CHAPTER III
“WOOED AND MARRIED, AND A’” ICELAND seems a strange place to go to, but it came about in this wise. My brother was ill after completing his medical education, and wanted a holiday. Not having the slightest idea where to go, Iceland was suggested. To Cook’s I then went. The young man behind the counter shook his head. They had never been asked for a ticket to Iceland. Indeed, they did not know how to get there. They knew nothing about the place. That decided the matter, and to Iceland, in 1886, we young folk went. Then it was that my father besought me to keep a diary. “There will be no possibility of sending letters home,” he said, “because there are only two or three posts a year, and there is no telegraphic communication. So by the time you come back, you will have forgotten many of the interesting details, all of which your mother and I would like to know. Consequently I beg you will keep a diary.” Therefore I took with me some funny little black-backed shiny books at a penny each, and scrawled down notes and impressions, sometimes written from the back of a pony, sometimes in the darkness of a tent in which one could not stand up; sometimes sitting beside a boiling geyser while our meal bubbled in a little tin can on the edge of the pool, but always beneath the gorgeous skies, the endless days and little-known nights of the Arctic in summer. To that little trip romance is attached. Alec Tweedie, who had been proposing to me regularly since the day I came out, was, to my amazement and disgust, standing on the quay at Leith when we arrived there ready to start. We were a little party of four, and as he knew I particularly wished him not to come, and that he would make an odd man in the party and also render the situation uncomfortable for me, I was perfectly furious. I raged up and down that quay, I used every bad word I could think of. But still he was firm to his ground. He would take his gun, he would shoot. He would never say a word to cause me the least embarrassment from the day we started till we returned, he would never refer to the old sentimental charge of which I was heartily sick. In fact, he promised to be on his “best behaviour,” but come he would. I nearly turned tail myself, even at the last moment, so furious was I at the situation. However, as his word of honour was given, I accepted the matter rather than upset the whole party at the eleventh hour or let the others guess the secret. To his credit be it said, he entirely carried out his promise. He was always there when I wanted him, never when I did not. He was just as nice to my girl companion as to myself. He was good pals with the two men, in fact, I do not think any of the others realised the situation in the least. It was his behaviour during that time that made me begin to change my mind. I saw the strain it was on him and admired him for carrying it through. I saw him pull himself up many times and march off to light a pipe for solace.
If love is service, Alec loved. Riding astride over a lava bed near Hekla my pony fell, the girths gave way, and saddle and I turned round together. It was a nasty fall on my head and I was stunned. Alec appeared—from goodness knows where—to pick me up. I have ridden since I was seven, generally on a side-saddle, but in Iceland, Morocco, and Mexico astride, and only two falls have been my lot, this and another from a side-saddle in Tangier, when my horse, climbing a steep stony road, strained and broke the girths and I fell on the off-side.
It was not till we were coming into the Firth of Forth many weeks later, just before landing on the quay where I had stormed and raged, that Alec Tweedie said: “There is Edinburgh Castle, have I kept my word?” “Yes,” I replied. “Have you any fault to find with anything I have said or done during the trip?” “No,” I murmured. “Have I kept my promise in the letter and the law?” Again I had to answer “Yes.” “Then you are satisfied?” “But you had no right to come,” I weakly said. “That has nothing to do with it. Are you satisfied?” “Yes,” I had to reply. “Then,” he continued, “remember that my bond is waste paper when we land in a few minutes, and the proposals I have made before, I shall repeat on terra firma.”
Six weeks later we were engaged, and six weeks later still I married one of the handsomest men in London.
When I was first engaged it was a constant subject of interest to my friends that the man should have such an extraordinary name as Alec. In 1887 no one in England had apparently ever heard the name of Alec. He was the fifth generation bearing the name himself, but outside that family the abbreviation does not appear to have penetrated. Times change, and twenty years later the name had become so well known that I had the honour and felicity of seeing it on a music-hall programme, and placarded for a music-hall artist. In his diary my father states the following: “My daughter Ethel has just married (1887) Alec Tweedie, son of an Indian Civil Servant and grandson of Dr. Alexander Tweedie, F.R.S., formerly of 47, Brook Street, whose portrait hangs in the Royal College of Physicians, London. Old Dr. Tweedie’s work on fever was very well known, and the London Fever Hospital was built under his auspices. Strangely enough, he examined me when I first came to London to take the membership of the Royal College of Physicians. “But the connecting-link is even stronger, for Alec Tweedie is first cousin to Sir Alexander Christison, my old Edinburgh chum, who took his degree with Murchison and myself on the same day in Edinburgh. My son-in-law is therefore a nephew of dear old Sir Robert Christison, whose classes I attended as a student. “On his mother’s side, Alec is the grandson of General Leslie, K.H., and great-grandson of Colonel Muttlebury, C.B.K.W., a very distinguished soldier, who was in command of the 69th at Quatre Bras. “My son-in-law is also a nephew of General Jackson, who was in the famous charge of Balaclava, so that on his mother’s side he is as much connected with the army as he is on his father’s with medicine.”
Being a young person with a mind of her own, I rebelled against hideous sugar flowers on my wedding-cake. I loved wedding-cake, and my father, knowing this form of greed, laughingly said: “You had better get a wedding-cake as big as yourself and then you will be happy.” I did, that is to say it weighed nine stone four pounds, my own weight, which is barely a stone more when these pages go to press. Well, thereupon, I repaired to Mr. Buszard, junior—whose father, attired in a large white apron and tall hat, I, as a baby, had known in his then little shop in Oxford Street. “I want real flowers on my cake,” I announced. “Impossible, we never do such a thing,” he replied. “Then you must do it now, do it for me.” Much palaver, and Mr. Buszard and I crossed the street together to a little flower shop, with the result that those three tiers of wedding-cake were decked with natural blooms and a tall vase of white flowers as a central ornament. Everyone has natural flowers nowadays. I travelled away with the top tier of my cake, and ate bits of it in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, during our three months’ honeymoon. We took one of the houses at the top of Harley Street, overlooking Regent’s Park, where squirrels frolic and wood pigeons cry, and there, in York Terrace, where the muffin man rings his bell on Sundays and George IV lamp-posts hold our light, I still live. Apropos of this street, Sir Arthur Grant of Monymusk once told me a curious story. His grandfather owned many houses in the neighbourhood in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and whenever one was empty he put an old caretaker in who had once been a personal servant. On one occasion one of the houses was to let. A lady and gentleman arrived in a carriage and asked to see over it. The caretaker showed them round and they seemed pleased with everything. They asked many questions and lingered some time, and when they left, to the surprise of the caretaker, they handed her a sovereign. As most people gave her nothing, and others a shilling, she was rather taken aback with the sovereign, and explained how large a sum it was. “It is all right,” said the gentleman, “put it in your pocket and may it bring you luck.” Not long after her return to the staircase, which she had been cleaning before their arrival, she heard a child’s voice. It seemed to be crying. She listened for some time, and as she was quite alone in the house, she was unable to understand the cause. Finally, feeling sure it came from a certain room, she went and opened the door, just to satisfy herself it was an hallucination. What was her amazement to find a sturdy little boy of two standing before her. She nearly had a fit, the people had not mentioned a child, nor had she seen anything of it, and she remembered that the lady and gentleman had left no address. Feeling sure such kind people would come back, she took the small boy to the kitchen and gave him some milk. He was too small to tell her who he was or where he came from, though he sat and cried. When her husband came home she told him the strange story. “Oh, they will come and fetch him presently. Don’t you worry,” he said. But day wore on to evening, and evening wore on to night, and no one came. The only thing she could do was to pacify him and put him to bed, and when she undressed him golden sovereigns fell out of a bag tied round his neck. The mystery thickened. Days went on; no one claimed the child. The caretaker went to Sir Arthur’s grandfather and reported the matter, and everything was done to try to trace the owners of the little boy, but nothing was heard of them. The woman’s husband was a nice old man, and instead of wishing to turn the child out, he said: “No, God ordained to give us no children of our own. This little boy has been left with us, and it is our duty to take care of him.” So accordingly the little boy was brought up as their own son. He was sent to school, went out as a page-boy, and became a footman. He made an excellent servant, clean, punctual, tidy, and efficient—but, alas! he finally traced his pedigree to a family of very high degree; from that moment he was ruined. He thought himself too grand for his situation, became idle, took to drink, began blackmail, and generally went to the dogs. The house we took was a few doors from this romance. Built about 1810, the house was strong and good, but old-fashioned, so we had to put in a bath, have hot and cold water laid on upstairs; add gas, after finally deciding it would be too much bother to work our own electric dynamo in the cellar (the only possible source of electric light in London in 1887 was at the Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street); reconstruct the drains from end to end; in fact, turn an ancient dwelling into a modern one. A vine, probably as old as the house, bears fruit on the drawing-room balcony every summer, and lilies of the valley and jasmine flourish beneath the window. One year the vine bore one hundred and seventy bunches of little black grapes. In the hot summer of 1911 the number of bunches was less; but two weighed respectively one pound, and thirteen ounces.
Was it Chance? or did Dame Brilliana Harley hover as a guardian angel round the path of her namesake, gently whispering suggestions shedding her influence to draw me in her footsteps? Howe’er it was, after my marriage and departure abroad, naturally nothing more was thought of the shiny black cloth book of Iceland notes by its owner. Meantime it happened that Miss Ellen Barlee, a fairly well-known authoress in those days—she wrote a Life of the Prince Imperial—was going blind, and my father lent them to her so that her secretary might read my jottings aloud in the evening with a view to amusing the old lady. GRAPES GROWING ON A LONDON BALCONY
One day she sent for me. “My dear, you must publish this,” she said as soon as I arrived. At that time I had not long returned from my wedding tour. Needless to say, therefore, I laughed at the idea. Miss Barlee was determined, however, to carry her point. “If you do not believe in my opinion,” she said, “may I send the manuscripts to my publisher, and if he approves of it, will you take the matter into serious consideration, as you are almost the first woman—girl, I should rather say—to have been across Iceland?” Naturally I assented to her proposal, thinking the whole thing absurd. What was my surprise when, a little later, I received a letter from the publisher to say that he liked the notes, and if I would divide them into chapters he thought that they would make a nice little book. He also asked whether I could let him have any illustrations for it. Feeling somewhat exalted, and yet very shy about the whole thing, I sent him a number of the sketches that I had made. Lo and behold, they were accepted for the illustrations, and the book appeared as A Girl’s Ride in Iceland. How strange it seems to look back and remember the origin of the title A Girl’s Ride in Iceland. It was the title I had put on the cover of the little black book—but it seemed absurd and ridiculous to my mind as a cover on a real book. I thought of all sorts of grand, high-sounding delineations; but Miss Barlee would none of them. “I love your title,” she said. “You were a girl, and it seems such an original idea, you must stick to it.” I did, but the critics laughed at the idea of a girl doing anything—nevertheless it was quickly followed with A Girl in the Carpathians, and every sort and kind of “girl” has haunted the public ever since, from the stage to the library. The book ran through four editions, finally appearing on the bookstalls at one shilling. But, oh dear, how I struggled with those chapters! How I fought those “Mondays,” “Tuesdays,” and “Wednesdays” of the diary-form and wrestled to get the whole into consecutive line and possible chapters: but it gave me amusement during long hours spent on a sofa before my eldest child was born. I used to get into despair, the despair of the amateur who does not know what is wanted, and which is just as bad as the despair of the professional who really knows what is wanted and yet cannot pull it off. And so A Girl’s Ride in Iceland appeared just for the fun of the thing. It cost me nothing and amused me hugely at the moment; but I soon forgot all about it and set to work to enjoy myself again. Among the friends who came to our bridal dinners—alas! years have rolled on and death has played havoc among them—was Professor John Stuart Blackie, my husband’s cousin. In Edinburgh that remarkable head of his, with the shaggy white locks, the incomparable black wide-awake and the Scotsman’s plaid thrown around his shoulders, was really one of the sights. In fact, no figure was better known north of the Tweed than Professor Blackie in his day. The north was his “ain countree,” but he was a delight to every social circle that he entered on those occasions when he came south. Of course, he commanded the whole company. And why not? Who would be an octogenarian as full of activity and high spirits as he was, a Greek scholar, professor, and a wit, without the authority to bid others keep silence while one’s self talks? His little foibles and vanities were the man, and nobody who knew him would willingly have seen him part with a single one of them. On such an evening, soon after my marriage, I was sitting between him and Mr. (now Sir) Anderson Critchett. The Professor declared in his emphatic way that no man who lacked a poetic soul ought to live, poetry being one of the most refining and ennobling gifts; he had always been a poet himself and hoped to continue so as long as he lived. The old scholar became quite excited on the theme and said he would sing to us after dinner, which he did, half singing, half reciting “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.” “I believe in singing, it does one good,” he professed, and so he sang. Eccentric as he was, Blackie’s courtesy was delightful. What a pity we have not more of that sort of thing nowadays! We women do love pretty little attentions. Blackie once wrote me a poem—it was in Greek: Likeness to God. Those things are likest to God, The heart that fainteth never, The love that ever is warm, And the hand of the generous giver.
When he gave it to me, he dropped on his knees on the floor before a whole roomful of people, kissed my hand like a courtier of the Middle Ages in humble obeisance, and handed me the little poem. About this time also dates my first essay in journalism. Chance so often steps in to foreshadow the important events of our lives. Everyone gets his chance; but many do not recognise it when it comes. If we only accept small beginnings they often lead to big endings. My chance notebook on Iceland and some sporting articles in the Queen were the beginning of an income a few years later. I was going to Scotland to pay a round of shooting and golfing visits with my husband, who was fond of all kinds of sport. It occurred to me it would be an interesting thing to write some sporting articles, for I invariably followed the guns. I therefore went down to the office of the Queen and boldly sent my card in to the editor. Miss Lowe received me. I explained my idea to her, but as it would be an innovation for a lady’s paper to attempt to print anything in the nature of sport she did not know how it would be received, so she sent for a worthy captain, who was at that time the art editor of the paper, and asked for his opinion. “Absurd!” he exclaimed, without a moment’s hesitation; “perfectly absurd! A woman can’t write articles on sport.” As really I did not care very much about doing the articles except for an amusement, I was turning to go away, when I noticed the editor holding the lapels of the old gentleman’s coat and trying to bawl into his ear. “Women don’t know anything about sport and don’t want to,” he continued, still determined not to listen. Those were the early days of women in journalism, and men—or rather most men—had a strong prejudice against us and a distinct disbelief in our abilities. After this ultimatum there was nothing left for me to do but to say good-bye and leave Miss Lowe’s room. I was going out a little crestfallen that my plan had so completely fallen through, when, as the captain opened the door for me, he suddenly noticed my gloves, and said: “Why do you wear those white gauntlet gloves? They look like the Horse Guards.” “They are my driving gloves,” I replied. “Driving gloves!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean? You didn’t drive here?” “Certainly,” I answered, “the phaeton is at the door.” “You drove down Holborn at this crowded hour of the day?” “Yes,” I mildly replied. He looked out of the window and saw the carriage and horses standing in the street below. By this time I was in the passage. He called me back, scanned me curiously, and, turning to Miss Lowe, said suddenly, and without any preliminary canter: “Let her do the articles. A woman who can drive a pair along the crowded London streets in the season ought to be able to write a sporting article.” Perhaps his conclusion was as illogical as his previous opinion of woman’s capability in the sporting line had been. Anyway, as it gave me the opportunity I wanted, I was not disposed to question, much less to quarrel, with it. So began the first series of sporting articles to appear in a woman’s paper. The little set was a success. This was my first essay in journalism, just done at the time for the fun of the thing. I think I made about fifteen pounds over it, and promptly distributed my earnings where most sadly required. Any little earnings then were devoted to charity, and I always called them my “charity money.” It was the generousness of superfluity. Now, when I can’t help giving away a great deal more than I ought to afford, it is the “extravagance of generosity.” Having tried my hand at journalism I was satisfied, just as I had tried my hand as a girl in my teens at exhibiting oil-paintings at the Lady Artists’ Exhibitions or china plaques elsewhere; or as later, when I exhibited photographs and won a Kodak prize of five pounds for horses galloping across the open prairie. It is nice to make an attempt at anything and everything, and sometimes such experience becomes of value. Truly, journalism did so to me when, six years after those first half-dozen sporting articles appeared for “the fun of the thing,” I had to look to my pen, or my brush. BORKUM OF SPY FAME—NOW A GREAT NAVAL STATION
Water-colour sketch by the Author. Exhibited in London 1911 How strange, after such a span of time, to feel a little thrill of pleasure at the announcement of acceptance of something I had done! It shows that, after all, one is capable of new sensations along new lines, even when parallel ones. Everyone was talking of Borkum in 1910. Two English officers had been arrested as spies there and imprisoned in a German fortress. Mr. Percy Anderson, fresh from designing the dresses for Kismet, chanced to see a sketch I had made at Borkum a few years before. “Why on earth don’t you send it to an exhibition?” he asked. “I never show anything nowadays,” was my reply. “Send this for a change, then—just get a frame and send it in.” The frame was bought, and to the Lady Artists in Suffolk Street it went. A little thrill of joy passed through me when I opened an envelope with a bright red ticket: Admit the artist to varnishing day. A week later my little picture appeared in the Daily Graphic. Borkum, once famous “as the only spot on earth without a Jew,” is now a great German naval base. In 1900 it was little more than a sandhill, with a few lodging-houses and bathing-machines, and ourselves the only English folk. Icebound in winter, it was the home of millions of wild fowl in summer. Every evening before going to bed the visitors and residents sang their anti-Jewish anthem. Though strong in fortification, Borkum is not great in size, being only six miles long and half a mile wide. Public charity is no doubt an excellent thing. The world could not get on without it. But private charity seems to me of infinitely more value. If every one of us always had some particular case in hand for someone less blessed than ourselves, what a much happier place the world would be. Individual charity means so much. There is nothing easier than for a rich person to write a cheque and send it to some institution, where a large percentage is swallowed up in paying rates, rent, and taxes, clerks, and the rest of it, but it means a great deal for a person to give up their private time, to expend their own energy, in looking after some individual case. We all know people we can help, not singly, but in multitudes, if we choose to take the trouble, and for the greater part of my life I have found it a good thing to have one big job in hand at a time and to work at it till completed. Procuring public or private pensions for the genteel poor, getting cripples into homes, invalids into hospitals, or people recovering from illnesses into convalescent homes; starting young people in life; enquiring into emigration cases and helping them; finding young women places in bonnet shops, even securing employment in orchestras. In fact, there is generally a niche for every case if one only takes the trouble to find it. The niche is not always procurable by the persons themselves, as they have not the world-wide knowledge and influence to secure it; but with a little capacity, a little work, and a little thought one is often able to help young people to start, to help to educate children, and do hundreds of little individual kindnesses which may keep the whole family together, or mean the future success of the individual. Poverty is always relative. It means possessing less than we have been accustomed to. Having been both rich and poor, I am perhaps an impartial critic. The domestic experiences of those married years were, later, as so much garnered grain to the writer. My luxurious, happy home was—without my knowledge—affording me training which afterwards proved invaluable in my writing. The responsibilities of motherhood gave me insight into the workings and imaginations of children’s minds. The household wisdom learnt as mistress of a fairly large establishment has been of infinite use in writing on practical subjects of domestic interest—especially those of interest to women. Men must really cease to think women find fun in ordering cabbages. As every book we read leaves some sort of an impression, so every scene or incident we live leaves its mark.
CHAPTER IV
“A WINTER JAUNT TO NORWAY” ON a terribly cold day in January, 1893, my father received a wire from Christiania, saying that my brother was dangerously ill there. After he took his degree, Vaughan had worked with Pasteur in Paris for some time at the table next Professor Sophus Torop. They thus became friends, and when my brother wished to complete some original scientific work of his own, Professor Torop kindly offered him space in his huge laboratories at Christiania if he cared to use them. Thither he went. A cut on his hand ended in serious blood-poisoning, and a terrifying telegram suggesting amputation of the right arm was the first intimation we had of the illness. It was afternoon. Someone must go to Norway. Norway in winter! Yes, Norway covered with snow and ice: its rivers, fjords, waterfalls, and lakes all frozen: its mountains cloaked with purest snow: its people swathed in fur. My father was too tied by his profession to leave. My mother was not equal to so perilous a journey. My husband was away in Scotland on business, so I undertook the expedition. It was considered too wild an undertaking for me, a young woman, to do quite alone, so my people insisted that my sister, then a little girl, should accompany me. Three hours later we started, not in the least knowing how we were ever going to get to Christiania, as the winter was particularly severe, and for months the great naval station at Kiel had been completely ice-bound. We had the most exciting time crossing from Kiel to KorsÖr in the first boat that had ventured through the ice for twelve weeks, and so bad did the passage finally become that we were forced to get out and walk. Crossing an ice-floe was somewhat interesting and certainly exciting, and walking on one’s feet from Denmark to Sweden was a queer experience. Sometimes we stumbled through slush across ice-hummocks between two and three feet thick. At other times we got into lumbersome ice-boats and were pulled by sailors with feet properly swathed for the purpose. Occasionally the boat would slide into an ice-crack, and, though the passengers remained dry, the wretched men dragging the craft suffered unexpected cold baths. We passed encampments on the ice, with people living calmly there, from whom we learnt that various venturesome travellers, thinking they could cross the frozen belt without proper guides, had started off on foot. Then fog or mist overtook them and they lost their way, or, being fatigued, they sat down to rest and were frozen into their eternal sleep. Others slipped and lost their lives in the ice-cracks. Two or three such deaths were matters of weekly occurrence that severe winter.
We were met in Christiania at six o’clock in the morning by Dr. Nansen, who came to tell us that our brother’s hand had been saved, and though he was still seriously ill, they hoped all immediate danger was past. We nursed him and finally took him away to the mountains, where there was snow ten feet deep, to recoup after his illness. Our experiences were so delightful that we returned to Norway a couple of years later for the fun of the thing, and I took a number of photographs. The Lady Brilliana Harley must have been at my elbow, I think, as I only did the thing as a joke and to amuse myself at the time. I had found ski so exciting a sport, I wanted others to know about its joys. Strange to say, however, no newspaper would take my photographs of ski. “They had never heard of such a sport, they did not wish to hear of such a sport—one which would never be the slightest interest to English people,” and so on. Who would believe this, when, only fifteen years later, the windows of London sporting outfitters are filled with ski in the winter months, and great numbers of young men and women have tried SkilÜbling themselves? Do not our English people go out to Switzerland in thousands and tens of thousands every year for this very purpose? While, after all, Norway is preferable in winter. When I took up my pen professionally, I pegged away, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. Other people began to be interested, so I contributed the first snow-shoe articles to the EncyclopÆdia of Sport, and newspapers and magazines galore. At that time in Christiania, and later on when we returned for snow-shoeing, Society was very simple, but very interesting. Night after night at parties we met such men as Nansen, Ibsen, BjÖrnson, Leys the poet, and Ilef Petersen the artist. There were no grand dinners, just simple little supper-parties, beer and milk being the chief beverages, with one hot dish and many delicious cold compounds. The daughter of the house, more or less, waited at table. Everything was simplicity itself, but brains and talent, wit and humour were omnipresent. The greatest personality of all this group was undoubtedly BjÖrnson. He was one of the finest men, both in appearance and brain, that I have ever met, and I have met many great men. I made a few notes, remembered much more; and finally, when friends begged me to write a volume of these travels, I wrote A Winter Jaunt to Norway. It went into two or perhaps three editions, but that was only as a hors d’oeuvre. It contained personal chapters upon such people as Nansen and the latter-day dramatists of Norway, Ibsen and BjÖrnson. Ibsen had not then the cult that he immediately afterwards acquired, and it is curious now to read of the hostility which his writings provoked. Sir Edwin Saunders wrote to me: “You have gone far to sweeten Ibsen, which is no ordinary achievement.” Mr. W. C. Miller, the editor of the Educational Times, wrote: “Some time I propose to try Ibsen again, when, I dare say, I shall be reviled (once more) almost as if I were advocating robbery and murder.” One appreciates most the compliments of one’s own fellow-countrymen. But the foreigner is charming, so frank and free, so naÏve. How could a young writer be otherwise than pleased to receive this letter from a Norwegian? “How well you bring out the poetry of winter in your Norway book! I think you are more of a poet than you know of yourself. I think, too, that you are a born story-teller. I never knew anyone seize so quickly and unerringly the spirit of those Icelandic tales. I believe you could modernise one of the Sagas so as to make it as interesting to a modern reader as a novel. I have an unbounded belief in you. “Yours truly,
“J. Stefansson.” Even as I write, the vision of Ibsen’s simple home, his plebeian wife, and the old man seated at his desk with his little dolls laid out before him, comes floating over the space of years. A most unromantic figure, surely! though at the end of his life Ibsen formed an attachment for a young girl which was tenfold returned by her. He was, notwithstanding the rough exterior, an amorous old gentleman, fond of squeezing ladies’ hands and whispering pretty things into their ears, so I was not so surprised as some of his admirers on this side seem to have been. He was hardly dead before a little book appeared in German, its title being Ibsen. With Unpublished Letters to a Friend, by Georg Brandes. The friend was the girl. There were twelve letters, including a set of album verses and the dedication of a photograph. The romance came about in this wise. In the late summer of 1889 Ibsen and his family spent a holiday in the Tyrolese watering-place Gossensass, where they made the acquaintance of a young Viennese girl who was also staying there. She was eighteen years of age, the poet sixty-one; but that wide disparity did not prevent a warm friendship springing up between them, which apparently was cultivated more assiduously on her side than on his, and was eventually brought to a close, as far as overt manifestations were concerned at any rate, by his decision. On separating, the dramatist gave her a copy of his photograph, on the back of which was written: “To the May sun of a September life—in the Tyrol; 27-9-89.—Henrik Ibsen.” By the following February Ibsen was already troubled in his mind over the development which the friendship was taking. He wrote: “Long, very long, have I let your last dear letter lie, read it and read it again, without sending you an answer. Please accept my most heartfelt thanks in a few words. And henceforward, till we see one another personally, you will hear from me by letter little and seldom. Believe me—it is better so. It is the only right thing to do. I feel it a matter of conscience to put a stop to this correspondence with you, or, at any rate, to restrict it.... You will understand all this as I have meant it. And if we meet again I will explain exactly. Till then and for ever you remain in my thoughts. And that all the more if this troublesome letter-writing causes no disturbance. A thousand greetings. “Your
“Henrik Ibsen.” In spite of Ibsen’s entreaties his young friend continued to send him letters, and a little present accompanied one of them at the close of 1890. He replied: “I have safely received your dear letter. Also the bell with the lovely picture. I thank you for them from my heart. My wife, too, thinks the picture is very well painted. Soon I will send you my new play. Receive it in friendship—but in silence. “Your ever devoted
“Henrik Ibsen.” That was the end of the letter-writing. They never saw one another again after the meeting in the Tyrol, and from then the Viennese girl kept silence. Only once did she break it—on the poet’s seventieth birthday, in 1898, when she sent him a congratulatory telegram. Three days later she received from him a photograph, on the back of which was written: “The summer in Gossensass was the happiest, the most beautiful in my life. Hardly dare to think of it. And yet must always—always.” So Love came tapping at the window of the old gentleman who had described Youth knocking at the door. A Winter’s Jaunt to Norway the papers unanimously described as “lively” and “breezy,” and its proud parent began to feel as if she had discovered the home of the winds. A few years later the solid meal followed—the notes were served up as soup, re-served as fish for the papers, and took more solid form as meat for the magazines. Memory was called upon in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of Scandinavian subjects as puddings for the Press, so these little trips for pleasure became invested capital and bore good interest. I became an authority on Northern lands, and for years was written to, or telegraphed to, or ’phoned to for copy on like subjects. I was asked to review somebody else’s Norway book; to join a Norwegian Club; to supply someone with a teacher of Norsk literature, and be interviewed for “galleries” of travellers or sportswomen. One gentleman, whom I unfortunately did not see, but of whose industry I remain an unceasing admirer, wrote an admirable four-column interview with me, entirely from his own imagination. It always pays to master something well, and it is strange how one comes across things again and again through life. When I had been very ill in 1909, and was ordered to Woodhall Spa for a course of baths, the delightful Bath-chair man who conveyed me to the pump-room, suddenly exclaimed, “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you the Mrs. Alec Tweedie that writes?” “Yes,” I replied. “I wondered if you were immediately I heard your name,” he said, “because I owe you a lot, ma’am.” “Owe me?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “seven or eight years ago there was a sale near here and a lot of books were sold. I bought a dozen old copies of Murray’s Magazine for a shilling, and a shilling meant a good deal to me in those days, but reading meant more. In them I read articles by you on Nansen, BjÖrnson, and those Norwegian fellows, and I got so interested in Norwegian literature and the North Pole that I have read everything about them I have been able to lay my hands on ever since. The Squire has been awfully good in lending me his books on Arctic travel, and if it had not been for you I should never have begun to take an interest in such things.” It was really quite touching. How little one knows when one takes up one’s pen what good or ill those inky scratches may do. On the heels of A Winter’s Jaunt to Norway, written for pleasure, came Wilton, Q.C., or Life in a Highland Shooting-Box, written for gain, which The Times was kind enough to praise for its instruction as well as amusement, saying the author appeared to have a sound knowledge of all varieties of the chase. This was the outcome of those sporting articles in the Queen written when I used to follow the guns with my husband. It was followed by a booklet on Danish versus English Butter-making, reprinted from the Fortnightly Review. This subject interested me so greatly that it was most cheering to find the big “dailies” taking up with zest my lecture to our slack farmers at home. A leading article in the Daily Telegraph said, “Those of our readers who wish to learn how the thrifty, hardy, and industrious Danes have grown rich during the last quarter of a century we refer to Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s instructive exegesis.” And the Review of Reviews affirmed, “It is a discourse much needed in the present day by our agriculturists.” But I am running too far ahead. Life is often ruled by chance, and that Danish subject which brought so much kudos at the time was taken up by chance because of a stray remark at a big dinner in Copenhagen. Apropos of the simplicity of life in Norway, it was rather amusing to note the despair and worry caused over the dress allowance of the maids-of-honour appointed to attend upon the young English Princess, who had, in 1906, but recently taken her seat upon the throne of Norway. It was decided that a certain amount of Court etiquette must be kept up. Accordingly, a high official from the Court of St. James’s went over to Christiania to see what could be done. It is a rule that a maid-of-honour should be paid a sum sufficient to dress upon, a sum which in England amounts to £300 a year, although a maid-of-honour is no longer given a thousand pounds as a marriage portion; all she carries away is her badge, with permission to wear it as a brooch since it is no longer required as an Order. Being anxious to make all arrangements as satisfactorily as possible the Englishman visited a well-known gentleman in the capital, who had several daughters and went much into Society. Touching the subject, he asked, “What would be a reasonable figure for a Norwegian girl to dress upon?” and explained his reason for wishing to know. “Well,” said the likewise exalted Scandinavian official, “I have three daughters, and as they go out a good deal, and I am particular that they should always look nice, I am afraid I am a little extravagant in their allowance and give them each twenty-five pounds a year.” “Twenty-five pounds a year!” exclaimed the Britisher, amazed. “Well, you see,” continued the Norwegian, evidently fearing that his visitor was shocked at the magnitude of the amount, “an ordinary young lady here would dress on fifteen or seventeen pounds a year, and, of course, some people do think the allowance I give my daughters somewhat excessive.” The Englishman, evidently more surprised, proceeded to explain that a dame-d’honneur would have to dress more expensively than an ordinary young lady; besides, there would be an occasional visit to London, or some other capital, when new clothes would be required. So these two good, kind creatures put their heads together, and, hovering between the hundred pounds offered by the Britisher and the fifty suggested by the Norwegian, decided that seventy-five pounds a year would be ample. Norway was amazed at the magnitude of the sum. For a young lady to have seventy-five pounds a year to put upon her back was astounding. But the young ladies soon discovered that they were expected to dress for dinner every night, a social custom unknown in their experience; and before the year had run out, they had learnt that their allowance was as little as they could clothe themselves upon as maids-in-waiting to the Queen of Norway. It was pleasant, when I paid my last visit to Norway in 1910, to hear how popular our English Princess and her Danish husband had made themselves. Norway is poor, but delightful. Life on lentils and beans can be quite pleasant; but perhaps the proletariat may deny us even these luxuries. Demos may decree that all men and women not employed on manual labour are “waste products,” and to work or to die will be demanded of them, work being to Demos a purely physical action.
CHAPTER V
“THE TENDER GRACE OF A DAY THAT IS DEAD” THOSE early days of married life were very gay. We entertained tremendously. We went out enormously. We lived in a perfect social whirl. I enjoyed the privilege of wearing pretty frocks at luncheons, dinners, and dances; of riding in the morning, and driving a Park phaeton and pair of cobs in the afternoon, followed by two brown collies, given me by Sir John Kinloch of Kinloch. One, “Ruby” by name, went everywhere with me, and, clinging to her coat as she perambulated round the dining-room, my babies learnt to walk. They were a pretty sight, those two small boys in Lord Fauntleroy suits, tumbling about on the hearth with the long-haired red collies. How I loved going to Ascot and Goodwood, taking people down, or being taken down, always feeling I could help to make things “go” and amuse people. Then the dinners; we had eight or ten to dine every Sunday night, quite informally, but as we usually lunched out and were away all day, we used to do this in the evenings. All sorts of charming people came, and I never enjoyed myself more than in the capacity of a hostess. Alec sang well, and we collected good musicians about us; Madame Lemmens-Sherrington, Madame Antoinette Sterling, George Grossmith, Corney Grain, Eugene Oudin, all went to the piano in turn. My husband was member of a dozen golf clubs, including St. Andrews, Wimbledon, and Sandwich; and we took houses for odd months on different links for the benefit of the children, who were looked after by two excellent nurses, while we ran down to see them for week-ends or slipped over to Paris for a few days. We went to shooting parties in the autumn, to race-meetings in the spring, were members of Sandown and Hurst Park, were constantly at Ranelagh or Hurlingham, kept a couple of boats on the river (the river was the height of fashion in the ’nineties) and generally enjoyed ourselves.
As a rule, we always lunched at the old Harley-Street house on Sundays when we were in town, went to all the theatres, and, in fact, lived a thoroughly happy, gay, social life, with no thought for the morrow. I still kept up my painting, did a quantity of embroidery from my own designs for bedspreads, sideboard cloths, babies’ bonnets, or lapels of dresses; once and again wrote a little, but the business of existence was more amusement, and fun and spending, rather than making money and saving. Everything seemed gay and bright and I found life one continual joy. Let Youth be happy and gay. It is the time to be irresponsible and light-hearted. Years bring soberness. Life makes us wonder if the game is worth the struggle. I suppose it comes to all of us at times to wish to run away and hide ourselves as Tolstoi did. The rebellion of youth against home restraint returns again in later years as the rebellion of age against life’s thraldom. And then, when the sky was blue, the bolt fell. We had been married eight years. Suddenly all was changed. My husband had joined a syndicate. The syndicate failed. He had lost—lost heavily. Lost his capital.
Immediately our household was reduced to modest limits. Our drawing-room was shut up, three servants dismissed, the horses sold. For the first time in my life I was without a carriage. But, as Alec was sure of earning money again shortly, we did not part with anything which this income would make possible to keep. Then a wonderful thing happened. A very dear old friend came to me. “Ethel,” he said, “I am more than sorry, my dear child, for all that has happened, but your husband will go back to business and all will be well; meantime put that in your bank to tide you over and keep things going as a weapon to fight fate.” It was a cheque for two thousand pounds. Imagine my amazement, imagine my pride at having a friend willing to make such a sacrifice; but, of course, I did not take it. I could not take it, although I thanked him from the bottom of my heart and promised if the necessity really came I would go to him. To give in one’s lifetime is true generosity, to bequeath after death is often merely convenience.
But my husband never smiled again. Overpowered by grief at the position in which he had placed his wife and children, he died six months later in his sleep; died simply of a broken heart. He was followed on the same journey only a few weeks later by my father, who passed away quite as suddenly, with the ink still wet on the paper of an article he was writing for the Lancet. He never finished his article, neither had he altered an old will as he had intended.
Three shocks had thus each followed the other in quick succession without time to recover from one before the next came, and so in little more than half a brief year the once happy daughter, wife, and mother stood alone, stunned, reduced to comparative poverty, with children clinging to her skirts. The two breadwinners of the family had gone out almost together.
There was not time to think and mourn and let precious moments go by. Something must be done. There was I with about as much to live on as I used to spend on my dress. Then my old dear friend came back to me. “I admired your pride and your pluck six months ago,” he said, “when you had a husband beside you to fight for you. But now, my dear child, you are alone and you have the children to think of. I wish you to go to your bank and put that two thousand pounds to your credit; and, more than that, I wish to adopt you as my daughter.” It was all so bewildering, so strange. I had known him all my life. He was one of my father’s oldest friends. His wife had always been charming to me and she had left me bits of jewellery when she died; but again I had to refuse. He had relations. I could not claim that privilege. Still he persisted. “You have always been like a daughter to me—to us—and now I want to claim the right to provide for you and your children.” Still I refused. I promised again to go to him if ever I was in real need; but I took nothing. When he died others inherited all he had.
There are only two crimes in Society: one to be poor, the other to be found out. It seems to me that everything in life is relative. If one is born poor, one does not know what it is to be rich, and if one is rich, one does not understand the responsibilities of strawberry leaves, and strawberry leaves do not comprehend the difficulties of a throne. If things change, if one goes up in the world, one naturally assimilates ideas and ways by merely taking on a little more of what one already has; but if one slides back in life, one has to give up what is part and parcel of one’s very existence. I was not born in a back street or a country cottage or a suburban villa—in either of these I might have lived in simple comfort on my small income—but that would not have been me.
Bills came in on every side. Bills haunted me. Bills were nothing in my old life when they were paid up every quarter; but even a few hundreds meant sleepless nights of haunting fear to me now. I took up my pen feverishly. Nine years of married life were ended. All was changed. Still, during those first few months of shock, my father yet lived, and I knew I could rely on his help, so it was not until the late autumn of 1896 that I realised my position in all its cruelty.
Pause, readers, not to give me your sympathy, not to shed tears on what is past, but to think of the future; pause and think, and pave the paths for your daughters, wives, mothers, and sisters by settlements. Yes, settlements. It is a cruel thing to let a girl leave a home without a safeguard in proportion to the income of her family. It is a crueller thing to bring boys and girls into the world with insufficient provision for their education and maintenance. This little book of a woman’s work will have served a good end if one father, husband, son, or brother, sees what opportunities were lost by no adequate provision being made for its author, when this could so easily have been done. Settlements of some sort are as necessary as the marriage ring, a health certificate is as important as the marriage lines. I feel strongly that every child born should have some kind of provision made for its education and maintenance and to give it a start in life. Both boys and girls should be treated exactly alike.
The unexpected change in my position showed me how kind the world can be; how good and generous the bulk of humanity is. There are certainly exceptions, and those generally where they should not be. But one does not think of them: one turns to the geniality and little acts of thoughtfulness that day by day come from friends in the truest sense of the word, and I can only wish that mine could realise to what extent they have greased the wheels of these working years. Little kindnesses are like flowers by the roadside or sun-gleams on a rainy day.
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