Collections and Recollections

by George William Erskine Russell

The art of avoiding conversational unpleasantness by a graceful way of putting things belongs, I suppose, in its highest perfection, to the East. When Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India, he had a "shikarry," or sporting servant, whose special duty was to attend the visitors at the Viceregal Court on their shooting excursions. Returning one day from one of these expeditions, the shikarry encountered the Viceroy, who, full of courteous solicitude for his guests' enjoyment, asked: "Well, what sort of sport has Lord ---- had?" "Oh," replied the scrupulously polite Indian, "the young Sahib shot divinely, but God was very merciful to the birds." Compare this honeyed speech with the terms in which an English gamekeeper would convey his opinion of a bad shot, and we are forced to admit the social superiority of Lord Salisbury's "black man."

If we turn from the Orient to the Occident, and from our dependencies to the United Kingdom, the Art of Putting Things is found to flourish better on Irish than on Scotch or English soil. We all remember that Archbishop Whately is said to have thanked God on his deathbed that he had never given a penny in indiscriminate charity. Perhaps one might find more suitable subjects of moribund self-congratulation; and I have always rejoiced in the mental picture of the Archbishop, in all the frigid pomp of Political Economy, waving off the Dublin beggar with "Go away, go away; I never give to any one in the street," and receiving the instantaneous rejoinder, "Then where would your reverence have me wait on you?" A lady of my acquaintance, who is a proprietress in County Galway, is in the habit of receiving her own rents. One day, when a tenant-farmer had pleaded long and unsuccessfully for an abatement, he exclaimed as he handed over his money, "Well, my lady, all I can say is that if I had my time over again it's not a tenant-farmer I'd be. I'd follow one of the learn'd professions." The proprietress gently replied that even in the learned professions there were losses as well as gains, and perhaps he would have found professional life as precarious as farming. "Ah, my lady, how can that be then?" replied the son of St. Patrick. "If you're a lawyer—win or lose, you're paid. If you're a doctor—kill or cure, you're paid. If you're a priest—heaven or hell, you're paid." Who can imagine an English farmer pleading the case for an abatement with this happy mixture of fun and satire?

"Urbane" is a word which etymologically bears witness that the ancient world believed the arts of courtesy to be the products of the town rather than of the country. Something of the same distinction may occasionally be traced even in the civilization of modern England. The house-surgeon of a London hospital was attending to the injuries of a poor woman whose arm had been severely bitten. As he was dressing the wound he said, "I cannot make out what sort of animal bit you. This is too small for a horse's bite, and too large for a dog's." "O sir," replied the patient, "it wasn't an animal; it was another lydy." Surely the force of Urbanity could no further go. On the other hand, it was a country clergyman who, in view of the approaching Confirmation, announced that on the morning of the ceremony the young ladies would assemble at the Vicarage and the young women at the National School.

"Let us distinguish," said the philosopher, and certainly the arbitrary use of the term "lady" and "gentleman" suggests some curious studies in the Art of Putting Things. A good woman who let furnished apartments in a country town, describing a lodger who had apparently "known better days," said, "I am positive she was a real born lady, for she hadn't the least idea how to do hanything for herself; it took her hours to peel her potatoes." Carlyle has illustrated from the annals of our criminal jurisprudence the truly British conception of "a very respectable man" as one who keeps a gig; and similarly, I recollect that in the famous trial of Kurr and Benson, the turf-swindlers, twenty years ago, a witness testified, with reference to one of the prisoners, that he had always considered him a "perfect gentleman;" and, being pressed by counsel to give his reasons for this view, said, "He had rooms at the Langham Hotel, and dined with the Lord Mayor."

On the other hand, it would seem that in certain circles and contingencies the "grand old name of Gentleman" is regarded as a term of opprobrium. The late Lord Wriothesley Russell, who was for many years a Canon of Windsor, used to conduct a mission service for the Household troops quartered there; and one of his converts, a stalwart trooper of the Blues, expressing his gratitude for these voluntary ministrations, and contrasting them with the officer-like and disciplinary methods of the army chaplains, genially exclaimed, "But I always say there's not a bit of the gentleman about you, my lord." When Dr. Harold Browne became Bishop of Ely, he asked the head verger some questions as to where his predecessor had been accustomed to sit in the Cathedral, what part he had taken in the services, and so on. The verger proved quite unable to supply the required information, and said in self-excuse, "Well, you see, my lord, his late lordship wasn't at all a church-going gentleman;" which, being interpreted, meant that, on account of age and infirmities, Bishop Turton had long confined his ministrations to his private chapel.

Just after a change of Government not many years ago, an officer of the Royal Household was chatting with one of the Queen's old coachmen (whose name and location I, for obvious reasons, forbear to indicate). "Well, Whipcord, have you seen your new Master of the Horse yet?" "Yes, sir, I have; and I should say that his lordship is more of an indoors man." The phrase has a touch of genial contempt for a long-descended but effete aristocracy which tickles the democratic palate. It was not old Whipcord, but a brother in the craft, who, when asked, during the Jubilee of 1887, if he was driving any of the Imperial and Royal guests then quartered at Buckingham Palace, replied, with calm self-respect, "No, sir; I am the Queen's Coachman. I don't drive the riff-raff." I take this to be a sublime instance of the Art of Putting Things. Lingering for a moment on these back stairs of History, let me tell the tragic tale of Mr. and Mrs. M----. Mr. M---- was one of the merchant princes of London, and Mrs. M---- had occasion to engage a new housekeeper for their palace in Park Lane. The outgoing official wrote to her incoming successor a detailed account of the house and its inmates. The butler was a very pleasant man. The chef was inclined to tipple. The lady's-maid gave herself airs; and the head housemaid was a very well principled young woman—and so on and so forth. After the signature, huddled away in a casual postscript, came the damning sentence, "As for Mr. and Mrs. M----, they behave as well as they know how." Was it by inadvertence, or from a desire to let people know their proper place, that the recipient of this letter allowed its contents to find their way to the children of the family?

As incidentally indicated above, a free recourse to alcoholic stimulus used to be, in less temperate days, closely associated with the culinary art; and one of the best cooks I ever knew was urged by her mistress to attend a great meeting for the propagation of the Blue Ribbon, to be held not a hundred miles from Southampton, and addressed by a famous preacher of total abstinence. The meeting was enthusiastic, and the Blue Ribbon was freely distributed. Next morning the lady anxiously asked her cook what effect the oratory had produced on her, and she replied, with the evident sense of narrow escape from imminent danger, "Well, my lady, if Mr. ---- had gone on for five minutes more, I believe I should have taken the Ribbon too; but, thank goodness! he stopped in time."

So far, I find, I have chiefly dealt with the Art of Putting Things as practised by the "urbane" or town-bred classes. Let me give a few instances of "pagan" or countrified use. A village blacksmith was describing to me with unaffected pathos the sudden death of his very aged father; "and," he added, "the worst part of it was that I had to go and break it to my poor old mother." Genuinely entering into my friend's grief, I said, "Yes; that must have been terrible. How did you break it?" "Well, I went into her cottage and I said. 'Dad's dead.' She said, 'What?' and I said, 'Dad's dead, and you may as well know it first as last.'" Breaking it! Truly a curious instance of the rural Art of Putting Things.

A labourer in Buckinghamshire, being asked how the rector of the village was, replied, "Well, he's getting wonderful old; but they do tell me that his understanding's no worse than it always was"—a pagan synonym for the hackneyed phrase that one is in full possession of one's faculties. This entire avoidance of flattering circumlocutions, though it sometimes produces these rather startling effects, gives a peculiar raciness to rustic oratory. Not long ago a member for a rural constituency, who had always professed the most democratic sentiments, suddenly astonished his constituents by taking a peerage. During the election caused by his transmigration, one of his former supporters said at a public meeting, "Mr. ---- says as how he's going to the House of Lords to leaven it. I tell you, you can't no more leaven the House of Lords by putting Mr. ---- into it than you can sweeten a cart-load of muck with a pot of marmalade." During the General Election of 1892 I heard an old labourer on a village green denouncing the evils of an Established Church. "I'll tell you how it is with one of these 'ere State parsons. If you take away his book, he can't preach; and if you take away his gownd, he mustn't preach; and if you take away his screw, he'll be d----d if he'll preach." The humour which underlies the roughness of countrified speech is often not only genuine but subtle. I have heard a story of a young labourer who, on his way to his day's work, called at the registrar's office to register his father's death. When the official asked the date of the event, the son replied, "He ain't dead yet, but he'll be dead before night, so I thought it would save me another journey if you would put it down now." "Oh, that won't do at all," said the registrar, "perhaps your father will live till to-morrow." "Well, I don't know, sir; the doctor says as he won't, and he knows what he has given him."

The accomplished authoress of Country Conversations has put on record some delightful specimens of rural dialogue, culled chiefly from the labouring classes of Cheshire. And, rising in the social scale from the labourer to the farmer, what could be more lifelike than this tale of an ill-starred wooing? "My son Tom has met with a disappointment about getting married. You know he's got that nice farm at H----; so he met a young lady at a dance, and he was very much took up, and she seemed quite agreeable. So, as he heard she had Five Hundred, he wrote next day to pursue the acquaintance, and her father wrote and asked Tom to come over to S----. Eh, dear! Poor fellow! He went off in such sperrits, and he looked so spruce in his best clothes, with a new tie and all. So next day, when I heard him come to the gate, I ran out as pleased as could be; but I see in a moment he was sadly cast down. 'Why, Tom, my lad,' says I, 'what is it?' 'Why, mother,' says he, 'she'd understood mine was a harable; and she will not marry to a dairy.'"