the turning-out of the crowded drawers of an old bureau or cabinet is universally known as the prime pastime of the faded spinster; a pastime in which the starved spirit may exercise itself among delicious melancholies and wraiths of spent joys. well, i am not yet faded, and i am not a spinster; but i have fallen to the lure of "turning out." i have lately "turned out"—not the musty souvenirs of fifty years ago, love, fifty years ago, but the still warm fragments of a.d. 1912.
the other day, while searching irately in my fumed-oak rolltop desk for a publisher's royalty statement which he had not sent me, i opened at random a little devil of a drawer who conceals his being in the right-hand lower corner. and lo! out stepped, airily, that well-polished gentleman, mr. nineteen-twelve. my anger over the missing accounts was at once soothed. in certain chapters of this book i have harked back to the years before 1914, and it may be that you conceive me as a doddering old bore: a praiser of[pg 169] times past. but what would you have? you have not surely the face to ask me to praise times present?
so i took a long look at mr. nineteen-twelve, and went thoroughly through him. my first discovery was an old menu. my second discovery was a bunch of menus. you won't get exasperated—will you?—if i print here the menu of a one-and-sixpenny dinner, eaten on a hot june night in greek street:—
hors-d'?uvre varié.
· ·
consommé henri iv.
crème parmentier.
· ·
saumon bouillé.
concombre.
· ·
filet mignon.
pommes sautés.
haricots verts.
· ·
poulet en casserole.
salade saison.
· ·
fraises aux liqueurs.
glace vanille.
· ·
fromages.
· ·
dessert.
· ·
café.
[pg 170]
i dug my hand deeper into the pockets of mr. nineteen-twelve, and menu after menu and relic after relic came forth. there was a menu of a lotus club supper. i'm hanged if i can remember the lotus club, or its idea, or even its situation. there were old hotel bills, which, thrown together in groups, might suggest itineraries for some very good walking tours; for there were bills from stratford-on-avon and goring-on-thames and high wycombe and oxford and banbury; there were bills from bognor and arundel and chichester and the isle of wight; there were bills from tintern and chepstow and dean forest and monmouth; there were bills from kendal and appleby and windermere and grasmere. another clutching hand gave up old menus from the great western, the north-western, and the great northern dining-cars. in a corner i found an assortment of fancy cigarette tins and boxes, specially designed and engraved for various restaurants and hotels. now the cigarette tins are no more, and the boxes are made from flimsy card and are none too well printed, and many of the restaurants from which they came have disappeared, these elaborate productions are [pg 171]treasurable, not only as echoes of the good days, but as objets d'art.
further search produced a flat aluminium match-case containing twelve vestas, and crested "with compliments—criterion restaurant"; and a tin waistcoat-pocket match box, also full, containing, on the inside of the lid, a charming glimpse of the interior of the boulogne restaurant—a man and woman at table, in 1912 fashions, lifting champagne glasses and crying, through a loop that begins and finishes at their mouths: "evviva noi!" the sight of this streak of matches spurred me to further prospecting, and the pan, after careful washing, yielded boxes from paris, with gaudy dancing-girls on either cover; insanely decorated boxes from italy, filled with red-stemmed, yellow-headed matches; plain boxes from monaco; and from ostend, very choice boxes, decorated inside and outside with examples of the old masters.
packets of toothpicks, with wrappers advertising various english and continental bars, came from another corner, where they were buried under a torn page from an old tatler, showing, in various phases, portraits of a well-dressed man.[pg 172] this species being now extinct, i hope the plate of that page has been destroyed, so that my relic may possess some value. two tickets for the phyllis court enclosure at henley lay neglected under a printed invitation to have "a breath of fresh air with the 'old mitre' christmas club, leaving the 'old mitre' by four-horse brake at 10.30, to arrive at 'the green man,' richmond, at 12 noon. a whacking good dinner and a meat tea. dancing on the lawn at dusk." an old programme of the covent garden grand season recalled that magnificent band of wagnerians, knupfer, dittmar, van rooy and the rest. where are they now—these bull-voiced rhinelanders? within the programme covers i found a ticket for admission to the fight between young ahearn and carpentier which was abandoned; a printed card inviting me to a tango tea at the savoy; a request for the pleasure of my company at the empress rooms to dance to the costive cacophony of a pink bavarian band; and half a dozen newspaper cuttings, with scare-heads and cross-heads, dealing at much length with debussy's tennis-court ballet, "jeux," danced by nijinsky, schollar and karsavina. turning over one of these cuttings, i found a long report of the[pg 173] burning of a pillar-box by a suffragette, and a list of recent window-breakings.
a little packet at the bottom caught my eye, and i dived for it. it was a small box of liqueur chocolates from rumpelmayer's—unopened, old boy! unopened. i am a devil for sweets, and i was beginning to tear the wrapper, when conscience bade me pause. ought i to eat them? ought i not first to ascertain whether there were not others whose need was greater than mine? think of the number of girls who would give their last hairpin for but one of the luscious little umber cubes. what right had i to liqueur chocolates of 1912 vintage? conscience won. the packet is still unopened; and if, within seven days from the appearance of these lines, the ugliest girl in the w.a.a.c. will let me have her name and address and photograph, it will be sent to her. failing receipt of any application by the specified date, i shall feel free to eat 'em.
two others relics yet remained. one was a small gold coin, none too common, even in those days, and now, i believe, obsolete. i fancy we called it a half-sovereign, or half-quid, or half-thick-un or half-jimmy, according to the current jargon of our set. the other was a throw-away[pg 174] leaflet, advertising on one side the programme of a london county council concert in embankment gardens, and on the other the cheap sunday and monday excursions arranged by the national sunday league.
this was the most heart-breaking of all the mementoes. how many sundays, that otherwise might have been masses of melancholy, were shattered into glowing fragments by these inexpensive peeps at the heart of england? i can remember now these fugitive glimpses, with every little incident of each glad journey; and i am impelled to breathe a prayer from the soul for the well-being of the sunday league, since it was only by the enterprise of the kindly n.s.l. that i was able to see my own country. here i give you the list of trips, with return fares, advertised on the leaflet before me:—
s. d.
brighton 2 6
hastings 3 0
eastbourne 4 0
sheffield 5 0
leeds 5 0
weston-super-mare 4 0
tintern abbey 4 6
stratford-on-avon 4 0
warwick 4 0
bournemouth 5 0
isle of wight 6 0
[pg 175]cardiff 5 0
shrewsbury 4 6
margate 3 6
herne bay 3 0
cromer 5 0
durham 6 0
york 5 0
sacred name of an albert stanley!
uttering this ejaculation, i restored my treasures to their hiding-place with the fumbling fingers of the dew-eyed, ruminative spinster, and locked the drawer against careless hands; hoping that, some day, some keen collector of the rare and curious might come along and offer me a blank cheque for this collection of nineteen-twelviana. looking it over, i consider it a very good lot—well-assorted; each item in mint state and scarce; one or two, indeed, unique.
what offers?