CHAPTER XV

ENGLAND ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR

Our fathers, a degenerate race, Begot us scoundrels, to give place To something meaner yet unborn. HORACE, tr. STAPLETON.

I suppose it is inevitable that those of us who have lived through a great world-crisis, such as the late war, should ask themselves or should be asked by others what it was like just before the crisis happened? How postured did the time of reckoning find us? Were we playing on, all unconscious, at the brink of a volcano? Or were we prepared—materially, morally, spiritually prepared—for what was to come upon us? The question is obviously not an easy one to answer. It is not easy to wipe out, even in imagination, the impressions left by nearly three years of war atmosphere and war strain. But, if only because there are not many of us left whose birth dates right back to the Five Years’ War, the last occasion when Europe became an armed camp, I feel that I ought to try and give my answer to that question, before I close these memoirs and bow myself out, to make way for younger authors with other messages.

I do not intend, however, to say anything much about our merely material preparation for the war. It is, after all, a question for experts: and the event proved that all the combatant countries were far better prepared for hostilities than the general public had ever supposed they would be. It is a commonplace that in any war either the offensive or the defensive arm is the better equipped, in advance of its rival. In this case, there can be no doubt at all that our defensive had outrun our offensive preparations. This was not generally known; indeed in our own country and in many others the comparatively small results achieved by our striking force became the subject of severe and quite undeserved criticism. The truth is, that Science does not lightly forget her humanitarian purpose; and (it is important to remember) the amazing efficiency of the Secret Service work done in the interests of the various belligerents in the long period between 1919 and 1972 had made it easy for the authorities in each country to know what was in store for them and to prepare against it. For the heroic and self-sacrificing work done by that noble body of men, the Secret Service Agents (mostly of Japanese origin, I believe), Europe and humanity itself can never be too grateful.

What was the effect of it? Why, that Mars, as in the old Greek legend, found himself in fetters. We, like the enemy, had put our faith in the invincible quality of our heavy artillery, not realizing that they, like us, had prepared a system of mine defences for their troops which made heavy artillery a back number. We told ourselves that our aerial fleet, superior both in numbers and in efficiency to any Continental fleet, was bound to make life insupportable in the larger enemy towns: the calculations of our enemy were exactly similar. Neither of us could foresee that long deadlock which resulted from the “stranglehold” we exercised over the enemy’s dispositions; neither of us could foresee that both sides would come out of the war with their air fleet practically untouched. Again, the typhus-germs from which we expected so much proved utterly ineffective against nations which had inoculated their children against typhus from infancy: and similarly, their dastardly plan (contrary to all the rules of civilized warfare) of infecting London with bubonic plague came too late when Milling’s discovery had made the bubonic plague a matter of three days in bed. In fact, if it had not been for the hitherto unrealized strength of British propaganda, it is difficult to see how the war could have resulted in anything but a complete stalemate.

But the question, Were we prepared for the war? involves deeper and more spiritual issues than this. What manner of men were we when that sudden strain was put upon our moral fibre? That is what posterity will want to know. And first of all, let me say that it is of England, not of the other belligerents, that I intend to speak. After all, on the admission of her enemies and even of her allies, it was she who bore the brunt of the conflict. Going into it with less, I suppose, of religious inspiration than France, with a Government less efficient, because less autocratic, than that of the United States, and with material resources not capable of competing with those of Brazil, she has achieved such a measure of victory as is indicated by the fact that her war indemnity, if it is ever paid, will amount to little less than a tenth of her war debt. It is not, then, simply because England is my own country, and because, a stay-at-home by nature, I have little inside information about other peoples, but because it was upon Great Britain that, in those fateful three years, the eyes of the world were centred, that I confine myself in this chapter to a survey of English conditions and English ideals.

“Show me,” that great philanthropist Peterson used to say, “how the poor of a nation live, and I will tell you whether that nation is alive.” In this respect, it must be confessed, the record of England at that time was indeed a black one. Huddled together in slums and rookeries, whose “model” flats often had to contain two families where only one could live with comfort, the poor were stifled from the first by overcrowding. It must be remembered that the poorer classes had, as usual, larger families than the rich, and it was no uncommon thing to find four or five children living in the same tenement with their parents. Many of these poor little mites got no more than a fortnight’s holiday at the seaside every year, and had nowhere to play in except the public parks. In return for their school attendance they were paid a mere pittance, and only the simplest possible fare was provided for them by the school authorities. It was piteous, as one moved about the poorer parts of London, to see their untidy hair, their crumpled collars and dirty handkerchiefs. Small wonder that disease spread quickly in such surroundings, and it was estimated that child-mortality in the poorer quarters of the large towns was fully one in a thousand. For a time, of course, the influence of the school kept them out of harm’s way, but at seventeen or eighteen, just at the most impressionable period of life, their schooling must perforce come to an end, and, hardly more than boys, they were thrust out into the world to shift for themselves. Often, of course, drink or gambling would be responsible for the worst cases of poverty; but often, too, it would be mere ill-luck or imprudent under-insurance that left them stranded when they were out of work. Too proud to accept relief from any of the thirty-eight organizations that offered it, these unfortunates would drag out a wretched existence on such doles as their Union and the National Beneficent Fund could afford them. It is true, and fortunately true, that we have now done much to remedy this terrible state of things; but in 1972 it was no exaggeration to say that the conditions of life in our great cities stood up in witness against us.

As usual, overcrowding in the towns went hand in hand with, and was partly caused by, rural depopulation. In all the country districts it was the same story—you could not get the young people to remain on the land. It was difficult to blame them; wages were so low that an unskilled agricultural labourer was hardly paid on the same scale as a governess; the cottages for the most part were mere eight-roomed hovels, and the deafening noise and incessant whirr of the machinery made the farmyard a good imitation of the Inferno. Machinery was continually replacing human labour, almost faster than the diminution in the birth-rate could keep pace with the process. Besides, there were few amusements which could make the country towns and villages compare in amenity with the large manufacturing centres: the cinemas often had no afternoon performances, and such dances as there were seldom lasted later than midnight. It was no wonder that the lure of the great cities continued to exercise its spell over the young and the ambitious.

The effect of these bad conditions on the health of the nation was plainly shown during the war itself, when the various “classes” came up for medical examination. Of the total manhood of Great Britain, one-tenth were liable to vertigo, such as prevented them either from going up in aircraft or else from going down into the pits. Something like 13 per cent. suffered from Pollock’s inhibition, either in the form of actonism (reluctance to kill) or of athanism (reluctance to die). Eight per cent. were declared unfit through psophophobia, which made them unable to stand loud noises. Another six per cent. had taxiphobia, and could not serve in the ranks. Ochlophobia, capnophobia, pyrophobia, zophophobia, atenxipodia, and other more ordinary nervous diseases, such as Blast’s inhibition, swelled the total of non-combatants. In all it is doubtful whether 40 per cent. of the men who were of military age could have been called upon to fight. Happily, most of the unfit were available for the much needed work of propaganda, since only a small percentage were troubled with pseudophobia, which alone was treated as ground for exemption from this class of work.

But, it hardly needs to be said, these same causes produced moral results as well as physical. Just before the outbreak of hostilities, we were all very much concerned about the attitude of organized Labour, which had never indeed been in power since Ropes’s ill-fated Government, but had always been a strong political, and a still stronger economic influence, in the counsels of the country. There had not for some time been any actual strike on a large scale, the “secret service” both of employers and of labourers being sufficiently well informed to prevent any miscalculation: threats of strikes and of lock-outs were common, but it seldom proved necessary to call your adversary’s bluff. Still, the Unions were an important power. Ever since the thirties it had been illegal for any manual worker not to belong to the union of his trade; and this fact had strengthened the numerical force of the unions without in any way moderating their counsels since the time when (I think in the fifties) shop stewards began to be appointed by examination instead of election. The hot-heads were always in the controlling positions: what would the effect of this be in the event of the country going to war? The International Labour Convention held at Innsbruck in ’67 had passed a series of unanimous resolutions designed to render all future war impossible by means of concerted sabotage. Fortunately, the alleged violation of Article 259 by the British workers, and the suspected violation of Article 283 by the U.S. workers, had the effect of rendering the whole compact nugatory. But the temper of Labour in all countries was, throughout the war, distrustful and frequently menacing.

At the other end of the scale, there can be no doubt that the paying classes, by the luxury and frivolity of their lives, showed equally little preparedness for a great emergency. Mere wealth seemed to be the only passport to Society, and blood counted for nothing: the old hereditary aristocracy who could trace their honours back to the beginning of the century were swamped by a crowd of new creations. No doubt in many ways we were more civilized than our fathers; the coarse old type that would fill a quarter of a glass with whisky, or motor at breakneck speed along country lanes, had disappeared; it was hard to imagine the rude days (which I can just remember) when the ladies left the dinner-table half an hour or so before the men, “leaving the gentlemen,” as it was called, “to their wine.” But if we had lost some of the coarseness, we had also lost much of the salutary sternness and moral earnestness of my young days. In the twenties and thirties the Divorce Court, although it was already fairly busy, did still carry with it, even for non-Catholics, a certain savour of impropriety. The novels and the plays of the period, although many of them offend our modern taste by the coarseness of their expression, must, by comparison with our own, be freed from the charge of suggestiveness. We gambled in those days, but you still had to go abroad to do it on a large scale; there was no wireless installation to report the winning numbers on the tape machines of our West-End Clubs.

Family life, too, meant far more to us in the early part of the century than it did in the sixties and seventies. Even in London, husband and wife would share the same flat and entertain each other’s friends. When they paid visits of pleasure, to hunt, or to fish or to shoot deer (they were not content to photograph them as we do!), they often travelled together; and there would have been something ludicrous in the idea of a husband and wife meeting one another unexpectedly at a country-house party or at a dinner. Fathers would take an active interest in the education of their children, and sometimes even be called in to reprove them for a fault. Girls, until the age of seventeen or eighteen, usually lived with their parents, and did not go about without somebody to take care of them. Boys did not expect to be provided with latch-keys until they were twenty-one! For myself, I never had one until I set up my own establishment; nor did I feel aggrieved at the deprivation. I do not mean that all these things are particularly important; and indeed, the old tradition seems fussy and unnecessary to us nowadays; but this strictness of guardianship did stand for symbol of a certain orderliness and discipline of behaviour, which I miss sometimes, I am afraid, among the young ladies and the young gentlemen of a later generation! There was something to be said, after all, for the rugged old Puritan school which wore dark suits on Sundays, thought chewing unladylike, and held that night-clubs were “not the thing” for young girls.

How much this difference of outlook is the result of a decline in the matter of religious conviction, I cannot feel any certainty. As I see things, religion does not so often dictate to the world its standards of behaviour—a morality, or even a hypocrisy, can sometimes do that with equal effect—as help men and women to live up to the standards of the time and to rise above them. But I am afraid there is no doubt that in the sixties and seventies we had lost, in great measure, the unclouded faith and simple piety of the twenties and thirties. The religious revival in the Nonconformist Federation, which took place early in the sixties, was marked by no less extraordinary indications of spiritual exaltation than the revivals of earlier centuries; but alas! the total numbers of those who were affected by any movement within this body was no longer very considerable. The secession of the “Enthusiasts” in ’53 had drained the Anglican Church of all the elements in its own body which might have responded to a call of this kind. The Westernizers seemed to have no energy but for Church politics; they achieved, indeed, for a few years the long-cherished dream of reunion with the crumbling relics of Byzantine Christianity, but it was only in the character of Little Bo-peep that they were able to do so. The bulk of what had been the “good-will” of the Anglican connexion remained with the Relativist Party, the historical descendant of the old Liberal school of thought. The relativists were men of considerable intellectual force and deeply religious temperament, but hampered, as any religious body must be, by a total absence of belief in the supernatural. In the generation that had intervened between my girlhood and my old age Catholicism indeed had spread, but England had ceased to be a Christian country.

Whether or no decline in religion was the cause of it, it is certain that during that same generation the rigid virtues of the mid-Georgian era had been dissipated or obscured. A statesman of that earlier period would have resented the imputation of openly using his official knowledge to secure a business deal: we think of such an attitude as quixotic, but there was a certain nobility about it. The Press of that earlier period would have scorned to hush up a public scandal just because influential people were implicated in it: we call that a sentimental prejudice, but at least it was an error in the right direction. A divine of that earlier period would have felt a delicacy about subscribing to a formula of belief with which he found himself in total disagreement; it was a scruple, perhaps, but surely a scruple which did him honour. Men thought strenuously in those days, and lived earnestly, and worked without thought of reward. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven”—I can never read those lines of Wordsworth without being reminded of my girlhood’s days; and of more than one figure in the public life of that time I am tempted to say, with the regretful tone of one who has outlived her generation: “He was a man, take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again.”

I cannot resist quoting, while I am on this subject, some words from the very last letter I ever received from my friend Lady Polebridge.[16] “You and I, my dear Opal,” she typed, “belong to a generation that is disappearing, and will not regret us (for who ever does really regret us?) when we are gone. Nothing so strongly affects me, when I look back, as the strong sense of the mutability of human things. We poor creatures choose our own friends, make our own groups round us, only for the rude hand of circumstance to redistribute and rearrange us when it wills. No illusion lasts, no experience is other than transitory. And yet when we look back upon our young days, we can surely say that there was more of stability and permanence about those peaceful, slow-going times than we can find in the bustle and hurry of to-day. Our youth belongs to the last generation of English life that really saw life steadily and saw it whole; that really had its innermost core rooted in the hard rock of purposeful, strenuous living. I shall not be sorry to go, when my turn comes, to a world full of the shadows of my old companions, where I shall perhaps find peace at last.”

Those words were written in 1971, only a year before the war actually broke out, and when, of course, we all saw that it was coming. Such then were the impressions of us older folk; and now let me leave it to my younger readers to say whether since then, with all the good resolutions we made when the crisis was upon us, we have really gone forward or gone back? Have we really fulfilled the promise of those desperate moments when, under the shadow of a world-catastrophe, we thought we had for once seen ourselves as we would like to be? Let me quote, though they have been often quoted, the words of Mrs. Bisset, in the early part of 1975, that rang like a trumpet-call throughout the theatrophones of the civilized world:

“We shall not lightly forget the lessons of the recent conflict. If we have learned that human nature, even in its degradation, can rise in its might and throw off its old evil habits under the stimulus of a great emergency, we will tell ourselves, in the years to come, that this human nature is worth labouring for and worth fighting for. If we have seen, at the same time, that the ideals which once satisfied and the conditions which once contented us were ideals which ambition should have despised, and conditions which dignity should have resented, we will remember in the days to come that we must never again let ourselves be duped by the ignoble lure of a false peace. We have fought for honour, for civilization, for high aims and pure enthusiasms: we have met the powers of evil, and forced upon them the conditions of a not dishonourable peace. And the power which has been generated by these years of relentless friction will, if we but canalize it aright, galvanize through centuries to come the failing dynamos of humanity.”

So it looked to us in ’75; I leave it to the consciences of my readers to determine whether we have lived up to those heroic sentiments.

And now I must unslip the catch, and put the lid upon my well-worn typewriter. I cannot tell what verdict will be passed on my poor efforts. In the old days, when reviewers held themselves bound to read through a book before they recorded their impressions of it, I should no doubt have had my weak points discovered by the eye of unfriendly criticism; to-day, one can still hope that one’s deficiencies will pass unobserved! I am afraid, now I come to look back over the record, that after all it is a chronicle of small doings; if I had known that I was to write reminiscences in my old age, perhaps I would have travelled further in search of impressions, and striven higher so as to satisfy my readers with the story of greater things. As it is, it must pass for an old woman’s gossip; and as such, let us hope that it will be lightly judged.

I have sometimes thought that it would be a pleasant occupation for the fancy to throw oneself forward into the future, and to write the imaginary reminiscences of an old lady, one’s granddaughter, who was putting print to paper in 2050! What a strange picture she would give of ourselves! How often she would hit the mark, how often miss it by a hair’s-breadth! She would let us see ourselves, I suppose, as a race of almost legendary heroes, to be spoken of with bated breath: ours would be the rugged virtues and the quaint, old-world ways! But the author who should attempt such a flight of the imagination would, no doubt, be accused not only of fantasy in his forecasts of the future, but of misrepresentation in the picture he gave of his own times. It would be a perilous task; let me present the idea to anyone who will make use of it!

And so let me close my story, with a kindly thought for all my readers, and a tranquil regard for my own approaching end. That regard I cannot express better than in some old lines which I found in a book of travels[17]—the identity of the original author is uncertain:

Look upward, for the sky is not all cloud. Look forward, think not of the dismal shroud. No lane but has a turning, and no road That leads not somewhere to a warm abode. Take courage. If the day seems rather long, The cooling dew will fall at evensong. Believe, and Doubt is sure to slink away; Doubt is a cur, and Fear is but a fool; Rely upon yourself and let your stay Be the observance of the heavenly rule. Never say die; and do not be afraid; At eventide the wages will be paid.

INDEX OF PERSONS REFERRED TO

Adgate, Sir Mark, his curious watch, 133

Albert, H.R.H. Prince (afterwards King Albert I), 202

Amboise, Mademoiselle, 21

“Antoinette,” her prescription, 80

Archdale, Leonard, the actor, 95

Banks, Wynefryde, 30, 118

Bates, Sir Arthur, his intrepid candidature, 151

Billericay, Lord, 129, 147, 177, 184, 187, 207

Birkenhead, Bishop of, amusing anecdote told by, 208

Bisset, Mrs., on War-aims, 238

Blisworth, Lady, 1, 10, 22, 25, 43, 73, 183

Blisworth, Lord, 1, 4, 11, 14, 16, 25, 81, 82

Bowles, Dr., 74

Brede, Marquis of, 166‒168, 211

Breder, Dr., on raw tomatoes, 137

St. Briavel’s, Countess of, 129

de Brignard, Comtesse, _see_ Tarporley.

Burstall, the “Futurist” artist, 173, 202

Bythorpe, Lord, his versatility, 41

Cheadle, Lord, his speech at Oxford, 41

Combe, Lady, 88‒92, 112‒114, 126, 180

Combe, Sir Richard, 88, 127

Crawshall, “Dick,” rides a bicycle, 131

Cubitt’s house at Eton, 183

Dives, Canon, 45‒47, 50, 51, 119‒122, 188, 212, 213‒221, 225

Dolman, Dr., chest specialist, 158

Drake, Mrs., _see_ Lushcombe.

Druce, Mr., Superintendent of the Berthellot Institute, 77‒79

Drysdale, Lady Jacynth, her coloured teeth, 131

Drywater, Professor, of Aberdeen, on travelling expenses, 162

Ducie, John, his reckless feats, 134

Engelberg, Baroness, _see_ Sholto.

Engelstein, Lady, 131, 188

Farnham, the Hon. Mrs., 151

Fearon, Hon. Algernon, his unusual accomplishment, 130

Feilding, Dr., of Christ Church, a popular lecturer, 36

ffynes, Sir Hugh, 211

Fitzgerald, the actor, 95

von Fleissing, Landgrab, on religion, 60

Forres, Lady Anne, 38

Fothergill, Professor, the younger, 194

Frodsham’s house at Eton, 183

Garvice, Miss, on the Absolution, 44

Geraghty, Daniel, Prime Minister of Ireland, 194

Goodge, Dame Beatrice, 205

Grant, the late Mrs., 133

Griggs, Holbeach, 138‒142

Grosheim, Lady Georgina, 131, 139, 140, 187

Gunter, Sir Hubert, 145, 165, 166

Hammond, George, the historian, 146, 207

Harkness, Francis, 128, 158, 177, 179, 190, 191, 211

Harkness, Gervase, 128, 157, 158, 177, 185, 190, 211

Harkness, Wilson, _see_ Porstock, Lord.

Hawkesley, Tulip, 30

Hazelbright, Sir Philip, 157

Henricourt, the novelist, 196‒197

Hodges, James, 122‒124, 127, 176

Hodgkins, Trevor, his breakfast at the Zoo, 135

Holbrook, the actor, 95

Holly, Lady Frances, does “knitting”, 131

Holroyd, The Right Hon. James, 155‒157, 162, 166, 168‒170, 210, 211

Hopedale, Viscount, 145, 147, 150, 152, 163, 188

Hopgood, Frank (afterwards White-Elephant-at-Arms), 106, 130

Hopgood, Irene, an exacting guest, 130

Hopkins, _see_ Engelberg.

Hopps, Adèle, and her hair, 132

Hoskyns, of B.N.C., the geographer, 35, 42, 43, 119

Humbledon, Lady, 139

Krausenberg, Dr., his theory of education, 180

Labadie, 95

Leek, Sapphire: Countess of, 137, 195

Lennox, the artist, 186, 202

Lestrange, General, 14

Lieberts, “Tommy”, 129, 153, 188

Linklater, Sybil, Lady, her revolving ball-room, 136

Linthorpe, Miss, 12, 13, 43, 51, 65, 66‒71, 122, 123, 191, 224

Linthorpe, _see also_ Blisworth, Lady.

Lock, “Archie”, 132, 135, 140, 142, 175, 177, 187, 207

Lushcombe, Lady, _see_ Stockdale.

Macdonald, “Fatty”, 30

McGillivray, the comic artist, 208

McGinnis, His Grace Duke, 100

McKechnie, Mrs., her “Reminiscences Edwardian and Albertian”, 148, 149

Mainwaring, the poet, 189

Margate, Esther, her acute feminism, 206‒207

Marrett, Lady, 204

Massachussets, Lady, 109, 110

Merewether, Dame Louise, her recklessness and caution, 135, 137

Mersham, Miss, numismatics mistress, runs away, 29

Michigan, Duke of, 131

Millthorpe, Viscount, 150

Montrose, Miss, Head Mistress, 18‒20, 165

Murchison, General, 102

van Murphy, Mr. and Mrs., 104‒105

Myslok, the novelist, 63

Nuneaton, Angela Lady, 135, 138, 139

O’Leary, the actor, 95

O’Leary, the K.C., 192‒193

O’Shaugnessy, President (U.S.A.), 9

Palliser, Capt. Jane, 30

Partridge, Mrs. Justice, 193

Perse, Lord, 169

Peterson, the philanthropist, 229

Philpotts, Dame Horatia, 154‒155

Pirbright, Edgar, the poet, 185, 199

Polebridge, Lady, 78, 93, 116‒118, 126, 175, 186, 198, 237

Poltwhistle, Lord Chief Justice, 192

Porstock, Wilson Lord, 100, 109‒111, 124‒127, 142, 170, 189

Poughkeepsie, Lord and Lady, 103‒105

Pulbrooke, Countess of (in her own right), 167, 174, 187

Rivers, Mrs., on chewing, 107

Ropes, Charles, 99, 147, 148

Rowlands, Rev. Agape, 86, 87, 89‒92, 108, 109, 114‒116, 124, 127, 158, 176

Rowlands, Rev. Didymus, 85, 87, 90, 91, 213

Rymer, Sir Alexander, 74

Sanderson, the Præteritist portrait-painter, 201‒205

Sandham, Lord, wears “starched” collars, 133

Sandridge, Dr., Head-Master of Eton, 185

Savage, Juliet, 30, 31, 39, 41, 52, 77, 79, 86, 118, 119, 122, 125, 144, 172, 177, 187, 188, 206, 225

Schultz, Herr, the pædagogist, 178‒180

Shanks, Dr., 73

Sholto, Mrs., _see_ Drake.

Sitwell, Dame Mary, the scalp specialist, 132

Smith, H.E., Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster, 189, 209, 221, 222

Sonnenschein, Miss, 77

Spink, Mrs., authoress of _Eugenics for Lower Forms_, 137

Stockdale, Lady, _see_ de Brignard.

Tarporley, Mrs., _see_ Travers-Grant, Lady.

Tonks, Arthur, Regius Professor of Statistics, 163

Toogood, Ena, 37

Townshend’s house at Eton, 183

Travers, Eustace, his versatility, 41

Travers-Grant, Lady, _see_ Polebridge.

Trecastle, Lady, 13, 14, 224

Trecastle, Lord, the last of the beavers, 133

Tremayne, James, his solution of the exchange problem, 98

Tryer, Dr., her methods, 75, 76

Winterhead, _see_ Blisworth, Lord.

Woollcombe, Miss, the bowler, 24

Wrightman, the sculptor, 173

_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_

Footnote 1:

Meaning, of course, the Five Years’ War.

Footnote 2:

Miss Linthorpe’s record did not seem so extraordinary then as it would now; even as late as the fifties I remember a few young men of thirty or thirty-five who had still some of their own teeth left.

Footnote 3:

Previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 4:

Previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 5:

Previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 6:

Curiously enough, this hymn was written by a lady who afterwards became a Catholic, early in the century.

Footnote 7:

This was Augustus Hemmerde, afterwards famous as a dramatist.

Footnote 8:

This, it will be remembered, actually happened, and the raising of the premium to £7,500 was one of the chief counts against the Tory Party.

Footnote 9:

My father always used to speak of this as “the Coalition Government.” The name Cabal was invented by later historians to distinguish it from the 1974 Coalition; the names that suggested it were those of Churchill, Arthur (Balfour), Birkenhead, Austen (Chamberlain) and Lloyd (George).

Footnote 10:

The records are, however, somewhat scratched as the result of the fire at Cippenham in ’73.

Footnote 11:

Previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 12:

The boys did not get any fees at all for staying at the school during the holidays, which, as it was against the rules, they nearly always did.

Footnote 13:

Previously Lady Stockdale, previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 14:

Previously Mrs. Tarporley, previously Mme de Brignard, previously Lady Stockdale, previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 15:

The title distinguishes him from the Ecumenical Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bridler.

Footnote 16:

Previously Lady Travers-Grant, previously Mrs. Tarporley, previously Mme. de Brignard, previously Lady Stockdale, previously Lady Lushcombe, previously Mrs. Drake, previously Mrs. Sholto, previously Baroness Engelberg, née Hopkins.

Footnote 17:

_ap._ Baring, Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 231. The attribution of the lines to Wordsworth is now generally discredited.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Memories of the Future, by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox