a marriage with her – without telling dear Mamma. Hic Incipit vita nova. Thus was George, young George, generated.
The Hartlys must have been more fun than the Winterbournes. The Winterbournes had never done a damn thing in their lives, and were as stuffily, frowsily, mawkish-religiously boring as a family could be and still remain – I won’t say alive or even sentient, but – able to digest their very puddingy meals. The Hartlys were different. They were poor Army. Pa Hartly had chased all round the Empire, dragging with him Ma Hartly, always in pod and always pupping in incongruous and inconvenient spots – the Egyptian desert, a shipwrecked troopship, a malarial morass in the West Indies, on the road to Kandahar. They had an inconceivable number of children, dead, dying, and alive, of all ages and sexes. Finally, old Hartly settled down near his wife’s family in rural Kent, with a smallish pension, a tiny “private” income, and the world of his swarming progeny on his less than Atlantean shoulders. I believe he had had two or three wives, all horribly fertile. No doubt the earlier Mrs. Hartlys had perished of superfluous child-bearing, “super-foetation ιόεν.”
Isabel Hardy was one – don’t ask which in numerical order, or by which wife – of Captain Hardy’s daughters. She was very pretty, in a florid, vulgarish way, with her artful-innocent dark eyes, and flashing smiles, and pretty little bustle and frills, and “fresh complexion” and “abounding health”. She was fascinatingly ignorant, even to the none too sophisticated George Augustus. And she had a strength of character superior even to dear Mamma’s, added to a superb, an admirable vitality, which bewitched, bewildered, electrified the somewhat sluggish and pretty comfortable George Augustus. He had never met any one like her. In fact, dear Mamma had never allowed him to meet any one but rather soggy Nonconformists of mature years, and “nice” youths and maidens of exemplary Nonconformist stupidity and lifelessness.
George Augustus fell horribly in love.
He abode at the village inn, which was cheap and pretty comfortable; and he did himself well. On these holidays he had such a mood of exultation (subconscious) in getting away from dear Mamma that he felt like a hero in Bulwer Lytton. We should say he swanked; probably the early nineties would have said he came the masher. He certainly mashed Isabel.
The Hartlys didn’t swank. They made no effort to conceal their poverty or the vulgarity imported into the family by the third (or fourth) Mrs. Hartly. They were fond of pork, and gratefully accepted the gifts of vegetables and fruit which the kind-hearted English country-people force on those they know are none too well off. They grew lots of vegetables and fruit themselves, and kept pigs. They made blackberry jam and damson jam, and scoured the country for mushrooms; and the only “drink” ever allowed in the family was Pa Hartly’s “drop o’ grog” secretly consumed after the innumerable children had gone to bed in threes and fours.
So it wasn’t hard for George Augustus to swank. He took the Hartlys – even Isabel – in completely. He talked about “my people” and “our place.” He talked about his Profession. He gave them copies of the Nonconformist tract he had published at fifteen. He gave Ma Hartly a fourteen-pound tin of that expensive (2s. 3d. a pound) tea she had always pined for since they had left Ceylon. He bought fantastic things for Isabel – a coral brooch, a copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress bound in wood from the door of Bunyan’s parish church, a turkey, a year’s subscription to the Family Herald Supplement, a new shawl, boxes of ls. 6d. a pound chocolates, and took her for drives in an open landau smelling of horse-piss and oats.
The Hartlys thought he was “rich”. George Augustus was so very comfortable and exalts that he too really thought he was “rich”.
One night, a sweet rural night, with a lemon moon over the sweet, breast-round, soft English country, with the nightingales jug-jugging and twit-twitting like mad in the leafy lanes, George Augustus kissed Isabel by a stile, and – manly fellow – asked her to marry him. Isabel – she had a pretty fiery temperament even then – had just sense enough not to kiss back and let him know that other “fellows” had kissed her, and perhaps fumbled further. She turned away her pretty head with its Pompadour knot of dark hair, and murmured – yes, she did, because she had read the stories in the Quiver and the Family Herald:
“O Mr. Winterbourne, this is so unexpected!”
But then her common-sense and the eagerness to be “rich” got the better of her Quiver artificiality, and she said, oh so softly and moderately:
“Yes!”
George Augustus quivered dramatically, clasped her, and they kissed a long time. He liked her ever so much more than the London whores, but he didn’t dare do any more than kiss her, and exclaim:
“Isabel! I love you. Be mine. Be my wife and build a home for me. Let us pass our lives in a delirium of joy. O that I need not leave you tonight!”
On the way home Isabel said:
“You must speak to father tomorrow.”
And George Augustus, who was nothing if not the gent, replied:
“I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.”
Next morning, according to schedule, George Augustus called on Pa Hartly with a bottle of 3s. 6d. port and a leg of fresh pork; and after a good deal of hemming and blushing and talking round the subject (as if old Hartly hadn’t heard from Isabel what was coming), formally and with immense solemnity applied for the job of supporting Isabel for the rest of his and her natural lives.
Did Pa Hartly refuse? Did he hesitate? Eagerly, gratefully, effusively, enthusiastically, he granted the request. He slapped George Augustus on the shoulder, which military expression of goodwill startled and slightly annoyed the prim George Augustus. He said George Augustus was a man after his own heart, the man he would have chosen to make his daughter happy, the man he longed to have as a son-in-law. He told two barrack-room stories, which made George Augustus exquisitely uneasy; drank two large glasses of port; and then launched out on a long story about how he had saved the British Army when he was an Ensign during the Crimea. George Augustus listened patiently and filially; but as hour after hour went by and the story showed no signs of ending, he ventured to suggest that the good news should be broken to Isabel and Ma Hartly, who (unknown to the gentlemen) were listening at the keyhole in an agony of impatience.
So they were called in, and Pa Hartly made a little speech founded on the style of old General Snooter, K.C.B., and then Pa kissed Isabel, and Ma embraced Isabel tearfully but enthusiastically and admiringly, and Pa pecked at Ma, and George Augustus kissed Isabel; and they were left alone for half an hour before “dinner” – 1.30 P.M., chops, potatoes, greens, a fruit-suet pudding, and beer.
The Hartlys still thought George Augustus was “rich”.
But before he left rural Kent he had to write home to his father for ten pounds to pay his inn bill and his fare. He told dear Papa about Isabel, and asked him to break the news to dear Mamma. “An old Army family,” George Augustus wrote, and “a sweet, pure girl who loves me dearly and for whom I would fight like a TIGER and willingly lay down my life.” He didn’t mention the poverty and the vulgarity and the catch-as-catch-can atmosphere of the Hartly family, or the innumerable progeny. Dear Papa almost thought George Augustus was marrying into the gentry.
Dear Papa sent George Augustus his ten pounds, and broke the news to dear Mamma. Strangely enough, she did not cut up as rough as you might have expected. Did she feel the force of Isabel’s character and determination even at that distance? Had she a suspicion of the furtive whoring, and did she think it better to marry than to burn? Perhaps she thought she could vamp George Augustus’s wife as well as George
