Cakes and Ale

the later Victorian novelists must arouse a smile; but it was the manner in which he was generally spoken of at Blackstable. One day we went to tea at Mrs. Greencourt’s, who had staying with her a cousin, the wife of an Oxford don, and we had been told that she was very cultivated. She was a Mrs. Encombe, a little woman with an eager wrinkled face; she surprised us very much because she wore her gray hair short and a black serge skirt that only just came down below the tops of her square-toed boots. She was the first example of the New Woman that had even been seen in Blackstable. We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she looked intellectual and it made us feel shy. (Afterward we all scoffed at her, and my uncle said to my aunt: “Well, my dear, I’m thankful you’re not clever, at least I’ve been spared that”; and my aunt in a playful mood put my uncle’s slippers which were warming for him by the fire over her boots and said: “Look, I’m the new woman.” And then we all said: “Mrs. Greencourt is very funny; you never know what she’ll do next. But of course she isn’t quite quite.” We could hardly forget that her father made china and that her grandfather had been a factory hand.)

But we all found it very interesting to hear Mrs. Encombe talk of the people she knew. My uncle had been at Oxford, but everyone he asked about seemed to be dead. Mrs. Encombe knew Mrs. Humphry Ward and admired Robert Elsmere. My uncle considered it a scandalous work, and he was surprised that Mr. Gladstone, who at least called himself a Christian, had found a good word to say for it. They had quite an argument about it. My uncle said he thought it would unsettle people’s opinions and give them all sorts of ideas that they were much better without. Mrs. Encombe answered that he wouldn’t think that if he knew Mrs. Humphry Ward. She was a woman of the very highest character, a niece of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and whatever you might think of the book itself (and she, Mrs. Encombe, was quite willing to admit that there were parts which had better have been omitted) it was quite certain that she had written it from the very highest motives. Mrs. Encombe knew Miss Broughton too. She was of very good family and it was strange that she wrote the books she did.

“I don’t see any harm in them,” said Mrs. Hayforth, the doctor’s wife. “I enjoy them, especially Red as a Rose Is She.”

“Would you like your girls to read them?” asked Mrs. Encombe.

“Not just yet perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “But when they’re married I should have no objection.”

“Then it might interest you to know,” said Mrs. Encombe, “that when I was in Florence last Easter I was introduced to Ouida.”

“That’s quite another matter,” returned Mrs. Hayforth. “I can’t believe that any lady would read a book by Ouida.”

“I read one out of curiosity,” said Mrs. Encombe. “I must say, it’s more what you’d expect from a Frenchman than from an English gentlewoman.”

“Oh, but I understand she isn’t really English. I’ve always heard her real name is Mademoiselle de la Ramée.”

It was then that Mr. Galloway mentioned Edward Driffield.

“You know we have an author living here,” he said.

“We’re not very proud of him,” said the major. “He’s the son of old Miss Wolfe’s bailiff and he married a barmaid.”

“Can he write?” asked Mrs. Encombe.

“You can tell at once that he’s not a gentleman,” said the curate, “but when you consider the disadvantages he’s had to struggle against it’s rather remarkable that he should write as well as he does.”

“He’s a friend of Willie’s,” said my uncle.

Everyone looked at me, and I felt very uncomfortable.

“They bicycled together last summer, and after Willie had gone back to school I got one of his books from the library to see what it was like. I read the first volume and then I sent it back. I wrote a pretty stiff letter to the librarian and I was glad to hear that he’d withdrawn it from circulation. If it had been my own property I should have put it promptly in the kitchen stove.”

“I looked through one of his books myself,” said the doctor. “It interested me because it was set in this neighbourhood and I recognized some of the people. But I can’t say I liked it; I thought it unnecessarily coarse.”

“I mentioned that to him,” said Mr. Galloway, “and he said the men in the colliers that run up to Newcastle and the fishermen and farm hands don’t behave like ladies and gentlemen and don’t talk like them.”

“But why write about people of that character?” said my uncle.

“That’s what I say,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “We all know that there are coarse and wicked and vicious people in the world, but I don’t see what good it does to write about them.”

“I’m not defending him,” said Mr. Galloway. “I’m only telling you what explanation he gives himself. And then of course he brought up Dickens.”

“Dickens is quite different,” said my uncle. “I don’t see how anyone can object to the Pickwick Papers.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of taste,” said my aunt. “I always found Dickens very coarse. I don’t want to read about people who drop their aitches. I must say I’m very glad the weather’s so bad now and Willie can’t take any more rides with Mr. Driffield. I don’t think he’s quite the sort of person he ought to associate with.”

Both Mr. Galloway and I looked down our noses.

IX

As often as the mild Christmas gaieties of Blackstable allowed me I went to the Driffields’ little house next door to the Congregational chapel. I always found Lord George and often Mr. Galloway. Our conspiracy of silence had made us friends