Later we used to sing in chorus and dancing a pas de trois, a song from a Gaiety burlesque:
“We’ll never come back any more, boys,
We’ll never come back any more.”
And, later still, someone brought back to London for Christmas the unforgettable tune of “Two Lovely Black Eyes,” which in after-life I heard all over the world—on the lagoon of Venice and in the villages of Mongolia.
One day after luncheon—on Sunday—John played the “Two Grenadiers” at the pianoforte, and I remember the experience being thrilling, if a little alarming, but a revelation, and a first introduction into the world of music.
CHAPTER II
THE NURSERY AND THE SCHOOLROOM
Life was divided between London from January to August, then Devonshire till after Christmas. In the nursery and the early part of the schoolroom period we used to go to Coombe in the summer. Coombe seemed to be inextricably interwoven with London and parallel to it; and I remember dinner-parties happening, and a Hungarian band playing on the lawn, unless I have dreamt that. But there came a time, I think I must have been six or seven, when Coombe was sold, and we went there no more, and life was confined to Membland and Charles Street. London in the winter, and summer in Devonshire, with sometimes brief visits to Devonshire at Easter and Whitsuntide, and brief visits to London in November, when my father and mother went up by themselves.
It is not any false illusion or the glamour of the past that makes the whole of that period of life until school-time was reached seem like fairyland. I thought so at the time, and grown-up people who came to Coombe and Membland felt, I think, that they had come to a place of rare and radiant happiness.