THE PHILATELIST.
This was the day appointed, after considerable discussion, for our visit to London, and at an early hour Frederick and I were ready for the journey. Frederick, who is tending slowly, as it seems to me, towards an as yet sufficiently remote ninth birthday, had been vigorously and successfully scrubbed till he shone with an unwonted absence of grime; his hair had been temporarily battened down; his Eton collar was speckless, and his knickerbocker suit, while not aggressively new, was appropriate and free from visible rents. I cannot say he was impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, but he was eager and fully determined to purchase as many stamps as could be secured for the generous prize of money bestowed upon him by a lady who had observed his progress in the study of Nature—beetles, moths, tadpoles and the like—and had noted his ever-growing passion for postage-stamps.
London he looked upon as one gigantic repository of stamps. I spoke to him of Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Column and the Landseer Lions. He replied by informing me that there was a certain issue of Mauritius which was valued at £1,200. "If," he said, "I could get that some day I shouldn't want to collect any more."
"It seems," I said, "a lot of money to pay for a small piece of paper."
"Yes," he agreed, "it is; but perhaps I could get it cheap in some old shop which didn't know much about it."
I then tried to divert his attention to the prospect of having luncheon with me at the Rhadamanthus Club, but he begged me not to interrupt him, as he was endeavouring to calculate how many years it would take him to get together the sum if he could manage to save two-pence a week out of his pocket-money. After a short mental struggle, however, he gave it up and banished the blue Mauritius, or whatever it is, from his ambitions and his conversation.
Before we started Francesca addressed a few earnest words to me about the proper care of a boy in London.
"Be sure," she said, "to see that he keeps his hands clean. I should hate to think that he was wandering about Piccadilly and Pall Mall with dirty hands."
"He'll have to wander," I said, "with such hands as Nature provides for him. No little boy can ever keep his hands clean anywhere for more than half a minute at a stretch."
"But you might give him an occasional wash, you know."
"I will do everything," I said, "that may become a father, short of carrying about a wash-hand basin and a jug of water and a piece of soap and a towel through Piccadilly and Pall Mall."
"And his hair," she said,—"you'll not let it got too untidy, will you?"
"I'll brush it when I can," I said; "but you must remember that a little boy without a Catherine-wheel of hair on the back of his head is only fit for a museum. I must insist on his keeping his Catherine-wheel substantially intact."
Well, at last we got off in the train on our adventure, I with a morning paper, and Frederick deep in a stamp-catalogue, from which he occasionally brought forth things old and new. In due time we reached our destination and stood triumphant in the stamp-shop. It was not a large shop, but it was a rich shop, owning countless valuable varieties, and Frederick, whose hands were now of the subfuse hue which Cambridge insists on for the garments of her candidates, was soon engaged in an animated discussion with the affable and amused proprietor. At last the five shillings were exhausted and the deal was complete, the last item consisting of a perfectly terrific set of Gaboon stamps, each decorated with the fuzzy head of a spear-bearing native warrior. It speaks volumes for the power and courage of our French allies that they should have been able to overcome these savage and formidable tribesmen, and reduce them to the order that is implied by the existence of a post-office and the possession of stamps.
We now found that we had about forty minutes to spare. It is hardly necessary to say that, being in the immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, we devoted the time to a Cinema. The change from the Gaboon and its truculent inhabitants to a highly sentimentalised fishing-village was something of a wrench, but Frederick, clutching his purchases and his catalogue as if his life depended on stamps, was equal to it. He bore without flinching the storms and the wrecks, and the bodies of drowned men tossed upon the shore. Nor did he audibly disapprove when one fisherman, rescued from death, lost his memory for many years, and eventually regained it in extreme old age amid the rejoicings of his relatives and neighbours.
Thence we passed by a happy change to the detached and melancholy malice of Mr. Charles Chaplin, of whom I can now say, Vidi tantum. Mr. Chaplin's victim on this occasion was a well-dressed foreign gentleman of perfect manners but fiery temper, who was compelled to suffer a series of dreadful indignities. We left him struggling silently but furiously against an adhesive lobster salad which Mr. Chaplin had, in an absent-minded moment, plastered over his face.
We now went on to the Rhadamanthus. Here the rite of washing and brushing was duly performed, Frederick remarking with obvious regret that if it had only been on the Cinema he would have had to throw the soap at me and splash the water in my face. "But," he added, "I shall be able to do it to Alice when I get home." He was not at all overwhelmed by the marble and gilded splendours of our palace, but sat himself down to luncheon as if he had an immemorial right to be there. General Wilbraham (in khaki), Mr. Justice Black, and Mr. Trevor, the eminent publisher, kind old gentlemen, my friends and contemporaries, came up to us and were introduced to the little boy and smiled at him and patted his head, where the indomitable Catherine-wheel still whirled in triumph, and all declared that it was hardly tolerable in another to be so young, and asked him what it felt like, and said that growing up was the great mistake.
And then a strange thing happened. The luncheon-room suddenly became a hall filled with boys. The General and the Judge and the Publisher dwindled and changed. The long-lost hair came back to their heads in great untidy tufts; they put on Eton jackets and collars and grubby hands. In fact, they were little boys again; and Master Wilbraham said he was keeping Cave, and Master Black said something was a regular chouse, and Master Trevor declared violently that somebody was a sneak and that somebody else must have tweaks for new clothes. It lasted for a moment, and then, as with a puff of air, it all changed back, and we were again in the luncheon-room of the club, four time-worn veterans and one eager little boy tightly grasping a catalogue of stamps.
R. C. L.
Subaltern (proudly, as devastating motor-cyclist dashes by). "One of 'ours.'"