He looked at the grinning idiot of a policeman for a minute, and then he brought his fist down hard right on his nose (the policeman’s). Then he said, “Put it out of my sight, and never let me see it again.” But presently he said, “There must be something about you and a policeman in the book, or they wouldn’t have put him hugging you on the cover. Which chapter is it? I’ll read it and see what the truth of this business is.”
I recollected then that there was something about a policeman, so I said, “No, Harry, dear, don’t read it now; you’re not in a fit state of mind. But whatever there is, I swear he didn’t sit in my kitchen with his arm round my waist; and he—he—he wasn’t—a grinning idiot like that.”
I took the book away from Harry, and wouldn’t let him see it then. But he kept on about it all the evening, and I could see it had made him jealous as well as savage; and it was very hard—all through that horrid picture the pleasure I had looked forward to was quite spoilt. But so it is in this world; and how often it happens that what we have been longing for to be a pleasure to us, when it comes is only a disappointment and a misery!
Harry said to me that evening that he would go to London and see the publishers, and have it out with them about the picture. He said it was a libel on my character, and he wasn’t going to have his wife stuck about on all the bookstalls in a policeman’s arms. But, I said to him, the publishers didn’t mean any harm, and it was no good being cross with them, or making a disturbance at their office.
But some time afterwards I wrote a little note to Messrs. Chatto and Windus about it, and Mr. Chatto wrote back that he was very sorry the picture had caused words between me and my husband, and, in the next editions, it should be altered, and soon after that he sent me a proof of the new cover, and it was Harry with his arm round my waist instead of the policeman, which makes all the difference.
There were many things that I shouldn’t have written, perhaps, if I’d been quite sure that they would be published, and my husband would read them; but, after all, there was no harm, and I only wrote the truth. I wrote what I saw, and it was because it was the real experience of a real servant that people read it, and, as I have reason to know, liked it. And now, after I have been landlady of a village hotel, doing a nice trade both in the bar and in the coffee-room (why coffee-room, I don’t know, for there is less coffee drunk in it than anything), I find myself putting down what I have seen and heard on paper, just as I did in my “Memoirs.”
People say to me sometimes, “Law, now, fancy your noticing that!—I never did;” and that’s the secret of my being an authoress, I suppose. I keep my eyes open, and my ears too; and if I see a character, I like to watch it, and find out all about it.
I’ve seen some strange characters in our inn, I can tell you; and as to the people in the village, why, when you come to know their stories, you find out that every place is a little world in itself, with its own dramas being played out in people’s lives just the same as in big towns. Yes, there are village tragedies and village comedies, and the village inn is the place to hear all about them. I haven’t got an imagination, so I can’t invent things, and I think it’s a good thing for me, because I might be tempted to make up stories, which are never so good as those that really happen. I thought when I came to this village I should have nothing to write about, but I hadn’t been in it long before I found my mistake. I hear a lot, of course, in the bar-parlour, because it’s like a club, and all the chatty people come there of an evening and talk their neighbours over, and I hear lots more in the house from the market women and from our cook and the people about the place, and I can promise you that I have learnt some real romances of real life—rich and poor, too—since I became the landlady of the ‘Stretford Arms.’
We didn’t get into the place all at once. Oh dear me, what an anxious time it was till we found what we wanted! and the way we were tried to be “done,” as Harry calls it, was something dreadful. Harry said he supposed, being a sailor, people thought he didn’t know anything; but when we came to compare notes with other people who had started in the business, we found our experiences of trying to become licensed victuallers was quite a common one.
We had a beautiful honeymoon first; but I’m not going to write anything about that, except that we were very happy—so happy that when I thanked God for my dear, kind husband and my happy life, the tears used to come into my eyes. But all that time is sacred. It is something between two people, and not to put into print. I don’t think a honeymoon would come out well in print. It is only people who are having honeymoons who would understand it.