“‘Prenez garde, madame, prenez garde.’
“Having arrived at the salle-à-manger the dear old Pasteur said he would leave me for a moment with his wife, in case there was anything I might like to discuss with her, and to my horror I was left closeted with madame, nervously fearing she might touch on subjects fit only for ladies’ ears, but not for the tender years of my manly youth. Needless to say I escaped from her clutches as quickly as possible.
“For two days I kept up the joke. Then it became too much for me, and as we were busily working at French verbs, in the curé’s study, I changed my voice and returned to the old lady’s Cockney French intonations, which was not in the least difficult, as my own French was none of the brightest. The Pasteur turned round, looked hard at me for a moment, and then went back to the verbs. I awaited another opportunity, and began again. This time he almost glared at me, and then, clapping his hands to his head and bursting into laughter, he exclaimed:
“‘Mais c’était vous, c’était vous la tante de Bishop?’
“It turned out he had written that morning to Bishop’s real aunt, accepting her second nephew as a pupil, and arranging all the details of his arrival. How surprised the good lady must have been.”
June 3rd, 1899, was the eleventh anniversary of Cyril Maude and Winifred Emery’s wedding day, and they gave a delightful little luncheon party at their pretty house in Egerton Crescent, where they then lived. The host certainly looked ridiculously young to have been married eleven years, or to be the father of the big girl of nine and the smaller one of six who came down to dessert.
Their home was a very cosy one—not big or grand in those days, but thoroughly carried out on a small scale, with trees in the gardens in front, trees in the back-yard behind, and the aspect was refreshing on that frightfully hot Oaks day.
Winifred Emery had a new toy—a tiny little dog, so small that it could curl itself up quite happily in the bottom of a man’s top hat, but yet wicked enough to do a vast amount of damage, for it had that morning pulled a blouse by the sleeves from the bed to the floor, and had calmly dissevered the lace from the cambric.
The Maudes are a most unconventional theatrical pair. They love their home and their children, and seem to wish to get rid of every remembrance of the theatre once they pass their own front door. And yet it is impossible to get rid of the theatre in the summer, for besides having eight performances a week of The Manœuvres of Jane at that time—which was doing even better business at the end of nine months than it was at the beginning—those unfortunate people were giving charity performances every week for seven consecutive weeks, which of course necessitated rehearsals apart from the performances themselves. Really the charity distributed by the theatrical world is enormous.
We had a delightful luncheon: much of my time was spent gazing at Miss Ellaline Terriss, who is even prettier off the stage than she is on.