by Edith Nesbit
‘I wonder whether he has taken a place as butler here?’ said Dicky.
‘A poor, broken-down man—’
Noel thought it was very likely, because he knew that in these big houses there were always thousands of stately butlers.
The Uncle came down the steps and opened the cab door himself, which I don’t think butlers would expect to have to do. And he took us in. It was a lovely hall, with bear and tiger skins on the floor, and a big clock with the faces of the sun and moon dodging out when it was day or night, and Father Time with a scythe coming out at the hours, and the name on it was ‘Flint. Ashford. 1776’; and there was a fox eating a stuffed duck in a glass case, and horns of stags and other animals over the doors.
‘We’ll just come into my study first,’ said the Uncle, ‘and wish each other a Merry Christmas.’ So then we knew he wasn’t the butler, but it must be his own house, for only the master of the house has a study.
His study was not much like Father’s. It had hardly any books, but swords and guns and newspapers and a great many boots, and boxes half unpacked, with more Indian things bulging out of them.
We gave him our presents and he was awfully pleased. Then he gave us his Christmas presents. You must be tired of hearing about presents, but I must remark that all the Uncle’s presents were watches; there was a watch for each of us, with our names engraved inside, all silver except H. O.’s, and that was a Waterbury, ‘To match his boots,’ the Uncle said. I don’t know what he meant.
Then the Uncle looked at Father, and Father said, ‘You tell them, sir.’
So the Uncle coughed and stood up and made a speech. He said —
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are met together to discuss an important subject which has for some weeks engrossed the attention of the honourable member opposite and myself.’
I said, ‘Hear, hear,’ and Alice whispered, ‘What happened to the guinea-pig?’ Of course you know the answer to that.
The Uncle went on —
‘I am going to live in this house, and as it’s rather big for me, your Father has agreed that he and you shall come and live with me. And so, if you’re agreeable, we’re all going to live here together, and, please God, it’ll be a happy home for us all. Eh! — what?’
He blew his nose and kissed us all round. As it was Christmas I did not mind, though I am much too old for it on other dates. Then he said, ‘Thank you all very much for your presents; but I’ve got a present here I value more than anything else I have.’
I thought it was not quite polite of him to say so, till I saw that what he valued so much was a threepenny-bit on his watch-chain, and, of course, I saw it must be the one we had given him.
He said, ‘You children gave me that when you thought I was the poor Indian, and I’ll keep it as long as I live. And I’ve asked some friends to help us to be jolly, for this is our house-warming. Eh! — what?’
Then he shook Father by the hand, and they blew their noses; and then Father said, ‘Your Uncle has been most kind — most—’
But Uncle interrupted by saying, ‘Now, Dick, no nonsense!’ Then H. O. said, ‘Then you’re not poor at all?’ as if he were very disappointed. The Uncle replied, ‘I have enough for my simple wants, thank you, H. O.; and your Father’s business will provide him with enough for yours. Eh! — what?’
Then we all went down and looked at the fox thoroughly, and made the Uncle take the glass off so that we could see it all round and then the Uncle took us all over the house, which is the most comfortable one I have ever been in. There is a beautiful portrait of Mother in Father’s sitting-room. The Uncle must be very rich indeed. This ending is like what happens in Dickens’s books; but I think it was much jollier to happen like a book, and it shows what a nice man the Uncle is, the way he did it all.
Think how flat it would have been if the Uncle had said, when we first offered him the one and threepence farthing, ‘Oh, I don’t want your dirty one and three-pence! I’m very rich indeed.’ Instead of which he saved up the news of his wealth till Christmas, and then told us all in one glorious burst. Besides, I can’t help it if it is like Dickens, because it happens this way. Real life is often something like books.
Presently, when we had seen the house, we were taken into the drawing-room, and there was Mrs Leslie, who gave us the shillings and wished us good hunting, and Lord Tottenham, and Albert-next-door’s Uncle — and Albert-next-door, and his Mother (I’m not very fond of her), and best of all our own Robber and his two kids, and our Robber had a new suit on. The Uncle told us he had asked the people who had been kind to us, and Noel said, ‘Where is my noble editor that I wrote the poetry to?’
The Uncle said he had not had the courage to ask a strange editor to dinner; but Lord Tottenham was an old friend of Uncle’s, and he had introduced Uncle to Mrs Leslie, and that was how he had the pride and pleasure of welcoming her to our house-warming. And he made her a bow like you see on a Christmas card.
Then Alice asked, ‘What about Mr Rosenbaum? He was kind; it would have been a pleasant surprise for him.’
But everybody laughed, and Uncle said —
‘Your father has paid him the sovereign he lent you. I don’t think he could have borne another pleasant surprise.’
And I said there was the butcher, and he was really kind; but they only laughed, and Father said you could not ask all your business friends to a private dinner.
Then it was dinner-time, and we thought of Uncle’s talk about cold mutton and rice. But it was a beautiful dinner, and I never saw such a dessert! We had ours on plates to take away into another sitting-room, which was much jollier than sitting round the table with the grown-ups. But the Robber’s kids stayed with their Father. They were very shy and frightened, and said hardly anything, but looked all about with very bright eyes. H. O. thought they were like white mice; but afterwards we got to know them very well, and in the end they were not so mousy. And there is a good deal of interesting stuff to tell about them; but I shall put all that in another book, for there is no room for it in this one. We played desert islands all the afternoon and drank Uncle’s health in ginger wine. It was H. O. that upset his over Alice’s green silk dress, and she never even rowed him. Brothers ought not to have favourites, and Oswald would never be so mean as to have a favourite sister, or, if he had, wild horses should not make him tell who it was.
And now we are to go on living in the big house on the Heath, and it is very jolly.
Mrs Leslie often comes to see us, and our own Robber and Albert-next-door’s uncle. The Indian Uncle likes him because he has been in India too and is brown; but our Uncle does not like Albert-next-door. He says he is a muff. And I am to go to Rugby, and so are Noel and H. O., and perhaps to Balliol afterwards. Balliol is my Father’s college. It has two separate coats of arms, which many other colleges are not allowed. Noel is going to be a poet and Dicky wants to go into Father’s business.
The Uncle is a real good old sort; and just think, we should never have found him if we hadn’t made up our minds to be Treasure Seekers! Noel made a poem about it —
Lo! the poor Indian from lands afar,
Comes where the treasure seekers are;
We looked for treasure, but we find
The best treasure of all is the Uncle good and kind.
I thought it was rather rot, but Alice would show it to the Uncle, and he liked it very much. He kissed Alice and he smacked Noel on the back, and he said, ‘I don’t think I’ve done so badly either, if you come to that, though I was never a regular professional treasure seeker. Eh! — what?’
THE END
THE WOULDBEGOODS
The Wouldbegoods is the second novel in E. Nesbit’s trilogy about the irrepressible Bastable children. Published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1901, the novel finds the children banished to the country during their summer holidays, where they must attempt to “learn to be good.” Of course they and their new friends find ample opportunity for adventure, from turning the garden into a jun
gle, to forming their own “Society of the Wouldbegoods,” which focuses on doing good deeds, most of which naturally go awry. Nesbit dedicated the novel to her son, Fabian Bland. Reginald Bathurst Birch illustrated The Wouldbegoods, known best for his illustrations of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1886 novel, Little Lord Fauntleroy, which set off an unfortunate (for little boys) fashion craze of frilly velvet suits and long, curled hair.
The first edition
CONTENTS
THE JUNGLE
THE WOULDBEGOODS
BILL’S TOMBSTONE
THE TOWER OF MYSTERY
THE WATER-WORKS
THE CIRCUS
BEING BEAVERS; OR, THE YOUNG EXPLORERS (ARCTIC OR OTHERWISE)
THE HIGH-BORN BABE
HUNTING THE FOX
THE FOX’S BURIAL ODE
THE SALE OF ANTIQUITIES
THE BENEVOLENT BAR
THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
THE DRAGON’S TEETH; OR ARMY-SEED
ALBERT’S UNCLE’S GRANDMOTHER; OR, THE LONG-LOST
Nesbit, 1887
THE JUNGLE
“Children are like jam: all very well in the proper place, but you can’t stand them all over the shop — eh, what?”
These were the dreadful words of our Indian uncle. They made us feel very young and angry; and yet we could not be comforted by calling him names to ourselves, as you do when nasty grown-ups say nasty things, because he is not nasty, but quite the exact opposite when not irritated. And we could not think it ungentlemanly of him to say we were like jam, because, as Alice says, jam is very nice indeed — only not on furniture and improper places like that. My father said, “Perhaps they had better go to boarding-school.” And that was awful, because we know father disapproves of boarding-schools. And he looked at us and said, “I am ashamed of them, sir!”
Your lot is indeed a dark and terrible one when your father is ashamed of you. And we all knew this, so that we felt in our chests just as if we had swallowed a hard-boiled egg whole. At least, this is what Oswald felt, and father said once that Oswald, as the eldest, was the representative of the family, so, of course, the others felt the same.
And then everybody said nothing for a short time. At last father said:
“You may go — but remember—” The words that followed I am not going to tell you. It is no use telling you what you know before — as they do in schools. And you must all have had such words said to you many times. We went away when it was over. The girls cried, and we boys got out books and began to read, so that nobody should think we cared. But we felt it deeply in our interior hearts, especially Oswald, who is the eldest and the representative of the family.
We felt it all the more because we had not really meant to do anything wrong. We only thought perhaps the grown-ups would not be quite pleased if they knew, and that is quite different. Besides, we meant to put all the things back in their proper places when we had done with them before any one found out about it. But I must not anticipate (that means telling the end of a story before the beginning. I tell you this because it is so sickening to have words you don’t know in a story, and to be told to look it up in the dicker).
We are the Bastables — Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, Noël, and H. O. If you want to know why we call our youngest brother H. O. you can jolly well read The Treasure Seekers and find out. We were the Treasure Seekers, and we sought it high and low, and quite regularly, because we particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it, but we were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped father with his business, so that father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big red house on Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived when we were only poor but honest Treasure Seekers. When we were poor but honest we always used to think that if only father had plenty of business, and we did not have to go short of pocket-money and wear shabby clothes (I don’t mind this myself, but the girls do), we should be quite happy and very, very good.
And when we were taken to the beautiful big Blackheath house we thought now all would be well, because it was a house with vineries and pineries, and gas and water, and shrubberies and stabling, and replete with every modern convenience, like it says in Dyer & Hilton’s list of Eligible House Property. I read all about it, and I have copied the words quite right.
It is a beautiful house, all the furniture solid and strong, no casters off the chairs, and the tables not scratched, and the silver not dented; and lots of servants, and the most decent meals every day — and lots of pocket-money.
But it is wonderful how soon you get used to things, even the things you want most. Our watches, for instance. We wanted them frightfully; but when I had had mine a week or two, after the mainspring got broken and was repaired at Bennett’s in the village, I hardly cared to look at the works at all, and it did not make me feel happy in my heart any more, though, of course, I should have been very unhappy if it had been taken away from me. And the same with new clothes and nice dinners and having enough of everything. You soon get used to it all, and it does not make you extra happy, although, if you had it all taken away, you would be very dejected. (That is a good word, and one I have never used before.) You get used to everything, as I said, and then you want something more. Father says this is what people mean by the deceitfulness of riches; but Albert’s uncle says it is the spirit of progress, and Mrs. Leslie said some people called it “divine discontent.” Oswald asked them all what they thought, one Sunday at dinner. Uncle said it was rot, and what we wanted was bread and water and a licking; but he meant it for a joke. This was in the Easter holidays.
We went to live at Morden House at Christmas. After the holidays the girls went to the Blackheath High School, and we boys went to the Prop. (that means the Proprietary School). And we had to swot rather during term; but about Easter we knew the deceitfulness of riches in the vac., when there was nothing much on, like pantomimes and things. Then there was the summer term, and we swotted more than ever; and it was boiling hot, and masters’ tempers got short and sharp, and the girls used to wish the exams, came in cold weather. I can’t think why they don’t. But I suppose schools don’t think of sensible things like that. They teach botany at girls’ schools.
Then the midsummer holidays came, and we breathed again — but only for a few days. We began to feel as if we had forgotten something, and did not know what it was. We wanted something to happen — only we didn’t exactly know what. So we were very pleased when father said:
“I’ve asked Mr. Foulkes to send his children here for a week or two. You know — the kids who came at Christmas. You must be jolly to them, and see that they have a good time, don’t you know.”
We remembered them right enough — they were little pinky, frightened things, like white mice, with very bright eyes. They had not been to our house since Christmas, because Denis, the boy, had been ill, and they had been with an aunt at Ramsgate.
Alice and Dora would have liked to get the bedrooms ready for the honored guests, but a really good housemaid is sometimes more ready to say “don’t” than even a general. So the girls had to chuck it. Jane only let them put flowers in the pots on the visitors’ mantel-pieces, and then they had to ask the gardener which kind they might pick, because nothing worth gathering happened to be growing in our own gardens just then.
Their train got in at 12.27. We all went to meet them. Afterwards I thought that was a mistake, because their aunt was with them, and she wore black with beady things and a tight bonnet, and she said, when we took our hats off, “Who are you?” quite crossly.
We said, “We are the Bastables; we’ve come to meet Daisy and Denny.”
The aunt is a very rude lady, and it made us sorry for Daisy and Denny when she said to them:
“Are these the children? Do you remember them?”
We weren’t very tidy, perhaps, because we’d been playing brigands in the shrubbery; and we knew we should have to wash for dinner as soon as we got back, anyhow. But still —
&nbs
p; Denny said he thought he remembered us. But Daisy said, “Of course they are,” and then looked as if she was going to cry.
So then the aunt called a cab, and told the man where to drive, and put Daisy and Denny in, and then she said:
“You two little girls may go too, if you like, but you little boys must walk.”
So the cab went off, and we were left. The aunt turned to us to say a few last words. We knew it would have been about brushing your hair and wearing gloves, so Oswald said, “Good-bye,” and turned haughtily away, before she could begin, and so did the others. No one but that kind of black, beady, tight lady would say “little boys.” She is like Miss Murdstone in David Copperfield. I should like to tell her so; but she would not understand. I don’t suppose she has ever read anything but Markham’s History and Mangnall’s Questions — improving books like that.
When we got home we found all four of those who had ridden in the cab sitting in our sitting-room — we don’t call it nursery now — looking very thoroughly washed, and our girls were asking polite questions and the others were saying “Yes” and “No” and “I don’t know.” We boys did not say anything. We stood at the window and looked out till the gong went for our dinner. We felt it was going to be awful — and it was. The new-comers would never have done for knight-errants, or to carry the cardinal’s sealed message through the heart of France on a horse; they would never have thought of anything to say to throw the enemy off the scent when they got into a tight place.
They said, “Yes, please,” and “No, thank you”; and they ate very neatly, and always wiped their mouths before they drank, as well as after, and never spoke with them full.
And after dinner it got worse and worse.
We got out all our books, and they said, “Thank you,” and didn’t look at them properly. And we got out all our toys, and they said, “Thank you, it’s very nice,” to everything. And it got less and less pleasant, and towards tea-time it came to nobody saying anything except Noël and H. O. — and they talked to each other about cricket.
