There were two drawing-rooms downstairs, a front drawing-room with three windows looking out on to the street, and a back drawing-room at right angles to it. The drawing-rooms had a faded green silk on the walls. Over the chimney-piece there was a fine picture by Cuyp, which years later I saw in a private house in the Bois de Boulogne. The room was full of flowers and green Sèvres china. In the back drawing-room there was a grand pianoforte and some bookcases, and beyond that a room called the gilding-room, a kind of workshop where my mother did gilding. I only once saw a part of the operation, which consisted of making size. Later on this room became the organ room and was enlarged. The drawing-room led to a small landing and a short staircase to the front hall. On the landing wall there was an enormous picture of Venice, by Birket Foster, and from this landing, when there was a dinner-party, we used to peer through the banisters and watch the guests arriving. We were especially forbidden to slide down the banisters, as my mother used to tell us that when she was a little girl she had slid down the banisters and had a terrible fall which had cut open her throat, so that when you put a spoon in her mouth it came out again through her throat. When Hugo, the last of the family to be told this story, heard it, he said, “Did you die?” And my mother was obliged to say that she did not.
On the ground floor was a room looking out into the street, called the library, but it only possessed two bookcases let into Louis XV. white walls, and this led into the dining-room, beyond which was my father’s dressing-room, where, when we were quite small, we would watch him shave in the morning.
Dinner downstairs was at eight, and when we were small I was often allowed to go down to the beginning of dinner and draw at the dinner-table on a piece of paper, and the girls used to come down to dessert, bringing an occupation such as needlework. We were always supposed to have an occupation when we were downstairs, and I remember Susan, being asked by Chérie what needlework she was going to take to the dining-room, saying: “Mon bas, ma chemise, et ma petite wobe, Chéwie.”
On Saturday afternoons we often had a treat, and went to the German Reed’s entertainment and Corney Grain, or to Maskelyne and Cook, and Hengler’s Circus, and on Sundays we often went to the Zoo, or drove down to Coombe when Coombe existed.
Lessons were in the hands of Chérie and Mrs. Christie. Chérie taught me to read and write in French, French history out of Lamé Fleury, not without arguments on my part to learn it from the bigger grown-up book of Guizot, and French poetry. Every day began with a hideous ordeal called “La Page d’Ecriture.” Chérie would write a phrase in enormous letters in a beautiful copy-book handwriting on the top line of the copy-book, and we had to copy the sentence on every other line, with a quill pen. Mrs. Christie, besides struggling with my arithmetic, used to teach us English literature, and make us learn passages from Shakespeare by heart, which were quite unintelligible to me, and passages from Byron, Walter Scott, Campbell, and Southey, and various pieces from the Children’s Garland and Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. I enjoyed the latter whole-heartedly.
Sometimes Mrs. Christie and Chérie used to have conversations across the children, as it were, during lessons. I remember Mrs. Christie saying to Chérie while I was doing my lessons by Chérie’s side one day: “That child will give you more trouble than all the others.”
I liked history lessons, especially Lamé Fleury’s French history and mythology; and in Lamé Fleury’s French history the favourite chapter was that beginning: “Jean II. dit le bon commença son règne par un assassinat.” The first book I read with Mrs. Christie was called Little Willie, and described the building of a house, an enchanting book. I did not like any of the English poetry we read, not understanding how by any stretch of the imagination it could be called poetry, as Shakespeare blank verse seemed to be a complicated form of prose full of uncouth words; what we learnt being Clarence’s dream, King Henry IV.’s battle speeches, which made me most uncomfortable for Chérie’s sake by their anti-French tone, and passages from Childe Harold, which I also found difficult to understand. The only poems I remember liking, which were revealed by Mrs. Christie, were Milton’s L’Allegro and Penseroso, which I copied out in a book as soon as I could write. One day she read me out Gray’s Elegy and I was greatly impressed. “That is,” she said, “the most beautiful Elegy in the language.” “Is it the most beautiful poem in the language?” I asked, rather disappointed at the qualification, and hankering for an absolute judgment. “It’s the most beautiful Elegy in the language,” she said, and I had to be content with that.
I don’t want to give the impression that we, any of us, disliked Mrs. Christie’s lessons in English literature. On the contrary, we enjoyed them, and I am grateful for them till this day. She taught us nothing soppy nor second-rate. The piece of her repertoire I most enjoyed, almost best, was a fable by Gay called “The Fox at the Point of Death.” She was always willing to explain things, and took for granted that when we didn’t ask we knew. This was not always the case. One of the pieces I learnt by heart was Shelley’s “Arethusa,” the sound of which fascinated me. But I had not the remotest idea that it was about a river. The poem begins, as it will be remembered:
“Arethusa arose