Mrs. Widow wrote regularly every month, and this is the type of letter she always sent:—
“Dear Mam. i hope your well, my newralger has been cruell bad but it is Better now. my daugters baby ethel have two teeth. she is a smart Baby but do cry a lot. Mrs Greens little girl have had something in her throat taken out. doctor says its had a noise. John Green have been called up but I expec you dont know none of them As they lives 3 mile above Monmouth. Mrs Greens sister lives to Cardiff she had a boy last week. i hope the master is well. Its the Sunday School versary tomorror. Thank you for the money. glad to say everything all rite.
Yours
Mrs Widow.”
I suppose the correct thing would be to call the letters “human documents”; but as the humans mentioned in the documents are, as often as not, people of whom I have never heard, the record of anniversaries, illnesses, births, deaths, and marriages that she sends regularly each month (as a receipt for cash received), are seldom either illuminating or exciting. There was nothing for it but to go down and glean impressions first hand.
It was known that I was going out of town the following week, therefore a collection of callers had looked in, and they were doing their utmost to “liven me up” one afternoon in February, and we were having a lovely time explaining to each other how highly strung our respective doctors said we were when they insisted that we must take a complete rest. It appeared—after a lavish amount of detail—that we each suffered from far too active a brain; I found I was by no means the only one!
We also were most communicative about the brilliancy of our children—not that we said it because we were their mothers, you understand; fortunately, unlike other mothers, we were able to take quite detached views of our own children, and regard them from a purely impersonal standpoint; a great gain, because it enabled us to see how really exceptional they were.
I was not expected to contribute anything under this heading, save copious notes of exclamation on hearing what the various head masters and mistresses had said regarding the genius of the respective children. It was simply amazing to sit there and just contemplate how indebted the world would ultimately be to these ladies, for having bestowed such prodigies on their day and generation; for evidently there wasn’t one of my guests who owned a just-ordinary child! No, these young people were all the joy and pride of their teacher, and the way all of them would have passed their exams, (if they hadn’t also possessed too active brains, like their mothers), was positively phenomenal.
There was one exception though—a boy at Dulwich, who was notorious for his adhesion to the lowest place in the form. But his mother, not one whit behind the others in her proud estimate of her son, confided to me that, for her part, she shouldn’t think of allowing Claude to be high up in the form. His ability was so marked, that the doctor said he must at all costs be kept back. Besides, you always knew that a school that put its brightest and most brilliant boys at the bottom of the class never showed favouritism or forced the children unduly.
I agreed with her heartily, and then listened to the confidences of another caller, a near neighbour (this one was without children, brilliant or otherwise), who told me that she had felt it her patriotic duty in war time to do all she could with her own two hands in the house; she had therefore cut down her fourteen indoor servants to nine; and she assured me she found that they could really manage quite well with this small number. Of course I looked politely incredulous; who wouldn’t, knowing that there was her husband as well as herself to be waited upon?—and I raised my eyebrows interrogatively, as though to inquire how she ever succeeded in getting even the simplest war-meal served with so inadequate a staff! But before she had time to tell me how she managed, the door opened and Mrs. Griggles was announced. And as, whenever Mrs. Griggles is announced, it is the signal for everyone who can to fly, I was not surprised to see furs and handbags being collected, and in a few more minutes the newcomer and I had the drawing room to ourselves.
Mrs. Griggles is a woman with, let us say, a dominant note; not that I object to that; every woman nowadays simply must have a dominant note if she is to keep her head above water (women’s war-work has proved a boon in that respect), and some of them are more trying than Mrs. Griggles’ pursuit of charity recipients. There is the moth-ball lady, for instance, who’s perennial boast is that the moth never come near her furs; the nuisance is that no one else can come near them either.