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, 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 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 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
