I don’t know why it is, but when I sit down to write this “Memoir,” knowing that it may be the last that I shall ever write, it makes me feel a little sad. In all human probability I, Mary Jane Beckett, am writing the last few pages of the last book that will ever come from my pen. We are leaving the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and going into a much larger house—a real big hotel in a well-known county town—where we shall have waiters in evening dress, and a big coffee-room, and a large commercial-room, and we shall make up over fifty beds, besides having a large room for sales and auctions, and another very large, lofty room for balls and big dinners and assemblies, and that sort of thing.
I am very sorry to leave the dear old ‘Stretford Arms,’—our first house, and the one where we have spent some happy years, and where my little Harry and my little Mary were both born; but we have made money, and we must not stand still. We have sold the house most advantageously, and made a very large profit, as we ought to do, for we have worked the business up and improved the premises very considerably.
It was a long time before we made up our minds, and we had very long and anxious talks; but a friend of Harry’s told us about the big hotel that was to be had in a Midland county town, and which was just the place for us to work up and do well in, and Harry, having a means of getting all the extra money, wanted to take it. It seemed a pity to let it go, especially as we could never{292} hope to do better than we were doing at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and if we are not going to work hard all our lives we must get into a place where we can make a bigger profit, and get more scope for our capital.
I have been to see the new house, and a very fine place it is. The rooms are simply grand. It is right opposite the Corn Exchange, and has a noble entrance-hall with statues in it, and is called the “Royal Hotel,” because Queen Elizabeth once slept there. Harry says that Queen Elizabeth seems to have slept at nearly every old hotel in the kingdom; but that is all nonsense.
The place is in really excellent order, having not long ago been refurnished by a great London firm, and some of the bedrooms are fit for Queen Elizabeth to come to now.
It will be quite a different trade, of course, to what we have been accustomed to, as coffee-room customers and commercial gentlemen come in every day by the trains, and it is a big racing house when the races are on, and they are very famous races indeed. It will be something new for me to study the commercial gentlemen and the sporting gentlemen, as we didn’t have any at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ not having any shops or a racecourse. I am told that I shall pick up a lot of character among the commercials, who are most entertaining and full of anecdotes; but it will be too late to put them in my book, as I must finish it now. I know I shall have no time at the “Royal Hotel,” for it will be a big task to manage it, and take us all we know.
I am told, too, that some of the sporting gentlemen would make capital stories, one of them being a young marquis, who is very odd and goes on anyhow. I suppose it will be what Harry calls “a warm time” at race time. I rather dread it. If it is too warm I shall keep out of the way.
But that is like me. Here am I beginning to worry about things before they happen, and instead of that I ought to be getting this chapter finished, for to-morrow is “the change,” and the new people take my dear old home over and enter into possession.
Everybody about the place is so sorry that we are going, and the nicest and kindest things have been said of us.{293} There was some talk of giving Harry a banquet; but we thought it best not for many reasons, and so last night a few old friends and customers came into our bar-parlour and had a little supper with us, and during supper the Doctor, who has been one of our best friends, presented us, in the name of the company, with a most beautiful silver salver for our sideboard, and on it was engraved “To Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, from a few old customers of the ‘Stretford Arms,’ wishing them long life, success, and happiness.”
It was very kind of them, wasn’t it? and we both felt it very deeply. It is a most beautiful salver, and we shall treasure it as long as we live, and I hope our children will treasure it after we are gone. It is very gratifying, when you have tried to keep up the character of your house and to make your customers comfortable, to know that your efforts have been appreciated, and that everybody wishes you well in your new undertaking.
We are going to spend a week in London before we take possession of the “Royal Hotel,” as Harry has his solicitor and the brokers to see, and a lot of business to attend to, and I want to take my boy to the Zoological Gardens. He is very fond of his Noah’s Ark, and is always delighted to hear his father tell him about the great big animals that live in foreign parts, and I am most anxious to hear what the dear child will say when he sees a real elephant and hears a real lion roar. He is most intelligent for his age, and, though we were rather afraid while he was teething, he has had the most perfect health ever since, and is as fine a little fellow as you could find in the kingdom, and very sturdy on his legs. He has a little sailor suit now, and marches about as proud as you please; but he will keep his hands in his pockets. The sailor suit which I bought him included a knife on a piece of whip-cord, which was the terror of my life for a long time. I wanted to take it away; but he screamed himself almost into convulsions, and I was obliged to let him keep it; but I lived in hourly dread of nurse coming rushing in to say Master Harry had cut himself.
I can’t think why it is that boy children always want to keep their hands in their pockets, and so dearly love{294} a knife. Little girls don’t care about knives; but, then, little girls are easier to manage in every way than little boys, who begin to assert their independence at the very earliest age.
I hope where we are going to will suit my little ones as well as this place has done; but everybody tells me that it is a most healthy town, and so I won’t begin to fidget on that score, though I should feel much happier if our nice, kind, clever doctor could be near us. But, of course, that can’t be.
I believe I shall cry to-morrow when we leave the dear old ‘Stretford Arms;’ but I shall try not to. I have been very happy in it, and we have been very fortunate, far more than we had any right to expect, seeing that we were only young beginners.
The packing up has been an awful job. It is really wonderful how things accumulate. We have had to buy boxes and I don’t know what, and we shall want a big van to take everything, as we take some of our furniture away with us, the new people having some of their own they want to bring in. I am very glad, as it will always be something to remind us of the old place.
Things in this village haven’t changed much since we first came. Dashing Dick’s grandmother, poor old lady, is now quite paralyzed; but the lad has turned out much better than was expected, and has been sent to sea, and writes very nice letters to her from foreign parts, and has begun to send her a little money. Old Gaffer Gabbitas, his daughter, who lives in the village, told us, a little time ago was found dead in his armchair one Sunday afternoon, with his Bible on his lap open at the place where he had been reading it when he fell asleep for the last time. We have written out to Mr. Wilkins in Australia, giving him our new address, and saying we shall always be glad to hear from him; and dear Jenny has another baby, a little girl, so, as she says in her letter, we are both equal now.
Graves, the farrier, has much improved lately. He is more civilized since he took to use our house regularly, and gave up going to the other place. He came out quite nobly not long ago, in a little affair which made some talk in the village. One of his men injured himself while{295} working at the forge, he being, I am sorry to say, the worse for liquor at the time (the man, not Graves), and was so bad he had to be sent to a London hospital, where he remained some time, and all the while he was away Graves paid his money to the wife, because she was an invalid, and had a large family. This shows that there is often a lot of good under a rough exterior; but I believe blacksmiths and farriers are very good-hearted men as a rule, and I always respect them, for I never see one without thinking of that noble-hearted blacksmith in the beautiful piece of poetry which I also heard as a song one night when there was an entertainment at our national schools. It was a lovely idea, that brawny fellow going to church of a Sunday, and thinking of his dead wife when he heard his daughter singing in the village choir, and wiping away a tear.
Graves isn’t the man to do that sort of thing—he couldn’t, because he has never married, and I don’t think he is so regular in attendance at church as the other blacksmith was; but his keeping that poor woman and children all those weeks, shows that his heart is in the right place, if he doesn’t always pick his words as carefully as he might.
Miss Ward, our barmaid, that you may remember was so unfortunate in her young man, that horrid fellow Shipsides, has married well, I am glad to say, and she and her husband have been put in to manage a public-house in the South of England. She wrote to me, and told me when she was married, and sent me a piece of cake, and I wrote her a nice letter back, and said how pleased I was to hear it.
Of course, directly I knew we were going to move, I wrote to Mr. Saxon, and told him what our new address would be, and said that he might be sure if he paid us a visit no one would be more welcome. He wrote back and said perhaps he would come when the races were on. I hear he has taken to go racing lately, which is a thing I should never have expected, though I remember hearing that, years ago, he used to be very fond of sport, but got too busy to keep it up. I hope it will do him good; at any rate, it is a change, and the fresh air is just what he wants. But I hope he won’t gamble and lose a lot of{296} money; but I don’t think he will, as he has to work too hard to get it. I have been told that he takes that nice Swedish gentleman about with him to the races, so perhaps he will come, too. I shall be very glad to see him again, as he was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever talked to, and had been all over the world, and was full of information. Poor fellow! he ought to be taken about; for he must have a bad time of it at home with Mr. Saxon, whose liver seems to get worse as he gets older.
The last I heard of him he had been to Italy for a month, for the benefit of his health, and came back in a fortnight, swearing that he had shortened his life by ten years, by going. Fancy a man going away for rest, and to benefit his health, and travelling five thousand miles, night and day, in a railway carriage, and then going on because he felt knocked up. But, with all his faults and his queer ways, there will be nobody that I shall be more pleased to see at the “Royal Hotel” than Mr. Saxon.
The new clergyman, the young fellow who was the cause of Mr. Wilkins going to Australia, has turned out what Harry calls “quite a trump.” There is no mistake about the impression he has made in the place. He has woke it up, so to speak, and, though nobody liked him at first, resenting his new-fangled ways, now he is the greatest favourite with everybody. He is a fine cricketer, and has made a cricket club, and he sings capitally, and gets up penny readings and entertainments in the winter, and his sermons are first class. The first Sunday some of the old-fashioned people were horrified. He made a joke in his sermon, and it was such a good joke that it made the people laugh before they remembered where they were. He said afterwards that he saw a lot of people were horrified, but that it wasn’t wicked to laugh. He said being good didn’t mean being sulky and gloomy and pulling a long face, and there was no more harm in feeling glad and gay inside a church than outside it; in fact, if there was any place in which people ought to feel comfortable and happy, and ready to smile on the slightest provocation, it was when they were worshipping One who had done so much to make His people glad and gay and happy here below.{297}
It took time to get the old-fashioned people round to his way of thinking; but he did it at last,............