The Ffolliots of Redmarley

by L. Allen Harker

Abel Gallup's sister came to keep house for them, and luckily, she, like his wife, was sensible and kindly, but she stood in great awe of her brother and never dreamt of criticising his conduct. Now his wife had never spared him her caustic, common-sense comments. Politics, especially where they might have affected the well-being of the child, were strictly kept in their proper place, And naturally she considered that, in the upbringing of a very small boy, that place should be remote almost to invisibility.

With her death all this was altered. Abel Gallup was very lonely, and turned to his little son for comfort. The child was biddable, loving, and gentle, and "to please his dada" had ever been held before him as his highest honour and duty.

Before he could read he could repeat long portions from the various speeches his father particularly admired; he learned by heart easily and had a retentive memory, and his father had only to say over a sentence two or three times when the child was word perfect. It gave Abel Gallup the most exquisite delight to stand his little son between his knees and hear the stirring, sonorous sentences rolled out in the high, child voice; and even in those early days he used to impress upon Eloquent that when he was grown-up he "would have to speak different to dada."

And little Eloquent, not realising that his father referred merely to accent and general grammar, would puzzle for hours wondering how such men as Mr Gladstone or John Bright would express their common wants. In what lofty terms, for instance, would Mr Gladstone inform his aunt, if he had an aunt, that his collar was frayed at the back and was scratching his neck. This, Eloquent felt, was quite a likely contingency, "seeing as he wore 'em so high." And how, he wondered, would Mr John Bright intimate delicately to the authorities who ruled his home that he hoped there would be pork for dinner on Sunday and plenty of crackling. He felt certain that Mr Bright would be sympathetic in the matter of crackling; he didn't know why, but he was sure of it. Equally convinced was he that the great statesman would express his desire in impressive and rhetorical language. He repeated "bits" from the speeches that he knew, to see if he could fasten on a chance phrase here and there that could be introduced into the common conversations of life; but they never did fit, and he was fain to express his small wants in the plain language of the folk about him.

Another name floated vague and nebulous among the impressions of very early childhood: that of one Herbert Spencer; and this was curious, for Abel Gallup was what he would himself have described as "a sincere Believer." Nevertheless, he was immensely attracted by the philosopher's Study of Sociology, and little Eloquent was made to learn and repeat many long bits from that dispassionate work. There was no portrait of Mr Herbert Spencer hanging upon the walls; he was not a living force, a real presence, like Mr Gladstone or Mr Bright; he spake not with the words of "a great soul greatly stirred"; yet there was something in his polished and logical sentences that gave Eloquent a doubtless quite erroneous sense of his personality, and of a certain aloofness in his attitude. He never called into council the "bits" from Mr Herbert Spencer in order to find majestic language in which to express the ordinary wants of life.

Eloquent was taken to his first political meeting when he was six years old, and he fell asleep before he had been there half an hour. His father put his arm round the child, rested the heavy little head against his shoulder and let him sleep in peace. Not even the cheering woke him, and his father carried him home, still sleeping. Perhaps Abel believed that in some mysterious manner the child absorbed the opinions of the speakers through the pores. He was not in the least annoyed with the little boy for falling asleep, nor did his tender years prevent a repetition of the experiment a few months later. This time Eloquent kept awake for nearly an hour. He was dreadfully bored, but at the same time felt very elated and important. He was the only little boy in the hall.

Abel Gallup was never tired of impressing upon Eloquent that "the people had the power, and the people had the votes to send you to parlyment or keep you out. Don't you be misled, my boy, by them as would wish you to try to please the gentry by and bye. The gentry's few and the people's many. I don't say a word against the gentry, mind, they're all right in their proper place, and very pleasant they be, some of them, but when the time comes for you to stand, just you remember that even hereabout there's hundreds of little houses for one manshun, and in every one of those little houses there's a vote, and you can have it if you go the right way about. When you're in, Eloquent, then you can hob-a-nob with the gentry if it so pleases you; but till you're in, remember it's the working man as can make or mar you."

Eloquent's aunt, Miss Gallup, had for many years "kept" the post-office and general shop in the village of Redmarley; but when her brother asked her to come and look after his home and his motherless child, she did not hesitate. She resigned her position of post-mistress, sold the good-will of her shop, and went to live in Marlehouse at "The Sign of the Golden Anchor."

She did not lose her interest in Redmarley, however; she had many friends there, and it was one of the treats of little Eloquent's childhood to drive there with his aunt "in a shay," to spend the afternoon in the woods, and have tea afterwards either with the housekeeper at the "Manshun" or in one of the cottages in the village.

In those days, only one old gentleman lived at the "Manshun." He "kept himself very much to himself," so aunt said, and Eloquent never saw him except from an upper window in the Golden Anchor, when he happened to drive through Marlehouse.