From the Angle of Seventeen

by Eden Phillpotts

Disguised as one of themselves with the cap and muffler, I was no further molested, and spent an hour or two among the people, to find that, as the day advanced, they began to cool down. It seemed as if the fever of battle was burning itself out, and when there rose a rumour that the troops had been called into the streets to help the police, a great change came o’er the spirit of the scene. The revolution hated to hear about the soldiers, because, of course, it was by no means ready for any such violent measures. In fact, so far as I was concerned, the incident was now at an end, and I returned home to Aunt Augusta full of my great intelligence. She had been painting rather industriously all day and had heard nothing of the peril that had threatened the metropolis. We talked a great deal about it, and she much regretted my top-hat and the events that had led to its destruction; but, womanlike, a little personal trifle interested her far more than the calamity that promised to shake the forces of Capital and Labour to the core, and very likely convulse the civilised world; and this was the trifling accident of my birthday.

I was, in fact, eighteen, and Aunt Augusta had already wished me many happy returns of the day and given me a present of an original and very beautiful water-colour drawing of the Thames at Westminster. But now she returned to the subject, though I tried to choke her off it and explained that after one reaches man’s estate these accidental anniversaries are better forgotten.

“If you don’t remember anything that doesn’t matter,” I said to her, “then you have all the more room in your memory for everything that does.”

But she insisted on making a stir about my natal day, and since London was too unsettled, in her opinion, to go to a theatre, she decided to have a lively evening at home, beginning with a dinner of unusual variety and style. She was rather a classy cook and had learned the science when an art student in Paris; so she sent out Jane to get supplies, and asked me if I thought I could venture out, too, and buy a bottle of champagne. I felt secretly that, owing to the hunger and so on of the masses, one ought not to be drinking champagne on a night like this. It was that sort of callous indifference that caused the French Revolution, and I told Aunt Augusta that if the proletariat knew what she and I were up to, they might very likely swoop upon her flat and ransack it, or set it on fire. But she answered, very truly, that the proletariat would not know, and as to have argued further would have laid me under suspicion of cowardice, I went out to buy the sparkling beverage and bring it home. Luckily for the banquet, Aunt Augusta had received rather a swagger commission for four of her etchings the day before, and so she was out of sympathy with the sufferings of the people and in sympathy with the anniversary of my birth.

We had a great time in a gastronomic sense. The meal embraced mock-turtle soup, an omelette with herbs chopped up in it, a pheasant and chipped potatoes, an apple tart and tinned apricots, anchovies on toast, pears, and a pineapple—all, of course, washed down with the juice of the grape and coffee.

Champagne is a most hopeful wine, which you can have sweet or dry, and after drinking a full glass, I began to suggest plans for improving the state of the proletariat, accompanied by a suspicion that their condition was not so bad as they wanted us to think. I talked a great deal to Aunt Augusta, and smoked a whole packet of cigarettes. She also smoked and drank her coffee and listened to me intently.

Presently, I began to discuss myself and my career, and thanked her very heartily for helping it forward to the best of her power, as she was doing.

She was kind enough to say that I had brought a great deal of pleasure into her life, and she didn’t know what she would do without me when I started rooms on my own account. I allayed her fears in this matter and promised I would not leave her for at least another year.

“From eighteen till nineteen you may count upon me,” I said, “though after another year has passed, I don’t know what may happen, because life is so full of surprises.”

I then retraced the year, from the day that Doctor Dunston had sent for me to see him and I thought it was fireworks, up to the present moment in the throes of the revolution. It seemed almost impossible that so much could happen in the time; and as I smoked and indulged in a retrospect, as the saying is, I felt that the battle of life had been fought almost day and night. It had not yet been won, exactly, but there seemed fair reason to expect that with luck it soon would be.