give my ready-made suits, my shirts which Aunt Edith darned and darned again, and my thick woollen socks. He would remember from past experience that he was not going to get much of a tip.
I knew from what Prosset, who often stayed at big houses in Ireland, had said, that it was customary to give the butler a pound, the footman who looked after you ten shillings, and the chauffeur at least five shillings. But of course that was ludicrous in Aunt Edith’s eyes. She provided me with seven-and-sixpence for the butler, five shillings for the footman, and said it was absurd for a boy of my age to have to tip the chauffeur at all.
But in spite of it all I was glad to be there. I spent every moment I could out of doors, killing birds and beasts without the slightest compunction or any feeling other than intense satisfaction when my shots went home. If I wounded one I put it out of its pain as quickly as possible. I did not finish if off with my hands, but fired a further shot.
On Sundays, when shooting was forbidden, I used to accompany my aunt on her rounds when she visited the outlying parts of the estate. It was during these walks that latterly she had endeavoured to strengthen the structure of my character, a character which her natural shrewdness had already divined as unheroic, to say the least, over-sensitive and inclined to envy and spiritual meanness. Prosset would have been her ideal. She was always telling me to stand up for myself.
“If I go and bend down in Trafalgar Square,” she would say, waving her ash stick belligerently, “anybody will kick my bottom for me.”
Once, when I was younger, she said, “Hit a bully in the wind and he’ll double up, and then you can sock him on the chin.”
I once tried this out at my preparatory school, but the bully was only irritated by my first blow, and gave me a good hiding before I could get in a second.
She always talked good straight English, and once almost blasted a waiter out of a hotel lounge when he asked her at teatime whether she would like some gateau. “Gateau!” she roared. “It’s cake, isn’t it? Why call it gateau, man? Gateau, indeed!”
Another time, making a rare appointment to have her hair done, she lost her temper with the store’s telephone operator because he said he would put her through to the “ladies’ salon.”
“Salon?” She stamped her foot. “Salon! I want the hairdresser. He’s a hairdresser, isn’t he? A barber, isn’t he? Salon, indeed!”
Two days before I came back to London, something occurred which although it was only of a trivial nature left a curiously lasting impression on my mind, though I do not see why it should have done.
I had spent the afternoon walking around with my gun on the lookout for vermin. It was the close season for game, and targets were therefore scarce. Apart from an abortive shot at a stoat, I had not had any sport. Before turning back for tea, I decided as a last hope to try a small coppice which stood on a raised piece of ground on an outlying part of the estate. It was round and isolated, mostly composed of conifers, and I knew from experience that such places were seldom inhabited by game or vermin, at any rate on Aunt Nell’s estate; though now and again you might startle a pigeon out of the tree tops, or hear a jay calling in its harsh, rasping tones.
It was a grey day, and a little wind was rising as I walked over and climbed the wooden fence with which the covert was surrounded. It was dark and sombre among the trees, and the pine needles with which the ground was thickly strewn seemed to deaden all noise except the occasional rustle of the wind in the branches. The place was at first sight utterly deserted and seemed to me oppressive and forbidding. I had often passed by on the outside of this little wood, but although I had peered into it, it had never seemed worthwhile to penetrate inside it. It was obviously a hopeless place for game, and I started to walk across it without
I knew from what Prosset, who often stayed at big houses in Ireland, had said, that it was customary to give the butler a pound, the footman who looked after you ten shillings, and the chauffeur at least five shillings. But of course that was ludicrous in Aunt Edith’s eyes. She provided me with seven-and-sixpence for the butler, five shillings for the footman, and said it was absurd for a boy of my age to have to tip the chauffeur at all.
But in spite of it all I was glad to be there. I spent every moment I could out of doors, killing birds and beasts without the slightest compunction or any feeling other than intense satisfaction when my shots went home. If I wounded one I put it out of its pain as quickly as possible. I did not finish if off with my hands, but fired a further shot.
On Sundays, when shooting was forbidden, I used to accompany my aunt on her rounds when she visited the outlying parts of the estate. It was during these walks that latterly she had endeavoured to strengthen the structure of my character, a character which her natural shrewdness had already divined as unheroic, to say the least, over-sensitive and inclined to envy and spiritual meanness. Prosset would have been her ideal. She was always telling me to stand up for myself.
“If I go and bend down in Trafalgar Square,” she would say, waving her ash stick belligerently, “anybody will kick my bottom for me.”
Once, when I was younger, she said, “Hit a bully in the wind and he’ll double up, and then you can sock him on the chin.”
I once tried this out at my preparatory school, but the bully was only irritated by my first blow, and gave me a good hiding before I could get in a second.
She always talked good straight English, and once almost blasted a waiter out of a hotel lounge when he asked her at teatime whether she would like some gateau. “Gateau!” she roared. “It’s cake, isn’t it? Why call it gateau, man? Gateau, indeed!”
Another time, making a rare appointment to have her hair done, she lost her temper with the store’s telephone operator because he said he would put her through to the “ladies’ salon.”
“Salon?” She stamped her foot. “Salon! I want the hairdresser. He’s a hairdresser, isn’t he? A barber, isn’t he? Salon, indeed!”
Two days before I came back to London, something occurred which although it was only of a trivial nature left a curiously lasting impression on my mind, though I do not see why it should have done.
I had spent the afternoon walking around with my gun on the lookout for vermin. It was the close season for game, and targets were therefore scarce. Apart from an abortive shot at a stoat, I had not had any sport. Before turning back for tea, I decided as a last hope to try a small coppice which stood on a raised piece of ground on an outlying part of the estate. It was round and isolated, mostly composed of conifers, and I knew from experience that such places were seldom inhabited by game or vermin, at any rate on Aunt Nell’s estate; though now and again you might startle a pigeon out of the tree tops, or hear a jay calling in its harsh, rasping tones.
It was a grey day, and a little wind was rising as I walked over and climbed the wooden fence with which the covert was surrounded. It was dark and sombre among the trees, and the pine needles with which the ground was thickly strewn seemed to deaden all noise except the occasional rustle of the wind in the branches. The place was at first sight utterly deserted and seemed to me oppressive and forbidding. I had often passed by on the outside of this little wood, but although I had peered into it, it had never seemed worthwhile to penetrate inside it. It was obviously a hopeless place for game, and I started to walk across it without
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