Anon George returned, having got a hansom, and the information that it was raining in torrents. Bah, what did that matter? It was dry inside the cab, and although I did feel some qualms about the driver being out in that downpour through four dark miles, I was not in a pessimistic mood, neither was my friend. So we bumped along, chatting gaily, until suddenly my friend smote his knee and uttered a resounding exclamation. Naturally I enquired what had bitten him. After anxiously feeling in all his pockets he replied:
“I’ve left my key in my office in Manchester, my family are at Bournemouth, and the old woman who does for me goes home at nine o’clock. Funny thing, won’t it be, if I can’t get into my own house?”
I made some banal reply, but even this was not sufficient to disturb my optimistic humour, and soon we were both laughing heartily at the episode. Meanwhile the horse plugged steadily on, and at last drew up outside the gate of a fine house. The rain was, if anything, worse, but out jumped my friend, bidding me stay where I was in the dry. I think I should have stayed there anyhow, for with all my good feelings I did not see how I could help matters by getting wet. After quite a long absence my friend returned to report that he had tried every possible door and window within reach only to find them all securely fastened. And the only thing to do now was to drive a mile further to the village where the old caretaker lived, rouse her up, get the key from her, and come back.
I acquiesced cheerfully, making no comment on my friend’s saturated condition but thinking ruefully of the poor cabman from whom we had not yet heard. When we arrived at the old lady’s house and while my friend was battering at her door to the consternation of the neighbourhood, I looked at my watch and found that it was 3.15. And I softly chuckled to myself until I thought of the poor fellow in the dickey. However, my friend got his key—I heard it fall from an upper window on to the pavement—returned to the cab, and we again started for home. The only reference to his condition made by my friend was that he felt as if he’d been in swimming, but he didn’t care, he rather enjoyed the adventure.
At last we reached his door and gained access without further trouble, he giving the cabby a big drink of whisky and I hope paying him well. He then made some coffee on the gas-stove and after we had drunk it we scurried to bed just as the clock struck four. Yet, in spite of that, he was up at seven, got breakfast ready, and we caught the Manchester train at about 8.30, none the worse, as far as I was concerned.
As a contrast to this, let me set off an amazing experience I had in the brave West Country. I was booked to lecture at Plymouth on a certain date, and as I was visiting a relative at Crewkerne some days previously, I was taking my father down with me. A lady wrote to me—and a most charming letter it was—offering the hospitality of her house during my stay in Plymouth, but as I was to have my father’s company I regretfully refused, telling her why. A few posts later a letter arrived from her saying that her husband had been suddenly ordered off to Egypt by his doctor and in consequence she would be unable to receive me. But she placed her house and servants and carriage at my disposal, begging me to bring my father and not only to treat the place as if it were my own as regarded us two, but to give entertainment to as many friends as I liked. Indeed she stipulated that I should give at least one dinner-party!
Well, what could I say to such a princely offer as this? Only accept it gratefully, and in due course father and I arrived at the Great Western Station to find a beautiful carriage and pair awaiting us. We were driven to a stately house on the Hoe and received by the housekeeper with the assurance that in accordance with her instructions she would spare no pains to keep us comfortable. Nor did she. Never can I forget the splendour of that dinner-party, all the guests being friends of my hostess, or the agony of my father who having against my advice loaded up with sandwiches and cake at the five o’clock tea was unable to touch a slice of the noble turkey he carved so well at the head of the table.
I need hardly say that our stay of two days there was all too brief for me, but business called me away, and I had to go. But now that I feel elated when I have eaten one egg and two small slices of toast for my breakfast, I often think of that board spread for us two the morning we left. A noble uncut ham, an untouched glazed tongue, cooked on the premises, and innocent of any tin or glass, half a dozen eggs, a huge brawn, a great jar of Devonshire cream—it was a banquet for a boarding school, and the sight of it almost satisfied our healthy hunger. That was an episode to be remembered, yea, to carry with me, as Kipling says, “to the hungry grave.”
It has often given me much food for wondering thought, this practice of hospitality which is carried to a length of which I had never before dreamed. For instance, I have known of quite fierce competition between two families for the honour (?) of putting me up for one night only, and in some cases the matter has only been settled by my consenting to dine in one house and sleep in another. It was always my practice on revisiting a place to stay with the same hosts, if it were convenient for them to have me; indeed, I always had a standing invitation to do so, but on several occasions I have received letters from other parties, informing me that they had been in negotiation with my former hosts, and had succeeded in inducing them to allow the writers to entertain me this time! And, do what I would, the thought would assert itself, How pleasant it is to be thus sought after, but why? I have never found any definite answer.
But several times I have heard rumours to the effect that some lions are not at all easy to cater for. Apropos of that, I remember reading in an American skit upon William Elbert Hubbard, the eccentric genius who founded the Roycroft Brotherhood of Aurora, New York, that upon being offered a sandwich by his trembling hostess, he threw back his mane and said loftily, “It is ten dollars extra if I eat.”