Mr. Bullock, the guard, was a great friend of all of us children; and our chief pleasure was to ask him a riddle: “Why is it dangerous to go out in the spring?” I will leave it to the reader to guess the answer, with merely this as a guide, that the first part of the answer to the riddle is “Because the hedges are shooting,” and the second part of the answer is peculiarly appropriate to Mr. Bullock. I am afraid Mr. Bullock never saw why, although no doubt he enjoyed the riddle.
I have already said that I cannot fix any line of division between the nursery and the schoolroom epochs, but before I get on to the subject of the schoolroom I will record a few things which must have belonged to the pre-schoolroom period.
One incident which stands out clearly in my mind is that of the fifty-shilling train. There were at that time in London two toy-shops called Cremer. One was in New Bond Street, No. 27, I think, near Tessier’s, the jeweller; another in Regent Street, somewhere between Liberty’s and Piccadilly Circus.
In the window of the Regent Street shop there was a long train with people in it, and it was labelled fifty shillings. In the year 1921 it is only a small mechanical train that can be bought for fifty shillings. I can’t remember whether I had reached the schoolroom when this happened, but I know I still wore a frock and had not yet reached the dignity of trousers. I used constantly to ask to go and look at this shop window and gaze at the fifty-shilling train, which seemed first to be miraculous for its size, and, secondly, for its price. Who in the world could have fifty shillings all at once?
I never went so far as thinking it was possible to possess that train; but I used to wonder whether there were people in the world who could store up fifty shillings. We were each of us given sixpence every Saturday, but it was always spent at once, nor could I calculate or even conceive how long it would take to save enough sixpences to make fifty shillings.
One evening, when we were at Coombe, in the summer, I was sent for to the drawing-room and then told to go into the dining-room. I opened the door, and there, on the floor, was the fifty-shilling train. If a fairy had flown into the room and lifted me to the ceiling I could not have thought a fact more miraculous. From that moment I knew for certain that miracles could happen and do happen, and subsequent experience has confirmed the belief. Alas! the funnel of the engine was soon broken, and Mr. Toombs, the carpenter, was said to be able to mend it, and I looked forward to another miracle. He did, but in a way which was hardly satisfactory considered as a miracle, although perfect for practical usage. He turned on a lathe a solid funnel made of black wood, but not hollow, and he stuck it in where the funnel ought to be. I pretended I was satisfied, but my private belief was that Mr. Toombs didn’t know how to make funnels.
Another thing which happened when I was six years old was a visit to the Drury Lane pantomime, which was Mother Goose. This, of course, with a transformation scene with a large fairy with moving emerald butterfly-like wings and Arthur Roberts who, when playing a trumpet, spat out all his teeth on to the floor as if they were an encumbrance, was an ecstasy beyond words.
Another event almost more exciting was the arrival of a doll’s house. I played with dolls, but not as girls do, mothering them and dressing them. Mine were little tiny dolls, and could not be dressed or undressed, and they were used as puppets. I made them open Parliament, act plays and stories, and most frequently take the part of the French Merovingian kings. This was at the beginning of the schoolroom period, and the dolls were called Chilpéric, Ermengarde, Clothilde, Blanche de Castille, Frédégonde, Brunehaut, Galswinthe, and Pépin le Bref, and other names belonging to the same remote period of history. One day I was told that a doll’s house was coming. I couldn’t sleep for excitement, and Hilly, Grace, and Annie gravely held a conclave one night when I was in bed and supposed to be asleep, over their supper, and said that so exciting a thing as a doll’s house ought not to be allowed me. It would ruin my health. I feigned deep sleep, and the next day pretended to have lost all interest in dolls’ houses, but when it came, all its furniture was taken out, put on the floor, and arranged in two long rows, with a throne at one end, to enable Chilpéric and Frédégonde to open Parliament.
One year in London I actually saw Queen Victoria drive to the opening of Parliament in a gilded coach with a little crown perched on her head and an ermine tippet. It was not quite a satisfactory crown, but still it was a crown, and the coach had the authentic Cinderella quality.
To go back to the dolls for a moment. I used to go to Membland sometimes for Easter with my father and mother when the rest of the family stayed in London, and Margaret used to write me letters from the dolls, beginning “Cher Papa” and ending “Ermengarde” or “Chilpéric,” as the case might be. These letters used to cover me with confusion and mortification before the grown-up people, as I kept it a secret that I ever played with dolls, knowing it to be thought rather eccentric, and liable to be misunderstood, especially when there were other boys about, which there were.
Of course, in the nursery, Hugo and I had endless games of pretending, especially during bath-time (baths were hip-baths), and I remember Hugo refusing to have his bath because when we were playing at fishes I seized the shark’s part and wouldn’t let him be a shark. “Hilly,” he wailed, “I will be a shark.” But no, I wouldn’t hear of it, and he had to be a whale, which the shark, so I said, easily mastered.
Promotion to the schoolroom meant lessons and luncheon downstairs. The schoolroom was inhabited by my three sisters, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Susan, and ruled over by the French governess, Chérie. I thought Chérie the most beautiful, the cleverest, and altogether the most wonderful person in the world. My earliest recollection of her almost magical powers was when she took a lot of coloured silks and put them behind a piece of glass and said this was une vision. I believed there was nothing she didn’t know and nothing she couldn’t do. I was also convinced that one day I would marry her. This dream was sadly marred by the conduct of my sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the eldest, Margaret the second, and Susan the third, of my sisters. I firmly believed in fairies. Elizabeth and Margaret fostered the belief by talking a great deal about their powers as fairies, and Elizabeth said she was Queen of the fairies. One day she said: “Just as you are going to be married to Chérie, and when you are in church, I will turn you into a frog.” This was said in the schoolroom in London. The schoolroom was on the floor over the nursery. No sooner had Elizabeth made this ominous remark when I ran to the door and howled in a manner which penetrated the whole house from the housemaids’ rooms upstairs to the housekeeper’s room in the basement. Screams and yells startled the whole house. Hilly came rushing from the nursery; Chérie came from her bedroom, where she had been doing some sewing; Dimmock, my mother’s maid, whom we called D., came downstairs, saying: “Well, I never”; Sheppy, the housekeeper, peered upwards from the subterranean housekeeper’s room; and, lastly, my mother came from the drawing-room. The cause of the crisis was explained by me through sobs. “She says” … sob, sob, yell … “that she’s a fairy” … sob, sob … “and that she’ll turn me into a frog” … sob, sob … “when I marry Chérie …” All attempts to calm me were in vain. Elizabeth was then appealed to, and the whole house in chorus said to her, “Say you’re not a fairy.” But Elizabeth became marble-constant. She said, “How can I say I’m not a fairy when I am one?” A statement which I felt to be all too true and well founded. More sobs and yells. Universal