The mention of Llandudno reminds me that I may have been unfair to that old grandmother. For I knew full well that she detested places like Llandudno or Clifton or Cheltenham, and yet she would take us there for the Easter holidays at our own request, in order that we might gratify a taste for fossils; which is surely to her credit. Not every grandmother would have made such a sacrifice for two objectionable boys. As a set-off to this, however, I must record that she used to make me play Wagner to her, much against my will—an inexplicably modern trait of hers, this love of Wagner, and all the more singular since he, at that time, was accounted a dangerous lunatic. (Perhaps she only asked me to play because at such moments, at least, I could not be up to any other devilry.) She also insisted on our both reading “Marmion” aloud; partly because it was her dear dead husband’s favorite poem, and partly on account of a family legend to the effect that certain of its cantos were composed on our property. Can that have improved its flavor?
“Marmion” we thought dreadful rot. To revenge ourselves, we made a farce of these recitals, by going through the lines in a toneless voice and laying stress not where the poet and common sense meant it to lie, but on that precise syllable where, by the structure of the verse, it came to lie; let any one read a page of “Marmion” according to this recipe, and note the rich and unforeseen results! It was only by a miracle that we managed to keep our countenance; or rather, not by a miracle at all, but by a systematic education in the art of “not exploding.” The old lady writhed and squirmed under this outrage upon her divine Sir Walter, but said never a word; gulping down her discomfort with the same air of dour determination with which, at dinner, and solely to set us a good example, she gulped down indigestible fragments of plum-pudding, roly-poly and other hyperborean horrors glistening with suet, although well aware that such things are not fit for human consumption. Of course we were obliged to gulp them down too, with this difference, that she had Madeira and port to wash the taste out of her mouth, while we only got claret, which made it worse. What a life!
RAIN
Rain
RAIN once more....
“Now this is the comble,” said Mr. R. this morning, entering my room with a pair of boots in his hand.
“What’s up?”
“Look!”