Shopping in the lane brought my accounts down nicely, and I kept them rigidly, noting every item, such as ‘parsley—½d.’ Everything was paid for by me except coal and Emma’s wages, and I received thirty shillings from Arthur each Monday morning, frequently having four or five shillings in hand against the unforeseens of the following week. Clothes were little worry to either of us, for thanks to Mary Wood I had stocked myself well, and Arthur’s method of replenishing his wardrobe was simplicity itself. Ever since his Cambridge days Mr. Neal, of Trumpington Street, had supplied him with clothes, and as far as I could judge Arthur paid him for this marvellous service £5 a year, at the same time always owing him about £20. As I had a horror of the smallest debt I suggested that Arthur should pay off the whole. ‘Pay it all!’ he exclaimed, ‘What a blow it would be to Neal! He would think that I was dissatisfied and finished with him.’ So I hoped it would never be paid, for apparently nothing but the death of a customer would excuse such an act of discourtesy. A man’s method of choosing new clothes seemed to me equally strange, and its simplicity charmed me. Mr. Neal paid periodical visits to his customers in London, told them what they wanted, and took orders; in due course the parcel arrived at home. ‘Saw old Neal in the Temple today,’ Arthur would tell me, ‘and he says I want a new overcoat as well as a new suit. I suppose I do. He showed me a lot of patterns for the trousers—they seem to be the only things one can have any choice about. But these were so much alike that I asked him why he didn’t break out into something fresh. “The taste of the public,” said he solemnly, “appears, Sir, to have settled in stripes.”’ This kindly man was more of a friend than a tailor to both of us, taking genuine interest in the joys and sorrows of our life; and now his sons clothe my son Arthur in the same delightful way.
§ 2
Cooking was the main field of my ambition, and it took me hours of thought and many failures before I managed to do it with half my mind, as one ought to do. Cookery books were little use for a beginner, never saying how to do the common things, such as making gravy out of nothing. Two guiding stars were the outcome of my own experience: (1) Never to keep Arthur waiting for his meal. (2) Never to give him cold mutton.
Gazing dubiously one day at a saucepan of stew, I heard Emma’s voice behind me, ‘The Consul’s brow was sad and the Consul’s speech was low.’ ‘Good gracious!’ said I, ‘where did you pick up that?’ ‘Oh, we learnt that at school.’ She was eager to learn anything she could, and one day when I had to go some distance to pay a call she begged me to let her manage the whole dinner—joint and vegetables, pudding and all. I risked it, and at her urgent request didn’t return till just upon dinner-time. It was a complete success, and I shall never forget her look of pleasure when Arthur proclaimed it ‘tophole’.
Many a bit of country lore I picked up from Emma. One of these described the ideal wife:
She could make, she could bake,
She could brew, she could sew,
And found time to teach her three sons to say ‘No’.
Brewing was out of my scope, and so were the three sons at the moment, but what about baking? I determined to have a try at this. My cookery book was discouraging, making it seem that to cook a loaf of bread was like carrying out some chemical experiment, referring to weights (I possessed no scales) and even to Fahrenheit. So I harked back to my recollections of having seen it done scores of times in Cornwall and Wales, without having paid attention to the actual details. I remembered how often mother used to send me out when I was a little child to buy a pennyworth of yeast at the baker’s, for her saffron cake. So I sent Emma out on a like errand. She had never made bread, but recalled a saying of her mother’s—‘All that bread wants is time and warmth.’ I started in with some flour; the yeast and the oven did their work; and with beginner’s luck I produced some lovely rolls. These were placed on the table within reach of Arthur at dinner.
‘Good roll, this,’ said he, trying one. ‘Where do you get them? A new baker?’
‘Yes,’ said I, as casually as my bursting pride would allow me, ‘I made them myself.’
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he exclaimed, ‘that this thing is only flour and water?’ Holding it up in amazement, he added, ‘Then what on earth do they do to the bread in the shops?’
To this day I have never gone back from that exciting discovery, and except in emergencies have produced my own bread for over thirty years, the family strongly objecting to ‘boughten’ bread. People dislike the idea of trying this for themselves because of the ‘time it takes’. The bread certainly wants time, I assure them, but not their time; it doesn’t ask to be watched, and can be trusted alone in the house; the actual labour in making a batch takes about six minutes from start to finish. But they shake their heads in a melancholy way as they ask for another slice.
An old friend of Arthur’s, Dr. Daniell, learned in physics and indeed everything else, was quite excited about the bread, wanted to hear exactly how I made it, but was shocked at my having to send out for the yeast. ‘Why not save time and trouble, not to mention expense, by making your own?’ he urged. So, following his directions, I cooked two pounds of potatoes, mashed them up in water and all, poured them into an earthenware pan, and when they were cooled to about blood heat, placed a slice of toast to float on the top with an ounce of yeast spread on it. (After all, one had to begin with a bit of yeast.) After some hours the whole panful became yeast, and we bottled it and put it away, using from it as required. Economical, labour-saving, efficient. But Arthur said it must stop, because his nerves couldn’t stand it. It was frequently his custom of an evening to be sitting up late for work after I had gone to bed, Emma had ceased singing, and all was quiet. Once, at about midnight, he was startled by what he called an infernal explosion. One of the bottles of yeast had burst its cork forth. So we returned to the pennyworth of yeast at the baker’s. Another pestiferous visitor, a ‘notable housewife’, informed me in a superior way that no bread was really home-made unless brewers’ barm was used. So I bought a little covered tin can (such as navvies use for their tea) and made expeditions to a brewery for a pennyworth of barm. We could perceive no difference in the quality of the bread, and I found the barm so temperamental and uncertain in its raising power that I soon returned to the original yeast, of which a pennyworth lasted for three bakings.
I wrote continually to my beloved aunt Tony in Cornwall, telling her of my ups and downs, and getting hints from her. She sent directions for stewing a rabbit, and for making a pork-pie, but she considered that I should never be able to achieve the latter. This put me on my mettle, and I made some fine ones; and when she sent me some of her own butter I was able to display an all home-made breakfast.
§ 3
In addition to the fun of shopping and attempts at new cookery, I had people to see me. Not the perfunctory kind, for it was pleasant to reflect that they would never mount those seventy steps in the hope of finding no one at home. There was always plenty to talk about, for if conversation flagged we had one exhibit of constant interest. Our windows looked right down into the grounds of a convent. I forget the name of the sisterhood, but it was a very close one. The nuns never left the premises, ate no meat, and grew all their own vegetables. We had this information from our doctor, who also attended them; he told us that someone had mistakenly sent them a turkey one Christmas, and that they had given it to him. We used to watch them digging and hoeing and watering, and often leaping about over the beds from sheer joie de vivre. Then there were frequent processions with chanting, and on special days coloured banners, figures, and crosses were carried round the paths.
One of my earliest visitors must have thought me very queer, for my mind was quite off the subject in hand. I could by no effort remember what her wedding present to me had been; and I felt sure she was expecting some grateful reference to it. It wouldn’t do to say merely, ‘How good of you to send me that nice present—so useful!’ when she was probably sitting on it, eating off it, or gazing at
it. No sooner had I seen her off and returned into the room than the little clock on the mantelpiece winked at me and said ‘It’s me’. For years I’ve puzzled over the fact that trying to remember a thing puts a stopper on one’s brain, and can only conclude that the fussy struggle throws a sabot into the machinery. Perhaps at this time my exuberant happiness affected my memory, for the first time I repaid one of these early calls I couldn’t think what my name was when the servant asked me.
The wife of a doctor (not our own) during the course of her visit told me how she suffered from young women patients who adored her husband and were always haunting the surgery with some feigned complaint. ‘Thank goodness,’ I replied, ‘there’s no trouble of that kind with a barrister.’ ‘Ah, Mrs. Hughes,’ said she, shaking her head sadly, ‘you little know what goes on in the Temple!’
Far more pleasant than such callers as this was the dropping in of kindred spirits—our brothers and their wives, our Celtic cousins, old friends on their visits to London, and the ever-welcome Mary Wood and her sisters. M’Jane and Yetta even mounted those stairs to give me encouragement and advice, to bring me some extra comforts or labour-saving gadgets, rearrange the furniture, and instruct Emma how to be more correct in her way of bringing in the tea. Sometimes I found these alterations and suggestions a bit trying, but Arthur said, ‘Never refuse advice. Whether you follow it or not is another matter.’
Most of my old companions were content to be amazed and amused that my ménage worked at all, and we exchanged notes on our experiences. My Cornish cousin Lucy, whose varied homes had included both Norway and China, compared my conditions very favourably with her own newly married life.
‘We started from Cornwall with some nice new furniture, but our route lay through the Straits Settlements, and when we arrived up-country and examined our belongings we found that the glue had melted, and packing-cases, chairs, tables, chests of drawers—everything was reduced to a mass of confused sticks.’
Her sister, Christina, also came to see me. She, too, had travelled in strange regions. Her stories tended to be more picturesque than Lucy’s, but I like to think that this one was true. She wanted to show her Chinese servant how to answer the door and announce a visitor properly. After instructing him verbally, she went outside to rehearse the whole affair by pretending to be a visitor. She knocked, Wong opened the door, showed her in and announced her perfectly. It was her afternoon ‘at home’, and she then sat down to await any callers, feeling satisfied that Wong would do his duty properly. Presently there was a knock, but it was followed by no movement on Wong’s part. The knock was repeated. Still dead silence within. A third knock roused her to anger and she went to the door herself to find Wong outside, grinning. ‘You foolie me,’ said he, ‘me foolie you.’
Another cousin was the mother of several boys, and told me that once during a visitor’s call there came through the open window an agonized cry as of a child being torn by machinery. Rushing out she found her son laughing with delight at the success of the noise that some Cornish imp had taught him. She said she wished she were able to achieve the nonchalance of a certain mother who exclaimed when she heard a blood-curdling yell, ‘Thank heaven, one of my sons is still alive!’
My late students of Bedford College who managed to come over to see me were pleased, I’m sure, to be able to turn the tables on me by giving me instruction in domestic work. They knew much more about sewing than I did, and taught me how to cut out, how to place a pocket, put in sleeves, and other mysteries. As for knitting, I could soon turn a heel, and was able to make quite elaborate patterns in fleecy white wool. Arthur assured me that he could knit too, but didn’t hold with patterns. One evening when I was making a little woolly jacket of basket-pattern I left it to go into the kitchen. On my taking it up again I found that Arthur had done a row to help me. ‘But it’s all wrong for the pattern,’ I cried. ‘No matter,’ said he, ‘you’ll find such quaint aberrations all the thing in really artistic work. Look at the Persian rug. And the small wearer won’t notice the oddity, you’ll see.’ So I kept it. Arthur had no knowledge of domestic affairs, much to my contentment, but if anything went wrong he was on the spot at once with precise efficiency. (How do men do it?) He used to assert that he could make an omelet, had indeed done so once in his bachelor rooms. But I didn’t test him, and no crisis ever befell us in which an omelet was called for.
At rare intervals we invited a choice friend or two to come and have dinner with us. Our guests would enter into the spirit of the thing and we all enjoyed ourselves—Emma not least, for she came out strong with her waiting. But once the friends were a little too choice. Dr. Daniell was a man of unlimited anecdote, and an accomplished raconteur. So we selected two other men we knew who were also gifted (or cursed) in this way, hoping that the conversation would be tip-top. Each indeed arrived all primed with his best stories, but, as we ought to have foreseen, he only listened to the others in order to chip in with his own. As for Dr. Daniell, he appeared to know every single story, and couldn’t disguise his knowledge of it. After one contribution he said, ‘Ah, yes, that is the Norfolk variant.’ But nothing deterred them from unloading all their goods, and it was a late hour when they finally tore themselves away. Then, indeed, Arthur and I had the first honest laugh of the evening, as we vowed that we didn’t want to hear another funny story ever.
Occasionally Arthur would announce, ‘Shan’t be home to dinner tomorrow; Alfred’s in town.’ At other times the reason would be, ‘Llewelyn is coming up to see how the bishops are behaving themselves at some blooming meeting.’ Or, ‘It’s call night at the Inn.’ Or, ‘It’s Grand night.’ Or, ‘The Bacon Club are having their annual dinner.’ I used to get much vicarious pleasure from hearing what they had had for dinner, especially after a Grand night at the Inn. I also got much amusement from Arthur’s report—always disparaging.
‘Not much of a dinner, just mutton, you know.’
‘Saddle?’
‘Yes, it was saddle, but the jelly wasn’t up to much.’ ‘Asparagus?’
‘M-yes, but not enough of it.’
‘Ices?’
‘M-yes, but I’ve tasted better, and anyhow I much prefer the dinner I get at home.’
His friends used to tease him about his frequent excuse for declining an invitation—‘Sorry, but I’ve got to get home.’ He told me that one of them had accused him of being henpecked. ‘I always go one better when people get funny, so I told him that it was not much use being married unless one was henpecked a bit.’
On one most memorable day I went to a banquet with him. It was some very specially red-letter day in the life of the Society of Cymmrodorion, of which Arthur was a zealous member. Eminent Welshmen from all parts and in all walks of life were gathered in the big hall of the Holborn Restaurant, to rejoice together in belonging to a nation that had produced so many heroes and poets. Of the long dinner I remember only the oysters—things I had heard of long enough, but never met before. Of the lovely Welsh singing that accompanied the feast I welcomed my favourite ‘Suo gân.’ The speeches were a delightful mixture of learning and wit. Of course the toast-master was a new experience for me, and his solemnity and pomposity amazed me. The chief guests of the evening for whom he prayed silence were Balfour and Lloyd George. We guessed that these two had never before sat down to a meal together, and the mere fact of seeing them in such close amicability was entertainment enough—as though one should see a lion and a lamb sharing a drink out of a trough. There was no doubt as to which was the lion and which the lamb. Balfour was there because he was steeped in Welsh literature, and Lloyd George was there because he was Welsh (although Arthur pretended to doubt even this!) It was the time when these two were going for one another hammer and tongs almost daily in Parliament. At the dinner their speeches were decorated by gracious bowings to one another and smiling allusions to Another Place. Cleverly as Lloyd George could score off Balfour in debate, he was no match for him in expatiating on the beauties of Welsh poet
ry, in quoting it, comparing with Homer, and suchlike subtleties, and as soon as decency permitted he left the table on account of ‘pressing duties in the House’.
For me the best bit of the evening was the period before the dinner, an ever memorable quart d’heure, when all the good and great were mingling and chatting. I could hardly believe that I was within touch of Balfour. Among the cheery throng was one of the most famous judges of the day, a Welshman, and Arthur brought me along for a few words with him. I was too nervous to take in the nice things he was saying to me, but noticed that they included a compliment on Arthur’s advocacy. However, I managed to say, ‘I have seen you on the Bench.’ ‘Then I do trust,’ said he, in anxious tones, ‘that I was behaving myself properly.’
§4
The evening was the part of the day that made the rest of it worthwhile. After dinner we began it with a game of chess, no matter how pressing any work might be. Arthur said it was good for his brain to think of something different, though if he lost he would say, ‘My mind was in the Temple.’ Now and again, in small ways, I was able to help with his work, usually by dictating passages from a fat law book for some bit of conveyancing. I soon came to be able to read the strange abbreviations which at first made the pages look like a foreign language.
A London Home in the Nineties Page 17
