However, spirits soon rose, for compensations became more weighty as the journey went on. Chief among these was the looking forward to seeing my father again, who was never able to spare more than a few days for a Cornish visit. We had heaps to tell him, and liked to show off our Cornish accent and turns of speech. For some time after our return we would say, ‘Where’s he to?’ instead of the English, ‘Where is he?’ and ‘Going out are you?’ instead of ‘Are you going out?’ Tom had a theory that this method of putting the important word first came from our having been descended from the Romans. Our family name of Vivian was certainly of Roman origin. Some energetic member had the matter traced by experts, who ‘discovered’ to our immense delight that we were descended from the Roman centurion who jumped into the water crying, ‘Desilite, milites!’ To our fancy this brave invader fell in love with a Cornish maiden, and our lively family was the result, revelling in the motto: ‘Dum vivimus vivamus’.
The name Vivian came in useful on our return journey, for our luggage was all labelled with it. At Paddington in those days all bags and trunks were arranged on the arrival platform under the letters of the alphabet. To find your belongings all you had to do was to go to the right initial. Since few people’s names began with ‘V’, our baggage was to be seen in lonely state. It seems to me a good plan, for friends could also meet you at the initial. There we would find my father with cab engaged and all ready for us.
None but an old Londoner can understand the curious attraction of the town. After the music of the words ‘London only’ at Reading, we gave ourselves up to the nil admirari spirit. The size and importance of the terminus might alarm a timid fellow passenger, but were nothing to us. The wet streets (for it invariably seemed to rain on our return), the reflections from the street-lamps and the shops, the utter indifference of everybody to us and our concerns—why was it fascinating even to a child? I suppose we took on that feeling of superiority to all the world, the idea of finality, that London gives. No sign-posts to other towns are to be seen. Here’s London. Here you are. We were almost of the same mind as the old Cornish farm-labourer who could not be made to believe that there was anything beyond London.
Mother’s power of producing a spread on our return home was able to work at a distance, for my main recollection of coming into the house was a big meal laid ready on the dining-room table, and the excited talk of all our doings as we sat round it. My father and usually Tom as well had to be shown all our sketches, bits of Cornish stone and shells, and be told all our jokes and hairbreadth escapes. The grief at leaving Cornwall was definitely over.
A change came over our home life when Tom left Shrewsbury. His education, except for Latin and Greek, had to begin again, and he started preparing for a London degree. Dym taught him mathematics, for his ideas in that line were hardly better than mine. Although literature was almost part of the family furniture and not a ‘subject’ in those days, history had to be studied, for Shrewsbury had been aware of nothing later than the Roman Empire. French he read every day with mother.
With all this being done at home, and Dym preparing for a mathematics scholarship at Cambridge, the study became more a work-room than a play-room, and some kind of order had to be maintained. Now whatever else Tom had failed to learn at Shrewsbury he had acquired the knack of ruling others, and by common consent he became a kind of Dictator. A general meeting was held, and he divulged a grand scheme for organizing our life in the study on democratic lines. A family club was formed, to be called ‘The Library’. The set of rules drawn up was to be as binding as the Decalogue. Like the Decalogue they were ten in number and chiefly negative. ‘Thou shalt not was the tone, but they did not interfere with the liberty of the decently behaved.
Although mother had nothing whatever to do with the affair, she must have been very glad of these rules, for they enabled the household to run smoothly without her having to harry, scold, or punish. Thus, in addition to regulations about work in the study, they forbade being late to breakfast (i.e. coming down after grace was said), going upstairs with boots on, omitting to brush your teeth, not hanging up coat and cap, and suchlike tiresome points for a mother to watch.
You may wonder how the club managed to enforce its rules. We all had definite pocket-money once a week, except me. I merely levied money from my father whenever I wanted some. Tom’s plan was that we should be fined a penny, twopence, &c., up to sixpence, according to a definite scale of charges every time we broke a rule. He bought an account-book, assigned a page to each of us, and reckoned up how much each owed at the end of the week.
Still you may wonder how the payment of the fines was enforced. It was quite simple—no payment, no entry to the study. Since the study was the heart of our home, to be shut out of it was misery. Only once was there a failure to pay up. Barnholt was not recalcitrant, but bankrupt. I shall never forget the two days that he was shut out, wandering disconsolately about the house, doing his hateful lessons on the stairs. Mother was wrung with pity, and so indeed were all of us, but we dared not interfere with discipline by subsidizing him. However, I had private means, could stand it no longer, and advanced him something…and Tom had the sense to make no ugly inquiries.
Tom soon found what he had no doubt hoped—that we had quite a nice little sum of money. He then unfolded his larger plan: the club was to be a real library. The shelves that had been decorated with childish fancies were cleared and made ready for books, and the first outlay was to be an additional bookcase that Charles had seen in Upper Street second hand. The books themselves made quite a respectable show. Tom had brought a good many from Shrewsbury, one of which was actually a prize. Dym had plenty of prizes and a lot of mathematical books. One I took to be Comic Sections was very disappointing when I opened it. Charles and even Barnholt had gained a prize or two, and we all had several gift books. When we had levied some Scott and Dickens from the bookcase downstairs our shelves began to look businesslike.
Imagine our excitement when we found that soon after the bookcase had been bought we had enough money to buy a new book. The number of books suggested, the meetings we held, the time spent in discussing the various possibilities—it all seems beyond belief today, when books are so cheap. The die was cast at last. Our love of Ungava determined us to get another of Ballantyne’s, and Tom was commissioned to buy The Iron Horse. I asked Charles what it would be about. ‘It’ll be something like the story of the wooden horse at Troy, I hope,’ said he. Surely no book was ever read and re-read and talked over as that first new volume, although we went on to buy many more.
One book we kept merely as a joke against Tom, for no one ever opened it, and its pages were uncut. Tom had been sent by my father to buy Barnes on St. Matthew. The bookseller said he was sorry that he had not Barnes on St. Matthew, he had only Barnes on Isaiah. ‘Oh, that will do,’ said Tom amiably, and he bought it and took it home, to cause more merriment than Barnes would have thought possible.
The outcome of our Library idea was an increased pride in the room itself. We took it in turn week by week to dust and tidy the study before breakfast. Since Tom didn’t go to school he had time after breakfast to make a tour of inspection, and if he found any part undusted, or a book lying about, he charged the weekly cleaner any fine he thought right, ‘not exceeding sixpence’. We never disputed his authority, for he took his own turn quite fairly and paid up his own fines. However, he had the privilege of being allowed to pay one of us to do his cleaning.
For small misdemeanours, such as doing sums aloud, shaking the table, or spilling the ink, Tom executed summary justice by means of a big, round, black ruler, that always lay on the table like the mace in Parliament. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he would say very quietly, and down would come the blow, fairly softly if you were quick in holding out your hand. I was spared the ruler, whatever I did, but otherwise was a full member of the club for all privileges and penalties. And I was an ever-ready runner of messages and fetcher of ‘my india-rubber, darling, on the hall t
able’. In fact stairs were my hobby, for I could do three at a time. One day I was foolish enough to defy Tom. He was busy, and told me to pick up a piece of paper that had floated on to the floor. ‘No, I won’t,’ said I, rushing to the door. I saw Tom get up, and dreading what he might do to me I fled in real terror to my bedroom, and crouched down on the farther side of the bed and hid under the valance. Tom followed at a leisurely pace, came over, picked me up in his arms without a word, and carried me up to the study. There he made my hand grasp the bit of paper and place it on the table. I felt very foolish, and, strange as it may seem, that is the only difference I have ever had with Tom throughout our lives.
After a while we were in sufficient funds to take in some magazines. Sunshine and Little Folks for the younger ones, and Cassell’s Family Magazine for us all. I can still remember the deep interest I took in a long serial story called ‘March Winds and April Showers bring forth May Flowers’. To my great satisfaction it didn’t turn out to be all about nature, but about a large family of boys and girls, who got into scrapes, quarrelled, and made it up again, and had various jolly adventures. One short story in my magazine was amusing enough for the boys to read. ‘Don’t let the Joneses know’ described some children going to a party. They were in distress because they had only a donkey-cart to go in. The rich Joneses were their special dread. These rich people would roll up in their carriage and pair, and would laugh if they heard about the donkey. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let the Joneses know’—that was the order of the day. Scheming by various delays to arrive late so as to slip in unobserved, they drew up at the precise moment that the Joneses had hit upon. Steeling themselves for the worst, they were astonished to find all the Joneses crowding round their cart, not with jeers, but with delighted admiration. ‘How lovely! Look! A real donkey! And Harry driving it himself!’ By this time the other guests had run out to look, and all were exclaiming, ‘Oh, how we wish we had a donkey!’ In fact they and their donkey were the main topic of talk and source of envy all the evening.
Mother specially liked this story, for it illustrated her oft-repeated injunction that for comfort and success in life one must never suppose that any other people whatsoever are one’s social superiors, ‘because,’ she added succinctly, ‘they aren’t’.
Cassell’s Magazine provided stronger meat, far more substantial than we get in the average magazine today. It had to last us a month, and I think every word of it found some reader in the family. When we had all read the portion of the serial story, and very definitely not before, we discussed endlessly at tea-time how the characters would turn out and who would marry whom. With so little new reading-matter to distract us we were able to carry all the details in our head until the next issue. The plot seems simple as I look back on it: a girl was engaged to a man whom duty bade her marry, while she was really in love with another. No one in those stories was ever actually married to the wrong man. To me the triangle seemed insoluble, and I was all prepared for a broken heart and tears. But Charles announced one day that the first young man would die, and all would be well. ‘How do you know?’ we asked him. ‘I noticed him cough in the second chapter.’
Charles broke our rule of never discussing a book’s plot with one still reading it, when he saw me one day deep in A Journey to the Interior of the Earth. ‘Have you come to where they all die?’ said he. I read on, expecting the worst on every page, until the end showed them all alive and well. I went to Charles in no little heat. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I never said they all died, I only asked you if you had come to it. And if you weren’t a little silly you would know that they couldn’t have all died, or who was left to tell the story?’
Wedding-bells were the usual end to our stories, of which The Heir of Redclyffe was a fair sample. Needless to say I had no notion of any difficulties after the bells had pealed. I took it for granted that husbands and wives were as happy as my own parents, with the exception of Aunt Bessie who grumbled at nothing, and Aunt Lizzie’s husband who got drunk and threw things at her, a surely unusual case. Vanity Fair I read without the faintest suspicion of the intent of the note in the bouquet, or of Rawdon’s reason for knocking down Lord Steyne. I thoroughly enjoyed that scene, although it seemed quite uncalled for.
One winter evening I was sitting over the fire engrossed in Jane Eyre, and had just got to where Grace Poole seems to be more than meets the eye, when Charles appealed to mother to take the book from me as being not very proper. She looked up, surprised, and then said, ‘Oh, ah, yes, perhaps she had better not read it,’ and took the book from me as suggested. Charles only meant it in fun, and was sorry that mother had taken it seriously, but the deed was done.
As a make-weight to our lighter magazines we took in the Nineteenth Century, and the elder boys read some of the articles. I struggled through one by Gladstone, in order to be able to say I had, but honestly I understood no single sentence. We were brought up in the belief that Gladstone was semi-divine, and to read an article by him ranked with reading the Bible. However, Tom introduced a wholesome note of doubt on this point, and also on the absolute worshipfulness of Queen Victoria.
‘I think she has had a pretty easy time of it,’ said he, startling the tea-table, after one of mother’s tributes to our beloved Queen.
‘Oh, no!’ cried mother, ‘she has walked on the edge of a sword.’ Thereafter I always pictured the Queen engaged in this absurd feat. I had been taken to see her once as she drove along Essex Road, and my memory of her made the idea of her walking on a sword merely funny. She was a shadowy figure to most people, but everyone loved the Prince of Wales. He took a hansom once, and next thing you knew he might be in an omnibus. I asked mother what she would do if the Prince were to drop in to see us. ‘I should offer him a little whisky and water,’ was her immediate reply.
In the matter of religion as well as politics Tom knocked down a few family idols. My father was a dark horse in these directions, but now and again let loose a delightfully irreverent remark. A Wesleyan concert was billed ‘to commence at 7.30 D.V.’ ‘Good Lord!’ cried my father. ‘Do they suppose the Almighty is going to bother about the time of their blooming concert?’ But as a rule he let mother’s piety have full sway. And it really did little harm, for it was concerned with externals almost entirely. Thus we were not allowed to put any other book on the top of the Bible. We knew the dreadful story of the little girl who couldn’t reach a shelf, trod on the big family Bible to help her, fell, and of course died of her injuries. So you can imagine the shock I got when Tom spoke lightly to mother about Elijah’s sacrifice on Carmel.
‘Petroleum was what he poured on the altar. He had a secret store of it, as all those holy men had—Moses on Sinai, and every time there was “fire from heaven”.’
When mother expostulated, Tom said, ‘Well, then, where did Elijah get all that water when there was not a drop to be had?’
Mother was still unconvinced until Tom told her of a passage in Maccabees, which explained the whole thing, and said where the petroleum was stored. He said that Elijah had no idea of humbugging the people, but thought God had given him this ‘holy water’ to use for His glory. At this mother was quite excited at the new light on an old difficulty. Still she was not clear how the petroleum caught fire. Tom looked round, saw me in the corner, and told me to run upstairs to the study and fetch Dym’s magnifying glass.
‘Now, mother, come out into the sun,’ said Tom, ‘and I’ll soon show you.’ In a few moments a piece of thin paper was scorched and actually alight.
‘But Elijah hadn’t a magnifying glass,’ said mother.
‘Oh, yes, he had. Those prophets knew lots of scientific facts, but kept them as holy secrets, entrusted to them by God, to be made use of for His glory. Look at their weather forecasts, their cure of diseases, their poison-antidotes. A magnet was a miracle.’
I was rather alarmed at all this, and was surprised to see how unhorrified and really interested mother was. I half expected to see Tom himself struck dea
d by an outraged Jehovah.
In the summer of 1877 Tom started a new idea. Not content with our magazines, he suggested that we should make one of our own. Of course we took up the idea with fervour, and meetings were held to decide the paper to be used, the size of the page, the material and colour of the cover. Its name was The Bee, because it was to go from flower to flower collecting honey for its readers, as Tom explained in a poem on the first page. He, of course, was the Editor, Dym the science special correspondent, Charles ‘our artist’ and provider of light fiction. But there was very little light about the publication, in which everything was expressed as solemnly as possible.
We had no reproducing machine, so that it all had to be written in manuscript. In order to preserve uniformity of appearance Tom copied it all himself. He sat at one end of the study table, and it was a point of honour not to look. Charles did a water-colour frontispiece for each number, one of Canonbury Tower, another of St. Paul’s from Merchant Taylors’ School playground, and a large number of pen-and-ink illustrations. I was allowed to do some little tail-pieces.
Tom wrote heavy articles in the style of the Nineteenth Century, on such subjects as ‘The effect on Poetry of Science’, ‘The Penge Case’, and ‘The Ritualists’. Charles described Wagner’s Lohengrin, and provided a serial story. Dym wrote on Voltaic Electricity, with diagrams of test-tubes and things, and on the Russo-Turkish Relations. I managed an account of a picnic in Cornwall, and a poem on my cat. I can remember pacing up and down my bedroom in torture of composition for my last line, which was rung out at last with more truth than rhythm. The final stanza ran thus:
Of a very bad cough
Poor Pinky died,
But I must now finish off,
Which to do I’ve often tried.
Tom kept to himself that in the original her fatal disease was spelt ‘coff’.
Tom got blood out of a stone, for he actually extracted a contribution from Barnholt. There was a symposium in the November issue on ‘Flogging at School’, on which each expressed his opinion. Barnholt produced no fewer than twenty-two lines on the subject. His opening remark was arresting: ‘Flogging is a very good substitute for boys who will not work.’ The burden of his article was that any punishment was better than endless detentions.
A London Child of the Seventies Page 14