So I went to London, where, of course, I had always meant to go sooner or later. I had heard and read a great deal about this place, but had no idea that it was so remarkable as it really is. Perhaps the most extraordinary of all things in London is passing millions of people every day of your life and not knowing a single one. My Aunt Augusta met me at Paddington, and we drove to her home, where I was to stop for the time being. Her name was Miss Augusta Medwin, and she lived in a place called Cornwall Residences and was an R.B.A. It was a huge house divided into flats, and her flat was the top one of all. She was an artist, and R.B.A. stands for Royal British Artist. She had a little place leading out of her flat on to the roof of the building. This was built specially for her. It looked out on to the whole of the top of London and was a studio. The Metropolitan Railway had a yard down below, where the engines got up steam before going to work in the mornings. It was, of course, a far more interesting spot than any I had ever yet met with. I had a little room in the flat, and my aunt had made it very nice and comfortable. But the engines always began to get up their steam at four o’clock in the morning, and it is a very noisy process, and it took me some time growing accustomed to the hissing noise, which was very loud. There is no real stillness and silence in London even in the most select districts. Not, I mean, like the country. My aunt had one servant called Jane. She had been married, but her husband had changed his mind and run away from her. She was old and grey and like a fowl, but very good-tempered. I told her about the engines and she said:

“This is London.”

My aunt painted very beautiful pictures in oil colours, and also made etchings of the most exquisite workmanship. She was made R.B.A. to reward her for her great genius in her art. She hung her pictures at exhibitions and was a well-known painter, though she told me that she did not make a great deal of money. I hoped that she would take at least half of my fifty pounds a year for letting me live with her, and assured her that I cared nothing for money; then she said we would look into that if I passed my examination. She was a good deal interested in me, and said that I had my dead mother’s eyes and artist’s hands. She was quite old herself, and might have been at least forty. She was not yet withered, like the very old. She wore double eyeglasses when she painted. Her expression was gloomy, but her eyes were blue and still bright. I found her very much more interesting to talk to than any other woman I had met; and I told her my great secret hope for the future.

I said:

“Some day, if things happen as I should like, I am going to be an actor. It is a very difficult and uphill course of life, I know; but still, that is what I want to be, because I have a great feeling for the stage, and I shall often and often go to a theatre at night after I have done my day’s work, if you don’t mind—especially tragedies.”

She didn’t laugh at the idea or scoff at it but she thought that I mustn’t fill my head with anything but fire insurance for the present. And of course I said that my first thought would be to work in the office and thoroughly earn my fifty pounds, and perhaps even earn more than I was paid, and so be applauded as a clerk rather out of the common.

She took me to a tailor’s shop and I was measured for a tail-coat. I also had to get a top hat, such as men wear. I was tall and thin, and when the things came I put them on, and Aunt Augusta said that the effect was good, and Jane said that I looked “quite the man.” Aunt Augusta took me to several picture-galleries, and I went about a good deal by myself and made strange discoveries.

Many people seemed to know that I was new in London without my telling them. Once I was nearly killed, showing how easily accidents happen. I had dropped a half-penny in Oxford Street, as I crossed the road, and was naturally stopping to pick it up, when the chest of a horse came bang against me and rolled me over. Fortunately, I was not in my new clothes. It was a hansom-cab horse that had run into me, and the driver pulled him up so that the horse simply skated along on his shoes and pushed me in front of him. Neither of us was hurt. A policeman appeared, and the driver asked me whether I thought the middle of Oxford Street was the right place for playing marbles. He meant it in an insulting way, as if I was still a boy. And I said that I had dropped a halfpenny and couldn’t surely be expected to leave it in the middle of London for anybody to pick up.

The driver said that no doubt I was one of God’s chosen—meaning it rudely—and the people laughed, and the policeman told us all to move on. I went down a side street and cleaned myself up as well as I could. Then I found a lavatory and washed myself and got a shoeblack to rub the mud off me. London mud is very different from all other mud, not being pure, like country mud, but adulterated with oil and tar and many other products. The shoeblack charged three-pence, so it was an expensive accident for me, besides the danger.

I passed the examination though they didn’t praise me much, or give any evidence of pleasure or surprise; and then my aunt said that she thought I ought to call on the Director of the Apollo Fire Office and thank him for his great kindness in giving her his nomination for me. The Director was out, but when he heard that I had called, he invited me to dine with him. I had never been invited to dinner before and rather wished my aunt would come too; but she said that she had not been asked, though she had often been there—to see Mr. Benyon Pepys and his original etchings. He followed art in his spare time, which was considerable, and my aunt had given him etching lessons, at which she was a great dab. He was also a descendant of the great Pepys of diary fame—so my aunt told me. He was a bachelor and very fond of pictures and very rich, as all Directors must be before they can rise to that high walk of life.

“You ought to wear dress clothes,” said Aunt Augusta; “however, it is not vital. He will understand.”

“You can hire ’em for a song,” declared Jane; but my aunt decided that I should put on my new tail-coat—with a white tie.

When it came to putting on this tie, however, she didn’t care about it, and thought that I looked too much like a curate. She showed a sort of objection to curates that much surprised me; because at Merivale there had never been any feeling against them; in fact, quite the contrary. Many of the masters at Merivale used to read for the Church while they taught us; and when they had read enough, they went away and gradually became curates, as the next stage in their careers.

But Aunt Augusta didn’t want me to look like one, and for that matter I didn’t myself, having no feeling for the Church; and so I put on a dark blue tie and wore my new silver watch and chain and went like that.

Mr. Benyon Pepys was a short, clean-shaved man and lived in the utmost magnificence in a house not far from Cavendish Square. Naturally, I had never seen such a house or such magnificence. It was an abode of the highest art. There were three footmen and a church organ with golden pipes in the hall alone; and everything was done on the same scale throughout. One footman asked me my name and another took my overcoat and top-hat and hung them up on a hat-stand, of which every hat-peg was the twisted horn of an antelope! Then the man who had asked my name threw open a door, on which were painted rare flowers—probably orchids—and announced my arrival. “Mr. Corkey!” he said in a deep voice.

I walked in and found Mr. Benyon Pepys and Miss Benyon Pepys sitting one on each side of a palatial mantelpiece, which was supported by the figures of naked girls in pure white marble. They both rose from their chairs as I walked down the room amid wonderful creations of art. They did not seem to realise the fact that they were surrounded by such amazing things. There were flowers and pictures in huge gold frames and statues on pedestals; and, strange to say, amid all this profusion they allowed a mere, live pug-dog with a pink bow tied round his neck! He sat on a rug, which must once have been the skin of a perfectly enormous tiger. It had glass eyes and its teeth were left in its jaws, which were red, as in life, and wide open. The pug lounged upon it, as though to the manner born.

“Well, Mr. Corker, so you’ve passed your examination and will join us next week, I hear,” said Mr. Benyon Pepys. He spoke in a light, easy—you might almost say a jaunty—tone of voice, though he was in full dress clothes and wore a gold watch-chain on a spotless white waistcoat. Miss Benyon Pepys was just as kind as him. There was not a spark of side about either of them. They were both of great age and Mr. Pepys was of a shining and complete baldness, as well as being clean-shaved. I told him my name was Corkey, not Corker; and he said, “Yes, yes, Corker—I know.”

“And how do you like London?” asked Miss Benyon Pepys. She was clad in some rare fabric—probably some fabulous embroidery from the Middle Ages—and richly adorned with jewels, which flashed when she moved her limbs; but she paid no attention to them, and was indeed far more interested in the pug-dog than anything in the room.

He was called “Peter,” and made a steady and disgusting noise, like a man snoring. He came in to dinner with us, and had a light meal off a blue china plate, prepared by Miss Benyon Pepys.

I was just saying that I liked London, and had pretty well mastered Oxford Street and Edgware Road, when a deep and musical chime of bells rang out and the door was thrown open.

“Will you take my sister in to dinner?” said Mr. Benyon Pepys; but I was prepared for this, because Aunt Augusta had warned me that it might happen. So I gave her my right arm, and she put the tips of her left hand fingers upon it, and I remember feeling curiously that, what with diamonds and rubies and one thing and another, her hand, small though it was, might easily have been worth many thousands of pounds.

“If the mere sister of a Director can do this sort of thing, how majestic must be the wealth of the Director himself!” I thought. In fact I very nearly said it, because it seemed to me that the idea was a great compliment and ought to have pleased them both. It would have been well meant anyway. But I found it difficult to make conversation, owing to the immense number of things all round me that had to be noticed.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t be said to take Miss Benyon Pepys in to dinner, not knowing the way. But she took me in, and it was no mere dinner, but a dazzling banquet on a table groaning with massive silver and other forms of plate. There was no tablecloth in the usual acceptation of the word; but a strip of rich fabric—probably antique tapestry from France or Turkey—spread on a polished table which glittered and reflected in its ebony depths the wax candles and silver and various pieces of rare workmanship arranged upon the hospitable board.

One would have thought, to see them, that a dinner of this kind—seven courses not counting dessert—was an everyday thing with the Benyon Pepys! It may have been, for all I know. Wine flowed like water—at least, it would have done so if there had been anybody there to drink it; but, of course, I didn’t, knowing well that wine goes to the head if you’re not used to it—and Miss Benyon Pepys merely drank hot water with a little tablet of some chemical that fizzed away in it—medicine, I suppose. It was sad in a way to see her pass the luxurious dishes without touching them. She little knew what she was missing. Even Mr. Benyon Pepys himself only sipped each wine in turn, with birdlike sips, but he never drank his glass quite empty. I expect the footmen dashed off what he left, doubtless tossing up among themselves which should have it.

I tried to talk at dinner, though there was little time, and once a good thing, full of rich and rare flavours, was swept away before I had finished it, because I stopped to speak.

I asked after the Pepys diaries and hoped they were successful. I said:

“I shall, of course, keep a diary in London, and I was going to get a Raphael Tuck diary; but I shall buy a Pepys now.”

Looking back, I don’t think either of them heard this. At any rate, that night when my Aunt Augusta explained about it, I prayed to God in my prayers that they might not have heard. The footmen, however, must have.

But I made Mr. Benyon Pepys laugh with a remark which, curiously enough, was not in the least amusing nor intended to be. I said:

“Of course, the business of a Director is to direct?”

Because I thought it would show a proper spirit to be interested in his great work. But he laughed, and said:

“Not always, Mr. Corker, not always! I am not myself a man of business; but a connoisseur and creator. Art is my occupation. Do not, however, think that I am not exceedingly interested in the Apollo. You will find upon the face of each policy an allegorical representation of the sun-god in a chariot drawn by four horses. I cannot claim that the actual design is mine, but the conception sprang from my brain twenty-five years ago. The creation, though severely Greek, is my own.”

He explained that he had found the greatest difficulty to get anybody to accept his nomination to the Apollo Fire Office.

“But fortunately,” he said, “your aunt, the accomplished artist, was able to help me, and I feel under no little obligation to her—and you.”

In this graceful and gentlemanly way he spoke to me. He told me that the staff was very large and included men of all ages—many brilliant and some ordinary.

“You will begin work in the Country Department,” he said; “they are a bit rough-and-ready up there, I fancy, but I speak only from hearsay. Certain adventurous members of the Board have penetrated to those savage regions, though I cannot honestly say that I have ever ventured. After signing a hundred or two policies, my intellect reels and I have to totter over to Murch’s for turtle-soup. It is a curious fact that turtle restores brain-fag quicker than any other form of food.”

“I am glad it has such a good effect on you, sir,” I said.

Miss Pepys left when the magnificent dessert was served. She never touched so much as a grape, though they were the largest I had ever seen; and after she had gone, Mr. Pepys asked me to smoke. Knowing, of course, that a cigarette is nothing on a full stomach, and also knowing that my own stomach was now perfectly adapted for it, I consented, and had a priceless box of chased silver containing rare Egyptian cigarettes handed to me by one of the footmen. With it he brought a lamp, which appeared to be—and very likely was—of solid gold. We then had coffee; and when all was over, Mr. Benyon Pepys proposed that we should again join Miss Benyon Pepys; so we returned to the drawing-room and he showed me a portfolio of his etchings. They were black and grubby and mysterious and no doubt great masterpieces, if I had only understood them. Even as it was, I rather came off over the etchings and recognised many things about them in a way that everybody didn’t. At least, I gathered so from the fact that Mr. Benyon Pepys was surprised and pleased. He said that “chiaroscurochiaroscuro” was the secret of his success, and no doubt it may have been. He praised my Aunt Augusta very highly; and I was exceedingly glad to hear him speak so well of her great genius in her art.

At ten o’clock I got up to go, and a footman whistled at the door for a cab, and I luckily had a sixpence which I pressed into his hand as I leapt into the cab. But the effect was spoiled, because I forgot my overcoat and had to leap out again. The footman helped me into it, but didn’t mention the sixpence. I dare say to him it was a thing of nought.

So I returned to Aunt Augusta’s flat, and told her all about the wonders of the evening; and she was pleased and said that she hoped Mr. Benyon Pepys would some day ask me again. But no such thing happened. And, of course, there was no reason why it should. Probably they did hear what I said about the diary, but were too highly born and refined to take any notice.