There was no room for anti-British feeling, either in Gosport or Portsmouth. The Lloyd Georges of those times never dared to run around these towns. The greatest literary figure was Rudyard Kipling, the most loved was Charles Dickens, and in the home of young Upfield, Ralph Connor was chief favourite.
The march of events was presented to the boy through the pages of the Illustrated London News, and for him national figures became persons quite likely to call at the house. Beyond these great people, from Disraeli to General Sir Redvers Buller, were a group of others equally real: Mr. Pickwick, Mrs. Bardell, Mr. Snodgrass, Alice and those extraordinary people she met at the other side of the looking- glass. And beyond even these, in a place where they wore strange clothes, were yet other real people, such as David and Moses, and Matthew and John, and the gentle Christ.
Periodically there came to the house a man who had a round red face, light blue eyes, and a ready smile. He came to visit the aunt, and when they set out on a walk, there was a scene because the boy was not to go with them. There came another aunt from America, and with her husband, who seemed to do little but lie on a sofa and be coaxed off to bed even before the boy’s time. Then there was a flurry of activity, when all the men wore top-hats and frock-coats, and all the younger women donned new dresses with leg-of-mutton sleeves. Arthur William’s father and mother were both there that day, and his father and uncles tied dozens of old boots to the back axle of the carriage which bore away the gay aunt and the man with the round face and the light blue eyes.
2
For a space Arthur William lived with his parents and brothers, of whom there were now four, and when he again went to live with the grandparents, the man who had so long reclined on the couch had gone, and the aunt wore sombre black, and always a bonnet with long black ribbons.
At first, almost every fine afternoon he accompanied this aunt to the cemetery and watched her kneeling beside the grave and snipping the grass with cutters as she watered it with her tears. It appeared that she had much in common with the cemetery manager–tall and cadaverous body, weak brown eyes, long red nose. Sometimes he cried with her. Sometimes at lunch or at dinner the aunt would abruptly burst into tears, and be chided by the grandmother for lack of control. This behaviour always cast a gloom over the boy, to be dispersed only when he could escape into the garden.
When winter came, there were long periods in bed suffering from bronchitis, and then father would come with toys and books, and, inevitably, copies of the Illustrated London News.
During the summer months the boy would lie abed and watch the day depart, and nothing delighted him more, winter or summer, than to watch the clouds, and people them with beings from the books read to him.
It was when he was confined to bed that his grandfather died, after a short illness, and then there were two widows dressed alike. When grandma’s sisters, the butchers now retired, called to take tea and talk wittily, there were four Queen Victorias, save that the sisters did not wear black ribbons.
Grandfather’s passing hurt. Thereafter, Arthur William would not eat an apple from grandfather’s favourite tree. But he climbed all the trees, the back wall overlooking the nursery and the division wall of the next garden, owned by a doctor. The neighbour came to believe that Arthur William was interested in his apples and strawberries, and so espied the box on the flat roof of a summer house abutting this party wall. He noted that the boy climbed the wall to reach the roof and to peer into the box, and sometimes stealthily to remove an article, appear to clean it with his handkerchief and replace it.
Curiosity drove him. Hearing that Arthur William was again confined to bed, he placed a ladder against the wall and reached for the box, an old tin one. Within it he found grandpa’s half-topper, together with the handkerchief serving as a duster.
Quite often, headed by their band, the Royal Marines would march by, and sometimes the King’s Royal Rifles would pass, and came the time when this regiment included detachments from the Colonies which had come to take part in the Coronation of Edward VII.
In mid-summer, when the apples fell, the boy would gather them and place them with exactitude on the rear lawn; the band, the position of all officers, accurately copied. Following a naval review at Spithead, the apples were made to represent the ships; ten apples in a packed line for each battleship, six for each cruiser, four for a destroyer, two for a torpedo boat. Every ship would be in the correct position according to the boy’s observation when taken on a passenger ship to view the fleet.
The last act of this period was dominated by a Christmas tree.
As grandma was confined to her bed, she had a large tree placed in her bedroom, and the entire Christmas Eve was given up to dressing the tree and fruiting it with presents. Then it was covered with a dust-sheet until the following evening, when arrived all the grandsons and the one granddaughter. Arthur William had to be the M.C., but it was a most successful party, and when a week or two later grandma settled to sleep the long sleep she spoke of the children and the tree.
3
The passing of Grandma Upfield brought to a close a period in the life of Arthur Upfield, and began another which in all respects was parallel with the greater changes which swept over Great Britain with the Coronation of Edward VII. It was as though everything, from ships to newspapers, horse-drawn public conveyances to the railways, schools, libraries and shops, all were changed in the few succeeding years.
The high-sided ironclads vanished to give place to warships lower on the water, faster, sleeker, culminating in the naval triumph of the dreadnought. The horse-drawn trams stopped, the roads were torn up, and the rails laid for electric trams. The street lights of incandescent gas gave way to modern electric standards. Powerful engines replaced the puff-and-snort locomotives on the railways. And new ways of shop window dressing were studied by business people, new methods of accountancy, new schemes devised to meet increased competition.
Arthur left the sheltered world of quiet affection, where most things came his way without competition, to enter a world in which his parents were fully occupied with business, and where he had to compete with his brothers. They were Edward, a year younger, Frank, two years younger than Edward, toddler Nelson, born on Trafalgar Day, and John, a small baby.
There was no crowding, not in that enormous house over the business premises. At the rear was an enclosed yard providing excellent playing room, and long vacant stables with a large loft which became the play-place in wet weather. What saved Arthur from jealousy created by competition was that, having had to adventure alone, he now adventured in company.
There was always the harbour. There was the ‘Green’ more often than not stacked with great logs which provided the planks and masts and spars for yachts and small ships, and close by were the shipyards of Camper & Nicholson, who built the series of Shamrocks, and the ‘lofts’ where the sails were made. And, when bicycles came, there was Haslar Creek, beyond which was the Naval Hospital and outlying forts, and Stoke’s Bay, to which the railway was extended; and Porchester Castle, a vast heap of masonry set on a perfect lawn of many acres.
Arthur did have important advantages over his brothers. He had received the concentrated attention of several women; they had had to compete with business for the attention of their parents. Arthur had lived in a vastly different world, a world where dwelt the heroes of books, the heroes beyond the seas. Because of this, not because he was the eldest, he became the leader in games and mischief. His inventiveness in this direction possibly outweighed his failing of being a bad loser.
The shop was opened at eight-thirty, and remained open until nine in the evening, but on Saturday night it remained open and doing good business at eleven o’clock. It seemed that the only reason for the shops not remaining open after midnight on Christmas Eve had a religious basis; and for the first hour of Christmas the Upfield shop