creature, what?

As to my education, a good deal depends on what is meant by education. The kind that was ladled out at the County Council establishment made little effect upon me. But I was pretty quick at figures, and knew that an investment of half-a-crown at eleven to eight should bring me in a profit of three-and five—provided that the horse won and the man at the fishmonger’s round the corner paid up. My brother Lemberg had the same talent. If he bought a packet of fags and paid with a ten-shilling note, he could always negotiate the change so that he made ninepence for himself and had the cigarettes thrown in. His only mistake was in trying to do it twice at the same shop, but the scar over his right eye hardly shows now. A sharp-cornered tobacco-tin was not the thing to have hit him with anyhow.

For autobiographical purposes always treat a deficiency as if it were a gift. The G.E. was apparently a duffer at arithmetic, but she tells you so in a way that makes you admire her for it. All the same I wish I had been one of those factory-girls that she used to reclaim in their dinner-hour; I am fundamentally honest, but I never could miss a chance when it was thrown at me.

My education in dancing was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life. The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and dance while he turned the handle. I told Signor Hokey-pokey what I thought of the offer, and I have some talent for language, if not for languages. So, as he could not get me, he did the next best thing and bought a monkey.

I was by far the most spiritual of the family. But my brother Minoru attended chapel regularly, until they stopped collecting the offertory in open plates and substituted locked boxes with a slot in them. He found another chapel that seemed more promising, but he attended it only once. I shall always consider that the policeman was needlessly rough with him, for Minoru said distinctly that he would go quietly.

My sisters and myself had a fascination for the other sex that was almost incredible. At one time we had a Proposal Competition every week; each of us put in sixpence, and the girl who got the greatest number of proposals took the pool. Casey or I generally won. Then one week I encountered on the Heath the annual beanfeast of the Pottey Asylum for the Feeble-minded, and won with a score of a hundred and seven, and I think the others said it was not fair. Anyhow, the competitions were discontinued.

Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.

He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said that I would accompany him.

“Better not,” he said. “Looks to me like rain.”

“But you have an umbrella,” I pointed out.

“Aye,” he said, “and when two people share one umbrella, they both get all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice book and read for a bit.”

“No,” I said. “I’m coming with you, and though it’s Leap Year, I definitely promise not to propose to you.”

“Well,” he said, “that makes a difference.”

I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.

“I was once told by a palmist,” I said, “that I had a mysterious and magnetic attraction for men.”

“Those palmists will say anything,” he said. “It’s just the other way round really.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I know I have an unlimited capacity for love—and nobody seems to want it.”

“Ah,” he said, “it’s a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article. It means parting with it at a loss.”

What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect me.

“I wish,” I said, “that you’d look if I’ve a fly in my eye.”

“If you had, you’d know,” he answered. “The fly sees to that.”

Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.

He looked down and said that it was not undone.

I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be insulted.

However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.

Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.

The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.

On leaving home I took an indeterminate position in a Bayswater boarding-house. At any rate, my wages and food were determined, but my hours of work were not.

A boarding-house is a congeries of people who have come down. The proprietoress never dreamed that she would have to earn her own living like that—though she gets everything to a knife-edge certainty in the first week. Then in the drawing-room you have military people who have thundered, been saluted, been respected—and superseded. And nobody can make worse clothes look better. The cook explains why she’s not in Grosvenor Square, and the elderly Swiss waiter says that he has been in places where pace was not everytink. If you’re out looking for depression, try a boarding-house.

I stayed there a week and then said I was going. The lady said she knew the law and I couldn’t. So I said I would stay, and was sorry that the state of my nerves would mean a good deal in breakages.

I left at the end of the week.

Third Extract

Gladstone—Mr. Lloyd George—Inmemorison—Dr.
Benger Horlick.

After this I had a long succession of different situations. It is possible for a girl to learn the work of any branch of domestic service in a week, if she wishes to do it, with the exception of the work of a cook or a personal maid. But then, it is quite possible to take a situation as a cook, and to keep it, without knowing anything appreciable about the work. Thousands of women have done it, and are still doing it. I never went as personal maid—I dislike familiarity—but with that exception I played, so to speak, every instrument in the orchestra.

I acquired an excellent stock of testimonials, of which some were genuine. The others were due to the kindly heart and vivid imagination of my sister Casey, now Mrs. Morgenstein.

I rarely kept my places, and never kept my friends. The only thing I did keep was a diary. A diary is evidence. So if you see anything about anybody in these pages, you can believe it without hesitation. Do, please. You see, if you hesitate, you may never believe it.

I well remember the first and only time that I met Gladstone. I was staying with Lady Bilberry at the time at her house in Half Moon Street. She was a woman with real charm and wit, but somewhat irritable. Most of the people I’ve met were irritable or became so, and I can’t think why. I