Mr. Bailey-Martin

Chapter I

All my life I have had an intense admiration of the unvarnished truth. It may be that we all esteem veracity so highly because it is a luxury too often denied us by the accident of circumstance. In the following confessions I propose to take off the closely fitting case by which my “ self ” is covered and let all the world see the mainspring of my character. My purpose is entirely a moral one. It will be revealed as my story unfolds.

I know I had a grandfather because I have heard my father speak of his father, who was not, he said, “ so indulgent a parent as himself.” Beyond this my family history is obscure. It is, like that of kindred ancient families, lost in the mists of antiquity. There is a great deal in blood and bone, even when it comes through a line of progenitors unidentified with two exceptions. My grandfather started a small grocer’s shop in a by-street near Charing Cross. Modern improvements have obliterated the original place of business. My father was a man of enterprise and ability. He succeeded my grandfather and was Martin the Second. There has been no Martin the Third. I am

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MU. BAILEY-MABTIK.

Percival Bailey-Martin, a hyphenated aristocrat and an ex-member of Parliament. Mine is the autobiography you are to read.

Under my father’s administration the business rapidly extended and we, his offspring, grew with it, our ambition — especially my ambition — increasing with the family prosperity. In my early years from the parlour behind the shop, educated, no doubt, to the practice, I have cried “ Shop, father ! ” to warn him of the arrival of a customer, and have seen him, in the absence of his assistant, sell half-a-pound of sugar to a child scarcely able to look over the counter. But this is amongst my earliest memories — a vision seen far off as though in another existence. From the dim by-street we migrated to Brixton, thence to the rural delights of Surbiton. The shop blossomed into The Amalgamated Oloptic Stores, Limited. The Martins became the Bailey- Martins — my mother’s name was Bailey so the title was not usurped — and the family naturally assumed in time their rightful place amongst the suburban aristocracy. My father was a bustling, pushing man, and not thin-skinned, none of the Bailey-Martins are thin-skinned ; my mother, a managing woman full of a sort of coarse tact on which her schemes for social advancement throve — and although the City men and their ladies were inclined to look down on us at first (this is when I was very young), we soon worked our way into the best set, where we moved on equal terms with members of the Stock Exchange with whom we vied in splendour. Our neighbourhood was, in the slang of our day, a “ stylish ” one, and my father said, and we all agreed with him, that it was “ just as cheap to know nobs as snobs and much more honourable.” In those days I had not learned to be ashamed of the English bourgeoisie,

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although from a comparatively early age the kind of vulgarity they suffered from vexed me. It happened that I was more intelligent than my brother, who was rightly supposed to have inherited my father’s business capacity, so it was decided that I should go into one of the professions — “the Church if possible,” said my mother — whilst the education of my brother was destined to be of that uncertain sort vaguely described as commercial. Consequently whilst he was despatched to a neighbouring collegiate school where the young gentlemen spoke with a cockney accent, and wore caps ornamented with neat gold bands, which gave them the military appearance enjoyed by German bandsmen, and caused them to be despised by the pupils of more aristocratic centres of learning, I was conducted to a preparatory establishment at the seaside to be trained for a public school. It was there that I formed my first conception of the world. Until the age of eleven I had enjoyed my share of teaching at the prim hands of the governess who ministered to the intellectual requirements of my only sister. Her teaching was, I admit, narrow, although sound of its kind. This estimable lady believed in manliness, and took us for endless walks through Surbiton, Esher, and the neighbourhood, at a considerable speed, to help us to become athletic. AY hen Miss Spencer discoursed of manliness and informed us what excellent athletes certain distant family connections of hers happened to be, her voice became almost base in quality. She induced our mother to make us take cold baths every morning, for at that time the cold-tubbing mania was at its height. To take a warm bath in the morning w~as considered in certain circles in Surbiton almost as improper as going to chapel. Beyond teaching me to read in a

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virile style and insisting on cold baths and long walks, there was no particular system in Miss Spencer’s method of juvenile training. She, however, was acquainted with the elements of Latin ; the pronunciation of which she altered continually in accordance with the most recently discovered plan, and had a voluble acquaintance with the French tongue, as it is spoken in England — a dialect, after all, possessing considerable advantages over the French of Paris, as it enables the natives of this country to understand each other in what they fancy is a foreign tongue. After Miss Spencer had taught me to pretend to like cold baths and pedestrian exercise — to conjugate my French verbs so cleverly that my first French teacher mistook it, as he said, for “ du c/nnois ,” and having in turn introduced me to Sisero, Kikero, and Chichero, her task with me was declared ended, and I was launched on the moving scene of life at a preparatory school. The Bailey- Martins are not an emotional family, and the incident took place quietly enough. I shook hands with my father, and my brother, who had just donned his scholastic cap with the gold band, kissed my sister, and, under my mother’s care, left Surbiton for the fashionable watering-place where the Reverend Theophilus Bland received “ twenty-five pupils, the sons of noblemen and gentlemen of position, to prepare for the public schools.” My mamma was then a stout, placid lady with rather unchanging blue eyes and an exaggerated notion of the importance of her own opinions. She was always ready with a “ now, I will tell you what I think,” and when, for instance, the subject happened to be the value of the dead languages or the revised edition of the Bible, her oracular utterances did not always throw light upon the question.

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“ Now, I will tell you what I think, Percival,” she said to me, as we drove along the sea front on a blustering day in April to the school. “ Y ou know Mr. Bland’s terms are rather high hut he has a first-class connection” — my mother was very much fascinated by first-class connections ; — “ and some of your fellow- pupils are the sons of very high people with whom it is a privilege to associate. Mr. Bland told your father he had the son of a peer, the grandson of a bishop, and at least three or four honourables under his care. Your father and I think such an excellent opportunity of making friends will not be lost, and, as I wish you some day to go into the Church, think how useful to you it would be, with God’s blessing, to know people who possibly might have the gift of a good living. You understand me, Percival, my dear, I am sure.”

I did, so I said “ Yes, ma,” as the fly drove up before the imposing residence of the Rev. Theophilus Bland, which seemed to be gazing across the wind-vexed sea with a look of aggressive respectability, the result of the constant polish to its exterior and the remarkable refinement of the aristocratic atmosphere prevailing within.

My feelings, on entering the precincts of preparatory learning, were of a mixed character. W e had no peers at Surbiton, and I thought it would he a great advantage to live on terms of equality with one of them. I had frequently heard “ a lord ” spoken of with bated breath, and already it seemed tome that my own importance became greater from the fact of my approaching proximity to one.

On the top of the stairs as we entered we had a glimpse of a plump little hoy in tears. I remember I despised him for this weakness, for I had no inclination

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to weep ; curiosity and expectancy were stronger than regret at leaving home.

The Rev. Theophilus Bland was a tall man with grey whiskers, a high nose, and long, prominent teeth. He said he was glad to see me, and asked if “ my mother would take a glass of sherry or anything,” a vague offer of hospitality that she wisely rejected.

“ This, Rev. Bland,” she said, “ is Percival, and I hope he will be a credit to you.”

Then my mother talked and Mr. Bland and I listened.

“Percival,” she said, “is a good boy, a tidy boy, an intelligent boy — and what I consider of still greater importance, — a plodding boy. W e intend him to go into the Church if we can, and I will tell you what I think, Mr. Bland, with such a high calling in prospect he cannot begin too soon to think seriously of his future.”

Mr. Bland had bowed slightly at every point of my mother’s criticism of myself and when she had finished he fixed an impartial eye on me.

“We will see what we can make of him, madam,” he said; “ I suppose we must begin at the beginning as usual.”

“ I think not,” said my mother, “ for Miss Spencer, our governess, has instructed him in the elements of Latin, English, French, arithmetic, geography, history and a knowledge of Scripture.”

“That,” said Mr. Bland, raising his eyebrows, “is satisfactory ; “ I trust he may not have to unlearn what he has already acquired, as is too often the case with people who have been taught at home.”

Mr. Bland I found had a great objection to little boys being taught at home. “ Home training might be economical,” he said, “ but it was invariably defective.”

I remember vividly this first introduction to the

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schoolmaster, because my eyes were opened by it. For, directly my mother had gone, suddenly his manner changed and he put his hands into his pockets and closed his lips and looked at me with the utmost indifference. This rather hurt my feelings, for I had felt convinced the account my mother had given of my qualities must have impressed him.

“Now, young what’s-yer-name,” he said, “ I think we had better go to the school-room.”

“ Percival Bailey-Martin,” said I.

“ Indeed,” said he, “ come on.”

And he lead the way down a passage into a high long room built out into an arid gravel yard where I found a number of boys of my own age doing nothing in particular with an air of deep depression.

“ They are all rather down on their luck,” said Mr. Bland as he surveyed the gloomy throng. “ Now then, boys,” he said, “ don’t look as though you were in a penitentiary. Here’s a new chap; his name’s Martin.”

Then he shut me in and departed, whilst the boys gathered round.

“ What’s your name ? ” said the biggest lad.

“ Percival Bailey-Martin,” said I.

“ Any relation to Martin, our chemist,” I wonder.

“ Certainly not,” said I, “ my father lives at Surbiton and is a private gentleman.”

“Rather a rum place for a private gentleman to live ! ” said another boy. “ Beastly low place Surbiton. Chock-full of London tradespeople. My aunt lives in Hampton Court Palace and I’ve heard her say so.”

Here was quite a new aspect of things. 1 had never heard Surbiton spoken of disrespectfully before. My parents, I knew, had gone there because of “the

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excellent society it afforded.” “I must be careful what I say,” thought I.

“Yes, it is rather a beastly hole,” I said, coolly. “ We can’t quite stand the people. But, I say, what sort of school is this ? I sha’n’t stop if I don’t like it.”

“ I hate it,” said the boy with the aristocratic pensioner relative at Hampton Court, “but my mater believes in old Bland, so here I stick.”

“ I shouldn’t stand that if I were you,” said I. “ I always make my people let me do as I like, and I’ve come here just to see if this place suits me or not.”

The value of bounce, you will perceive, I had already discovered. It had made an impression on my new companions, although I heard one fellow, a tall supercilious-looking boy, exclaim : “ What a young Bounder ! ” a term of opprobrium then new to me.

“ Are you going to Eton ? ” asked one lad.

“ P’r’a’ps,” said I. “ My people will let me go where I like.”

“ I wonder why you learn anything if you can do that?”

“ Well, I only do learn what suits me,” I replied.

“Look here, young Martin,” interposed the tall supercilious lad who had called me a “ Bounder,” “ we have had enough of your swagger, so just shut up, or you’ll be well kicked.”

So I “ shut up,” coming, however, to a rapid decision which I ever after remembered, that, to get on in life, not too much swagger, but just swagger enough, is most needed. With a beginner the amount is an unfixed quantity and only discoverable by experience.

Chapter II

I think it is M. About who says that children are what nature has made them, whilst men and women have been moulded by the clumsy hands of Society. This is true, to a certain extent. Looking back to my sojourn at Bland’s school, I feel it is a half truth. It is true, for instance, in the case of Lambert, the boy who threatened to kick me for “ swagger.” He was perfectly natural, and, as he said, never cared “ a blow for anything so long as he didn’t do things to make him feel like a skunk.” But with me, About’s dictum is not true. I was the outcome of my environment. I meant to “ get on ” like all the Bailey-Martins, so I took good care only to make friends that were useful — to make friends in the language of pulpit oratory, of “ the mammon of unrighteousness.” Lambert used to snub young Lord Righton and call him a “ milksop,” whereas I made myself his jidus Achates. I listened with silent admiration when, in answer to my inquiries, he told me how many ponies he had at home, and said I should like to see them.

“Why,” said the good-natured little lord, “ I’ll ask ’em to have you stay with me in the holidays if you’d re’lly like to see ’em so much. I wish you had to ride ’em instead of me. Riding beastly rot.”

The little nobleman was a rather anaemic and thin-

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blooded member of the aristocracy. When Lambert said he was a “ milksop ” he described him accurately. So I wrote home and said perhaps Righton — “ Lord Righton, you know, mamma, the Earl of Marlington’s eldest son, is going to ask me to stay next holidays at Righton House.” My mamma took good care all Surbiton should know it. It is true I didn’t go on this occasion, but the glory to the family was just the same.

Mamma wrote to me and said I ought to invite Lord Righton to stay with us, but when I broached the subject he said it wasn’t possible. “ You see, Martin, my Gov’ner never heard of yours and everyone knows mine.”

“ That may be, but ours is a very old family, only my Gov’ner’s such a retiring fellow,” I replied.

This was in evening school, whilst I was busy writing Righton’s Latin exercise for him, as usual. He yawned, I remember, and said, “ I wish it was bedtime.”

I had not been long at school before Bland made me a monitor — a duty all the other fellows shirked. It did not carry with it any particular dignity, but it gave me an opportunity of prying into other boys’ affairs, and of reading any letters that might be lying in their desks. My duties were to remain behind every evening, and look round the school-room to see if the books and exercises of my fellow-pupils were put away, and to report any boy “for want of order.” This gave me an interesting opportunity of learning something about their home affairs, which, in such a seminary as ours, could not but be useful. Lambert said “ it wasn’t fit work for a gentleman, but well suited to such a sneak as Martin,” a saying for which I at the first opportunity reported him for untidiness. He was angry and

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violent in consequence, and nearly smothered me under my own pillow in the dormitory — the only revenge he could take, inasmuch as my vindictive cries of “ Shut up, Lambert,” must have been heard by the authorities supping below, had not the corner of the pillow, inserted so far in my mouth as to touch my uvula, stifled my complaints.

I went home at the end of the term with my stock of worldly wisdom increased, and my horizon extended. There is nothing that expands the mind of a member of the middle classes more than mingling with the aristocracy from an early age. lie thus learns in his youth the actual value of social distinctions — distinctions that in these days of vulgar confusion, are likely to be forgotten — and if he happen to be a lad of tact and intelligence, his opportunities will not be wasted in after life. “ How the boy is improved ! ” said my mother, on the evening of my return. My polished manners and distinguished accent were compared (greatly to his disadvantage) with those of my brother Robert, fresh from his commercial academy.

“Well,” said my father, “Percival’s school bill is double Bob’s, so it isn’t fair to expect the same article.”

“We’ll see which is the best to wear, pa,” said Robert, naturally a little nettled at the comparison.

“ There are no little lords at Robert’s school,” interposed my sister. “You can’t expect him to be so pompous as Percival.”

“ Hush, child,” said my mother ; “ he’s not pompous, he’s only gentlemanly.”

All this conversation was not actually in my presence, but I overheard part of it from the hall when the drawing-room door was open.

Robert, my sister Florence, and I, went to several

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juvenile parties that Christmas, where we were much admired, and my refined manners were an excellent advertisement to Bland’s Preparatory School. As a matter of fact, I rather overdid the thing, but my tact soon showed me this was necessary. If I had been too quiet, my excellent manners and address might have been overlooked, for we like things prononce, as they call it at Surbiton.

All the ladies asked me how my young friend, Lord Righton, was. I said, “ Rigliton is very well, thank you ; I am going to stay with him next holidays.”

This was not exactly true then, although it became so. I cultivated him so carefully, and gave him so much assistance in his studies, that Lady Marlington sent me an invitation, through Mr. Bland, to the delight of my parents. It is true Florence said she ought to have written to my mother, but the slight was too trifling to moderate the family rejoicing at the honour.

Now looking back I am aware all this appears trivial. You see the past in my confessions stripped of all its trappings. I was born of the world “ worldly.” All Surbiton admired wealth and aristocratic connections above all things, for are not these the gods of the middle classes? As I became better acquainted with the world, I found the Church had no attractions for me. Mr. Bland was a clergyman, and evidently thought little of his profession. My mother had still hankerings after it, for although not exactly devout, she had an instinctive veneration for the Established Church ; as well as a fair share of the superstitious side of religion, and to her a son in the Church seemed a sort of moral lightning conductor to ward off the unknown dangers associated with cemeteries, undertakers, thunder-storms, and dark passages. But my father said,

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“Percival can do better.” So I determined to do better.

I spent nearly all the Easter holidays with Lord Righton. The Lord and the Countess were on the Riviera, and Lady Gertrude’s governess, Miss Gilbert, did the honours. I confess it was rather dull — duller far than home, — but there was a feeling of glory in it. The governess was rigid and frigid ; Lady Gertrude, who was several years older than myself, not half so pretty or amusing as my sister Florence ; Righton, as usual, listless and apathetic. He and his sister were dosed with cod-liver oil three times a day by Miss Gilbert.

“Ask Martin to have some,” young Righton said, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t have some too. He’s growing and his blood’s thick.”

“Would you like some?” asked the grim Miss Gilbert.

“Do have some, Percival,” entreated Lady Gertrude, who had already acquired a woman’s love for the medicine chest. “ I am sure you have a weak chest.”

“ Thank you, Miss Gilbert,” said I, determined to do my best to please my young host and hostess, “ perhaps I had better have some, as Lady Gertrude is kind enough to think it will do me good.”

So I was drenched with cod-liver oil, which I swallowed without a wry face in order to set young Righton a good example. The oil-taking after this became of daily occurrence, and made me glad when my visit terminated.

When my mother met me at the station, she found me “ looking bilious,” and concluded it was the rich and aristocratic cookery to which I had been accustomed. She never learnt what was the real cause.

To permit myself to be dosed in this way, in order to 2

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ingratiate myself with Lady Gertrude, was one of those errors into which we fall at first in our anxiety to propitiate those who sit in the high places of the world. To anyone with a glimmer of humour it must have presented me in a comic light, and this at the time I overlooked. The discomfort it entailed, moreover, was of proportion to the end in view. I perceived this when I had swallowed the first nauseous dose, hut having put my hand to the plough (excuse the metaphor, it is not a happy one), I determined not to turn back. The worst of the matter was that Right on told the fellows at school.

“ Just fancy trying to ‘ suck up ’ to a fellow’s people by taking cod-liver oil,” was the contemptuous remark Lambert made when he heard of it. “You’re safe to be made a Lord Mayor one of these days, Martin ; a cod rampant on a yellow shield would be a capital crest for you. I don’t suppose you’ve been a swell long enough to have one. In the days of chivalry, you know, coatsof-arms were given for some daring deed ; so you ought to be rewarded for the beastly oil you lapped down.”

The fellows thought this very amusing, and the story is still told of me to my disadvantage by my schoolfellows.

I left Bland’s at fourteen, the same term as Lord Righton, and followed him and several other of my school- fellows to Harrowby. My three years’ preparation had taught me much. I soon learnt to employ a vulgar but expressive metaphor not “ to lay it on too thick.”

I determined to make a mark at Harrowby, and I succeeded. When one knows how, and is fairly well equipped physically, as I was, this is not difficult. To be “ good at games ” is the first essential ; to be a capable

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scholar is not so important, but nevertheless carries credit along with it. I soon learnt to play cricket decently, and though I was never in the eleven, I was in measurable distance of reaching the honour. I was captain of “our house” eleven, — I acquitted myself creditably at foot-ball, took several little cups home to my admiring parents for second places gained on various occasions in consolation races. Though I left Harrowby without getting into the Sixth, I was fairly high up in the “ Upper Fifth.” I was removed in order to spend a year on the Continent to learn French. I pass over my school days briefly. English Public Schools are excellent training institutions. It is there a boy learns a sense of proportion in social things that is of the greatest use to him afterwards, if he belong to the middle class. He learns, for instance, to despise “ a swot ” — as we used to call a lad who had a taste for literature — tastes which Harrowby in my day did not alleviate. He also learns how he ought to have his trousers cut in order to shine in polite society, and to respect the beauty and gloss of the tall hat. The very slang he picks up gives him distinction when he goes home. He is made in truth an elegant sort of Philistine who despises poverty, admires display, and considers field sports a passport to statesmanship. Harrowby in my time was a microcosm, and, an intelligent microbe in that miniature world, I learnt to swagger with the best, and to leer at the young ladies in the confectioners’ shops, with unblushing effrontery. In the holidays brother Bob used to take me as copy, and to set the fashion at his commercial academy with me for a model. My sister Florence, I admit, was accustomed to laugh at me, but her sense of humour was always an exaggerated one ; humour, if she be

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excepted, not being the strong point of the Bailey- Martins. I am inclined to think its possession a somewhat doubtful advantage. Men and women at the best are rather ridiculous beings, and if they are spared a knowledge of the fact by their own dulness, the loss has its compensations ; imagine what a life of self-torture my father’s, my mother’s, Bob’s life and my own life must have been, if we had looked on life with the eye of William Makepeace Thackeray, who wrote a book about snobs, in which none of us could find anything funny. When I went to school at the Rev. Theophilus Bland’s I think I must have formed my plans for the future. My object, no doubt already sufficiently clear, was to climb up a rung in the social ladder. I cannot recollect when the purpose first dawned clearly in my youthful mind. Looking back it seems as if I must « have inherited it like an instinct. Retrievers — a race of dogs, originally, I suppose, the result of cross breeding — have now the advantages of a long series of ancestors between themselves and the stock from which they sprung. To-day, dogs come into the world with the retiring instinct as an inheritance. My studies into the mysteries of natural history are superficial, and readers with a deeper tincture of the science may perhaps contradict my conclusion. It rests on no stronger authority, so far as I am aware, than the uncertain recollection of somebody else’s assertion. I once heard someone or other make this statement about retrievers. Let its accuracy be granted for the sake of argument, in order to account in a similar manner for my own mental precocity. From the earliest age I longed to be someone of importance, and I believe the' desire is due to heredity. How useful the Darwinian theory lias become as an explanatory system ! I instinctively

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worshipped wealth just as the retrievers of my parallel (if not of actual existence) fetch and carry soon after their eyes are open. My father had flourished and expanded amongst a small plutocracy of a London suburb, and had in that satisfied his ambition. I, however, started where he began, and with Harrowby behind me and Oxford before me, was by no means able to rest content with a “ house and grounds ” overlooking the river and the trees of Bushy Park beyond. This goal might suit brother Bob, who had now a post under my father in the “ Amalgamated Oloptic,” well enough, but, for an enterprising young man who had more than once been the guest of a peer, it meant what I had recently learnt in France to call a carriers manquee.

I was nineteen when I returned from a year’s residence in Paris under the tuition of a “ highly recommended ” Protestant pasteur. This reverend gentleman, who dwelt at Passy, let us do pretty nearly what we liked, so long as we did not bother him. We were not exacting, and the twelvemonths three of my young fellow-countrymen and myself spent under the roof of this excellent man passed pleasantly and, I think, not unprofitably. I regretted afterwards that the constant use we made of our own tongue, added to an uninterrupted perusal of The Sporting Times and similar literature, prevented me from acquiring any facility in the language of the country. But I certainly made the best of my opportunities to pick up the French of Paris as it is spoken at the Palais Royal theatre and amongst the habitues of the Eden, and so long as we did not wake up ce cher Monsieur Patry , as the small colony of French Calvinists shepherded by our pious instructor called him, our late hours were not com-