MY LIFE.
(With acknowledgments to Mr. G. R. Sims.)
Being a few Foretastes of the Great Feast to follow.
Peering backward into the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London of chop-houses, peg-top trousers and Dundreary whiskers....
I remember the Derby of Caractacus and the Oaks of Boadicea. Once more I see "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere." I remember "Old Q." and Old Parr, Arnold of Rugby and Keate of Eton, Charles Lamb and General Wolfe, Charles James Fox and Mrs. Leo Hunter; the poets Burns and Tennyson, the latter of whom gave me my name of "Dagonet."
I think back to a London of trim-built wherries and nankeen pantaloons, when The Times cost as much as a dozen oysters, which everyone then ate. I remember backing myself in my humorous way to eat sixty "seconds" in a minute and winning the bet.
I look back to the time when Betty, the infant Roscius, and Grimaldi, and Nell Gwynn and Colley Cibber and Robson and Fechter and Peg Woffington were the chief luminaries of the histrionic firmament. I remember the débuts of Catalani and Malibran and Piccolomini and Broccolini and Giulio Perkins.
I remember the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the erection of Drayton's "Polyolbion," the removal of the Wembley Tower, and the fight between Belcher and the gas-man.
I often think of the battles of Waterloo and Blenheim and Culloden and Preston Pans and Cannæ. I often think of next Sunday with a shudder.
I see Count d'Orsay careering along Kensington Gore in his curricle; Lord Macaulay sauntering homeward to Campden Hill, and Lord George Sanger driving home to East Finchley behind two spanking elephants.
I see Jerusalem and Madagascar and North and South Amerikee...
It was on the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Cressy that I first drew breath on August 25th, "somewhere" in the Roaring Forties. The date was well chosen, for my maternal great-great-grandfather had amassed a considerable fortune by the manufacture of mustard, and the happy collocation was destined to bear conspicuous fruit in after years.
Good old Herodotus, my favourite reading in my school-days, tells us how old-world potentate, in order to discover which was the most ancient language in the world, had two children brought up in strict seclusion by dumb nurses, with the result that the first word they uttered was "Beck," the Phrygian for bread. Strange to say this was not my first linguistic effort, which was, as a matter of fact, the Romany word "bop."
Although I shall probably write my autobiography again a few details about my ancestry are pardonable at this juncture.
My great-great-great-great-grandfather was a robust Devon yeoman who fought with Drake in the Spanish main, but subsequently married the daughter of a Spanish Admiral, made captain at the time of the Armada, Count Guzman Intimidad Larranaga. The daughter, Pomposa Seguidilla, came to England to share her father's imprisonment, and my ancestor fell in love with her and married her. She was a vivacious brunette with nobly chiselled features and fine Castilian manners. Their son Alonzo married Mary Lyte of Paddington, so that I trace my descent to the Lytes of London as well as to the grandees of Spain.... Incredibly also I was one of the Hopes of England.
And now, when London has no light any more, I take pen in hand to retrace the steps of my wonderful journey through the ages. Ah me! Eheu fugaces!
Among my early reading nothing made so much impression on me as Mrs. Glasse's Cookery Book, and I still remember the roars of laughter that went up when I read out a famous sentence in my childish way: "First tatch your hair." Those words have stuck to me through life and have had a deep influence on my career. Strange how little we know at the time which are our vital moments.
I remember standing, when still only of tender years, listening to Bow bells and vowing that, if I grew up, I would so reflect my life in my writings that no experience however trifling should be without its recording paragraph. I would tell all. And I am proud to say I have kept that vow. I have not even concealed from my readers the names of the hotels I have stayed in, and if I have liked the watering-places I have resisted every temptation not to say so. Odd how childish aspirations can be fulfilled!
Tommy. "Hold hard, young feller. You shouldn't butt in like that—plenty of room behind."
His Girl. "Leave him alone, Harry. He thinks it's a recruiting office."
"A Young Country Girl, 18, wishes a situation as Housemaid or Betweenmaid; never out before; wages not objected to."
Irish Times.
Very nice of her to be so accommodating.
"Col. J. W. Wray and Mrs. Wray entertained the recruiting staff, numbering £21, to tea at Brett's Hall, Guildford, on Thursday."
Provincial Paper.
Sterling fellows, evidently.
"Us have had a letter from our Jarge. He've killed three Germans!"
"I bain't zurprised! Lor'! How that boy did love a bit o' rattin', or anything to do with vermin!"