Opal Porstock
I need hardly say that the Press was very amusing at my expense, but its comment was not always particularly intelligent. Indeed, the only sensible criticism I remember was a cartoon in which I was represented as an exhibit at a freak-show, with six fingers on each hand. But the greater part of my critics seemed to have entirely missed the point at issue. They all seemed obsessed with the idea, either that I multiplied three by four into ten, or that I multiplied five by two into twelve, or both. The words “tink” and “tonk” naturally caught on with the humorists of the day; indeed, I believe a revue entitled “Tink tonk” was still running at the outbreak of the Great War. Some of my serious critics were even more entertaining, and I was severely reproved by more than one religiously minded correspondent for upsetting the eternal laws of number, ordained for us by a wise Providence when it gave us fingers and toes. But I was not to be moved by any kind of opposition, and the support of Juliet Savage prevented the public from laughing me out of court. In the end, as my readers will probably remember, the situation became so acute that the Prime Minister actually came back from France and held a Round Table Conference at Chequers. For a time it looked as if no modus vivendi could be arrived at, but at last statesmanship triumphed, and a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the relative merits of decimal and duodecimal numeration, which is still sitting to-day.
I need only mention one other of my public activities, which remains a legitimate boast; it was a Private Member’s Bill, brought forward by myself, that procured the erection of the great statue of Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street. I pointed out that London was now the only European capital which had no statue of the kind, and the plaque on No. 221B Baker Street was a quite inadequate recognition of the famous detective’s services. The question whether he had ever existed did not affect, or ought not to affect, the feelings of veneration with which we regarded him. When the bill passed, I was elected a member of the Committee which was to decide between the various designs sent in. The prevailing taste at the moment was Futuribilism, but none of the artists then in vogue seemed to have treated his subject adequately. Several of them represented the head merely as a square block of stone, on the ground that all attempts to imitate the features in sculpture were a violation of the canons of Art. Another, on the same ground, represented the figure as strictly globular. I am glad to say that it was at my instigation the Committee chose the design sent in by Wrightman, then quite unknown, but destined to become famous as one of the leaders of the neo-classical school in the sixties. The conception is a noble one, and if some have found fault with the pipe as out of keeping with the classical draperies in which the figure is represented, it is not for us to complain. “We must approach Art,” Burstall used to say, “as a goddess demanding a sacrifice; and the victim she asks of us is the Actual.”
Well, the old days of Parliament are dead; and we no longer see St. Stephen’s presenting the appearance it used to present on “voting nights,” when helico after helico landed in the great square outside and legislatress after legislatress passed into the building to record her decision upon the affairs of the nation: when, by a quaint old survival, they used to bow to one another as they passed, while the opposing platforms bore them into the opposing lobbies; or when, on the occasion of some important speech, as many as five hundred auditors would assemble in the dictaphone room, to catch, in awestruck silence, the very tones of a Hopedale or a Holroyd before they passed into the receiver. Those of us who belonged to those older Parliaments will look back with some regret at the pomp and circumstance which used to attend legislation in those days; and perhaps even suspect that some of our modern indifference to political issues is due to the disappearance of that pageantry which is so dear to English hearts. There is still an old-world enchantment that lingers about the House itself: and you might almost fancy that those voiceless figures which sit there now, admirably as the Tussaud family has caught the likenesses of our present-day legislators, were the ghosts of a distant past, when the voice of a Burke would stir his contemporaries to indignation and to endurance, or the receiving funnels vibrated to the delicate soprano of a Pulbrooke.
CHAPTER XII
HOME LIFE
The word “home,” albeit of Teutonic origin, has in great measure outlived the conception it was designed to express.—Dr. Dives: Life of Malthus.
And now it is high time that I returned from my political reminiscences to the chronicle of our simple life at Greylands. After all, what historians will value (if they value anything!) in such a book as this is not the record of great public events, even when these can be narrated by one who took part in them; but the story of how we lived, what we thought about, what were our daily cares and interests. One of the happiest recollections I have of those days is that of our iron wedding in ’54. It was not at that time customary to hold the religious ceremony over again, with a formal renewal of consent; but we made merry on the occasion, entertained our friends, and, of course, received presents. Our friends were extremely generous on this occasion, and I was especially touched by the letter with which Archie Lock enclosed his cheque: “Really, you are one of the most economical friends I have in the way of wedding presents! Look at Cynthia Stockdale[[11]] now—she gets married so often that I’m thinking of making out a banker’s order for her.” Still more did I appreciate a flitch of bacon, bought and addressed at Dunmow, over the Essex border, “with respectful compts from J. Hodges.”
The accommodation at Greylands could be regal when it liked, and we managed to put up no less than fifteen guests for the ceremony. Mrs. Rowlands, rather sobered now by her experiences in a violent campaign against the daily nearing menace of Disestablishment, had still enough of her old spirit left to compose a special form of service for the occasion. It began, I need hardly say, with “O God, our help in ages past,” as a tribute to the long lease we had had of married life: then there was a Psalm or two appropriate to extreme old age; then it strayed off (as far as I could make out) into the Baptism of Adults and the Form of Prayer to be used at Sea; then we had the prayer for the High Court of Parliament. Then there was “Peace, perfect peace,” then an extremely embarrassing sermon from Mr. Rowlands, who talked of our marriage as if it was the one fixed landmark in a world of continual change and progress; then a translation of “Ein feste Burg” in which the words “And though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife, Yet is their profit small” struck one as hardly felicitous. And finally the Te Deum, with what Mrs. Rowlands called “the characteristically mediæval parts” left out. Juliet Savage asked Mrs. Rowlands whether she couldn’t have put in “My old Dutch,” but this was lost on her—Mrs. Rowlands did not read nineteenth century literature.
I remember Porstock, who had fortunately been able to get back from America just in time for the ceremony, surprising us all by appearing in the old opalescent suit, now ten years out of fashion, but, I am glad to say, still fitting round the waist. I remember Lord Billericay telling us in a speech that in his young days they didn’t have any iron weddings; one wedding was iron enough for them. I remember Archie Lock telling us about a man whom he congratulated on his future bride answering “The same to you and many of them.” I remember my two sons, one on each side of me, doing good work with the champagne, and Juliet telling me that I looked like the mother of the Bacchi. I know I cried a great deal, but I seem to remember only the things which made me laugh.
The education of our two children was now a constant care to us. Francis, though never a strong child, was already at his multiplication table (not mine!), and even little Gervase was learning his alphabet. Their names were down for Eton, since the Education Act made it impossible for them to be brought up at home. We were, I think, strict parents; Francis, for example, to the day he went to Eton was never allowed to take the helico out except in fine weather; neither was given permission to smoke till the age of twelve, and they were made to go out for a walk on Sunday afternoon if they had not been to church. A still more unusual embargo—neither of them was allowed to come into the boudoir except to ask a question or make a request of myself or some one else who was there. The difficulty of this was that they were not easy to find when visitors came to tea, until I arranged that they should not go out in the afternoon without the portable wireless: on receipt of the call “CD” (“company downstairs”) they had to come back at once to the house, and if there was a further call “CC” they went up to put on clean collars. Then they had to burst into the boudoir saying, “Mummy, may we go and shoot the gold-fish?” or some such formula, to which I would answer, “Not just now, dears, come and look at some pretty pictures.” It was thus always possible to show our family treasure to visitors without the appearance of any unnecessary restraint.