The Common Reader
The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is
a lump of Paris Green. But English people won’t use microscopes; you
can’t make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it
drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won’t take a woman’s
word. And indeed, though for the sake of the Ox Warble one must stretch
a point, there are matters, questions of stock infestation, things one
has to go into—things a lady doesn’t even like to see, much less
discuss, in print—“these, I say, I intend to leave entirely to the
Veterinary surgeons. My brother—oh, he’s dead now—a very good man—for
whom I collected wasps’ nests—lived at Brighton and wrote about
wasps—he, I say, wouldn’t let me learn anatomy, never liked me to do
more than take sections of teeth.”
Ah, but Eleanor, the Bot and the Hessian have more power over you than
Mr. Edward Ormerod himself. Under the microscope you clearly perceive
that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most
emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble,
on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if
slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than
when lit up by the candour of her avowal. “This is excrement; these,
though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative
organs of the male. I’ve proved it.” Upon her head the hood of Edinburgh
most fitly descended; pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green.
“If you’re sure I’m not in your way,” said Miss Lipscomb unstrapping her
paint box and planting her tripod firmly in the path, “—I’ll try to get
a picture of those lovely hydrangeas against the sky—What flowers you
have in Penzance!”
The market gardener crossed his hands on his hoe, slowly twined a piece
of bass round his finger, looked at the sky, said something about the
sun, also about the prevalence of lady artists, and then, with a nod of
his head, observed sententiously that it was to a lady that he owed
everything he had.
“Ah?” said Miss Lipscomb, flattered, but already much occupied with her
composition.
“A lady with a queer-sounding name,” said Mr. Pascoe, “but that’s the
lady I’ve called my little girl after—I don’t think there’s such
another in Christendom.”
Of course it was Miss Ormerod, equally of course Miss Lipscomb was the
sister of Miss Ormerod’s family doctor; and so she did no sketching that
morning, but left with a handsome bunch of grapes instead—for every
flower had drooped, ruin had stared him in the face—he had written, not
believing one bit what they told him—to the lady with the queer name,
back there came a book “In-ju-ri-ous In-sects,” with the page turned
down, perhaps by her very hand, also a letter which he kept at home
under the clock, but he knew every word by heart, since it was due to
what she said there that he wasn’t a ruined man—and the tears ran down
his face and Miss Lipscomb, clearing a space on the lodging-house table,
wrote the whole story to her brother.
“The prejudice against Paris Green certainly seems to be dying down,”
said Miss Ormerod when she read it.—“But now,” she sighed rather
heavily, being no longer young and much afflicted with the gout, “now
it’s the sparrows.”
One might have thought that _they_ would have left her alone—innocent
dirt-grey birds, taking more than their share of the breakfast crumbs,
otherwise inoffensive. But once you look through a microscope—once you
see the Hessian and the Bot as they really are—there’s no peace for an
elderly lady pacing her terrace on a fine May morning. For example, why,
when there are crumbs enough for all, do only the sparrows get them? Why
not swallows or martins? Why—oh, here come the servants for prayers—
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against
us. . . . For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for
ever and ever. Amen—”
“The Times, ma’am—”
“Thank you, Dixon. . . . The Queen’s birthday! We must drink her
Majesty’s health in the old white port, Dixon. Home Rule—tut—tut—tut.
All that madman Gladstone. My father would have thought the world was
coming to an end, and I’m not at all sure that it isn’t. I must talk to
Dr. Lipscomb—”
Yet all the time in the tail of her eye she saw myriads of sparrows, and
retiring to the study proclaimed in a pamphlet of which 36,000 copies
were gratuitously distributed that the sparrow is a pest.
“When he eats an insect,” she said to her sister Georgians, “which
isn’t often, it’s one of the few insects that one wants to keep—one of
the very few,” she added with a touch of acidity natural to one whose
investigations have all tended to the discredit of the insect race.
“But there’ll be some very unpleasant consequences to face,” she
concluded—“Very unpleasant indeed.”
Happily the port was now brought in, the servants assembled; and Miss
Ormerod, rising to her feet, gave the toast “Her Blessed Majesty.” She
was extremely loyal, and moreover she liked nothing better than a glass
of her father’s old white port. She kept his pigtail, too, in a box.
Such being her disposition it went hard with her to analyse the
sparrow’s crop, for the sparrow she felt, symbolises something of the
homely virtue of English domestic life, and to proclaim it stuffed with
deceit was disloyal to much that she, and her fathers before her, held
dear. Sure enough the clergy—the Rev. J. E. Walker—denounced her for
her brutality; “God Save the Sparrow!” exclaimed the Animal’s Friend;
and Miss Carrington, of the Humanitarian League, replied in a leaflet
described by Miss Ormerod as “spirity, discourteous, and inaccurate.”
“Well,” said Miss Ormerod to her sister, “it did me no harm before to be
threatened to be shot at, also hanged in effigy, and other little
attentions.”
“Still it was very disagreeable, Eleanor—more disagreeable I believe,
to me than to you,” said Georgiana. Soon Georgiana died. She had however
finished the beautiful series of insect diagrams at which she worked
every morning in the dining-room and they were presented to Edinburgh
University. But Eleanor was never the same woman after that.
Dear forest fly—flour moths—weevils—grouse and cheese
flies—beetles—foreign correspondents—eel worms—ladybirds—wheat
midges—resignation from the Royal Agricultural Society—gall
mites—boot beetles—Announcement of honorary degree to be
conferred—feelings of appreciation and anxiety—paper on wasps—last
annual report warnings of serious illness—proposed pension—gradual
loss of strength—Finally Death.
That is life, so they say.
“It does no good to keep people waiting for an answer,” sighed Miss
Ormerod, “though I don’t feel as able as I did since that unlucky
accident at Waterloo. And no one realises what the strain of the work
is—often I’m the only lady in the room, and the gentlemen so learned,
though I’ve always found them most helpful, most generous in every way.
But I’m growing old. Miss Hartwell, that’s what it is. That’s what led
me to be thinking of this difficult matter of flour infestation in the
middle of the road so that I didn’t see the horse until he had poked his
nose into my ear. . . . Then there’s this nonsense about a pension. What
could possess Mr. Barron to think of such a thing? I should feel
inexpressibly lowered if I accepted a pension. Why, I don’t altogether
like writing LL.D. after my name, though Georgie would have liked it.
All I ask is to be let go on in my own quiet way. Now where is Messrs.
Langridge’s sample? We must take that first. ‘Gentlemen, I have examined
your sample and find . . .’”
“If any one deserves a thorough good rest it’s you. Miss Ormerod,” said
Dr. Lipscomb, who had grown a little white over the ears. “I should say
the farmers of England ought to set up a statue to you, bring offerings
of corn and wine—make you a kind of Goddess, eh—what was her name?”
“Not a very shapely figure for a Goddess,” said Miss Ormerod with a
little laugh. “I should enjoy the wine though. You’re not going to cut
me off my one glass of port surely?”
“You must remember,” said Dr. Lipscomb, shaking his head, “how much your
life means to others.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Miss Ormerod, pondering a little.
“To be sure, I’ve chosen my epitaph. ‘She introduced Paris Green into
England,’ and there might be a word or two about the Hessian fly—that,
I do believe, was a good piece of work.”
“No need to think about epitaphs yet,” said Dr. Lipscomb.
“Our lives are in the hands of the Lord,” said Miss Ormerod simply.
Dr. Lipscomb bent his head and looked out of the window. Miss Ormerod
remained silent.
“English entomologists care little or nothing for objects of practical
importance,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Take this question of flour
infestation—I can’t say how many grey hairs that hasn’t grown me.”
“Figuratively speaking. Miss Ormerod,” said Dr. Lipscomb, for her hair
was still raven black.
“Well, I do believe all good work is done in concert,” Miss Ormerod
continued. “It is often a great comfort to me to think that.”
“It’s beginning to rain,” said Dr. Lipscomb. “How will your enemies like
that, Miss Ormerod?”
“Hot or cold, wet or dry, insects always flourish!” cried Miss Ormerod,
energetically sitting up in bed.
“Old Miss Ormerod is dead,” said Mr. Drummond, opening The Times on
Saturday, July 20th, 1901.
“Old Miss Ormerod?” asked Mrs. Drummond.
[Footnote 8: Founded upon the Life of Eleanor Ormerod, by Robert
Wallace Murray. 1904.]
_Jane Austen_
It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way, we should
have had nothing of Jane Austen’s except her novels. To her elder sister
alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if
rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss
Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister’s fame made her
suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars
speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could
gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to
be of interest.
Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived from a little gossip, a
few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip which has survived
its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it suits our
purpose admirably. For example, Jane “is not at all pretty and very
prim, unlike a girl of twelve . . . Jane is whimsical and affected,”
says little Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs.
Mitford, who knew the Austens as girls and thought Jane “the prettiest,
silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers”.
Next, there is Miss Mitford’s anonymous friend “who visits her now [and]
says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise,
taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ that ever existed, and that,
until _Pride and Prejudice_ showed what a precious gem was hidden in
that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or
firescreen. . . . The case is very different now,” the good lady goes on;
“she is still a poker—but a poker of whom everybody is afraid. . . .
A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is terrific
indeed!” On the other side, of course, there are the Austens, a race
little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they say, her
brothers “were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to
her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each
loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his
own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected
to see.” Charming but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by
strangers, biting of tongue but tender of heart—these contrasts are by