PART II
a€?GIRLS AND BOYS COME OUT TO PLAYa€?
I
Until one looks back on onea€?s own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has. The angle of vision is entirely different to that of the adult, everything is out of proportion.
Children can make a shrewd appraisal of what is going on around them, and have a quite good judgment of character and people. But the how and the why of things never seems to occur to them.
It must have been when I was about five years old that my father first became worried about financial affairs. He had been a rich mana€?s son and had taken it for granted that an assured income would always come in. My grandfather had set up a complicated series of trusts to come into effect when he died. There had been four trustees. One was very old and had, I think, retired from any active connection with the business, another shortly went into a mental asylum, and the other two, both men of his own age, died shortly afterwards. In one case the son took on. Whether it was sheer inefficiency or whether in the course of replacement somebody managed to convert things to his own use I do not know. At any rate the position seemed to get worse and worse.
My father was bewildered and depressed, but not being a businesslike man he did not know what to do about it. He wrote to dear old So-and-So and dear old Somebody Else, and they wrote back, either reassuring him or laying the blame on the state of the market, depreciation and other things. A legacy from an elderly aunt came in about this time and, I should imagine, tided him over a year or two, whilst the income that was due and should have been paid to him never seemed to arrive.
It was at about this time, too, that his health began to give way. On several occasions he suffered what were supposed to be heart attacks, a vague term that covered almost everything. The financial worry must, I think, have affected his health. The immediate remedy seemed to be that we must economise. The recognised way at that particular time was to go and live abroad for a short while. This was not, as nowadays, because of income taxa€“income tax was, I should imagine, about a shilling in the pounda€“but the cost of living was much less abroad. So the procedure was to let the house with the servants, etc., at a good rent, and go abroad to the South of France, staying at a fairly economical hotel.
Such a migration happened, as far as I remember, when I was six years old. Ashfield was duly leta€“I think to Americans, who paid a good price for ita€“and the family prepared to set off. We were going to Pau in the South of France. I was, of course, very much excited by this prospect. We were going, so my mother told me, where we should see mountains. I asked many questions about these. Were they very, very highHigher than the steeple of St. MarychurchI asked with great interest. It was the highest thing I knew. Yes, mountains were much, much higher than that. They went up for hundreds of feet, thousands of feet. I retired to the garden with Tony, and munching an enormous crust of dry bread obtained from Jane in the kitchen set to work to think this out, to try to visualise mountains. My head went back, my eyes stared up at the skies. That was how mountains would looka€“going up, up, up, up, up until lost in the clouds. It was an awe-inspiring thought. Mother loved mountains. She had never cared for the sea, she told us. Mountains, I felt sure, were to be one of the greatest things in my life.
One sad thing about going abroad was that it meant a parting between me and Tony. Tony was not, of course, being let with the house; he was being boarded out with a former parlourmaid called Froudie. Froudie, who was married to a carpenter and lived not far away, was quite prepared to have Tony. I kissed him all over and Tony responded by licking me frantically all over my face, neck, arms and hands.
Looking back now, the conditions of travel abroad then seem extraordinary. There were, of course, no passports or any forms to fill in. You bought tickets, made sleeping-car reservations, and that was all that had to be done. Simplicity itself. But the Packing! (Only capital letters would explain what packing meant.) I dona€?t know what the luggage of the rest of the family consisted of; I do have a fair memory of what my mother took with her. There were, to begin with, three round-top trunks. The largest stood about four feet high and had two trays inside. There were also hat boxes, large square leather cases, three trunks of the type called cabin trunks and trunks of American manufacture which were often to be seen at that time in the corridors of hotels. They were large, and I should imagine excessively heavy.
For a week at least before departure my mother was surrounded by her trunks in her bedroom. Since we were not well off by the standards of the day, we did not have a ladya€?s maid. My mother did the packing herself. The preliminary to it was what was called a€?sortinga€?. The large wardrobes and chests of drawers stood open while my mother sorted amongst such things as artificial flowers, and an array of odds and ends called a€?my ribbonsa€and a€?my jewellerya€?. All these apparently required hours of sorting before they were packed in the trays in the various trunks.
Jewellery did not, as nowadays, consist of a few pieces of a€?real jewellerya€and large quantities of costume jewellery. Imitation jewellery was frowned on as a€?bad tastea€?, except for an occasional brooch of old paste. My mothera€?s valuable jewellery consisted of a€?my diamond buckle, my diamond crescent and my diamond engagement ringa€?. The rest of her ornaments were a€?reala€but comparatively inexpensive. Nevertheless they were all of intense interest to all of us. There was a€?my Indian necklacea€?, a€?my Florentine seta€?, a€?my Venetian necklacea€?, a€?my cameosa€and so on. And there were six brooches in which both my sister and myself took a personal and vivid interest. These were a€?the fishesa€?, five small fish in diamonds, a€?the mistletoea€?, a tiny diamond and pearl brooch, a€?my parma violeta€?, an enamel brooch representing a parma violet, a€?my dogrosea€?, also a flower brooch, a pink enamelled rose with clusters of diamond leaves round it, and a€?my donkeya€?, prime favourite, which was a baroque pearl mounted in diamonds as a donkeya€?s head. They were all earmarked for the future on my mothera€?s demise. Madge was to have the parma violet (her favourite flower), the diamond crescent and the donkey. I was to have the rose, the diamond buckle and the mistletoe. This earmarking of possessions for the future was freely indulged in by my family. It conjured up no sad feelings about death, but merely a warm appreciation of the benefits to come.
At Ashfield the whole house was crowded with oil paintings bought by my father. To crowd oil paintings as closely as you could on your walls was the fashion of the day. One was marked down for mea€“a large painting of the sea, with a simpering young woman catching a boy in a net in it. It was my highest idea of beauty as a child, and it is sad to reflect how poorly I thought of it when the time came for me to sort out pictures to sell. Even for sentimenta€?s sake I have not kept any of them. I am forced to consider that my fathera€?s taste in pictures was consistently bad. On the other hand every piece of furniture he ever bought is a gem. He had a passion for antique furniture, and the Sheraton desks and Chippendale chairs that he bought, often at a very low figure since at that time bamboo was all the rage, are a joy to live with and possess, and appreciated so much in value that my mother was able to keep the wolf from the door after my father died by selling a good many of the best pieces.
He, my mother and my grandmother all had a passion for collecting china. When Grannie came to live with us later she brought her collection of Dresden and Capo di Monte with her, and innumerable cupboards were filled with it at Ashfield. In fact, fresh cupboards had to be built to accommodate it. There is no doubt that we were a family of collectors and that I have inherited these attributes. The only sad thing is that if you inherit a good collection of china and furniture it leaves you no excuse for starting a collection of your own. The collectora€?s passion, however, has to be satisfied, and in my case I have accumulated quite a nice stock of papier-mache furniture and small objects which had not figured in my parentsa€collections.
When the day came I was so excited that I felt quite sick and completely silent. When really thrilled by anything, it always seems to deprive me of the powers of speech. My first clear memory of going abroad was when we stepped on to the boat at Folkestone. My mother and Madge took the Channel crossing with the utmost seriousness. They were bad sailors and retired immediately to the ladiesa€saloon to lay themselves down, close their eyes and hope to get across the intervening water to France without the worst happening. In spite of my experience in small dinghies I was convinced that I was a good sailor. My father encouraged me in this belief, so I remained on deck with him. It was, I imagine, a perfectly smooth crossing, but I gave the credit not to the sea but to my own power of withstanding its motion. We arrived at Boulogne and I was glad to hear father announce, a€?Agathaa€?s a perfectly good sailora€?.
The next excitement was going to bed in the train. I shared a compartment with my mother and was hoisted up on to the top bunk. My mother always had a passion for fresh air, and the steam heat of the wagon lits carriages was agony to her. All that night it seemed to me I woke up to see mother with the window pushed down and her head out, breathing great gasps of night air.
Early the next morning we arrived at Pau. The Hotel Beausejour bus was waiting so we piled into it, our eighteen pieces of luggage coming separately, and in due course arrived at the hotel. It had a large terrace outside it facing the Pyrenees.
a€?There!a€said father. a€?SeeThere are the Pyrenees. The snow mountains.a€?
I looked. It was one of the great disillusionments of my life, a disillusionment that I have never forgotten. Where was that soaring height going up, up, up into the sky, far above my heada€“something beyond contemplation or understandingInstead, I saw, some distance away on the horizon, what looked like a row of teeth standing up, it seemed, about an inch or two from the plain below. ThoseWere those mountainsI said nothing, but even now I can still feel that terrible disappointment.