FullReads

Then there was Methyll–this is the old Anglo-Saxon form of Ethel. She was a charming child and made a profound study of natural history. I remember her saying to me at a reception where the refreshments had been somewhat restricted: “One cocktail doesn’t make a swallow.” Modern biology has, I believe, confirmed this observation. She spent much of her time at the Zoo, and it was thought that it would be an advantage if she could be permanently resident there. But although she was not unlike a flamingo in the face, and I had some interest with the man who supplies the fish for the sea-lions, no vacant cage could be found. An offer to let her share one with the cassowary– missionara timbuctana –was refused.

I must now speak of another sister, Caramel, though I do so with grief. However, there is a skeleton in every fold–I mean to say, a black sheep in every cupboard. She was undeniably beautiful, and had a romantic postcard face. Her figure was perfect. Her intelligence was C 3. In a weak moment she accepted a thinking part in a revue at the “Frivolity,” and her career ended, as might have been expected, in a shocking mesalliance. She married the Marquis of Beanstrite, and has more than once appeared on the back page of the “Daily Mail,” but that is not everything. She never sees anything of me now, and it brings the tears to my eyes when I think what she is missing.

My brothers were all of them sportsmen, but they were seldom at home. They seemed to feel that they were wanted elsewhere, and they generally were. You ask any policeman in the Kentish Town district, mentioning my name, and he will tell you.

There were seventy-three of us all together, of whom eighty-four survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little irritable–I wonder why.

My mamma was quite different from my papa. They were not even of the same sex. But that so often happens, don’t you think?

My father had a curious fancy for naming all his sons after subsequent winners of the Derby. No doubt it will be said that this is not always practical; nor is it–the Derby is occasionally won by a gee-gee of the sex which I have myself adopted, and in those cases the name is unsuitable for a boy. But if it could be generally done, it would absolutely preclude any betting on one of our classic races; it would probably also preclude the race. After all, we do have to be moral in the intervals, and reclaim factory-girls in the dinner-hour. But I fear it will never happen–so few men have dear papa’s wonderful foresight.

Spearmint, my eldest surviving brother, came much under the influence of Alexis Chopitoff, and entered the same profession. Simple and unassuming, no one would have supposed that in one year he had backed the winner in all the principal races. But such was veritably the case.

“There’s nothing in it, Marge,” he said to me one evening. “There’s only one sure way to win–back every horse in the race with another man’s money. I tell a customer the tale that I was shaving a well-known trainer that morning, and that the trainer had given me a certainty; all I ask is that the customer will put half-a-crown on for me. I repeat the process, changing the name of the certainty, until I have got all risks covered. I know it’s old fashioned, but I like it. It demands nothing but patience, and it cannot possibly go wrong.”

But it did go wrong. He was telling the tale of how the well-known trainer had given him the certainty to a new customer, whom Spearmint had never shaved before. By a disastrous coincidence it happened that the new customer actually was that well-known trainer. He seemed to think that Spearmint had taken a liberty with his name, and even to resent it.