The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Romance of His Life, by Mary Cholmondeley

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Title: The Romance of His Life

And Other Romances

Author: Mary Cholmondeley

Release Date: October 5, 2012 [eBook #40947]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANCE OF HIS LIFE***

E-text prepared by Fred Salzer, Suzanne Shell,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
(http://archive.org/details/toronto)

TO
Percy Lubbock

Contents

Introduction

IN PRAISE OF A SUFFOLK COTTAGE

Most of these stories were written in a cottage in Suffolk.

For aught I know to the contrary there may be other habitable dwellings in that beloved country of grey skies and tidal rivers, and cool sea breezes. There certainly are other houses in our own village, some larger, some smaller than mine, where pleasant neighbours manage to eat and sleep, and to eke out their existence. But, of course, though they try to hide it, they must all be consumed with envy of me, for a cottage to equal mine I have never yet come across, nor do I believe in its existence.

Everyone has a so-called cottage nowadays. But fourteen years ago when I fell desperately in love with mine they were not yet the rage. The fashion was only beginning.

Now we all know that it is a parlous affair to fall in love in middle age. Christina Rossetti goes out of her way to warn us against these dangerous grey haired attachments.

She says:

“Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring.”

I had often read those beautiful lines and thought how true they were, but I paid no more attention to their prudent advice the moment my emotions were stirred than a tourist does to the word “Private” on a gate.

It amazes me to recall that the bewitching object of my affections had actually stood, forlorn, dishevelled, and untenanted, for more than a year before I set my heart upon it, and the owner good naturedly gave me a long lease of it.

Millionaires would tumble over each other to secure it now. This paper is written partly in order to make millionaires uneasy, for I have a theory, no, more than a theory, a conviction that they seldom obtain the pick of the things that make life delightful.

Do you remember how the ex-Kaiser, even in his palmy days, never could get hot buttered toast unless his daughter’s English governess made it for him, and later on chronicled the fact for the British public.

There are indications that a few millionaires and crowned heads have dimly felt for some time past the need of cottages, but Royalty has not yet got any nearer to one than that distressful eyesore at Kew with tall windows, which I believe Queen Caroline built, and which Queen Victoria bequeathed to the nation as “a thing of beauty.”

One of the many advantages of a cottage is that the front door always stands open unless it is wet, and as the Home Ruler and I sit at breakfast in the tiny raftered hall we see the children running to school, and the cows coming up the lane, and Mrs. A’s washing