A London Child of the Seventies

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘But how do they manage to get the stuff?’

  ‘The grocer supplies it, and puts it down as sugar on the bills.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘From a grocer patient.’

  ‘How do you treat them?’

  ‘Well, you see, I have my living to make, and dare not be frank with them. They would be offended and call in someone else.’

  Occasionally the bits were perhaps too juicy for me to hear, however guardedly worded, and mother would tell me to run and play. Chagrined, as all children are by this speciously pleasant order, I used to carry out her instructions to the letter. My play consisted in stealing the Doctor’s stethoscope from his top-hat in the hall, hiding it, and then sitting at the top of the stairs to await events. Soon would come the dramatic moment—the sound of good-byes, front door opened, seizure of gloves, and then the outcry at the missing stethoscope. ‘That naughty Molly at her tricks again!’ It was not until mother threatened fearful vengeance that I would run down and retrieve the poor instrument (that was glad of a change, I fancied) from behind the books or under the hearthrug. The doctor would then catch me in his arms and kiss me, thereby encouraging me to future performances. Although his beard prickled me I liked his smell, and I suppose that is why disinfectants are pleasant to me to this day.

  One red-letter day he took me on his rounds. No word in the English language can express my feeling of importance. He was very solemn, and I duly lived up to it. Seated in the victoria while he was paying a visit, I was too remote, physically and mentally, to converse with the coachman, so I tried to imagine what was going on inside. When the doctor emerged from one extremely long visit I asked him what was the matter in there. Gravely he looked at me, and said, ‘You must never, never, never ask a doctor what is the matter with a patient.’ Silly man, he might have known that even a child can put two and two together. He should have said ‘whooping-cough’ and passed on. However, it was a valuable bit of professional etiquette that I thus acquired early.

  As for the usual female visitors, they seemed to enjoy nothing but worries and grievances, which they poured forth on mother. Sitting in a little chair in the corner I used to amuse myself by listening to the funny sounds of the voices, high or low, now whining, now nervously giggling, but I cannot remember ever to have heard a woman visitor laugh. Sometimes I counted the number of times they said ‘yes’. One visitor was grand at this, for every now and again she would let forth a chromatic scale of the word ‘yes’, starting on a high note and rushing down in a torrent of concession. Some visitors would make no attempt to talk at all unless mother kept hard at it. One day, in the middle of a deadly pause, I broke in brightly with,

  ‘I know what you are thinking, mother.’

  Snatching at any straw, mother was unwise enough to invite me to tell.

  ‘You are thinking up what you can possibly say next.’

  Startled, mother looked anxiously at the visitor, who fortunately was too stupid to notice anything odd in my remark.

  Among the frequenters of the house was a young man named Arthur Collins. Where he came from, or by whom introduced, nobody seemed to know. He cannot have been a friend of the boys. He would look in at all hours and stay endlessly—too shy to go. He had a shock of black hair, a perpetual smile, and nothing whatever to say. Invariably during his visit he held on his knees a paper parcel, which we all knew to be a present for one of us. Never summoning up courage to give it, he would throw it on the front-door mat as he left. You may think how pleasant this must have been. But we all knew that the present would be a cardboard tidy, or bookmark, or box, ornamented with green ribbon—all his own work. The house was already littered with these gifts, so that we loathed the sight of them, and his mode of delivery involved a letter of thanks from the unlucky recipient.

  He liked to join in any game that was afoot, so long as it was simple, such as dominoes or draughts, but was so good natured that he always let his opponent win. Not that he said so, but we were all aware of it, and could see him making mistakes on purpose. To poor Arthur we owed our disgust with obtrusively unselfish people, and our understanding of mother’s oft-repeated maxim: ‘Please yourself, your friends will like you the better.’

  Dym and Barnholt had gone one day for a long tramp—train to Barnet, thence to St. Albans, and back by Potters Bar. From the outset everything went wrong. They missed the train and had a long wait to begin with. They left their parcel of sandwiches in the rack. The rain, which they laughed at when it began, increased to a steady downpour. The tea at St. Albans, on which they had counted to revive them, was only just warm and very dear. Barnholt lost his last coin, a half-crown, through a hole in his pocket, and Dym had only just enough for their fares home from Potters Bar. On the way they amused themselves with the fun they would get out of telling their misfortunes to the others, and as they neared the house they agreed that it only needed to find Arthur Collins in the study to crown the day. The servant opened the door with the words,

  ‘Mr. Collins is in the study, sir; he has been waiting for you for some time.’

  While acquaintances were few, we were richly endowed with relations, mostly aunts and cousins, whose notion of a visit involved far more than a mere hour’s chat. Aunt Polly was the worst. We knew her knock, which became a signal for the boys to stampede to the study, and become deep in their work. Exceedingly fat and affectionate, she would envelop me in her embrace, and burst into fulsome flattery as to how I was ‘getting on’, a ‘fine girl’, and ‘so like dear Helen’ (an aunt even fatter than herself). What annoyed mother most was her habit of turning up about ten minutes before a meal, with loud declarations that she couldn’t stop, had only just popped in, and must be off at once. When the meal had been delayed in accordance with this idea, she would catch a savoury smell and rearrange her mind. (As Tom used to remark, ‘No lady smells roast chicken’.) She would think that perhaps the meal would give her a chance to see the dear boys. After that it seemed abrupt to go, and she would stay to tea, and then wait till my father came home, to see dear Tom. It often ended in his having to see her home, or, worse still, in her being put up for the night. And she revoked at whist. She used to wish that she had ten sons, ‘like your wonderful and industrious boys, Mary dear’. We all heartily wished the same, for they would occupy her time completely.

  Another aunt, of very different calibre, also lived within visiting range. Instead of flattering the family, she found fault. Her hobbies were correct behaviour and religion. The latter varied from the severest forms of nonconformity to extreme High Church, according to the last friend who had influenced her. The only shade of thought that never attracted her was the Broad Church, ‘where, Mary dear, they do not believe in Hell’.

  She lost no opportunity of improving our morals, and manners at table, feeling that poor Mary was very lax with those boys. They, needless to say, enjoyed shocking her with their adventures and stories, coloured for her benefit. During one Primitive Methodist period she markedly left behind a little magazine, containing a list of ‘persons for whom our prayers are requested’. Charles, always on the scent for the ridiculous, seized the list hopefully, and hooted with delight when he found: ‘For a family of four boys and one girl. That they may be led to give up their frivolous mode of life.’

  That’s us,’ he shouted, and we all crowded round to see ourselves in print, but not in the spirit that Aunt Lizzie had intended.

  Among several of her gifts to me was a little book of devotion, called The Narrow Way. I tried hard to cope with its suggestions, but it had no pictures, and endless prayers for every occasion. Let alone grace at meals, you were to say a prayer on hearing a clock strike, on waking up in the night, on receiving bad news, and even on taking medicine. Now medicine was bad enough in itself, and I concluded that no one could really be as good as this book wanted and that it was a fearful waste of time.

  On one of my bad days I refused to finish up my rice pudding, was sent from the
room, and fled in angry tears to my bedroom. Soon Aunt Lizzie came up to me with the information that ‘it says in the Bible that the disobedient are to burn for ever in the Lake of Fire, with idolaters and murderers and liars’. This sounded all too likely, and without questioning the accuracy of her quotation I went back and choked down that rice pudding.

  Another distasteful point about this aunt was her regular visit once a week to give Charles and me our music lessons. No child of today would believe the long hours we spent practising. I had to hold my hand so flat that a penny would not fall off, and then hammer down finger after finger on the piano. What misery the third finger gave me! Then followed scales and more exercises, and last of all a little ‘piece’ which I loathed most of all. The only thing I really enjoyed was the chromatic scale, walking down the piano and playing every note, as fast as I could.

  In spite of the fun that we made of Aunt Lizzie we were really fond of her, because she never gushed and would do anything for us. And we all knew her tragedy. She had run away to be married, and her husband had turned out a drunken brute with no redeeming attraction. He tortured her to such an extent that she was obliged to flee from lodging to lodging to avoid him, and to make a living for herself by giving music lessons. It is no wonder that she took gloomy views of life, and had such vivid ideas of Hell. Victorian times are supposed to have been so settled and happy and care-free, but my recollections hardly tally with this rosy picture. Surely today no woman would endure such humiliations year after year. But then, of course, Lizzie’s extreme piety may have driven her husband to drink and extreme measures.

  The unrelieved melancholy of a third aunt must have arisen from a lifelong boredom. Unlike Polly who was an old maid, and Lizzie who was unhappily married and childless, Bessie had a kind husband and three children. But never did she rejoice. A watery smile of politeness was her utmost effort. A tear seemed always about to fall, more depressing than a burst of crying. When the boys had decamped as usual to the study, ‘Oh, Mary,’ she would say, fixing mother with one eye at a time, and in an undertone as though disclosing a state secret, ‘how I wish that I had never married.’ Of course I hoped for the worst, and each time imagined that some dark story must lie behind so much misery. But no, mother used to assure me afterwards that there was nothing wrong with her beyond self-pity. It’s true that her husband was called Bertie, and my father said he was an awful fool, but beyond these drawbacks there was nothing amiss.

  The cousins that came every now and again belonged to that vague area of distant relationship included by the Cornish under the word ‘cousin’. They were of all ages, and the more elderly ones had to be addressed as ‘Cousin Jane’, ‘Cousin Henry’, and so on. One large family of parents and grown-up offspring used to come to see us in small groups. We had some trouble in keeping their names and peculiarities clear. They never came without the tidings that one of them had passed away, and we were naturally anxious not to ask after his health at their next visit. At last Charles discovered that whereas they always put ‘dear’ in front of every name, they gave anyone who had passed away the extra title of ‘poor dear’.

  Amid all these lugubrious kinsfolk and acquaintance, mother found her social duties tiresome enough, and liked to have me in the room in order that she might give vent to her feelings afterwards. ‘Molly dear,’ she would exclaim, ‘I must say what I think about Aunt Lizzie, or I shall burst.’ Charles enabled us to bear a lot by means of his deadly imitations of every one. But mother, the gayest of mortals, had to rack her brains to get the conversation away from grievances. She even asked a visitor one day how she managed to have such an effective bustle. The astounding answer was ‘The Times. I find its paper so good, far more satisfactory than the Daily News’, and putting her hand under her skirt she tore off a piece to show us.

  One last acquaintance I must mention—an old lady who was too great an invalid to go out. Mother used to take me now and again to see her. Her name was Mrs. Ayres. She wore a larger cap than the usual kind that middle-aged ladies used to put on when they took their hats off. ‘Where is Mr. Ayres?’ I asked mother one day, when we got outside. ‘There isn’t any Mr. Ayres,’ she replied, ‘and there never was any Mr. Ayres.’ After a mysterious pause she added, ‘They call her Mrs. Ayres from courtesy, because she is so old.’

  Who were ‘they’? I pictured people gathering together round a green table and deciding, ‘Let’s call Miss Ayres Mrs. Ayres.’ But to this day I have wondered at what particular moment this decision was made.

  IX. A. Long Railway journey

  OUR lack of interest in kinsfolk and acquaintance in London was more than balanced by our enthusiasm for our relations in Cornwall.

  Mother’s family was not only numerous and well-to-do, but intelligent and jolly. Hardly a year passed but some of us paid them a visit, and occasionally it was all of us. Among, then, the bits of luck in my childhood must be included this plunge from London to the depth of the country.

  To us children an important element in this piece of luck was the journey of three hundred miles that it involved. Our parents must have thought otherwise. Had they not been peculiarly care-free by disposition they would never have embarked on the adventure of taking five children all that way in a train of the ’seventies. Coaching days were doubtless bad, but there were inns on the way.

  We used to go to bed earlier the day before, not so much to please mother as to bring tomorrow a bit sooner. We got up long before it was necessary, impeding all the sandwich-making and hard-boiling of eggs that was going on. But eat a good breakfast we could not, being ‘journey-proud’, as our old cook used to express our excited state. Meanwhile the luggage was being assembled in the hall, having its last touches of cording and labels. For weeks I had been packing in my bedroom, and once I presented five large cardboard boxes, wobbly with various belongings. My father ran upstairs to inspect them, and solemnly looking at them said, ‘Now, Molly, which of these is really the most important?’ Charmed by his businesslike manner and by the word ‘important’, I gladly pointed to one, and consented to leave the others behind.

  The next crisis was the fetching of a cab. At 7 o’clock in the morning there was no certainty of getting one quickly, and we kept rushing to the window until someone shouted, ‘Here it comes.’ If you saw that cab today your anxiety would be as to whether it could possibly stay the course to Paddington. The few ‘growlers’ still to be seen in the London streets are royal coaches compared with those of the ’seventies. They were like the omnibuses, with the same dingy blue velvet, only much dirtier, and as they were used for taking people to hospitals my father used to call them ‘damned fever-boxes’. To us children, no Cinderella’s fairy-carriage could have been handsomer than the cab actually at the door. If we were all going my father and the elder boys had to follow in a second cab. Luggage was piled on the top, and we were packed in among rugs, umbrellas, and hand-bags. At last the cabby climbed up to his seat and whipped up the horse. It took an hour or more to jog along from Canonbury to Paddington, but we did reach the enchanted spot at last.

  The train was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. and to arrive at Camborne at 9 p.m. This was before the days of the Flying Dutchman, not to mention the Cornishman and the Riviera Express. Even when the Flying Dutchman was begun it had no third class, and was too expensive for the whole family. Luncheon-baskets had not been invented, neither was it possible to reserve seats. In order, therefore, to travel all together in one compartment we had to arrive more than half an hour before the train was to start. There was then the suspense of waiting for it to come in, and my fear that we might not be on the right platform or that the Great Western had forgotten all about it. My father meanwhile was taking the tickets and having the luggage labelled. Never did he hasten his steps or hurry, no matter what the emergency, so that there was the additional fear that he would miss the train. When at last we were all safely in a carriage, he would saunter off to buy a paper, and other people were coming in.

 
; In time everything was settled and we were gliding out, ‘with our faces towards Cornwall’, as mother used to say. Very little of the view from the windows escaped us, and I was privileged to ‘kneel up’ and report the latest news to the company. No sooner had we fairly left London behind, were gathering speed, and had sated ourselves with fields and hedges for a while, than we began to survey our fellow passengers and make friends with them. In the old broad-gauge carriages there were usually six a side, and much courtesy was needed for a long run when there was no escape from one another. Our parents took care to found a family tradition of being good travellers, which was understood to mean that we must not be a nuisance to other people, by crowding the window, talking loudly, moving about, eating before the appointed time (and perhaps being ill)…and the evil-doings of children who began to eat sweets before Reading were pointed out.

  Where we came out strong in the carriage company at large was in our superior familiarity with the route. We knew all the points of interest to be looked out for. ‘We are going to Cornwall.’ ‘We always go there,’ ‘We’ll show you when it comes.’ By such delicate expressions of superiority we managed to conceal our contempt for the poor creatures who ‘were only going to Bristol’, or some degraded person who had to ‘change at Didcot’. What we most liked was a grown-up, preferably a man, who was a complete stranger to the line. A kindly clergyman would listen with apparent fervour to our informative talk about Brunei and the viaducts, or be shown the ‘very place that Turner took for his “Rain, Steam and Speed”’. We knew the exact point to get a view of Windsor Castle, and showed it as if it were our own.

  Reading, the first stop, was great fun for those on the near side. What more cheering than to see distracted people looking for seats when we were definitely full up? If we had a vacant seat at any stop Charles would suggest that I should be pushed forward, for any one on seeing me, he maintained, would try farther on. Or he would ejaculate, as any one was about to come in, ‘No one would think that Barnholt was recovering from measles!’ We talk of the confusion of a modern station, but it is orderly peace compared to the rushing about and shouting of those days. The wonder is that we ever moved on again. And yet we didn’t dare to leave the carriage, because at any moment the guard might decide that he had had enough.