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Page 43
My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very
kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as
much in the water as he did. There are some people who see a
great deal and some who see very little in the same things.
When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal
seers and see things more wonderful than Water Babies where
other folks can see nothing.
There is a story of Mohammed that once, rather than disturb a
favourite cat, he cut off the sleeve of his robe on which it lay
asleep. Whether in like circumstances my father would have done the
same--had flowing sleeves been a Victorian fashion--I cannot certainly
say, though he once was found similarly dispossessed of his favourite
study chair; but he always regarded this anecdote as displaying
an agreeable trait in the Prophet. For he himself was very fond
of animals, and, though we seldom kept dogs in London, cats were
invariable members of the household. Apropos of these, a letter may
be quoted which was written in 1893 in reply to an inquiry from a
journalist who was collecting anecdotes for an article on the Home
Pets of Celebrities:--
A long series of cats has reigned over my household for the
last forty years, or thereabouts, but I am sorry to say that I
have no pictorial or other record of their physical and moral
excellences.
The present occupant of the throne is a large, young,
grey Tabby--Oliver by name. Not that he is in any sense a
protector, for I doubt whether he has the heart to kill a
mouse. However, I saw him catch and eat the first butterfly
of the season, and trust that this germ of courage, thus
manifested, may develop with age into efficient mousing.
As to sagacity, I should say that his judgment respecting the
warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible;
his punctuality at meal-times is admirable; and his
pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders, till they
give him some of the best of what is going, indicates great
firmness.
XVIII
SOME LETTERS AND TABLE TALK
My father's letters were seldom without a dash of playfulness or
humour somewhere; a thing always fresh and spontaneous, unlike the
calculated or laboured playfulness sometimes to be observed in the
epistolary touch of literary folk. A capital example is a note to
Matthew Arnold, at whose house he had left his umbrella. Arnold, it
may be added, had recently been critically engaged upon the works of
Bishop Wilson:--
Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of covetousness, and then
inspect your umbrella stand. You will there see a beautiful
brown smooth-handled umbrella which is _not_ your property.
Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised, and
bring it with you next time you come to the Club. The porter
will take care of it for me.
Sometimes the words will come trippingly from the pen as if they were
flung out in a brilliant flash of talk, like the following sketch of
human character:--
Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of
horse-nervousness, ass-stubbornness, and camel-malice--with
an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the
posset--and when they can do exactly as they please they are
very hard to drive.
As to his conversation, that, wrote the late Wilfrid Ward,
was singularly finished and (if I may so express it)
clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid
illustrations. He was an excellent _raconteur_, and his
stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them
always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and
economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived
to ninety, that they should ever have been disparaged as
symptoms of what has been called "anecdotage."
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