A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  I am working very hard this term. The headmaster said the other day, ‘Oh! Mr. Thomas, you’ll coach those boys in the higher parts of Trigonometry, De Moivre’s Theorem and so on, won’t you? You’re fresher at it than I am.’ Oh, yes, of course, I am indeed fresher at it. But what man has done man can do. And if De Moivre can imagine , I can bring myself to treat it in the familiar spirit, required by the Journal of Education. My conic sections man, too, is becoming a burden; he has got on to the parabola. He generally has a week’s illness after a violent leap upward like that, so I have time to read up ahead.

  Good old Tom! He taught in that school for over forty years, and when the age for retirement came, he told me that he hated giving up the job, and knew that he was far more capable of a good day’s work than the younger fellows.

  § 2

  In the summer we naturally fled to Cornwall as soon as my school-term was over. My uncle Joe invited Arthur down, too, and Dym came from Plymouth for a week or two, so it was a jolly holiday. My cousins used to say that they liked ‘Aunt Mary’ to be staying with them, because she added to the fun and didn’t reprove them for their follies. While she indulged her passion for sketching, Dym and Arthur had as many days’ fishing as they could manage, and the rest of us either accompanied them in the background or went off for tramps along the cliffs. Long expeditions were now beyond our means, but I had always been anxious to see Falmouth, which had held a glamour for me since childhood. So Arthur and I plotted to go by train and have a long day there. We took my cousin Alice with us, a girl of about fifteen, and for all three it was a red-letter day, spent in exploring the defences of the harbour, the shipping, the tempting old curiosity shops (in one of which I had some trouble to restrain Arthur from buying a ravishing tea-service ‘for when we are married’) and in eating strange meals as cheaply as we could.

  I mention this day’s outing, not on account of anything special that happened, but because of Alice’s happy face throughout. I am certain that never for one moment did she feel herself an awkward ‘third’. Arthur and I hated being obviously left alone together, and behaved so little like the traditional engaged couple that no one bothered about us. I think it was only Tony and mother and Dym who understood us in this way, and realized how much we managed to communicate in the midst of the crowded and jolly family life. It was not till long years afterwards that I came across some lines of Blake’s that sum up for me the whole of my life with Arthur:

  He who bends to himself a joy

  Doth the winged life destroy;

  But he who kisses the joy as it flies

  Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

  When mother and I got back to Kensington we sucked a good deal of amusement from the remarks that had been made in Cornwall about the engagement. ‘A very tame affair.’ ‘They are not at all suited to one another—Arthur so grave and Molly so light-hearted.’ ‘Of course, it will never come to anything.’ ‘Reading for the Bar indeed! It will be years before he can marry, and Molly will soon be tired of waiting.’ Mother had met all such remarks with variations of ‘Quite, indeed, yes, how true, but after all they must use their own judgements, mustn’t they? You and I are not called upon to marry Arthur, are we?’

  A more direct attack was made upon me. A distant cousin, a Mrs. Tyack, had been very faithful with me and seriously advised me to ‘break it off’.

  ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and then what would happen? What would be my next move?’

  ‘You might see someone else you liked to marry.’

  ‘But I can’t imagine ever wanting to marry anybody else, however desperate the circumstances.’

  ‘Still, it would be a good thing to break it off…just to stir him up a little.’

  ‘How does one do it?’ I asked, trying to appear anxious to pick up a wrinkle.

  ‘You say something appropriate about not seeing your way to wait any longer, and return the ring.’

  ‘Oh, that’s no good at all,’ I replied. ‘I tried that last summer in Wales. My ring came off in some soapy water by mistake, for I never take it off, and I thought it would be a good joke to pretend to return it. So I screwed up my face, found Arthur sitting reading the paper, laid the ring by his side with the remark that I wished to end our engagement. His response, without turning from the paper, was, ‘I say, look here, what Parnell has been saying.’ Naturally I found Parnell’s latest effort more interesting than my little joke, so I slipped the ring on my finger again.’

  At this Mrs. Tyack tossed her head and exclaimed that I had no sense of my own dignity, took nothing seriously, and might expect a miserable future with a man of that type.

  ‘What did she mean, mother, by all that notion of breaking off an engagement?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just one of the tricks women play on men. I could point out lots of instances even among our own acquaintance that would astonish you.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘It’s generally the mothers rather than the girls who do the mischief. What do they do? They seize on anything—say a man dances with a girl more than twice, or sits out with her for a talk, or takes her to a theatre. Her mother will “ask his intentions”.’

  ‘Well, if he has none, that’s easy.’

  Mother laughed. ‘Not so easy as it sounds. I had a dreadful business once in getting Dym out of a hole of that kind. It was too ridiculous. A girl whom you know quite well had been snubbed and ill-treated, Dym found her weeping and sympathized, kissed her no doubt—you know how soft-hearted dear old Dym always is—that was really all that had happened, and if you please he was expected to marry her! I could tell you of others who have been caught by such methods, and unfortunately not rescued.’

  ‘Yes, but when they are actually engaged, what’s the sense of breaking it off, as Mrs. Tyack suggested to me?’

  ‘Why, that’s to hurry on the marriage, for fear the man should come to his senses and wriggle out of it.’ Here she instanced several cases from our own circle, where the husband would certainly have backed out if he had had time.

  These were real eye-openers to me. Looking back on those days I see that mother made several attempts to enlighten me on many other points. Remarks and anecdotes of hers, vivid in my memory, passed over me at the time like water from a duck’s back. Mother must have hoped that I would inquire further about these incidents, but I was amazingly lacking in curiosity. As for her views on a happy married life, on these she was quite explicit, and she shot them at me bit by bit.

  ‘You must be ready to go anywhere in the world with your husband, from the Arctic to the Tropics.’

  ‘Oh, rather,’ said I, ‘that would be fun.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what sort of a house, or even hovel you live in, so long as you are happy together inside.’ That seemed to me too obvious to require assent.

  ‘One of the pleasantest things in married life is that you have no money of your own, but have to come to your husband for every sixpence.’ Here mother and I saw precisely eye to eye, for we both hated money calculations.

  ‘Some husbands and wives agree to go their own ways—each not minding what the other does. There may be points about this, but it’s far better to discuss things, and come to some common plan…especially about anything to do with the children.’

  ‘Oh yes, far better,’ I agreed with an appreciative smile.

  I have found throughout life that the easiest way to say anything extremely difficult is to call it over the stairs or across the garden in a casual tone. This gives the recipient time, for he can always pretend he didn’t hear and ask for a repetition. It also gives him a chance to hide a tell-tale countenance. Perhaps it was some such idea of avoiding hateful ‘tactfulness’ that led mother to say casually one day, apropos of nothing, while she was writing a letter and I was busy over some Latin, ‘I suppose you realize that you will have to sleep with Arthur?’ ‘Oh yes,’ I replied, with the same appreciative smile that I had given to all her other remarks on a happy married life. I thi
nk now that she must have been puzzled as to how much or how little I knew. But she probed no further, and I think her restraint was wise. In all our talks, however, there were two injunctions reiterated so often that it was impossible for me to forget them. It was not until later years that I discovered the darker parts of her life that had given rise to these injunctions, which she had learnt ‘with her blood’. One was ‘be deliberate’, sounding far more obvious and easy than it really is. The other was ‘be sure you are never capricious with Arthur’. Obviously in her scheme of things men were the important people. Well, they are. And I shall never cease to be grateful to her for training me from childhood to appreciate this point.

  Material considerations never troubled her. As for the possible date of our wedding, and all the ways and means and prospects of the future, she never referred to them. Nor did I, even mentally, for I knew it must be a long time ahead. There were some lines I came across and learnt by heart that fitted my present case exactly, and I used to say them to myself as I pounded off to school. They may not be correctly remembered, but they began like this:

  Most sweet it is, with unuplifted eyes,

  To pace the ground, if path there be or none,

  While a fair region round the traveller lies,

  Which he forbears again to look upon.

  §3

  Where does a decade end? This is a story of the eighties, and perhaps should end with the winter of 1889. But a compromise will suit me best, for the early part of 1890 brought such a change in my work and life that a full stop seems natural. As soon as the autumn term was over mother and I put out for Cornwall. We were so anxious to arrive at Paddington in time that we started absurdly early, only to find that the winter timetable was different from the summer one, and that we had an hour and a half to wait. But mother thought there were few things more amusing than a railway station when oneself was calm and other people were not. But one can be too calm. Dym met us as usual at Plymouth, and took us off for a cup of tea in Mill Bay station, where the refreshment-room was away from the platforms. We had heaps to talk and laugh about, and Dym assured us that there was no hurry, for refreshment-room clocks are kept fast, but when we thought it was about time we were taking our seats again, we found an empty platform and the red lights of the last train to Cornwall just disappearing. There was nothing to do but laugh, incriminate one another, send a telegram to uncle Joe, and go to an hotel. Now it is just possible that mother’s bed was damp—one seizes on any explanation, but ever after that holiday she was subject every now and again to mysterious pains. She would be perfectly well for a week or two, and able to take her long walks, and go sketching when it was fine; so that we hoped the trouble was passing off. When Easter was close at hand Arthur and I planned a special little holiday for her. I suppose we owe it to Moses, or perhaps some ancient moon-worshipper, that schools break up at different times in the spring. It chanced in ’90 that my school was dispersed a full week before the one at Bedford; so Arthur suggested that mother and I should take rooms for that week at the Swan Inn at Elstow, where he could come over to see us every day; and he hoped to get his friend Bourne for a day or two.

  In those days the town had not encroached on Elstow, and the little village was one of those lovely spots of beauty that people are now beginning to value and try to ‘preserve’. In addition to the usual beauties of old timbered cottages and thatched barns, great trees and a vivid, velvety ‘green’, it had an ancient moot-house, and a church with the curiosity of a tower separate from the main building. The association with Bunyan was another great attraction, and I liked to picture the jolly tinker drinking in the bar of the ‘Swan’ in his unregenerate days. Mother and I were entranced with the old inn itself, its rickety stairs and uneven floors, the homeliness of the innkeeper and his wife, the generous meals, and the one decoration on the wall of our sitting-room—a faded sepia print of biblical history from Adam and Eve to Revelation. I caught mother and Arthur laughing quietly together one day over an episode in this print, which had been depicted with more vigour than delicacy, and I heard her say, ‘Believe me, it’s always the woman who does the tempting’. I was rather shocked at the time, but have since come to pretty much the same conclusion.

  Everything combined to make that a happy week for mother. She was in surroundings that recalled her boy Charles continually; she had recently had a letter from Barnholt who was expecting to come home in the summer; we had daily visits from Arthur and his fellow masters; and the weather was April at its best. What was not so pleasant she managed to keep to herself, as the following letter will show. It was written on our return to London, and came to my hand for the first time only a few days ago:

  West Kensington. April 17th ’90.

  Here we are again, Tony darling returned on Tuesday night, and dreadfully sorry were we to leave the sunny, quiet old village, beloved Elstow. How kind and thoughtful Arthur was I cannot possibly express. Our little spree cost us more money than we counted on, but never was money better spent in the procuring of happiness; it was altogether lovely and with much of a certain romance about it. Molly made a little sketch of the church, from our window, for you, but was so dissatisfied with its finish that she tore it up, thereby making both Arthur and me angry. I did two or three sketches, which you will see when you come up. I do not feel much better and am altogether disheartened about myself. I am sure you have no idea how far from well I am; but as Molly says ‘it’s a poor heart that never rejoices’.

  The sacred resting-place of our boy was looking lovely and Molly put some fresh flowers there every day—azaleas, lilies of the valley, and some sweet polyanthus and daisies.

  Mr. Hutchinson came to call twice, and took tea with us in Arthur’s room. Arthur said I was setting my cap at him. Mr. Bourne came on Tuesday to spend a day and night with Arthur; of course, he was brought to our rooms immediately; he’s a delightful man as I am sure you will say if you ever see him. He and Arthur and Molly and I walked down to the station together; it was quite jolly tramping along in the dark. Had a letter from Dym this morning, or Molly had, same thing; he is fishing on Dartmoor. Please tell me how you are, you pearl of Antoninas, and when you are coming up. With dearest love

  Mary.

  I find that quite by chance I began this story with a letter from mother, and am now closing it with the last she ever wrote. For about a week after our return from Elstow she seemed in splendid health and spirits, and we were full of plans for the future as well as getting ready for Tony’s long-promised visit. We had just been to a good shop near South Kensington Station, to buy her a new paint-brush, when her mysterious pains became suddenly worse. In spite of her protests I called in a doctor, with the result that she was ordered to a nursing-home and operated on. She lived for a few days so cheerfully that I hoped all was well; but there was a sudden relapse, and with a last thought for Tony she died on May Day.

  The nurses kindly led me away into an empty room, and I looked out on one of those suburban streets that seem to wipe out of life every vestige of dignity and grace. At that desolate moment I would have welcomed a dense fog, a downpour of rain, or a thunderstorm; but it was a brilliant sunny day, and a barrel-organ must needs burst into a merry tune. It struck me like a dreadful mockery, but as I look back on it now it seems a fitting requiem for one who had braved her full share of tragedy, and yet had always managed to suck merriment from the least cheerful surroundings.

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