to mention any of the other people of the outside world at once brings me to membland, because the outside world was intimately connected with that place. membland was a large, square, jacobean house, white brick, green shutters and ivy, with some modern gabled rough-cast additions and a tower, about twelve miles from plymouth and ten miles from the station ivy bridge.
on the north side of the house there was a gravel yard, on the south side a long, sweeping, sloping lawn, then a ha-ha, a field beyond this and rookery which was called the grove.
when you went through the front hall you came into a large billiard-room in which there was a staircase leading to a gallery going round the room and to the bedrooms. the billiard-room was high and there were no rooms over the billiard-room proper—but beyond the billiard-table the room extended into a lower section, culminating in a semicircle of windows in which there was a large double writing-table.
later, under the staircase, there was an organ, and the pipes of the great organ were on the wall.
there was a drawing-room full of chintz chairs, books, potpourri, a grand pianoforte, and two writing-tables; a dining-room looking south; a floor of guests’ rooms; a bachelors’ passage in the wing; a schoolroom on the ground floor looking north, with a little dark room full of rubbish next to it, which was called the cabinet noir, and where we were sent when we were naughty; and a nursery floor over the guests’ rooms.
from the northern side of the house you could see the hills of dartmoor. in the west there was a mass of tall trees, scotch firs, stone-pines, and ashes.
there was a large kitchen garden at some distance from the house on a hill and enclosed by walls.
[32]
our routine of life was much the same as it was in london, except that the children had breakfast in the schoolroom at nine, as the grown-ups did not have breakfast till later.
then came lessons, a walk, or play in the garden, further lessons, luncheon at two, a walk or an expedition, lessons from five till six, and then tea and games or reading aloud afterwards. one of the chief items of lessons was the dictée, in which we all took part, and even everard from eton used to come and join in this sometimes.
elizabeth won a kind of inglorious glory one day by making thirteen mistakes in her dictée, which was the record—a record never beaten by any one of us before or since; and the words treize fautes used often to be hurled at her head in moments of stress.
after tea chérie used to read out books to the girls, and i was allowed to listen, although i was supposed to be too young to understand, and indeed i was. nevertheless, i found the experience thrilling; and there are many book incidents which have remained for ever in my mind, absorbed during these readings, although i cannot always place them. i recollect a wonderful book called l’homme de neige, and many passages from alexandre dumas.
sometimes chérie would read out to me, especially stories from the cabinet des fées, or better still, tell stories of her own invention. there was one story in which many animals took part, and one of the characters was a partridge who used to go out just before the shooting season with a telescope under his wing to see whether things were safe. chérie always used to say this was the creation she was proudest of. another story was called le prince muguet et princesse myosotis, which my mother had printed. i wrote a different story on the same theme and inspired by chérie’s story when i grew up. but i enjoyed chérie’s recollections of her childhood as much as her stories, and i could listen for ever to the tales of her grand-mère sévere who made her pick thorny juniper to make gin, or the story of a lady who had only one gown, a yellow one, and who every day used to ask her maid what the weather was like, and if the maid said it was fine, she would say, “eh bien, je mettrai ma robe jaune,” and if it was rainy she would likewise say, “je mettrai ma robe jaune.” poor chérie used to be made to repeat this story and others like it in season and out of season.
[33]
she would describe paris until i felt i knew every street, and landscapes in normandy and other parts of france. the dream of my life was to go to paris and see the boulevards and the invalides and the arc de triomphe, and above all, the champs elysées.
chérie had also a repertory of french songs which she used to teach us. one was the melancholy story of a little cabin-boy:
“je ne suis qu’un petit mousse
a bord d’un vaisseau royal,
je vais partout où le vent me pousse,
nord ou midi cela m’est égale.
car d’une mère et d’un père
je n’ai jamais connu l’amour.”
another one, less pathetic but more sentimental, was:
“pourquoi tous les jours, madeleine,
vas-tu au bord du ruisseau?
ce n’est pas, car je l’espère,
pour te regarder dans l’eau,
‘mais si,’ répond madeleine,
baissant ses beaux yeux d’ébêne.
je n’y vais pour autre raison.”
i forget the rest, but it said that she looked into the stream to see whether it was true, as people said, that she was beautiful—“pour voir si gent ne ment pas”—and came back satisfied that it was true.
but best of all i liked the ballad:
“en revenant des noces j’étais si fatiguée
au bord d’un ruisseau je me suis reposée,
l’eau était si claire que je me suis baignée,
avec une feuille de chêne je me suis essuyée,
sur la plus haute branche un rossignol chantait,
chante, beau rossignol, si tu as le c?ur gai,
pour un bouton de rose mon ami s’est faché,
je voudrais que la rose f?t encore au rosier,”
or words to that effect.
besides these she taught us all the french singing games: “savez-vous planter les choux?” “sur le pont d’avignon,” and “qu’est qui passe ici si tard, compagnons de la marjolaine?” we used to sing and dance these up and down the passage outside the schoolroom after tea.
round about membland were several nests of relations. six miles off was my mother’s old home flete, where the mildmays lived. uncle bingham mildmay married my mother’s sister,[34] aunt georgie, and bought flete; the house, which was old, was said to be falling to pieces, so it was rebuilt, more or less on the old lines, with some of the old structure left intact.
at pamflete, three miles off, lived my mother’s brother, uncle johnny bulteel, with his wife, aunt effie, and thirteen children.
and in the village of yealmpton, three miles off, also lived my great-aunt jane who had a sister called aunt sister, who, whenever she heard carriage wheels in the drive, used to get under the bed, such was her disinclination to receive guests. i cannot remember aunt sister, but i remember aunt jane and uncle willie harris, who was either her brother or her husband. he had been present at the battle of waterloo as a drummer-boy at the age of fifteen. but aunt sister’s characteristics had descended to other members of the family, and my mother used to say that when she and her sister were girls my aunt georgie had offered her a pound if she would receive some guests instead of herself.
on sundays we used to go to church at a little church in noss mayo until my father built a new church, which is there now.
the service was long, beginning at eleven and lasting till almost one. there was morning prayer, the litany, the ante-communion service, and a long sermon preached by the rector, a charming old man called mr. roe, who was not, i fear, a compelling preacher.
when we went to church i was given a picture-book when i was small to read during the sermon, a book with sacred pictures in colours. i was terribly ashamed of this. i would sooner have died than be seen in the pew with this book. it was a large picture-book. so i used every sunday to lose or hide it just before the service, and find it again afterwards. on sunday evenings we used sometimes to sing hymns in the schoolroom. the words of the hymns were a great puzzle. for instance, in the hymn, “thy will be done,” the following verse occurs—i punctuate it as i understood it, reading it, that is to say, according to the tune—
“renew my will from day to day,
blend it with thine, and take away.
all that now makes it hard to say
thy will be done.”
[35]
i thought the blending and the subsequent taking away of what was blent was a kind of trial of faith.
after tea, instead of being read to, we used sometimes to play a delightful round game with counters, called le nain jaune.
any number of people could play at it, and i especially remember susan triumphantly playing the winning card and saying:
“le bon valet, la bonne dame, le bon woi. je wecommence.”
in september or october, chérie would go for her holidays. i cannot remember if she went every year, but we had no one instead of her, and she left behind her a series of holiday tasks.
during one of her absences my aunt m’aimée, another sister of my mother’s, came to stay with us. aunt m’aimée was married to uncle henry ponsonby, the queen’s private secretary. he came, too, and with them their daughter betty. betty had a craze at that time for sarah bernhardt, and gave a fine imitation of her as do?a sol in the last act of hernani. it was decided we should act this whole scene, with margaret as hernani and aunt m’aimée reading the part of ruy gomez, who appears in a domino and mask.
never had i experienced anything more thrilling. i used to lie on the floor during the rehearsals, and soon i knew the whole act by heart. i thought betty the greatest genius that ever lived.
when chérie came back she was rather surprised and not altogether pleased to find i knew the whole of the last act of hernani by heart. she thought this a little too exciting and grown-up for me, and even for margaret, but none the less she let me perform the part of do?a sol one evening after tea in my mother’s bedroom, dressed in a white frock, with susan in a riding-habit playing the sinister figure of ruy gomez. i can see chérie now, sitting behind a screen, book in hand to prompt me, and shaking with laughter as i piped out in a tremulous and lisping treble the passionate words:
“il vaudrait mieuxzaller (which i made all one word) au tigre même
arracher ses petits qu’à moi celui que j’aime.”
chérie’s return from her holidays was one of the most exciting of events, for she would bring back with her a mass of toys from giroux and the paradis des enfants, and a flood of[36] stories about the people and places and plays she had seen, and the food she had eaten.
one year she brought me back a theatre of puppets. it was called théatre fran?ais. it had a white proscenium, three scenes and an interior, a moorish garden by moonlight, and a forest, and a quantity of small puppets suspended by stiff wires and dressed in silk and satin. there was a harlequin, a columbine, a king, a queen, many princesses, a villain scowling beneath black eyebrows, an executioner with a mask, peasants, pastry-cooks, and soldiers with halberds, who would have done honour to the papal guard at the vatican, and some heavily moustached gendarmes. this theatre was a source of ecstasy, and innumerable dramas used to be performed in it. chérie used also to bring back some delicious cakes called nonnettes, a kind of gingerbread with icing on the top, rolled up in a long paper cylinder.
she also brought baskets of bonbons from boissier, the kind of basket which had several floors of different kinds of bonbons, fondants on the top in their white frills, then caramels, then chocolates, then fruits confits. all these things confirmed one’s idea that there could be no place like paris.
in 1878, when i was four years old, another brother was born, rupert, in august, but he died in october of the same year. he was buried in revelstoke church, a church not used any more, and then in ruins except for one aisle, which was roofed in, and provided with pews. it nestled by the seashore, right down on the rocks, grey and covered with ivy, and surrounded by quaint tombstones that seemed to have been scattered haphazard in the thick grass and the nettles.
i think it was about the same time that one evening i was playing in my godmother’s room, that i fell into the fire, and my little white frock was ablaze and my back badly burnt. i remember being taken up to the nursery and having my back rubbed with potatoes, and thinking that part, and the excitement and sympathy shown, and the interest created, great fun.
all this was before hugo was in the schoolroom, but in all my sharper memories of membland days he plays a prominent part. we, of course, shared the night nursery, and we soon invented games together, some of which were distracting, not to say maddening, to grown-up people. one was an imaginary language in which even the word “yes” was a trisyllable,[37] namely: “sheepartee,” and the word for “no” was even longer and more complicated, namely: “quiliquinino.” we used to talk this language, which was called “sheepartee,” and which consisted of unmitigated gibberish, for hours in the nursery, till hilly, grace, and annie could bear it no longer, and everard came up one evening and told us the language must stop or we should be whipped.
the language stopped, but a game grew out of it, which was most complicated, and lasted for years even after we went to school. the game was called “spankaboo.” it consisted of telling and acting the story of an imaginary continent in which we knew the countries, the towns, the government, and the leading people. these countries were generally at war with one another. lady spankaboo was a prominent lady at the court of doodahn. she was a charming character, not beautiful nor clever, and sometimes a little bit foolish, but most good-natured and easily taken in. her husband, lord spankaboo, was a country gentleman, and they had no children. she wore red velvet in the evening, and she was bien vue at court.
there were hundreds of characters in the game. they increased as the story grew. it could be played out of doors, where all the larger trees in the garden were forts belonging to the various countries, or indoors, but it was chiefly played in the garden, or after we went to bed. then hugo would say: “let’s play spankaboo,” and i would go straight on with the latest events, interrupting the narrative every now and then by saying: “now, you be lady spankaboo,” or whoever the character on the stage might be for the moment, “and i’ll be so-and-so.” everything that happened to us and everything we read was brought into the game—history, geography, the ancient romans, the greeks, the french; but it was a realistic game, and there were no fairies in it and nothing in the least frightening. as it was a night game, this was just as well.
hugo was big for his age, with powerful lungs, and after luncheon he used to sing a song called “apples no more,” with immense effect. hugo was once told the following riddle: “why can’t an engine-driver sit down?”—to which the answer is, “because he has a tender behind.” he asked this to my mother at luncheon the next day, and when nobody could guess it, he said: “because he has a soft behind.” there was a groom in the stables who had rather a japanese cast of face,[38] and we used to call him le japonnais. one day hugo went and stood in front of him and said to him: “you’re the japonais.” on another occasion when hugo was learning to conjugate the auxiliary verb être, chérie urged him to add a substantive after “je suis,” to show he knew what he was doing. “je suis une plume,” said hugo.
we were constantly in d.’s room and used to play sad tricks on her. she rashly told us one day that her brother jim had once taken her to a fair at wallington and had there shown her a punch’s face, in gutta-percha, on the wall. “go and touch his nose,” had said jim. she did so, and the face being charged with electricity gave her a shock.
this story fired our imagination and we resolved to follow jim’s example. we got a galvanic battery, how and where, i forget, the kind which consists of a small box with a large magnet in it, and a handle which you turn, the patient holding two small cylinders. we persuaded d. to hold the cylinders, and then we made the current as strong as possible and turned the handle with all our might. poor d. screamed and tears poured down her cheeks, but we did not stop, and she could not leave go because the current contracts the fingers; we went on and on till she was rescued by someone else.
another person we used to play tricks on was m. butat, the cook, and one day hugo and i, to his great indignation, threw a dirty mop into his stock-pot.
a great ally in the house was the housekeeper, mrs. tudgay. every day at eleven she would have two little baskets ready for us, which contained biscuits, raisins and almonds, two little cakes, and perhaps a tangerine orange.
to the outside world mrs. tudgay was rather alarming. she had a calm, crystal, cold manner; she was thin, reserved, rather sallow, and had a clear, quiet, precise way of saying scathing and deadly things to those whom she disliked. once when elizabeth was grown up and married and happened to be staying with us, mrs. tudgay said to her: “you’re an expense to his lordship.” once when she engaged an under-housemaid she said: “she shall be called—nothing—and get ￡15 a year.” but for children she had no terrors. she was devoted to us, bore anything, did anything, and guarded our effects and belongings with the vigilance of a sleepless hound. she had formerly been maid to the duchess of san marino in italy,[39] and she had a fund of stories about italy, a scrap-book full of italian pictures and photographs, and a silver cross containing a relic of the true cross given her by pope pius ix. we very often spent the evening in the housekeeper’s room, and played long whist with mrs. tudgay, d., mr. deacon, and john’s servant, mr. thompson.
when, in the morning, we were exhausted from playing forts and spankaboo in the garden, we used to leap through mrs. tudgay’s window into the housekeeper’s room, which was on the ground floor and looked out on to the garden, and demand refreshment, and mrs. tudgay used to bring two wine glasses of ginger wine and some biscuits.
sometimes we used to go for picnics with mrs. tudgay, d., hilly, and the other servants. we started out in the morning and took luncheon with us, which was eaten at one of the many keepers’ houses on the coast, some of which had a room kept for expeditions, and then spent the afternoon paddling on the rocks and picking shells and anemones. we never bathed, as there was not a single beach on my father’s estate where it was possible. it was far too rocky. mrs. tudgay had a small and ineffectual pomeranian black dog called albo, who used to be taken on these expeditions. looking back on these, i wonder at the quantity of food d. and mrs. tudgay used to allow us to eat. hugo and i thought nothing of eating a whole lobster apiece, besides cold beef and apple tart.
sometimes we all went expeditions with my mother. then there used to be sketching, and certainly more moderation in the way of food.
membland was close to the sea. my father made a ten-mile drive along the cliffs so that you could drive from the house one way, make a complete circle, and come back following the seacoast all the way to the river yealm, on one side of which was the village of newton ferrers and on the other the village of noss mayo. both villages straggled down the slopes of a steep hill. noss mayo had many white-washed and straw-thatched cottages and some new cottages of devonshire stone built by my father, with slate roofs, but not ugly or aggressive. down the slopes of noss there were fields and orchards, and here and there a straw-thatched cottage. they were both fishing villages, the yealm lying beneath them, a muddy stretch at low tide and a brimming river at high tide. newton had an old[40] grey devonshire church with a tower at the west end. at noss my father built a church exactly the same in pattern of devonshire stone. you could not have wished for a prettier village than noss, and it had, as my mother used to say: “a little foreign look about it.”
at different points of this long road round the cliffs, which in the summer were a blaze of yellow gorse, there were various keepers’ cottages, as i have said. from one you looked straight on to the sea from the top of the cliff. another was hidden low down among orchards and not far from the old ruined church of revelstoke. a third, called battery cottage, was built near the emplacement of an old battery and looked out on to the mewstone towards plymouth sound and ram head. the making of this road and the building of the church were two great events. pieces of the cliff had to be blasted with dynamite, which was under the direction of a cheery workman called mr. yapsley, during the road-making, and the building of the church which was in the hands of mr. crosbie, the clerk of the works, whom we were devoted to, entailed a host of interesting side-issues. one of these was the carving which was done by mr. harry hems of exeter. he carved the bench-ends, and on one of them was a sea battle in which a member of the bulteel family, whom we took to be uncle johnny, was seen hurling a stone from a mast’s crows’ nest in a sailing ship, on to a serpent which writhed in the waves. hugo and i both sat for cherubs’ heads, which were carved in stone on the reredos. there were some stained-glass windows and a hand-blown organ on which john used to play on sundays when it was ready.
the church was consecrated by the bishop of exeter, bishop temple.
hugo and i learned to ride first on a docile beast called emma, who, when she became too lethargic, was relegated to a little cart which used to be driven by all of us, and then on a dartmoor pony called the giant, and finally on a pony called emma jane.
the coachman’s name was bilky. he was a perfect devonshire character. his admiration for my brothers was unbounded. he used to talk of them one after the other, afraid if he had praised one, he had not praised the others enough. my brother everard, whom we always called the “imp,” he said was as strong as a lion and as nimble as a bee. “they have[41] rightly, sir, named you the himp,” one of the servants said to him one day.
during all these years we had extraordinarily few illnesses. hugo once had whooping-cough at london, and i was put in the same room so as to have it at the same time, and although i was longing to catch it, as hugo was rioting in presents and delicacies as well as whoops, my constitution was obstinately impervious to infection.
we often had colds, entailing doses of spirits of nitre, linseed poultices, and sometimes even a mustard poultice, but i never remember anything more serious. every now and then hilly thought it necessary to dose us with castor-oil, and the struggles that took place when hilly used to arrive with a large spoon, saying, as every nanny i have ever known says: “now, take it!” were indescribable. i recollect five people being necessary one day to hold me down before the castor-oil could be got down my throat. we had a charming comfortable country doctor called doctor atkins, who used to drive over in a dog-cart, muffled in wraps, and produce a stethoscope out of his hat. he was so genial and comfortable that one began to feel better directly he felt one’s pulse.
when we first went to membland the post used to be brought by a postman who walked every day on foot from ivy bridge, ten miles off. he had a watch the size of a turnip, and the stamps at that time were the dark red ones with the queen’s head on them. later the post came in a cart from plympton, and finally from plymouth.
in the autumn, visitors used to begin to arrive for the covert shooting, which was good and picturesque, the pheasants flying high in the steep woods on the banks of the yealm, and during the autumn months the nearing approach of christmas cast an aura of excitement over life. the first question was: would there be a christmas tree? during all the early years there was one regularly.
after the november interval in london, which i have already described, the serious business of getting the tree ready began. it was a large tree, and stood in a square green box.
the first i remember was placed in the drawing-room, the next in the dining-room, the next in the billiard-room, and after that they were always in the covered-in tennis court, which[42] had been built in the meanwhile. the decoration of the tree was under the management of d. the excitement when the tree was brought into the house or the tennis court for the first time was terrific, and mr. ellis, the house-carpenter, who always wore carpet shoes, climbed up a ladder and affixed the silver fairy to the top of the tree. then reels of wire were brought out, scissors, boxes of crackers, boxes of coloured candles, glass-balls, clips for candles, and a quantity of little toys.
hugo and i were not allowed to do much. nearly everything we did was said to be wrong. the presents were, of course, kept a secret and were done up in parcels, and not brought into the room until the afternoon of christmas eve.
the christmas tree was lit on christmas eve after tea. the ritual was always the same. hugo and i ran backwards and forwards with the servants’ presents. the maids were given theirs first,—they consisted of stuff for a gown done up in a parcel,—then mrs. tudgay, d., and the upper servants. one year mrs. tudgay had a work-basket.
then the guests were given their presents, and we gave our presents and received our own. the presents we gave were things we had made ourselves: kettle-holders, leather slippers worked in silk for my father, and the girls sometimes made a woollen waistcoat or a comforter. chérie always had a nice present for my mother, which we were allowed to see beforehand, and she always used to say: “n’y touchez pas, la fra?cheur en fait la beauté.”
our presents were what we had put down beforehand in a list of “christmas wants”—a horse and cart, a painting-box, or a stylograph pen.
the house used to be full at christmas. my father’s brothers, uncle tom and uncle bob, used to be there. madame neruda i remember as a christmas visitor. godfrey webb wrote the following lines about christmas at membland:
christmas at membland
“who says that happiness is far to seek?
here have i passed a happy christmas week.
christmas at membland—all was bright and gay,
without one shadow till this final day,
when mrs. baring said, ‘before you go
you must write something in the book, you know.’
i must write something—that’s all very well,
[43]
but what to write about i cannot tell.
where shall i look for help?—it must be found,
if i survey this christmas party round.
there’s ned himself, our most delightful host,
or mrs. baring, she could help me most,
the uncles too, if i their time might rob.
shall i ask tom? or try my luck with bob?
madame neruda, ah, would she begin,
we’d write the story of a violin,
and tell how first the inspiration came
which took the world by storm and gave her fame.
there’s harry bourke, with him i can’t go wrong,
could i but write the words he’d sing the song.
so sung, my verse would haply win a smile
from his bright beauty of the sister isle,
who comes prepared her country’s pride to save,
for every saxon is at once her slave;
but no, i must not for assistance look,
so, mrs. baring, you must keep your book
for cleverer pens and i no more will trouble you,
but just remain your baffled bard.”
g. w. (1879).
mr. webb was a great feature in the children’s life of many families. with his beady, bird-like eye and his impassive face he made jokes so quietly that you overheard them rather than heard them. one day out shooting on a steep hill in newton wood, in which there were woodcock and dangerous shots, my father said to him, “you take the middle drive, godfrey; it’s safer, medio tutissimus.” “is there any chance of an ibis?” mr. webb asked quietly. another time, he went out duck-shooting. he was asked afterwards whether he had shot many. “not even a mallard imaginaire,” was his answer.
another christmas event was the french play we used to act under the stage management of chérie.
when i was six i played the part of an old man with a bald forehead and white tufts of hair in a play called le ma?tre d’ecole, and i remember playing the part of nicole in scenes from the bourgeois gentilhomme at christmas in 1883, and an old witch called mathurine in a play called le talisman in january 1884.
one of our most ambitious efforts was a play called la grammaire, by labiche: it proved too ambitious, and never got further than a dress rehearsal in the schoolroom. in this play, elizabeth had the part of the heroine, and had to be elegantly[44] dressed; she borrowed a grown-up gown, and had her hair done up, but she took such a long time preening herself that she missed her cue, which was: “l’ange la voici!” it was spoken by margaret, who had a man’s part.
“l’ange la voici!” said margaret in ringing tones, but no ange appeared. “l’ange la voici!” repeated margaret, with still greater emphasis, but still no ange; finally, not without malice, margaret almost shouted, “l’ange la voici!” and at last elizabeth tripped blushing on to the stage with the final touches of her toilette still a little uncertain. in the same play, susan played the part of a red-nosed horse-coper, dressed in a grey-tailed coat, called machut.
another source of joy in membland life was the yacht, the waterwitch, which in the summer months used to sail as soon as the cowes regatta was over, down to the yealm river. the waterwitch was a schooner of 150 tons; it had one large cabin where one had one’s meals, my mother’s cabin aft, a cabin for my father, and three spare cabins. the name of the first captain was goomes, but he was afterwards replaced by bletchington. goomes was employed later by the german emperor. he had a knack of always getting into rows during races, and even on other occasions.
one day there was a regatta going on on the yealm river; the gig of the waterwitch was to race the gig of another yacht. they had to go round a buoy. for some reason, i was in the waterwitch’s gig when the race started, sitting in the stern next to goomes, who was steering. all went well at first, but when the boats were going round the buoy they fouled, and goomes and the skipper of the rival gig were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand combat, and beating each other hard with the steering-lines. my father and the rest of the family were watching the race on board the yacht. i think i was about six or seven. my father shouted at the top of his voice, “come back, come back,” but to no avail, as goomes and the other skipper were fighting like two dogs, and the boats were almost capsizing. i think goomes won the fight and the race. i remember enjoying it all heartily, but not so my father on board the yacht.
bletchington was a much milder person and, besides being a beautiful sailor, one of the gentlest and most beautiful-mannered mariners i have ever met. he was invariably optimistic, and always said there was a nice breeze. this sometimes tempted[45] the girls, who were bad sailors, to go out sailing, but they always regretted it and used to come back saying, “how foolish we were to be taken in!” hugo and i were good sailors and enjoyed the yacht more than anything. john was an expert in the handling of a yacht, but the “imp” nearly died of sea-sickness if ever he ventured on board.
captain bletchington taught hugo and myself a song in fiji language. it ran like this:
“tang a rang a chicky nee, picky-nicky wooa,
tarra iddy ucky chucky chingo.”
which meant:
“all up and down the river they did go;
the king and queen of otahiti.”
i think what we enjoyed most of all were games of hide-and-seek on board. one day one of the sailors hid us by reefing us up in a sail in the sail-room, a hiding-place which baffled everyone. the waterwitch was a fast vessel, and won the schooners’ race round the isle of wight one year and only narrowly missed winning the queen’s cup. the story of this race used to be told us over and over again by d., and used to be enacted by hugo and me on our toy yachts or with pieces of cork in the sink. this is what happened. another schooner, the cetonia, had to allow the waterwitch five minutes, but the waterwitch had to allow the sleuthhound, a cutter, twenty-five minutes. d. was watching from the shore, and my mother was watching from the r.y.s. club. the cetonia came in first, but a minute or two later the waterwitch sailed in before the five minutes’ allowance was up. then twenty minutes of dreadful suspense rolled by, twenty-three minutes, and during the last two minutes, as d. dramatically said, “that ’orrid sleuthhound sailed round the corner and won the race.” hugo and i felt we could never forgive the owner of the sleuthhound.
besides the waterwitch there was a little steam launch called the wasp which used to take us in to plymouth, and john had a sailing-boat of his own.
