Part 1

Chapter 14,309 wordsPublic domain

Transcriber’s Notes:

The original spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained, with the exception of apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.

Text in Italics is indicated between _underscores_.

Text in small capitals has been replaced by regular uppercase text.

In the original, the Table of Contents does not contain the entries to Chapters XI, XII, and XIII. However, in the electronic version, they have been added.

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THE PATCHWORK PAPERS

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

THE APPLE OF EDEN MIRAGE THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE

THE PATCHWORK PAPERS

BY E. TEMPLE THURSTON

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1910

_Some eight of these papers appear in print for the first time. For those which have been published before, my thanks are due to the Editors of “The Onlooker” and “The Ladies’ Field” for permission to reprint._

_THE AUTHOR._

_Published February 1911_

_To_ NORMAN FORBES ROBERTSON

MY DEAR NORMAN,

Here are my Patchwork Papers for you to unpick at your leisure. I have not presumed to call them essays, since it is nowadays unseemly for a novelist to attempt anything worthy of the name of letters—moreover, would any one read them? By the same token, I have not dared to call them short stories, and that, mainly because the so-called essential love interest is conspicuous by its absence. Really they are illustrated essays. What better name then than papers can be given them?

It may, for example, be pardonable in a paper to split an infinitive for the sake of euphony, as I have done in “From my Portfolio,”—but to split an infinitive in an essay! It were better to rob a church, or speak out one’s mind about the monarchy. All such things as these are treasonable. To call them papers then will save me much from my friends.

When they appeared serially, it was under the title “Beauties which are Inevitable.” I altered that when I thought of you trying to remember what the book was called, as you recommended it with a twinkle in your eye to your friends. But that title still stands justified in my mind, since these papers express the things which latterly have become realities to me. For wheresoever you may go in this world—whether it be striving to the highest heights, or descending, as some would have it, to the deepest depths—life is just as ugly or just as beautiful as you are inclined to find it.

In all my early work, until, in fact, I wrote “Sally Bishop,” I was inclined to find it ugly enough in all conscience. But now beauty does seem inevitable and, what is more, the only reality we have. For if, as they say, God made man in His own image, then to call the ugliness of man a reality is to curse the sight of God; in which case, it were as well to die and have done with this business of existence altogether.

To see nothing but ugliness then, or, as the modern school would have it, to see nothing but realism, is a form of mental suicide which, thank God, no longer appeals to me. For when every year I find the daffodils bringing up their glory of colour and beauty of line with unfailing perfection, I cannot but think that man, made in God’s image, was meant to be still more beautiful in his thoughts and deeds even than they. Then surely what man was meant to be must be the only true reality of what he is. All else happens to him. That is all.

Wherefore, when, in these pages, you read of Bellwattle and of Emily the housemaid, of my little old pensioner, or of the poor woman in Limehouse; when, too, you read my attempt to give words to the maternal instinct; then you will see realities as I have seen them over the past two years and I dedicate this true record of them to you, because I know that you will take them to be as real as the beauty of Livy, the manliness of Nod, or the colour of those wall-flowers which bloom by the little red-brick paths in that graceful garden of yours in Kent.

Yours always, E. TEMPLE THURSTON.

Eversley, 1910.

CONTENTS

I. THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT 3

II. THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET 13

III. THE WONDERFUL CITY 25

IV. BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD 33

V. REALISM 43

VI. THE SABBATH 55

VII. HOUSE TO LET 67

VIII. A SUFFRAGETTE 77

IX. BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE 87

X. MAY EVE 101

XI. THE FLOWER BEAUTIFUL 111

XII. THE FEMININE APPRECIATION OF MATHEMATICS 123

XIII. THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 135

XIV. FROM MY PORTFOLIO 147

XV. AN OLD STRING BONNET 159

XVI. THE NEW MALADY 167

XVII. BELLWATTLE AND THE DIGNITY OF MEN 179

XVIII. THE NIGHT THE POPE DIED 193

XIX. ART 203

XX. THE VALUE OF IDLENESS 217

XXI. THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION 229

XXII. BELLWATTLE ON THE HIGHER MATHEMATICS 243

XXIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE VOTE 257

XXIV. SHIP’S LOGS 269

THE PENSION OF THE PATCHWORK QUILT

So much more than you would ever dream lies hidden behind the beauty of “The Blue Bird,” by Maurice Maeterlinck. Beauty may be the first of its qualities. By the same token, beauty may be the last. But in the midst, in the heart of it, there is set a deep well of truth—fathomless almost—one of those natural wells which God, with His omnipotent disregard of limitations, has sunk into the heart of the world.

That utter annihilation of death must be confusion to many when expressed in terms of St. Joseph lilies. Ninety per cent. of people will be likely to say, “How pretty!” That is the worst of it. They ought to be feeling, “How true!”

Yet what is a man to do? He can only express the immortality that he knows in terms of the material things he sees. St. Joseph lilies are as good as, if not better than anything else. But they might as well have been artichokes, which come up every year. Artichokes would have done just as well, only that people who object to artichokes would have said, “How silly!”

No one can object to St. Joseph lilies. Yet, whatever they are, you will never be able to persuade the world to see the immortal truth behind the mortal and material fact.

It was the chance of circumstance which gave me an example of that amazing truth that old people, when they have passed away, are given life whenever the young people think of them. To the hundreds and thousands who have been to see “The Blue Bird” there are hundreds and thousands to say, “How charming that idea is—the old people coming to life again whenever any one thinks of them!”

“And how amazingly true,” said I to one who had made the remark to me.

The lady looked at me as at one who has made a needless jest and then she laughed. Being a lady, she was polite.

But I hated that politeness. I hated the laugh which expressed it. If chance should make her eye to fall upon this page, she will see how I hated it. She will see also how earnestly I had meant what I said. For I have found a proof of the truth. I know now that the old people live. What is more, they know it too. When it comes that they pass that Rubicon which takes them into the shadow of those portals beneath which all the old people must wait until the Great Gates are opened—when once they near the three-score years and ten—then they know. But they may not speak. They may not say they know. They can only hint.

It was that an old lady hinted to me. Oh, such a broad hint it was! And that is how I know.

She was close on seventy. Another summer, another winter, and yet another spring, would see her three-score years and ten. The pension of the country would be given her then and this great ambition had leapt into the heart of her:

“I want to leave off work then, sir,” she said and a smile parted her thin, wrinkled lips, lit two fires in her eyes, making her whole face sparkle. “I want to leave off work then, sir, and I want to take a little cottage. I only work now so that my sons shan’t have the expense of keeping me. They’ve got expenses enough of their own.” Then her little brown eyes, like beads in the deep hollows, took into them a tender look as she thought of the trials and troubles which they had to bear.

“Will you ever be able to get a cottage and keep yourself alive on five shillings a week?” I asked.

She set her little mouth. She was a wee, tiny creature, shrivelled with age. Everything about her was little and crumpled and old.

“It doesn’t need much to keep me alive now, sir,” she said. “The cottage I can get for half a crown a week; and, of course, my sons are real good boys—they send me a little now and then.”

I gazed at her—at her wee, withered body, wasted away to nothing in tireless energy.

“You know you won’t care to leave off work when it comes to the time,” said I; “you’ll hate to have nothing to do.”

She looked back at me with a cunning twinkle in her bright brown eyes. As if she were fool enough to think that life would be bearable with nothing to do! As if she had ever dreamed that the hands could be idle while the heart was beating! As if she did not know that each must labour until death stilled them both!

“I shan’t have nothing to do, sir,” she said when she had said it already with her eyes. “Why, it’s just the time I’ve been looking for. I’m too busy now.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Make a patchwork quilt.”

“A patchwork quilt?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“So that I can leave something behind me for people to remember me when I’m gone.”

She said it quite cheerfully, quite happily. Her bright eyes glistened like a wink of light in an old brown china tea-pot. She said it, too, in that half-reserved way as though there were more to tell, but she was not allowed even to whisper it.

Of course, there was more to tell! She never would be gone! Not really gone! Every time you thought of her, the light of the other life would start back into her eyes, the wrinkled lips would smile again. She would never be really gone! And this was a hint—just a hint to let me at least, for one, make sure about it.

“Then every night they go to bed,” said I, “and pull the patchwork quilt tight round them——”

“Yes—and every time they throw it off in the morning——” said she.

“They’ll think of you?”

“They’ll think of me,” and she chuckled like a little child to think how clever it was of her.

“Supposing,” said I, suddenly, in a whisper as the thought occurred to me—“supposing you could do without any assistance from your boys——”

“I wish I could,” she said; “p’raps I can.”

“You wait and see,” said I.

Her seventieth birthday came round, and the evening before I posted to her my little present. I made her my pensioner as long as she lives, and on the twentieth day of each month she receives her tiny portion, and on the twenty-first day of that month I get back in return a wee bunch of flowers tied with red Angola wool.

“In payment of the Pension of the Patchwork Quilt,” I write, just on a slip of paper; then off it goes every month. And as I drop it in the letterbox, I can see her surrounded with all sorts of materials in divers colours. I can hear the scratching of her needle as she sews them together. I can picture her little eyes bent eagerly upon the stitches for fear it might not be done in time.

And I take her gentle hint.

I know.

THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET

In Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, there is a mouse-trap, a cunningly devised contrivance in which many a timid little mouse is caught. You will find them in other streets than this. They are set in exactly the same way, the same alluring bait, the same doors that open with so generous an admission of innocence, the same doors that close with so final and irrevocable a snap.

I have never watched the other ones at work. But I have seen four mice caught at different times in Henrietta Street. Therefore, it is about the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street that I feel qualified to speak.

One of these little mice I knew well. I knew her by name, where she lived—the little hole in this great labyrinth of London down which she vanished when the day’s work was done, or when any one frightened her little wits and made her scamper home for safety. She even came once and sat in my room, just on the edge of an armchair, taking tea and cake in that frightened way, eyes ever peering, head ever on the alert, as mice will eat their food.

So you will see I knew a good deal about her. It was through no accident of chance that I saw her walk into the trap. I had heard that such an event was likely. I was on the lookout for it.

During the day-time, she waited at the tables in an A.B.C. shop. Don’t ask me what they paid her for it. I marvel at the wage for manual labour when sometimes I am compelled to do a little job for myself. I wonder why on earth the woman comes to tidy my rooms for ten shillings a week. But she does. What is more, I find myself on the very point of abusing her when she breaks a piece of my Lowestoft china, coming with tears in her eyes to tell me of it.

Whatever it was they paid this little mouse of a child, she found it a sufficient inducement to come there day after day, week after week, with just that one short, marvellous evening in the six days and the whole of the glorious seventh in which to do what she liked.

I suppose it would have gone on like that for ever. She would have continued creeping in and out amongst the tables, her body on tip-toe, her voice on tip-toe, the whole personality of her almost overbalancing itself as it worked out its justification on the very tip of its toes.

She would have continued waiting on her customers, writing her little checks in a wholly illegible handwriting, which only the girl at the desk could read. She would have continued supplying me with the three-pennyworth of cold cod steak for my kitten until I should have been ordering five cold cod steaks for the entire family that was bound to come. All these things would have gone on just the same, had not the tempter come to lure her into the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.

I saw him one morning, a dandy-looking youth from one of the hosier’s shops in the Strand near by. He was having lunch—a cup of coffee and some stewed figs and cream. Taste is a funny thing. And she was serving him. She had served him. He was already hustling the food into his mouth as he talked to her. But it was more than talking. He was saying things with a pair of large calf eyes and she was laughing as she listened.

I would sooner see a woman serious than see her laugh; that is, if some one else were making love to her. For when she is serious there are two ways about it; but when she laughs there is only time for one.

When she saw me, the little mouse came at once to the counter and took down the piece of cold cod steak without a word. As she handed me the bag and the little paper check, she said—

“How’s the kitten to-day?”

Then I knew she felt guilty, and was trying to distract my mind from what she knew I had seen.

“Why are you ashamed of talking to the young man?” I asked.

“I’m not,” said she.

“Did you notice his eyes?” said I.

She looked at me for a moment, quite frightened, then she scampered away into a corner and began wetting her pencil with her lips and scribbling things. When the young man tapped his coffee-cup, she pretended not to hear. But as soon as I stepped out into the street, I turned round and saw her hurrying back to his table.

You guess how it went along. He asked her to marry him—then—there—at once. You might have known he was a man of business.

She told me all about it when she came on one of those short evenings, and nibbled a little piece of cake as she sat on the edge of my chair.

He wanted to marry her at once, but he was earning only eighteen shillings a week and, as far as I could see, spent most of that on neckties, socks and hair oil. He would no doubt begin to save it directly they were married; but eighteen shillings was not enough to keep them both.

“He’d better wait, then,” said I.

“He’s so afraid he’d lose me,” she whispered.

“And would he?” I asked.

She picked up a crumb from the floor, seeming thereby to suggest that it was not in the nature of her to waste anything.

“Then I suppose you’ll be married in secret and go on just the same?”

She nodded her head.

“Where does he propose you should be married?”

“At the registry office in Henrietta Street.”

“The mouse-trap,” said I.

“No; the registry office,” she replied.

“And when’s it to be?” I asked.

“My next evening after this.”

Well, it came to that next evening. I got permission from a firm of book-buyers to occupy a window opposite. And there I observed that little parlour tragedy which you can see in the corner of any old wainscotted room if only you keep quiet long enough.

It did not happen successfully that first time. For half an hour he walked her up and down Henrietta Street. I saw my publisher come out of his door, little dreaming of the comedy that was being played as he passed them by. And every time they stopped outside the Registry Office windows, she stood and read the notices of soldiers deserted the army, of children that were lost, while he talked of the great things that life was offering to them both just inside those varnished doors.

After a time they walked away and I came out from my hiding-place. Something must have upset her, I thought, and I went across to look at the notices in the window. There was nothing to frighten her there; yet she had scampered away home to that little hole in Clapham, and there vanished out of sight.

But it came at last. It came the very next of her short evenings. I was on the lookout again. I saw them march up to the door. No hesitation this time. He must have been eloquent indeed to have led her so surely as that.

I saw him lift the spring of the trap. I saw her enter with tip-toe steps, but more full of confidence now. Then I heard the sharp snap of the door as it fell.

“They’ve caught a mouse,” said I to the book-buyer as I came downstairs.

“’Tis a good thing,” said he; “they’re the very devil for eating my bindings.”

III

THE WONDERFUL CITY

III

THE WONDERFUL CITY

I saw a wonderful city to-day. Rows of houses there were. Domes of great buildings with their dull brown roofs lifted silently into the sky. Long streets in tireless avenues led from one cathedral to another; some with the straightness of an arrow, others twisting and turning in devious ways, yet all leading, as a well-planned street should lead, to the crowning glory of some great edifice.

By the chance of Destiny I stood above it all and looked down. It was strange that only the night before I had been dreaming that I was in the City of New York, with its vast maze of buildings leaping to the sky. In my dream I had stood wrapt in amazement. But I was silent with a greater astonishment here. For as I gazed upon it, there had come a man to my side and, seeing the direction of my eyes, he had said—

“There warn’t a trace o’ that there last night.”

“Not a trace?” said I. And I said it in amazement, for frankly I disbelieved him.

“Not a trace,” he repeated solemnly.

“All that built in one night?” I asked again.

“In one night,” said he.

“But doesn’t it astound you?” said I. I tried to lift his lethargy to the wonderment and admiration that was thrilling in my mind.

“It do seem strange,” he replied, “when yer come to think of it.”

“Well, then, come to think of it!” I exclaimed. “You can’t do better than find the world strange. Come to think of it and, finding it strange, you’ll come to believe in it!”

He stared at me with solemn eyes.

“Look at the dome of that cathedral,” I went on. “Could you set to work and, in a single night, build a vast piece of architecture like that, so many times higher than yourself?”

“That ain’t no cathedral,” said he.

“Have you ever seen a cathedral?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, then, how do you know it isn’t?”

He could give me no reply and I continued in my enthusiasm—

“Look at that street, cut through all obstacles, leading straight as though a thousand instruments of latter-day science had been used in the making of it. Look at this avenue turning to right and to left. Do you see that great cluster of buildings, a very parliament of houses, set round a vast space that would shame the great square of St. Peter’s, in Rome. Only look at the——”

I turned round and he had gone. I could see his figure retreating in the distance. Every moment he turned his head, looking round, as one who is pursued yet fears to show his cowardice by running away. He thought I was mad, I have no doubt. Every one thinks you mad when you say the moon is a dead world or the sun is a fiery furnace. To be sane, you must only remark upon the coldness of the moon, or the warmth of the sun. To be sane, you must speak of the things of this world only in terms of people’s bodies. They do not understand unless.

And so, when the man left me, I was alone, looking over the wonderful city. For an hour then, I amused myself by naming the different streets, by assigning to the various buildings the uses to which it seemed they might be put.

That huge edifice with the cupola of bronze was the Cathedral of Shadows, where prayers were said in darkness and never a lamp was lit. The street which led to its very steps, that was called the Street of Sighs. Here, in a lighter part of the city, approached to its silent doors by Tight Street, was the Bat’s Theatre, where you could hear, but never see the performance as it progressed. A little further on there was Blind Alley—a cul-de-sac, terminating in a tiny building, the Chapel of Disappointment. There was the Avenue of Progress, the Church of Whispers, the Bridge of Stones and a thousand other places, the names of which went from me no sooner than they crossed my mind.

It may be possible to build a wonderful city in a night. I only know how utterly impossible it is to name all its streets and its palaces in one day.

And then, while I was still thus employed, I saw the man returning with a jug of beer.

I nodded to the vessel which he carried in his hand.

“You don’t need to think about that,” said I, “to understand it.”

A broad grin spread across his face. He had found me sane after all. I had talked about beer in terms of bodily comfort.

“I need to drink it,” said he with a laugh.

“You do,” said I.

Then, as if to appease me for the moment e’er he passed on his way, he returned to our former subject and, with a serious voice, he said—

“When yer come to think of it,” said he, “it do seem wonderful that them moles is blind.”

“Not so blind,” said I, looking down at the wonderful city, “not so blind as those who can see.”

He thought I had gone mad again, and he walked away with his jug of beer.

BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD

I often wonder why God evolved a creature so antagonistic to all His laws as woman. I must tell you what I mean.