Chapter IV: The Good Man and Cupid 256 (5)

The tailor’s widow was a woman out of the common, for a favourite author of hers was Milton, and she told her lodger that her “late husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she read Milton with such proper emphasis.” This endeared her to her lodger too, for a pocket Milton was his inseparable companion during his travels. But I fear that when he proceeds to deduce from the widow a general love of the great authors among even the common English people, he goes too far. He made indeed the mistake that he might make to-day, when cheap reprints of classics are far more numerous than they were then: the mistake of supposing that people read what they possess. Classics are still largely furniture and decoration. For the most part, I fear, the owners of the hundred best books are reading something from the circulating library.

The widow and her servant looked after him well, giving him bread and butter cut as thin as “poppy leaves.” But what he liked even better was their toast: “another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. You take one slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once. This is called toast.”--That seems to be a very pleasant touch. I wonder into how many books of travel in England toast has found its way.

His curiosity took him everywhere, sometimes without any introduction, and sometimes with a letter from the German Minister, Count Lucy. His first experience of the House of Commons, with no influence at his back, was amusing and illuminating. “Above there is a small staircase, by which you go to the gallery, the place allotted for strangers. The first time I went up this small staircase and had reached the rails, I saw a very genteel man in black standing there. I accosted him without any introduction, and asked him whether I might be allowed to go in the gallery. He told me that I must be introduced by a Member, or else I could not get admission there. Now, as I had not the honour to be acquainted with a Member, I was under the mortifying necessity of retreating, and again going downstairs: as I did, much chagrined. And now, as I was sullenly marching back, I heard something said about a bottle of wine, which seemed to be addressed to me. I could not conceive what it could mean, till I got home, when my obliging landlady told me, I should have given the well-dressed man half a crown, or a couple of shillings, for a bottle of wine.

“Happy,” he says, “in this information, I went again the next day; when the same man who before had sent me away, after I had given him only two shillings, very politely opened the door for me, and himself recommended me to a good seat in the gallery.”

Manners in Parliament seem to have improved a little. Mr. Moritz says: “The Members of the House of Commons have nothing particular in their dress; they even come into the house in their great-coats, and with boots and spurs. It is not at all uncommon to see a Member lying stretched out on one of the benches while others are debating. Some crack nuts, others eat oranges, or whatever else is in season. There is no end to their going in or out; and as often as any one wishes to go out, he places himself before the Speaker, and makes him his bow, as if, like a school-boy, he asked his tutor’s permission. Those who speak, seem to deliver themselves with but little, perhaps not always with even a decorous, gravity. All that is necessary is to stand up in your place, take off your hat, turn to the Speaker (to whom all the speeches are addressed), to hold your hat and stick in one hand, and with the other to make any such motions as you fancy necessary to accompany your speech.”

Mr. Moritz had good fortune, for he heard both Fox and Burke. He writes: “Charles Fox is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks of sagacity and fire in his eyes. I have frequently heard the people here say, that this same Mr. Fox is as cunning as a fox. Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken.” Burke was then only fifty-three, but he had just been excluded from the Cabinet.

A few weeks later, on his return to London, Moritz was again in the House to hear the debate on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham. Fox, General Conway, and Burke were the speakers. This is interesting: “Burke now stood up and made a most elegant, though florid speech, in praise of the late Marquis of Rockingham. As he did not meet with sufficient attention, and heard much talking and many murmurs, he said, with much vehemence, and a sense of injured merit, ‘This is not treatment for so old a Member of Parliament as I am, and I will be heard!’ On which there was immediately a most profound silence.”

Living authors seem to have had no interest for Mr. Moritz, and therefore we get no glimpse of Dr. Johnson; but he saw everything else. He went to Ranelagh and Vauxhall; to many of the churches, even preaching in one; to the British Museum and to the theatre, where he was so much taken with a musical farce called “The Agreeable Surprise” that he saw it again and wished to translate it into German. Edwin was the principal comedian. Although the play was good, the audience was very uncivil.

Here again it is not uninstructive to pause and ask ourselves for our views on the London theatre-gallery in 1782. It had not occurred to me that the gods were quite as high-spirited and powerful as Mr. Moritz describes them. In his seat in the pit Mr. Moritz became at once their target; but whether it was because he looked foreign, or because he had the effrontery to be able to afford to sit there, is not explained.

“Often and often, whilst I sat here, did a rotten orange or pieces of the peel of an orange fly past me, or past some of my neighbours, and once one of them actually hit my hat: without my daring to look round, for fear another might then hit me on the face. Besides this perpetual pelting from the gallery, which renders an English play-house so uncomfortable, there is no end to their calling out and knocking with their sticks, till the curtain is drawn up. I saw a miller’s, or a baker’s boy thus, like a huge booby, leaning over the rails and knocking again and again on the outside, with all his might, so that he was seen by everybody, without being in the least ashamed or abashed.

“In the boxes, quite in a corner, sat several servants, who were said to be placed there to keep the seats for the families they served, till they should arrive; they seemed to sit remarkably close and still, the reason of which, I was told, was their apprehension of being pelted; for if one of them dares to look out of the box, he is immediately saluted with a shower of orange peel from the gallery.” And here the London experiences end.

Now for the open road. Having coached to Richmond, Mr. Moritz set out to reach Oxford on foot, sleeping at whatever village he came to at nightfall. But he was not very fortunate, either because he fell among peculiarly rude and inhospitable folk or because his appearance was so odd as to be irresistible. A traveller on foot in this country, he says, “seems to be considered as a sort of wild man, or out-of-the-way being, who is stared at, pitied, suspected and shunned by everybody that meets him. At least this has hitherto been my case, on the road from Richmond to Windsor. When I was tired, I sat down in the shade under the hedges, and read Milton. But this relief was soon rendered disagreeable to me; for those who rode, or drove, past me, stared at me with astonishment; and made many significant gestures, as if they thought my head deranged. So singular must it needs have appeared to them to see a man sitting along the side of a public road, and reading. I therefore found myself obliged, when I wished to rest myself and read, to look out for a retired spot in some by-lane or cross-road.

“Many of the coachmen who drove by called out to me, ever and anon, and asked if I would not ride on the outside; and when, every now and then, a farmer on horseback met me, he said, and seemingly with an air of pity for me, ‘’Tis warm walking, sir!’ and when I passed through a village, every old woman testified her pity by an exclamation of ‘Good God!’”

His troubles continued, for an Eton inn refused to admit him at all, and the servants at the Windsor inn did all they could to make him uncomfortable. He had his revenge, however. “As I was going away, the waiter, who had served me with so very ill a grace, placed himself on the stairs, and said, ‘Pray remember the waiter!’ I gave him three halfpence: on which he saluted me with the heartiest ‘G--d d----n you, sir!’ I had ever heard. At the door stood the cross maid, who also accosted me with ‘Pray remember the chambermaid!’--‘Yes, yes,’ said I, ‘I shall long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour and shameful incivility’; and so I gave her nothing. I hope she was stung and nettled by my reproof: however, she strove to stifle her anger by a contemptuous, loud horse-laugh.”

An adventure with a foot-pad and rebuffs from other landlords followed, but in the little Berkshire village of Nettlebed, five miles north-west of Henley, he found repose. Nettlebed remained in his mind as the most charming spot in England: he liked the inn, he liked the people, and he liked the church. His description of the inn actually re-creates the past; indeed, it is not unworthy to stand beside that description of that inn in “The Old Curiosity Shop” in which the nature of dwarfs and giants was so illuminatingly discussed, over the landlord’s wonderful stew.

“‘May I stay here to-night?’ I asked with eagerness.

“‘Why, yes, you may.’--An answer which, however cold and surly, made me exceedingly happy.

“They showed me into the kitchen, and let me sit down to sup at the same table with some soldiers and the servants. I now, for the first time, found myself in one of their kitchens which I had so often read of in Fielding’s fine novels, and which certainly give one, on the whole, a very accurate idea of English manners.

“The chimney in this kitchen, where they were roasting and boiling, seemed to be taken off from the rest of the room and enclosed by a wooden partition: the rest of the apartment was made use of as a sitting and eating room. All round on the sides were shelves with pewter dishes and plates, and the ceiling was well stored with provisions of various kinds, such as sugar-loaves, black-puddings, hams, sausages, flitches of bacon, etc.

“While I was eating, a post-chaise drove up; and in a moment both the folding-doors were thrown open, and the whole house set in motion, in order to receive, with all due respect, these guests, who, no doubt, were supposed to be persons of consequence. The gentlemen alighted, however, only for a moment, and called for nothing but a couple of pots of beer; and then drove away again. Notwithstanding the people of the house behaved to them with all possible attention, for they came in a post-chaise.”

On at last tearing himself from Nettlebed, after three futile efforts, Mr. Moritz walked to Dorchester, where he hoped to sleep but was not permitted. Late at night, therefore, he set out for Oxford, and was joined on the way by another traveller to the same city, a young clergyman. They reached Oxford just before midnight, and Mr. Moritz proposed to sleep on a stone. “No, no,” said his companion: and here we come to the gem of the book.

Hitherto Mr. Moritz has been now and then a little caustic and always an alert observer, holding himself well in hand; but in the next two pages a very delightful satirical glint appears. I consider the midnight theological conversation that follows by no means unworthy to be remembered along with Hogarth’s picture of a not dissimilar occasion. Whether it is known at Oxford I have not inquired; but I have several friends there who would immensely relish it.

“‘No, no,’” said his friend, “‘come along with me to a neighbouring ale-house, where it is possible they mayn’t be gone to bed and we may yet find company.’ We went on a few houses further, and then knocked at a door. It was then nearly twelve. They readily let us in; but how great was my astonishment when, on being shown into a room on the left, I saw a great number of clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on, sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him. My travelling companion introduced me to them, as a German clergyman, whom he could not sufficiently praise for my correct pronunciation of the Latin, my orthodoxy, and my good walking.

“I now saw myself in a moment, as it were, all at once transported into the midst of a company, all apparently very respectable men, but all strangers to me. And it appeared to me very extraordinary that I should, thus at midnight, be in Oxford, in a large company of Oxonian clergy, without well knowing how I had got there. Meanwhile, however, I took all the pains in my power to recommend myself to my company, and in the course of conversation I gave them as good an account as I could of our German universities, neither denying nor concealing that, now and then, we had riots and disturbances. ‘O, we are very unruly here too,’ said one of the clergymen, as he took a hearty draught out of his pot of beer, and knocked on the table with his hand. The conversation now became louder, more general, and a little confused; they enquired after Mr. Bruns, at present professor at Helmstadt, who was known by many of them.

“Among these gentlemen there was one of the name of Clerk, who seemed ambitious to pass for a great wit, which he attempted by starting sundry objections to the Bible. I should have liked him better if he had confined himself to punning and playing on his own name, by telling us again and again, that he should still be at least a Clerk, even though he should never become a clergyman. Upon the whole, however, he was, in his way, a man of some humour, and an agreeable companion.

“Among other objections to the Scriptures, he stated this one to my travelling companion, whose name I now learnt was Maud, that it was said in the Bible that God was a wine-bibber and a drunkard. On this Mr. Maud fell into a violent passion, and maintained that it was utterly impossible for any such passage to be found in the Bible. Another divine, a Mr. Caern, referred us to his absent brother, who had already been forty years in the Church, and must certainly know something of such a passage if it were in the Bible, but he would venture to lay any wager his brother knew nothing of it.

“‘Waiter! fetch a Bible!’ called out Mr. Clerk, and a great family Bible was immediately brought in, and opened on the table among all the beer jugs.

“Mr. Clerk turned over a few leaves, and in the book of Judges, 9th chapter, verse 13, he read, ‘Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man?’

“Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, who had before been most violent, now sat as if struck dumb. A silence of some minutes prevailed, when all at once the spirit of revelation seemed to come on me, and I said, ‘Why, gentlemen, you must be sensible that it is but an allegorical expression; and,’ I added, ‘how often in the Bible are kings called Gods!’

“‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ said Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, ‘it is an allegorical expression; nothing can be more clear; it is a metaphor, and therefore it is absurd to understand it in a literal sense.’ And now they, in their turn, triumphed over poor Clerk, and drank large draughts to my health. Mr. Clerk, however, had not yet exhausted his quiver, and so he desired them to explain to him a passage in the prophecy of Isaiah, where it is said in express terms that God is a barber. Mr. Maud was so enraged at this, that he called Clerk an impudent fellow; and Mr. Caern again and yet more earnestly referred us to his brother, who had been forty years in the Church, and who therefore, he doubted not, would also consider Mr. Clerk as an impudent fellow, if he maintained any such abominable notions. [This is sheer Dickens, isn’t it?]

“Mr. Clerk all this while sat perfectly composed, without either a smile or a frown; but turning to a passage in Isaiah, chapter xx, verse 7, he read these words: ‘In the same day the Lord shall shave with a razor ... the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.’ If Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern were before stunned and confounded, they were much more so now; and even Mr. Caern’s brother, who had been forty years in the Church, seemed to have left them in the lurch, for he was no longer referred to. I broke silence a second time, and said, ‘Why, gentlemen, this also is clearly metaphorical, and it is equally just, strong and beautiful.’ ‘Aye, to be sure it is,’ rejoined Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern both in a breath; at the same time rapping the table with their knuckles. I went on, and said, ‘You know it was the custom for those who were captives to have their heads shorn; the plain import, then, of this remarkable expression is nothing more than that God would deliver the rebellious Jews to be prisoners to a foreign people, who would shave their beards!’ ‘Aye, to be sure it is; anybody may see it is; why it is as clear as the day!’ ‘So it is,’ rejoined Mr. Caern, ‘and my brother, who has been forty years in the Church, explains it just as this gentleman does.’

“We had now gained a second victory over Mr. Clerk; who being perhaps ashamed either of himself or of us, now remained quiet, and made no further objections to the Bible. My health, however, was again encored, and drunk in strong ale; which, as my company seemed to like so much, I was sorry I could not like. It either intoxicated or stupefied me; and I do think it overpowers one much sooner than so much wine could. The conversation now turned on many different subjects. At last, when morning drew near, Mr. Maud suddenly exclaimed, ‘D----n me, I must read prayers this morning at All-Souls!’”

The scene of that convivial disputation was the “Mitre”; and if there are any other equally amusing descriptions of a night in that inn I should like to read them. It reflects credit, not only upon the traveller, but also upon the very young lady, his translator, whose name, according to the editorial preface, was “fragrant with exemplary piety.”

Mr. Maud, before he departed on his conscientious errand, arranged to call for Mr. Moritz and show him Oxford; but the strong ale had been too much for the foreigner and he was not able to see the city till the day following. He was then taken to Corpus Christi and All Souls and other colleges. While “going along the street, we met the English poet laureate, Warton, now rather an elderly man; and yet he is still the fellow of a college. His greatest pleasure, next to poetry, is, as Mr. Maud told me, shooting wild ducks.” After Oxford, Mr. Moritz visited Stratford-on-Avon, which he reached in a coach. And after Stratford-on-Avon, he saw Birmingham and the Peak of Derbyshire, and so returned to London and Germany. He had other adventures and encounters, all described with liveliness; but here I must stop.

The ideal travel book could, I suppose, be written only by the Wandering Jew, who, never ceasing, as he does, to perambulate this globe, returning periodically, as one imagines, to every country, has it in his power in each successive description to note not only physical but social changes. I don’t know what intervals elapse between his visits to London, but they must be sufficiently lengthy to permit of very noticeable alterations, perceptible even to a footsore and disenchanted Hebrew of incredible age. In default of this ancient peripatetic, no one could do it better than Halley’s Comet, whose visits are paid punctually every seventy-four years.

The Windmill

Chance recently made me for a while the tenant of a windmill. Not to live in, and unhappily not to grind corn in, but to visit as the mood arose, and see the ships in the harbour from the topmost window, and look down on the sheep and the green world all around. For this mill stands high and white--so white, indeed, that when there is a thunder-cloud behind it, it seems a thing of polished aluminium.

From its windows you can see four other mills, all, like itself, idle, and one merely a ruin and one with only two sweeps left. But just over the next range of hills, out of sight, to the north-east, is a windmill that still merrily goes, and about five miles away to the north-west is another also active; so that things are not quite so bad hereabouts as in many parts of the country, where the good breezes blow altogether in vain. And recently as all the world knows there has been a boom in whole-meal bread which was to set many a pair of derelict mill-stones in action again.

Thinking over the losses which England has had forced upon her by steam and the ingenuity of the engineer, one is disposed to count the decay of the windmill among the first. Perhaps in the matter of pure picturesqueness the most serious thing that ever happened to England was the discovery of galvanized iron roofing; but, after all, there was never anything but quiet and rich and comfortable beauty about red roofs, whereas the living windmill is not only beautiful but romantic too: a willing, man-serving creature, yoked to the elements, a whirling monster, often a thing of terror. No one can stand very near the crashing sweeps of a windmill in half a gale without a tightening of the heart--a feeling comparable to that which comes from watching the waves break over a wall in a storm. And to be within the mill at such a time is to know something of sound’s very sources; it is the cave of noise itself. No doubt there are dens of hammering energy which are more shattering, but the noise of a windmill is largely natural, the product of wood striving with the good sou’-wester; it fills the ears rather than assaults them. The effect, moreover, is by no means lessened by the absence of the wind itself and the silent nonchalance of the miller and his man, who move about in the midst of this appalling racket with the quiet efficiency of vergers.

In my mill, of course, there is no such uproar; nothing but the occasional shaking of the cross-pieces of the idle sails. Everything is still, and the pity of it is that everything is in almost perfect order for the day’s work. The mill one day--some score years ago--was full of life; the next, and ever after, mute and lifeless, like a stream frozen in a night or the palace in Tennyson’s ballad of the “Sleeping Beauty.” There is no decay--merely inanition. One or two of the apple-wood cogs have been broken from the great wheel; a few floor planks have been rotted; but that is all. A week’s overhauling would put everything right. But it will never come, and the cheerful winds that once were to drive a thousand English mills so happily now bustle over the Channel in vain.

Not the least attractive thing about my mill is its profound woodenness. There is not enough iron in it to fill a wheelbarrow. The walls are wood, the sweeps, the brake, the wheels, the cogs (apple as I have said: how long were they discovering that apple was best, I wonder). Those fishing-smacks which from the topmost window we see on the grey waters do not owe more to the friendly forest.

I know a man who takes the loss of the windmill so much to heart that he is making a windmill map. He is beginning with Sussex only and marking with a cross every place--so far as he can now ascertain--where a windmill once stood. “That will show them what they have lost!” he says bitterly. “That will teach them to prefer steam!” The crosses will crowd like lovers’ kisses in some parts, for Sussex was a county of millers, and all over the Downs now one comes upon shallow pits from which ancient mills have been dug and dispersed. Imaginative archæologists find a thousand fantastic explanations of these hollows, and one even has been claimed for a prehistoric observatory; but all the time they are merely the foundations of windmills: nothing more romantic than that, and nothing less romantic.

To me, at any rate, this map will be a melancholy document. How much more so would it be to that greatest of mill-lovers and mill-painters and himself a miller and miller’s son, John Constable, could he see it! The Sussex mill-map alone would cause him to weep tears, for, though an alien, he knew our mills well, and painted many of them. Even at Brighton (such is the incorruptible beauty of these structures) he found mills to paint. One or two, indeed, still remain, but they are blackened stumps merely--only the ruins of the radiant aerial creatures of their prime, when the master sat before them with those paints and brushes whose magic secret it was to preserve and glorify English weather for all time. You will find some of these sketches in South Kensington Museum, particularly that masterpiece of wind and joyousness called “Spring,” which depicts the very mill in which the youthful artist, when milling was still his destiny, worked; and a favourite of mine is the “Mill Near Brighton,” seen over the shoulder of a poppied field, that hangs in the Salting collection at the National Gallery. Mr. Salting showed it to me soon after he bought it, and I longed for enough moral courage to snatch it from his hand and run. But one’s ordinary invertebrate easy rectitude prevailed, and I lost it.

Constable’s grief, I say, would be deep as he scanned this Sussex map for his lost darlings. How much more so when the Suffolk mill-map was laid before him! He used to say that a miller has a better chance to study the sky than any man: that is, on land. Certainly if he had never been a miller his own skies would not have the living truth that is theirs.

As to the loss of the miller, that is a matter that does not bear thinking about. That the elimination of this character, historically so shrewd and so genial, from the countryside should be borne with such equanimity proves the carelessness and apathy of England more almost than the rise of the dust-evolving, road-devouring car. And what chance has the English ballad poetry of the future with no millers to celebrate? But perhaps the bread boom will really bring him back. Devoutly do I hope so, for the only thing more beautiful in a landscape than a mill that is still is a mill that is active.

A Glimpse of Civilization

The sign of this inn, like that of so many in the fair land of France, was “Les Quatre Fils d’Aymon”; and who Aymon was, and what his four sons did, I wonder how many English people know. Aymon was the Duke of Dordogne, and his sons were Renaud, Guiscard, Alard, and Richard, and you may read of them in a twelfth-century French romance and in Victor Hugo’s _Légende des Siècles_. So much I can state, but no more. There are certain things that one’s memory will not retain, and the story of Aymon and his four sons is one of them. I have equal difficulty in remembering for certain whether the pen is mightier than the sword or the sword mightier than the pen.

But Aymon and his quartette matter nothing. What does matter is that in a French inn you may be as witty as you can, as intelligent as you can, but some one there will be more intelligent, more witty. We came to this inn, which is some three leagues distant from Paris, about five in the afternoon on a bitter, snowy day. We made the journey in a motor-car through the bleakest country I ever saw, chiefly over _pavé_, right from the heart of Paris, and the sign of Aymon and his family was the first to greet our eyes, strain them as we might. Hence, since there are few pleasures to compare with that of entering a warm inn while one is on a cold journey, we were very happy when the door closed behind us, and the rays of the circular stove in the middle of the room drew us to it like tentacles.

Where was the _patron_? (We had heard of the _patron_ as a character.) The _patron_, being also the _chef_, was in the kitchen--a vast, clean kitchen, with a glowing fire, and myriad copper pots on the walls; but he very willingly called in a lieutenant, and then brought certain hot cordials and himself to our table. Consider an English innkeeper being found at five in the afternoon in a spotless kitchen, himself in spotless white, and leaving it to discuss the world at large with two guests of a few minutes! For that is what we did--we discussed affairs. He had the “Petit Journal” before him, and we went through the pictures, and he dismissed men and matters with grunts and chuckles. He knew the world. He had lived and he knew. Napoleon III had once dined in this very inn, and a copper pipkin was still preserved on the kitchen wall in which part of the Imperial meal had been cooked; but it was nothing to our little host. President Fallières lunched there only a few months ago--in that very chair--but that also was nothing to him. Life is an individual business; life comes first; and an innkeeper has as much life to live as any one else, be it Emperor or President.

He is a short man, between fifty and sixty, with close-cropped, grizzled hair, a grizzled imperial, and a fierce, grizzled moustache in perpetual danger of being burned by his cigarette. As a young man he was cook to his officers’ mess, chiefly in Algiers, where he had a touch of sun, which accounts for a certain excitability and nervousness. (At a performance of “Biribi” at Antoine’s Theatre he had to be led out, it was so true and he so overwrought.) He would certainly have written poetry had his parents been rich. Trouble also he would as assuredly have plunged into; and indeed his life is not too smooth as it is, for he is terribly susceptible (those African sunstrokes!) and Madame had to keep both eyes very wide open before she ceased to care.

In his youth, before his Army period, he had been a valet in London, in Half-Moon Street, and though it was only for a few weeks and he speaks no English, it brings him into touch with English people a little quicker; and after a glass or two, if he likes you and Madame is absent, he will tell you of how the only woman he ever really loved was the English girl that he met in London. But this vein is not to be encouraged, since it ends in tears. For the most part he is a mocker--laughing and cynical--appraising everything and everybody in modern life with a French shrug or a French gesture, never wholly serious and never wholly thoughtless, living in that busy, materialistic French way that makes such contented citizens and such an efficient nation and is yet the despair of every moralist in Tunbridge Wells.

After a while the door opened, letting in an icy blast and a little woman in a plaid shawl. Her head was bare, her light brown hair being pulled back from the forehead in the French way. She had large diamond earrings, a pair of cold blue eyes capable of much surface mirth, and a shrewd calculating face. It was Madame. She sat down at once and began to talk, and talked on, cleverly, commandingly, till we left--cynical as her husband, but more alert. Her readiness was amazing. She took every point and added to it points of her own; while with every new customer that entered for a glass of coffee or cognac or an _apéritif_ she had a sentence or two of greeting and jest, flung across to their tables--for in this land of France, where people talk little of the conduct of life, but live it industriously, every man who wants refreshment may have a seat for his comfort and a table on which to stand his glass, and may sit there as long as he wishes.

How far (I thought as I sat there, while the landlord and the landlady and my friend exchanged their badinage) is this removed from the “Red Lions” and “King’s Heads” and “White Horses” of my native land, where landlords are plethoric and vinous, and landladies testy and not too clean, and barmaids vacuous and pert, and bars are crowded by horse-laughing loafers who know not when to stop! How different! And to what class of society in England would one have to go (I asked myself) for a similarly vivid banter and shrewd criticism of life? Certainly not to licensed victuallers, was the nearest reply I could frame.

Her Royal ’Tumnal Tintiness

She is absurdly small--a homœopathic dose of a dog. Nothing but the folly of Western fashions prevents her being carried in the sleeve, as Nature and Art intended her to be. But she is small only in figure: in all else she is as large as a Newfoundland--in fidelity and courage and spirit and protectiveness and appetite (proportionately), and love of ease--while in brain power she is larger. Although not six months old, she has the gravity of age, she suggests complete mental maturity. If she were ten she could not open an eye upon a superfluous caress with more languor or disdain. Her regality is such that one resorts to all kinds of expedients to win her favour. She has the more radiant merits of the cat--she eats like a cat, with all its meticulous cleanliness and precision, she plays with a cotton-reel like a cat, she has a cat’s flexibility in her toilet. On your knee she sinks into complacency like a cat. None the less she is a true dog too, with nearly all the stigmata of her kind--the black muzzle, the deep stoop, the flat forehead, the plumed tail carried high, the bowed legs, the minuteness, the nervous fluid. Her hue is that of a beech leaf in autumn.

When she runs from room to room she beats the floor with her fore-paws with a gallant little rocking-horse action. When she runs over grass she makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulating ripple of a sea-serpent, and her soft pads reverberate like muffled hoofs. When she is not running she is asleep. When she sleeps the most comfortable place in the room is hopelessly engaged until she wakes. However fast she may be sleeping, she wakes directly her particular friend leaves the room, her religion being sociability. Left alone she screams. Put out of the house alone, she circumnavigates it with the speed of thought, seeking an open door or window. The sunlight through her tongue is more than rubies.

One difficulty that seems to confront many owners of Pekingese spaniels is the finding of a suitable name; for it should of course be Chinese and also easily pronounceable. But to those who have the honour to possess Professor Giles’s “Chinese Biographical Dictionary” the situation is without such complications. Turning over its pages I quickly alighted upon a choice of engaging females whose names might fitly be conferred upon Her Autumn Leafiness. To mention a few, there is A-chiao, who, when a child, was shown to the Emperor Wu Ti, also a child, and he was asked what he thought of her as a possible wife. “Oh,” said the boy, “if I could get A-chiao I would have a golden house to keep her in.” There is Chao Fei-yen, who was so graceful and light that she was called “Flying Swallow.” There is Chao Yün, who died with these words from the “Diamond Sûtra” on her lips: “Like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble, like a shadow, like dew, like lightning.” There is Ch’i Nu, who had two lovers, one of which lived on the right of the house and the other on the left. Her father bade her tuck up the sleeve which corresponded to the man whom she preferred, and she tucked up both, saying that she would like to live with the handsome one and eat with the rich. (This dog is very like that.) There is Féng Hou, one of the favourites of the Emperor Yüan Ti, who, when a bear escaped, did not flee with all the other ladies, but remained to face the bear, saying: “I was afraid lest some harm should come to Your Majesty’s person.” There is Hsi Chih, who was never so lovely as when she knitted her brows; and P’an Fei, the favourite of Hsiao Pao-chüan, who said of her, “Every step makes a lily grow!” and Pei Ch’i Kung Chu, who awakened in the breast of her lover such a flame that it set fire to a temple; and Tao Yün, who when her brother likened a snow-storm to salt sprinkled in the air, corrected the feebleness of his simile by comparing it to willow-catkins whirled by the wind; and Ts’ai Luan, who compiled a rhyming dictionary and ascended to heaven with her husband, each on a white tiger.--Here, you observe, is a considerable range--although by no means all--for the selecting mind to consider.

The choice fell upon Féng Hou. That is the name to which, since it is hers and she is all caprice and individuality, she refuses to answer.

The dog will come when he is called,
The cat will turn away,

--so wrote an old observer. It is true of dogs and cats, but it is hopelessly amiss of Pekingese. I would amend it thus:--

The dog will come when he is called,
The cat will turn away;
The Pekingese will please itself,
Whatever you may say.

For, to adapt an old proverb, where there’s a Pekingese there’s a will.

I do not think that she is ever likely to be a wonder from the point of view of the bench. At least one of the dreaded penalizations is hers already, and she may acquire others; nothing can make her fit to sit beside her illustrious grandfather, Ch. Chu’erh of Alderbourne, that Napoleon of Pekingese, that Meredith, that Brummell, all combined; nor has she the ingratiating pictorial charm of Ch. Broadoak Beetle; but no one knows what her own children may be like, and meanwhile she is enough for her owner. She has brought into a house hitherto unconscious of it the adorable piquancy of Peking.

Having done all that was possible to make Féng Hou our own, no one in the house having any independent will left, and butcher’s-bills rising like Grahame White: having done all this, it was something more than a shock to be favoured with a translation of the rhapsodical pearls of wisdom dropped from the lips of her Imperial Majesty Tzŭ Hsi, the late Dowager Empress of Western China, for the guidance of the master of her kennel. One saw at once how much was still to do if Féng Hou was to be worthy of her race. I quote this most delightful document, the very flower of Chinese solicitude and fancy.

PEARLS DROPPED FROM THE LIPS OF HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, TZŬ HSI, DOWAGER EMPRESS OF THE FLOWERY LAND

Let the Lion Dog be small: let it wear the swelling cape of dignity
around its neck: let it display the billowing standard of pomp
above its back.

Let its face be black: let its fore legs be shaggy: let its
forehead be straight and low, like unto the brow of an Imperial
righteous harmony boxer.

Let its eyes be large and luminous: let its ears be set like the
sails of a war-junk: let its nose be like that of the monkey god of
the Hindus.

Let its fore legs be bent, so that it shall not desire to wander
far, or leave the Imperial precincts.

Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its
prey.

Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may
be soundless: and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whisk
of the Tibetan’s yak, which is flourished to protect the Imperial
litter from the attacks of flying insects.

Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols;
let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger: let it
be domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other
beasts, fishes, or birds that find protection in the Imperial
Palace. And for its colour, let it be that of the lion--a golden
sable, to be carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe, or the colour
of a red bear, or a black or a white bear, or striped like a
dragon, so that there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in
the Imperial wardrobe.

Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine
cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.

Let it comport itself with dignity; let it learn to bite the
foreign devils instantly.

Let it be dainty in its food that it shall be known for an Imperial
dog by its fastidiousness.

Sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers and the breasts of quails, on
these it may be fed; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed
from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province
of the Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in
the Imperial parks. Thus shall it preserve its integrity and
self-respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with
the clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to
drink a throstle’s egg-shell full of the juice of the custard-apple
in which have been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros
horn, and apply to it piebald leeches.

So shall it remain; but if it die, remember thou, too, art mortal.

That is a very charming poem, is it not? Queen Victoria drew up no such rules for Dandie Dinmonts, nor did Charles I, so far as I know, thus establish the standard of the little creatures with whose ears he played instead of studying the signs of the times. But it must necessarily strike some apprehension into the breast of the owner of a Pekingese. Is one doing rightly by the dog? is a question that it forces upon one. In the matter of diet alone I find that we have been all to seek. No house could have been so free from sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers as this, and if a quail’s breast has chanced to enter, it was certainly not Féng Hou who ate it. As for drink--but I wonder if any one can recommend me a good, trustworthy antelope-milker: one who would not object to help in the garden when it is not milking-time? Things would be simple then--until Féng Hou was ill. But that does not bear thinking about.

Apropos of medicine, however, an odd thing happened. Féng Hou at first was not always good; indeed she was sometimes extremely naughty; and a little castigating seemed needful. A letter therefore was dispatched to London, to a provider of quaint necessaries, asking that some attractive little switch, worthy of such a creature, might be supplied. It came at once--the most delicate and radiant of rods, with a note saying that it was something of a curiosity, being pure rhinoceros horn. So we have one of the ingredients of one of the prescriptions after all! Physic indeed.

Five Characters

I.--THE KIND RED LIONESS

I will admit that my head ached and I looked tired; but I was not so depressed as all that. None the less she thought I was, and being a good soul she did what she could to help me, and since I knew her to be a good soul doing all that she could to help me, I had to acquiesce.

“Let me bring you something to cheer you up,” she said. “Of course it’s lonely staying in a country inn all by yourself. I know it must be. But I’ve got something that’ll make you laugh. I’ll fetch it in.”

I feared the worst as Mrs. Tally hastened away; and I knew the worst when she returned bearing the Visitors’ Book.

“There,” she said, “I often have a good laugh over that of an evening. Such funny bits there are in it. Some of the gentlemen we get here are such wags. Look at this”--and she placed her fat finger on a drawing of a young man in a straw hat, leaning against the bar while he blew kisses to an enormous figure behind it.

“That’s me,” she said, pointing to the enormous figure. “I remember that young gentleman so well. He came with two others, on bicycles, and they stayed from Saturday to Monday. So bright they were, and so full of jokes. See what he wrote underneath.”

I read: “Dook Snook, Lord Bob, and the Hon. Billy came and saw and were conquered--to Tally!”

“Do you see the take off in that last word?” she inquired. “Rather smart, wasn’t it? But they’re full of fun, all of them. Here’s another amusing one. I remember that gentleman too. He was always full of his jokes.”

I looked and read: “I was sent to the Red Lion by my doctor for change and rest. The waitress got the change, and the hostess the rest.”

“Isn’t that neat?” the Red Lioness inquired.

I said it was. How could I dash this enthusiast’s spirit by telling her its age?

“This is a bit of poetry,” said my hostess, proceeding to read it:--

“Of all the girls that are so smart,
There’s none like Mrs. Tally,
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
Signed × (BILL BAILEY, his mark).

“He was a jolly young fellow,” she added. “Fancy calling himself Bill Bailey!” and she pealed merrily. “I wonder what’s become of him; he hasn’t been here for months,” she added. “Here’s some more poetry:--

“There’s nothing like a Lion that’s Red
For pleasant food and comfy bed.
I mean to come and stay again,
But now must run and catch my train.

ALGERNON MULL,
296, Broad Walk, Ealing.

“Don’t you think it’s wonderful to be able to make up poytry like that?” Mrs. Tally continued. “I do. I’ve tried, but I never could do anything worth repeating, and as for writing in a Visitors’ Book!... Don’t you agree with me?” she asked.

“Certainly,” I said. “It’s a real gift, there’s no doubt about it. A gift.”

“Yes,” she said, “a gift. That’s what it is. Here’s another funny one.”

I read: “The Ten Thirsty Tiddlers visited the old Red Lion for the fifteenth time. Everything A1 as usual.”

“But of course,” said Mrs. Tally, “although these are amusing and make the book such good reading, it’s the serious compliments we like the best. All comic wouldn’t do at all. Some people, indeed, actually dislike it. There were two lady artists here not long ago who asked me to remove the book from the room, as it was so vulgar. Fancy that--‘remove the book!’ No, it’s the serious things that do us the most good, of course. Like this, for instance”--and Mrs. Tally pointed to the following, one after the other:--

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Flower, of Dunedin, N.Z., spent a week here
very pleasantly in July. The cooking was excellent and everything
was most comfortable. They hope to return on their next visit to
the dear old country.

Comfortable rooms, good attendance, perfect cooking and the best of
landladies. In short, a home from home.

H. A. MARTIN,
St. Swithin’s, Sydenham, S.E.

My daughter, Mrs. Crawley, and myself have spent a very agreeable
week-end here and hope to come again.

J. MURRAY PHIPPS,
Member of the Committee of the Royal Musical Society.

We have received every kindness from Mrs. Tally and her very
efficient staff.

MR. AND MRS. J. ARBUTHNOT GILL,
Wood Dene, Pinner.

“Well,” said Mrs. Tally, “I must go now; but I’ll leave the book with you. And there’s an earlier volume if you like to see it. It’ll cheer you wonderfully, and you’ll just die of laughing.”

The honest kindly soul! There are moments when one is more ashamed of what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance.

II.--A DARLING OF THE GODS

I see by the papers, with deep concern, that my friend X has been run over by a motor-bus and killed, at the age of only thirty-eight. I wish I could find some one who helped to pick him up, just to see if he said anything about his end: because----

But I will tell you. His foible was to believe that everything that happened was for the best--for himself. Not for mankind; he had none of the great Dr. Pangloss’s satisfaction that everything that is is right, that this is the best of all possible worlds. None at all. But he was persuaded that his own fortunes were being vigilantly and tirelessly watched by tutelary powers--that he was, in short, a pet of Fate.

And in this creed he had grown very ingenious. I remember once hurrying with him to catch a train, which, he said, he must not lose at any cost. Well, after seriously injuring ourselves--or at least myself--by running with our heavy bags, we lost it.

“Never mind,” he said calmly, “I was evidently intended not to catch it.”

“Then why on earth did you drag me along at that infernal pace?” I asked.

“Oh, well,” he said, “one has to try; one does not know what the stars’ game is.”

“What do you think it is?” I inquired coldly.

“I expect the train will meet with an accident; if so, we are well out of it.”

I took the trouble to find out, when we did at last reach the London station, if that train had come safely in.

“To the minute,” said the porter.

“There,” I said to my friend, “what do you make of that?”

“Oh,” he replied, “I daresay some one with an infectious disease had been sitting in our compartment and we should have caught it.”

What are you to do with a man who talks like that?

Your ordinary fatalist who thinks that, everything being ordained and fixed, no effort of his own can matter, is bad enough; but the fatalist who is also an optimist and secure in the knowledge of his own prosperity is worse. And yet it was rather fine too. The hardest rebuffs (as I should call them) left him smiling.

One day he lost a lot of money in an investment.

“That’s very serious,” I said.

“Not so bad as it might have been,” he replied. “It was done to teach me not to speculate. I am not naturally speculative; I was going against my genius when I did it. Now I have lost £500. But if I hadn’t I might have lost £5000 later on.”