England -- Fiction; Patent medicines -- Marketing -- Fiction; Pharmaceutical industry -- Fiction; Satire; Science fiction
Beckenham, in the persons of a vicar, a doctor’s wife, and a large
proud lady called Hogberry, “called” on my uncle and aunt almost at
once, so soon in fact as the lawn was down again, and afterwards my
aunt made friends with a quiet gentlewoman next door, a propos of an
overhanging cherry tree and the need of repairing the party fence. So
she resumed her place in society from which she had fallen with the
disaster of Wimblehurst. She made a partially facetious study of the
etiquette of her position, had cards engraved and retaliated calls. And
then she received a card for one of Mrs. Hogberry’s At Homes, gave an
old garden party herself, participated in a bazaar and sale of work,
and was really becoming quite cheerfully entangled in Beckenham society
when she was suddenly taken up by the roots again by my uncle and
transplanted to Chiselhurst.
“Old Trek, George,” she said compactly, “Onward and Up,” when I found
her superintending the loading of two big furniture vans. “Go up and
say good-bye to ‘Martin Luther,’ and then I’ll see what you can do to
help me.”
II
I look into the jumbled stores of the middle distance of memory, and
Beckenham seems to me a quite transitory phase. But really they were
there several years; through nearly all my married life, in fact, and
far longer than the year and odd months we lived together at
Wimblehurst. But the Wimblehurst time with them is fuller in my memory
by far then the Beckenham period. There comes back to me with a quite
considerable amount of detail the effect of that garden party of my
aunt’s and of a little social misbehaviour of which I was guilty on
that occasion. It’s like a scrap from another life. It’s all set in
what is for me a kind of cutaneous feeling, the feeling of rather
ill-cut city clothes, frock coat and grey trousers, and of a high
collar and tie worn in sunshine among flowers. I have still a quite
vivid memory of the little trapezoidal lawn, of the gathering, and
particularly of the hats and feathers of the gathering, of the
parlour-maid and the blue tea-cups, and of the magnificent presence of
Mrs. Hogberry and of her clear, resonant voice. It was a voice that
would have gone with a garden party on a larger scale; it went into
adjacent premises; it included the gardener who was far up the
vegetable patch and technically out of play. The only other men were my
aunt’s doctor, two of the clergy, amiable contrasted men, and Mrs.
Hogberry’s imperfectly grown-up son, a youth just bursting into collar.
The rest were women, except for a young girl or so in a state of
speechless good behaviour. Marion also was there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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