LONDON, December 29th, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER: — ]
I had a most exciting Christmas, most of which I spent in
Whitechapel in the London Hospital. I lunched with the
Spenders and then went down with them carrying large packages
for distribution to the sick. I expected to be terribly
bored, but thought I would feel so virtuous that I would the
better enjoy my dinner which I had promised to take with the
McCarthys — On the contrary, I had the most amusing time and
much more fun than I had later. The patients seemed only to
be playing sick, and some of them were very humorous and
others very pathetic and I played tin soldiers with some, and
distributed rich gifts, other people had paid for, with a
lavish hand. I also sat on a little girl's cot and played
dolls for an hour. She had something wrong with her spine and
I wept most of the time, chiefly because she smiled all the
time. She went asleep holding on to my middle finger like the
baby in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." There were eighty babies
in red flannel nightgowns buttoned up the back who had pillow
fights in honor of the day and took turns in playing on a
barrel organ, those that were strong and tall enough. In the
next ward another baby in white was dying — Its mother was a
coster girl, seventeen years old, with a big hat and plumes
like those the flower girls wear at Piccadilly Circus. The
baby was yellow like old ivory and its teeth and gums were
blue and it died while we were watching it. The mother girl
was drinking tea and crying into it out of red swollen eyes,
and twenty feet off one of the red nightgowned kids was
playing "Louisiana Lou" on the barrel organ. The nurse put
the baby's arms under the sheets and then pulled one up over
its face and took the teacup away from the mother who didn't
see what had happened and I came away while three young nurses
were comforting the girl. Most of the nurses were very
beautiful, and I neglected my duties as Santa Claus to talk to
them. They would stop talking to get down on their knees and
dust up the floor, which was most embarrassing, you couldn't
very well ask to be let to help. There was one coster who had
his broken leg in a cage which
moved with the leg no matter how much he tossed. He was like
the man "who sat in jail without his boots, admiring how the
world was made," he spent all his waking hours in wrapt
admiration of the cage — He said to me "I've been here a
fortnight now, come Monday, and I can't break my leg no how.
Yer can't do it, that's all — Yer can twist, and kick, and
toss, and it don't do no good. Yer jest can't do it — Now you
take notice." Then he would kick violently and the cage would
run around on trolleys and keep the broken limb straight.
"See!" he would exclaim, "Wot did I tell you — Its no use of
trying, yer just can't do it. 'ere I've been ten days a
trying and it can't be done."
We had a very fine Christmas dinner just Ethel, the
McCarthy's and I. Fanny, tell Charles, brought in the plum
pudding with a sprig of holly in it and blazing, and after
dinner I read them the Jackall — About eleven I started to
take Ethel to Miss Terry's, who lives miles beyond Kensington.
There was a light fog. I said that all sorts of things ought
to happen in a fog but that no one ever did have adventures
nowadays. At that we rode straight into a bank of fog that
makes those on the fishing banks look like Spring sunshine.
You could not see the houses, nor the street, nor the horse,
not even his tail. All you could see were gas jets, but not
the iron that supported them. The cabman discovered the fact
that he was lost and turned around in circles and the horse
slipped on the asphalt which was thick with frost, and then we
backed into lamp-posts and curbs until Ethel got so scared she
bit her under lip until it bled. You could not tell whether
you were going into a house or over a precipice or into a sea.
The horse finally backed
up a flight of steps, and rubbed the cabby against a, front
door, and jabbed the wheels into an area railing and fell
down. That, I thought, was our cue to get out, so we slipped
into a well of yellow mist and felt around for each 'other
until a square block of light suddenly opened in mid air and
four terrified women appeared in the doorway of the house
through which the cabman was endeavoring to butt himself.
They begged us to come in, and we did — Being Christmas and
because the McCarthy's always call me "King" I had put on all
my decorations and the tin star and I also wore my beautiful
fur coat, to which I have treated myself, and a grand good
thing it is, too — I took this off because the room was very
hot, forgetting about the decorations and remarked in the same
time to Ethel that it would be folly to try and get to
Barkston Gardens, and that we must go back to the "Duchess's"
for the night. At this Ethel answered calmly "yes, Duke," and
I became conscious of the fact that the eyes of the four women
were riveted on my fur coat and decorations. At the word
"Duke" delivered by a very pretty girl in an evening frock and
with nothing on her hair the four women disappeared and
brought back the children, the servants, and the men, who were
so overcome with awe and excitement and Christmas cheer that
they all but got down on their knees in a circle. So, we fled
out into the night followed by minute directions as to where
"Your Grace" and "Your Ladyship" should turn. For years, no
doubt, on a Christmas Day the story will be told in that
house, wherever it may be in the millions of other houses of
London, how a beautiful Countess and a wicked Duke were
pitched into their front door out of a hansom cab, and after
having partaken of their
Christmas supper, disappeared again into a sea of fog. The
only direction Ethel and I could remember was that we were to
go to the right when we came to a Church, so when by feeling
our way by the walls we finally reached a church we continued
going on around it until we had encircled it five times or it
had encircled us, we were not sure which. After the fifth lap
we gave up and sat down on the steps. Ethel had on low
slippers and was shivering and coughing but intensely amused
and only scared for fear she would lose her voice for the
first night of "Peter" — We could hear voices sometimes, like
people talking in a dream, and sometimes the sound of dance
music, and a man's voice calling "Perlice" in a discouraged
way as if he didn't much care whether the police came or not,
but regularly like a fog siren — I don't know how long we sat
there or how long we might have sat there had not a man with a
bicycle lamp loomed up out of the mist and rescued us. He had
his mother with him and she said with great pride that her boy
could find his way anywhere. So, we clung to her boy and
followed. A cabman passed leading his horse with one of his
lamps in his other hand and I turned for an instant to speak
to him and Ethel and her friends disappeared exactly as though
the earth had opened. So, I yelled after them, and Ethel said
"Here, I am," at my elbow. It was like the chesire cat that
kept appearing and disappearing until he made Alice dizzy. We
finally found a link-boy and he finally found the McCarthy's
house, and I left them giving Ethel quinine and whiskey. They
wanted me to stay, but I could not face dressing, in the
morning. So I felt my way home and only got lost twice. The
Arch on Constitution Hill gave me much trouble. I thought it
was the Marble Arch, and hence — In Jermyn Street
I saw two lamps burning dimly and a voice said, hearing my
footsteps "where am I? I don't know where I am no more than
nothing — " I told him he was in Jermyn Street with his horse's
head about twenty feet from St. James — There was a long
dramatic silence and then the voice said — "Well, I be blowed
I thought I was in Pimlico!!!"
This has been such a long letter that I shall have to
skip any more. I have NO sciatica chiefly because of the fur
coat, I think, and I got two Christmas presents, one from
Margaret Fraser and one from the Duchess of Sutherland —
Boxing Day I took Margaret to the matinee of the Pantomine and
it lasted five hours, until six twenty, then I dressed and
dined with the Hay's and went with them to the Barnum circus
which began at eight and lasted until twelve. It was a busy
day.
Lots of love. DICK.
