Part 4 (1/2)

Mr. Bunting is, I believe, still with Lord Baringstoke. This was, perhaps, one of the princ.i.p.al triumphs of the Soles. There were many others. We had our own secret service, and I should here acknowledge with respect and admiration the Gallic ingenuity of two of the Soles, Monsieur Colbert and Monsieur Normand, in reconstructing fragmentary letters taken from the waste-paper baskets of the ill.u.s.trious.

Naturally, we had to suffer from the jealousy and malice of those who had not been asked to join us, and a rumour even was spread abroad that we played bridge for sixpence a hundred. There was no truth in it. There have been, and still are, gambling clubs among the younger men-servants of the West-end, but we never gambled. Mr. Bunting would not have liked it at all. We were serious. We did try to live up to our ideals, and some of our members actually succeeded in living beyond their incomes.

Our princ.i.p.al recreation was pencil-games, mostly of our own invention.

In this connection I have rather a sad incident to relate. On one occasion we had a compet.i.tion to see which of us could write the flattest and least pointed epigram in rhyme. The prize for men consisted of two out-size Havannah cigars, formerly the property of Lord Baringstoke, kindly presented by Mr. Bunting.

Percy Binder, first footman to the Earl of Dilwater, was extremely anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpa.s.sed for clumsy and laboured imbecility. The last two ran:

”But when for aid he ceased to beg, The wily devil broke his leg.”

And then came a terrible discovery. Percy Binder had stolen these lines from the autobiography of my own G.E. She says, by the way, that their author was ”the last of the wits.” But how can you be last in a race in which you never start? It is always safe to say what you think, but sometimes dangerous to give your reasons for thinking it.

That, however, is a digression. Percy Binder was given to understand that we did not know him in future. Mr. Bunting was so upset that he declared the compet.i.tion cancelled, and smoked the prize himself. He said afterwards that what annoyed him most was the foolishness of Mr.

Binder's idea that his plagiarism would be undetected.

”He is,” said Mr. Bunting, ”like the silly ostrich that lays its eggs in the sand in order to escape the vigilance of its pursuers.”

One of our pencil-games was known as Inverted Conundrums, and played as follows. One person gave the answer to a riddle, and mentioned one word to be used in the question. The rest then had to write down what they thought the question would be. The deafness of dear Violet Orpington sometimes spoiled this game.

For instance, I had once given as an answer ”bee-hive,” and said that one word in the question was ”correct.”

The first question I read out was from George Leghorn. He had written: ”If a c.o.c.kney nurse wished to correct a child, what insect-home would she name?” This was accepted.

The next question was from Violet Orpington: ”If you had never corrected a naughty boy before, where would you correct him?”

”But, Violet,” I said, ”the answer to that could not be 'bee-hive.'”

”Oh,” she said, ”you said 'hive,' did you? I thought you said something else.”

I have never been able to guess what it was she thought I had said; and she refused to tell me.

Another of our pencil-games was Missing Rhymes. One of us would write a deccasyllabic couplet--we always called it a quatrain, as being a better-cla.s.s word--and the rhyme in the second line would not be actually given but merely indicated.

For example, I myself wrote the following little sonnet:

”I have an adoration for One person only, namely _je_.”

To any reader who is familiar with the French language, this may seem almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that the French word _je_ is p.r.o.nounced ”mwor,” thus supplying the missing rhyme.

Millie Wyandotte disgraced herself with the following lyric:

”After her dance, Salome, curtseying, fell, And shocked the Baptist with her scream of 'Bother!'”

She had no sooner read it out than Mr. Bunting rose in his place and said gravely:

”I can only speak definitely for myself, but it is my firm belief that all present, with the exception of Miss Wyandotte, have too much refinement to be able to guess correctly the missing rhyme in this case.” Loud and prolonged applause.

George Leghorn was particularly happy at these pencil games, and to him is due this very clever combination of the lyrical and the acrostical: