having in those days ever been in a nursery at all. He never had a nursery himself, I don’t believe that the most genteel friend of his childhood ever had a nursery; it seems to me, looking back, that he was riotously happy without nurseries, without even a nana (but with some one better) to kiss the place when he bumped. The children of six he had met were, if boys, helping their father to pit the potatoes, and if girls, they were nurses (without knowing the word) to some one smaller than themselves. He came of parents who could not afford nurseries, but who could by dint of struggle send their daughters to boarding-schools and their sons to universities.
Perhaps Anon did meet in London some children of the nurseries, and found with surprise what care had to be taken of them at six years of age; that, for instance, there needed to be a tall fender to prevent their falling into the fire. Such children were something new in the world to him. Perhaps he studied them closely, perhaps just sufficiently to rip an article out of them. He may have made a call and his hostess have instructed the nurse to carry the eldest down very carefully so that the visitor might be gazed at with safety. On the other hand this article may have been evolved out of Anon’s seeing an alphabetical biscuit in a shop-window.
Heigho, so long it is since I had a ‘way’ with children. I remember more vividly than most things the day I first knew it was gone. The blow was struck by a little girl, with whom I had the smallest acquaintance, but I was doing my best to entertain her when suddenly I saw upon her face the look that means, ‘You are done with all this, my friend.’ It is the cruellest, most candid look that ever comes into the face of a child. I had to accept it as final, though I swear I had a way with them once. That was among the most rueful days of my life.
CHAPTER XV
“THE BIOGRAPHER AT BAY” — GEORGE MEREDITH
“WE have missed the publishing season again, not greatly to my surprise, for this is my fifth disillusionment. It would not do to mention his name; but he is world renowned, and seven years ago I admired him so much (as I do still) that he appointed me his biographer. He was an old man then, and infirm, so there was a sort of informal understanding between us that, alas, he would not last long. I worked night and day in the arrangement of his letters, autobiographical notes and other remains, forming them into a most interesting biography, which he was desirous to revise himself. For five years it has been ready for the Press; but he insists that the publication must be posthumous. He has had several illnesses; but he shakes them all off; and the publishers wrote to me last week saying he looks so sprightly that they have given him up for another year. Of course I admire him as much as ever, but at the same time this is evidently to be a splendid season for memoirs, and I have mouths to feed and little feet to shoe.
For these five years he has been engrossed in nothing but his health. Had he continued to increase his reputation there would have been nothing at which to murmur; but he has not even the interest in his reputation that he used to have. At his time of life most distinguished men are martyrs to insomnia, but he sleeps better now, he says, than for forty years; and he came back from his last tour abroad frolicking rather than leaning on his staff. One night in September of this year I saw him in the stalls of a theatre with an opera-glass at his eyes, which was surely a little brazen in a man who, seven years ago, distinctly stated to my grief and that of another (whom I could bring forward as a witness) that he had one foot in the grave. I don’t cavil at his still being with us, I rejoice in it; but I do think that out of consideration for me he might remain studiously at home. Even as it is it would be painful to me to think that I had in a moment of irritation said one word against him. Whe
n the memoir does appear it will be found that he is the hero whom I have always worshipped.
In the meantime, as there is no immediate prospect of the biography’s being published, let me say in justice both to him and myself that he is not blind to the awkward position in which his health has placed me. There are moments when he sympathizes with me keenly, and shows it by a pressure of the hand. Out of sheer kindness I have known him remark in conversation with me that he was not feeling so well to-day. On such occasions I could appreciate his motive; but the statement sent no thrill through me, for his face belied his words. He has looked at me apologetically, too, when others have remarked in my presence on his vigour; so that he is still, as I have always thought him, a man of feeling. Once or twice — not often, I am glad to say — I have been betrayed into talking a little bitterly of biographies prepared too soon, and then he has perhaps blustered. Legally, I admit frankly he is right in holding that I have no claim on him, and that I accepted the post at a certain risk. Yet this is scarcely a matter that should be looked at merely from the legal point of view. The question is whether the informal understanding I have already referred to left him absolutely a free man. So long as he treats me kindly I am willing not to press the point, and to rejoice in his vigour; but my outlook is a little saddened when he seems to forget, as he sometimes does; even openly exulting over me.
In the meantime the biography is suffering in various ways. I pass over his comparative indifference to the work, though in my esteem for him I naturally desire that it should be as good as possible. A few years of leisure at the end of a laborious and distinguished career are neither here nor there (except to him and me); but a stately biography would keep him before the public for a sufficiency of months. However, if he will not stretch a point for my sake, I need not discuss the matter. What is perhaps more serious is that the book is losing both in freshness and truthfulness as a picture of this splendid man. He is becoming garrulous, and has told some of the best and most characteristic things in the book at his club. As any one knows, this means that the newspaper men get hold of the stories and telegraph them round the globe. For instance there was something about him, which he must have supplied himself, in a society paper last week that ruins my fifth chapter. Then there is his interview with Carlyle at Craigenputtock, which I had been trusting reviews would quote. He was in Dumfries many years ago, and drove to Craigenputtock to meet the sage, whom he did not happen to know personally. He thought, however, that his name would be sufficient introduction. On reaching the farm he saw Carlyle sitting on a dyke. The sage would not let him approach, saying he had never heard of him, and finally chased him round the duck pond. He learned afterwards from the schoolmaster that this was one of Carlyle’s ‘bad days,’ and also that a labourer in the parish was paid by the genial author of ‘Sartor Resartus’ £5 per annum to take admiring visitors to another farm and pretend that it was Craigenputtock. Now all this is very interesting, and I would never have thought of mentioning it here did I not know that the London Correspondents will have it in a day or two. A friend of mine assures me that the subject of my biography has been telling the story at tea-parties, in which he now finds the greatest pleasure; and, furthermore, that he requests his audience not to let his indiscretion come to my ears. Clearly, therefore, my august friend is aware that he is wronging me and doing the biography harm; and it is obvious that if this kind of thing goes on the reviewers will find little that is new in the book.
Unless I largely re-write it, I may even be taken to task for misunderstanding my man. Until the last year or two he was almost a recluse, very reserved, seldom mixing in company, quite unknown except by his magnificent work to the general public. Now he is a clubman; he has been seen at flower-shows; he has insisted on trying the switchback railway; his mantelshelf is ornamented with cards of invitations to ‘at homes.’ It is to me a matter of grave concern that those who have met him only lately will find it difficult to believe that I have known that noble brain aright.
When I was appointed his biographer my friends made much of me; but as year after year passed without anything coming of it I have taken a lower place in their estimation; others, seeing that it is a sore subject, hasten to talk of something else. They know that the fault is not mine (nor do I call it his): but nevertheless I suffer for it.
He has no longer the pleasure in my society that he once had. He has become so lively that he describes me to others as a heavy fellow. I daresay that is true, but I do not take it to be the real reason of his avoidance of me. I fear that sometimes I cannot help looking reproachfully at him. He reads this as dumb suffering in my eyes, and it annoys him. This is particularly noticeable when he is being treated for one of the ailments that seem in the end to give him new strength. Then he breaks out violently, and says that I am a hypocrite when I express a hope that he will soon be better. His servants have told me in confidence that he shudders every time he hears that I have been at the door inquiring for him. Once we almost quarrelled. He had been confined to bed with a cold (he is all right again), and I went to the doctor’s house to hear how he really was. He heard of this, and being unjust in his illness, the object of my devotion sent me a magazine containing an article on centenarians. This, I confess, pained me; and, forcing my way into his bedroom, I said more than I ought to have said. Never should I forget his greatness. Since then he is nervous if we are left alone together; but that is the only sign of shakiness I can find about him. As for the fickle public, some of them insist that the biography appeared years ago, and that they have read it.”
THOUGH this article was entirely fanciful it sets me thinking of George Meredith and of the day he walked up and down in Flint Cottage reading it and mockingly assuming the leading rôle. I remember his putting the paper-knife into my hand to stab him with.
He was royalty at its most august to Anon, whose very first railway journey on coming to
London was to Box Hill to gaze at the shrine. Whether Anon wore the Hat on this great occasion I cannot now remember. The Hat would certainly have been an encumbrance in the country, but as an honour to the man in whom he did take the most delight I hope he wore it. There is a grassy bank, or there was (for I go there no more), opposite the gate, and the little royal residence is only some twenty yards away. Even to Anon that day it seemed small but very royal. He sat on the grassy bank and quivered. Presently he saw a face at the window of a little sitting-room he was to be very familiar with in the hereafter. He knew whose face it was. Then the figure stood in the doorway, an amazing handsome man in grey clothes and a red necktie. He came slowly down the path towards the gate. It was too awful for Anon. He ran away. If the Hat was with him it must have been in his hand; he could not have run with it on his head. Meredith knew of this affair afterwards, and also of the store I set by the Hat, which made him throw back his head and laugh uproariously. He always insisted afterwards that I was wearing the Hat on that pilgrimage, and that what brought him down the path was to have a closer look at it and not at Anon. After his wont he paraphrased the incident into vast proportions, and maintained that he thought I was the first arrival for his funeral.
Something I wrote made him ask me to visit him, and after that I was often at Flint Cottage for stretches of time until he died in 1909. I loved this man more every time I saw him. The last time, when he was very frail, I said I thought he had a better colour, and he replied with a smile, ‘Yes, a pretty green.’ He was then too hard of hearing to follow what you said unless you were close to him, and while he talked of women and wine and the winds his nurse, most faithful but not in literary taste a Meredithian, was telling me of his health and other matters. ‘They assure me,’ she said, with an affectionate glance at him, ‘that he has a wonderful knowledge of woman; all I can say is that I don’t think he knows one little thing about women.’ I felt that I was looking at a Shakespearian fragment. Morley, who was his executor, wanted me to write his Life, but Meredith had told me that he wished nothing of the kind
to be done, and in his last weeks he saw to it that bonfires of his ‘literary remains’ should smoulder in his garden. In any case there is no one less qualified than I to write the Life of any one. I wrote a few things of no account about him, and when he died a little piece that I should like to insert here. Had he been present he would certainly have said that he saw me writing it on the grassy bank, using the Hat as a desk: —
‘All morning there had been a little gathering of people outside the gate. It was the day on which Mr. Meredith was to be, as they say, buried. He had been, as they say, cremated. The funeral coach came, and a very small thing was placed in it and covered with flowers. One plant of the wallflower in the garden would have covered it. The coach, followed by a few others, took the road to Dorking where, in familiar phrase, the funeral was to be. In a moment or two all seemed silent and deserted, the cottage, the garden, and Box Hill.
‘The cottage was not deserted, as They knew who now trooped into the round in front of it, their eyes on the closed door. They were the mighty company, his children, Lucy and Clara and Rhoda and Diana and Rose and Old Mel and Roy Richmond and Adrian and Sir Willoughby and a hundred others, and the shades of many dogs, and they stood in line against the boxwood, waiting for him to come out. Each of his proud women carried a flower, and the hands of all his men were ready for the salute. His dogs were in commotion.
‘In the room on the right, in an armchair which had been his home for years — to many the throne of letters in this country — sat an old man, like one forgotten in an empty house. When the last sound of the coaches had passed away he moved in his chair. He wore grey clothes and a red tie, and his face was rarely beautiful, but the hair was white, and the limbs were feeble, and the piercing eyes dimmed, and he was hard of hearing. He moved in his chair, for something was happening to him, old age was falling from him. This is what is meant by Death to such as he, and the company awaiting knew. His eyes became again those of the eagle, and his hair was brown, and the lustiness of youth was in his frame, but still he wore the red tie. He rose, and not a moment did he remain within the house, for “golden lie the meadows, golden run the streams,” and “the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.” He flung open the door, as They knew he would do who were awaiting him, and he stood there looking at them, a general reviewing his troops. They wore the pretty clothing in which he had loved to drape them; they were not sad like the mourners who had gone, but happy as the forget-me-nots and pansies at their feet and the barking dogs, for they knew that this was his coronation day. Only one was airily in mourning, as knowing better than the others what fitted the occasion, the Countess de Saldar. He recognized her sense of the fitness of things with a smile and a bow. The men saluted, the women gave their flowers to Dahlia to give to him, so that she, being the most unhappy and therefore by him the most beloved, should have his last word, and he took their offerings and passed on. They did not go with him, these, his splendid progeny, the ladies of the future, they went their ways to tell the whole earth of the new world for women which he had been the first to foresee.