The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

“Yes,” he would say, “there’s three thousand pounds worth of seating accommodation in this very drawing-room, and they tell me ’twas lucky to have got the suite at that figure. All Louis—Louis—Per, my boy, did they tell us it was Louis XV. or XVI.? Sixteenth, yes, Louis XVI. Divide it up and you’ll find that it averages two hundred pounds a chair. Seems funny to sit on two hundred pounds, hey? Mrs. Osborne, she said a bright thing about that. ‘Sit firm then,’ she said and you’ll keep it safe.’”

The furnishing and appointments of the house had in fact been entrusted to a notable firm, which though it had certainly charged Mr. Osborne a great deal of money for what it supplied, had given him very good for his cheque, and both he and his wife, after they had got over the unusual feeling of sitting on two hundred pounds, and if you chose putting your feet up on another two hundred, were quite content that both the furniture of this Louis XVI. room for instance and the cheque for it, should be what they called a “little stiff.” It was the same in the Italian room that opened out of it, and matters were no better in the dining room, which was furnished with Chippendale. Here indeed a very dreadful accident had happened on the first evening that they had got into the house, now two months ago, for Mr. Osborne, alone with Percy his wife for that night, had drawn his chair up to the fire—the night being chilly—to drink his second and third glasses of port and had rested his feet on the pierced steel fender that guarded the hearth. This led to his tilting his Chippendale chair back on to its hind legs, which, designed to bear only half the weight of its occupant, had crashed into splinters and deposited Mr. Osborne on the floor and his second glass of port on his shirt front. But he had taken the incident with great good-humour.

“Live and learn,” he had said, “live and learn. Got to sit up and behave now, Maria. Per, my boy, don’t you finish all the port while your dad changes his shirt. Drink fair, for fair play’s a jewel, and fill your mother’s glass.”

Mr. Osborne would never have attained to the eminence he occupied as a manufacturer of hardware, had he not been a man of intelligence, and instead of upbraiding the furnishing firm for charging so high a price for a “four legs of carved dry rot” which a momentary irritation carefully kept to himself might have led him to do, drew the lesson that it was unwise to tilt chairs unless they were clearly tiltable. But this accident had caused him to insist on his own room, which he called his snuggery, being furnished as he chose and not as anybody else chose, and here he rejoiced in chairs of the pattern known as Chesterfield, a solid mahogany table, on which stood a telephone, and a broad firm mantel-shelf where he could put a box of cigars without fear of its overbalancing. On this point also, his wife had adopted a similar attitude and her own sitting room opening out of the white-furnished bedroom where she was afraid to touch anything for fear of “soiling” it, was thoroughly to her taste. As in her husband’s snuggery she had matters arranged for her own comfort and not for other people’s admiration. Percy had “done” the room for her, and sometimes when she came up here to look at her letters before going to bed, and drink the glass of hot water which was so excellent a digestive after the dinner that was still a little curious to her, she wondered whether Percy did not understand house furnishing better than the great French firm, the name of which she was always rather shy of pronouncing. She had asked him to choose all the furniture himself, remarking only that she was a little rheumatic, and found it difficult to get out of very low chairs. And he had succeeded to admiration, not only had he consulted her comfort, but he had divined and satisfied her taste. The paper of the walls was a pattern of ferns with iridescent lilies of the valley neatly disposed among them, so that it was almost a shame to hang pictures thereon; indeed it would have been quite a shame had not those pictures been so well selected. For Mrs. Osborne cared far more about the subject of a picture than the manner in which it was presented, and all the subjects were admirably chosen. There was a beautiful “view” of the church that Edward had built at Sheffield, a print of the Duke of Wellington in a garter and of Queen Victoria in a bonnet and a couple of large oil-paintings, one of the Land’s End and the other of Koynance Cove, both of which were intimately associated in her affectionate heart with her honeymoon. Edward and she had spent a month in Cornwall, staying at little inns and walking as much as possible to save expense, and though all that was thirty years ago, she never entered this room now without remembering how they had sat just on that very bluff above the emerald sea, and read the “Idylls of the King” together, and he had promised her, when they were rich enough, to give her an emerald necklace to remind her of the colour of the sea. It is true that those emeralds (which were remarkably fine) were not exactly of the tint that either nature had given to the sea, or the very vivid artist had reproduced in the painting that hung on the walls, but they still reminded both her and Edward of those enchanted weeks in Cornwall, and it was but seldom, when she wore her emeralds, that he did not say “Mrs. O. has got the Land’s End emeralds on to-night.”

Then, more often than not would follow the explanation of this cryptic remark, and the whispered information of how much the emeralds had cost. Mrs. Osborne, as a matter of fact, had overheard, again and again, what the figure was, but she was still officially ignorant of it, and generally closed the subject by saying, “Mr. Osborne won’t never tell me what he paid for them. I believe he got them cheap, and that’s why.”

But she secretly rejoiced to know that this was not the reason. The reason was just the opposite; they had been so enormously expensive. That expense would not be unreasonable now, but at the time, for she had worn the Land’s End necklace for twenty years, it had been preposterous. They had had no holiday one year in consequence, but had grilled in Sheffield throughout August and September. But during those months she had worn the emeralds every evening, and it had been a sort of renewal of the honeymoon. Though they had not been able to go away themselves, they had managed to send Percy and Claude to the seaside, and the two months in Sheffield, when every night she wore the emeralds which had been the cause of their remaining there, was still one of Mrs. Osborne’s most delightful memories, as a sort of renewed honeymoon. Since then times had considerably changed, and though to many the change from simplicity of life and not uncomfortable narrowness of means to the wider horizons which the rapid accumulation of an enormous fortune brings within the view, implies a loss of happiness rather than an extension of it, neither Edward nor she were of that Arcadian build. They both immensely enjoyed the wider horizon; the humble establishment with parlour maids had been all very well, but how much more enjoyable was the brownstone house on the outskirts of Sheffield with footmen and a carriage. For Mrs. Osborne did not find it in the least interfered with her happiness to have men to manage or “richer” things to eat. As a matter of fact she liked managing, and rejoiced in the building of a new wing to the brown stone house, in the acquisition of motor cars and in the drain on their time and resources by Edward being made Mayor of Sheffield. Neither of them ever thought that they had been happier when their means were more straitened and their establishment humbler. Both of them, in spite of an essential and innate simplicity of nature rejoiced in these establishments, and were always ready to enlarge and embellish and rejoice. They had always made the most of their current resources—though in a merely financial sense they had always saved—and it was as great a pleasure to Mrs. Osborne to see her table plentifully loaded with the most expensive food that money could provide, and press second helpings on her guests, as it had been to have a solid four courses at midday dinner on Sunday in Sheffield and tell her friends that Mr. Osborne liked nothing better than to have a good dinner on Sunday, and see a pleasant party to share it with him. She still inquired if she might not “tempt” her neighbours at table to have another quail, just as she had tried to persuade them to have a second cut of roast lamb, when in season, while from the other end of the table she would hear as a hospitable echo her husband’s voice recommending Veuve Clicquot of 1884, just as in the old days he had recommended the sound whiskey which would hurt nobody, not if you drank it all afternoon.

The year of the mayoralty of Sheffield had been succeeded by seven years fatter than even Joseph had dreamed of. Edward was as sound in his business as he was in the whiskey he so hospitably pressed on his guests, and by dint of always supplying goods of the best possible workmanship and material at prices that gave him no more than a respectable profit, the profits had annually increased till in the opinion of those who did not adopt so unspeculative a quality of goods, they had almost ceased to be respectable, and became colossal instead. Then, at the end of seven fat years, Edward had realized that he was sixty, though he neither looked nor felt more than an adolescent fifty, had turned the hardware business into a company, and as vendor had received ordinary shares to an extent that would insure him an income no less than that of the fat years. He had already put by a capital that produced some ten thousand pounds a year, and he was thus not disadvantageously situated. Percy, however, still held the Art Department in his own hands. The plant and profits of that had not been offered to the public, but had been presented to Percy by his father on the occasion of his marriage, an event now six years old. For the whole idea of ornamental tin ivy and the host of collateral ideas that emanated therefrom had been Percy’s and it was now a joke between his father and him that Mrs. P. would soon have an emerald necklace that would take the shine out of the Land’s End. “Land’s End will be Mrs. P.’s beginning,” said his father. “And the Sea is Britannia’s realm,” he added by a happy afterthought. “I’ll call her Mrs. C. instead of Mrs. P. Hey, Per?”

Badinage had ensued. She was called Mrs. C. instantly and there were numerous conjectures as to who C. was. Mr. Osborne said that it was curious that C. was the first letter of Co-respondent; but that joke, though Edward was usually very successful in such facetiæ, was not very well received. The momentary Mrs. C. ate her grapes with a studied air, and Mrs. Osborne from the other end of the table—this was still in Sheffield—said, “You don’t think, Eddie; you let your tongue run away with you.”

On reflection Eddie agreed with her, and there was no more heard about Mrs. C. But he always thought that his badinage had been taken a little too seriously. “A joke’s a joke,” he said to himself as he shaved his chin next morning, leaving side-whiskers. “But if they don’t like one joke, we’ll try another. Lots of jokes still left.”

So without sense of injury or of being misunderstood he tried plenty of others, which were as successful as humour should have any expectation of being. Humour comes from a well that is rarely found, but when found proves always to be inexhaustible. The numerical value, therefore, of Edward’s jokes had not been diminished and Percy inherited his father’s sense of fun.