Mamma thought this extremely uncontrolled.
Lady Pembroke’s waywardness made her often alarming. She invited us to tea, and then forgot all about it, and when we arrived she begged us to go away. Sometimes she was seized with the whim of dressing one of us up in some fantastic ridiculous dress, to appear as a caller, as a practical joke on another guest, and she would allow no refusal. There were days when she allowed us to talk recklessly and disrespectfully about our elders, for she loved to be amused; but then she often repented, and wrote a touching humble letter telling us that we had been wrong, and she still more wrong to listen.
Lord Pembroke’s three sisters were all married to remarkable men. Lady Mary was the wife of Baron Freddy von Hügel, perhaps the profoundest Christian thinker of his day. He was very deaf, and his talk was an amazing jumble of German philosophical terms and of schoolboy slang. He used whichever vocabulary most nearly approached the fresh original thought which he was flashing out from the caverns of his spirit. Being with him was like going into King Solomon’s Mines. Lady Maud’s husband was Hubert Parry the composer —a whirlwind of genius. He loved outdoor sports, and most of all, dangerous ones. His family at last refused to sail with him in his little yacht off the Sussex coast, as he preferred these excursions far more when they ended with a capsize and a swim home. Lady Maud declared that in his early days as a motorist, he ‘ always came home covered with blood’, and I remember his skating on the Rectory pond when, in the midst of an elaborate figure, he fell in, the ice cracking in all directions. All the other skaters fled to the bank, and there sat Hubert Parry, as if he was in his bath, and looking extremely jolly and happy, head, feet and arms supported on the ominously cracking ice. He quickly jumped out and ran dripping to the kitchen, from whence he returned with a red-hot salamander. With this he melted down all the jagged pieces of ice, so that the skating the next day should not be spoilt.
Lady Maud’s great beauty was ravaged by ill-health and completely ignored by herself. Her extremely dilapidated clothes were hung on her anyhow, but her appearance continued to be most distinguished, while the sudden flash of her smile, and the brilliant glance of her magnificent eyes, gave great rarity to her beauty. She loved teasing, and it was often really for the pleasure of teasing somebody that she first embraced the ‘Causes’ which she adopted. Nothing delighted her more than to gaze proudly at some conventional acquaintance as she marched by in a Suffragette procession.
Lord Pembroke’s youngest sister was that dazzling woman Lady Ripon, whose husband was distinguished too, for he was the best shot in the country. Unlike her sisters, Lady Ripon was a great figure in Society. She was recognized as a social queen in most European capitals, and at Wilton I chiefly remember the gaiety of her laughter. She hid us in her bedroom when Lady Pembroke had told us to go home, and there we watched her being dressed for dinner by Ellen Mitchell, her old nurse, who lived in the town, and who came every evening to see her when she was at Wilton. I think that, to the end of her life, Lady Ripon loved Ellen more than anyone else.
In the town of Wilton lived many interesting people. Near by the semicircular wall and gateway of stone and brick which faces the church, and makes so charming an entrance to the school, is a building containing the two houses of the head teachers. In my early years, one of these was occupied by Mr. Corby with his wife and family, and the other by Miss Sargent. Mr. Corby was a Cornishman, and the Head Master of the Boys’ School. He looked as if he was made entirely of bone, even to the texture of his hard black hair, and his short pointed beard. His large aquiline nose was fierce, and when he smiled, the smile seemed only to be a rather difficult movement of his lower jaw. Mr. Corby’s old pupils had a great respect and affection for him, but at first sight, I never saw a sterner face than his. That smile in the jaw was nearly always cut short by the firm black beard. His personality was like his native county, that harsh Cornish moorland, slate-coloured and forbidding, yet haunted by sudden appearances of those Celtic Leprechauns which are like no other kind of fairy. Such were the odd dark gleams of fun which sometimes crossed Mr. Corby’s face.
The tin mine which had belonged to his family was derelict, as are many others in the county, and Mr. Corby never seemed to go home. Perhaps he had no relations left there. This dark man had come up alone from the land of Celtic twilight, though he himself was more like a Celtic night, black and sinister. Yet he possessed an unexpected charm: his was the quality of chicory which is both crisp and bitter.
Mr. Corby was no musician, but on the Tuesday in Holy Week it was the custom for the Head Master of the Boys’ School to play the harmonium at the morning service in the church. The children of the various schools took turns to form the choir during that week, the head teachers accompanying them. Mr. Corby would not let down the boy’s school by sending a substitute organist. He may not have been musical, but he was acute. His choice of hymns was limited to those appropriate to Holy Week, yet among these he discovered one which can be so interpreted as
