The Days Before Yesterday Part 13

Students of Pepys' Diary must have gasped with amazement at learning of the prodigious quant.i.ties of food considered necessary in the seventeenth century for a dinner of a dozen people. Samuel Pepys gives us several accounts of his entertainments, varying, with a nice sense of discrimination, the epithet with which he labels his dinners. Here is one which he gave to ten people, in 1660, which he proudly terms "a very fine dinner." "A dish of marrow-bones; a leg of mutton; a loin of veal; a dish of fowl; three pullets, and two dozen of larks, all in a dish; a great tart; a neat's tongue; a dish of anchovies; a dish of prawns, and cheese." On another occasion, in 1662, Pepys having four guests only, merely gave them what he modestly describes as "a pretty dinner." "A brace of stewed carps; six roasted chickens; a jowl of salmon; a tanzy; two neats' tongues, and cheese." For six distinguished guests in 1663 he provided "a n.o.ble dinner." (I like this careful grading of epithets.) "Oysters; a hash of rabbits; a lamb, and a rare chine of beef, Next a great dish of roasted fowl cost me about thirty shillings; a tart, fruit and cheese." Pepys anxiously hopes that this was enough! One is pleased to learn that on all three occasions his guests enjoyed themselves, and that they were "very merry," but however did they manage to hold one quarter of this prodigious amount of food?

The curious idea that hospitality entailed the proffering of four times the amount of food that an average person could a.s.similate, persisted throughout the eighteenth century and well into the "seventies" of the nineteenth century. I remember as a child, on the rare occasion when I was allowed to "sit up" for dinner, how interminable that repast seemed. That may have been due to the fact that my brother and I were forbidden to eat anything except a biscuit or two. The idea that human beings required perpetual nourishment was so deep-grounded that, to the end of my father's life, the "wine and water tray" was brought in nightly before the ladies went to bed. This tray contained port, sherry and claret, a silver kettle of hot water, sugar, lemons and nutmeg, as well as two large plates of sandwiches. All the ladies devoured wholly superfluous sandwiches, and took a gla.s.s of wine and hot water before retiring. I think people would be surprised to find how excellent a beverage the obsolete "negus" is. Let them try a gla.s.s of either port, sherry, or claret, with hot water, sugar, a squeeze of lemon, and a dusting of nutmeg, and I think that they will agree with me.

A custom, I believe, peculiar to our family, was the burning of church incense in the rooms after dinner. At the conclusion of dinner, the groom-of-the-chambers walked round the dining-room, solemnly swinging a large silver censer. This dignified thurifer then made the circuit of the other rooms, plying his censer. From the conscientious manner in which he fulfilled his task, I fear that an Ecclesiastical Court might have found that this came under the heading of "incense used ceremonially."

My father had one peculiarity; he never altered his manner of living, whether the house was full of visitors, or he were alone with my mother, after his children had married and left him. At Baron's Court, when quite by themselves, they used the large rooms, and had them all lighted up at night, exactly as though the house was full of guests.

There was to my mind something very touching in seeing an aged couple, after more than fifty years of married life together, still preserving the affectionate relations of lovers with each other. They played their chess together nightly in a room ninety-eight feet long, and delighted in still singing together, in the quavering tones of old age, the simple little Italian duets that they had sung in the far-off days of their courtship. As his years increased, my father did not care to venture much beyond the circle of his own family, though as thirteen of his children had grown up, and he had seven married daughters, the two elder of whom had each thirteen children of her own, the number of his immediate descendants afforded him a fairly wide field of selection. In his old age he liked to have his five sons round him all the winter, together with their wives and children. Accordingly, every October my three married brothers arrived at Baron's Court with their entire families, and remained there till January, so that the house persistently rang with children's laughter. What with governesses, children, nurses and servants, this meant thirty-three extra people all through the winter, so it was fortunate that Baron's Court was a large house, and that there was plenty of room left for other visitors. It entailed no great hardship on the sons, for the autumn salmon-fishing in the turbulent Mourne is excellent, there was abundance of shooting, and M. Gouffe, the cook, was a noted artist.

Both my father and mother detested publicity, or anything in the nature of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt, which only shows how hopelessly out of touch they would have been with modern conditions.

My father was also old-fashioned enough to read family prayers every morning and every Sunday evening; he was very particular, too, about Sunday observance, now almost fallen into desuetude, so neither the thud of lawn-tennis racquets nor the click of billiard-b.a.l.l.s were ever heard on that day, and no one would have dreamed of playing cards on Sunday.

It would be difficult to convey any idea of the pleasant family life in that isolated spot tucked away amongst the Tyrone mountains; of the long tramps over the bogs after duck and snipe; of the struggles with big salmon; of the sailing-matches on the lakes; of the grouse and the woodc.o.c.ks; of the theatrical performances, the fun and jollity, and all the varied incidents which make country life so fascinating to those brought up to it.

It was the custom at Baron's Court to have two annual dances in the barn to celebrate "Harvest Home" and Christmas, and to these dances my father, and my brother after him, invited every single person in their employ, and all the neighbouring farmers and their wives. Any one hoping to shine at a barn-dance required exceptionally sound muscles, for the dancing was quite a serious business. The so-called barn was really a long granary, elaborately decorated with wreaths of evergreens, flags, and mottoes. The proceedings invariably commenced with a dance (peculiar, I think, to the north of Ireland) known as "Haste to the Wedding." It is a country dance, but its peculiarity lies in the fact that instead of the couples standing motionless opposite to one another, they are expected to "set to each other," and to keep on doing steps without intermission; all this being, I imagine, typical of the intense eagerness every one was supposed to express to reach the scene of the wedding festivities as quickly as possible. Twenty minutes of "Haste to the Wedding" are warranted to exhaust the stoutest leg-muscles. My mother always led off with the farm-bailiff as partner, my father at the other end dancing with the bailiff's wife. Both my father, and my brother after him, were very careful always to wear their Garter as well as their other Orders on these occasions, in order to show respect to their guests. Scotch reels and Irish jigs alternated with "The Triumph," "Flowers of Edinburgh," and other country dances, until feet and legs refused their office; and still the fiddles sc.r.a.ped, and feet, light or heavy, belaboured the floor till 6 a.m. The supper would hardly have come up to London standards, for instead of light airy nothings, huge joints of roast and boiled were aligned down the tables. Some of the stricter Presbyterians, though fond of a dance, experienced conscientious qualms about it. So they struck an ingenious compromise with their consciences by dancing vigorously whilst a.s.suming an air of intense misery, as though they were undergoing some terrible penance. Every one present enjoyed these barn-dances enormously.

My father was an admirable speaker of the old-fashioned school, with calculated pauses, an unusual felicity in the choice of his epithets, and a considerable amount of gesticulation. The veteran Lord Chaplin is the last living exponent of this type of oratory. Although my father prepared his speeches very carefully indeed, he never made a single written note. He had a beautiful speaking voice and a prodigious memory; this memory, he knew from experience, would not fail him. An excellent shot himself both with gun and rifle, and a good fisherman, to the end of his life he maintained his interest in sport and in all the pursuits of the younger life around him, for he was very human.

It is difficult for a son to write impartially of his mother. My mother's character was a blend of extreme simplicity and great dignity, with a limitless gift of sympathy for others. I can say with perfect truth that, throughout her life, she succeeded in winning the deep love of all those who were brought into constant contact with her. Very early in life she fell under the influence of the Evangelical movement, which was then stirring England to its depths, and she throughout her days remained faithful to its tenets. It could be said of her that, though, in the world, she was not of the world. Owing to force of circ.u.mstances, she had at times to take her position in the world, and no one could do it with greater dignity, or more winning grace; but the atmosphere of London, both physical and social, was distasteful to her.

She had an idea that the smoke-laden London air affected her lungs, and, apart from the pleasure of seeing the survivors of the very intimate circle of friends of her young days, London had few attractions for her; all her interests were centred in the country, in country people, and country things. Although deeply religious, her religion had no gloom about it, for her inextinguishable love of a joke, and irrepressible sense of fun, remained with her to the end of her life, and kept her young in spite of her ninety-three years. From the commencement of her married life, my mother had been in the habit of "visiting" in the village twice a week, and in every cottage she was welcomed as a friend, for in addition to her gift of sympathy, she had a memory almost as tenacious as my father's, and remembered the names of every one of the cottagers' children, knew where they were employed, and whom they had married. With the help of her maid, my mother used to compound a cordial, bottles of which she distributed amongst the cottagers, a cordial which gained an immense local reputation. The ingredients of this panacea were one part of strong iron-water to five parts of old whisky, to which sal-volatile, red lavender, cardamoms, ginger, and other warming drugs were added. "Her Grace's bottle," as it was invariably termed, achieved astonishing popularity, and the most marvellous cures were ascribed to it. I have sometimes wondered whether its vogue would have been as great had the whisky been eliminated from its composition. In her home under the Suss.e.x downs, amidst the broad stretches of heather-clad common, the beautiful Tudor stone-built old farm-houses, and the undulating woodlands of that most lovable and typically English county, she continued, to the end of her life, visiting amongst her less fortunate neighbours, and finding friends in every house. Her immense vitality and power of entering into the sorrows and enjoyments of others, led at times to developments very unexpected in the case of one so aged. For instance, a small great-nephew of mine had had a pair of stilts given him. The boy was clumsy at learning to use them, and my mother, who in her youth, could perform every species of trick upon stilts, was discovered by her trained nurse mounted on stilts and perambulating the garden on them, in her eighty-sixth year, for the better instruction of her little great-grandson. Again, during a great rat-hunt we had organised, the nurse missed her ninety-year-old charge, to discover her later, in company with the stable-boy, behind a barn, both of them armed with sticks, intently watching a rat-hole into which the stable-boy had just inserted a ferret.

My mother travelled up to London on one occasion to consult a celebrated oculist, and confided to him that she was growing apprehensive about her eyesight, as she began to find it difficult to read small print by lamplight. The man of Harley Street, after a careful examination of his patient's eyes, asked whether he might inquire what her age was. On receiving the reply that she had been ninety on her last birthday, the specialist a.s.sured her that his experience led him to believe that cases of failing eyesight were by no means unusual at that age.

My mother had known all the great characters that had flitted across the European stage at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Talleyrand, Metternich, the great Duke of Wellington, and many others.

With her wonderful memory, she was a treasure-house of anecdotes of these and other well-known personages, which she narrated with all the skill of the born reconteuse. She belonged, too, to an age in which letter-writing was cultivated as an art, and was regarded as an intellectual relaxation. At the time of her death she had one hundred and sixty-nine direct living descendants: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, in addition to thirty-seven grandchildren and great-grandchildren by marriage. She kept in touch with all her descendants by habitually corresponding with them, and the advice given by this shrewd, wise old counsellor, with her ninety years of experience, was invariably followed by its recipients. She made a point of travelling to London to attend the weddings of every one of her descendants, and even journeyed up to be present at the Coronation of King Edward in her ninetieth year. It is given to but few to see their GRANDSON'S GRANDSON; it is granted to fewer to live ninety-three years with the full use of every intellectual faculty, and the retention of but slightly impaired bodily powers; and seldom is it possible to live to so great an age with the powers of enjoyment and of unabated interest in the lives of others still retained.

She never returned to Ireland after her widowhood, but was able, up to the end of her life, to pay a yearly autumn visit to her beloved Scotland. And so, under the rolling Suss.e.x downs, amidst familiar woodlands and villages, full of years, and surrounded by the lore of all those who knew her, the long day closed.

I think that there is a pa.s.sage in the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs which says: "Her children rise up and call her blessed."

I have reached my appointed limits, leaving unsaid one-half of the things I had wished to narrate. Reminiscences come crowding in unbidden, and, like the flickering lights of the Will-o'-the-wisp, they tend to lead the wayfarer far astray from the path he had originally traced out for himself. "Jack-o'-lanthorn" is proverbially a fickle guide to follow, and should I have succ.u.mbed to his lure, I can only proffer my excuses, and plead in extenuation that sixty years is such a long road to re-travel that an occasional deviation into a by-path by elderly feet may perhaps be forgiven.

Charles Kingsley, in the "Water-Babies", has put some very touching lines into the mouth of the old school-dame in Vendale, lines which come home with pathetic force to persons of my time of life.

"When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every la.s.s a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad And every dog his day.

"When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The old and spent among: G.o.d grant you find one face there You loved when all was young."

I protest indignantly against the idea that all the wheels are run down; nor are the trees yet brown, for kindly autumn, to soften us to the inevitable pa.s.sing of summer, touches the trees with her magic wand, and forthwith they blaze with crimson and russet-gold, pale-gold and flaming copper-red.

In the mellow golden sunshine of the still October days it is sometimes difficult to realise that the glory of the year has pa.s.sed beyond recall, though the sunshine has no longer the genial warmth of July, and the more delicate flowers are already shrivelled by the first furtive touches of winter's finger-tips. Experience has taught us that the many-hued glory of autumn is short-lived; the faintest breeze brings the leaves fluttering to the ground in golden showers. Soon the few that remain will patter gently down to earth, their mother. Winter comes.