A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  Tony had a little surprise for me one day. When she was in Bedford she had taken a great liking to Arthur Hughes (not only out of gratitude for his kindness to Charles), and she had begged him to come down to Reskadinnick for a visit. And now she had a letter from him saying he could run down from his home in Wales for a few days—ten at most—and if convenient he would come at once. ‘We must do our best to make him welcome, and show him something of the Cornwall that Charles loved so dearly. I’ve written to tell him to come as soon as he likes.’

  As it turned out there was little left for mother and me to do in the way of making him welcome. The cousins at Reskadinnick did all. They took him on expeditions to the points of interest, and it was only in brief snatches that I had any chat with him. But I gathered that he had been impressed with Carn Brea, which had seemed to him at first a small affair; they went up its slopes, to see the huge blocks of granite, some of them upright and still showing an intended arrangement, and the remains of an ancient castle. Another of his expeditions I greatly envied him—uncle William took him down a tin mine—not a thing for a girl to do! He told me of the curious shovel used by the miners, shaped like the spade on a pack of cards, of unknown antiquity and supposed to be the identical pattern used by the early Phoenician settlers.

  ‘Mr. Hughes admires the North cliffs,’ said one of my cousins to me, ‘but he is insufferable in the way he sneers at our little trout-stream, and almost patronizes Carn Brea—for ever making comparisons with Wales. So we mean to take him to the Land’s End, and rub his nose in that.’ ‘A good idea,’ said I, but didn’t add what I felt—that I wished they would ask me to come too. But the very rarity and brevity of our talks together made them more significant. For instance, it was a day or two after the drive to the Land’s End that a group of the Reskadinnick cousins and friends dropped in at uncle Joe’s, and Mr. Hughes and I were together for a few moments in the garden. ‘Your North cliffs are always lovely, and Perranporth takes a lot of beating,’ said he, ‘but the Land’s End! It turned out a grey and blustery day, and the Atlantic was coming out strong. There is surely nothing like it. I felt I could have stayed there for ever’ (here someone was joining us) ‘if you could be there with me.’

  Mother and I were both invited to a ‘musical evening’ at Reskadinnick, and Mr. Hughes, who never went anywhere without his fiddle, was able to add considerably to the entertainment. A trio of Gounod’s Ave Maria, with one cousin at the piano, another singing, and the fiddle accompanying, pleased me greatly, and at the end I asked Mr. Hughes to pass me the musical score to look at. He came over to me and handed it with the words, very much in inverted commas, “and afterward, what else?” He knew that I should recognize the quotation from The Patriot, and that no one else would.

  Towards the end of his visit, for some unknown and blessed reason (probably due to Tony, like most good things in my life), I was asked to go for an evening drive to the Cliffs with the Reskadinnick cousins. We started after an early tea, the time of day just right for colour; the weather was at its best, heather in full bloom, sea ultramarine laced with emerald, rocks looking defiant as the great breakers tossed their foam over them. As was customary, the wagonette pulled up at Hell’s Mouth, our show-piece, so that we might all get out to look down.

  Knowing every inch of the ground from my childhood, I ran on ahead of the others, all eager to show our visitor the way to do it. The ritual was to run up to the edge of the cliff and then lie full length, with head over, so as to gaze in safety at the cauldron of raging sea below. Before lying down I turned to hail the others coming up. To my surprise Arthur Hughes was in front of them all, running and looking horribly scared.

  ‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh!’ he gasped, ‘I thought you were bound to go over—running at the edge like that! I was afraid to shout a warning—it might have startled you.’ The expression on his face checked my natural impulse to laugh at his fears. As the others came straggling up he added in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘If you had gone over I should have gone after you.’ In the moment left to us we looked at one another in silence. We each knew that it was the key-note of our lives—where one went the other would go—to the mouth of hell or elsewhere—it didn’t matter.

  On the drive back it was convenient for me to be dropped at the foot of the town while the others went on to Reskadinnick. Automatically I went up Fore Street and took the right turnings to reach uncle Joe’s; sheer habit took me, for I had no idea what I was doing. It was a comfort to be among my cheerful cousins, none of whom would notice my disquiet. Amid the hilarious talk around me I tried to concentrate on Sesame and Lilies, but it seemed tame and unreal. I was thankful when uncle Joe asked me to have a game of chess. Here silence was respectable, and it pleased my uncle that I was taking so long over my moves. Usually he had been distressed at my impatience with his slowness, for with him chess was more like a Buddhist meditation than a game. This lasted a nice long time, for my random moves put him out of his calculations almost as effectively as any strategy—each one made him suspect a subtle attack, and each piece that I lost he regarded as a gambit. He little imagined that his king was safe enough, for instead of designs on it I had running in my head the line of Bunyan, ‘Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven’. Only I was reversing it, for I saw that there was a way to heaven even at hell’s mouth.

  It may seem strange that I was so flabbergasted. With four brothers and their many friends, with endless love-affairs of cousins and acquaintances, and discussions and speculations about them, surely I must have imagined something of the kind coming my own way? But I hadn’t. The mere fact of meeting men of so many different types and finding them capital companions, and taking them quite naturally, must have acted as a kind of barrage, enabling both them and myself to talk without self-consciousness. I remember in particular a friend of Tom’s who had fallen desperately in love with one of my cousins, who would have none of him. He poured out his wretchedness to me in long letters, begging me to write about her to him and do all I could. I entered into the job with great zest, but never supposed that this kind of stuff would come my way.

  Anyhow, I managed to keep my feelings to myself, and in two days’ time Mr. Hughes had returned to Wales without our having a word together again, and without anyone supposing that we might like it. Perhaps mother suspected something. When he called to take a formal farewell, I heard her give him a casual invitation to come to see us in London, and promise to let him know our address when it was fixed. I joined my cousins in seeing him off at the station, where his farewells to them were very warm; but no word did he address to me. I felt flat—desolate. If I had asked mother she could have told me that neglect is sometimes the warmest gesture possible; but I said nothing to her, in spite of our close intimacy and confidence; or is it simply because of the intimacy that a mother has to forgo the deepest confidences?

  Well, I had plenty to distract my thoughts. A post had been offered me in Kensington, through the recommendation of Miss Buss. An ardent old North Londoner, a Miss Bennett, was starting a new school, and wanted to run it on the lines of the North London. Much to our satisfaction the post was non-resident, so that mother and I could live together. The address of the school was West Kensington, of which we had never heard. We concluded that it must be even more aristocratic than Kensington, but were soon undeceived on this point. Aunt Lizzie had been very good in finding some rooms for us close to the school. At a turn in North End Road was a large public house called ‘The Cedars’, and opposite this was a row of good shops. One of these, a greengrocer’s, was to be our new home. We didn’t have to push through the greens and potatoes, but went up to our first-floor rooms by a private entrance. Mother was perfectly contented wherever you put her down. She always maintained that it was the people you lived with that mattered, and not the place. She at once admired the spacious sitting-room, and exclaimed, ‘Look at the good view we get, in two directions, and with such
a lot going on.’ What entertained us both, and everyone who came to see us, was the wall decoration. Not the usual romantic engravings, but huge oil-paintings in heavy gilt frames. Our landlady had lived in Spain and had brought them back with her, and that seemed to account for them amply. She said they were very old masters. They were certainly obscure from dirt and age, and this was greatly to their advantage, for it lent a mellowness and respectability to scenes that were mostly bloodthirsty or crude in their morality. One was a realistic rendering of something from the story of Susannah and the Elders, and another was the figure of Judith pacing home in quiet triumph, swinging the head of Holofernes, all dripping with blood, as though she had just picked it up cheap in the market, and cared not who knew it.

  The scheme of colouring in the furniture was in harmony: carpet a fierce green, tablecloth a yellower green; chairs covered with crimson velvet, and some antimacassars of vermilion; but all were faded sufficiently to provide a quiet gaiety to the room as a whole.

  The new school was only at five minutes’ distance. Everything in it was beautifully arranged, but for the first few weeks there were only three pupils, so my labours were light. I had time to go on with my work for a degree, and have long tramps with mother. She on her part did a good deal of exploring of the neighbourhood. When I came in to dinner on the second day she said, ‘We are in the odour of sanctity here. I have discovered that Burne-Jones has his studio just at the back of us. I saw his name on the door. And our landlady tells me that his famous briar-rose is in the garden.’ It was not till later on that we heard the more interesting item about his house—that it was the home of Richardson at one time, and that he wrote Pamela there.

  As soon as we were settled mother wrote to Mr. Hughes to suggest that he should come up to spend a Sunday with us, and as October 2nd was a Sunday and our common birthday, it seemed a good excuse for a little celebration, ‘especially as Molly is to be twenty-one’. He replied that he could spend the Saturday night with his old friend Bourne, living in Camberwell, and would come on to us in time for midday dinner, and added that he was to be thirty.

  Mother ordered roast fowl and its appurtenances—always a sign of festivity with her. We children used to say that she said grace more fervently over roast fowl than over roast mutton. When it came to the time for starting to church she announced that she was going to sample something fresh, as the church round the corner was so unstimulating; she had a mind to try the Roman Catholic Pro-cathedral; it sounded dignified anyhow. ‘You can stop at home, dear, to receive Mr. Hughes; I’ve been in the oven myself.’ This was a reference to an old story about a girl who had disappeared; she could nowhere be found until a neighbour came in and suggested looking in the big brick oven; and there she was. When the neighbour was asked how she had guessed the hiding-place she said, ‘I’ve been in the oven myself’.

  So I was left at home alone, to await his arrival. A long time passed, and the usual Sunday-morning lethargy was pervading North End Road. I gave up looking out of the window, for the traffic was hardly more than an occasional milk cart. I tried to read, but the words made no impression on my brain. Then I began to think that he had been unable to come after all…or that he had found his friend Bourne too engrossing…or that he had changed his mind and preferred to keep away…or that he had met with an accident It was past twelve, and soon the landlady would be bustling in to lay the cloth for dinner, and then mother would be returning. I was just thinking that I didn’t care what happened if only something would happen, when I heard a hansom draw up outside. ‘It isn’t at our door,’ I said to myself. ‘Just go on with your book.’ In another minute there were steps on the stairs, the door was thrown open, and the landlady announced ‘Mr. Hughes’. If she was listening at the door after closing it she must have been disappointed and no doubt surprised, for it was some time before a word was said. He stalked in, threw his hat down, took me in his arms and kissed me as if it were the natural salute.

  It may be hard to believe (my three sons have difficulty in doing so), but this was the first kiss, other than fraternal, that I had ever experienced from a man of my own age. Perhaps I had missed a lot of enjoyment, but no amount of it could possibly have equalled the satisfaction of that first one. A bit unnerved, I felt that the silence must be broken somehow, and by something matter-of-fact. ‘Won’t you take your overcoat off?’ I managed to say. No reply. Then I heard myself saying, ‘Will it take off?’ Even this absurdity did not strike either of us at the moment, and mother returned while we were still standing bemused.

  Dinner time passed off quite gaily, for mother gallantly described her peculiar experiences at the Pro-cathedral with great gusto, and when we sat round the fire afterwards we were all talking naturally enough. We laughed over Arthur’s attempts to see more of me in Cornwall. He had been so kindly entertained that he hadn’t had a minute to himself, let alone a chance to walk up to Camborne. To get such a chance one day he announced that he had to send a telegram, and must go up to Camborne at once about it. Immediately a kindly cousin had offered to take it, as he was then going up to the town himself, and Arthur had been obliged to lay out a shilling on telling his mother that all was going well. Mother was merely amused at our difficulties in seeing one another. ‘Those little obstacles’, said she, ‘merely enhance the pleasure of your meeting. One kiss behind the door is worth ten in front of it.’ But, as Arthur pointed out, we hadn’t managed to get even the stolen one. She was as enthusiastic about everything as we could wish, and with her unerring instinct for saying the right thing she announced firmly:

  ‘You poor fools! You fancy yourselves in love with one another! Wait till ten years have passed, and then you will see how paltry this will seem compared to your love for one another then.’

  That was the stuff to give us. Thus cheered, Arthur came to the main thing on his mind.

  ‘You know, Mrs. Thomas, I’m a poor man, and my friends tell me I shall never be a rich one. I don’t know why.’

  ‘I know why,’ she rejoined quickly, ‘and I may tell you this, that Molly would be simply wasted on a rich man. She and I have reduced “doing without” to a science, haven’t we, Molly?’

  ‘Oh, rather! I can always make a shilling do the work of eighteenpence; and it would be flying in the face of providence for me to have to bury this talent.’

  ‘You’ll have to keep an eye on her, though,’ said mother, laughing, ‘for she is apt to go to the High Street to buy a pair of gloves, and come back with a new book and the old gloves.’

  ‘That’s me, too,’ said Arthur, and then hurriedly plunged into his prospects. He was getting a good amount at present, but he had to help his mother, and was sparing all he could for his young brother, who was going through an expensive time in taking his medical training in Edinburgh. ‘I took mathematics at Cambridge, but I’m sick of teaching it, and hate schoolmastering. I’m reading for the Bar—that’s where my real interest lies, but it will be sometime before I can make a decent income at it. Will Molly wait?’

  At this point I didn’t stop for mother to reply, but broke in, ‘Oh, I’m like Traddles’s Sophie. She was willing to wait till she was sixty, or was it seventy?’

  We all three laughed, and to smooth over the situation I fetched David Copperfield to see which age she had fixed as her limit. Dickens is the worst author in the world to find anything in, and a prolonged hunt for what didn’t matter was just the thing to lead us away from an awkward topic. If we had known then that we were to wait ten years before we could be married we might not have been so light-hearted about it. But it would have made no difference, however long the wait. It was many years later that he said to me, ‘If we were separated I could wait for you for a thousand years on the chance of getting you at the end.’

  Before leaving that evening he left us a kind of legacy in the shape of his friend Bourne, who (so he asserted) would enjoy coming over for a chat now and again. ‘Enjoy’ was hardly the right word, for Bourne surely dreaded the ordea
l. I can imagine how he muttered to himself, ‘A mother and daughter…and poor Hughes let in…I suppose I must do my best for him and go over to see them…the sooner I get it over the better.’ Whatever his motive, he came very soon, and often. A man more stiff with learning I have never met, stiff in the sense of sheer amount, not stiff in the use of it, or in ability to make others enjoy it with him. He was very tall and impressive, and a little alarming to me at first. But not so to mother, who could always smell a suppressed challenge and rise to the occasion with joy. His excessive courtesy towards women concealed his complete contempt for their minds, but mother took him unawares, and his first visit had hardly lasted a few minutes before she and he were laughing and sparkling with anecdote and argument. She had won, for he was dragged into forgetting that she was a woman and letting his natural self expand. He ventured his touchstone upon us: he announced that his chief aim in life was to make one thought grow where two thoughts grew before. He was accustomed to get much sardonic amusement out of the usual reply to this—‘Oh yes, of course, Mr. Bourne!’ from people who supposed he meant the platitudinous opposite. So when mother and I burst out with a startled and delighted ‘Good!’ we were friends indeed.

  He told us a good deal about Arthur, and his struggles to help his mother and brother, and indeed any lame dog he met, finishing with the remark, ‘You know, Mrs. Thomas, I don’t think Hughes will ever be even decently well off’ To this mother replied, ‘True, but then, you see, he is a nobleman.’ To her, indeed, he seemed all that one could desire for a son-in-law, and he always remained as dear to her as one of her own sons, and no marriage of mine, however exalted, could have satisfied her as much. My happiness was too deep for me to talk about it, but she and I understood one another without words. One can’t blink the fact that healthy children are bound to neglect their parents’ feelings, and be callously uncommunicative; therefore one of my most pleasing memories is the look on her face when I handed her my first love-letter, with the words, ‘Would you like to read it, mother?’ ‘Do you really mean it?’ she said in astonishment. She must have known how much it cost me to do this, and she took it as though it was a sacrament she was receiving. So it was—a kind of benison on all the restraint, absence of persuasion or interference, absence of all inquisitiveness, that she had maintained towards her only daughter. Our slight awkwardness over sharing the letter was relieved by the laughter we got from one passage in it: ‘I had to tell all the men last night. Hutchinson who had gone to bed I woke up and I raved to him until he said he would have to love some woman.’