Cakes and Ale Page 13

  ‘Well, that may be, but it’s not a very pretty habit for a distinguished man of letters. And then, he didn’t exactly tipple, but he was rather fond of going down to the Bear and Key at Blackstable and having a few beers in the public bar. Of course there was no harm in it, but it did make him rather conspicuous, especially in summer when the place was full of trippers. He didn’t mind who he talked to. He didn’t seem able to realize that he had a position to keep up. You can’t deny it was rather awkward after they’d been having a lot of interesting people to lunch – people like Edmund Gosse, for instance, and Lord Curzon – that he should go down to a public-house and tell the plumber and the baker and the sanitary inspector what he thought about them. But of course that could be explained away. One could say that he was after local colour and was interested in types. But he had some habits that really were rather difficult to cope with. Do you know that it was with the greatest difficulty that Amy Driffield could ever get him to take a bath?’

  ‘He was born at a time when people thought it unhealthy to take too many baths. I don’t suppose he ever lived in a house that had a bathroom till he was fifty.’

  ‘Well, he said he never had had a bath more than once a week and he didn’t see why he should change his habits at his time of life. Then Amy said that he must change his underlinen every day, but he objected to that too. He said he’d always been used to wearing his vest and drawers for a week and it was nonsense, it only wore them out to have them washed so often. Mrs Driffield did everything she could to tempt him to have a bath every day, with bath salts and perfumes, you know, but nothing would induce him to, and as he grew older he wouldn’t even have one once a week. She tells me that for the last three years of his life he never had a bath at all. Of course all this is between ourselves; I’m merely telling it to show you that in writing his life I shall have to use a good deal of tact. I don’t see how one can deny that he was just a wee bit unscrupulous in money matters, and he had a kink in him that made him take a strange pleasure in the society of his inferiors and some of his personal habits were rather disagreeable, but I don’t think that side of him was the most significant. I don’t want to say anything that’s untrue, but I do think there’s a certain amount that’s better left unsaid.’

  ‘Don’t you think it would be more interesting if you went the whole hog and drew him warts and all?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t. Amy Driffield would never speak to me again. She only asked me to do the life because she felt she could trust my discretion. I must behave like a gentleman.’

  ‘It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.’

  ‘I don’t see why. And besides, you know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you’re cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism. Of course I don’t deny that if I were thoroughly unscrupulous I could make a sensation. It would be rather amusing to show the man with his passion for beauty and his careless treatment of his obligations, his fine style and his personal hatred for soap and water, his idealism and his tippling in disreputable pubs; but honestly, would it pay? They’d only say I was imitating Lytton Strachey. No. I think I shall do much better to be allusive and charming and rather subtle, you know the sort of thing, and tender. I think one ought always to see a book before one starts it. Well, I see this rather like a portrait by Van Dyck, with a good deal of atmosphere, you know, and a certain gravity, and with a sort of aristocratic distinction. Do you know what I mean? About eighty thousand words.’

  He was absorbed for a moment in the ecstasy of aesthetic contemplation. In his mind’s eye he saw a book, in royal octavo, slim and light in the hand, printed with large margins on handsome paper in a type that was both clear and comely, and I think he saw a binding in smooth black cloth with a decoration in gold and gilt lettering. But being human, Alroy Kear could not, as I suggested a few pages back, hold the ecstasy that beauty yields for more than a little while. He gave me a candid smile.

  ‘But how the devil am I to get over the first Mrs Driffield?’

  ‘The skeleton in the cupboard,’ I murmured.

  ‘She is damned awkward to deal with. She was married to Driffield for a good many years. Amy has very decided views on the subject, but I don’t see how I can possibly meet them. You see, her attitude is that Rose Driffield exerted a most pernicious influence on her husband, and that she did everything possible to ruin him morally, physically, and financially; she was beneath him in every way, at least intellectually and spiritually, and it was only because he was a man of immense force and vitality that he survived. It was of course a very unfortunate marriage. It’s true that she’s been dead for ages and it seems a pity to rake up old scandals and wash a lot of dirty linen in public; but the fact remains that all Driffield’s greatest books were written when he was living with her. Much as I admire the later books, and no one is more conscious of their genuine beauty than I am, and they have a restraint and a sort of classical sobriety which are admirable, I must admit that they haven’t the tang and the vigour and the smell and bustle of life of the early ones. It does seem to me that you can’t altogether ignore the influence his first wife had on his work.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I can’t see why all that part of his life shouldn’t be treated with the greatest possible reserve and delicacy, so as not to offend the most exacting susceptibility, and yet with a sort of manly frankness, if you understand what I mean, that would be rather moving.’

  ‘It sounds a very tall order.’

  ‘As I see it, there’s no need to dot the i’s or to cross the t’s. It can only be a question of getting just the right touch. I wouldn’t state more than I could help, but I would suggest what was essential for the reader to realize. You know, however gross a subject is you can soften its unpleasantness if you treat it with dignity. But I can do nothing unless I am in complete possession of the facts.’

  ‘Obviously you can’t cook them unless you have them.’

  Roy had been speaking with a fluent ease that revealed the successful lecturer. I wished (a) that I could express myself with so much force and aptness, never at a loss for a word, rolling off the sentences without a moment’s hesitation; and (b) that I did not feel so miserably incompetent with my one small insignificant person to represent the large and appreciative audience that Roy was instinctively addressing. But now he paused. A genial look came over his face, which his enthusiasm had reddened and the heat of the day caused to perspire, and the eyes that had held me with a dominating brilliance softened and smiled.

  ‘This is where you come in, old boy,’ he said pleasantly.

  I have always found it a very good plan in life to say nothing when I had nothing to say and when I do not know how to answer a remark to hold my tongue. I remained silent and looked back at Roy amiably.

  ‘You know more about his life at Blackstable than anybody else.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. There must be a number of people at Blackstable who saw as much of him in the old days as I did.’

  ‘That may be, but after all they’re presumably not people 106 of any importance, and I don’t think they matter very much.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You mean that I’m the only person who might blow the gaff.’

  ‘Roughly, that is what I do mean, if you feel that you must put it in a facetious way.’

  I saw that Roy was not inclined to be amused. I did not mind, for I am quite used to people not being amused at my jokes. I often think that the purest type of the artist is the humorist who laughs alone at his own jests.

  ‘And you saw a good deal of him later on in London, I believe.’

  ‘Yes,’

  ‘That is when he had an apartment somewhere in Lower Belgravia.’

  ‘Well, lodgings in Pimlico.’ Roy smiled dryly.

  ‘We won’t quarrel about the exact designation, of the quarter of London in which he lived. You were very intimate with him then.’

&
nbsp; ‘Fairly.’

  ‘How long did that last?’

  ‘About a couple of years.’

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Now look here, I want you to do me a great favour. It won’t take you very long and it will be of quite inestimable value to me. I want you to jot down as fully as you can all your recollections of Driffield, and all you remember about his wife and his relations with her and so on, both at Blackstable and in London.’

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow, that’s asking a great deal. I’ve got a lot of work to do just now.’

  ‘It needn’t take you very long. You can write it quite roughly, I mean. You needn’t bother about style, you know, or anything like that. I’ll put the style in. All I want are the facts. After all, you know them and nobody else does. I don’t want to be pompous or anything like that, but Driffield was a great man and you owe it to his memory and to English literature to tell everything you know. I shouldn’t have asked you, but you told me the other day that you weren’t going to write anything about him yourself. It would be rather like a dog in a manger to keep to yourself a whole lot of material that you have no intention of using.’

  Thus Roy appealed at once to my sense of duty, my indolence, my generosity, and my rectitude.

  ‘But why does Mrs Driffield want me to go down and stay at Ferne Court?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we talked it over. It’s a very jolly house to stay in. She does one very well, and it ought to be divine in the country just now. She thought it would be very nice and quiet for you if you felt inclined to write your recollections there; of course, I said I couldn’t promise that, but naturally being so near Blackstable would remind you of all sorts of things that you might otherwise forget. And then, living in his house, among his books and things, it would make the past seem much more real. We could all talk about him, and you know how in the heat of conversation things come back. Amy’s very quick and clever. She’s been in the habit of making notes of Driffield’s talk for years, and after all it’s quite likely that you’ll say things on the spur of the moment that you wouldn’t think of writing and she can just jot them down afterward. And we can play tennis and bathe.’

  ‘I’m not very fond of staying with people,’ I said. ‘I hate getting up for a nine o’clock breakfast to eat things I have no mind to. I don’t like going for walks, and I’m not interested in other people’s chickens.’

  ‘She’s a lonely woman now. It would be a kindness to her and it would be a kindness to me too.’

  I reflected.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go down to Blackstable, but I’ll go down on my own. I’ll put up at the Bear and Key and I’ll come over and see Mrs Driffield while you’re there. You can both talk your heads off about Edward Driffield, but I shall be able to get away when I’m fed up with you.’ Roy laughed good-naturedly.

  ‘All right. That’ll do. And will you jot down anything you can remember that you think will be useful to me?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘When will you come? I’m going down on Friday.’

  ‘I’ll come with you if you’ll promise not to talk to me in the train.’

  ‘All right. The five-ten’s the best one. Shall I come and fetch you?’

  ‘I’m capable of getting to Victoria by myself. I’ll meet you on the platform.’

  I don’t know if Roy was afraid of me changing my mind, but he got up at once, shook my hand heartily, and left. He begged me on no account to forget my tennis racquet and bathing suit.

  12

  My promise to Roy sent my thoughts back to my first years in London. Having nothing much to do that afternoon, it occurred to me to stroll along and have a cup of tea with my old landlady. Mrs Hudson’s name had been given to me by the secretary of the medical school at St Luke’s when, a callow youth just arrived in town, I was looking for lodgings. She had a house in Vincent Square. I lived there for five years, in two rooms on the ground floor, and over me on the drawing-room floor lived a master at Westminster School. I paid a pound a week for my rooms and he paid twenty-five shillings. Mrs Hudson was a little, active, bustling woman, with a sallow face, a large aquiline nose, and the brightest, the most vivacious black eyes that I ever saw. She had a great deal of very dark hair, in the afternoons and all day on Sunday arranged in a fringe on the forehead with a bun at the nape of the neck as you may see in old photographs of the Jersey Lily. She had a heart of gold (though I did not know it then, for when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right) and she was an excellent cook. No one could make a better omelette soufflè than she. Every morning she was up betimes to get the fire lit in her gentlemen’s sitting-rooms so that ‘they needn’t eat their breakfasts simply perishin’ with the cold, my word it’s bitter this morning’; and if she didn’t hear you having your bath, a flat tin bath that slipped under the bed, the water put in the night before to take the chill off, she’d say: ‘There now, there’s my dining-room floor not up yet, ’e’ll be late for his lecture again,’ and she would come tripping upstairs and thump on the door, and you would hear her shrill voice: ‘If you don’t get up at once you won’t ’ave time to ’ave breakfast, an’ I’ve got a lovely ’addick for you.’ She worked all day long and she sang at her work, and she was gay and happy and smiling. Her husband was much older than she. He had been a butler in very good families, and wore sidewhiskers and a perfect manner; he was verger at a neighbouring church, highly respected, and he waited at table and cleaned the boots and helped with the washing-up. Mrs Hudson’s only relaxation was to come up after she had served the dinners (I had mine at half past six and the schoolmaster at seven) and have a little chat with her gentlemen. I wish to goodness I had had the sense (like Amy Driffield with her celebrated husband) to take notes of her conversation, for Mrs Hudson was a mistress of Cockney humour. She had a gift of repartee that never failed her, she had a racy style and an apt and vivid vocabulary, she was never at a loss for the comic metaphor or the vivid phrase. She was a pattern of propriety, and she would never have women in her house, you never knew what they were up to (‘It’s men, men, men all the time with them, and afternoon tea and thin bread and butter, and openin’ the door and ringin’ for ’ot water and I don’t know what all’); but in conversation she did not hesitate to use what was called in those days the blue bag. One could have said of her what she said of Marie Lloyd: ‘What I like about ’er is that she gives you a good laugh. She goes pretty near the knuckle sometimes, but she never jumps over the fence.’ Mrs Hudson enjoyed her own humour and I think she talked more willingly to her lodgers because her husband was a serious man (‘It’s as it should be,’ she said, ‘’im bein a verger and attendin’ weddings and funerals and what all and wasn’t much of a one for a joke. ‘Wot I says to ’Udson is, laugh while you’ve got the chance, you won’t laugh when you’re dead and buried.’

  Mrs Hudson’s humour was cumulative, and the story of her feud with Miss Butcher who let lodgings at number fourteen was a great comic saga that went on year in and year out.

  ‘She’s a disagreeable old cat, but I give you my word I’d miss ’er if the Lord took ’er one fine day. Though what ‘E’d do with ’er when ’E got ’er I can’t think. Many’s the good laugh she’s given me in ’er time.’

  Mrs Hudson had very bad teeth, and the question whether she should have them taken out and have false ones was discussed by her for two or three years with an unimaginable variety of comic invention.

  ‘But as I said to ’Udson on’y last night, when he said: “Oh, come on, ’ave ’em out and ’ave done with it,” I shouldn’t ’ave anythin’ to talk about.’

  I had not seen Mrs Hudson for two or three years. My last visit had been in answer to a little letter in which she asked me to come and drink a nice strong cup of tea with her and announced: ‘Hudson died three months ago next Saturday, aged seventy-nine, and George and Hester send their respectful compliments.’ George was the issue
of her marriage with Hudson. He was now a man approaching middle age who worked at Woolwich Arsenal, and his mother had been repeating for twenty years that George would be bringing a wife home one of these days. Hester was the maid-of-all-work she had engaged toward the end of my stay with her, and Mrs Hudson still spoke of her as ‘that dratted girl of mine’. Though Mrs Hudson must have been well over thirty when I first took her rooms, and that was five and thirty years ago, I had no feelings as I walked leisurely through the Green Park that I should not find her alive. She was as definitely part of the recollections of my youth as the pelicans that stood at the edge of my ornamental water.

  I walked down the area steps and the door was opened to me by Hester, a woman getting on for fifty now, and stoutish, but still bearing on her shyly grinning face the irresponsibility of the dratted girl. Mrs Hudson was darning George’s socks when I was shown into the front room of the basement, and she took off her spectacles to look at me.

  ‘Well, if that isn’t Mr Ashenden! Whoever thought of seeing you? Is the water boiling, ‘Ester? You will ’ave a nice cup of tea, won’t you?’

  Mrs Hudson was a little heavier than when I first knew her, and her movements were more deliberate, but there was scarcely a white hair on her head, and her eyes, as black and shining as buttons, sparkled with fun. I sat down in a shabby little arm-chair covered with maroon leather.

  ‘How are you getting on, Mrs Hudson?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got nothin’ much to complain of except that I’m not so young as I used to was,’ she answered. ‘I can’t do so much as I could when you was ‘ere. I don’t give my gentlemen dinner now, only breakfast.’

  ‘Are all your rooms let?’

  ‘Yes, I’m thankful to say.’

  Owing to the rise of prices Mrs Hudson was able to get more for her rooms than in my day, and I think in her modest way she was quite well off. But of course people wanted a lot nowadays.