I don’t know why it is, but when I sit down to write this “Memoir,” knowing that it may be the last that I shall ever write, it makes me feel a little sad.

In all human probability I, Mary Jane Beckett, am writing the last few pages of the last book that will ever come from my pen. We are leaving the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and going into a much larger house—a real big hotel in a well-known county town—where we shall have waiters in evening dress, and a big coffee-room, and a large commercial-room, and we shall make up over fifty beds, besides having a large room for sales and auctions, and another very large, lofty room for balls and big dinners and assemblies, and that sort of thing.

I am very sorry to leave the dear old ‘Stretford Arms,’—our first house, and the one where we have spent some happy years, and where my little Harry and my little Mary were both born; but we have made money, and we must not stand still. We have sold the house most advantageously, and made a very large profit, as we ought to do, for we have worked the business up and improved the premises very considerably.

It was a long time before we made up our minds, and we had very long and anxious talks; but a friend of Harry’s told us about the big hotel that was to be had in a Midland county town, and which was just the place for us to work up and do well in, and Harry, having a means of getting all the extra money, wanted to take it. It seemed a pity to let it go, especially as we could never hope to do better than we were doing at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and if we are not going to work hard all our lives we must get into a place where we can make a bigger profit, and get more scope for our capital.

I have been to see the new house, and a very fine place it is. The rooms are simply grand. It is right opposite the Corn Exchange, and has a noble entrance-hall with statues in it, and is called the “Royal Hotel,” because Queen Elizabeth once slept there. Harry says that Queen Elizabeth seems to have slept at nearly every old hotel in the kingdom; but that is all nonsense.

The place is in really excellent order, having not long ago been refurnished by a great London firm, and some of the bedrooms are fit for Queen Elizabeth to come to now.

It will be quite a different trade, of course, to what we have been accustomed to, as coffee-room customers and commercial gentlemen come in every day by the trains, and it is a big racing house when the races are on, and they are very famous races indeed. It will be something new for me to study the commercial gentlemen and the sporting gentlemen, as we didn’t have any at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ not having any shops or a racecourse. I am told that I shall pick up a lot of character among the commercials, who are most entertaining and full of anecdotes; but it will be too late to put them in my book, as I must finish it now. I know I shall have no time at the “Royal Hotel,” for it will be a big task to manage it, and take us all we know.

I am told, too, that some of the sporting gentlemen would make capital stories, one of them being a young marquis, who is very odd and goes on anyhow. I suppose it will be what Harry calls “a warm time” at race time. I rather dread it. If it is too warm I shall keep out of the way.

But that is like me. Here am I beginning to worry about things before they happen, and instead of that I ought to be getting this chapter finished, for to-morrow is “the change,” and the new people take my dear old home over and enter into possession.

Everybody about the place is so sorry that we are going, and the nicest and kindest things have been said of us. There was some talk of giving Harry a banquet; but we thought it best not for many reasons, and so last night a few old friends and customers came into our bar-parlour and had a little supper with us, and during supper the Doctor, who has been one of our best friends, presented us, in the name of the company, with a most beautiful silver salver for our sideboard, and on it was engraved “To Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, from a few old customers of the ‘Stretford Arms,’ wishing them long life, success, and happiness.”

It was very kind of them, wasn’t it? and we both felt it very deeply. It is a most beautiful salver, and we shall treasure it as long as we live, and I hope our children will treasure it after we are gone. It is very gratifying, when you have tried to keep up the character of your house and to make your customers comfortable, to know that your efforts have been appreciated, and that everybody wishes you well in your new undertaking.

We are going to spend a week in London before we take possession of the “Royal Hotel,” as Harry has his solicitor and the brokers to see, and a lot of business to attend to, and I want to take my boy to the Zoological Gardens. He is very fond of his Noah’s Ark, and is always delighted to hear his father tell him about the great big animals that live in foreign parts, and I am most anxious to hear what the dear child will say when he sees a real elephant and hears a real lion roar. He is most intelligent for his age, and, though we were rather afraid while he was teething, he has had the most perfect health ever since, and is as fine a little fellow as you could find in the kingdom, and very sturdy on his legs. He has a little sailor suit now, and marches about as proud as you please; but he will keep his hands in his pockets. The sailor suit which I bought him included a knife on a piece of whip-cord, which was the terror of my life for a long time. I wanted to take it away; but he screamed himself almost into convulsions, and I was obliged to let him keep it; but I lived in hourly dread of nurse coming rushing in to say Master Harry had cut himself.

I can’t think why it is that boy children always want to keep their hands in their pockets, and so dearly love a knife. Little girls don’t care about knives; but, then, little girls are easier to manage in every way than little boys, who begin to assert their independence at the very earliest age.

I hope where we are going to will suit my little ones as well as this place has done; but everybody tells me that it is a most healthy town, and so I won’t begin to fidget on that score, though I should feel much happier if our nice, kind, clever doctor could be near us. But, of course, that can’t be.

I believe I shall cry to-morrow when we leave the dear old ‘Stretford Arms;’ but I shall try not to. I have been very happy in it, and we have been very fortunate, far more than we had any right to expect, seeing that we were only young beginners.

The packing up has been an awful job. It is really wonderful how things accumulate. We have had to buy boxes and I don’t know what, and we shall want a big van to take everything, as we take some of our furniture away with us, the new people having some of their own they want to bring in. I am very glad, as it will always be something to remind us of the old place.

Things in this village haven’t changed much since we first came. Dashing Dick’s grandmother, poor old lady, is now quite paralyzed; but the lad has turned out much better than was expected, and has been sent to sea, and writes very nice letters to her from foreign parts, and has begun to send her a little money. Old Gaffer Gabbitas, his daughter, who lives in the village, told us, a little time ago was found dead in his armchair one Sunday afternoon, with his Bible on his lap open at the place where he had been reading it when he fell asleep for the last time. We have written out to Mr. Wilkins in Australia, giving him our new address, and saying we shall always be glad to hear from him; and dear Jenny has another baby, a little girl, so, as she says in her letter, we are both equal now.

Graves, the farrier, has much improved lately. He is more civilized since he took to use our house regularly, and gave up going to the other place. He came out quite nobly not long ago, in a little affair which made some talk in the village. One of his men injured himself while working at the forge, he being, I am sorry to say, the worse for liquor at the time (the man, not Graves), and was so bad he had to be sent to a London hospital, where he remained some time, and all the while he was away Graves paid his money to the wife, because she was an invalid, and had a large family. This shows that there is often a lot of good under a rough exterior; but I believe blacksmiths and farriers are very good-hearted men as a rule, and I always respect them, for I never see one without thinking of that noble-hearted blacksmith in the beautiful piece of poetry which I also heard as a song one night when there was an entertainment at our national schools. It was a lovely idea, that brawny fellow going to church of a Sunday, and thinking of his dead wife when he heard his daughter singing in the village choir, and wiping away a tear.

Graves isn’t the man to do that sort of thing—he couldn’t, because he has never married, and I don’t think he is so regular in attendance at church as the other blacksmith was; but his keeping that poor woman and children all those weeks, shows that his heart is in the right place, if he doesn’t always pick his words as carefully as he might.

Miss Ward, our barmaid, that you may remember was so unfortunate in her young man, that horrid fellow Shipsides, has married well, I am glad to say, and she and her husband have been put in to manage a public-house in the South of England. She wrote to me, and told me when she was married, and sent me a piece of cake, and I wrote her a nice letter back, and said how pleased I was to hear it.

Of course, directly I knew we were going to move, I wrote to Mr. Saxon, and told him what our new address would be, and said that he might be sure if he paid us a visit no one would be more welcome. He wrote back and said perhaps he would come when the races were on. I hear he has taken to go racing lately, which is a thing I should never have expected, though I remember hearing that, years ago, he used to be very fond of sport, but got too busy to keep it up. I hope it will do him good; at any rate, it is a change, and the fresh air is just what he wants. But I hope he won’t gamble and lose a lot of money; but I don’t think he will, as he has to work too hard to get it. I have been told that he takes that nice Swedish gentleman about with him to the races, so perhaps he will come, too. I shall be very glad to see him again, as he was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever talked to, and had been all over the world, and was full of information. Poor fellow! he ought to be taken about; for he must have a bad time of it at home with Mr. Saxon, whose liver seems to get worse as he gets older.

The last I heard of him he had been to Italy for a month, for the benefit of his health, and came back in a fortnight, swearing that he had shortened his life by ten years, by going. Fancy a man going away for rest, and to benefit his health, and travelling five thousand miles, night and day, in a railway carriage, and then going on because he felt knocked up. But, with all his faults and his queer ways, there will be nobody that I shall be more pleased to see at the “Royal Hotel” than Mr. Saxon.

The new clergyman, the young fellow who was the cause of Mr. Wilkins going to Australia, has turned out what Harry calls “quite a trump.” There is no mistake about the impression he has made in the place. He has woke it up, so to speak, and, though nobody liked him at first, resenting his new-fangled ways, now he is the greatest favourite with everybody. He is a fine cricketer, and has made a cricket club, and he sings capitally, and gets up penny readings and entertainments in the winter, and his sermons are first class. The first Sunday some of the old-fashioned people were horrified. He made a joke in his sermon, and it was such a good joke that it made the people laugh before they remembered where they were. He said afterwards that he saw a lot of people were horrified, but that it wasn’t wicked to laugh. He said being good didn’t mean being sulky and gloomy and pulling a long face, and there was no more harm in feeling glad and gay inside a church than outside it; in fact, if there was any place in which people ought to feel comfortable and happy, and ready to smile on the slightest provocation, it was when they were worshipping One who had done so much to make His people glad and gay and happy here below.

It took time to get the old-fashioned people round to his way of thinking; but he did it at last, and now our parson is the best-liked man in the place. Everybody respects him and likes him, and nobody is afraid of him, except the bad characters, and they are afraid of him because he don’t care whether they are high or low, rich or poor. He tells them straight what he thinks of them. The Rev. Tommy was a dear nice old gentleman; but his mind was always wandering away to before the Flood, and he let everything after the Flood go its own way. The new man, “the whipper-snapper,” doesn’t bother himself even about yesterday. He makes the best of to-day, and looks out for to-morrow, and, after all, that is the only way to take life practically, and to make the best of it.

Which reminds me that I have to make the best of to-day myself, and to look out for to-morrow as well, for I shall have all my work cut out, so my dear old “Memoirs” will have to be cut short, and wound up, and put away, for there won’t be any “Memoirs” at the “Royal Hotel.”

I think I have told you nearly everything about the people you know who have been mixed up with the ‘Stretford Arms.’ We leave it with plenty of friends, and, I honestly believe, without a single enemy. And we leave it with a first-class reputation and an excellent connection. It has become quite a “pulling-up house,” as it is called in the trade, with people who drive from London, and is now well-known as a quiet and comfortable country hotel for ladies and gentlemen and families, who wish to stay for a little time a short distance from town. The local connection has not been neglected, and our smoke-room has become quite a nice little local club, while the billiard-room has brought many of the young fellows from the best private houses to make it a rendezvous. We have been very particular to keep the billiard-room quiet and select, and to discourage gambling, and this has made it a boon to the neighbourhood, when with bad management it might have become quite the reverse.

The new people who are coming in are luckier than we were, for they will find a good business ready made for them. All they have to do is to keep everything up to the mark, and I think they will. I have seen them several times, and I like them very much. Their name is Eager. Mr. Eager is a man of about thirty-five, tall and dark, and I think rather handsome, and his wife is a pretty little woman of about five-and-twenty. They have both been in the business before, her papa having been an hotel-proprietor in the North of England, and he having been manager to a small hotel at the seaside, where the proprietor was his uncle.

They are very nice, quiet, straightforward people, and our business with them has been done very pleasantly indeed. They are what we were when we took the ‘Stretford Arms’—a newly-married couple—and they seem most affectionate and amiable.

Mrs. Eager and I had a quiet cup of tea together while the gentlemen were talking business over a cigar and a glass of whiskey-and-water, and she told me all about their meeting, and falling in love, and it wasn’t at all a bad story.

It seems that Mrs. Eager, who was a Miss Braham, was staying with her papa, who was not very well, at the seaside place where Mr. Eager’s hotel was. Her papa was a good swimmer, and used to bathe early in the morning from the beach. One morning he was swimming when suddenly he felt very bad, and found he was losing strength, and being carried too far from shore in a rough sea. Another gentleman who was swimming, saw what was the matter, and swam towards him, and managed to help him, and keep him up and shout till a man on the beach saw them, and jumped into a boat and rowed out to them, and rescued them both. The old gentleman (he wasn’t very old) was very grateful, and said the young fellow, who was Mr. Eager, had saved his life—and that was quite true, for, but for him, he would have been drowned, as his strength was fast deserting him.

That began the acquaintance, and Mr. Eager was invited to come and stay at Mr. Braham’s hotel up north, and he did; and then the daughter, as well as the papa, took a great liking to him, and they were very soon engaged to be married. When the father found how the land lay he was very pleased, and he said he would start the young couple in a nice little hotel of their own as soon as they were married, and that is how they came to take the ‘Stretford Arms’ of us.

I hope they will be as happy in it as we have been. I shall often sit and think of an evening, when I am at the “Royal Hotel” of the little ‘Stretford Arms,’ and, in fancy, I shall see the dear old bar-parlour and the smoke-room, and the customers sitting there smoking their evening pipes, when I am far away.

“What is it? Come in. The master wants me? All right; say I’m coming directly.” I must finish. I have promised Harry that I won’t start any more “Memoirs” in the new house, as he says, when I have a few minutes to spare, he wants to enjoy the pleasure of my society; and so I am going to get every bit of this book written and finished to-night, and then good-bye to pens and ink, and all the pleasure and all the pains of authorship.

Looking back on all that has happened since I left service, and married Harry, and went into this line of business, I feel that I have every reason to be grateful. We have had good luck, good health, and a good time, and not one really great or serious trouble. If we go on as we have begun, perhaps before we are too old to enjoy it we shall have made enough money to retire and live in a pretty little house, and devote ourselves to each other and our children. That is my idea of happiness.

When that time comes I may perhaps be tempted to write some more of my experiences. I dare say I shall have had plenty by then. But till that time does come I have made up my mind to think about no books but the books of the “Royal Hotel,” and to study no characters but the characters of my servants. And so, gentle reader, though it makes me feel sad to say the words, I have at last to wish you good-bye—a long, long good-bye. I hope you won’t forget me altogether, but that sometimes, when you are reading other people’s stories, you will say to yourself, “I wonder how Mary Jane is getting on;” and if any of you are ever near the Midland town we are going to make our new home in, I hope you will come and stay at the “Royal Hotel,” proprietor Harry Beckett, late of the ‘Stretford Arms.’ You may be sure that we shall make you as comfortable as possible, and I think from what you know of my husband and myself you will be able to rely upon finding a good kitchen and a good cellar, and comfort, cleanliness, and attention, combined with moderate charges.

Please don’t think that I say this by way of advertisement. I should be very sorry to make my book an advertisement for my business, as I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I have written the “Memoirs” of our village hotel as I wrote the “Memoirs” of myself in service, because I thought I had something to write about that would be interesting to the people who read books. As a landlady, I have had as many opportunities of observing people and hearing their stories as I had when a servant—more varied opportunities as the landlady than as the servant. I hope that now, as in the former “Memoirs,” I have written nothing which can offend or be considered a breach of confidence. I have tried in my humble way to describe everything I have seen and heard faithfully, and to give a correct description of all that happened in our hotel.

“All right, dear; I won’t be one minute.” I must finish this chapter now, or I shall not have another chance. To-morrow we shall be moving up to London, and I shan’t get a minute. Good-bye, dear reader; that impatient husband of mine won’t let me have another minute to myself, and so I can’t write the nice finish that I wanted to. All I have time to say is this. Don’t all of you go and take country hotels or village inns because we have done so well and been so comfortable. For one that succeeds in our business there are half-a-dozen who fail; and I have told you a good deal more about the bright side of our business than about the dark side, because I don’t think people nowadays want to look on the dark side of anything more than they can help. We have been fortunate; but you might get a business that would nearly drive you mad, and ruin you. I told you about a few of the dangers of taking a business in our line in my first chapter, and since I wrote that I have learnt a good deal more. I could tell you some stories of hard-working young couples who have put all their capital, and a lot of their friends’ and relations’ capital, into a licensed house, and come to the most dreadful grief. I know there is an idea that a public-house or an hotel is a royal road to fortune. The money makes itself, and all the landlady has to do is to dress herself up and wear diamond earrings and a big gold chain, while the landlord drives a fast trotter in a gig, and goes to races, and comes home and spends the evening in smoking big cigars and drinking champagne.

That is the idea some people have of being a licensed victualler, and it is a very nice one. Go to the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum and ask some of the inmates what their idea is, and you will hear a different tale.

We have done well because we have worked hard, and because we walked before we tried to run, and looked after our business ourselves, and didn’t expect it to go up all by itself in a night, like the mushrooms grow. “Luck,” you say. No, that is a word that has no right to come into business at all. I was reading a book of poetry the other day, that one of the gentlemen who stays with us left behind him, and I came on something about Luck which I thought was so good that I copied it out.

It was this——

Of course I don’t mean to say that Harry and I are “rightful kings.” That is the way a poet has to put it to make it poetry, I suppose; but I do mean to say that the first part of the verse is true about us and the way we got on. And so, if we drew a prize where others get blanks, it isn’t fair to put it down to our “luck.”

But, luck or no luck, we did draw a prize, and I hope we are going to draw another. The “Royal Hotel” will never be to me what the ‘Stretford Arms’ was. There won’t be the romance about it, and perhaps it is as well, as a woman with a big business and two little children to look after hasn’t much time for romance. The romance of the ‘Stretford Arms’ was very nice though, for it enabled me to write these Tales of a Village Inn, and to ask the reader to share in the joys and sorrows, the pains and pleasures, and the trials and adventures of Mary Jane Married, and—no, not settled—anything but settled.

If you could see the way this room is blocked up with boxes half packed, and how things are lying about all over the place, you wouldn’t say settled—unsettled, just at present, would be the word. Never mind; I dare say it will come all right, and in a few weeks we shall be settled at the “Royal Hotel,” and I hope it will be a very long time before we make another move.

And now, farewell, dear reader; I must write the word at last. Harry sends you his kind regards, little Harry says “Ta-ta,” and my dear little baby girl puts her little fat hand to her mouth and blows you a kiss, and, with just one little tear of regret in her eye, Mary Jane Beckett, formerly Mary Jane Buffham, and late of the ‘Stretford Arms’ Hotel, wishes you all a long and happy life, and bids you slowly and sadly a long “Farewell.”

* * * * *

It is written, the last line. Perhaps the last line I shall ever write for print. Think kindly of me, won’t you? and let my book have a nice place in your library. I can promise you that it will be a nicer cover than the last. No grinning policeman this time, with his arm round my waist. This will be a book that I can give to my husband, and be proud of, and write his name inside—

THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

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