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Grossmith (ed. Morton)
The Diary
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of a Nobody
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broadview editions
“Although The Diary of a Nobody has never been out of print over the last George and
Weedon Grossmith
hundred years, it has, until now, failed to attract an edition capable of
really illuminating its lost social and literary contexts. Peter Morton’s
Broadview edition remedies this lack with its excellent introduction, incisive
textual annotation, and its comprehensive selection of extracts from
background material. This extensive scholarly apparatus, rather than edited by
overwhelming the Diary’s comedy, succeeds in breathing new life into Peter Morton
an established classic of its genre.”
Jonathan Wild, University of Edinburgh
The Diary of a Nobody
“Finally the Grossmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody has an edition worthy of its
importance. Peter Morton’s introduction, like the secondary materials he
has wisely chosen, pays attention to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of
the text. The selection of contemporary reviews and other materials allows
readers to see that the Diary for all its notoriety was not a singular
phenomenon, but rather part of a flourishing of interest in the lives of
clerks and other lower-middle-class figures. This is another fine Broadview
edition that will find its home on the bookshelves of scholars, students,
and readers of nineteenth-century literature.”
Scott Banville, University of Nevada Reno
The Diary of a Nobody, the fictional diary of Charles Pooter, a London clerk,
The Diary
first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been out of print since. The
hilariously trivial doings of the accident-prone Pooter, his wife Carrie, and
of a Nobody
their troublesome son Lupin have inspired many writers since; the satirical
novelist Evelyn Waugh called it “the funniest book in the world.” This
George and Weedon
enduring classic of Victorian social comedy is now available in a newly
edited Broadview edition.
Grossmith
This edition includes a critical introduction, comprehensive notes on the
many historical allusions in the text, and a wide selection of relevant
edited by contemporary materials on the clerk’s life, suburbia, spiritualism, and
Peter Morton domestic economy. A selection of Weedon Grossmith’s original illustrations
also accompanies the novel.
Peter Morton is Associate Professor of English at
Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
Cover: “Portrait of a Couple,” about 1890 (detail).
Photograph by the studio of H.M. Widwinter.
National Media Museum/SSPL.
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w w w. b r o a d v i e w p r e s s . c o m
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T H E D I A RY O F A N O B O D Y
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series editor: L.W. Conolly
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Diary of a Nobody main 9/16/08 10:12 AM Page 3
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T H E D I A RY O F A N O B O D Y
George and Weedon Grossmith
edited by Peter Morton
broadview editions
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© Peter Morton
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a
retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying,
a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite
, Toronto, ON —is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Grossmith, George, –.
The diary of a nobody / George & Weedon Grossmith ; edited by Peter Morton.
(Broadview editions)
Includes bibliographical references.
978-1-55111-704-1
I. Grossmith, Weedon, –. II. Morton, Peter, Apr. – III. Title. IV. Series.
pr6013.r82d53 2008 823'.8 c2008-905083-5
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Contents
Acknowledgements •
Introduction •
George and Weedon Grossmith: A Brief Chronology •
A Note on the Text •
The Diary of a Nobody •
Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews •
. From Baron de B.W. & Co., “Our Booking Office,”
Punch, ( June ) •
. From The Saturday Review, ( June ) •
. From The Athenaeum ( August ) •
. From The Literary World, ( July ) •
. From The Speaker, ( August ) •
. From The New York Times ( December ) •
. Publisher’s Note to the “new edition” of
( October ) •
. From The Bookman [London],
(December ) •
. From The Bookman [London],
(December ) •
. From Xanthias, Queen’s Quarterly, () •
Appendix B: The Clerk’s Lot in Life •
. From Charles Edward Parsons, Clerks;
Their Position and Advancement () •
. From The Clerk:A Sketch in Outline of His Duties and
Discipline () •
. From Francis Davenant, Starting in Life:
Hints for Parents on the Choice of a Profession or
Trade for Their Sons () •
. From The Story of a London Clerk:
A Faithful Narrative Faithfully Told () •
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. From Charles Booth, ed., Life and Labour of the
People in London () •
. From Robert White, “Wanted: A Rowton House for
Clerks,” Nineteenth Century, (October ) •
. From Shan Bullock, Robert Thorne:The Story of a
London Clerk () •
Appendix C: Domestic Economy at The Laurels •
. From G.S. Layard, “A Lower Middle-Class Budget,”
Cornhill Magazine, (Jan–June ) •
Appendix D: Suburban Fictions in the Wake of the Diary •
. From R. Andom, Martha and I: Being Scenes from Our
Suburban Life () •
. From W. Pett Ridge, Outside the Radius: Stories of a
London Suburb () •
. From Barry Pain, Eliza () •
. From Keble Howard, The Smiths of Surbiton:A Comedy
without a Plot () •
Appendix E: Séances in the Suburbs •
. From Morell Theobald, Spirit Workers in the Home
Circle () •
. From Florence Marryat, There Is No Death
() •
. From Barry Pain, Eliza Getting On () •
Appendix F: Suburban Life and its Critics •
. From Geoffrey Mortimer, The Blight of Respectability
() •
. From H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds () •
. From T.W.H. Crosland, The Suburbans () •
. From C.F.G. Masterman, In Peril of Change:
Essays Written in Time of Tranquillity () •
. From C.F.G. Masterman, The Condition of England
() •
Works Cited and Recommended Reading •
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Acknowledgements
Surprisingly for a popular book that has never been out of print,
The Diary of a Nobody has never been properly edited before. This
lack has drawn some comment: for example, in his Inventing the
Victorians (), Matthew Sweet wondered why, when it is so
“Zeitgeistish,” more attention hasn’t been paid to the very numer-
ous contemporary allusions in the Diary. Perhaps one reason is
that some of these allusions are so obscure that they have proved
hard to identify even with the help of specialist historians. I thank
the following people and institutions for helping me resolve
specific issues dealt with in this edition: Tony Joseph, George
Grossmith’s biographer and a fund of information about his life
and writings, and Leon Berger, an expert on his musical career;
Victoria Arrowsmith, Richard Dennis, Judith Flanders, John
George, Jim Hammerton, Lynne Hapgood, Michael Kilgarriff,Val
Pope, Dil Porter, and John Turner. I am also grateful for the detec-
tive work of my research assistant, Melinda Graefe; and thanks also
to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of
Texas, for supplying a copy of Evelyn Waugh’s own annotated
copy of the Diary.
As always, I am grateful to the School of Humanities, Flinders
University, for its financial and other generous support that have
enabled me to finish this task within the contract period.
As the textual notes demonstrate, the Oxford English Dictionary
(and its helpful editorial staff) have assisted in clarifying numer-
ous linguistic details. The online OED gives citations for the
noun “Pooter” dating between and and for the adjec-
tive “Pooterish” between and . The OED cites the
Diary twelve times, and of these citations five illustrate the first,
or joint-first, recorded usage of a word. Most of these are slang
expressions, and suggest the Grossmiths took good care to make
Lupin Pooter’s talk sound thoroughly modern.
Sweet (), .
Flint (), xii, claims the Oxford English Dictionary credits the Diary “with over
twenty neologisms.” In fact the five citations in the current () online version of
the OED illustrating a first usage are for: “blithering idiot,” “bread-pills,” “bussing,”
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Introduction
The Diary of a Nobody, the diary of Charles Pooter, a fictional clerk
in late-Victorian London, first appeared as an anonymous serial in
the British humour magazine Punch, or the London Charivari in
–. Each weekly issue of Punch, which came out on Saturdays,
contained cartoons on political and social themes, comic stories and
poems, and satirical comment on issues of the day. Its editor was
Frank Burnand (–), a lawyer with a taste for the stage and
a prolific author of comic plays and sketches. It was he who devised
the Diary’s title and added this footnote to the first episode: “As
everybody who is anybody is publishing Reminiscences, Diaries,
Notes, Autobiographies, and Recollections, we are sincerely grate-
ful to “A Nobody” for permitting us to add to the historic collec-
tion.” This is a good-humoured dig at a friend and one of the
authors of the Diary, George Grossmith, a famous actor and song-
writer. Burnand knew that Grossmith, then aged forty, was writing
an autobiography. Called A Society Clown, it appeared in August
, three months into the run of the Punch serial of the Diary.
Nothing is known of what the Punch readers thought of the
serial. However, its reception must have been sufficiently encour-
aging for its authors to go further. Some three years later, in July
, a longer version appeared as a book, under the imprint of
the publisher J.W. Arrowsmith. The authors were now identified
as the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith.
The publisher was based in Bristol, and it may seem strange that
the brothers, centred as they were on London’s theatrical and artis-
tic life, should have offered the book to a provincial company. But
there were good reasons. Arrowsmith had commissioned A Society
Clown from George Grossmith, who later claimed that ,
copies of it were sold in the month of publication. Also,
Arrowsmith had had a great success with Jerome K. Jerome’s comic
“cert” and “chuck.” For the first of these, the citation is given only as “ Punch
Feb. ,” but it is in fact a quotation from the Diary.
Punch, ( May ), .
In an interview in . See Banfield (), .
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novel Three Men in a Boat, which had also appeared first as a serial,
so for the Grossmiths the company was the obvious choice.
Who Wrote the Diary?
The short answer to this question is that the Grossmith brothers,
George and Weedon, wrote it in collaboration. It is usually assumed
that George, familiarly known in theatrical circles as “GG” or “Gee
Gee,” wrote all the text and Weedon (“Wee-Gee”), who worked
as an artist,drew the illustrations for the book version.The evidence
for this is quite good. Punch paid George alone for all the episodes.
He was no stranger to Punch, his main contribution to it being a
series of skits based on his police-court experiences, called “Very
Trying.” George himself had featured in some of its good-natured
cartoons, in connection with his key roles in the Gilbert and
Sullivan operas. Certainly he was, in , the most verbally creative
of the brothers. He was a formidably prolific song and sketch
writer, being the author, eventually, of more than eighty sketches,
at least songs, the music for seven operettas, and a quantity of
other occasional pieces for Punch and elsewhere.
But Weedon had his literary successes too, though they all
date from after the Diary. He published a novel in and was
the sole author of at least nine plays. As a actor he specialised in
Pooterish comical and farcical roles. What is more, after he
returned from an American theatrical tour in Weedon
stayed with George and his family for eighteen months. He was
certainly living with them early in May at the time when
the Diary was presumably being conceived. However, according
to Weedon’s recollections much later, they “did not see so very
much of each other,” as he was painting in a studio during the
day and, like his brother, acting in the evening.
GG’s biographer discovered this from the Punch archives. See Joseph (), .
“Very Trying: a Record of a Few Trials of Patience” appeared in Punch in ten
episodes, January-April .
Kilgarriff () lists songs and sketches, but Joseph’s unpublished bibliography
() is far more extensive.
Grossmith (), . Weedon reproduces there a telegram to himself addressed to
Dorset Square and postmarked May. George was then playing in a revival of The
Pirates of Penzance.
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The final word on this subject has to be the title page of the
first edition. The careful phrasing there was perhaps licensed by
the brothers themselves: “by George Grossmith and Weedon
Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon Grossmith.”
The Brothers Grossmith
The Grossmiths were a family of actors and entertainers encom-
passing several generations. George Grossmith, born in ,
worked as a police-court reporter and intended to move from there
into the law. But his real talent, the one that was to make his
fortune,was as an entertainer,giving what he called “recitals.”These
were one-man shows made up of comic sketches and songs, jokes,
parodies, and imitations, all of his own invention, given to a piano
accompaniment. Grossmith was a virtuoso on the piano, and could
produce from it almost any sound he wished, “except a sneer” as
an admirer said.
In George toured with Florence Marryat, a seasoned
actress some ten years older than he. Their show, Entre Nous, was
a mini-revue of piano sketches, humorous anecdotes, and recita-
tions in historical costume. This led in turn to the great break-
through in George’s career: the offer of the title role in the new
Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Sorcerer. Over the next eleven
years George went on to star in many of the “G & S” comic
operas such as Patience, The Mikado and The Yeoman of the Guard.
These roles made him a household name.
George was so small and spare that the editor Frank Harris
described him as looking like a gnat. He was pale, with a dead-pan,
drily sarcastic manner accentuated by the pince-nez that he habit-
ually wore. But he was also, as Harris said, “a sort of elf who could
sing with extraordinary speed—the very quality needed to give the
patter of Gilbert its full value.” George worked enormously hard
and, throughout his eleven years of connection with D’Oyly
Carte’s Savoy Opera Company, continued to give his humorous
solo recitals at fashionable private parties, revelling in his reputation
as a “society clown.” But his success was emotionally costly. He
Harris (), .
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suffered from insomnia, and when he did sleep was “persecuted by
the most awful nightmares.... My constant fear was that I should
forget what I had to get through on the platform, or that some
horrible mishap would occur to ruin the performance,and my own
future.” Later gossip had it that he calmed himself with drugs and
in fact became an addict. Perhaps this is responsible for the fact that
memoirs of the period record very different impressions of what
he was like personally. Some people undoubtedly found him just
as amusing as he was on stage, while others avoided him because
of his air of self-importance, or simply because his endless buffoon-
ery bored them stiff.
Meanwhile Weedon, six years younger than his brother, was
also making his way after a shakier start as an artist. At the age of
thirty, he too took to the stage and to playwriting. His first full-
length comedy, The Night of the Party, enjoyed a six-month run
in London in , and he was a very familiar face in the theatri-
cal world as an actor-manager right up to World War I.
Neither brother knew anything first-hand of the Holloway
milieu in which the Diary is set. It is true that they were raised in
North London, but that broad area stretching all the way between
Islington and Hampstead contained, then as now, many social strata.
When George was ten the Grossmiths moved to the Manor Lodge,
Haverstock Hill, and the family clearly belonged to the artistic sub-
species of the solid middle class. Their friends were theatrical folk
and journalists such as Henry Irving, George Sala and Ellen Terry.
George Grossmith senior was a journalist for The Times and a well-
known lecturer on literary subjects; his father was an intimate of
Dickens and is said to have been a model for Mr. Pickwick.
By the time the Diary was being written, the Grossmith broth-
ers had, materially speaking, far outstripped their parents’ genera-
tion. Haverstock Hill, let alone Holloway, had been left behind.
George and his family were now living in a townhouse with its
own ballroom at Dorset Square, near Regent’s Park, where they
hobnobbed with the cream of London’s literary, theatrical, and legal
society. His son described the family’s socialising at this time:
Zedlitz (), .
There are, for instance, contradictory pen-portraits in memoirs by St. Helier (),
– and Shorter (), .
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what a wonderful home and what wonderful people passed through
its doors! Great singers, artists, actors, musicians, writers, judges,
princes and poets ... Occasionally my parents would specialize. It
would be my mother’s evening—Scientists, Theologists, and ... her
special pets ...Theosophists,as well as many charming people not in
the public eye. Then it would be my father’s turn. Most of his near-
est friends were at the Bar.
“GG” could well afford such a lifestyle, for Richard D’Oyly Carte
was paying him more than £ a year by the end of his eleven-
year connection with the Savoy Opera Company. This was a huge
salary in itself, but it was only part of his earnings. It is said that
the royalties on his most popular song, See Me Dance the Polka,
alone earned him more than a thousand pounds. Nor did he rest
on his laurels after he left the Savoy for good in August , a
few months after the Diary ended in Punch. His first provincial
tour as a solo piano entertainer is said to have netted him £,
in the first seven months—probably more than a clerk like Pooter
earned in his entire working life. His American tours, five in all,
were very popular and even more remunerative.
Though Weedon never attained this level of opulence, once
he moved from art to the theatre his acting and playwriting
proved lucrative too. As a bachelor he lived in an Elizabethan
house in Canonbury Place and entertained a good deal. Later;
after he married, he had a townhouse at Bedford Square, where
he lived from until his death in .
For both brothers, then, it was a very long way indeed from
the Pooters’ cramped, nervous little parties to private dinners
with the Prince of Wales and, in George’s case, performing for
Queen Victoria at Balmoral. It is astonishing how well the Diary
captures in such convincingly minute detail the humdrum
lower-middle-class life led at Brickfield Terrace. Nothing that
the brothers wrote before May suggests that they were capa-
ble of such a remarkable feat of ventriloquism as we now
perceive the Diary to be.
Grossmith (), .
Joseph (), , . Banfield () was shown some original accounts during his
interview with GG.
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On the other hand, the Diary is suffused with its authors’ person-
alities. There was something more than a little Pooterish about both
brothers, as their memoirs make clear. These volumes are full of
long-winded anecdotes, interspersed with modest disavowals about
their authors’ talents that are less than convincing. George in partic-
ular liked to drop the names of the titled great to an extent that
some contemporaries found vulgar. Exactly like Pooter, he tells
how he keeps all his letters, just as long as there is a “good name”
at the foot. Indeed, he went further than Pooter by binding these
letters into volumes for display to friends; and then he regales us
with extracts from high-society nonentities who, strange to say, are
all found to be paying fulsome tribute to his private performances.
“This collection is the collection of a Snob, no doubt,” he says, with
a frankness that is almost disarming. But not quite.
The Genesis of the Diary
Although the Diary has pleased several generations with its humour
and has been a palpable influence on talented writers right up to
the present, almost nothing is known of the circumstances that
produced it. Whether Burnand commissioned it for Punch, or
whether the brothers offered the idea to him,is unknown.Burnand’s
own memoirs, in two hefty volumes published in while the
brothers were still alive,mention neither them nor the Diary.All we
can say is that, if the idea was suggested to him, Burnand would
surely have reacted positively.During his eight years as editor he had
softened the magazine’s political radicalism and had taken its
humour down-market,from pillorying the misdeeds of the great to
celebrating the misadventures of the little man—men like Pooter.
Even less, if possible, is known of the Grossmiths’ own atti-
tude to the work that alone has preserved their names. Few of
their private papers have survived, and none refer to it. It is rather
extraordinary that although the brothers’ three autobiographical
volumes review their active careers over many hundreds of pages,
nowhere do they devote so much as a single sentence to the
Grossmith (), . An anonymous reviewer went so far as to say that this partic-
ular detail left a nasty taste in the mouth. “[Review of A Society Clown],” (), .
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work that is their only surviving memorial.
Curiously, not one of the interviews that George gave to jour-
nalists in the s had any substantial references to it either. The
fullest of these interviews was by Raymond Blathwayt, a pioneer
in what was then a new journalistic format. He interviewed
George less than a year after the Diary was published. It is incon-
ceivable that Blathwayt did not ask him about it, yet it is never
mentioned in the resulting article. Such a transparent omission
seems to imply an agreement to keep off the subject.
How can this be explained? It may be argued, and has been,
that the Grossmiths never regarded the Diary as anything more
than a jeu d’esprit, thrown off in light-hearted moments between
weightier and more profitable commitments. But there may be
another explanation: the judgement of the first reviewers.
The Reception and Reputation of the Diary
Not much notice was taken of the Diary on its first book appear-
ance, as the publisher conceded much later (Appendix A). Nor
were the few reviews that did appear particularly favourable. Only
the Saturday Review was positive and thoughtful; the rest ranged
from the indifferent to the downright hostile. At least three review-
ers, and probably influential ones, simply failed to get the joke.
It is clear that the Diary was a “sleeper” that gradually made
its way by personal recommendation. It only started to hit its
stride among the wider public in the years leading up to World
War I. When Arrowsmith’s released a new edition in October
, it was prefaced with some fulsome comments from a few
admirers, which the company apparently had solicited directly
for the purpose. (It is significant that, in a departure from normal
practice, no quotations from reviews were included.) Whatever
the effect of this odd strategy, the Diary started to sell busily, and
this edition was frequently reprinted over the next decade.
After the War, the Diary may actually have benefited from the
jeering hostility to all things Victorian of the generation led by
Blathwayt (). There is just one non-specific phrase about Weedon’s being “part
author with myself of several sketches which have appeared in Punch” (). Other
interviews by Hyde () and Zedlitz () do not mention the Diary.
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Lytton Strachey and his brilliantly destructive essays Eminent
Victorians (). Naturally, in Strachey’s circle the Diary would
have been scorned because it seemed to confirm, in its mild fash-
ion, many of those parental values that had plunged Europe into
war. Those were values that the Modernists had made it their
business to denounce.
But Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group were not the only
arbiters of taste in post-war England. For those writers and critics
who were anti-Modernist in their sympathies and practices, admir-
ing the Diary, even singing its praises excessively, was a convenient
way of nailing one’s colours to the mast. One might defiantly cele-
brate its charm, while patronising it too. The characteristic note is
struck by the satirical essayist and journalist D.B. Wyndham Lewis,
writing in the early s. For him the Pooters were “warm, living,
breathing, futile, half-baked, incredibly alive and endearing bone-
heads” (). According to Lewis, its admirers at that time were the
“salt of the earth,” by which he meant men of the legal and polit-
ical Establishment; people like “Lord Rosebery, Mr Augustine
Birrell, Mr Hilaire Belloc, one of H.M. Ambassadors, and at least
one Abbot of Benedictines” (): in short, middle-aged senti-
mental Tories who were nostalgic about the Diary’s values but
enjoyed having a condescending chuckle over it as well. Possibly
they found reading about the misadventures of a Holloway clerk
akin to sniggering at the antics of some new monkey at the zoo.
Nevertheless, more admirers soon appeared among people of
very different stamp. By the end of the s, we find it being
praised in the same cosy phrases by J.B. Priestley. “Poor Mr. Pooter,
with his little vanities, his simplicity, his timidity, his goodness of
heart,” said the left-wing novelist, “is not simply a figure of fun,
but one of those innocent, lovable fools who are dear to the heart”
(). By that date, in the eyes of the next generation of
Grossmiths, the Diary was fully established, and with good reason,
as “the family classic.” Even so stringent a critic as Evelyn Waugh
spoke of it as “the funniest book in the world” and annotated his
own copy of it in minute detail. By the s its reputation had
Grossmith (), .
Waugh (). Waugh’s extensive annotations are discussed in Morton ().
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virtually stabilised, and it no longer seemed insincere for critics to
speak of it seriously as “a great work of art.”
Plenty of people since then have agreed with that evaluation.
Indeed, as the Diary approached and then passed its centenary,
claims for its genius increased. It has been praised by working
novelists like William Trevor. Social historians such as Gillian
Tindall and A.N. Wilson have called Pooter “the presiding shade
of the whole period” and his Diary “the best comic novel in the
language,” claiming that the Pooters are the perfect emblems of
“the really triumphant class of the Victorian period.” As recently
as October a survey of journalists on the London Observer
placed it among the hundred greatest novels of all time in any
language, thereby putting it in the same league as near-contempo-
rary canonical texts such as Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Wilde’s Dorian
Gray and James’s Portrait of a Lady. There have been at least three
different stage versions, in , , and , with the last, by
Keith Waterhouse, drawing on his own two clever pastiches of the
Diary. There have also been two television versions and several
radio dramatisations.
In short, the Pooters are among those literary characters that
educated people are assumed to know about, as regular mentions
of them in quality journalism show. Perhaps one should limit that
to British journalism: the Diary is hardly known outside its native
country. American literary sophisticates who like it seem to feel
they have to be defensive about it, for example. The Diary is “a
book that has been my prop and stay in troubled times,” says one,
as though only an arch, quasi-Biblical tone will ward off the
raised eyebrows. But whether the humour is really distinctively
“English” is for each reader to decide.
The Pooter World
“It’s the diary that makes the man. Where would Evelyn and Pepys
have been if it had not been for their diaries?” reflects Pooter ().
Lancaster (), .
Tindall (), ; Wilson (), .
McCrum (), –.
Holt (), .
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He has a point. Those great seventeenth-century diarists do offer
a remarkable window into the public life of their day, but even
Pepys, an important civil servant, is remembered most for the
homely details and shameless self-revelations in his diary. Certainly
Pooter is no Pepys: the joke, of course, is the excruciating banality
of his diary. But in its way the Diary is a valuable document of social
history, especially so because the sector of Victorian society with
which it deals has attracted few historians, despite its size.
It is not that the Diary deals with important topical matters.
One looks in vain for any mention of the public events of the
day, even though the later s were wracked by public distur-
bances. We find nothing about the great issue of Home Rule for
Ireland, or about the Fenian terrorist bombings in London. The
Match Girls’ strike of July , which was recognised at the time
as being a turning point in labour history, goes unmentioned. So
do the Bloody Sunday riots of the unemployed in Trafalgar
Square at the end of , events that had horrified many people
of Pooter’s class and above.
It is less surprising, no doubt, that there is no mention of the
“autumn of terror”: the ten weeks late in , while the Diary
was in mid-stream, that saw Jack the Ripper killing women in
Whitechapel. The last and most hideous murder took place on
the night of Friday November, the very day on which Pooter
records that his “endeavours to discover who tore the sheets out
of my diary still fruitless.”
What the Diary does contain is a wealth of cultural signifiers.
It is a mine of small, striking, easily-overlooked details that help
illuminate, and in turn are illuminated by, the masterpieces of real-
istic fiction by Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, and Arnold
Bennett: such matters as bicycling and ballooning, manicuring and
newspaper controversies about marriage, “aesthetic” decorative
affectations, rude Christmas cards, parasols five feet long, patent
bow-ties, and financial frauds. Even Pooter’s painting the bath is
Ivan Butler () wrote a witty and ingenious essay making a “case” for “Charles
the Ripper.” He made much of the fact that the “sinister” gap in the entries caused
by the pages of the Diary having been accidentally “burnt” (or so Pooter claimed!)
do in fact encompass the dates of the first four murders, which occurred between
Friday August and Sunday September .
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realistic. A contemporary household manual specifically mentions
re-enamelling the bathtub as a job that the amateur could tackle—
though not, admittedly, using red paint. We can discover how
people of Pooter’s class talked to servants and tradespeople, and,
far more unusually, how they talked back. We find out much about
their domestic amusements, especially spiritualist séances; about
their commuting habits and their relations with their family
members and their friends and social superiors.
Most of all, perhaps, we notice Pooter’s repeated and usually
futile attempts to assert his male authority. The Diary offers inter-
esting insights into the steady erosion of respectability and defer-
ence in Edwardian England; about feminised masculinity in the
suburban middle classes; and about the satisfactions and tensions
of marriage and changes in pre-marital relations among the
younger generation.
The Grossmiths’ first brilliant stroke was to house the Pooters
in Holloway. For a while, earlier in the nineteenth century, this
district had been a geographically distinctive place—a “walking
suburb” close enough to the City for pedestrian commuters. In
Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (–), which is apparently set
somewhat earlier, Reginald Wilfer is a junior clerk with “a
limited salary and an unlimited family.” Even then, Holloway was
the natural habitat for such a man. Dickens’s description of the
locality gives an extra resonance to the name of the Pooters’
street, Brickfield Terrace:
His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and
then divided from it by fields and trees. Between Battle Bridge
[the area around King’s Cross] and that part of the Holloway
district in which he dwelt, was a tract of suburban Sahara, where
tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat,
rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by
contractors. Skirting the border of this desert, by the way he
took, when the light of its kiln-fires made lurid smears on the
fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head ().
See, in particular, the works by A. James Hammerton and John Tosh listed in the
bibliography.
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By the s the brick fields lay buried under their own prod-
uct and Holloway was rapidly ceasing to be what most people
understood by a London “suburb” at all. Mrs. James “of Sutton”
lives in a proper suburb; the Pooters just live somewhere in the
shapeless sprawl of the largest city on earth.
Holloway was definitely on the slide as the century closed.
The well-to-do had always shunned it. By the Pooters’ day, parts
of it had become distinctly seedy, especially to the south, running
down to King’s Cross railway station. In his slum novel Thyrza
(), George Gissing drew a gruesome pen-portrait of “Pooter
country” at this date:
Caledonian Road is a great channel of traffic running directly
north from King’s Cross to Holloway. It is doubtful whether
London can show any thoroughfare of importance more
offensive to eye and ear and nostril.You stand at the entrance
to it, and gaze into a region of supreme ugliness; every house
front is marked with meanness and inveterate grime; every
shop seems breaking forth with mould or dry-rot; the people
who walk here appear one and all to be employed in labour
that soils body and spirit. Journey on the top of a tram-car
from King’s Cross to Holloway, and civilisation has taught you
its ultimate achievement in ignoble hideousness.You look off
into narrow side-channels where unconscious degradation has
made its inexpugnable home, and sits veiled with refuse.You
pass above lines of railway, which cleave the region with black-
breathing fissure.You see the pavements half occupied with the
paltriest and most sordid wares; the sign of the pawnbroker is
on every hand; the public-houses look and reek more intoler-
ably than in other places. The population is dense, the poverty
is undisguised. All this northward-bearing tract, between
Camden Town on the one hand and Islington on the other, is
the valley of the shadow of vilest servitude. Its public monu-
ment is a cyclopean prison [Pentonville]: save for the desert
around the Great Northern Goods Depôt, its only open
ground is a malodorous cattle-market. In comparison, Lambeth
is picturesque and venerable, St. Giles’s is romantic, Hoxton is
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clean and suggestive of domesticity, Whitechapel is full of
poetry, Limehouse is sweet with sea-breathings.
This is what the Pooters must see, for example, when they
travel by bus to Islington via King’s Cross for their disastrous
evening’s entertainment at the Tank theatre. Gissing’s is a gloomy
picture indeed, and charged with his typically ironic disgust, but
it is certain that squalor was never very far away. One street,
Campbell Road, housed six noisy brothels by the s and had
picked up the label of “the worst street in North London”—an
award for which there was surely plenty of competition. Twenty
years later, other streets in the area were said to be notable for
“both poverty and vice,” as reflected in the condition of the local
schoolchildren. Broadly speaking, the demographic spectrum
ranged from the unpretentious working classes, through the
lower-lower middle classes struggling to become respectable, as
far as the upper-lower middle classes (to which the Pooters
belong) painfully eager to cling on to and consolidate their status.
It seems that by the s Holloway had become a conven-
ient butt for any novelist wanting to set a scene where pathos
and vulgarity had to be interwoven. For example, when Ernest
Le Breton, the hero of Grant Allen’s Socialist novel Philistia
(), loses his schoolmaster’s job and has to search for lodgings
with his wife and baby, it is through the back streets of Holloway
that the family tramps. They look for cheap rooms, and “they
saw a great many, more or less dear, and more or less dirty and
unsuitable, until their poor hearts really began to sink within
them” ().
But things turn out better in Allen’s novel than they do in
George Gissing’s New Grub Street (). In Gissing’s novel Mrs.
Yule, the working-class wife of the aging hack author Alfred
Yule, hails from Holloway and, unknown to her irritable
husband, returns there surreptitiously to visit her relatives. The
fury that Yule unleashes on his miserable wife after an intrusion
Gissing (), . First published . The areas mentioned in the closing sentence
were East End slums.
Inwood (), ; Argyll, in Booth (–), .
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from Holloway speaks volumes about the perceived gulf between
that suburb and the shabby but respectable St Paul’s Crescent,
Camden Town, where the Yules live. It matters not a whit that
they live in a house no better than the Pooters’, and actually on
a rather smaller income. Gissing was a topographical diagnosti-
cian of unerring accuracy about such matters.
But to all this Charles Pooter is sublimely indifferent. Gissing’s
“ignoble hideousness” means nothing to him, and that is a very
pointed part of the joke. When his boss Mr Perkupp presents
him with the gift of the freehold of his “little house,” he hopes
to live out the rest of his days there. He could still have been
living there and contemplating retirement in , when a
nearby street was the sinister background to the Crippen murder
case. Indeed, Dr Crippen, who looked like a stereotypical clerk,
was supposedly known as the “Mr. Pooter of crime.”
Whether the Pooters’ home, The Laurels, is imaginary or not
has been disputed. Certainly houses of that type do still exist by
their thousands in Holloway and similar suburbs. However, in
a radio talk in , Philip Carr, who knew the Grossmith family
well as a child, was certain that The Laurels was modelled exactly
on the house occupied by George and Rosa Grossmith after
their marriage, which was in Blandford Square, Marylebone,
nowhere near Holloway.
Whatever its location, The Laurels is thoroughly realised. (The
absurdity of giving such a house a name resonant of spacious
detached villas is supposed to be obvious.) It contains six main
rooms in two storeys above a half-basement. The latter has two
rooms, a kitchen at the back and the “breakfast parlour” with a
sunken bay window, the upper half of which looks over the front
garden. The Pooters use this a good deal, probably because it is cosy
and warm. Of the three ground-floor rooms, the front one is the
parlour, separated by folding doors from the drawing room (and
dining room) that looks onto the rear garden. The remaining
Quoted in Early (), , but no source is given.
Cases have been made for houses at Holloway Road or else at Pemberton
Gardens, Holloway, which does back on to railway lines, but neither frontage matches
Weedon’s drawing very closely. See Carr (), Weinreb & Hibbert (), ; West
(), ; Glinert (), –.
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downstairs room is presumably the one referred to alternatively as
the “back drawing room” or “sitting room.”
The upper floor is reached from a staircase rising from a small
hall. Upstairs, the allocation of the bedrooms isn’t very clear. There
is room only for three, two at the front and one at the back next
to the bathroom. The main front bedroom has the back of a dress-
ing table mirror visible in Weedon’s drawing, so we assume this is
the marital bedroom. One entry says there is “no key to our
bedroom door.” () Yet other references seem to make it equally
plain that the Pooters have separate rooms, for we hear how Mrs.
James “went into Carrie’s room to take off her bonnet, and
remained there nearly an hour” (); and, later on, that “Carrie,
who appeared very frightened, was standing outside her bedroom.”
() Another time Pooter leaves at night a present and a note on
his wife’s dressing table, which seems odd if they share a room.
These conflicting statements may be a result of the habit, then
current, of alluding delicately to the marital bedroom as the
wife’s domain only. Indeed, in grander houses, the husband might
well sleep sometimes in an adjacent “dressing room.” However,
if the Pooters do sleep apart, then the second bedroom must be
Charles’s and the third Lupin’s.
Where, then, does the maid Sarah sleep? Clearly upstairs,
because Pooter goes there to paint her wash-stand. This is surpris-
ing in itself, for it is unlikely that in so small a house the servant
would have had a bedroom. It was quite usual even in much larger
houses for one or two servants to sleep in the kitchen on truckle
beds. Further, in Weedon’s drawing, Sarah’s room has a dormer
window, but this seems to conflict with his view of the frontage
of The Laurels, which shows a flat roof and no attic.
At any rate, Sarah surely had to make do with the scullery and
wash-house beyond the kitchen for her ablutions, and the
outdoors privy. It is unimaginable that she would have used the
family’s bathroom. The latter may not have contained a lavatory
fitting at that date. If not, then the Pooters must have used the
same outdoors privy as their servant in the daytime and had
chamber pots in the bedrooms at night.
The household is maintained solely by the earnings of Mr
Pooter. He has worked for Mr. Perkupp’s business in the City for
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twenty years. His duties are not very clear, but he keeps accounts,
writes letters, and advises clients about their investments. From
Monday to Saturday he commutes to the office by horse-drawn
bus. It takes half an hour, and apparently it is acceptable to arrive at
:. Saturday is a half-day. He goes out to a restaurant for his
dinner—only his trendy son “lunches” during the week—and is
home by six-thirty or seven in time for tea, or, if there are visitors,
“meat-tea.” Meal-times were in a state of flux, but in Pooter’s class
the main meal was in the middle of the day or, at weekends, in the
late afternoon. Pooter is disconcerted when his son proposes dining
with him one evening as late as :.
We do not know Pooter’s salary exactly, but it is certainly well
above the average for clerks. Clerks were notoriously ill-paid and
sometimes subject to a regimen which even at the time was
thought fatuous and offensive (see Appendix B). In a large office
employing say thirty clerks, twenty would have been paid £ a
year at most, and some a lot less. As a commentator put it in ,
“very few journeymen mechanics are paid so little as a guinea
[£.p] per week, which is a very common salary for clerks who
have long passed the junior stage.” Small wonder that career
guides written for parents thought it axiomatic that “no one will
propose to make his son a clerk if he can possibly get anything
better for him to do” (Appendix B). Commentators remarked
how curious it was that clerks were so ill-paid and so despised
when their work was so vital to the economy. The number of
clerking jobs in England and Wales did nearly quadruple between
and , as Britain became not only the workshop of the
world but its financial and mercantile heart as well. Behind the
cosy routines of Pooter and the invented names like “Cleanands,”
“Gylterson,” “Gillam Crowbillon”—if not “Perkupp”—one can
hear faintly the hammer-pulse of the richest economy the world
had ever seen.
Flanders (), says that pm “was the same time that Mr. Pooter had his dinner
on his return from the City.” This is a slip, as Pooter arrives home at least an hour
later than that and the meal he has is always “tea.” He leaves his office to dine at :.
Roberts (), . He adds that “the ordinary clerk has very few chances of earn-
ing an income of £ or £ per annum.” It should be borne in mind that even
in barely one in twenty of British families had an income above £pa.
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Despite the low pay, clerking had something desirable to offer:
white-collar respectability. Many clerks had a proletarian back-
ground. They had secured a toehold, but no more than that, in
the middle class. Insecure and marginalised, they were naturally
inclined to obsequiousness, conventionality, timidity, loyalty, and
political quietism. The very thought that he might join a trade
union would have frightened Pooter out of his wits.
By the average standard of clerks, then, it is plain that Pooter is
doing pretty well, especially after his promotional increase of
£, which he calls “enormous.” If he is then earning about
£ a year, Pooter is within the top few percent of salary-earn-
ers in s England. It is true that correcting for inflation suggests
this sum is “worth” around £, in modern currency, but that
in itself is a misleading conversion. What made a great difference
is that Pooter paid very few taxes, either direct or indirect. In
a young professional man writing as “Felicitas” revealed that he
paid only £ in income tax, on earnings of £. He thought
even that much was “odious” (). It has been said that, to allow
for tax savings, a Victorian salary, after correcting for inflation,
should then be tripled to give an idea of its relative purchasing
power today.
A more direct means of comparison is an article by G.S.
Layard, which discusses the lifestyle available to those with up to
£ a year (Appendix C). It seems a fairly straitened life
compared to the one we see the Pooters enjoying. For example,
Layard says a wife’s skill with the needle, in making or adapting
the family’s clothes, must strongly affect their standard of living,
but we never see Carrie so industriously engaged. (Indeed, one
of the first reviewers seized on this very detail, objecting that in
a Pooter-type household the wife would have mended their
clothes, and never wasted money on a tailor.) Nor, of course, do
they have dependent children.
The Pooters are surely living above Layard’s maximum
budget, and it is plain that having even say £ more did make
a lot of difference. Compared to most people of their class they
live well—indeed, very well. To have a whole house at the
disposal of two or three people was far beyond the scope of most
London families. They eat and drink more or less what they like
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and can afford small luxuries. Pooter treats himself to the latest
consumer gadgets, and Carrie always has a new costume for their
annual holiday. There are plenty of small tradesmen close at hand
eager to supply all the services that their economy had available,
and the Pooters pay others to do practically everything they
don’t want to do, or can’t do, for themselves. Pooter’s working
hours, and the kind of work he is paid well to do, do not seem
very arduous by modern standards.
Nor, indeed, do Carrie’s housewifely duties. After all, she has
a live-in, full-time “general” (all-purpose servant) as well as a
daily charwoman. Tradesmen call at the door. Carrie has ample
leisure—in the class to which she aspires that was important—
but she appears to have no particular interests, not even paying
“calls” which filled up so much time for married women in the
classes above her. She goes shopping and visits her old school-
friend Mrs. James at Sutton, in Surrey, a place then on the way
to becoming a dormitory suburb for the comfortable middle
classes. Mrs. James allows no fashionable trend, from large hats to
spiritualism, to pass her by, and Carrie is slightly in awe of her,
although both male Pooters find her overbearing and rude. Apart
from such excursions, we gather that Carrie rarely leaves home
unaccompanied. At one point Pooter has to return home to
collect her for a social engagement, because she refuses to travel
by herself in the early evening to meet him.
The Pooters in their leisure hours remind us how entirely
dependent our ancestors were on self-generated domestic
amusements. We hear of piano-playing and singing; having
friends call in; playing dominoes, cards, or other parlour games;
smoking and drinking downstairs in the breakfast parlour.
Watching friends doing impersonations and imitations is surpris-
ingly prominent. Reading is mostly confined to magazines and
newspapers; books are rarely mentioned.
Yet it is not all cosy comfort. A striking feature of the Pooters’
lives is that they are mildly but constantly anxious. It is an anxi-
ety mostly social and class-based, but it is also economic. Of
course, the anxiety is touched up for comic effect, but there is
no mistaking the more serious tone that occasionally intrudes.
We are reminded of the nagging fear of the white-collar worker
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over losing his “berth” when Mr Perkupp, the boss, calls Pooter
to his office. Pooter has no reason to be apprehensive, but “I must
confess that my heart commenced to beat and I had most seri-
ous misgivings.”
Mr. Perkupp was in his room writing, and he said: “Take a
seat, Mr. Pooter, I shall not be moment.”
I replied: “No, thank you, sir; I’ll stand.”
I watched the clock on the mantelpiece, and I was waiting
quite twenty minutes; but it seemed hours. Mr. Perkupp at last
got up himself ().
This is a muted theme in the Diary—it was hardly a comic
matter—but Pooter’s anxieties do gain great point when read
against other fiction about clerks, such as the anonymous Story of a
London Clerk (), whose hero Osmond Ormesby braces himself
“to sell his labour at almost any price, in almost any market.” ()
Later, he explains how he lives on twelve shillings a week working
for a lawyer. At all costs he has to hang on to his respectable appear-
ance, and that involves, among other indignities, wearing dirt-proof
rubber collars to his shirts. This drearily realistic documentary
fiction helps us appreciate both Pooter’s nervousness and his more
usual mood of preening self-satisfaction (see Appendix B).
Another form of anxiety on display is much mocked. This is
the intense class consciousness of Pooter and his wife. For exam-
ple, they worry constantly about wearing the right clothes, and
are mortified when they, or their friends, wear the wrong clothes
for the occasion. Dress was one of the supreme signifiers of class
and status at this time, and every Victorian learned to decode its
symbolic language. A modern reader is hardly likely to register
the fact that Cummings turns up to the party in an invented
“half dress” consisting of a frock coat and a white tie, but the
combination would have made the first readers guffaw. Similarly,
the detail about Carrie’s “little cloth cricket-cap,” that she prefers
to a bonnet, is probably meant to imply vulgarity.
Clothes were expensive to buy and keep presentable, so they
were likely to register cruelly the first signs that one was slipping
down the economic ladder. After the Sunday dinner at Finsworth’s,
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when the dog licks the polish off Pooter’s boots, we hear that “the
walk home was remarkable only for the fact that several fools
giggled at the unpolished state of my boots. Polished them myself
when I got home.” () Again, the incident is touched up for
comic effect, but nevertheless it is a reminder that this was a world
of stronger social policing than ours. It was a world where you
might be jeered at by street loungers if your apparent status and
your clothes were giving out contradictory signals.
The Pooters’ social anxiety is exacerbated by their realisation
that the ground is shifting under their feet. The mid-Victorian
certainties under which they were raised are starting to break up,
and that makes them neurotically sensitive about their social
position. Bettering themselves means, above all, getting other
people to see them as “gentlefolk.” At this time, the notion of
what constituted a gentleman or a lady was just starting to lose
its definition as a class/income delineator, in which the most
important element was either not needing to work, or working
(in the case of a man) at one of the jobs traditionally accepted as
gentlemanly: law, medicine, the Church, the army, certain kinds
of artistic activity, the higher levels of business. Again and again
we see Pooter drawing the cloak of gentleman protectively
around him; yet the truth, of which he himself is uneasily aware,
is that a clerk simply was not, and could not be, a gentleman in
the sense still prevailing. The theme is stated early, in the first
chapter, when the tradesman Borset claims not to know any
clerks who are gentlemen. Borset is drunk, as it happens, but he
is right. The conversion had only just started of the term
“gentleman” into a vague moral descriptor: that is, merely any
respectable middle-class person, and eventually little but a label
on a public lavatory.
The most frightening and subversive single line in the Diary
(from Pooter’s perspective) is the “loud, coarse laugh” of the
ironmonger, Farmerson, which is his response when Pooter is
astonished to see him at the Mansion House ball: “I like that—
if you, why not me?” Pooter can only respond “Certainly” but
wishes “I could have thought of something better to say.” ()
But there is nothing he can say. A prosperous retail ironmonger
could well afford, in every sense, to patronise a mid-level clerk.
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It is a painful realisation for the likes of Pooter, and betokened
the further disruptions to the traditional class structure that lay
in wait in the next century.
Perhaps these various anxieties are what make the Pooters cling
so closely together. “I spent the evening quietly with Carrie, of
whose company I never tire.” () Such is the keynote of the
Pooter marriage. Among the aspirant middle orders in the urban
England of the s, the ideal of the companionate marriage had
been thoroughly internalised. Both Pooters adhere to it. Both take
it for granted that, apart from very occasional Sunday outings
with his male friends, Pooter will be found neither at the pub nor
in his club, the male retreats of the classes below and above him.
He will spend all his leisure at home with his wife.
If the Pooters are a partnership, as the current ideology
required, then it is an unequal one. Pooter’s home is a thoroughly
gendered space, his wife’s domain, and he regularly defers to her.
Almost his only outlet for manful assertion is to patronise his wife
secretly in his diary. He confides to it that some of her sugges-
tions about what to put in an important letter are “absolutely
idiotic,” () and when they dine with the thrillingly unortho-
dox Hardfur Huttle, for instance, he records how “Carrie was
about to say something; but she was interrupted, for which I was
rather pleased, for she is not clever at argument.” ()
But we, the readers, see that she is quite clever enough to snub
her husband when she wishes to. In fact Carrie Pooter strikes us
as more empowered than most Victorian wives are supposed to
have been. It is true that she has no income, no career and no
vote. If Mr. Pooter had suddenly taken it into his head to keep a
mistress, for example, or to sexually abuse her, she could not have
divorced him on those grounds alone. For anything short of
severe physical violence she was expected to stick it out at home.
(Marital rape, adultery, domestic imprisonment, and moderate
chastisement did not count as cruelty.) If Carrie had left because
Pooter would not maintain her, for instance, she would have put
herself outside the protection of the law.
Yet we see how these hard facts have remarkably little effect
on her self-image or behaviour. She does not fit either of the
stereotypes traditionally associated with Victorian wives. She is
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neither an “Angel in the House” of extraordinary moral virtue,
nor is she a domestic slave under marital control. We see her
arguing vigorously with her husband, and even walking out on
him for more than a week. Pooter unconsciously reveals just how
irritating she finds him in private, and she does not scruple to
disparage him in public, as when she informs his friends that “he
tells me his stupid dreams every morning nearly.” () Only
once does the meek Pooter show real spirit: this comes when he
finally puts his foot down over the séances, after which Mrs James
makes some insulting remark in an undertone:
I said: “Hush, madam. I am master of this house—please under-
stand that.”
Mrs. James made an observation which I sincerely hope I was
mistaken in. I was in such a rage I could not quite catch what she
said. But if I thought she said what it sounded like, she should
never enter the house again. ()
What she has muttered, clearly, is something about who really
wears the trousers at The Laurels. When, provoked beyond
endurance at this sally, he turns on her like a cornered rat—or
mouse—it is hard, as usual, to know whether we are expected to
snigger or smile sympathetically.
The unwelcome arrival home of Lupin Pooter, a sprig of
twenty, introduces more domestic comedy. He is instantly recog-
nizable as the forerunner of a modern youth still living fretfully
under the parental roof. He treats the house as a hotel, staying in
bed all morning and then going out with friends at eleven
o’clock. He is insouciant about money and drinks and smokes
too much. His taste in music, entertainment and friends seem
specially designed to irritate. Lupin despises Pooter’s fashion
sense and, dressing sharply himself, does not hesitate to say so.
But he has many saving graces. He is quick-witted, enterpris-
ing and warm-hearted and, despite his father’s gloomy predic-
tions, is soon spotted by his employer as a young man in a hurry.
Relations between father and son, which are marked by an easy,
mocking familiarity on Lupin’s part, are presented attractively:
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In the exuberance of his spirits he hit his hat with his stick, gave a
loud war “Whoo-oop,” jumped over a chair, and took the liberty
of rumpling my hair all over my forehead, and bounced out of the
room, giving me no chance of reminding him of his age and the
respect which was due to his parent. ()
It is plain that no such scene as this ever took place at George
Grossmith’s tightly-run home in Dorset Square. But then, his eldest
son was only fourteen when Lupin sauntered into the pages of Punch.
In the novelist Colin McInnes, in an article entitled
“Groovy Lupin,” presented him as a Sixties teenager, eighty years
before his time. But this view of Lupin as a proto-hippie is ridicu-
lous. Lupin is no rebel, other than being impatient with his father’s
stuffiness and humble obedience. No, Lupin is a startlingly recog-
nisable precursor of a very different type: the yuppie. His ambitions
circle around the idea of what he calls “good old biz,” and his most
obvious descendants are the young City brokers of just a century
later. Can we doubt that today’s Lupin would be hunched over a
screen,making in a single deal most of his father’s annual salary? The
full extent of Lupin’s rebellion is merely to swap Holloway for an
expensive Bayswater apartment, to get a job in a progressive finan-
cial house,and to marry Murray Posh’s rich sister.Certainly no hint
of McInnes’s “groovy Lupin” is visible as he raps out instructions to
his parents to be prompt at his first dinner party: “Eight o’clock
sharp. No one else.” () The occasion is, naturally, “full dress.”
When another decade or so has passed, Lupin and his tall,
plain, older wife with her annoying laugh will make a perfect
Edwardian nouveau riche couple. With the benefit of hindsight
we can predict life is likely to be good for Lupin Pooter. He will
be too old for the First World War, though he may lose a son of
his own in it, and he will probably die just after the start of the
Second. He will surely make good money in the Edwardian
boom years; and he is likely, since he will be in his fifties by that
time, to do even better in the free-spending s. Indeed, by
that date he may well have become one of those “hard-faced
men,” cited by John Maynard Keynes, who looked as if they had
done very well out of the War. The poet John Betjeman memo-
rialised him in his elegiac poem “Middlesex”:
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Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.
In one respect the comedy of the Diary reaches even beyond the
grave. Its hilarious and shrewd account of a séance in Chapter
gives us a light-hearted but informative insight into this curious late-
Victorian cultural phenomenon.Spiritualism appealed especially to
the aspiring middle classes,especially the women,and table-turning
and other forms of séance were a popular domestic entertainment
in the suburbs. Some of the written accounts are so Pooterish in
their unconscious absurdity as to suggest the Grossmiths needed to
invent very little (see especially Appendix E).
Since George Grossmith’s wife cultivated spiritualists, doubtless
both brothers would have been familiar in outline with the work
of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in , whose
original membership included the cream of Britain’s intelligentsia.
Their friend the Punch editor Frank Burnand was a spiritualist, and
both brothers, though highly sceptical, had frequented, and in
Weedon’s case organised, séances themselves.
Spiritualism’s heyday in Britain was the s, with the rise of
mediums who claimed to produce materialised spirit forms. The
best-known was Florence Cook, whose spectacular ability to raise
the spirit “Katie King” was investigated by a famous chemist and
academic, William Crookes. He staked his reputation on the
phenomena being genuine. Cook’s credibility suffered in a well-
publicised incident in January , when another manifestation
was seized during a séance and proved to be Cook in her under-
clothes. This is probably the context to Pooter’s masterful boast
that he “put an end to it years ago when Carrie, at our old house,
used to have séances every night with poor Mrs. Fussters.” ()
However, the Diary is, yet again, accurate in capturing a revival
of interest in the early s. This was due in part to the visit to
England in – of Leonora Piper of Boston, a respectable
“Middlesex,” in Betjeman (). Another of Betjeman’s poems, “Thoughts on the
Diary of a Nobody” (), is about the Pooters’ Sunday visit to Watney Lodge.
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woman whose career withstood all investigation over many
years. She was a “mental,” not a materialising medium, and gave
that form of Spiritualism a new credibility. At the same time the
feats of another, more dubious Italian physical medium, Eusapia
Paladino, were becoming known in England.
The trigger for the Pooters’ séances is Carrie’s reading There Is
No Birth (“All the world is going mad over the book” ()). A
best-seller of was Florence Marryat’s There Is No Death.
Marryat, a woman of extraordinary energy, had been George
Grossmith’s touring partner years before. She was the author of
more than eighty books, mostly sensational romances for women;
she also worked as an editor, journalist, and opera singer. A friend
described her as “a tall striking-looking woman,” given to slang
and breezy expletives in her talk (Downey, –). She was a
committed spiritualist, and her book is a breathless account of the
wonders she had personally experienced during twenty years in
the séance room. It is hard to reconcile the image of this versatile
woman with the absurdities of There Is No Death. Even now it is
impossible to decide whether Marryat was idiotically gullible,
subject to bizarre hallucinations, or simply a barefaced liar.
The séance scenes are amusing and sharply observed in their
own right, but they are also woven cleverly into the plot. They
are given sharp point—indeed, some drama—by the unspoken
fears Pooter and Carrie have about their son. On April Pooter
has his dream:
I suddenly remembered an extraordinary dream I had a few nights
ago, and I thought I would tell them about it. I dreamt I saw some
huge blocks of ice in a shop with a bright glare behind them. I
walked into the shop and the heat was overpowering. I found that
the blocks of ice were on fire. The whole thing was so real and yet
so supernatural I woke up in a cold perspiration. ()
Sure as fate, a couple of weeks later Lupin is sacked, and Pooter
forms “terrible suspicions” about his son’s behaviour, especially
Hall () notices that the column “Novels of the Week” is where the Athenaeum
(intentionally?) reviewed her book, on December . For further details of her spir-
itualism see Black (), Eisenbud (), and, most usefully, Oppenheim (), –.
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when he finds he is friends with Murray and Daisy Posh again, and
is spending much of his time there. By the end of the month, the
insensitive but astute Gowing puts into words Pooter’s worst fears:
Gowing said: “I say, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Lupin if old
Posh kicked the bucket.”
My heart gave a leap of horror, and I rebuked Gowing very
sternly for joking on such a subject. I lay awake half the night
thinking of it—the other half was spent in nightmares on the
same subject. ()
Just two days later Pooter is persuaded to take part in his first
séance, and then on June the table spells out the ominous
sequence “NIPUL-WARN-POSH” and “we all thought of Mrs
Murray Posh and Lupin.” () What they are all thinking—
though Pooter dare not confess it even in his diary—is that Lupin
and Daisy Posh are lovers who are conspiring to murder the latter’s
rich husband. It all comes to nothing, of course—Pooter has got
the wrong end of the stick, as usual—but, just for a moment,
grotesque shadows seem to be gathering, fed by ambiguous
menaces from the Other World.
Narrative Technique in the Diary
The Diary of a Nobody, useful though it is as a document of social
history, is first and foremost a comic fiction—indeed, by general
consent, a comic masterpiece.
Analysing humour is a dispiriting activity. As Mark Twain said,
it is like a frog: you can dissect it, but if you do, it dies. It is a fact
that very little Victorian humour has worn well. It is a disquieting
experience to leaf through an original volume of a comic paper
like Punch. Many of the cartoons, jokes, and anecdotes in Punch are
not simply not funny today: they are literally incomprehensible.
Nevertheless, the Diary did emerge from a well-established
tradition of Victorian humour, and it has to be read against that.
Where the Diary is most unusual is in its economy of effect. In an
era when most written humour was marked by its piling-up of
whimsical detail—the Dickensian tradition, in fact—the Diary is
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very different. It knocks away a central prop of Victorian humour
with its mockery of Pooter’s own execrable puns. Its writing is
scrupulously taut. It contains hardly an extraneous sentence. Every
little detail carries its sly weight of comic significance. How diffi-
cult a feat that is can be seen by looking at extracts from fictions
which tried to imitate the Diary’s success (especially Appendices
D and D). These seem slack by comparison, and their humour
close to mere facetiousness.
Indeed, though the Diary may seem artless, it is a good deal
more sophisticated than it may look. For one thing, there is its
sheer originality. Earlier novels had incorporated diary entries
for the sake of immediacy, but the Diary is probably the first
English novel using a diary format throughout.
It is useful, at this point, to distinguish between two types of
fictive diary. The first is the pseudo-diary, where a fiction is offered
as a real diary, ostensibly written by the protagonist. Examples are
Stephen Dedalus’s diary that closes Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man and Roquentin’s diary that makes up Sartre’s novel
Nausea (). The appeal of using this variety of first-person narra-
tive is obvious: no other technique is so inherently realistic and
immediate. Indeed, the realistic novel itself was, in part, born out of
texts that were offered initially as “real” memoirs or diaries. For
example, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year () was offered as
the memoir of one “H.F.,” a Whitechapel saddler, recording the
events of the Great Plague of –, and was not discerned to be
fiction until decades later.
The other type is the mock-diary, where both diarist and the
diary form itself are handled ironically. The mock-diary emerged
definitively in the late-Victorian years,probably because a new flood
of real,pompous,self-regarding diaries,journals and memoirs finally
drew the attention of satirists. Punch magazine exploited this trend
with a “Dogberry’s Diary” about an inept policeman, a “Diary of a
Pessimist,”and an “Extract from the Diary of a Dyspeptic.”Another
long-running feature in Punch was a mock diary called “Essence of
Parliament. Extracted from the Diary of Toby, MP.” All these were
These mock-diaries appeared in the issues of Punch of April, June and December
respectively. “Toby, MP” started on June . All were anonymous.
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contemporary with The Diary of a Nobody, which announces itself
as being in the same mode with its defensive opening statement by
Mr Pooter himself: “I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a
‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting.” ()
Mock-diaries are inherently comical, and their comedy
depends on the maintenance of several narrative levels in the text
which, in the convenient terminology of reader-response liter-
ary theory, are controlled by the implied author, the narrator, the
narratee, and the implied reader.
The implied author is a voiceless textual constructor, the
arranger of the materials, and the guide to the whole point of
view of the Diary: It is not necessarily identical to the flesh and
blood Grossmiths—a point considered further later on.
As for the narrator, this is ostensibly Pooter himself. In most
realist fiction, certainly that of the Victorian era, the narrator may
well address the implied reader directly, without ambiguity and
with a tacit assumption of shared values.
However, in some fictions—and in all mock-diaries—stand-
ing between narrator and implied reader is another entity, the
narratee, who is silent in the text yet exists as an ever-sympathetic
“ear” into which the diarist speaks. Frequently the narratee is the
physical diary itself: the entity sometimes cosily addressed by
diarists (though not by Pooter) as “Dear Diary.”
The humour in all mock-diaries depends on the maintenance
of a gap between the implied reader—that is, the one who is
presumed to be capable of deciphering the narrator’s pomposities
and self-deceptions—and what has been called the “specifically
acquiescent” narratee. What makes for unique comedy in this
Diary is the particular way in which Pooter recollects and repre-
sents his painful experiences, for the ear of his unheard narratee.
Three episodes will serve to illustrate this point. Each of them,
potentially, involves humiliation and fear, but in each case these
strong emotions are anaesthetised during the process of transcrip-
tion and transmission to the narratee. In the scene at the Islington
theatre, when his free tickets are contemptuously rejected, Pooter
By Cobley (), in his brief but cogent discussion of the Diary’s narrative
tactics.
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is not, so to speak, humiliated in “real time.” What we have is
Pooter’s reconstruction of the episode afterwards for his narratee,
and the essence of the humour is not the situation itself but
Pooter’s inability to give adequate verbal shape to his pain. The
stilted phrasing (“some very unpleasant words ... to my horror ...
doomed to still further humiliation ... felt quite miserable ... could
scarcely sleep a wink” ()) defuses the whole toe-curling experi-
ence. It is the implied reader who turns it into comedy by detect-
ing just how absurdly content Pooter is once he has transmitted
his pain to his silently consoling narratee.
Again in the second case, Pooter’s confrontation with the irate
cab driver over the lack of the fare, we do not see Pooter having
his beard pulled by the cab-driver, which would be more shock-
ing than amusing. What we have is Pooter telling his narratee that
he has been subjected to a “disgraceful insult and outrage.” ()
Further, we notice that the episode closes only when Pooter is
able to lay a soothing plaster of words—in two layers this time—
over the raw experience. Here as elsewhere, he writes in his diary
about his need to communicate in writing with a second narra-
tee. “Have copied this verbatim in the diary ... wrote a very satir-
ical letter ... never wrote a more determined letter ... wrote him
sixteen pages ... put down the conversation word for word ...
intend writing to the Telegraph.” () That newspaper was and is
a Conservative paper where the middle classes expect to elicit
sympathy when they want to wax indignant about society’s short-
comings. In real life, no doubt, it still supplies the same kind of
balm that a century ago healed Pooter’s damaged self-esteem. For
a man of his stamp, its readership makes the perfect narratee.
Thirdly, there is the episode where Pooter paints the bath-tub
red. It is only two days afterwards that he takes a bath and scoops
up what he thinks is a handful of blood. We might object that
he could hardly have failed to notice the paint was melting and
staining the water as he got in. But the Grossmiths worked in a
trade of situation comedy where timing and effect are critical.
In a editorial, the Daily Telegraph preened itself about this century-old reference,
apparently believing the Grossmiths were promoting Pooter as a middle-class hero.
The writer failed to realise the distinction between narratee and implied reader.
There are further details in Wheen ().
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They knew well how to build situations unobtrusively but
progressively, for example by making Mrs. James devolve in
graded steps from being a pleasant acquaintance to a meddling
nuisance. In the bath-tub case, the intervening “business” has
been so adroitly handled that it doesn’t seem unrealistic that the
climax surprises Pooter, for the reader too has quite forgotten
the paint-pot.
There is nothing remotely funny about showing a man terri-
fied that he has had a fatal haemorrhage. The scene is irresistibly
comic, nevertheless. Why? Because of the clichéd, clerkish offi-
cialese that is the only register Pooter can command when he
secretively writes it up later (“experienced the greatest fright I
ever received in the whole course of my life ... imagine my
horror”), not to mention the wonderfully economical bathos of
“stepped out of the bath, perfectly red all over.” ()
One consequence of having a narratee interposed between
the narrator and the implied reader was first noticed by Tom
Lubbock: it makes it hard to do justice to the Diary’s comedy
when it is dramatised or read aloud. An audible reader can hardly
refrain from leaning heavily on phrases like “imagine my horror”
or “felt quite miserable,” yet these phrases are intended for the
ear of the narratee, not the (presumed) less-than-sympathetic
implied hearer. Unless handled carefully they distort the effect
of having the experience filtered through Pooter’s complacent
sensibility. This is humour that works best, as Lubbock put it, in
“the silence of the page” ().
The “New Humorists” and the Literary Influence of the Diary
In retrospect we can see that the Diary belongs to a line of
fictional development taking shape in the early s, whose
practitioners were called the “New Humorists.” Its influence is
still palpable after more than a century, especially in television
comedy. The widening of public education had produced read-
ers who delighted in tales of the “little man”—that is to say, the
adventures of heroes drawn from the lower segments of the
middle class, heroes who are not patronised by their creators but
treated with affectionate and understanding humour. The first
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great success in this mould was Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat,
whose publication as a serial overlapped that of the Diary. It sold
, copies in Britain alone.
This type of comedy was taken to new heights by H.G. Wells,
who came from such a background himself. He was briefly
linked to the New Humorists for his social comedies such as
Love and Mr Lewisham (). It was Wells who created perhaps
the most typical of these “little man” heroes with his Kipps:The
Story of a Simple Soul (). Kipps, a young draper’s clerk, inher-
its a fortune but finds it hard to live up to it. Kipps reacts much
as Charles and Carrie Pooter might have reacted had they
suddenly come into a lot of money. When his fortune is embez-
zled, he is more relieved than otherwise. His initiation into the
habits and manners of the upper middle class is matter for rich
humour, and Wells treats him with a tender, condescending
concern that is quite reminiscent of the Diary.
In other New Humour comedies, suburban clerks did some-
times get a rather better press. Such jaunty, more sympathetic
tales were usually set in a slightly higher social stratum than the
one Wells dealt with, and belonged in spirit to the following, or
what we might call the Lupin Pooter, generation. They reflected
a new self-confidence about the suburban way of life. Even the
conservative social analyst C.F.C. Masterman, no friend of subur-
bia, appreciated that it had some virtues (see Appendix F).
Masterman is exactly right about what these new light fictions
of suburbia celebrated. Typically, they retained the episodic form
of the Diary, telling of the tribulations of married couples after
their move to their new home. They have chapters on moving
house, hiring and losing servants, dealing with tradesmen, trou-
bles with the neighbours, tackling home repairs and improve-
ments (and always failing), attending social functions, and going
on annual holidays.
These stories had no reformist ambitions. They sought merely
to entertain and, perhaps, to reassure and validate the experiences
of their newly suburbanised readers. It is striking that, though
they are narrated from a male perspective, they nearly always
feature a bumbling, good-natured husband whose follies have to
be corrected by a managing and commonsensical wife. As the
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historian John Tosh puts it, “the distinctive hallmark of British
domesticity was that it permeated the lives of men too—as
husbands, as fathers, and as upholders of fireside virtues.” It is as
though, in these fictions, both author and characters are conspir-
ing to feminize and revalue the male. They may have scenes set
in the working world, but their focus is really on domestic detail
and routine, its pleasures and pains, which are offered as the
touchstones of reality. Indeed, in a typical example from Keble
Howard’s The Smiths of Surbiton, in a chapter rather ironically
titled “The Day’s Work,” the husband-worker, an insurance
clerk, thoroughly disparages his own world, the world of work,
as being entirely mundane and dull, compared to the world of
home presided over by his wife (see Appendix D).
Some, probably most, of these fictions were written with one
eye on the success of the Diary. This is certainly true of Barry
Pain’s Eliza stories, describing episodes in the life of an unnamed
city clerk, told in the first person. Pain copied some of the inven-
tions of the Diary so explicitly that he invites a charge of plagia-
rism (see Appendices D and E).
Mock-diaries and memoirs continued to be popular after
World War I and indeed right up to the end of the twentieth
century. In America, Anita Loos’s witty Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:
The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady () pushed the
technique of ingenuous self-exposure to new heights. More
recent times have seen another rush of fictional diaries that more
than match earlier products in their range of cultural reference
and modish concerns: these include Christopher Matthew’s
Diary of a Somebody (), Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of
Adrian Mole Aged / () and its successors, and Helen
Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary ().
Scorning the Suburbs
Finally, there is the vexed question whether it is possible to read
the Diary today in quite the way that it could be read at the end
of the nineteenth century. We recall that George was given to
Tosh (), .
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playing practical jokes on his social inferiors, and in his memoirs
he tells these stories with a relish that makes the reader squirm.
Were the Grossmiths writing for the same élite to which they
belonged themselves? Did they intend to give voice to their own
class’s indignation at upstarts who dared to burst in among them?
Or is it that Pooter’s fatuity is supposed to be politically reassur-
ing: a demonstration to the established middle class that the sinis-
ter fruit of Socialism would wither and die on the suburban vine?
Without treading on the treacherous ground of what the
brothers may or may not have intended by their creation, it is
arguable that the implied author of the Diary is crueller, more
fiercely satirical, about the Pooters’ vanities and absurdities than
we can now easily perceive. Consider, for instance, the emphasis
on Pooter’s uxoriousness and domestication (“What’s the good
of a home, if you are never in it? ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ that’s my
motto” ()). Was this intended to be more laughable, even
contemptible, than we may think it today? Is the implied author
speaking, for the implied reader’s approval, from a world of male
clubs and homosocial companionship? After all, the Diary, via
the character of Hardfur Huttle (based on the rakish editor Frank
Harris), expresses overt anti-suburban abuse directed against
hook-on ties, constipated etiquette, nasty cheap champagne, and
houses with pretentious entrances like a four-poster bedstead.
Surely the implied reader is being guided away from totally
rejecting Huttle’s views when even the Pooters are not entirely
displeased to think that their son may be cast in the same mould.
Pursuing this line, it has been argued very recently that the
Diary is a “suburban anti-vision” whose relationship to the
emerging line of suburban literature is forcefully adversarial. If
the Grossmiths really intended to be contemptuous about their
suburban hero, then their stance would have found a ready
response at the time, as the social historian A. James Hammerton
has explained:
Few readers of late Victorian and Edwardian fiction would be
unaware of the cutting scorn aimed at white collar suburbanites,
Hapgood () has argued this case.
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symbolic of all that was most threatening in philistine mass culture:
servile work, degraded taste and aspirations beyond their station,
an audience for the excesses of the manipulative yellow press and
political deception. Two features distinguish this critique; it was
constructed overwhelmingly through satire, for the entertainment
of élites, which heightened the identification of the lower middle
class with the absurd and pompous; and, at least on the surface, it
was focused on the inanities of men rather than women.
Certainly “cutting scorn” is no exaggeration. “I am not going
to rot away my life in the suburbs,” cries Lupin Pooter (),
rejecting his father’s Holloway and all it stands for. There were
plenty of people in his generation to agree with him. It was a
popular theme, in and out of fiction, and well into the new
century. Most of the descriptive phrases for those who dwelt in
the suburbs were derogatory. Such people made up the ranks of
“clerkdom” or “villadom.” They were the “lower middle class”
or the “petty bourgeois.” They were “middle-brow” or, worse,
had “foreheads villainous low.”
Simple snobbery accounted for much of this, ranging in tone
from measured disdain to violent invective (see Appendices
F–, and especially B). The worst part of the charge was that
the male suburbanite (for which read: clerk) had lost his virility.
He had become feminized or sexless, with (according to H.G.
Wells) “no proud dreams and no proud lusts” () to motivate
him. There is, perhaps, a hint of the same charge of low virility
in the Diary. Since the Pooters were very exceptional, as a late-
Victorian fertile couple, in having only one child, it is not impos-
sible that here is a sly hint that Pooter’s emasculation in the
parlour and office extends to the bedroom.
But if the Diary was intended to be rancorous, in this tradi-
tion of anti-suburban invective, then time, and the success of the
New Humorists, has drawn its sting. Few modern readers are
Hammerton, “Perils” (), .
Hammerton, “Pooterism” (), makes this point. As a riposte to this attitude,
Conan Doyle, in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s
Clerk” (), goes out of his way to praise the manly quality of clerks, from whose
ranks, according to the narrator, spring the best soldiers, athletes and sportsmen.
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reluctant to find a kinship with Pooter and his circle. The Pooters
inhabit a world we recognize, a world of small anxieties and small
successes, familiar enough in households of similar status: the
ineffectual do-it-yourself efforts; the pains of “entertaining” at
home; dealing with inept and cheating tradesmen; handling the
etiquette of an unfamiliar formal occasion. As an artistic creation,
the world of The Laurels is easily recognisable, because nearly all
British television comedy ultimately descends from the Diary
and the New Humorists. Two obvious exemplars are Hyacinth
Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”) and her relatives in the series
Keeping Up Appearances (–) and David Brent in The Office
(–).
In such comedies we are invited to share and empathize more
than to mock. These are comedies of involvement and recogni-
tion, though they trade also in acute embarrassment, just as the
Diary does a century earlier, with its dreadful faux pas. Such
comedies live or die by the ambivalence of our response to the
lead character. Consider how true this is of Pooter. He has so
many conflicting facets to his nature. He teeters on the brink of
being a complacent bore and prig, small-minded, self-satisfied,
and imperceptive. How can we be interested in a man whose
ambitions focus on having his son commute on the same bus to
the same office, or seeing his mustard and cress coming up in the
garden? Who uses his diary to complain about the colour of his
breakfast sausages? Whose only two friends are, we perceive,
boring and stupid, and actually rather despise him and each
other? We perceive him to be gauche, obtuse, censorious, timid,
snobbish, conventional, culturally a philistine, uxorious to the
point of being a little frightened of his wife, and incompetent in
most practical matters. He fawns over his superiors and is scared
of his inferiors, and is mocked, to different degrees, by everyone
who knows him.
Yet, mostly, we like him. His is loyal, affectionate, hard-work-
ing, well-meaning, optimistic, unenvious, and without a spiteful
or hypocritical bone in his body. He is not so much pompous as
innocently egotistical, and his ego is easily punctured. He loves
his wife and son, and they love him. His job may be dull, but he
likes it and is good at it. It is true that he harangues the servant,
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making her cry, and physically assaults a delivery boy once, but
such behaviour has to be seen in the context of the time. For all
his faults he is an endearing character. Our reaction is a little
more ambivalent than the Victorians’, perhaps. We still laugh
comfortably at the Pooters, whose ineptitude is (we hope) so
much greater than our own; but we also laugh with them, indul-
gently if a little uncomfortably, since we are not sure how far we
want to stand revealed, even to ourselves, as potentially Pooterish.
Our rueful chuckle at their absurdities is made up of one part
scorn to three parts sympathy. Whatever the Grossmiths
intended, this is what has kept the Diary fresh, relevant and enter-
taining for a very long time.
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George and Weedon Grossmith:
A Brief Chronology
December . George Grossmith born, first child of
George Grossmith senior, police-court reporter for
The Times and semi-professional lecturer on literary
topics, and Louisa, née Weedon.
June . Weedon Grossmith born, the third child
and second son of the family.
The Grossmith family moves to The Manor
House, Haverstock Hill, London.
– George & Weedon both attend North London
Collegiate School, Camden Town. Weedon is later
admitted to the Royal Academy Schools to train
as an artist.
George trains and works as a reporter at Bow
Street Police Court, while planning to study for
the Bar. He embarks on a parallel career as a piano
entertainer with growing success, appearing before
audiences at literary institutes, churches, and the
YMCA, then as a “society clown” in fashionable
drawing-rooms.
George marries Emmeline “Rosa” Noyce.
May . George Grossmith junior born, first of four
siblings. The family lives in Blandford Square,
Marylebone.
– George tours with the comedienne Florence
Marryat in their show Entre Nous, consisting of
piano sketches, scenes, and recitations in costume.
October. George’s career breakthrough: an
invitation from Arthur Sullivan to take the role of
John Wellington Wells in a new Gilbert & Sullivan
opera, The Sorcerer.
– George becomes famous for his leading roles in
most of the D’Oyly Carte/Gilbert & Sullivan
operas. Simultaneously he continues with dozens of
:
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private and charitable solo entertainments, writing
nearly all his own material.
May. George takes the role of Sir Joseph Porter in
HMS Pinafore.
A portrait by Weedon of his father is “hung” at the
Royal Academy.
April. The Pirates of Penzance starts its run, with
George as Major-General Stanley.
April. Patience starts its run, with George playing
Bunthorne.
October. Richard D’Oyly Carte opens his new
Savoy Theatre in the Strand.
February. George attends a dinner-party with the
Prince of Wales, the first of several invitations.
November. George plays the Lord Chancellor in
Iolanthe.
George’s first significant publication, a comic
sketch, “The Society Dramatist,” appears in Punch.
Weedon’s career as an artist stalls and he begins to
consider a stage career.
January. George plays King Gama in Princess Ida.
January-April. He publishes “Very Trying,” ten
sketches of police-court life, in Punch.
May. Weedon has another portrait hung at the
Royal Academy.
March. The Mikado starts its run, with George
playing Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner. It runs
for nearly two years. He moves to Dorset Square
and lives there for years, becoming a familiar
figure in literary, theatrical, and legal London.
September. Weedon takes to the stage, first in
Liverpool then in Boston; he finds success in a
one-act play, A Pantomime Rehearsal.
George is said to earn £ in royalties from his
popular hit song, See Me Dance the Polka. Weedon
again tours in America, in an Arthur Pinero farce.
January. George begins the role of Robin Oakapple
in Ruddigore.
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Early in the year Weedon returns to England; he
lives with George and his family in Dorset Square
until May or later, during which time the
Diary is conceived and the first episodes appear.
November. George plays in a revival of HMS
Pinafore.
February. George signs a contract to write his
memoirs, A Society Clown.
March . George plays in a revival of The Pirates of
Penzance (to June ).
May. Weedon is invited to act in a play starring
Henry Irving, Robert Macaire—the start of his
successful British stage career.
May . The Diary of a Nobody starts to appear
anonymously in Punch. All the payments (total £
s. d.) are made to George alone.
June . George plays in a revival of The Mikado (to
September ).
August. His partial autobiography A Society Clown
is published.
October. George plays Jack Point in The Yeoman of
the Guard.
February. Weedon plays in The School for Scandal at
the Globe Theatre.
May . The Punch episodes of the Diary conclude.
July. George leaves the Savoy permanently after
years; by the end, his salary is said to be £ a year.
September. George starts a gruelling series of
“Humorous and Musical Recitals,” for which he
tours and works solo. He is said to have earned
£, in the first seven months.
November . George entertains Queen Victoria at
Balmoral.
Weedon moves to The Old House, Canonbury.
July . The first book edition of the Diary, with a
much-extended text, is published by J.W.
Arrowsmith, of Bristol, with new illustrations by
Weedon.
:
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October . George departs on his first American
tour; four more follow.
Weedon marries May Palfrey, an actress.
Weedon publishes his only novel, A Woman with a
History.
Weedon’s first full-length comedy, The Night of the
Party, has a run of six months in London; he
continues as a well-known actor and playwright up
to World War I, living at Bedford Square.
George and his family move to Russell Square.
George’s last public engagement; he retires to a
house at Manor Road, Folkestone.
George’s second volume of reminiscences, Piano
and I, is published.
Arrowsmith releases a new edition of the Diary,
which establishes it as a success.
March . George dies.
Weedon publishes his reminiscences, From Studio to
Stage.
June . Weedon dies.
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A Note on the Text
The serial version of the Diary consisted of twenty-five instal-
ments of about a column and a half each in the issues of Punch
published between May and May inclusive. They
appeared intermittently. There were none in the issues of April
, and there was an even longer gap of eight issues between
the episodes of September and November . These gaps
probably resulted from the authors’ heavy acting commitments,
but the longest gap is fictionally “explained” as follows: when the
entries resume, Pooter fumes over the disappearance of the last
six weeks of his entries, finally discovering after a domestic
upheaval that the missing portion has been burnt accidentally.
The very last entry, dated “March ,” ends on this cheerful note:
“fell asleep only to dream of three happy people, Lupin, dear
Carrie, and myself.”
The Grossmiths made many changes when preparing the first
book edition for Arrowsmith in . First and most obviously,
they arranged the serial episodes into seventeen chapters, and
supplemented them with seven newly-written ones. The first
entry of the new eighteenth chapter is dated “April ,” or two
and a half weeks after the date of the last entry given in Punch.
It starts by saying “no events of any importance” have happened
in the meantime.
The authors also made numerous textual changes by adding,
substituting, and occasionally deleting material. New scenes
included the bow-tie incident at the theatre and the vexing
Blackfriars Bi-weekly News episode. They corrected minor typo-
graphical errors and altered the punctuation and paragraphing.
They adjusted some dates: for example, someone must have
noticed that the Pooters and their friends had played the game
Consequences on a Sunday evening ( June ), a social occa-
sion at which Gowing, typically, had “over-stepped the limits of
good taste.” So for the book they shifted it back a day to the
Saturday evening. They replaced the thinly-disguised names of
places with their true names (e.g., the original “Broadsteps”
becomes the real “Broadstairs,” a popular resort town). They
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updated some of the song titles by substituting hits more current
in –. They also got rid of the occasional false note: for
example, one case where, inaptly, they had put the French phrase
“sans cérémonie” into Pooter’s mouth. They added the introduc-
tory paragraph supposedly by Pooter himself, starting “Why
should I not publish my diary?”
One curious detail is that in the Punch version Daisy Mutlar’s
brother is twice called “Harry” in the entry for November but
“Frank” after that. In revising for the book the Grossmiths not
only failed to notice the error but perpetuated it. In the added
material with which they supplemented the original entry for
November, they again named “Harry Mutlar” as the “low
comedy merchant.” The error remained uncorrected even in
quite recent editions.
The final important addition was the thirty-three witty pen
and ink sketches by Weedon Grossmith, which in mood and
style now seem so integral to the text. Weedon toured the
photographers’ shops on the Euston Road looking for models
for the main characters, especially for a child’s picture hideous
enough to help with the portraiture of that spoilt brat, Master
Percy James.
Various significances have been read into the Diary’s first entry,
dated “April ,” which was a Tuesday in , the day after the
Easter bank holiday. House leases traditionally started on Lady Day,
March, but that seems to contradict the opening sentence, which
says that the Pooters have been in their new home for just a week.
(That is, providing we assume that this undated opening is supposed
to be part of the first dated entry.) The simplest explanation may
be that on the day they composed or started the first episode, the
brothers counted back a set period, perhaps six weeks, and fixed
the date of the opening entry that way. Surely they did so to open
up a window of time so that entries could mention whatever public
events had happened in the meantime that were amenable to comic
treatment. In the event, they made small use of this.
Weedon made drawings for the first edition. Some editions do not reproduce all
of them.
Carr (), ; Grossmith (), .
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To increase the effect of immediacy, the brothers were care-
ful to make the entry dates conform with actual dates in the
calendar. For example, the very first episode in Punch has sepa-
rate entries for every day between April and April inclusive,
and the last two entry dates are identified as a Saturday and a
Sunday, which they were in . That was maintained
throughout, so that every entry date does correspond to actual
dates in –.
A further important point is that when they revised and
extended the text, the brothers preserved and continued the
original dates from three years before, so that the dates of the
new entries (running from April to July) still match the
calendar, not the one.
With respect to this, one noteworthy detail relates to the entry
that in Punch is dated “Sunday, November .” This day was
indeed a Sunday in . But when they revised this episode for
the book the Grossmiths made a mistake. For some reason they
re-dated this entry “November , Sunday” and so continued to
be one day out in the rest of the entries up to the end of the year.
For example, the very next entry is “November ,” which was a
Tuesday in , yet this entry is clearly supposed to be a
Monday, just as it is in the Punch version, being the first available
business day when Lupin can attend Mr Perkupp’s office to find
out about his job offer. Furthermore, Guy Fawkes Day is the fifth
of November, which fell on a Monday in . So in Punch the
Bonfire Night party at Cummings’s house does take place
correctly on the Monday evening, rather than a day later, as in
the book.
(If Guy Fawkes Day had fallen on a Sunday, no fireworks party
could have been held on that day, of course. Perhaps this played
some part in the Grossmiths’ later confusion about, and manip-
ulation of, the date, particularly as they had already shifted
another inappropriate entry away from a Sunday.)
The Grossmiths forced the dates back on track when they
correctly labelled the entry for December a Sunday.
Glinert, in his notes to the Penguin Classic edition (), xxv, says that the first Punch
episode “ends with Pooter ordering fresh eggs ( April)” but this is an error.
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Doing so introduced another anomaly, however; for the astute
reader will notice that if November was a Sunday, and it is so
described, then December cannot be one as well.
No holograph or publisher’s proofs of the Diary survive. For
many years there has been some bibliographical confusion about
the number of the early book editions. This is mainly a conse-
quence of the practice, habitual in the s, of not distinguish-
ing fully between an edition and an impression (i.e., an essentially
unaltered reprint).
The original publisher, Arrowsmith, twice changed its mind
about the number of the important edition published in October
. This was described on the flyleaf as “a handy Pocket
Edition … printed from new type and from re-engraved draw-
ings.” In it was called the “fifth” edition; in , the
“third”; and by it had become the “fourth.”
What is certain, however, is that this edition, whatever its
number, has the most textual authority. It incorporates some
minor corrections to the first edition and its reprints. The
edition is the last whose preparation could have been overseen
by both brothers, although there is no evidence that it was. The
British Library’s copy of this edition has been used as the copy-
text here. A very few obvious typographical errors have been
corrected silently. The punctuation is slightly eccentric in places
by modern standards but generally I have left it alone.
Arrowsmith continued to produce editions into the s
before selling the copyright to Dent. Many publishers have issued
their own editions since, but none has a higher textual author-
ity than Arrowsmith’s edition of , and some introduce fresh
errors. The Diary has never been out of print.
In his edition, Pryce-Jones (), noticed part of the anomaly, but did not explain
how it had come about. There is a fuller but still incomplete account in Waterhouse
(). All entries after December are correctly dated up to the last one of
Thursday July , with the exception of July, which is miscalled a Sunday.
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The Diary of a Nobody
Introduction by Mr. Pooter
Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen
reminiscences of people I have never even heard of,
and I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a
“Somebody”—why my diary should not be interest-
ing. My only regret is that I did not commence it
when I was a youth.
CHARLES POOTER.
The Laurels,
Brickfield Terrace,
Holloway.
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Chapter One
We settle down in our new home, and I resolve to keep a diary.
Tradesmen trouble us a bit, so does the scraper.The Curate calls
and pays me a great compliment.
My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new
house, “The Laurels,” Brickfield Terrace, Holloway—a nice six-
roomed residence, not counting basement with a front breakfast-
parlour. We have a little front garden; and there is a flight of ten
steps up to the front door; which, by-the-by, we keep locked
with the chain up. Cummings, Gowing, and our other intimate
friends always come to the little side entrance, which saves the
servant the trouble of going up to the front door, thereby taking
her from her work. We have a nice little back garden which runs
down to the railway. We were rather afraid of the noise of the
trains at first, but the landlord said we should not notice them
after a bit, and took £ off the rent. He was certainly right; and
beyond the cracking of the garden-wall at the bottom, we have
suffered no inconvenience.
After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good
of a home, if you are never in it? “Home, Sweet Home,” that’s my
motto. I am always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may
drop in without ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite.
“Brickfield” is a reminder that the clay for the yellow bricks of which much of
London is built was extracted from these areas before they were built over in the
s, whereas “Terrace” sounds much more up-market.
The kitchen would have been the rear room in the basement, serving also as a sitting-
room, and often a bedroom, for the servant. The front basement “breakfast-parlour”
would have been the cosiest room in the house.
Very few Londoners owned the freehold to their houses; most were rented. Inflation
barely existed, so there was little motive to buy. The rent of The Laurels was proba-
bly £– a year, so the £ deduction was not much. Advisory manuals suggested
spending no more than a tenth of your income on housing, but in London that was
possible only for the rich.
This detail is not entirely to show Pooter’s complacency. Certainly the house would
have been noisy and dirtier, but it had the strong advantage of not being closely over-
looked at the rear.
The title of a well-known song dating from and sung by Jenny Lind, Nellie
Melba, Adelina Patti, and many others.
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My dear wife Caroline and I are pleased to see them, if they like to
drop in on us. But Carrie and I can manage to pass our evenings
together without friends. There is always something to be done: a
tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up, or
part of a carpet to nail down—all of which I can do with my pipe
in my mouth; while Carrie is not above putting a button on a shirt,
mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia Gavotte” on our
new cottage piano (on the three years’ system), manufactured by
W. Bilkson (in small letters), from Collard and Collard (in very
large letters). It is also a great comfort to us to know that our boy
Willie is getting on so well in the Bank at Oldham. We should
like to see more of him. Now for my diary:—
This gavotte (a lively dance) is properly called Who is Sylvia? by Franz Schubert, with
words from Shakespeare’s song. The authors updated many of the song titles for the
book. In the Punch version this one was The Maiden’s Prayer, a hugely popular melody
from .
A famous business founded early in the century. The Pooters’ piano was either made
under licence, or was simply a cheap imitation. The name “Bilkson” (to “bilk” is to
cheat) rather suggests the latter. A piano was an expensive but highly desirable
consumer item which by this date could be bought on time payments.
No explanation is given why Lupin has taken a job in a bank so far away as Oldham,
Lancashire.
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April . Tradesmen called for custom, and I promised
Farmerson, the ironmonger, to give him a turn if I wanted any
nails or tools. By-the-by, that reminds me there is no key to our
bedroom door, and the bells must be seen to. The parlour bell is
broken and the front door rings up in the servant’s bedroom,
which is ridiculous. Dear friend Gowing dropped in, but would-
n’t stay, saying there was an infernal smell of paint.
April . Tradesmen still call-
ing: Carrie being out, I
arranged to deal with Horwin,
who seemed a civil butcher
with a nice clean shop.
Ordered a shoulder of mutton
for to-morrow, to give him a
trial. Carrie arranged with
Borset, the butterman, and
ordered a pound of fresh
butter, and a pound and a half
of salt ditto for kitchen, and a
shilling’s worth of eggs. In the
evening, Cummings unexpectedly dropped in to show me a meer-
schaum pipe he had won in a raffle in the City, and told me to
handle it carefully, as it would spoil the colouring if the hand was
moist. He said he wouldn’t stay, as he didn’t care much for the
smell of the paint, and fell over the scraper as he went out. Must
get the scraper removed, or else I shall get into a scrape. I don’t often
make jokes.
April .Two shoulders of mutton arrived,Carrie having arranged
with another butcher without consulting me. Gowing called, and
fell over scraper coming in. Must get that scraper removed.
April . Eggs for breakfast simply shocking; sent them back to
Borset with my compliments, and he needn’t call any more for
orders. Couldn’t find umbrella, and though it was pouring with
Even in small houses all the main rooms had bell pulls to summon the servant. The
relevant room was shown on an indicator box in the kitchen.
Evidently some of the salt would be mixed with the butter, to flavour and preserve it.
Made of a soft greyish stone, which gradually becomes attractively stained by the
tobacco tar and smoke.
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rain, had to go without it. Sarah said Mr. Gowing must have
took it by mistake last night, as there was a stick in the ’all that
didn’t belong to nobody. In the evening, hearing someone talk-
ing in a loud voice to the servant in the downstairs hall, I went
out to see who it was, and was surprised to find it was Borset,
the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on
seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City
clerks any more—the game wasn’t worth the candle. I restrained
my feelings, and quietly remarked that I thought it was possible
for a city clerk to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to
hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one,
for he hadn’t. He left the house, slamming the door after him,
which nearly broke the fanlight; and I heard him fall over the
scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn’t removed it. When he
had gone, I thought of a splen-
did answer I ought to have
given him. However, I will keep
it for another occasion.
April . Being Saturday, I
looked forward to being home
early, and putting a few things
straight; but two of our princi-
pals at the office were absent
through illness, and I did not get
home till seven. Found Borset
waiting. He had been three
times during the day to apolo-
gise for his conduct last night.
He said he was unable to take
his Bank Holiday last Monday,
and took it last night instead. He
The Pooters’ maid-of-all-work. Domestic servants were cheap: Sarah’s wages might
have been as little as £ a year plus keep. The Diary gives good and uncommon
insight into the relations between the servant and the family at this social level.
Notice how the Grossmiths, via Pooter, use three linguistic class markers to show
Sarah’s status, even though she is not being quoted directly.
A five-and-a-half-day working week was normal for white-collar workers until well
into the twentieth century.
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begged me to accept his apology, and a pound of fresh butter. He
seems, after all, a decent sort of fellow; so I gave him an order for
some fresh eggs, with a request that on this occasion they should
be fresh. I am afraid we shall have to get some new stair-carpets
after all; our old ones are not quite wide enough to meet the
paint on either side. Carrie suggests that we might ourselves
broaden the paint. I will see if we can match the colour (dark
chocolate) on Monday.
April , Sunday. After Church, the Curate came back with us.
I sent Carrie in to open front door, which we do not use except
on special occasions. She could not get it open, and after all my
display, I had to take the Curate (whose name, by-the-by, I did
not catch) round the side entrance. He caught his foot in the
scraper, and tore the bottom of his trousers. Most annoying, as
Carrie could not well offer to repair them on a Sunday. After
dinner, went to sleep. Took a walk round the garden, and
discovered a beautiful spot for sowing mustard-and-cress and
radishes. Went to Church again in the evening: walked back with
the Curate. Carrie noticed he had got on the same pair of
trousers, only repaired. He wants me to take round the plate,
which I think a great compliment.
Chapter Two
Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome. Gowing rather tire-
some with his complaints of the paint. I make one of the best jokes
of my life. Delights of gardening. Mr. Stillbrook, Gowing,
Cummings, and I have a little misunderstanding. Sarah makes me
look a fool before Cummings.
The Laurels would have been rented unfurnished, without carpets.
“Dinner” was a solid mid-day meal among Pooter’s class. The evening meal was “tea”
or sometimes “meat-tea.” The terrible monotony of an English Sunday appalled
many European visitors. Many people like Pooter probably went to church twice on
Sunday for something to do.
That is, looking after the passage of the collection plate up and down the pews, as
the congregation added their charitable contributions. The task was too trivial to be
much of a “compliment.”
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April . Commenced the morning badly. The butcher, whom we
decided not to arrange with, called and blackguarded me in the
most uncalled-for manner. He began by abusing me, and saying
he did not want my custom. I simply said: “Then what are you
making all this fuss about it for?” And he shouted out at the top
of his voice, so that all the neighbours could hear: “Pah! go
along. Ugh! I could buy up ‘things’ like you by the dozen!”
I shut the door, and was giving Carrie to understand that this
disgraceful scene was entirely her fault, when there was a violent
kicking at the door, enough to break the panels. It was the
blackguard butcher again, who said he had cut his foot over the
scraper, and would immediately bring an action against me.
Called at Farmerson’s, the ironmonger, on my way to town, and
gave him the job of moving the scraper and repairing the bells,
thinking it scarcely worth while to trouble the landlord with
such a trifling matter.
Arrived home tired and worried. Mr. Putley, a painter and deco-
rator, who had sent in a card, said he could not match the colour
on the stairs, as it contained Indian carmine. He said he spent half-
a-day calling at warehouses to see if he could get it. He suggested
he should entirely re-paint the stairs. It would cost very little more;
if he tried to match it, he could only make a bad job of it. It would
be more satisfactory to him and to us to have the work done prop-
erly. I consented but felt I had been talked over. Planted some
mustard-and-cress and radishes, and went to bed at nine.
April . Farmerson came round to attend to the scraper
himself. He seems a very civil fellow. He says he does not usually
conduct such small jobs personally, but for me he would do so. I
thanked him, and went to town. It is disgraceful how late some
of the young clerks are at arriving. I told three of them that if
Mr. Perkupp, the principal, heard of it, they might be discharged.
Pitt, a monkey of seventeen, who has only been with us six
weeks, told me “to keep my hair on!” I informed him I had had
the honour of being in the firm twenty years, to which he inso-
lently replied that I “looked it.” I gave him an indignant look,
and said: “I demand from you some respect, sir.” He replied: “All
A brilliant red dye extracted from the bodies of cochineal insects.
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right, go on demanding.” I would not argue with him any
further.You cannot argue with people like that. In the evening
Gowing called, and repeated his complaint about the smell of
paint. Gowing is sometimes very tedious with his remarks, and
not always cautious; and Carrie once very properly reminded
him that she was present.
April . Mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet. To-
day was a day of annoyances. I missed the quarter-to-nine ’bus
to the City, through having words with the grocer’s boy, who for
the second time had the impertinence to bring his basket to the
hall-door, and had left the marks of his dirty boots on the fresh-
cleaned door-steps. He said he had knocked at the side-door with
his knuckles for a quarter of an hour. I knew Sarah, our servant,
could not hear this, as she was upstairs doing the bedrooms, so
asked the boy why he did not ring the bell? He replied that he
did pull the bell, but the handle came off in his hand.
I was half-an-hour late at the office, a thing that has never
happened to me before. There has recently been much irregular-
ity in the attendance of the clerks, and Mr. Perkupp, our princi-
pal, unfortunately choose this very morning to pounce down
upon us early. Someone had given the tip to the others. The result
was that I was the only one late of the lot. Buckling, one of the
senior clerks, was a brick, and I was saved by his intervention. As
I passed by Pitt’s desk, I heard him remark to his neighbour: “How
disgracefully late some of the head clerks arrive!” This was of
course meant for me. I treated the observation with silence, simply
giving him a look, which unfortunately had the effect of making
both of the clerks laugh. Thought afterwards it would have been
more dignified if I had pretended not to have heard him at all.
Cummings called in the evening, and we played dominoes.
A euphemism for swearing or mildly indecent talk, which a “respectable” woman
could not permit.
Pooter commutes to the City (i.e., London’s financial and commercial heart) in about
half an hour. The fare was probably three pence each way. A horse-drawn omnibus
held – passengers in a van-like vehicle with an open upper deck. Sixty an hour
were said to pass down Holloway Road in . There was also a horse-tramway
system in London in Pooter’s day but it is not mentioned, probably because there
was no convenient route. Tram tracks were not allowed in most parts of the City.
Early Victorian slang meaning a “good fellow.”
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April . Mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet. Left
Farmerson repairing the scraper, but when I came home found
three men working. I asked the meaning of it, and Farmerson said
that in making a fresh hole he had penetrated the gas-pipe. He
said it was a most ridiculous place to put the gas-pipe, and the
man who did it evidently knew nothing about his business. I felt
his excuse was no consolation for the expense I shall be put to.
In the evening, after tea, Gowing dropped in, and we had a
smoke together in the breakfast-parlour. Carrie joined us later,
but did not stay long, saying the smoke was too much for her. It
was also rather too much for me, for Gowing had given me what
he called a green cigar, one that his friend Shoemach had just
brought over from America. The cigar didn’t look green, but I
fancy I must have done so, for when I had smoked a little more
than half, I was obliged to retire on the pretext of telling Sarah
to bring in the glasses.
I took a walk round the garden three or four times, feeling
the need of fresh air. On returning Gowing noticed I was not
smoking: offered me another cigar, which I politely declined.
Gowing began his usual sniffing, so, anticipating him, I said:
“You’re not going to complain of the smell of paint again?” He
said: “No, not this time; but I’ll tell you what—I distinctly smell
dry rot.” I don’t often make jokes, but I replied: “You’re talking
a lot of dry rot yourself.” I could not help roaring at this, and
Carrie said her sides quite ached with laughter. I never was so
immensely tickled by anything I have ever said before. I actually
woke up twice during the night, and laughed till the bed shook.
April . An extraordinary coincidence: Carrie had called in
a woman to make some chintz covers for our drawing-room
chairs and sofa to prevent the sun fading the green rep of the
furniture. I saw the woman, and recognised her as a woman who
used to work years ago for my old aunt at Clapham. It only
shows how small the world is.
April . Spent the whole of the afternoon in the garden,
having this morning picked up at a bookstall for fivepence a
One made of wild, that is uncultivated, tobacco.
A hard-wearing fabric with a corded surface.
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capital little book, in good condition, on Gardening. I procured
and sowed some half-hardy annuals in what I fancy will be a
warm, sunny border. I thought of a joke, and called out Carrie.
Carrie came out rather testy, I thought. I said: “I have just discov-
ered we have got a lodging-house.” She replied: “How do you
mean?” I said: “Look at the boarders.” Carrie said: “Is that all you
wanted me for?” I said: “Any other time you would have laughed
at my little pleasantry.” Carrie said: “Certainly—at any other time,
but not when I am busy in the house.” The stairs looked very
nice. Gowing called, and said the stairs looked all right, but it
made the banisters look all wrong, and suggested a coat of paint
on them also, which Carrie quite agreed with. I walked round
to Putley, and fortunately he was out, so I had a good excuse to
let the banisters slide. By-the-by, that is rather funny.
April , Sunday. At three o’clock Cummings and Gowing called
for a good long walk over Hampstead and Finchley, and brought
with them a friend named Stillbrook. We walked and chatted
together, except Stillbrook, who was always a few yards behind us
staring at the ground and cutting at the grass with his stick.
As it was getting on for five, we four held a consultation, and
Gowing suggested that we should make for “The Cow and
Hedge,” and get some tea. Stillbrook said: “A brandy-and-soda
In the s there were open fields and footpaths north of Holloway to the villages
of Hampstead and Finchley. The walk would have been under ten miles return.
Really The Old Bull and Bush, then and now a popular pub on Hampstead Heath.
The Grossmiths gave thinly-disguised names to real places in the Punch version, but
restored most but not all of them in the book.
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was good enough for him.” I reminded them that all public-
houses were closed till six o’clock.Stillbrook said:“That’s all right—
bona fide travellers.”
We arrived; and as I was trying to pass, the man in charge of
the gate said: “Where from?” I replied: “Holloway.” He immedi-
ately put up his arm, and declined to let me pass. I turned back
for a moment, when I saw Stillbrook, closely followed by
Cummings and Gowing, make for the entrance. I watched them
and thought I would have a good laugh at their expense. I heard
the porter say: “Where from?” When, to my surprise, in fact
disgust, Stillbrook replied: “Blackheath,” and the three were
immediately admitted.
Gowing called to me across the gate and said: “We shan’t be
a minute.” I waited for them the best part of an hour. When they
appeared they were all in most excellent spirits, and the only one
who made an effort to apologise was Mr. Stillbrook, who said to
me: “It was very rough on you to be kept waiting, but we had
The convention of putting indirect speech into quotation marks was dying at this
time, but lingered among old-fashioned writers or publishers.
Before World War I, only travellers from a point more than three miles away could
buy a drink in a pub on Sunday afternoons. It was assumed that no gentleman would
lie about how far he had come. Pooter is indignant at Stillbrook’s impudent lie
because Blackheath is about forty miles southeast of Holloway—an absurdly distant
point of origin for a Sunday outing.
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another spin for S and B’s.” I walked home in silence. I couldn’t
speak to them. I felt very dull all the evening, but deemed it
advisable not to say anything to Carrie about the matter.
April . After business, set to work in the garden. When it
got dark I wrote to Cummings and Gowing (who neither called,
for a wonder; perhaps they were ashamed of themselves) about
yesterday’s adventure at “The Cow and Hedge.” Afterwards made
up my mind not to write yet.
April . Thought I would write a kind little note to Gowing
and Cummings about last Sunday, and warning them against Mr.
Probably tossing a coin to see who paid for the round.
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Stillbrook. Afterwards, thinking the matter over, tore up the letters
and determined not to write at all, but to speak quietly to them.
Dumfounded at receiving a sharp letter from Cummings, saying
that both he and Gowing had been waiting for an explanation of
my (mind you, MY) extraordinary conduct coming home on
Sunday. At last I wrote: “I thought I was the aggrieved party; but
as I freely forgive you, you—feeling yourself aggrieved—should
bestow forgiveness on me.” I have copied this verbatim in the diary,
because I think it is one of the most perfect and thoughtful
sentences I have ever written. I posted the letter, but in my own
heart I felt I was actually apologising for having been insulted.
April . Am in for a cold. Spent the whole day at the office
sneezing. In the evening, the cold being intolerable, sent Sarah out
for a bottle of Kinahan. Fell asleep in the arm-chair, and woke
with the shivers. Was startled by a loud knock at the front door.
Carrie awfully flurried. Sarah still out, so went up, opened the door,
and found it was only Cummings. Remembered the grocer’s boy
had again broken the side-bell. Cummings squeezed my hand, and
said: “I’ve just seen Gowing. All right. Say no more about it.” There
is no doubt they are both under the impression I have apologised.
While playing dominoes with Cummings in the parlour, he
said: “By-the-by, do you want any wine or spirits? My cousin
Merton has just set up in the trade, and has a splendid whisky,
four years in bottle, at thirty-eight shillings. It is worth your
while laying down a few dozen of it.” I told him my cellars,
which were very small, were full up. To my horror, at that very
moment, Sarah entered the room, and putting a bottle of whisky,
wrapped in a dirty piece of newspaper, on the table in front of
us, said: “Please, sir, the grocer says he ain’t got no more Kinahan,
but you’ll find this very good at two-and-six, with twopence
returned on the bottle; and, please, did you want any more sherry
as he has some at one-and-three, as dry as a nut!”
A cheap Irish whisky, advertised implausibly as “more wholesome than the finest
Cognac Brandy.”
That is, for a dozen bottles; a little more than three shillings (p) a bottle.
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Chapter Three
A conversation with Mr. Merton on Society. Mr. and Mrs. James,
of Sutton, come up. A miserable evening at the Tank Theatre.
Experiments with enamel paint. I make another good joke; but
Gowing and Cummings are unnecessarily offended. I paint the
bath red, with unexpected result.
April . Cummings called, bringing with him his friend Merton,
who is in the wine trade. Gowing also called. Mr Merton made
himself at home at once, and Carrie and I were both struck with
him immediately, and thoroughly approved of his sentiments.
He leaned back in his chair and said: “You must take me as I
am,” and I replied: “Yes—and you must take us as we are. We’re
homely people, we are not swells.”
He answered: “No, I can see that,” and Gowing roared with
laughter; but Merton in a most gentlemanly manner said to
Gowing, “I don’t think you quite understand me. I intended to
convey that our charming host and hostess were superior to the
follies of fashion, and preferred leading a simple and wholesome
life to gadding about to twopenny-halfpenny tea-drinking after-
noons, and living above their incomes.”
I was immensely pleased with these sensible remarks of
Merton’s, and concluded that subject by saying: “No, candidly,
Mr. Merton, we don’t go into Society, because we do not care for
it; and what with the expense of cabs here and cabs there, and
white gloves and white ties, etc, it doesn’t seem worth the money.”
Merton said in reference to friends, “My motto is ‘Few and
True;’ and, by the way, I also apply that to wine,‘Little and Good.’
Gowing said:‘Yes, and sometimes ‘cheap and tasty,’ eh, old man?’”
Merton still continuing, said he should treat me as a friend, and
put me down for a dozen of his “Lockanbar” whisky, and as I
was an old friend of Gowing, I should have it for s., which was
considerably under what he paid for it.
This pseudo-Scottish name is probably supposed to evoke Walter Scott’s romantic
hero “young Lochinvar,” in the famous poem.
Pooter is being imposed on again. Colmore () suggested a man earning as much
as £ a year need spend no more on his whisky than shillings (£) a dozen.
He allocated such a household a bottle a week to drink.
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He booked his own order, and further said that at any time I
wanted any passes for the theatre I was to let him know, as his
name stood good for any theatre in London.
April . Carrie reminded me that as her old school friend,
Annie Fullers (now Mrs. James), and her husband had come up
from Sutton for a few days, it would look kind to take them to
the theatre, and would I drop a line to Mr. Merton asking him
for passes for four, either for the Italian Opera, Haymarket, Savoy,
or Lyceum. I wrote Merton to that effect.
April . Got a reply from Merton, saying he was very busy,
and just at present couldn’t manage passes for the Italian Opera,
Haymarket, Savoy, or Lyceum, but the best thing going on in
London was the Brown Bushes, at the Tank Theatre, Islington,
and enclosed seats for four; also bill for whisky.
April . Mr. and Mrs. James (Miss Fuller that was), came to
meat tea, and we left directly after for the Tank Theatre. We got a
’bus that took us to King’s Cross, and then changed into one that
took us to the “Angel.” Mr. James each time insisted on paying for
all, saying that I had paid for the tickets and that was quite enough.
We arrived at theatre, where, curiously enough, all our ’bus-
load except an old woman with a basket seemed to be going in.
I walked ahead and presented the tickets. The man looked at
them, and called out “Mr. Willowly! do you know anything
about these?” holding up my tickets. The gentleman called to,
came up and examined my tickets, and said: “Who gave you
these?” I said rather indignantly: “Mr. Merton, of course.” He
said: “Merton? Who’s he?” I answered rather sharply, “You ought
to know, his name’s good at any theatre in London.” He replied:
“Oh! is it? Well, it ain’t no good here. These tickets, which are
not dated, were issued under Mr. Swinstead’s management, which
has since changed hands.” While I was having some very
Both Grossmith brothers were professionally associated with most of these theatres,
especially the Savoy, the home of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
A parody of the title of the melodrama The Green Bushes, by J.B. Buckstone. Though
written as early as , it remained popular for most of the century.
The “Tank Theatre” at Islington probably glances at the Philharmonic Theatre in
that suburb, which was at various times a theatre and a music hall. Its character is well
captured in its popular name, “The Spittoon.”
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unpleasant words with the man, James, who had gone upstairs
with the ladies, called out: “Come on!” I went up after them, and
a very civil attendant said: “This way, please, box H.” I said to
James: “Why, how on earth did you manage it?” and to my
horror he replied: “Why, paid for it of course.”
This was humiliating enough, and I could scarcely follow the
play, but I was doomed to still further humiliation. I was leaning
out of the box, when my tie—a little black bow which fastened
on to the stud by means of a new patent—fell into the pit
below. A clumsy man not noticing it, had his foot on it for ever
so long before he discovered it. He then picked it up and even-
tually flung it under the next seat in disgust. What with the box
incident and the tie, I felt quite miserable. Mr. James, of Sutton,
was very good. He said: “Don’t worry—no one will notice it
with your beard. That is the only advantage of growing one that
I can see.” There was no occasion for that remark, for Carrie is
very proud of my beard.
To hide the absence of the tie I had to keep my chin down the
rest of the evening, which caused a pain at the back of my neck.
April . Could scarcely sleep a wink through thinking of
having brought up Mr. and Mrs. James from the country to go to
the theatre last night, and his having paid for a private box because
our order was not honoured; and such a poor play too. I wrote a
very satirical letter to Merton, the wine merchant, who gave us
the pass, and said, “Considering we had to pay for our seats, we
did our best to appreciate the performance.” I thought this line
rather cutting, and I asked Carrie how many p’s there were in
appreciate, and she said, “One.” After I sent off the letter I looked
at the dictionary and found there were two. Awfully vexed at this.
Decided not to worry myself any more about the James’s; for, as
Carrie wisely said, “We’ll make it all right with them by asking
them up from Sutton one evening next week to play at Bézique.”
April . In consequence of Brickwell telling me his wife was
working wonders with the new Pinkford’s enamel paint, I deter-
mined to try it.I bought two tins of red on my way home.I hastened
New gadget or invention.
A fairly complicated card game, also called pinochle.
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through tea, went into the garden and painted some flower-pots. I
called out Carrie, who said: “You’ve always got some new-fangled
craze;” but she was obliged to admit that the flower-pots looked
remarkably well. Went upstairs into the servant’s bedroom and
painted her washstand, towel-horse, and chest of drawers. To my
mind it was an extraordinary improvement, but as an example of
the ignorance of the lower classes in the matter of taste, our servant
Sarah, on seeing them, evinced no sign of pleasure, but merely said:
“she thought they looked very well as they was before.”
This parodies the craze for painted furniture characteristic of the Arts and Crafts
movement associated with William Morris, which stressed the hand-made and richly
decorative. But household manuals for the middle-classes assumed they would be
putting on the paint themselves: one praised “Aspinall’s lovely and invaluable enamel
paints—paints that have a glaze upon them and wear beautifully, and can be applied
at home.” (Panton, [], ).
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April . Got some more red enamel paint (red, to my mind,
being the best colour), and painted the coal-scuttle, and the backs
of our Shakspeare, the binding of which had almost worn out.
April . Painted the bath red, and was delighted with the
result. Sorry to say Carrie was not, in fact we had a few words
about it. She said I ought to have consulted her, and she had
never heard of such a thing as a bath being painted red. I replied:
“It’s merely a matter of taste.”
Fortunately, further argument on the subject was stopped by
a voice saying: “May I come in?” It was only Cummings, who
said, “Your maid opened the door, and asked me to excuse her
showing me in, as she was wringing out some socks.” I was
delighted to see him, and suggested we should have a game of
whist with a dummy, and by way of merriment said: “You can
be the dummy.” Cummings (I thought rather ill-naturedly)
replied: “Funny as usual.” He said he couldn’t stop, he only called
to leave me the Bicycle News, as he had done with it.
Another ring at the bell; it was Gowing, who said he “must
apologise for coming so often, and that one of these days we must
come round to him.” I said: “A very extraordinary thing has
struck me.” “Something funny, as usual,” said Cummings. “Yes,”
I replied; “I think even you will say so this time. It’s concerning
you both; for doesn’t it seem odd that Gowing’s always coming
and Cummings’ always going?” Carrie, who had evidently quite
forgotten about the bath, went into fits of laughter, and as for
myself, I fairly doubled up in my chair, till it cracked beneath me.
I think this was one of the best jokes I have ever made.
Then imagine my astonishment on perceiving both
Cummings and Gowing perfectly silent, and without a smile on
their faces. After rather an unpleasant pause, Cummings, who had
opened a cigar-case, closed it up again and said: “Yes—I think,
after that, I shall be going, and I am sorry I fail to see the fun of
An imaginary player whose cards are left visible on the table.
Bicycles with a chain and pneumatic tires wrought a cultural transformation in the
s and s, bringing personal mobility and freedom to many people, notably
young women. Clubs and magazines sprang up to cater for the market and had a
social as well as a technical function. Bicycling News was published in London between
and .
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your jokes.” Gowing said he didn’t mind a joke when it wasn’t
rude, but a pun on a name, to his thinking, was certainly a little
wanting in good taste. Cummings followed it up by saying, if it
had been said by anyone else but myself, he shouldn’t have
entered the house again. This rather unpleasantly terminated
what might have been a cheerful evening. However, it was as well
they went, for the charwoman had finished up the remains of the
cold pork.
April . At the office, the new and very young clerk Pitt, who
was very impudent to me a week or so ago, was late again. I told
him it would be my duty to inform Mr. Perkupp, the principal.
To my surprise, Pitt apologised most humbly and in a most
gentlemanly fashion. I was unfeignedly pleased to notice this
improvement in his manner towards me, and told him I would
look over his unpunctuality. Passing down the room an hour
later, I received a smart smack in the face from a rolled-up ball
of hard foolscap. I turned round sharply, but all the clerks were
apparently riveted to their work. I am not a rich man, but I
would give half-a-sovereign to know whether that was thrown
by accident or design. Went home early and bought some more
enamel paint—black this time—and spent the evening touching
up the fender, picture-frames, and an old pair of boots, making
them look as good as new. Also painted Gowing’s walking-stick,
which he left behind, and made it look like ebony.
April , Sunday. Woke up with a fearful headache and strong
symptoms of a cold. Carrie, with a perversity which is just like her,
said it was “painter’s colic,” and was the result of my having spent
the last few days with my nose over a paint-pot. I told her firmly
that I knew a great deal better what was the matter with me than
she did. I had got a chill, and decided to have a bath as hot as I could
bear it. Bath ready—could scarcely bear it so hot. I persevered, and
got in; very hot, but very acceptable. I lay still for some time.
On moving my hand above the surface of the water, I expe-
rienced the greatest fright I ever received in the whole course of
my life; for imagine my horror on discovering my hand, as I
thought, full of blood. My first thought was that I had ruptured
We now know it as chronic lead poisoning, an occupational hazard for painters.
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an artery, and was bleeding to death, and should be discovered,
later on, looking like a second Marat, as I remember seeing him
in Madame Tussaud’s. My second thought was to ring the bell,
but remembered there was no bell to ring. My third was, that it
was nothing but the enamel paint, which had dissolved with
boiling water. I stepped out of the bath, perfectly red all over,
resembling the Red Indians I have seen depicted at an East-End
theatre. I determined not to say a word to Carrie, but to tell
Farmerson to come on Monday and paint the bath white.
Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday during the French
Revolution in . A model of the scene was constructed soon afterwards by Marie
Tussaud and later became one of the most popular exhibits in her waxworks. The
scene is still on display today.
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Chapter Four
The ball at the Mansion House.
April . Perfectly astounded at receiving an invitation for Carrie
and myself from the Lord and Lady Mayoress to the Mansion
House, to “meet the Representatives of Trades and Commerce.”
My heart beat like that of a schoolboy’s. Carrie and I read the invi-
tation over two or three times. I could scarcely eat my breakfast. I
said—and I felt it from the bottom of my heart,—“Carrie darling,
I was a proud man when I led you down the aisle of the church
on our wedding-day; that pride will be equalled, if not surpassed,
when I lead my dear, pretty wife up to the Lord and Lady
Mayoress at the Mansion House.” I saw the tears in Carrie’s eyes,
and she said: “Charlie dear, it is I who have to be proud of you.
And I am very, very proud of you.You have called me pretty; and
as long as I am pretty in your eyes, I am happy.You, dear old
Charlie, are not handsome, but you are good, which is far more
noble.” I gave her a kiss, and she said: “I wonder if there will be
any dancing? I have not danced with you for years.”
I cannot tell what induced me to do it, but I seized her round
the waist, and we were silly enough to be executing a wild kind
of polka when Sarah entered, grinning, and said: “There is a man,
mum, at the door who wants to know if you want any good coals.”
Most annoyed at this. Spent the evening in answering, and tearing
up again, the reply to the Mansion House, having left word with
Sarah if Gowing or Cummings called we were not at home. Must
consult Mr. Perkupp how to answer the Lord Mayor’s invitation.
May . Carrie said: “I should like to send mother the invita-
tion to look at.” I consented, as soon as I had answered it. I told
Mr. Perkupp, at the office, with a feeling of pride, that we had
received an invitation to the Mansion House; and he said, to my
astonishment, that he himself gave in my name to the Lord
Mayor’s secretary. I felt this rather discounted the value of the
invitation, but I thanked him, and in reply to me, he described
The grand official residence of the Lord Mayor at the Bank, EC. Receptions and
dances were held there regularly for all sorts of worthy citizens, and an invitation to
one carried no very special significance.
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how I was to answer it. I felt the reply was too simple; but of
course Mr. Perkupp knows best.
May . Sent my dress-coat and trousers to the little tailor’s
round the corner, to have the creases taken out. Told Gowing
not to call next Monday, as we were going to the Mansion
House. Sent similar note to Cummings.
May . Carrie went to Mrs. James, at Sutton, to consult about
her dress for next Monday. While speaking incidentally to
Spotch, one of our head clerks, about the Mansion House, he
Formal evening wear consisting of a black elastic twill cloth jacket with cut-away
waistcoat and black trousers.
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said: “Oh, I’m asked, but don’t think I shall go.” When a vulgar
man like Spotch is asked, I feel my invitation is considerably
discounted. In the evening, while I was out, the little tailor
brought round my coat and trousers, and because Sarah had not
a shilling to pay for the pressing, he took them away again.
May . Carrie’s mother returned the Lord Mayor’s invitation,
which was sent to her to look at, with apologies for having upset
a glass of port over it. I was too angry to say anything.
May . Bought a pair of lavender kid-gloves for next Monday,
and two white ties, in case one got spoiled in the tying.
May , Sunday. A very dull sermon, during which, I regret to
say, I twice thought of the Mansion House reception to-morrow.
May . A big red-letter day; viz., the Lord Mayor’s reception.
The whole house upset. I had to get dressed at half-past six, as
Carrie wanted the room to herself. Mrs. James had come up
from Sutton to help Carrie; so I could not help thinking it
unreasonable that she should require the entire attention of
Sarah, the servant, as well. Sarah kept running out of the house
to fetch “something for missis,” and several times I had, in my
full evening-dress, to answer the back-door.
The last time it was the greengrocer’s boy, who, not seeing it
was me, for Sarah had not lighted the gas, pushed into my hands
two cabbages and half-a-dozen coal-blocks. I indignantly threw
them on the ground, and felt so annoyed that I so far forgot
myself as to box the boy’s ears. He went away crying, and said he
should summons me, a thing I would not have happen for the
world. In the dark, I stepped on a piece of the cabbage, which
brought me down on the flags all of a heap. For a moment I was
stunned, but when I recovered I crawled upstairs into the draw-
ing-room and on looking into the chimney-glass discovered that
my chin was bleeding, my shirt smeared with the coal-blocks,
and my left trouser torn at the knee.
However, Mrs. James brought me down another shirt, which
I changed in the drawing-room. I put a piece of court-plaister
Originally a saint’s day, marked in red in the calendar.
A convenient form of compressed powdered coal, for use in the kitchen range.
A piece of silk coated with a sticky substance to cover minor wounds; the predeces-
sor of Band-Aids.
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on my chin, and Sarah very neatly sewed up the tear at the knee.
At nine o’clock Carrie swept into the room, looking like a queen.
Never have I seen her look so lovely, or so distinguished. She was
wearing a satin dress of sky-blue—my favourite colour—and a
piece of lace, which Mrs. James lent her, round the shoulders, to
give a finish. I thought perhaps the dress was a little too long
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behind, and decidedly too short in front, but Mrs. James said it
was à la mode. Mrs. James was most kind, and lent Carrie a fan of
ivory with red feathers, the value of which, she said, was price-
less, as the feathers belonged to the Kachu eagle—a bird now
extinct. I preferred the little white fan which Carrie bought for
three-and-six at Shoolbred’s, but both ladies sat on me at once.
We arrived at the Mansion House too early, which was rather
fortunate, for I had an opportunity of speaking to his lordship,
who graciously condescended to talk with me some minutes;
but I must say I was disappointed to find he did not even know
Mr. Perkupp, our principal.
I felt as if we had been invited to the Mansion House by one
who did not know the Lord Mayor himself. Crowds arrived, and
I shall never forget the grand sight. My humble pen can never
describe it. I was a little annoyed with Carrie, who kept saying:
“Isn’t it a pity we don’t know anybody?”
Once she quite lost her head. I saw someone who looked like
Franching, from Peckham, and was moving towards him when
she seized me by the coat-tails, and said quite loudly: “Don’t
leave me,” which caused an elderly gentleman, in a court-suit,
and a chain round him, and two ladies, to burst out laughing.
There was an immense crowd in the supper-room, and, my stars!
it was a splendid supper—any amount of champagne.
Carrie made a most hearty supper, for which I was pleased;
for I sometimes think she is not strong. There was scarcely a dish
she did not taste. I was so thirsty, I could not eat much. Receiving
a sharp slap on the shoulder, I turned, and, to my amazement,
saw Farmerson, our ironmonger. He said, in the most familiar
way: “This is better than Brickfield Terrace, eh?” I simply looked
at him, and said coolly: “I never expected to see you here.” He
said, with a loud, coarse laugh: “I like that—if you, why not me?”
I replied: “Certainly.” I wish I could have thought of something
better to say. He said: “Can I get your good lady anything?”
This sounds like a tall story of Mrs. James, as the name of this eagle is apparently
invented.
A well-known department store, originally a draper’s shop, in Tottenham Court
Road.
Evidently some sort of impressive uniform, though the term is obscure.
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Carrie said: “No, I thank you,” for which I was pleased. I said, by
way of reproof to him: “You never sent to-day to paint the bath,
as I requested.” Farmerson said: “Pardon me, Mr. Pooter, no shop
when we’re in company, please.”
Before I could think of a reply, one of the sheriffs, in full Court
costume, slapped Farmerson on the back and hailed him as an old
friend, and asked him to dine with him at his lodge. I was aston-
ished. For full five minutes they stood roaring with laughter, and
stood digging each other in the ribs. They kept telling each other
they didn’t look a day older. They began embracing each other
and drinking champagne.
To think that a man who mends our scraper should know any
member of our aristocracy! I was just moving with Carrie, when
Farmerson seized me rather roughly by the collar, and addressing
the sheriff, said: “Let me introduce my neighbour, Pooter.” He did
not even say “Mister.” The sheriff handed me a glass of champagne.
I felt, after all, it was a great honour to drink a glass of wine with
him, and I told him so. We stood chatting for some time, and at last
I said: “You must excuse me now if I join Mrs. Pooter.” When I
approached her, she said: “Don’t let me take you away from friends.
I am quite happy standing here alone in a crowd,knowing nobody!”
As it takes two to make a quarrel, and as it was neither the time
nor the place for it, I gave my arm to Carrie, and said: “I hope my
darling little wife will dance with me, if only for the sake of saying
we had danced at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord Mayor.”
Finding the dancing after supper was less formal, and knowing how
much Carrie used to admire my dancing in the days gone by, I put
my arm round her waist and we commenced a waltz.
A most unfortunate accident occurred. I had got on a new
pair of boots. Foolishly, I had omitted to take Carrie’s advice;
namely, to scratch the soles of them with the points of the scis-
sors or to put a little wet on them. I had scarcely started when,
Sheriffs were elected annually by liverymen of city companies, one of these being
the Ironmongers’ Company. It is not very surprising therefore that Farmerson, an
ironmonger, should know one, particularly as “lodge” implies both are freemasons.
Despite their fancy dress, sheriffs are not “aristocrats” as Pooter thinks.
A gentleman in his own eyes, Pooter expects to be called “Mister Pooter” by a trades-
man. He himself would have addressed the ironmonger as “Farmerson.”
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like lightning, my left foot slipped away and I came down, the
side of my head striking the floor with such violence that for a
second or two I did not know what had happened. I need hardly
say that Carrie fell with me with equal violence, breaking the
comb in her hair and grazing her elbow.
There was a roar of laughter, which was immediately checked
when people found that we had really hurt ourselves. A gentle-
man assisted Carrie to a seat, and I expressed myself pretty strongly
on the danger of having a plain polished floor with no carpet or
drugget to prevent people slipping. The gentleman, who said his
name was Darwitts, insisted on escorting Carrie to have a glass of
wine, an invitation which I was pleased to allow Carrie to accept.
I followed, and met Farmerson, who immediately said, in his
loud voice: “Oh, are you the one who went down?”
I answered with an indignant look.
With execrable taste, he said: “Look here, old man, we are too
old for this game. We must leave these capers to the youngsters.
Come and have another glass, that is more in our line.”
Although I felt I was buying his silence by accepting, we
followed the others into the supper-room.
Neither Carrie nor I, after our unfortunate mishap, felt
inclined to stay longer. As we were departing, Farmerson said:
“Are you going? if so, you might give me a lift.”
I thought it better to consent, but wish I had first consulted
Carrie.
Chapter Five
After the Mansion House Ball. Carrie offended. Gowing also
offended. A pleasant party at the Cummings’. Mr. Franching, of
Peckham, visits us.
May . I woke up with a most terrible headache. I could scarcely
see, and the back of my neck was as if I had given it a crick. I
Pooter must be concussed when he blames the dance floor for not being carpeted.
Unwaxed parquet flooring was the preferred choice at this time.
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thought first of sending for a doctor; but I did not think it neces-
sary. When up, I felt faint, and went to Brownish’s, the chemist, who
gave me a draught. So bad at the office, had to get leave to come
home. Went to another chemist in the City, and I got a draught.
Brownish’s dose seems to have made me worse; have eaten noth-
ing all day. To make matters worse, Carrie, every time I spoke to
her, answered me sharply—that is, when she answered at all.
In the evening I felt very much worse again and said to her: “I
do believe I’ve been poisoned by the lobster mayonnaise at the
Mansion House last night;” she simply replied, without taking her
eyes from her sewing: “Champagne never did agree with you.” I
felt irritated, and said: “What nonsense you talk; I only had a glass
and a half, and you know as well as I do—” Before I could
complete the sentence she bounced out of the room. I sat over an
hour waiting for her to return; but as she did not, I determined I
would go to bed. I discovered Carrie had gone to bed without even
saying “good-night”; leaving me to bar the scullery door and feed
the cat. I shall certainly speak to her about this in the morning.
May . Still a little shaky, with black specs. The Blackfriars Bi-
weekly News, contains a long list of the guests at the Mansion
House Ball. Disappointed to find our names omitted, though
Farmerson is in plainly enough with M.L.L. after it, whatever
that may mean. More than vexed because we had ordered a
dozen copies to send to our friends. Wrote to the Blackfriars Bi-
weekly News pointing out their omission.
Carrie had commenced her breakfast when I entered the
parlour. I helped myself to a cup of tea, and I said, perfectly calmly
and quietly: “Carrie, I wish a little explanation of your conduct
last night.”
She replied: “Indeed! and I desire something more than a little
explanation of your conduct the night before.”
Some proprietary medicines were available by this date, but most chemists still made
up their own remedies for minor ailments like hangovers, using any ingredients they
chose. They were mixed and drunk on the spot.
An invented newspaper.
These mystifying initials are presumably, but not certainly, an abbreviation used by
freemasons. Perhaps they are supposed to tell which lodge Farmerson belongs to.
(There were at least lodges in London.) However, the initials remain unidenti-
fiable, so it is possible that they are invented. George Grossmith was a freemason.
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I said, coolly: “Really, I don’t understand you.”
Carrie said sneeringly: “Probably not; you were scarcely in a
condition to understand anything.”
I was astounded at this insinuation and simply ejaculated:
“Caroline!”
She said: “Don’t be theatrical, it has no effect on me. Reserve
that tone for your new friend, Mister Farmerson, the ironmonger.”
I was about to speak, when Carrie, in a temper such as I have
never seen her in before, told me to hold my tongue. She said:
“Now I’m going to say something! After professing to snub Mr.
Farmerson, you permit him to snub you, in my presence, and then
accept his invitation to take a glass of champagne with you, and
you don’t limit yourself to one glass.You then offer this vulgar
man, who made a bungle of repairing our scraper, a seat in our cab
on the way home. I say nothing about his tearing my dress in
getting in the cab, nor of treading on Mrs. James’s expensive fan,
which you knocked out of my hand, and for which he never even
apologised; but you smoked all the way home without having the
decency to ask my permission. That is not all! At the end of the
journey, although he did not offer you a farthing towards his share
of the cab, you asked him in. Fortunately, he was sober enough to
detect, from my manner, that his company was not desirable.”
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Goodness knows I felt humiliated enough at this; but, to make
matters worse, Gowing entered the room, without knocking, with
two hats on his head and holding the garden-rake in his hand, with
Carrie’s fur tippet (which he had taken off the downstairs hall-
peg) round his neck, and announced himself in a loud, coarse
voice: “His Royal Highness, the Lord Mayor!” He marched twice
round the room like a buffoon, and finding we took no notice,
said: “Hulloh! what’s up? Lovers’ quarrel, eh?”
There was a silence for a moment, so I said quietly: “My dear
Gowing, I’m not very well, and not quite in the humour for
joking; especially when you enter the room without knocking,
an act which I fail to see the fun of.”
Gowing said: “I’m very sorry, but I called for my stick, which
I thought you would have sent round.” I handed him his stick,
which I remembered I had painted black with the enamel paint,
thinking to improve it. He looked at it for a minute with a dazed
expression and said: “Who did this?”
I said: “Eh, Did what?”
He said: “Did what? Why, destroyed my stick! It belonged to
my poor uncle, and I value it more than anything I have in the
world! I’ll know who did it.”
I said: “I’m very sorry. I daresay it will come off. I did it for
the best.”
Gowing said: “Then all I can say is, it’s a confounded liberty;
and I would add, you’re a bigger fool than you look, only that’s
absolutely impossible.”
May . Got a single copy of the Blackfriars Bi-weekly News.
There was a short list of several names they had omitted; but the
stupid people had mentioned our names as “Mr. and Mrs. C.
Porter.” Most annoying! Wrote again and I took particular care
to write our name in capital letters, POOTER, so that there
should be no possible mistake this time.
May . Absolutely disgusted on opening the Blackfriars Bi-
weekly News of to-day, to find the following paragraph: “We have
received two letters from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pewter, requesting
us to announce the important fact that they were at the Mansion
House Ball.” I tore up the paper and threw it in the waste-paper
basket. My time is far too valuable to bother about such trifles.
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May . The last week or ten days terribly dull, Carrie being
away at Mrs. James’s, at Sutton. Cummings also away. Gowing,
I presume, is still offended with me for black-enamelling his stick
without asking him.
May . Purchased a new stick mounted with silver, which
cost seven-and-sixpence (shall tell Carrie five shillings), and sent
it round with nice note to Gowing.
May . Received strange note from Gowing; he says:
“Offended? not a bit, my boy. I thought you were offended with
me for losing my temper. Besides, I found after all, it was not my
poor old uncle’s stick you painted. It was only a shilling thing I
bought at a tobacconist’s. However, I am much obliged to you
for your handsome present all same.”
May . Carrie back. Hoorah! She looks wonderfully well,
except that the sun has caught her nose.
May . Carrie brought down some of my shirts and advised
me to take them to Trillip’s round the corner. She said: “The
fronts and cuffs are much frayed.” I said without a moment’s hesi-
tation: “I’m ‘frayed they are.’ Lor! how we roared. I thought we
should never stop laughing. As I happened to be sitting next the
driver going to town on the ’bus, I told him my joke about the
“frayed” shirts. I thought he would have rolled off his seat. They
laughed at the office a good bit too over it.
May . Left the shirts to be repaired at Trillip’s. I said to him:
“I’m ’fraid they are frayed.” He said, without a smile: “They’re
bound to do that, sir.” Some people seem to be quite destitute
of a sense of humour.
June . The last week has been like old times, Carrie being
back, and Gowing and Cummings calling every evening nearly.
Twice we sat out in the garden quite late. This evening we were
like a pack of children, and played “consequences.” It is a good
game.
June . “Consequences” again this evening. Not quite so
Pooter does not confide even to his diary that his wife has temporarily left him after
their fierce quarrel over his behaviour on the night of the ball.
A game in which the players in turn add invented “consequences” of a man and a
woman meeting, without knowing what others have written before them. The sensa-
tional and indecent possibilities are endless.
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successful as last night; Gowing having several times over-stepped
the limits of good taste.
June . In the evening Carrie and I went round to Mr. and
Mrs. Cummings’ to spend a quiet evening with them. Gowing
was there, also Mr. Stillbrook. It was quiet but pleasant. Mrs.
Cummings sang five or six songs, “No, Sir,” and “The Garden
of Sleep,” being best in my humble judgment; but what pleased
me most was the duet she sang with Carrie—classical duet, too.
I think it is called, “I would that my love!” It was beautiful. If
Carrie had been in better voice, I don’t think professionals could
have sung it better. After supper we made them sing it again. I
never liked Mr. Stillbrook since the walk that Sunday to the
“Cow and Hedge,” but I must say he sings comic-songs well. His
song: “We don’t want the old men now,” made us shriek with
laughter, especially the verse referring to Mr. Gladstone; but there
was one verse I think he might have omitted, and I said so, but
Gowing thought it was the best of the lot.
June . Trillip brought round the shirts and, to my disgust, his
charge for repairing was more than I gave for them when new.I told
him so,and he impertinently replied:“Well,they are better now than
when they were new.”I paid him,and said it was a robbery.He said:
“If you wanted your shirt-fronts made out of pauper-linen, such
as is used for packing and bookbinding, why didn’t you say so?”
June . A dreadful annoyance. Met Mr. Franching, who lives at
Peckham, and who is a great swell in his way.I ventured to ask him
to come home to meat-tea and take pot-luck. I did not think he
would accept such a humble invitation; but he did, saying, in a most
friendly way,he would rather “peck”with us than by himself.I said:
Probably a Spanish ballad with words and music arranged by A.M. Wakefield in .
A song of , with words by Clement Scott and music by Isidore de Lara. In the
Punch version the two songs were Maggie’s Secret, a song of with words and music
by “Claribel” (Charlotte Barnard) and Why Don’t the Men Propose? of , with
words by T.H. Bayly and music by Jonathan Blewitt. Both must have been popular
in their day but were probably almost forgotten by .
No such song is known, although comic songs about Gladstone were popular.
Probably the Grossmiths invented the title so Pooter’s prissiness could be exposed.
Evidently the verse mentioned contained some sexual innuendo.
An archaic form of “paper linen”: not a fabric.
Peckham, south of the Thames, was originally a small Surrey village; but by it
was another popular “clerks’ suburb.”
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“We had better get into this blue ’bus.”
He replied: “No blue-bussing for me. I
have had enough of the blues lately. I lost
a cool “thou” over the Copper Scare.
Step in here.”
We drove up home in style, in a
hansom-cab, and I knocked three times
at the front door without getting an
answer. I saw Carrie, through the panels
of ground-glass (with stars), rushing
upstairs. I told Mr. Franching to wait at
the door while I went round to the side.
There I saw the grocer’s boy actually
picking off the paint on the door, which
had formed into blisters. No time to reprove him; so went round
and effected an entrance through the kitchen window. I let in Mr.
Franching,and showed him into the drawing-room.I went up stairs
to Carrie,who was changing her dress,and told her I had persuaded
Mr. Franching to come home. She replied: “How can you do such
a thing? You know it’s Sarah’s holiday, and there’s not a thing in the
house, the cold mutton having turned with the hot weather.”
Eventually Carrie, like a good creature as she is, slipped down,
washed up the teacups, and laid the cloth, and I gave Franching
our views of Japan to look at while I ran round to the butcher’s
to get three chops.
Horse buses operated by the London General Omnibus Company were not
numbered; instead, the buses were different colours, each one identifying a general
route. The blue routes ran to and from Holloway and western suburbs such as
Brompton, Fulham and Chelsea.
Probably a reference to the collapse of the copper mining industry in southern
England, after the discovery of huge copper reserves in the United States, Bolivia,
and Australia. “Blue” in the sense of depressed is a usage hundreds of years old.
Hansoms charged sixpence (.p) a mile in the inner city and a shilling (p) a mile
for more distant journeys, and were too expensive for trips to the suburbs for the
likes of Pooter.
Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado () had both expressed and rein-
forced the contemporary fascination with Japanese art and culture. George Grossmith
played Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, to much acclaim. The inspiration of the
opera had been a “Japanese village” installed in Knightsbridge. The opera’s run at the
Savoy theatre lasted nearly two years, and while the Punch version of the Diary was
appearing GG was playing in a revival of it (from June ).
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July . The miserable cold weather is either upsetting me or
Carrie, or both. We seem to break out into an argument about
absolutely nothing, and this unpleasant state of things usually
occurs at meal times.
The summer of was one of the ten coldest known in England, according to
records dating back to .
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This morning, for some unaccountable reason, we were talk-
ing about balloons, and we were as merry as possible; but the
conversation drifted into family matters, during which Carrie,
without the slightest reason, referred in the most uncompli-
mentary manner to my poor father’s pecuniary trouble. I
retorted by saying that “Pa, at all events, was a gentleman,”
whereupon Carrie burst out crying. I positively could not eat
any breakfast.
At the office I was sent for by Mr. Perkupp, who said he was
very sorry, but I should have to take my annual holidays from
next Saturday. Franching called at office and asked me to dine at
his Club, “The Constitutional.” Fearing disagreeables at home
after the “tiff ” this morning, I sent a telegram to Carrie, telling
her I was going out to dine and she was not to sit up. Bought a
little silver bangle for Carrie.
July . Carrie was very pleased with the bangle, which I left
with an affectionate note on her dressing-table last night before
going to bed. I told Carrie we should have to start for our holi-
day next Saturday. She replied quite happily that she did not
mind, except that the weather was so bad, and she feared that
Miss Jibbons would not be able to get her a seaside dress in time.
I told Carrie that I thought the drab one with pink bows looked
quite good enough; and Carrie said she should not think of
wearing it. I was about to discuss the matter, when, remember-
ing the argument yesterday, resolved to hold my tongue.
I said to Carrie: “I don’t think we can do better than ‘Good
old Broadstairs.’” Carrie not only, to my astonishment, raised an
This paternal detail is perhaps an attempt to account for Pooter’s obsession with job
security and caution over money. His own implication that his father-in-law was not
a gentleman would have been quite an insult to Carrie, who like her husband feels
insecure about her class position.
The use of quotation marks suggests Pooter feels slightly daring in using slang from his
youth. But by the time of the Diary it was quite conventional English, so it merely
suggests how out of touch he is. There are other examples, such as his later use of “go”.
Although the postal service was extraordinarily efficient with up to eight deliveries
daily in London, ordinary people used telegrams for really urgent personal business:
a boy on a bicycle would deliver one within an hour or two.
A light brown woollen cloth, hardly suitable for a sea-side holiday in August. The
word “drab” did not have entirely negative connotations as it does today.
A genteel holiday town on the Kent coast, about two hours by train from London.
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objection to Broadstairs, for the first time; but begged me not to
use the expression, “Good old,” but to leave it to Mr. Stillbrook
and other gentlemen of his type. Hearing my ’bus pass the
window, I was obliged to rush out of the house without kissing
Carrie as usual; and I shouted to her: “I leave it to you to decide.”
On returning in the evening, Carrie said she thought as the time
was so short she had decided on Broadstairs, and had written to
Mrs. Beck, Harbour View Terrace, for apartments.
August . Ordered a new pair of trousers at Edwards’s, and told
them not to cut them so loose over the boot; the last pair being
so loose and also tight at the knee, looked like a sailor’s, and I heard
Pitt, that objectionable youth at the office, call out “Hornpipe” as
I passed his desk. Carrie has ordered of Miss Jibbons a pink
Garibaldi and blue-serge skirt, which I always think looks so
pretty at the seaside. In the evening she trimmed herself a little
sailor-hat, while I read to her the Exchange and Mart. We had a
good laugh over my trying on the hat when she had finished it;
Carrie saying it looked so funny with my beard, and how the
people would have roared if I went on the stage like it.
August . Mrs. Beck wrote to say we could have our usual
rooms at Broadstairs. That’s off our mind. Bought a coloured
shirt and a pair of tan-coloured boots, which I see many of the
swell clerks wearing in the City, and I hear are all the “go.”
August . A beautiful day. Looking forward to to-morrow.
Carrie bought a parasol about five feet long. I told her it was
ridiculous. She said: “Mrs James, of Sutton, has one twice as long;”
so the matter dropped. I bought a capital hat for hot weather at
the seaside. I don’t know what it is called, but it is the shape of the
helmet worn in India, only made of straw. Got three new ties,
two coloured handkerchiefs, and a pair of navy-blue socks at Pope
Brothers. Spent the evening packing. Carrie told me not to forget
to borrow Mr. Higgsworth’s telescope, which he always lends me,
A type of blouse (originally bright red) associated with the Italian revolutionary
Garibaldi and his followers.
A thrice-weekly paper founded in consisting almost entirely of classified adver-
tisements for buying, selling, and exchanging all kinds of goods. Its interest to Carrie
would surely have been minimal.
Pooter is thinking of the sola topi, a light round hat made of the pith of a plant.
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knowing I know how to take care of it. Sent Sarah out for it.
While everything was seeming so bright, the last post brought us
a letter from Mrs. Beck, saying: “I have just let all my house to one
party, and am sorry I must take back my words, and am sorry you
must find other apartments; but Mrs. Womming, next door, will
be pleased to accommodate you, but she cannot take you before
Monday, as her rooms are engaged Bank Holiday week.”
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Chapter Six
The unexpected arrival home of our son,Willie Lupin Pooter.
August . The first post brought a nice letter from our dear son
Willie, acknowledging a trifling present which Carrie sent him,
the day before yesterday being his twentieth birthday. To our
utter amazement he turned up himself in the afternoon, having
journeyed all the way from Oldham. He said he had got leave
from the bank, and as Monday was a holiday he thought he
would give us a little surprise.
August , Sunday. We have not seen Willie since last
Christmas, and are pleased to notice what a fine young man he
has grown. One would scarcely believe he was Carrie’s son. He
looks more like a younger brother. I rather disapprove of his
wearing a check suit on a Sunday, and I think he ought to have
gone to church this morning; but he said he was tired after
yesterday’s journey, so I refrained from any remark on the subject.
We had a bottle of port for dinner, and drank dear Willie’s health.
He said: “Oh, by-the-by, did
I tell you I’ve cut my first name,
‘William,’ and taken the second
name ‘Lupin’? In fact, I’m only
known at Oldham as ‘Lupin
Pooter.’ If you were to ‘Willie’
me there, they wouldn’t know
what you meant.”
Of course, Lupin being a
purely family name, Carrie was
delighted, and began by giving
a long history of the Lupins. I
ventured to say that I thought
William a nice simple name,
In the Punch serial version ( Aug , ) this first mention of Willie (Lupin) was
followed by the phrase “(son by my first)” i.e., that he is Carrie’s stepson and that
Pooter has been (presumably) a widower. Pooter’s first marriage is never mentioned
again even in the Punch serial.
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and reminded him he was christened after his Uncle William,
who was much respected in the City. Willie, in a manner which
I did not much care for, said sneeringly: “Oh, I know all about
that—Good old Bill!” and helped himself to a third glass of port.
Carrie objected strongly to my saying “Good old,” but she
made no remark when Willie used the double adjective. I said
nothing, but looked at her, which meant more. I said: “My dear
Willie, I hope you are happy with your colleagues at the bank.”
He replied: “Lupin, if you please; and with respect to the bank,
there’s not a clerk who is a gentleman, and the ‘boss’ is a cad.”
I felt so shocked, I could say nothing, and my instinct told me
there was something wrong.
August , Bank Holiday. As there was no sign of Lupin moving
at nine o’clock, I knocked at his door, and said we usually break-
fasted at half-past eight, and asked how long would he be? Lupin
replied that he had had a lively time of it, first with the trains
shaking the house all night, and then with the sun streaming in
through the windows in his eyes, and giving him a cracking
headache. Carrie came up and asked if he would like some
breakfast sent up, and he said he could do with a cup of tea, and
didn’t want anything to eat.
Lupin not having come down, I went up again at half-past
one, and said we dined at two; he said he “would be there.” He
never came down till a quarter to three. I said: “We have not seen
much of you, and you will have to return by the . train; there-
fore you will have to leave in an hour, unless you go by the
midnight mail.” He said: “Look here, Guv’nor, it’s no use beat-
ing about the bush. I’ve tendered my resignation at the Bank.”
For a moment I could not speak. When my speech came
again, I said: “How dare you, sir? How dare you take such a seri-
ous step without consulting me? Don’t answer me, sir!—you will
sit down immediately, and write a note at my dictation, with-
drawing your resignation and amply apologising for your
thoughtlessness.”
“Boss” was still regarded as American slang at this period.
“Guv’nor” or “Guv,” i.e., “Governor,” was an informal but still respectful mode of
address from sons to fathers in middle-class circles. The Grossmith brothers addressed
their own father in that way.
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Imagine my dismay when he replied with a loud guffaw: “It’s
no use. If you want the good old truth, I’ve got the chuck!”
August . Mr. Perkupp has given me leave to postpone my
holiday a week, as we could not get the room. This will give us
an opportunity of trying to find an appointment for Willie
before we go. The ambition of my life would be to get him into
Mr. Perkupp’s firm.
August . Although it is a serious matter having our boy
Lupin on our hands, still it is satisfactory to know he was asked
to resign from the Bank simply because “he took no interest in
his work, and always arrived an hour (sometimes two hours)
late.” We can all start off on Monday to Broadstairs with a light
heart. This will take my mind off the worry of the last few days,
which have been wasted over a useless correspondence with the
manager of the Bank at Oldham.
August . Hurrah! at Broadstairs.Very nice apartments near
the station. On the cliff they would have been double the price.
The landlady had a nice five o’clock dinner and tea ready, which
we all enjoyed, though Lupin seemed fastidious because there
happened to be a fly in the butter. It was very wet in the evening,
for which I was thankful, as it was a good excuse for going to
bed early. Lupin said he would sit up and read a bit.
August . I was a little annoyed to find Lupin, instead of read-
ing last night, had gone to a common sort of entertainment, given
at the Assembly Rooms. I expressed my opinion that such
performances were unworthy of respectable patronage; but he
replied: “Oh, it was only ‘for one night only.’ I had a fit of the
blues come on, and thought I would go to see Polly Presswell,
England’s Particular Spark.” I told him I was proud to say I had
never heard of her. Carrie said: “Do let the boy alone. He’s quite
old enough to take care of himself, and won’t forget he’s a gentle-
man. Remember you were young once yourself.” Rained all day
hard, but Lupin would go out.
The OED cites this passage from the Diary as the earliest usage of the noun to mean
“dismissal.”
Presumably the landlady supplied a substantial meal in the late afternoon especially
for visitors coming by train from London, who would have missed the mid-day
dinner, the largest meal of the day in the Pooters’ social class.
Probably an allusion to Jenny Hill (–),a music-hall star known as “TheVital Spark.”
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August . Cleared up a bit; so we all took the train to Margate,
and the first person we met on the jetty was Gowing. I said:
“Hulloh! I thought you had gone to Barmouth with your
Birmingham friends?” He said: “Yes, but young Peter Lawrence
was so ill, they postponed their visit, so I came down here.You
know the Cummings’ are here too?” Carrie said: “Oh, that will be
delightful! We must have some evenings together and have games.”
I introduced Lupin, saying: “You will be pleased to find we
have our dear boy at home!” Gowing said: “How’s that? You
don’t mean to say he’s left the Bank?”
I changed the subject quickly, and thereby avoided any of those
awkward questions which Gowing always has a knack of asking.
August . Lupin positively refused to walk down the Parade
with me because I was wearing my new straw helmet with my
frock-coat. I don’t know what the boy is coming to.
August . Lupin not falling in with our views, Carrie and I
went for a sail. It was a relief to be with her alone; for when
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Lupin irritates me, she always sides with him. On our return, he
said: “Oh, you’ve been on the ‘Shilling Emetic,’ have you? You’ll
come to six-pennorth on the ‘Liver Jerker’ next.” I presume he
meant a tricycle, but I affected not to understand him.
August . Gowing and Cummings walked over to arrange an
evening at Margate. It being wet, Gowing asked Cummings to
accompany him to the hotel and have a game of billiards, know-
ing I never play, and in fact disapprove of the game. Cummings
said he must hasten back to Margate; whereupon Lupin, to my
horror, said: “I’ll give you a game, Gowing—a hundred up. A
walk round the cloth will give me an appetite for dinner.” I said:
“Perhaps Mister Gowing does not care to play with boys.”
Gowing surprised me by saying: “Oh yes, I do, if they play well,”
and they walked off together.
August , Sunday. I was about to read Lupin a sermon on
smoking (which he indulges in violently) and billiards, but he put
on his hat and walked out. Carrie then read me a long sermon on
the palpable inadvisability of treating Lupin as if he were a mere
child. I felt she was somewhat right, so in the evening I offered
him a cigar. He seemed pleased, but, after a few whiffs, said: “This
is a good old tup’ny—try one of mine,” and he handed me a
cigar as long as it was strong, which is saying a good deal.
August . I am glad our last day at the seaside was fine, though
clouded overhead. We went over to Cummings’ (at Margate) in
the evening, and as it was cold, we stayed in and played games;
Gowing, as usual, overstepping the mark. He suggested we
should play “Cutlets,” a game we never heard of. He sat on a
chair, and asked Carrie to sit on his lap, an invitation which dear
Carrie rightly declined.
After some species of wrangling, I sat on Gowing’s knees and
Carrie sat on the edge of mine. Lupin sat on the edge of Carrie’s
lap, then Cummings on Lupin’s, and Mrs. Cummings on her
husband’s. We looked very ridiculous, and laughed a good deal.
Gowing then said: “Are you a believer in the Great Mogul?”
A cigar costing twopence (less than the cost of a bus ticket) was likely to be cheap
and nasty.
No Victorian parlour game by this name is known; probably it was a practical joke
known to, or even invented by, the Grossmiths.
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We had to answer all together: “Yes—oh, yes!” (three times).
Gowing said: “So am I,” and suddenly got up. The result of this
stupid joke was that we all fell on the ground, and poor Carrie
banged her head against the corner of the fender. Mrs.
Cummings put some vinegar on; but through this we missed the
last train, and had to drive back to Broadstairs, which cost me
seven-and-sixpence.
Chapter Seven
Home again.Mrs.James’influence on
Carrie. Can get nothing for Lupin.
Next-door neighbours are a little
troublesome. Some one tampers
with my diary.Got a place for Lupin.
Lupin startles us with an announce-
ment.
August . Home sweet Home
again! Carrie bought some pretty
blue-wool mats to stand vases on.
Fripps, Janus and Co. write to say
they are sorry they have no vacancy
among their staff of clerks for Lupin.
August . I bought a pair of stags’
heads made of plaster-of-Paris and
coloured brown. They will look just
the thing for our little hall, and give
it style; the heads are excellent imita-
tions. Poolers and Smith are sorry
they have nothing to offer Lupin.
August . Simply to please
Lupin, and make things cheerful for
him, as he is a little down, Carrie
As the distance is under four miles, even a hansom cab should have charged about
half that: we suspect Pooter was cheated yet again.
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invited Mrs. James to come up from Sutton and spend two or
three days with us. We have not said a word to Lupin, but mean
to keep it as a surprise.
August . Mrs. James, of Sutton, arrived in the afternoon,
bringing with her an enormous bunch of wild flowers. The more
I see of Mrs James the nicer I think she is, and she is devoted to
Carrie. She went into Carrie’s room to take off her bonnet, and
remained there nearly an hour talking about dress. Lupin said he
was not a bit surprised at Mrs. James’ visit, but was surprised at her.
August , Sunday. Nearly late for church, Mrs. James having
talked considerably about what to wear all the morning. Lupin
does not seem to get on very well with Mrs. James. I am afraid we
shall have some trouble with our next-door neighbours who came
in last Wednesday. Several of their friends, who drive up in dog-
carts, have already made themselves objectionable.
An evening or two ago I had put on a white waistcoat for cool-
ness, and while walking past with my thumbs in my waistcoat
pockets (a habit I have), one man, seated in the cart, and looking
like an American, commenced singing some vulgar nonsense about
“I had thirteen dollars in my waistcoat pocket.” I fancied it was meant
for me,and my suspicions were confirmed;for while walking round
the garden in my tall hat this afternoon, a “throw-down” cracker
was deliberately aimed at my hat, and exploded on it like a percus-
sion cap. I turned sharply, and am positive I saw the man who was
in the cart retreating from one of the bedroom windows.
August . Carrie and Mrs. James went off shopping, and had
not returned when I came back from the office. Judging from
the subsequent conversation, I am afraid Mrs. James is filling
Carrie’s head with a lot of nonsense about dress. I walked over
to Gowing’s and asked him to drop in to supper, and make
things pleasant.
Carrie prepared a little extemporised supper, consisting of the
remainder of the cold joint, a small piece of salmon (which I was
to refuse, in case there was not enough to go round), and a blanc-
mange and custards. There was also a decanter of port and some
No song containing this line has been identified.
Australian colloquialism for a small firework or squib.
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jam puffs on the sideboard. Mrs. James made us play rather a
good game of cards, called “Muggings.” To my surprise, in fact
disgust, Lupin got up in the middle, and, in a most sarcastic tone,
said: “Pardon me, this sort of thing is too fast for me, I shall go
and enjoy a quiet game of marbles in the back-garden.”
Things might have become rather disagreeable but for
Gowing (who seems to have taken to Lupin) suggesting they
should invent games. Lupin said: “Let’s play ‘Monkeys.’” He then
led Gowing all round the room, and brought him in front of the
looking-glass. I must confess I laughed heartily at this. I was a
little vexed at everybody subsequently laughing at some joke
which they did not explain, and it was only on going to bed I
discovered I must have been walking about all the evening with
an antimacassar on one button of my coat-tails.
August . Found a large brick in the middle bed of gerani-
ums, evidently come from next door. Pattles and Pattles can’t find
a place for Lupin.
August . Mrs. James is making a positive fool of Carrie. Carrie
appeared in a new dress like a smock-frock. She said “smocking”
was all the rage. I replied it put me in a rage. She also had on a hat
as big as a kitchen coal-scuttle, and the same shape. Mrs. James
went home, and both Lupin and I were somewhat pleased—the
first time we have agreed on a single subject since his return.
Merkins and Son write they have no vacancy for Lupin.
October . I should very much like to know who has wilfully
torn the last five or six weeks out of my diary. It is perfectly
A children’s game in which each player in turn puts down a card face up, forming a
pile; when two cards match, the first to cry “Muggin(g)s” collects the other piles. Its
simplicity accounts for Lupin’s sarcasm.
An ornamental cover on the back of an armchair or sofa to protect it from hair oil.
A loose dress made of gathered material, taken up by artists and other “Aesthetic”
folk at this time, based on the garment worn by agricultural labourers. A smock was
originally a woman’s sole undergarment, so Pooter might well have thought a dress
of similar design was indelicate.
Mrs James is, as ever, ahead of a new fashion trend. Very large hats, in the
“Gainsborough” style, had a brief vogue in the s, with fantastic trimmings of
birds’ wings, fur, feathers, and lace veils.
Richard Burton, the traveller and translator of erotica, defined merkin in as “a
heart-shaped article of thin skin stuffed with cotton and slit with an artificial vagina”
(OED). Whether this is a sly joke of the Grossmiths is uncertain.
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monstrous! Mine is a large scribbling diary, with plenty of space
for the record of my everyday events, and in keeping up that
record I take (with much pride) a great deal of pains.
I asked Carrie if she knew anything about it. She replied it
was my own fault for leaving the diary about with a charwoman
cleaning and the sweeps in the house. I said that was not an
answer to my question. This retort of mine, which I thought
extremely smart, would have been more effective had I not
jogged my elbow against a vase on a table temporarily placed in
the passage, knocked it over, and smashed it.
Carrie was dreadfully upset at this disaster, for it was one of a
pair of vases which cannot be matched, given to us on our
wedding-day by Mrs. Burtsett, an old friend of Carrie’s cousins,
the Pommertons, late of Dalston. I called to Sarah, and asked her
about the diary. She said she had not been in the sitting-room at
all; after the sweep had left, Mrs. Birrell (the charwoman) had
cleaned the room and lighted the fire herself. Finding a burnt piece
of paper in the grate, I examined it, and found it was a piece of my
diary. So it was evident some one had torn my diary to light the
fire. I requested Mrs. Birrell to be sent to me to-morrow.
October . Received a letter from our principal, Mr. Perkupp,
saying that he thinks he knows of a place at last for our dear boy
Lupin. This, in a measure, consoles me for the loss of a portion
of my diary; for I am bound to confess the last few weeks have
been devoted to the record of disappointing answers received
from people to whom I have applied for appointments for Lupin.
Mrs. Birrell called, and, in reply to me, said: “She never see no
book, much less take such a liberty as touch it.”
I said I was determined to find out who did it, whereupon
she said she would do her best to help me; but she remembered
the sweep lighting the fire with a bit of the Echo. I requested
the sweep to be sent to me to-morrow. I wish Carrie had not
given Lupin a latch-key; we never seem to see anything of him.
I sat up till past one for him, and then retired tired.
A comic rendition of a famous incident in when J.S. Mill’s housekeeper acci-
dentally burnt part of the manuscript of Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution.
This evening newspaper, the first to cost only a halfpenny, was published between
and .
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November . My entry yesterday about “retired tired,” which I
did not notice at the time, is rather funny. If I were not so worried
just now, I might have had a little joke about it. The sweep called,
but had the audacity to come up to the hall-door and lean his dirty
bag of soot on the door-step. He, however, was so polite, I could
not rebuke him. He said Sarah lighted the fire. Unfortunately, Sarah
heard this, for she was dusting the banisters, and she ran down, and
flew into a temper with the sweep, causing a row on the front
door-steps, which I would not have had happen for anything. I
ordered her about her business, and told the sweep I was sorry to
have troubled him; and so I was, for the door-steps were covered
with soot in consequence of his visit. I would willingly give ten
shillings to find out who tore my diary.
November . I spent the evening quietly with Carrie, of whose
company I never tire. We had a most pleasant chat about the letters
on “Is Marriage a Failure?” It has been no failure in our case. In
talking over our own happy experiences, we never noticed that it
was past midnight. We were startled by hearing the door slam
violently. Lupin had come in. He
made no attempt to turn down
the gas in the passage, or even to
look into the room where we
were, but went straight up to
bed, making a terrible noise. I
asked him to come down for a
moment, and he begged to be
excused, as he was “dead beat,”
an observation that was scarcely
consistent with the fact that, for
a quarter of an hour afterwards,
he was positively dancing in his
room, and shouting out: “See
me dance the Polka!” or some
such nonsense.
A series on this subject in the Daily Telegraph had resulted in a deluge of , letters
to the editor, who finally called a halt on September .
See Me Dance the Polka was George Grossmith’s great hit of : the lyrics contain
the lines “For a rollicking romping Polka/Is the jolliest fun I know.”
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November . Good news at last. Mr. Perkupp has got an
appointment for Lupin, and he is to go and see about it on
Monday. Oh, how my mind is relieved! I went to Lupin’s room
to take the good news to him, but he was in bed, very seedy, so
I resolved to keep it over till the evening.
He said he had last night been elected a member of an Amateur
Dramatic Club, called the “Holloway Comedians”; and, though it
was a pleasant evening, he had sat in a draught, and got neuralgia
in the head. He declined to have any breakfast, so I left him.
In the evening I had up a special bottle of port, and, Lupin being
in for a wonder, we filled our glasses, and I said: “Lupin my boy, I
have some good and unexpected news for you. Mr. Perkupp has
procured you an appointment!” Lupin said: “Good biz!” and we
drained our glasses.
Lupin then said: “Fill up the glasses again, for I have some
good and unexpected news for you.”
I had some slight misgivings, and so evidently had Carrie, for
she said: “I hope we shall think it good news.”
Lupin said: “Oh, it’s all right. I’m engaged to be married!”
Chapter Eight
Daisy Mutlar sole topic of conversation. Lupin’s new berth.
Fireworks at the Cummings’.The “Holloway Comedians.” Sarah
quarrels with the charwoman. Lupin’s uncalled-for interference.
Am introduced to Daisy Mutlar.We decide to give a party in her
honour.
November , Sunday. Carrie and I troubled about that mere boy
Lupin getting engaged to be married without consulting us or
anything. After dinner he told us all about it. He said the lady’s
name was Daisy Mutlar, and she was the nicest, prettiest, and
This day was a Saturday, and the news presumably arrived by mail before Pooter left
for work. The first delivery on Saturdays in London was at : a.m.
November was the Sunday in , as given correctly in the Punch version. See the
Note on the Text for further details about this error in the book version, which
affected the next and subsequent entries.
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most accomplished girl he ever met. He loved her the moment
he saw her, and if he had to wait fifty years he would wait, and
he knew she would wait for him.
Lupin further said, with much warmth, that the world was a
different world to him now,—it was a world worth living in. He
lived with an object now, and that was to make Daisy Mutlar—
Daisy Pooter, and he would guarantee she would not disgrace
the family of the Pooters. Carrie here burst out crying, and threw
her arms round his neck, and in doing so, upset the glass of port
he held in his hand all over his new light trousers.
I said I had no doubt we should like Miss Mutlar when we
saw her, but Carrie said she loved her already. I thought this
rather premature, but held my tongue. Daisy Mutlar was the sole
topic of conversation for the remainder of the day. I asked Lupin
who her people were, and he replied: “Oh, you know Mutlar,
Williams and Watts.” I did not know, but refrained from asking
any further questions at present, for fear of irritating Lupin.
November . Lupin went with me to the office, and had a long
conversation with Mr. Perkupp, our principal, the result of which
was that he accepted a clerkship in the firm of Job Cleanands
and Co., Stock and Share Brokers. Lupin told me, privately, it was
an advertising firm, and he did not think much of it. I replied:
“Beggars should not be choosers;” and I will do Lupin the justice
to say, he looked rather ashamed of himself.
In the evening we went round to the Cummings’, to have a
few fireworks. It began to rain, and I thought it rather dull. One
of my squibs would not go off, and Gowing said: “Hit it on your
boot, boy; it will go off then.” I gave it a few knocks on the end
of my boot, and it went off with one loud explosion, and burnt
my fingers rather badly. I gave the rest of the squibs to the little
Cummings’ boy to let off.
Another unfortunate thing happened, which brought a heap of
abuse on my head. Cummings fastened a large wheel set-piece on
This phrase does not mean that it was also an advertising agency, but rather one which
advertised for business—a questionable procedure for a stockbroker at that time. As
we see, Lupin’s suspicions are well-founded. Apart from the obvious ironical pun on
“Cleanands,” the name “Job” is reminiscent of “jobber,” a term meaning both one
who dealt on the Stock Exchange and one who distributed favours corruptly.
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a stake in the ground by way of a grand finale. He made a great fuss
about it; said it cost seven shillings. There was a little difficulty in
getting it alight. At last it went off; but after a couple of slow revo-
lutions, it stopped. I had my stick with me, so I gave it a tap to send
it round, and, unfortunately, it fell off the stake on to the grass.
Anybody would have thought I had set the house on fire from the
way in which they stormed at me. I will never join in any more
firework parties. It is a ridiculous waste of time and money.
November . Lupin asked Carrie to call on Mrs. Mutlar, but
Carrie said she thought Mrs. Mutlar ought to call on her first. I
agreed with Carrie, and this led to an argument. However, the
matter was settled by Carrie saying she could not find any visit-
ing cards, and we must get some more printed, and when they
were finished would be quite time enough to discuss the etiquette
of calling.
November . I ordered some of our cards at Black’s, the Stationers.
I ordered twenty-five of each, which will last us for a good long
time. In the evening, Lupin brought in Frank Mutlar, Miss Mutlar’s
brother. He was rather a gawky youth, and Lupin said he was the
most popular and best amateur in the club, referring to the
“Holloway Comedians.” Lupin whispered to us that if we could
only “draw out” Frank a bit, he would make us roar with laughter.
At supper, young Mutlar did several amusing things. He took
up a knife, and with the flat part of it played a tune on his cheek
in a wonderful manner. He also gave an imitation of an old man
with no teeth, smoking a big cigar. The way he kept dropping
the cigar sent Carrie into fits.
In the course of conversation, Daisy’s name cropped up, and
young Mutlar said he would bring his sister round to us one
evening—his parents being rather old-fashioned, and not going
out much. Carrie said we would get up a little special party. As
young Mutlar showed no inclination to go, and it was approach-
ing eleven o’clock, as a hint I reminded Lupin that he had to be
The middle-class ritual of paying calls (heralded by leaving a visiting card) raised ques-
tions of etiquette which caused much anxiety for the socially insecure. If Carrie called
on Mrs Mutlar first, she might be tacitly recognising the latter as her social superior.
Victorian etiquette, however, demanded that she should do so, as mother of the bride-
groom, since that role temporarily took precedence over their respective ranks.
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up early to-morrow. Instead of taking the hint, Mutlar began a
series of comic imitations. He went on for an hour without
cessation. Poor Carrie could scarcely keep her eyes open. At last
she made an excuse, and said “Good-night.”
Mutlar then left, and I heard him and Lupin whispering in the
hall something about the “Holloway Comedians,” and to my
disgust, although it was past midnight, Lupin put on his hat and
coat, and went out with his new companion.
November . My endeavours to discover who tore the sheets
out of my diary still fruitless. Lupin has Daisy Mutlar on the
brain, so we see little of him, except that he invariably turns up
at meal times. Cummings dropped in.
November . Lupin seems to like his new berth—that’s a
comfort. Daisy Mutlar the sole topic of conversation during tea.
Carrie almost as full of it as Lupin. Lupin informs me, to my
disgust, that he has been persuaded to take part in the forth-
coming performance of the “Holloway Comedians.” He says he
is to play Bob Britches in the farce, Gone to my Uncle’s; Frank
Mutlar is going to play old Musty. I told Lupin pretty plainly I
was not in the least degree interested in the matter, and totally
disapproved of amateur theatricals. Gowing came in the evening.
November . Returned home to find the house in a most
disgraceful uproar. Carrie, who appeared very frightened, was
standing outside her bedroom, while Sarah was excited and
crying. Mrs. Birrell (the charwoman), who had evidently been
drinking, was shouting at the top of her voice that “she was no
thief, that she was a respectable woman, who had to work hard
for her living, and she would smack anyone’s face who put lies
into her mouth.” Lupin whose back was towards me, did not hear
me come in. He was standing between the two women, and, I
regret to say, in his endeavour to act as peacemaker, he made use
of rather strong language in the presence of his mother; and I
was just in time to hear him say: “And all this fuss about the loss
of a few pages from a rotten diary that wouldn’t fetch three-half-
pence a pound!” I said, quietly: “Pardon me, Lupin, that is a
Fictional title. Since “uncle’s” is slang for a pawnbroker, the Grossmiths probably
wanted to suggest a low comedy of a kind likely to appeal to Lupin’s friends.
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matter of opinion; and as I am master of this house, perhaps you
will allow me to take the reins.”
I ascertained that the cause of the row was, that Sarah had
accused Mrs. Birrell of tearing the pages out of my diary to wrap
up some kitchen fat and leavings which she had taken out of the
house last week. Mrs. Birrell had slapped Sarah’s face, and said
she had taken nothing out of the place, as there was “never no
leavings to take.” I ordered Sarah back to her work, and requested
Mrs. Birrell to go home. When I entered the parlour Lupin was
kicking his legs in the air, and roaring with laughter.
November , Sunday. Coming home from church Carrie and
I met Lupin, Daisy Mutlar, and her brother. Daisy was introduced
to us, and we walked home together, Carrie walking on with
Miss Mutlar. We asked them in for a few minutes, and I had a
good look at my future daughter-in-law. My heart quite sank.
She is a big young woman, and I should think at least eight years
older than Lupin. I did not even think her good-looking. Carrie
asked her if she could come in on Wednesday next with her
brother to meet a few friends. She replied that she would only
be too pleased.
November . Carrie sent out invitations
to Gowing, the Cummings’, to Mr. and
Mrs. James (of Sutton), and Mr. Stillbrook.
I wrote a note to Mr. Franching, of
Peckham. Carrie said we may as well make
it a nice affair, and why not ask our prin-
cipal, Mr. Perkupp? I said I feared we were
not quite grand enough for him. Carrie
said there was “no offence in asking him.”
I said: “Certainly not,” and I wrote him a
letter. Carrie confessed she was a little
disappointed with Daisy Mutlar’s appear-
ance, but thought she seemed a nice girl.
November . Everybody so far has
accepted for our quite grand little party for
to-morrow. Mr. Perkupp, in a nice letter
which I shall keep, wrote that he was dining
in Kensington, but if he could get away, he
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would come up to Holloway for an hour. Carrie was busy all day,
making little cakes and open jam puffs and jellies. She said she felt
quite nervous about her responsibilities to-morrow evening. We
decided to have some light things on the table, such as sand-
wiches, cold chicken and ham, and some sweets, and on the side-
board a nice piece of cold beef and a Paysandu tongue—for the
more hungry ones to peg into if they liked.
Gowing called to know if he was to put on “swallow-tails”
to-morrow. Carrie said he had better dress, especially as Mr.
Franching was coming, and there was a possibility of Mr.
Perkupp also putting in an appearance.
Gowing said: “Oh, I only wanted to know; for I have not
worn my dress-coat for some time, and I must send it to have
the creases pressed out.”
After Gowing left, Lupin came in, and in his anxiety to please
Daisy Mutlar, carped at and criticised the arrangements, and, in
fact, disapproved of everything, including our having asked our
old friend Cummings, who, he said, would look in evening-dress
like a green-grocer engaged to wait, and who must not be
surprised if Daisy took him for one.
I fairly lost my temper, and I said: “Lupin, allow me to tell you
Miss Daisy Mutlar is not the Queen of England. I gave you credit
for more wisdom than to allow yourself to be inveigled into an
engagement with a woman considerably older than yourself. I
advise you to think of earning your living before entangling your-
self with a wife whom you will have to support, and, in all prob-
ability, her brother also, who appeared to be nothing but a loafer.”
Instead of receiving this advice in a sensible manner, Lupin
jumped up and said: “If you insult the lady I am engaged to, you
insult me.I will leave the house and never darken your doors again.”
He went out of the house, slamming the hall-door. But it was
all right. He came back to supper, and we played Bézique till
nearly twelve o’clock.
These tinned beef tongues were a convenient high-protein delicacy. The adventur-
ers in Rider Haggard’s She () have them in their stores. They were named after
the meat-packing town of Paysandu in Uruguay.
A tight-fitting evening coat with a pair of separated, pointed skirts at the back.
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Chapter Nine
Our first important party. Old friends and new friends. Gowing
is a little annoying; but his friend, Mr. Stillbrook, turns out to be
quite amusing. Inopportune arrival of Mr. Perkupp, but he is most
kind and complimentary. Party a great success.
November . A red-letter day. Our first important party since we
have been in this house. I got home early from the City. Lupin
insisted on having a hired waiter, and stood a half-dozen of
champagne. I think this an unnecessary expense, but Lupin said
he had had a piece of luck, having made three pounds out a
private deal in the City. I hope he won’t gamble in his new situ-
ation. The supper-room looked so nice, and Carrie truly said:
“We need not be ashamed of its being seen by Mr. Perkupp,
should he honour us by coming.”
I dressed early in case people should arrive punctually at eight
o’clock, and was much vexed to find my new dress trousers much
too short. Lupin, who is getting beyond his position, found fault
with my wearing ordinary boots instead of dress boots.
I replied, satirically: “My dear son, I have lived to be above
that sort of thing.”
Lupin burst out laughing, and said: “A man generally was
above his boots.”
This may be funny, or it may not; but I was gratified to find
he had not discovered the coral had come off one of my studs.
Carrie looked a picture, wearing the dress she wore at the
Mansion House. The arrangement of the drawing-room was
excellent. Carrie had hung muslin curtains over the folding-
doors, and also over one of the entrances, for we had removed
the door from its hinges.
Mr. Peters, the waiter, arrived in good time, and I gave him
strict orders not to open another bottle of champagne until the
previous one was empty. Carrie arranged for some sherry and
port wine to be placed on the drawing-room sideboard, with
A starched evening shirt had studs instead of buttons down the front, decorated with
small pieces of coral.
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some glasses. By-the-by, our new enlarged and tinted photo-
graphs look very nice on the walls, especially as Carrie has
arranged some Liberty silk bows on the four corners of them.
The first arrival was Gowing, who, with his usual taste, greeted
me with: “Hulloh, Pooter; why, your trousers are too short!”
I simply said: “Very likely, and you will find my temper “short”
also.”
He said: “That won’t make your trousers longer, Juggins.You
should get your missus to put a flounce on them.”
I wonder I waste my time entering his insulting observations
in my diary.
The next arrivals were Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. The former
said: “As you didn’t say anything about dress, I have come ‘half
dress.’” He had on a black frock-coat and white tie. The James’s,
Mr. Merton, and Mr. Stillbrook arrived, but Lupin was restless
and unbearable till his Daisy Mutlar and Frank arrived.
Carrie and I were rather startled at Daisy’s appearance. She
had a bright-crimson dress on, cut very low in the neck. I do not
think such a style modest. She ought to have taken a lesson from
Carrie, and covered her shoulders with a little lace. Mr. Nackles,
Mr. Sprice Hogg and his four daughters came; so did Franching,
and one or two of Lupin’s new friends, members of the
“Holloway Comedians.” Some of these seemed rather theatrical
in their manner especially one, who was posing all the evening,
and leant on our little round table and cracked it. Lupin called
him “our Henry,” and said he was “our lead at the H.C.’s” and
was quite as good in that department as Frank Mutlar was as the
low comedy merchant. All this is Greek to me.
We had some music, and Lupin, who never left Daisy’s side
for a moment, raved over her singing of a song, called “Some
Monochrome photographs intended for framing and display could be hand-painted
in more or less convincing colours.
Liberty’s, a shop founded in , was and is famous for its textiles, furnishings, and
arts and crafts. It set the fashionable pace during the Aesthetic movement of the s
and ’s.
“Half dress” was for less formal occasions, usually day-time ones. A frock-coat had a
skirt reaching nearly to the knees all the way round, but would never be worn with
a white tie, which demanded a dress-coat or a dinner jacket (an item which was
coming into fashion in the later s).
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Day.” It seemed a pretty song, but she made such grimaces, and
sang, to my mind, so out of tune, I would not have asked her to
sing again; but Lupin made her sing four songs right off, one after
the other.
At ten o’clock we went down to supper, and from the way
Gowing and Cummings ate you would have thought they had
not had a meal for a month. I told Carrie to keep something
back in case Mr. Perkupp should come by mere chance. Gowing
annoyed me very much by filling a large tumbler of champagne,
and drinking it straight off. He repeated this action, and made
me fear our half dozen of champagne would not last out. I tried
to keep a bottle back, but Lupin got hold of it, and took it to the
side-table with Daisy and Frank Mutlar.
We went upstairs, and the young fellows began skylarking.
Carrie put a stop to that at once. Stillbrook amused us with a
song, “What have you done with your cousin John?” I did not
notice that Lupin and Frank had disappeared. I asked Mr.
Watson, one of the Holloways, where they were, and he said: “It’s
a case of ‘Oh, what a surprise!’”
We were directed to form a circle—which we did. Watson
then said: “I have much pleasure in introducing the celebrated
Blondin Donkey.” Frank and Lupin then bounded into the
room. Lupin had whitened his face like a clown, and Frank had
tied round his waist a large hearthrug. He was supposed to be
the donkey, and he looked it. They indulged in a very noisy
pantomime, and we were all shrieking with laughter.
I turned round suddenly, and then I saw Mr. Perkupp stand-
ing half-way in the door, he having arrived without our know-
ing it. I beckoned to Carrie, and we went up to him at once. He
A song dating from , with words by H. Conway and music by Joseph Milton
Wellings.
A catch-phrase from the chorus of the music-hall song Two Lovely Black Eyes, a great
hit by Charles Coborn (–) in .
Charles Blondin (–) was the celebrated tightrope walker, who crossed the
Niagara Falls in . At least one circus did have a real tightrope-walking horse, but
the “Blondin Donkey” was a famous variety act, a burlesque performance by the
Griffiths Brothers, who were active for several decades from . One partner
dressed in the pantomime donkey skin while the other, as a clown, urged him along
an imaginary tightrope. See Kilgarriff (), .
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would not come right into the room. I apologised for the fool-
ery, but Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh, it seems amusing.” I could see he
was not a bit amused.
Carrie and I took him downstairs, but the table was a wreck.
There was not a glass of champagne left—not even a sandwich.
Mr. Perkupp said he required nothing, but would like a glass of
seltzer or soda water. The last syphon was empty. Carrie said:
“We have plenty of port wine left.” Mr. Perkupp said, with a
smile: “No, thank you. I really require nothing, but I am most
pleased to see you and your husband in your own home. Good-
night, Mrs. Pooter—you will excuse my very short stay, I know.”
I went with him to his carriage, and he said: “Don’t trouble to
come to the office till twelve to-morrow.”
I felt despondent as I went back to the house, and I told
Carrie I thought the party was a failure. Carrie said it was a great
success, and I was only tired, and insisted on my having some
port myself. I drank two glasses, and felt much better, and we
went into the drawing-room, where they had commenced danc-
ing. Carrie and I had a little dance, which I said reminded me of
old days. She said I was a spooney old thing
Chapter Ten
Reflections. I make another good joke.Am annoyed at the constant
serving-up of the “Blanc-Mange.” Lupin expresses his opinion
of weddings. Lupin falls out with Daisy Mutlar.
November . Woke about twenty times during the night, with
terrible thirst. Finished off all the water in the bottle, as well as half
that in the jug. Kept dreaming also, that last night’s party was a fail-
ure, and that a lot of low people came without invitation, and kept
chaffing and throwing things at Mr. Perkupp, till at last I was obliged
to hide him in the box-room (which we had just discovered), with
a bath-towel over him. It seems absurd now, but it was painfully real
in the dream. I had the same dream about a dozen times.
Mid-Victorian slang meaning “soft and sentimental.”
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Carrie annoyed me by saying: “You know champagne never
agrees with you.” I told her I had only a couple of glasses of it,
having kept myself entirely to port. I added that good champagne
hurt nobody, and Lupin told me he had only got it from a trav-
eller as a favour, as that particular brand had been entirely bought
up by a West-End club.
I think I ate too heartily of the “side dishes,” as the waiter called
them. I said to Carrie: “I wish I had put those ‘side dishes’ aside.” I
repeated this, but Carrie was busy, packing up the teaspoons we had
borrowed of Mrs. Cummings for the party. It was just half-past
eleven, and I was starting for the office, when Lupin appeared, with
a yellow complexion, and said: “Hulloh! Guv., what priced head
have you this morning?” I told him he might just as well speak to
me in Dutch. He added: “When I woke this morning, my head
was as big as Baldwin’s balloon.” On the spur of the moment I
said the cleverest thing I think I have ever said; viz.: “Perhaps that
accounts for the parashooting pains.” We all three roared.
November . Still feel tired and headachy! In the evening
Gowing called, and was full of praise about our party last
Wednesday. He said everything was done beautifully, and he
enjoyed himself enormously. Gowing can be a very nice fellow
when he likes, but you never know how long it will last. For
instance, he stopped to supper, and seeing some blanc-mange on
the table, shouted out, while the servant was in the room:
“Hulloh! The remains of Wednesday?”
In Punch the champagne is identified as the brand “Jackson Frères,” but the
Grossmiths removed this, as the next time the brand is mentioned ( Jan ) we
see it is freely available from the grocer, implying that Lupin is a liar.
The first citation of the slang expression “what price ...” is dated as late as in
the OED.
Thomas Scott “Professor” Baldwin (–), an American, began by performing
trapeze acts beneath a hot air balloon. By he was making jumps from a balloon
using a rigid parachute like a giant umbrella. On July the Times reported that
“on Saturday evening a daring aeronautical feat was performed in the Alexandra
Palace” in front of thousands of spectators. Baldwin leapt from his balloon at about
a thousand feet and then was seen “gracefully, steadily, and quickly descending, with
his umbrella opened out above him like a giant mushroom.” The excitement was
such that questions were asked in Parliament about whether the stunts should be
permitted, but by September Baldwin had made ten similar descents. He gave a last
performance in London before the Prince of Wales on October and then left for
Australia. He had a long career in early aeronautics in the US.
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November . Woke up quite fresh after a good night’s rest, and
feel quite myself again. I am satisfied a life of going-out and
Society is not a life for me; we therefore declined the invitation
which we received this morning to Miss Bird’s wedding. We only
met her twice at Mrs James’, and it means a present. Lupin said:
“I am with you for once. To my mind a wedding’s a very poor
play. There are only two parts in it—the bride and bridegroom.
The best man is only a walking gentleman. With the exception
of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are supers
who have to dress well and have to pay for their insignificant
parts in the shape of costly presents.” I did not care for the
theatrical slang, but thought it clever, though disrespectful.
I told Sarah not to bring up the blanc-mange again for breakfast.
It seems to have been placed on our table at every meal since
Wednesday. Cummings came round in the evening, and congratu-
lated us on the success of our party. He said it was the best party he
had been to for many a year; but he wished we had let him know
it was full dress, as he would have turned up in his swallow-tails. We
sat down to a quiet game of dominoes,and were interrupted by the
noisy entrance of Lupin and Frank Mutlar. Cummings and I asked
them to join us. Lupin said he did not care for dominoes, and
suggested a game of “Spoof.” On my asking if it required coun-
ters, Frank and Lupin in measured time said: “One, two, three; Go!
Have you an estate in Greenland?” It was simply Greek to me, but
it appears it is one of the customs of the “Holloway Comedians” to
do this when a member displays ignorance.
In spite of my instructions, that blanc-mange was brought up
again for supper. To make matters worse, there had been an
A “walking gentleman” was an extra in a play scene calling for a respectable man
who had few or no lines. A “super” (supernumerary) is one of a number of people
making up a crowd scene.
Originally the name of a game, “spoof ” in the sense of a hoax belongs to the mid-
s (OED).
“Green” (perhaps short for “greenhorn”) is contemptuous slang for naive or inno-
cent, and “Greenland” therefore the habitat of such a person. The pun is an old one:
Dickens uses it in Oliver Twist (–).
Most cookery books assumed that leftovers would be served up regularly. Menu plans
allowed for as few as three “new” dinners a week. See Flanders (), . Layard
(Appendix C) recommended a clerk’s family should dine on the same half leg of
mutton three days running: served hot, cold and finally hashed!
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attempt to disguise it, by placing it in a glass dish with jam round
it. Carrie asked Lupin if he would have some, and he replied:
“No second-hand goods for me, thank you.” I told Carrie, when
we were alone, if that blanc-mange were placed on the table again,
I should walk out of the house.
November , Sunday. A delightfully quiet day. In the afternoon
Lupin was off to spend the rest of the day with the Mutlars. He
departed in the best of spirits, and Carrie said: “Well, one advan-
tage of Lupin’s engagement with Daisy is that the boy seems
happy all day long. That quite reconciles me to what I must
confess seems an imprudent engagement.”
Carrie and I talked the matter over during the evening, and
agreed that it did not always follow that an early engagement
meant an unhappy marriage. Dear Carrie reminded me that we
married early, and with the exception of a few trivial misunder-
standings, we had never had a really serious word. I could not
help thinking (as I told her) that half the pleasures of life were
derived from the little struggles and small privations that one had
to endure at the beginning of one’s married life. Such struggles
were generally occasioned by want of means, and often helped
to make loving couples stand together all the firmer.
Carrie said I had expressed myself wonderfully well, and that
I was quite a philosopher.
We are all vain at times and I must confess I felt flattered by
Carrie’s little compliment. I don’t pretend to be able to express
myself in fine language, but I feel I have the power of expressing
my thoughts with simplicity and lucidness. About nine o’clock, to
our surprise. Lupin entered, with a wild, reckless look, and in a
hollow voice, which I must say seemed rather theatrical, said: “Have
you any brandy?” I said: “No; but here is some whisky.” Lupin
drank off nearly a wine-glassful without water, to my horror.
We all three sat reading in silence till ten, when Carrie and I
rose to go to bed. Carrie said to Lupin: “I hope Daisy is well?”
Lupin, with a forced careless air that he must have picked up
from the “Holloway Comedians,” replied: “Oh, Daisy? You mean
Miss Mutlar. I don’t know whether she is well or not, but please
never to mention her name again in my presence.”
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Chapter Eleven
We have a dose of Irving imitations. Make the acquaintance of
a Mr. Padge. Don’t care for him. Mr. Burwin-Fosselton becomes
a nuisance.
November . Have seen nothing of Lupin the whole day. Bought
a cheap address-book. I spent the evening copying in the names
and addresses of my friends and acquaintances. Left out the
Mutlars of course.
November . Lupin turned up for a few minutes in the
evening. He asked for a drop of brandy with a sort of careless
look, which to my mind was theatrical and quite ineffective. I
said: “My boy, I have none, and I don’t think I should give it you
if I had.” Lupin said: “I’ll go where I can get some,” and walked
out of the house. Carrie took the boy’s part and the rest of the
evening was spent in a disagreeable discussion, in which the words
“Daisy” and “Mutlar” must have occurred a thousand times.
November . Gowing and Cummings dropped in during the
evening. Lupin also came in, bringing his friend Mr. Burwin-
Fosselton—one of the “Holloway Comedians”—who was at our
party the other night, and who cracked our little round table.
Happy to say Daisy Mutlar was never referred to. The conversa-
tion was almost entirely monopolised by the young fellow
Fosselton, who not only looked rather like Mr. Irving, but
seemed to imagine that he was the celebrated actor. I must say he
gave some capital imitations of him. As he showed no signs of
moving at supper time, I said: “If you like to stay, Mr. Fosselton,
for our usual crust—pray do.” He replied: “Oh! Thanks; but please
call me Burwin-Fosselton. It is a double name. There are lots of
Fosseltons but please call me Burwin-Fosselton.”
At the time, the actor Henry Irving (–) was the height of his powers. His
performances in the roles of Hamlet and Shylock, among many others, made him a
household name. Irving’s dramatic mannerisms were easy to imitate, and both
Grossmith brothers did comic versions of him on the stage.
Possibly Burwin-Fosselton is imitating his hero, whose birth surname was Brodribb.
Several notable actors of the s added hyphens to their names to make them
sound more resonant or “aristocratic”: examples include Johnston Forbes-Robertson
(–) and John Martin-Harvey (–).
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He began doing the Irving business all through supper. He
sank so low down in his chair that his chin was almost on a level
with the table, and twice he kicked Carrie under the table, upset
his wine, and flashed a knife uncomfortably near Gowing’s face.
After supper he kept stretching out his legs on the fender,
indulging in scraps of quotations from plays which were Greek
to me, and more than once knocked over the fire-irons, making
a hideous row—poor Carrie already having a bad head ache.
When he went, he said, to our surprise: “I will come to-
morrow and bring my Irving make-up.” Gowing and Cummings
said they would like to see it and would come too. I could not
help thinking they might as well give a party at my house while
they are about it. However, as Carrie sensibly said: “Do anything,
dear, to make Lupin forget the Daisy Mutlar business.”
November . In the evening, Cummings came early. Gowing
came a little later and brought, without asking permission, a fat
and, I think, very vulgar-looking man named Padge, who
appeared to be all moustache. Gowing never attempted any apol-
ogy to either of us, but said Padge wanted to see the Irving busi-
ness, to which Padge said: “That’s right,” and that is about all he
did say during the entire evening. Lupin came in and seemed in
much better spirits. He had prepared a bit of a surprise. Mr.
Burwin-Fosselton had come in with him, but had gone upstairs
to get ready. In half-an-hour Lupin retired from the parlour, and
returning in a few minutes, announced “Mr. Henry Irving.”
I must say we were all astounded. I never saw such a resem-
blance. It was astonishing. The only person who did not appear
interested was the man Padge, who had got the best arm-chair,
and was puffing away at a foul pipe into the fireplace. After some
little time I said: “Why do actors always wear their hair so long?”
Carrie in a moment said, “Mr. Hare doesn’t wear long hair.”
How we laughed except Mr. Fosselton who said, in a rather
patronising kind of way, “The joke, Mrs. Pooter, is extremely
At least two photographs of Irving in his role which made him famous, Mathias in
The Bells of , shows the conscience-tormented murderer slouching on a chair.
Weedon’s illustration shows Burwin-Fosselton dressed as Irving appeared in The Bells.
A comic actor. In the story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Sherlock Holmes’s own disguise
as a doddery old clergyman is said to be worthy of John Hare (–).
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appropriate, if not altogether new.” Thinking this rather a snub,
I said: “Mr. Fosselton, I fancy—” He interrupted me by saying:
“Mr. Burwin-Fosselton, if you please,” which made me quite
forget what I was going to say to him. During the supper Mr.
Burwin-Fosselton again monopolised the conversation with his
Irving talk, and both Carrie and I came to the conclusion one
can have even too much imitation of Irving. After supper, Mr.
Burwin-Fosselton got a little too boisterous over his Irving
imitation, and suddenly seizing Gowing by the collar of his coat,
dug his thumb-nail, accidentally of course, into Gowing’s neck
and took a piece of flesh out. Gowing was rightly annoyed, but
that man Padge, who having declined our modest supper in
order that he should not lose his comfortable chair, burst into an
uncontrollable fit of laughter at the little misadventure. I was so
annoyed at the conduct of Padge, I said: “I suppose you would
have laughed if he had poked Mr. Gowing’s eye out?” to which
Padge replied: “That’s right,” and laughed more than ever. I think
perhaps the greatest surprise was, when we broke up, for Mr.
Burwin-Fosselton said: “Good-night, Mr. Pooter. I’m glad you
like the imitation, I’ll bring the other make-up to-morrow night.”
November . I went to town without a pocket-handkerchief.
This is the second time I have done this during the last week. I
must be losing my memory. Had it not been for this Daisy
Mutlar business, I would have written to Mr. Burwin-Fosselton
and told him I should be out this evening, but I fancy he is the
sort of young man who would come all the same.
Dear old Cummings came in the evening; but Gowing sent
round a little note, saying he hoped I would excuse his not turn-
ing up, which rather amused me. He added that his neck was still
painful. Of course, Burwin-Fosselton came, but Lupin never
turned up, and imagine my utter disgust when that man Padge
actually came again, and not even accompanied by Gowing. I
was exasperated, and said: “Mr. Padge, this is a surprise.” Dear
Carrie fearing unpleasantness said, “Oh! I suppose Mr. Padge has
only come to see the other Irving make-up.” Mr. Padge said:
“That’s right,” and took the best chair again, from which he
never moved the whole evening.
My only consolation is, he takes no supper, so he is not an
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expensive guest, but I shall speak to Gowing about the matter. The
Irving imitations and conversations occupied the whole evening,
till I was sick of it. Once we had a rather heated discussion, which
was commenced by Cummings saying that it appeared to him that
Mr. Burwin-Fosselton was not only like Mr. Irving but was in his
judgment every way as good or even better. I ventured to remark
that after all it was but an imitation of an original.
Cummings said surely some imitations were better than the
originals. I made what I considered a very clever remark: “Without
an original there can be no imitation.” Mr. Burwin-Fosselton said
quite impertinently: “Don’t discuss me in my presence, if you
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please; and Mr. Pooter, I should advise you to talk about what you
understand;” to which that cad Padge replied: “That s right.” Dear
Carrie saved the whole thing by suddenly saying: “I’ll be Ellen
Terry.” Dear Carrie’s imitation wasn’t a bit liked, but she was so
spontaneous and so funny that the disagreeable discussion passed
off. When they left, I very pointedly said to Mr. Burwin-Fosselton
and Mr. Padge that we should be engaged to-morrow evening.
November . Had a long letter from Mr. Fosselton respecting
last night’s Irving discussion. I was very angry, and I wrote and
said I knew little or nothing about stage matters, was not in the
least interested in them and positively declined to be drawn into
a discussion on the subject, even at the risk of its leading to a
breach of friendship. I never wrote a more determined letter.
On returning home at the usual early hour on Saturday after-
noon I met near the Archway Daisy Mutlar. My heart gave a
leap. I bowed rather stiffly, but she affected not to have seen me.
Very much annoyed in the evening by the laundress sending
home an odd sock. Sarah said she sent two pairs, and the laun-
dress declared only a pair and a half were sent. I spoke to Carrie
about it, but she rather testily replied: “I am tired of speaking to
her; you had better go and speak to her yourself. She is outside.”
I did so, but the laundress declared that only an odd sock was sent.
Gowing passed into the passage at this time and was rude
enough to listen to the conversation, and interrupting, said, “Don’t
waste the odd sock old man;do an act of charity and give it to some
poor man with only one leg.” The laundress giggled like an idiot.
I was disgusted and walked upstairs for the purpose of pinning
down my collar, as the button had come off the back of my shirt.
When I returned to the parlour, Gowing was retailing his
idiotic joke about the odd sock, and Carrie was roaring with
laughter. I suppose I am losing my sense of humour. I spoke my
mind pretty freely about Padge. Gowing said he had met him only
once before that evening. He had been introduced by a friend, and
Ellen Terry (–) was the most famous Shakespearean actress of the age and
Henry Irving’s long-time mistress. How Carrie might “imitate” her isn’t clear, except
that Terry was notably light on her feet and had a “singing” manner of delivery.
The Archway, built in , is a viaduct carrying traffic across the road at the point
where it begins to climb steeply up Highgate Hill.
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as he (Padge) had “stood” a good dinner, Gowing wished to show
him some little return. Upon my word, Gowing’s coolness
surpasses all belief. Lupin came in before I could reply, and Gowing
unfortunately inquired after Daisy Mutlar. Lupin shouted: “Mind
your own business, sir!” and bounced out of the room, slamming
the door. The remainder of the night was Daisy Mutlar—Daisy
Mutlar—Daisy Mutlar. Oh dear!
November , Sunday. The Curate preached a very good sermon
to-day—very good indeed. His appearance is never so impressive
as our dear old vicar’s, but I am bound to say his sermons are much
more impressive. A rather annoying incident occurred, of which I
must make mention. Mrs. Fernlosse, who is quite a grand lady,
living in one of those large houses in the Camden Road, stopped
to speak to me after church, when we were all coming out. I must
say I felt flattered, for she is thought a good deal of. I suppose she
knew me through seeing me so often take round the plate, espe-
cially as she always occupies the corner seat of the pew. She is a very
influential lady, and may have had something of the utmost impor-
tance to say, but unfortunately, as she commenced to speak a strong
gust of wind came and blew my hat off into the middle of the road.
I had to run after it, and had the greatest difficulty in recov-
ering it. When I had succeeded in doing so, I found Mrs.
Fernlosse had walked on with some swell friends, and I felt I
could not well approach her now, especially as my hat was
smothered with mud. I cannot say how disappointed I felt.
In the evening (Sunday evening of all others) I found an imper-
tinent note from Mr. Burwin-Fosselton which ran as follows:
“DEAR MR. POOTER,—Although your junior by perhaps some
twenty or thirty years—which is sufficient reason that you ought
to have a longer record of the things and ways in this miniature
of a planet—I feel it is just within the bounds of possibility that
the wheels of your life don’t travel so quickly round as those of
the humble writer of these lines. The dandy horse of past days
has been known to overtake the slow coach.
Distinguished in appearance and socially superior, rather than a later sense express-
ing general approval.
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“Do I make myself understood?
“Very well, then! Permit me, Mr. Pooter, to advise you to
accept the verb. sap. Acknowledge your defeat, and take your
whipping gracefully; for remember you threw down the glove,
and I cannot claim to be either mentally or physically a coward!
“Revenons à nos moutons.
“Our lives run in different grooves. I live for MY ART—THE
STAGE.Your life is devoted to commercial pursuits—‘A life
among Ledgers.’ My books are of different metal.Your life in the
City is honourable, I admit. But how different! Cannot even you
see the ocean between us? A channel that prevents the meeting
of our brains in harmonious accord. Ah! But chaçun à son goût.
“I have registered a vow to mount the steps of fame. I may
crawl, I may slip, I may even falter (we are all weak), but reach the
top rung of the ladder I will!!! When there, my voice shall be heard,
for I will shout to the multitudes below:‘Vici!’ For the present
I am only an amateur, and my work is unknown, forsooth, save
to a party of friends, with here and there an enemy.
“But, Mr. Pooter, let me ask you, ‘What is the difference
between the amateur and the professional?’
“None!!!
“Stay! Yes, there is a difference. One is paid for doing what the
other does as skilfully for nothing!
“But I will be paid too! For I, contrary to the wishes of my
family and friends, have at last elected to adopt the stage as my
profession. And when the farce craze is over—and, mark you, that
will be soon—I will make my power known; for I feel—pardon
my apparent conceit—that there is no living man who can play
the hump-backed Richard as I feel and know I can.
“And you will be the first to come round and bend your head
in submission. There are many matters you may understand, but
Abbreviated Latin phrase meaning “one word to a wise person ought to be enough.”
Traditional challenge to combat among medieval knights.
French for “let’s get back to the point.”
French for “everyone to his own taste.”
Latin for “I have conquered,” quoting Julius Caesar’s famous phrase “Veni, vidi, vici..”
Henry Irving’s performance in Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Lyceum theatre in
had been a sensation.
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knowledge of the fine art of acting is to you an unknown quan-
tity.
“Pray let this discussion cease with this letter. Vale!
“Yours truly,
“BURWIN-FOSSELTON.”
I was disgusted. When Lupin came in, I handed him this
impertinent letter, and said: “My boy, in that letter you can see
the true character of your friend.”
Lupin, to my surprise, said: “Oh yes. He showed me the letter
before he sent it. I think he is right, and you ought to apologise.”
Chapter Twelve
A serious discussion concerning the use and value of my diary.Lupin’s
opinion of “Xmas.” Lupin’s unfortunate engagement is on again.
December . As I open my scribbling diary I find the words
“Oxford Michaelmas Term ends.” Why this should induce me
to indulge in retrospective I don’t know, but it does. The last few
weeks of my diary are of minimum interest. The breaking-off of
the engagement between Lupin and Daisy Mutlar has made him
a different being, and Carrie a rather depressing companion. She
was a little dull last Saturday, and I thought to cheer her up by
reading some extracts from my diary; but she walked out of the
room in the middle of the reading, without a word. On her
return, I said: “Did my diary bore you, darling?”
She replied, to my surprise: “I really wasn’t listening, dear. I was
obliged to leave to give instructions to the laundress. In conse-
quence of some stuff she puts in the water, two more of Lupin’s
coloured shirts have run; and he says he won’t wear them.”
I said: “Everything is Lupin. It’s all Lupin, Lupin, Lupin. There
was not a single button on my shirt yesterday, but I made no
complaint.”
Carrie simply replied: “You should do as all other men do,
Latin for “farewell.”
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and wear studs. In fact, I never saw anyone but you wear buttons
on the shirt-fronts.”
I said: “I certainly wore none yesterday, for there were none on.”
Another thought that strikes me is that Gowing seldom calls
in the evening, and Cummings never does. I fear they don’t get
on well with Lupin.
December .Yesterday I was in a retrospective vein—to-day it
is prospective. I see nothing but clouds, clouds, clouds. Lupin is
perfectly intolerable over the Daisy Mutlar business. He won’t
say what is the cause of the breach. He is evidently condemning
her conduct, and yet, if we venture to agree with him, says he
won’t hear a word against her. So what is one to do? Another
thing which is disappointing to me is, that Carrie and Lupin take
no interest whatever in my diary.
I broached the subject at the breakfast-table to-day. I said: “I
was in hopes that, if anything ever happened to me, the diary
would be an endless source of pleasure to you both; to say noth-
ing of the chance of the remuneration which may accrue from
its being published.”
Both Carrie and Lupin burst out laughing. Carrie was sorry
for this, I could see, for she said: “I did not mean to be rude, dear
Charlie; but truly I do not think your diary would sufficiently
interest the public, to be taken up by a publisher.”
I replied: “I am sure it would prove quite as interesting as some
of the ridiculous reminiscences that have been published lately.
Besides, it’s the diary that makes the man. Where would Evelyn
and Pepys have been if it had not been for their diaries?”
Carrie said I was quite a philosopher; but Lupin, in a jeering
tone, said: “If it had been written on larger paper, Guv., we might
get a fair price from a butterman for it.”
As I am in the prospective vein, I vow the end of this year will
see the end of my diary.
A self-mocking reference to George Grossmith’s own memoir A Society Clown,
published the previous August.
John Evelyn (–) and Samuel Pepys (–) were men of affairs whose
diaries give a remarkable insight into seventeenth-century English life.
Butter was sold from a block, so there was a demand for clean waste paper for wrap-
ping it. In the case of James Boswell’s th century memoirs, some manuscript pages
were found lining pies.
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December . The annual invitation came to spend Christmas
with Carrie’s mother—the usual family festive gathering to
which we always look forward. Lupin declined to go. I was
astounded, and expressed my surprise and disgust. Lupin then
obliged us with the following Radical speech: “I hate a family
gathering at Christmas. What does it mean? Why someone says:
‘Ah! we miss poor Uncle James, who was here last year,’ and we
all begin to snivel. Someone else says: ‘It’s two years since poor
Aunt Liz used to sit in that corner.’ Then we all begin to snivel
again. Then another gloomy relation says:‘Ah, I wonder whose
turn it will be next?’ Then we all snivel again, and proceed to eat
and drink too much, and they don’t discover until I get up that
we have been seated thirteen at dinner.”
December . Went to Smirkson’s, the drapers, in the Strand,
who this year have turned out everything in the shop and
devoted the whole place to the sale of Christmas Cards. Shop
crowded with people, who seemed to take up the cards rather
roughly, and after a hurried glance at them, throw them down
again. I remarked to one of the young persons serving, that care-
lessness appeared to be a disease with some purchasers. The
observation was scarcely out of my mouth, when my thick coat-
sleeve caught against a large pile of expensive cards in boxes one
on top of the other, and threw them down. The manager came
forward, looking very much annoyed, and picking up several
cards from the ground, said to one of the assistants, with a palpa-
ble side-glance at me: “Put these amongst the sixpenny goods;
they can’t be sold for a shilling now.” The result was, I felt it my
duty to buy some of these damaged cards.
I had to buy more and pay more than intended. Unfortunately I
did not examine them all,and when I got home I discovered a vulgar
card with a picture of a fat nurse with two babies, one black and the
other white, and the words: “We wish Pa a Merry Christmas.” I
Sending Christmas cards had been a custom in England only since the s. The
etiquette of choosing and sending them was anxiety-making for people of the
Pooters’ class.
This is the most risqué joke in the Diary, which was meant for a family readership.
Yet this kind of joke was typical of some Victorian cards, where much sexual innu-
endo was tolerated.
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tore up the card and threw it away. Carrie said the great disad-
vantage of going out in Society and increasing the number of our
friends was, that we should have to send out nearly two dozen
cards this year.
December . To save the postman a miserable Christmas, we
follow the example of all unselfish people, and send out our cards
early. Most of the cards had finger-marks, which I did not notice
at night. I shall buy all future cards in the daytime. Lupin (who,
ever since he has had the appointment with a stock and share
broker, does not seem over-scrupulous in his dealings) told me
never to rub out the pencilled price on the backs of the cards. I
asked him why. Lupin said: “Suppose your card is marked d.
Well, all you have to do is to pencil a —and a long down-stroke
after it—in front of the ninepence, and people will think you have
given five times the price for it.”
In the evening Lupin was very low-spirited, and I reminded
him that behind the clouds the sun was shining. He said: “Ugh!
it never shines on me.” I said: “Stop, Lupin, my boy; you are
worried about Daisy Mutlar. Don’t think of her any more.You
ought to congratulate yourself on having got off a very bad
bargain. Her notions are far too grand for our simple tastes.” He
jumped up and said: “I won’t allow one word to be uttered
against her. She’s worth the whole bunch of your friends put
together, that inflated, sloping-head of a Perkupp included.” I
left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat.
December . I exchanged no words with Lupin in the morn-
ing; but as he seemed to be in exuberant spirits in the evening,
I ventured to ask him where he intended to spend his Christmas.
He replied: “Oh, most likely at the Mutlars’.”
In wonderment, I said: “What! after your engagement has
been broken off?”
Lupin said: “Who said it is off?”
I said: “You have given us both to understand—”
He interrupted me by saying: “Well, never mind what I said.
It is on again—there!”
An expensive card indeed, at such a price: more than a bottle of whisky.
Probably an allusion to Ally Sloper, a comic character of the s, whose receding
forehead and big nose marked him out as dishonest and dim-witted.
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Chapter Thirteen
I receive an insulting Christmas card. We spend a pleasant
Christmas at Carrie’s mother’s. A Mr. Moss is rather too free. A
boisterous evening, during which I am struck in the dark. I receive
an extraordinary letter from Mr. Mutlar, senior, respecting Lupin.
We miss drinking out the Old Year.
December . I am a poor man, but I would gladly give ten
shillings to find out who sent me the insulting Christmas card I
received this morning. I never insult people; why should they
insult me? The worst part of the transaction is, that I find myself
suspecting all my friends. The handwriting on the envelope is
evidently disguised, being written sloping the wrong way. I
cannot think either Gowing or Cummings would do such a
mean thing. Lupin denied all knowledge of it, and I believe him;
although I disapprove of his laughing and sympathising with the
offender. Mr. Franching would be above such an act; and I don’t
think any of the Mutlars would descend to such a course. I
wonder if Pitt, that impudent clerk at the office, did it? Or Mrs.
Birrell, the charwoman, or Burwin-Fosselton? The writing is too
good for the former.
Christmas Day. We caught the . train at Paddington, and
spent a pleasant day at Carrie’s mother’s. The country was quite
nice and pleasant, although the roads were sloppy. We dined in
the middle of the day, just ten of us, and talked over old times. If
everybody had a nice, uninterfering mother-in-law, such as I
have, what a deal of happiness there would be in the world. Being
all in good spirits, I proposed her health, and I made, I think, a
very good speech.
I concluded, rather neatly, by saying: “On an occasion like
this—whether relatives, friends, or acquaintances,—we are all
inspired with good feelings towards each other. We are of one
mind, and think only of love and friendship. Those who have
quarrelled with absent friends should kiss and make it up. Those
who happily have not fallen out, can kiss all the same.”
I saw the tears in the eyes of both Carrie and her mother, and
must say I felt very flattered by the compliment. That dear old
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Reverend John Panzy Smith, who married us, made a most
cheerful and amusing speech, and said he should act on my
suggestion respecting the kissing. He then walked round the table
and kissed all the ladies, including Carrie. Of course one did not
object to this, but I was more than staggered when a young fellow
named Moss, who was a stranger to me, and who had scarcely
spoken a word through dinner, jumped up suddenly with a sprig
of mistletoe, and exclaimed: “Hulloh! I don’t see why I should-
n’t be on in this scene.” Before one could realise what he was
about to do, he kissed Carrie and the rest of the ladies.
Fortunately the matter was treated as a joke, and we all
laughed; but it was a dangerous experiment, and I felt very
uneasy for a moment as to the result. I subsequently referred to
the matter to Carrie, but she said: “Oh, he’s not much more than
a boy.” I said that he had a very large moustache for a boy. Carrie
replied: “I didn’t say he was not a nice boy.”
December . I did not sleep very well last night; I never do in
a strange bed. I feel a little indigestion, which one must expect
at this time of the year. Carrie and I returned to Town in the
evening. Lupin came in late. He said he enjoyed his Christmas,
and added: “I feel as fit as a Lowther Arcade fiddle, and only
require a little more ‘oof ’ to feel as fit as a £ Stradivarius.” I
have long since given up trying to understand Lupin’s slang, or
asking him to explain it.
December . I told Lupin I was expecting Gowing and
Cummings to drop in to-morrow evening for a quiet game. I was
in hope the boy would volunteer to stay in, and help to amuse
them. Instead of which, he said: “Oh, you had better put them off,
as I have asked Daisy and Frank Mutlar to come.” I said I could
not think of doing such a thing. Lupin said: “Then I will send a
wire, and put off Daisy.” I suggested that a post-card or letter would
reach her quite soon enough, and would not be so extravagant.
Given the Grossmiths’ constant punning on names, one may suspect that this is a
comment on the vicar’s effeminacy. However, this meaning of “pansy” seems to date
only from (OED).
A bazaar off the Strand, famous for its toy shops and other cheap goods sold from
stalls. By contrast, only a few hundred violins by the master craftsman Antonio
Stradivari of Cremona (d.) survive today, and are enormously valuable.
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Carrie, who had listened to the above conversation with
apparent annoyance, directed a well-aimed shaft at Lupin. She
said: “Lupin, why do you object to Daisy meeting your father’s
friends? Is it because they are not good enough for her, or (which
is equally possible) she is not good enough for them?” Lupin was
dumbfounded, and could make no reply. When he left the room,
I gave Carrie a kiss of approval.
December . Lupin, on coming down to breakfast, said to his
mother: “I have not put off Daisy and Frank, and should like
them to join Gowing and Cummings this evening.” I felt very
pleased with the boy for this. Carrie said, in reply: “I am glad you
let me know in time, as I can turn over the cold leg of mutton,
dress it with a little parsley, and no one will know it has been
cut.” She further said she would make a few custards, and stew
some pippins, so that they would be cold by the evening.
Finding Lupin in good spirits, I asked him quietly if he really
had any personal objection to either Gowing or Cummings. He
replied: “Not in the least. I think Cummings looks rather an ass,
but that is partly due to his patronising ‘the three-and-six-one-
price hat company,’ and wearing a reach-me-down frock coat.
As for that perpetual brown velveteen jacket of Gowing’s—why,
he resembles an itinerant photographer.”
I said it was not the coat that made the gentleman; where-
upon Lupin, with a laugh, replied: “No, and it wasn’t much of a
gentleman who made their coats.”
We were rather jolly at supper, and Daisy made herself very
agreeable, especially in the earlier part of the evening, when she
sang. At supper, however, she said: “Can you make Tee To Tums
with bread?” and she commenced rolling up pieces of bread, and
twisting them round on the table. I felt this to be bad manners,
but of course said nothing. Presently Daisy and Lupin, to my
disgust, began throwing bread pills at each other. Frank followed
suit, and so did Cummings and Gowing, to my astonishment.
They then commenced throwing hard pieces of crust, one piece
Ready-made garments were regarded as inferior and might even be suspected of
being second-hand; middle-class people patronised a tailor or dressmaker.
A small toy top spun with the fingers, usually spelt “teetotum.”
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catching me on the forehead, and making me blink. I said:
“Steady, please, steady!” Frank jumped up and said: “Tum, tum,
then the band played.”
I did not know what this meant, but they all roared, and
continued the bread-battle. Gowing suddenly seized all the pars-
ley off the cold mutton, and threw it full in my face. I looked
daggers at Gowing, who replied: “I say, it’s no good trying to
look indignant, with your hair full of parsley.” I rose from the
table, and insisted that a stop should be put to this foolery at
once. Frank Mutlar shouted: “Time, gentlemen, please! time!”
and turned out the gas, leaving us in absolute darkness.
I was feeling my way out of the room, when I suddenly
received a hard intentional punch at the back of my head. I said,
loudly: “Who did that?” There was no answer; so I repeated the
question, with the same result. I struck a match, and lighted the
gas. They were all talking and laughing, so I kept my own coun-
sel; but, after they had gone, I said to Carrie: “The person who
sent me that insulting post-card at Christmas was here to-night.”
December . I had a most vivid dream last night. I woke up,
and on falling asleep, dreamed the same dream over again
precisely. I dreamt I heard Frank Mutlar telling his sister that he
had not only sent me the insulting Christmas card, but admitted
that he was the one who punched my head last night in the dark.
As fate would have it, Lupin, at breakfast, was reading extracts
from a letter he had just received from Frank.
I asked him to pass the envelope, that I might compare the
writing. He did so, and I examined it by the side of the envelope
containing the Christmas card. I detected a similarity in the writ-
ing, in spite of the attempted disguise. I passed them on to
Carrie, who began to laugh. I asked her what she was laughing
at, and she said the card was never directed to me at all. It was
“L. Pooter,” not “C. Pooter.” Lupin asked to look at the direc-
tion and the card, and exclaimed, with a laugh: “Oh yes, Guv.;
it’s meant for me.” I said: “Are you in the habit of receiving
A catchphrase of the period –, possibly referring to the practice of having
a brass band at political meetings, ready to play louder at critical moments to drown
out an opponent’s speech.
Closing time in British pubs was signalled by this call.
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insulting Christmas cards?” He replied: “Oh yes, and of sending
them, too.”
In the evening Gowing called, and said he enjoyed himself
very much last night. I took the opportunity to confide in him,
as an old friend, about the vicious punch last night. He burst out
laughing, and said: “Oh, it was your head, was it? I know I acci-
dentally hit something, but I thought it was a brick wall.” I told
him I felt hurt, in both senses of the expression.
December , Sunday. Lupin spent the whole day with the
Mutlars. He seemed rather cheerful in the evening, so I said: “I’m
glad to see you so happy, Lupin.” He answered: “Well, Daisy is a
splendid girl, but I was obliged to take her old fool of a father
down a peg. What with his meanness over his cigars, his stingi-
ness over his drinks, his farthing economy in turning down the
gas if you only quit the room for a second, writing to one on
half-sheets of note-paper, sticking the remnant of the last cake
of soap on to the new cake, putting two bricks on each side of
the fireplace, and his general ‘outside-halfpenny-’bus-ness,’ I
was compelled to let him have a bit of my mind.” I said: “Lupin,
you are not much more than a boy; I hope you won’t repent it.”
December . The last day of the Old Year. I received an extraor-
dinary letter from Mr. Mutlar, senior. He writes: “Dear Sir,—For
a long time past I have had considerable difficulty deciding the
important question, ‘Who is the master of my own house?
Myself—or your son Lupin?’ Believe me, I have no prejudice one
way or the other; but I have been most reluctantly compelled to
give judgment to the effect that I am the master of it. Under the
circumstances, it has become my duty to forbid your son to enter
my house again. I am sorry, because it deprives me of the society
of one of the most modest, unassuming, and gentlemanly persons
I have ever had the honour of being acquainted with.”
The Grossmiths at last corrected the day here: December was indeed a
Sunday. But they did so at the cost of logic: if the last Sunday entry was that of
November, as given, then this entry had to be a Saturday.
That is, to reduce the amount of coal that one could put in the grate—a very unwel-
come economy.
The fare was lower for upstairs seating on horse-drawn buses, as it was open to the
weather.
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I did not desire the last day to wind up disagreeably, so I said
nothing to either Carrie or Lupin about the letter.
A most terrible fog came on, and Lupin would go out in it,
but promised to be back to drink out the Old Year—a custom we
have always observed. At a quarter to twelve Lupin had not
returned, and the fog was fearful. As time was drawing close, I got
out the spirits. Carrie and I deciding on whisky, I opened a fresh
bottle; but Carrie said it smelt like brandy. As I knew it to be
whisky, I said there was nothing to discuss. Carrie, evidently vexed
that Lupin had not come in, did discuss it all the same, and wanted
me to have a small wager with her to decide by the smell. I said
I could decide it by the taste in a moment. A silly and unneces-
sary argument followed, the result of which was we suddenly saw
it was a quarter-past twelve, and, for the first time in our married
life, we missed welcoming in the New Year. Lupin got home at a
quarter-past two, having got lost in the fog—so he said.
Chapter Fourteen
Begin the year with an unexpected promotion at the office. I make
two good jokes. I get an enormous rise in my salary. Lupin spec-
ulates successfully and starts a pony-trap. Have to speak to Sarah.
Extraordinary conduct of Gowing’s.
January . I had intended concluding my diary last week; but a
most important event has happened, so I shall continue for a little
while longer on the fly-leaves attached to the end of my last year’s
diary. It had just struck half-past one, and I was on the point of
leaving the office to have my dinner, when I received a message
that Mr. Perkupp desired to see me at once. I must confess that
my heart commenced to beat and I had most serious misgivings.
Mr. Perkupp was in his room writing, and he said: “Take a
seat, Mr. Pooter, I shall not be moment.”
I replied: “No, thank you, sir; I’ll stand.”
I watched the clock on the mantelpiece, and I was waiting
quite twenty minutes; but it seemed hours. Mr. Perkupp at last
got up himself.
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I said: “I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”
He replied: “Oh dear, no! quite the reverse, I hope.” What a
weight off my mind! My breath seemed to come back again in
an instant.
Mr. Perkupp said: “Mr. Buckling is going to retire, and there
will be some slight changes in the office.You have been with us
nearly twenty-one years, and, in consequence of your conduct
during that period, we intend making a special promotion in your
favour. We have not quite decided how you will be placed; but
in any case there will be a considerable increase in your salary,
which, it is quite unnecessary for me to say, you fully deserve. I
have an appointment at two; but you shall hear more to-morrow.”
He then left the room quickly, and I was not even allowed
time or thought to express a single word of grateful thanks to
him. I need not say how dear Carrie received this joyful news.
With perfect simplicity she said: “At last we shall be able to have
a chimney-glass for the back drawing-room, which we always
wanted.” I added: “Yes, and at last you shall have that little
costume which you saw at Peter Robinson’s so cheap.”
January . I was in a great state of suspense all day at the office.
I did not like to worry Mr. Perkupp; but as he did not send for
me, and mentioned yesterday that he would see me again to-day,
I thought it better, perhaps, to go to him. I knocked at his door,
and on entering, Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh! it’s you, Mr. Pooter; do
you want to see me?” I said: “No, sir, I thought you wanted to
see me!” “Oh!” he replied, “I remember. Well, I am very busy
to-day; I will see you to-morrow.”
January . Still in a state of anxiety and excitement, which was
not alleviated by ascertaining that Mr. Perkupp sent word he
should not be at the office at all to-day. In the evening, Lupin,
who was busily engaged with a paper, said suddenly to me: “Do
you know anything about chalk pits, Guv.?” I said: “No, my boy,
not that I’m aware of.” Lupin said: “Well, I give you the tip; chalk
pits are as safe as Consols, and pay six per cent. at par.” I said a
A large mirror placed over the mantelpiece.
Consols were government bonds which paid a fixed and modest rate of interest: they
were a byword for security. Interest rates were very low in this period, and any share
paying six per cent on its face value was a highly speculative, and risky, investment.
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rather neat thing, viz: “They may be six per cent. at par, but your
pa has no money to invest.” Carrie and I both roared with laugh-
ter. Lupin did not take the slightest notice of the joke, although
I purposely repeated it for him; but continued: “I give you the
tip, that’s all—chalk pits!” I said another funny thing: “Mind you
don’t fall into them!” Lupin put on a supercilious smile, and said:
“Bravo! Joe Miller.”
January . Mr. Perkupp sent for me and told me that my posi-
tion would be that of one of the senior clerks. I was more than
overjoyed. Mr. Perkupp added he would let me know to-
morrow what the salary would be. This means another day’s
anxiety; I don’t mind, for it is anxiety of the right sort. That
reminded me that I had forgotten to speak to Lupin about the
letter I received from Mr. Mutlar, senr. I broached the subject to
Lupin in the evening, having first consulted Carrie. Lupin was
riveted to the Financial News, as if he had been a born capital-
ist, and I said: “Pardon me a moment, Lupin, how is it you have
not been to the Mutlars any day this week?”
Lupin answered: “I told you! I cannot stand old Mutlar.”
I said: “Mr. Mutlar writes to me to say pretty plainly that he
cannot stand you!”
Lupin said: “Well, I like his cheek in writing to you. I’ll find
out if his father is still alive, and I will write him a note complain-
ing of his son, and I’ll state pretty clearly that his son is a blither-
ing idiot!”
I said: “Lupin, please moderate your expressions in the pres-
ence of your mother.”
Lupin said: “I’m very sorry, but there is no other expression
one can apply to him. However, I’m determined not to enter his
place again.”
Joe Miller, a comedian, died in , but his name became attached to a book of jokes
and became a colloquial phrase for any tired joke.
A newspaper founded in by Harry Marks, who asked his readers rhetorically
“if ‘Yankee bounce’ in a ‘semi-American’ journal is not sounder than eighteen-
hundred-and-fast-asleep conservatism?” (Quoted by Porter [], ). Although by
it was being challenged by the new Financial Times, its lively style would surely
have appealed to Lupin.
That is, a babbling fool. The OED records this quotation as the earliest known use
of the phrase.
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I said: “You know, Lupin, he has forbidden you the house.”
Lupin replied: “Well, we won’t split straws—it’s all the same.
Daisy is a trump, and will wait for me ten years, if necessary.”
January . I can scarcely write the news. Mr. Perkupp told me
my salary would be raised £! I stood gaping for a moment
unable to realise it. I annually get £ rise, and I thought it might
be £ or even £; but £ surpasses all belief. Carrie and I
both rejoiced over our good fortune. Lupin came home in the
evening in the utmost good spirits. I sent Sarah quietly round to
the grocer’s for a bottle of champagne, the same as we had before,
“Jackson Frères.” It was opened at supper, and I said to Lupin:
“This is to celebrate some good news I have received to-day.”Lupin
replied: “Hooray, Guv.! And I have some good news, also; a double
event, eh?” I said: “My boy, as a result of twenty-one years’ indus-
try and strict attention to the interests of my superiors in office, I
have been rewarded with promotion and a rise in salary of £.”
Lupin gave three cheers, and we rapped the tables furiously,
which brought in Sarah to see what the matter was. Lupin ordered
us to “fill up” again, and addressing us upstanding, said: “Having
been in the firm of Job Cleanands, stock and share-brokers, a few
weeks, and not having paid particular attention to the interests of
my superiors in office, my Guv’nor, as a reward to me, allotted me
£ worth of shares in a really good thing. The result is, to-day I
have made £.” I said: “Lupin, you are joking.” “No, Guv., it’s
the good old truth; Job Cleanands put me on to chlorates.”
January . I am very much concerned at Lupin having started
a pony-trap. I said: “Lupin, are you justified in this outrageous
extravagance?” Lupin replied: “Well, one must get to the City
somehow. I’ve only hired it, and can give it up any time I like.” I
repeated my question: “Are you justified in this extravagance?” He
replied: “Look here, Guv.; excuse my saying so, but you’re a bit out
of date. It does not pay nowadays, fiddling about over small things.
I don’t mean anything personal, Guv’nor. My boss says if I take his
tip, and stick to big things, I can make big money!” I said I thought
Grocers sold alcoholic drinks, but those in Holloway were not likely to be selling
fine wines. A peculiar label like this, mixing French and English, does not augur well
for the quality of “champagne” inside. It may even have been made of, or adulter-
ated with, gooseberry or rhubarb juice.
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the very idea of speculation most horrifying. Lupin said: “It is not
speculation, it’s a dead cert.” I advised him, at all events, not to
continue the pony and cart; but he replied: “I made £ in one
day; now suppose I only make £ in a month, or put it at £
a month, which is ridiculously low—why, that is £ a year.
What’s a few pounds a week for a trap?”
I did not pursue the subject further, beyond saying that I
should feel glad when the autumn came, and Lupin would be of
age and responsible for his own debts. He answered: “My dear
Guv., I promise you faithfully that I will never speculate with
what I have not got. I shall only go on Job Cleanands’ tips, and
as he is in the ‘know’ it is pretty safe sailing.” I felt somewhat
relieved. Gowing called in the evening and, to my surprise,
informed me that, as he had made £ by one of Lupin’s tips,
he intended asking us and the Cummings’ round next Saturday.
Carrie and I said we should be delighted.
January . I don’t generally lose my temper with servants; but
I had to speak to Sarah rather sharply about a careless habit she
has recently contracted of shaking the table-cloth, after removing
the breakfast things, in a manner which causes all the crumbs to
fall on the carpet, eventually to be trodden in. Sarah answered
very rudely: “Oh, you are always complaining.” I replied: “Indeed,
I am not. I spoke to you last week about walking all over the
drawing-room carpet with a piece of yellow soap on the heel of
your boot.” She said: “And you’re always grumbling about your
breakfast.” I said: “No, I am not; but I feel perfectly justified in
complaining that I never can get a hard-boiled egg. The moment
I crack the shell it spurts all over the plate, and I have spoken to
you at least fifty times about it.” She began to cry and make a
scene; but fortunately my ’bus came by, so I had a good excuse
for leaving her. Gowing left a message in the evening, that we
were not to forget next Saturday. Carrie amusingly said: “As he
has never asked any friends before, we are not likely to forget it.”
January . I asked Lupin to try and change the hard brushes,
he recently made me a present of, for some softer ones, as my hair-
dresser tells me I ought not to brush my hair too much just now.
A certainty. The OED dates this expression to , and cites this quotation from the
Diary as the first known usage.
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January . The new chimney-glass came home for the back
drawing-room. Carrie arranged some fans very prettily on the
top and on each side. It is an immense improvement to the room.
January . We had just finished our tea, when who should
come in but Cummings, who has not been here for over three
weeks. I noticed that he looked anything but well, so I said:
“Well, Cummings, how are you? You look a little blue.” He
replied: “Yes! and I feel blue too.” I said: “Why, what’s the
matter?” He said: “Oh, nothing, except that I have been on my
back for a couple of weeks, that’s all. At one time my doctor
nearly gave me up, yet not a soul has come near me. No one has
even taken the trouble to inquire whether I was alive or dead.”
I said: “This is the first I have heard of it. I have passed your
house several nights, and presumed you had company, as the
rooms were so brilliantly lighted.”
Cummings replied: “No! The only company I have had was
my wife, the doctor, and the landlady—the last-named having
turned out a perfect trump. I wonder you did not see it in the
paper. I know it was mentioned in the Bicycle News.”
I thought to cheer him up, and said: “Well, you are all right
now?”
He replied:“That’s not the question.The question is whether an
illness does not enable you to discover who are your true friends.”
I said such an observation was unworthy of him. To make
matters worse, in came Gowing, who gave Cummings a violent
slap on the back, and said: “Hulloh! Have you seen a ghost? You
look scared to death, like Irving in Macbeth.” I said: “Gently,
Gowing, the poor fellow has been very ill.” Gowing roared with
laughter and said: “Yes, and you look it, too.” Cummings quietly
said: “Yes, and I feel it too—not that I suppose you care.”
An awkward silence followed. Gowing said: “Never mind,
Cummings,you and the missis come round to my place to-morrow,
and it will cheer you up a bit; for we’ll open a bottle of wine.”
January . An extraordinary thing happened. Carrie and I
went round to Gowing’s, as arranged, at half-past seven. We
knocked and rang several times without getting an answer. At
last the latch was drawn and the door opened a little way, the
chain still being up. A man in shirt-sleeves put his head through
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and said: “Who is it? What do you want?” I said: “Mr. Gowing,
he is expecting us.” The man said (as well as I could hear, owing
to the yapping of a little dog): “I don’t think he is. Mr. Gowing
is not at home.” I said: “He will be in directly.”
With that observation he slammed the door, leaving Carrie
and me standing on the steps with a cutting wind blowing round
the corner.
Carrie advised me to knock again. I did so, and then discov-
ered for the first time that the knocker had been newly painted,
and the paint had come off on my gloves—which were, in
consequence, completely spoiled.
I knocked at the door with my stick two or three times.
The man opened the door, taking the chain off this time, and
began abusing me. He said: “What do you mean by scratching
the paint with your stick like that, spoiling the varnish? You
ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
I said: “Pardon me, Mr. Gowing invited—”
He interrupted, and said: “I don’t care for Mr. Gowing, or any
of his friends. This is my door, not Mr. Gowing’s. There are
people here besides Mr. Gowing.”
The impertinence of this man was nothing. I scarcely noticed
it, it was so trivial in comparison with the scandalous conduct of
Gowing.
At this moment Cummings and his wife arrived. Cummings
was very lame and leaning on a stick; but got up the steps and
asked what the matter was.
The man said: “Mr. Gowing said nothing about expecting
anyone. All he said was he had just received an invitation to
Croydon, and he should not be back till Monday evening. He
took his bag with him.”
With that he slammed the door again. I was too indignant
with Gowing’s conduct to say anything. Cummings looked
white with rage, and as he descended the steps struck his stick
violently on the ground and said: “Scoundrel!”
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Chapter Fifteen
Gowing explains his conduct. Lupin takes us for a drive, which
we don’t enjoy. Lupin introduces us to Mr. Murray Posh.
February . It does seem hard I cannot get good sausages for
breakfast. They are either full of bread or spice, or are as red as
beef. Still anxious about the £ I invested last week by Lupin’s
advice. However, Cummings has done the same.
February . Exactly a fortnight has passed, and I have neither
seen nor heard from Gowing respecting his extraordinary
conduct in asking us round to his house, and then being out. In
the evening Carrie was engaged marking a half-dozen new
collars I had purchased. I’ll back Carrie’s marking against
anybody’s. While I was drying them at the fire, and Carrie was
rebuking me for scorching them, Cummings came in.
He seemed quite well again, and chaffed us about marking the
collars. I asked him if he had heard from Gowing, and he replied
that he had not. I said I should not have believed that Gowing
could have acted in such an ungentlemanly manner. Cummings
said: “You are mild in your description of him; I think he has
acted like a cad.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door
opened, and Gowing, putting in his head, said: “May I come in?”
I said: “Certainly.” Carrie said very pointedly: “Well, you are a
stranger.” Gowing said: “Yes, I’ve been on and off to Croydon
during the last fortnight.” I could see Cummings was boiling
over, and eventually he tackled Gowing very strongly respecting
his conduct last Saturday week. Gowing appeared surprised, and
said: “Why, I posted a letter to you in the morning announcing
that the party was ‘off, very much off.’ I said: “I never got it.”
Gowing, turning to Carrie, said: “I suppose letters sometimes
miscarry, don’t they, Mrs. Carrie?” Cummings sharply said: “This
is not a time for joking. I had no notice of the party being put
off.” Gowing replied: “I told Pooter in my note to tell you, as I
Collars were detachable from shirts, to save on the washing. If they were sent out to
a laundry they had to be identifiable.
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was in a hurry. However, I’ll inquire at the post-office, and we
must meet again at my place.” I added that I hoped he would be
present at the next meeting. Carrie roared at this, and even
Cummings could not help laughing.
February , Sunday. Contrary to my wishes, Carrie allowed
Lupin to persuade her to take her for a drive in the afternoon in
his trap. I quite disapprove of driving on a Sunday, but I did not
like to trust Carrie alone with Lupin, so I offered to go too.
Lupin said: “Now, that is nice of you, Guv., but you won’t mind
sitting on the back-seat of the cart?”
Lupin proceeded to put on a bright-blue coat that seemed
miles too large for him. Carrie said it wanted taking in consid-
erably at the back. Lupin said: “Haven’t you seen a box-coat
before? You can’t drive in anything else.”
He may wear what he likes in the future, for I shall never drive
with him again. His conduct was shocking. When we passed
Highgate Archway, he tried to pass everything and everybody.
He shouted to respectable people who were walking quietly in
the road to get out of the way; he flicked at the horse of an old
man who was riding, causing it to rear; and, as I had to ride back-
wards, I was compelled to face a gang of roughs in a donkey-
cart, whom Lupin had chaffed, and who turned and followed us
for nearly a mile, bellowing, indulging in coarse jokes and laugh-
ter, to say nothing of occasionally pelting us with orange-peel.
Lupin’s excuse—that the Prince of Wales would have to put
up with the same sort of thing if he drove to the Derby—was
of little consolation to either Carrie or myself. Frank Mutlar
called in the evening, and Lupin went out with him.
February . Feeling a little concerned about Lupin, I mustered
up courage to speak to Mr. Perkupp about him. Mr. Perkupp has
always been most kind to me, so I told him everything, including
yesterday’s adventure. Mr. Perkupp kindly replied: “There is no
necessity for you to be anxious, Mr. Pooter. It would be impos-
sible for a son of such good parents to turn out erroneously.
A heavy overcoat, originally a type worn by those sitting outside with the driver on
the box of a coach.
The fair and race meeting held at Epsom Downs in May or June: a hugely popular
outing for all classes of Londoners.
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Remember he is young, and will soon get older. I wish we could
find room for him in this firm.” The advice of this good man
takes loads off my mind. In the evening Lupin came in.
After our little supper, he said: “My dear parents, I have some
news, which I fear will affect you considerably.” I felt a qualm
come over me, and said nothing. Lupin then said: “It may distress
you—in fact, I’m sure it will—but this afternoon I have given
up my pony and trap for ever.” It may seem absurd, but I was so
pleased, I immediately opened a bottle of port. Gowing dropped
in just in time, bringing with him a large sheet, with a print of
a tailless donkey, which he fastened against the wall. He then
produced several separate tails, and we spent the remainder of the
evening trying blindfolded to pin a tail on in the proper place.
My sides positively ached with laughter when I went to bed.
February . In the evening I spoke to Lupin about his engage-
ment with Daisy Mutlar. I asked if he had heard from her. He
replied: “No; she promised that old windbag of a father of hers
that she would not communicate with me. I see Frank Mutlar, of
course; in fact, he said he might call again this evening.” Frank
called, but said he could not stop, as he had a friend waiting
outside for him, named Murray Posh, adding he was quite a
swell. Carrie asked Frank to bring him in.
He was brought in, Gowing
entering at the same time. Mr.
Murray Posh was a tall, fat
young man, and was evidently
of a very nervous disposition, as
he subsequently confessed he
would never go in a hansom
cab, nor would he enter a four-
wheeler until the driver had
first got on the box with his
reins in his hands.
On being introduced,
“Posh” in the Victorian period was a noun, meaning a coin of low value. “Posh” as
an adjective, meaning “socially superior,” came into general use only early in the next
century (OED). It is possible that the Grossmiths invented the use of the word in
what is clearly intended to be its modern sense.
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Gowing, with his usual want of tact, said: “Any relation to ‘Posh’s
three-shilling hats’?” Mr. Posh replied: “Yes; but please under-
stand I don’t try on hats myself. I take no active part in the busi-
ness.” I replied: “I wish I had a business like it.” Mr. Posh seemed
pleased, and gave a long but most interesting history of the
extraordinary difficulties in the manufacture of cheap hats.
Murray Posh evidently knew Daisy Mutlar very intimately
from the way he was talking of her; and Frank said to Lupin
once, laughingly: “If you don’t look out, Posh will cut you out!”
When they had all gone, I referred to this flippant conversation;
and Lupin said, sarcastically: “A man who is jealous has no
respect for himself. A man who would be jealous of an elephant
like Murray Posh could only have a contempt for himself. I
know Daisy. She would wait ten years for me, as I said before; in
fact, if necessary, she would wait twenty years for me.”
Chapter Sixteen
We lose money over Lupin’s advice as to investments, so does
Cummings. Murray Posh engaged to Daisy Mutlar.
February . Carrie has several times recently called attention to
the thinness of my hair at the top of my head, and recommended
me to get it seen to. I was this morning trying to look at it by
the aid of a small hand-glass, when somehow my elbow caught
against the edge of the chest of drawers and knocked the glass
out of my hand and smashed it. Carrie was in an awful way about
it, as she is rather absurdly superstitious. To make matters worse,
my large photograph in the drawing-room fell during the night,
and the glass cracked.
Carrie said: “Mark my words, Charles, some misfortune is
about to happen.”
I said: “Nonsense, dear.”
In the evening Lupin arrived home early, and seemed a little
agitated. I said: “What’s up, my boy?” He hesitated a good deal,
and then said: “You know those Parachikka Chlorates I advised
you to invest £ in? I replied: ‘Yes; they are all right, I trust?’
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He replied: “Well, no! To the surprise of everybody, they have
utterly collapsed.”
My breath was so completely taken away, I could say nothing.
Carrie looked at me, and said: “What did I tell you?” Lupin, after
a while, said: “However, you are specially fortunate. I received an
early tip, and sold out yours immediately, and was fortunate to
get £ for them. So you get something after all.”
I gave a sigh of relief. I said: “I was not so sanguine as to
suppose, as you predicted, that I should get six or eight times the
amount of my investment; still a profit of £ is a good percent-
age for such a short time.” Lupin said, quite irritably: “You don’t
understand. I sold your £ shares for £; you therefore lose
£ on the transaction, whereby Cummings and Gowing will
lose the whole of theirs.”
February . Lupin, before going to town, said: “I am very
sorry about those Parachikka Chlorates; it would not have
happened if the boss, Job Cleanands, had been in town. Between
ourselves, you must not be surprised if something goes wrong at
our office. Job Cleanands has not been seen the last few days, and
it strikes me several people do want to see him very particularly.”
In the evening Lupin was just on the point of going out to
avoid a collision with Gowing and Cummings, when the former
entered the room, without knocking, but with his usual trick of
saying, “May I come in?”
He entered, and to the surprise of Lupin and myself, seemed
to be in the very best of spirits. Neither Lupin nor I broached
the subject to him, but he did so of his own accord. He said: “I
say, those Parachikka Chlorates have gone an awful smash! You’re
a nice one, Master Lupin. How much do you lose?” Lupin, to
my utter astonishment, said: “Oh! I had nothing in them. There
was some informality in my application—I forgot to enclose the
Chlorates were used in disinfectants and for bleaching paper, but there is probably a
covert allusion to the activities of John Thomas North (–), “the Nitrate
King.” Nitrates were mined in Chile for fertiliser, and North had cornered the market
in the s, growing fabulously rich and cutting a dash in society. In February ,
to allay shareholders’ anxiety, North, with attendant journalists, left on an investiga-
tive tour of South America after a sensational “farewell” ball for a thousand guests
which cost him £,. Nitrate shares continued to fall in his absence, and people
feared he had absconded. For further details see Blakemore ().
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cheque, or something, and I didn’t get any. The Guv. loses £.”
I said: “I quite understood you were in it, or nothing would have
induced me to speculate.” Lupin replied: “Well, it can’t be helped;
you must go double on the next tip.” Before I could reply,
Gowing said: “Well, I lose nothing, fortunately. From what I
heard, I did not quite believe in them, so I persuaded Cummings
to take my £ worth, as he had more faith in them than I had.”
Lupin burst out laughing, and, in the most unseemly manner,
said: “Alas, poor Cummings! He’ll lose £.” At that moment
there was a ring at the bell. Lupin said: “I don’t want to meet
Cummings.” If he had gone out of the door he would have met
him in the passage, so as quickly as possible Lupin opened the
parlour window and got out. Gowing jumped up suddenly,
exclaiming: “I don’t want to see him either!” and, before I could
say a word, he followed Lupin out of the window.
For my own part, I was horrified to think my own son and one
of my most intimate friends should depart from the house like a
couple of interrupted burglars. Poor Cummings was very upset,
and of course was naturally very angry both with Lupin and
Gowing. I pressed him to have a little whisky, and he replied that
he had given up whisky; but would like a little “Unsweetened,”
as he was advised it was the most healthy spirit. I had none in the
house, but sent Sarah round to Lockwood’s for some.
February . The first thing that caught my eye on opening the
Standard was—“Great Failure of Stock and Share Dealers! Mr. Job
Cleanands absconded!” I handed it to Carrie,and she replied:“Oh!
perhaps it’s for Lupin’s good. I never did think it a suitable situation
for him.” I thought the whole affair very shocking.
Lupin came down to breakfast, and seeing he looked painfully
distressed, I said: “We know the news, my dear boy, and feel very
A variety of imported gin, also called “Old Tom.”
The Evening Standard, a London newspaper published since .
Financial frauds were common in this period, but in the Grossmiths probably
had in mind both the activities of North “the Nitrate King” and the swindle of the
“Rae-Transvaal Gold Mining Company” which had been floated in –. It
collapsed in May , just before the Diary started, and its shareholders lost every-
thing. Harry Marks, founder of the Financial News, Lupin’s preferred reading, was
implicated in “puffing” the company in his paper, but this was not generally known
until a court case in .
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sorry for you.” Lupin said: “How did you know? who told you?”
I handed him the Standard. He threw the paper down, and said:
“Oh I don’t care a button for that! I expected that, but I did not
expect this.” He then read a letter from Frank Mutlar, announc-
ing, in a cool manner, that Daisy Mutlar is to be married next
month to Murray Posh. I exclaimed: “Murray Posh! Is not that
the very man Frank had the impudence to bring here last Tuesday
week?” Lupin said: “Yes; the ‘Posh’s-three-shilling-hats’ chap.”
We all then ate our breakfast in dead silence.
In fact, I could eat nothing. I was not only too worried, but I
cannot and will not eat cushion of bacon. If I cannot get streaky
bacon, I will do without anything.
When Lupin rose to go I noticed a malicious smile creep over
his face. I asked him what it meant. He replied: “Oh! only a little
consolation—still it is a consolation. I have just remembered that,
by my advice, Mr. Murray Posh has invested £ in Parachikka
Chlorates!”
Chapter Seventeen
Marriage of Daisy Mutlar and Murray Posh.The dream of my
life realised. Mr. Perkupp takes Lupin into the office.
March . To-day being the day on which Daisy Mutlar and Mr.
Murray Posh are to be married, Lupin has gone with a friend to
spend the day at Gravesend. Lupin has been much cut-up over the
affair, although he declares that he is glad it is off. I wish he would
not go to so many music-halls, but one dare not say anything to
him about it. At the present moment he irritates me by singing all
over the house some nonsense about “What’s the matter with
Gladstone? He’s all right! What’s the matter with Lupin? He’s all
right!” I don’t think either of them is. In the evening Gowing
Bacon made from the buttock of a pig, meaty and with little fat.
Another song in Charles Coborn’s repertoire. Any name of the moment could be
substituted in the catch-phrase title. Gladstone, the Liberal leader, had resigned in
, his party having split over the issue of Irish Home Rule. Naturally, Pooter voted
Conservative, the party currently in power.
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called, and the chief topic of conversation was Daisy’s marriage to
Murray Posh. I said: “I was glad the matter was at an end, as Daisy
would only have made a fool of Lupin.” Gowing, with his usual
good taste, said: “Oh, Master Lupin can make a fool of himself
without any assistance.” Carrie very properly resented this, and
Gowing had sufficient sense to say he was sorry.
March . To-day I shall conclude my diary, for it is one of the
happiest days of my life. My great dream of the last few weeks—
in fact, of many years—has been realised. This morning came a
letter from Mr. Perkupp, asking me to take Lupin down to the
office with me. I went to Lupin’s room; poor fellow, he seemed
very pale, and said he had a bad headache. He had come back
yesterday from Gravesend, where he spent part of the day in a
small boat on the water, having been mad enough to neglect to
take his overcoat with him. I showed him Mr. Perkupp’s letter,
and he got up as quickly as possible. I begged of him not to put
on his fast-coloured clothes and ties, but to dress in something
black or quiet-looking.
Carrie was all of a tremble when she read the letter, and all
she could keep on saying was: “Oh, I do hope it will be all right.”
For myself, I could scarcely eat any breakfast. Lupin came down
dressed quietly, and looking a perfect gentleman, except that his
face was rather yellow. Carrie, by way of encouragement said:
“You do look nice, Lupin.” Lupin replied: “Yes, it’s a good make-
up, isn’t it? A regular-downright-respectable-funereal-first-class-
City-firm-junior-clerk.” He laughed rather ironically.
In the hall I heard a great noise, and also Lupin shouting to
Sarah to fetch down his old hat. I went into the passage, and
found Lupin in a fury, kicking and smashing a new tall hat. I said:
“Lupin, my boy, what are you doing? How wicked of you! Some
poor fellow would be glad to have it.” Lupin replied: “I would
not insult any poor fellow by giving it to him.”
When he had gone outside, I picked up the battered hat, and
This entry concluded the Punch serial, in the issue of May . The remainder
of the Diary appeared first in the book version in .
“Fast-coloured” means here “aggressively fashionable.”
This theatrical term can mean any appearance or dress adopted for a public perform-
ance, not just facial make-up. (OED).
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saw inside “Posh’s Patent.” Poor Lupin! I can forgive him. It seemed
hours before we reached the office. Mr. Perkupp sent for Lupin,
who was with him nearly an hour. He returned, as I thought, crest-
fallen in appearance. I said: “Well, Lupin, how about Mr. Perkupp?”
Lupin commenced his song: “What’s the matter with Perkupp?
He’s all right!” I felt instinctively my boy was engaged. I went to
Mr.Perkupp,but I could not speak.He said:“Well,Mr.Pooter,what
is it?” I must have looked a fool, for all I could say was: “Mr.
Perkupp, you are a good man.” He looked at me for a moment, and
said: “No, Mr. Pooter, you are the good man; and we’ll see if we
cannot get your son to follow such an excellent example.” I said:
“Mr. Perkupp, may I go home? I cannot work any more to-day.”
My good master shook my hand warmly as he nodded his
head. It was as much as I could do to prevent myself from crying
in the ’bus; in fact, I should have done so, had my thoughts not
been interrupted by Lupin, who was having a quarrel with a fat
man in the ’bus, whom he accused of taking up too much room.
In the evening Carrie sent round for dear old friend Cummings
and his wife, and also to Gowing. We all sat round the fire, and in
a bottle of “Jackson Frères,” which Sarah fetched from the grocer’s,
drank Lupin’s health. I lay awake for hours, thinking of the future.
My boy in the same office as myself—we can go down together
by the ’bus, come home together, and who knows but in the
course of time he may take great interest in our little home. That
he may help me to put a nail in here or a nail in there, or help his
dear mother to hang a picture. In the summer he may help us in
our little garden with the flowers, and assist us to paint the stands
and pots. (By-the-by, I must get in some more enamel paint.) All
this I thought over and over again, and a thousand happy thoughts
beside. I heard the clock strike four, and soon after fell asleep, only
to dream of three happy people, Lupin, dear Carrie, and myself.
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Chapter Eighteen
Trouble with a stylographic pen.We go to a Volunteer Ball, where
I am let in for an expensive supper. Grossly insulted by a cabman.
An odd invitation to Southend.
April . No events of any importance, except that Gowing
strongly recommended a new patent stylographic pen, which
cost me nine-and-sixpence, and which was simply nine-and-
sixpence thrown in the mud. It has caused me constant annoy-
ance and irritability of temper. The ink oozes out of the top,
making a mess on my hands, and once at the office when I was
knocking the palm of my hand on the desk to jerk the ink down,
Mr. Perkupp, who had just entered, called out: “Stop that knock-
ing! I suppose that is you, Mr. Pitt?” That young monkey, Pitt,
took a malicious glee in responding quite loudly: “No, sir; I beg
pardon, it is Mr. Pooter with his pen; it has been going on all the
morning.” To make matters worse, I saw Lupin laughing behind
his desk. I thought it wiser to say nothing. I took the pen back
to the shop and asked them if they would take it back, as it did
not act. I did not expect the full price returned, but was willing
to take half. The man said he could not do that—buying and
selling were two different things. Lupin’s conduct during the
period he has been in Mr. Perkupp’s office has been most exem-
plary. My only fear is, it is too good to last.
April . Gowing called, bringing with him an invitation for
Carrie and myself to a ball given by the East Acton Rifle Brigade,
which he thought would be a swell affair, as the member for East
Acton (Sir William Grime) had promised his patronage. We
accepted of his kindness, and he stayed to supper, an occasion I
thought suitable for trying a bottle of the sparkling Algéra that
Mr. James (of Sutton) had sent as a present. Gowing sipped the
A complicated kind of fountain pen equipped with a needle point instead of a nib,
and an ink valve which opened when pressure was applied to the tip. The pen cost
the equivalent of £.
The name of the wine is apparently invented, but Algeria was a large exporter of
wine at that time, especially after French vineyards were severely damaged by phyl-
loxera in the ’s and ’s.
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wine, observing that he had never tasted it before, and further
remarked that his policy was to stick to more recognised brands.
I told him it was a present from a dear friend, and one mustn’t
look a gift-horse in the mouth. Gowing facetiously replied: “And
he didn’t like putting it in the mouth either.”
I thought the remarks were rude without being funny, but on
tasting it myself, came to the conclusion there was some justifi-
cation for them. The sparkling Algéra is very like cider, only
more sour. I suggested that perhaps the thunder had turned it a
bit acid. He merely replied: “Oh! I don’t think so.” We had a very
pleasant game of cards, though I lost four shillings and Carrie
lost one, and Gowing said he had lost about sixpence: how he
could have lost, considering that Carrie and I were the only
other players, remains a mystery.
April , Sunday. Owing, I presume, to the unsettled weather,
I awoke with a feeling that my skin was drawn over my face as
tight as a drum. Walking round the garden with Mr. and Mrs.
Treane, members of our congregation who had walked back
with us, I was much annoyed to find a large newspaper full of
bones on the gravel-path, evidently thrown over by those young
Griffin boys next door; who, whenever we have friends, climb
up the empty steps inside their conservatory, tap at the windows,
making faces, whistling, and imitating birds.
April . Burnt my tongue most awfully with the Worcester
sauce, through that stupid girl Sarah shaking the bottle violently
before putting it on the table.
April . The night of the East Acton Volunteer Ball. On my
advice, Carrie put on the same dress that she looked so beautiful
in at the Mansion House, for it had occurred to me, being a mili-
tary ball, that Mr. Perkupp, who, I believe, is an officer in the
Honorary Artillery Company, would in all probability be pres-
The Volunteers (the Rifle Volunteer Corps) were part of the national system of part-
time soldiers which has long supplemented the forces of the regular Army. They were
merged into what eventually became the Territorial Army early in the next century.
At this time its activities were more social than anything else.
A regiment of amateur soldiers of ancient foundation, closely connected with the
City of London, for which it performs ceremonial functions. To be an officer in it
was a mark of social distinction and influence.
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ent. Lupin, in his usual incomprehensible language, remarked that
he had heard it was a “bounders’ ball.” I didn’t ask him what he
meant though I didn’t understand. Where he gets these expres-
sions from I don’t know; he certainly doesn’t learn them at home.
The invitation was for half-past eight, so I concluded if we
arrived an hour later we should be in good time, without being
“unfashionable,” as Mrs. James says. It was very difficult to find—
the cabman having to get down several times to inquire at differ-
ent public-houses where the Drill Hall was. I wonder at people
living in such out-of-the-way places. No one seemed to know it.
However, after going up and down a good many badly-lighted
streets we arrived at our destination. I had no idea it was so far from
Holloway. I gave the cabman five shillings, who only grumbled,
That is, a ball organised, or attended, by crooks. A good example of Lupin’s up-to-
the-minute slang, since the OED’s earliest quotation illustrating “bounder” used in
this sense dates from .
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saying it was dirt cheap at half-a-sovereign, and was impertinent
enough to advise me the next time I went to a ball to take a ’bus.
Captain Welcut received us, saying we were rather late, but
that it was better late than never. He seemed a very good-look-
ing gentleman though, as Carrie remarked: “rather short for an
officer.” He begged to be excused for leaving us, as he was
engaged for a dance, and hoped we should make ourselves at
home. Carrie took my arm and we walked round the rooms two
or three times and watched the people dancing. I couldn’t find
a single person I knew, but attributed it to most of them being
in uniform. As we were entering the supper-room I received a
slap on the shoulder, followed by a welcome shake of the hand.
I said: “Mr. Padge, I believe?” He replied: “That’s right.”
I gave Carrie a chair, and seated by her was a lady who made
herself at home with Carrie at once.
There was a very liberal repast on the tables, plenty of cham-
pagne, claret, etc, and, in fact, everything seemed to be done
regardless of expense. Mr. Padge is a man that, I admit, I have no
particular liking for, but I felt so glad to come across someone I
knew, that I asked him to sit at our table, and I must say that for
a short fat man he looked well in uniform, although I think his
tunic was rather baggy in the back. It was the only supper-room
that I have been in that was not overcrowded; in fact we were
the only people there, everybody being so busy dancing.
I assisted Carrie and her newly-formed acquaintance, who
said her name was Lupkin, to some champagne; also myself, and
handed the bottle to Mr. Padge to do likewise, saying: “You must
look after yourself.” He replied: “That’s right,” and poured out
half a tumbler and drank Carrie’s health, coupled, as he said:
“with her worthy lord and master.” We all had some splendid
pigeon pie, and ices to follow.
The waiters were very attentive, and asked if we would like
some more wine. I assisted Carrie and her friend and Mr. Padge,
also some people who had just come from the dancing-room, who
The distance is about eight miles, and five shillings (equivalent to new pence),
including a tip, was a reasonable fare. (Half a sovereign was double that.) Because cabs
were not metered, the risk of humiliation and insult was ever-present as cabmen were
notoriously disrespectful of status.
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were very civil. It occurred to me at the time that perhaps some
of the gentlemen knew me in the City, as they were so polite. I
made myself useful, and assisted several ladies to ices, remember-
ing an old saying that “There is nothing lost by civility.”
The band struck up for the dance, and they all went into the
ball-room. The ladies (Carrie and Mrs. Lupkin) were anxious to
see the dancing, and as I had not quite finished my supper, Mr.
Padge offered his arms to them and escorted them to the ball-
room, telling me to follow. I said to Mr. Padge: “It is quite a West
End affair,” to which remark Mr. Padge replied: “That’s right.”
When I had quite finished my supper, and was leaving, the
waiter who had been attending on us arrested my attention by
tapping me on the shoulder. I thought it unusual for a waiter at
a private ball to expect a tip, but nevertheless gave a shilling, as
he had been very attentive. He smilingly replied: “I beg your
pardon, sir, this is no good,” alluding to the shilling. “Your party’s
had four suppers at s. a head, five ices at s., three bottles of
champagne at s.d., a glass of claret, and a sixpenny cigar for
the stout gentleman—in all £ s.d.!”
I don’t think I was ever so surprised in my life, and had only
sufficient breath to inform him that I had received a private invi-
tation, to which he answered that he was perfectly well aware of
that; but that the invitation didn’t include eatables and drink-
ables. A gentleman who was standing at the bar corroborated the
waiter’s statement, and assured me it was quite correct.
The waiter said he was extremely sorry if I had been under
any misapprehension; but it was not his fault. Of course there
was nothing to be done but to pay. So, after turning out my
pockets, I just managed to scrape up sufficient, all but nine
shillings; but the manager, on my giving my card to him, said:
“That’s all right.”
Colmore () thought even a family with £ a year ought to manage on £ a
week for housekeeping, including food, laundry and all other recurrent expenses. So
this bill is a large fraction of Pooter’s weekly pay. It is surprising he carried that much
on him in cash, but there was no other way of paying immediate bills except by
personal cheque. Most tradesmen’s bills of this size were settled when an account was
rendered; that is why Pooter leaves his card with the manager so he can be billed for
the nine shillings.
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I don’t think I ever felt more humiliated in my life, and I deter-
mined to keep this misfortune from Carrie, for it would entirely
destroy the pleasant evening she was enjoying. I felt there was no
more enjoyment for me that evening, and it being late, I sought
Carrie and Mrs. Lupkin. Carrie said she was quite ready to go,
and Mrs. Lupkin, as we were wishing her “Good-night,” asked
Carrie and myself if we ever paid a visit to Southend? On my
replying that I hadn’t been there for many years, she very kindly
said: “Well, why don’t you come down and stay at our place?” As
her invitation was so pressing, and observing that Carrie wished
to go, we promised we would visit her the next Saturday week,
and stay till Monday. Mrs. Lupkin said she would write to us to-
morrow, giving us the address and particulars of trains, etc.
When we got outside the Drill Hall it was raining so hard that
the roads resembled canals, and I need hardly say we had great
difficulty in getting a cabman to take us to Holloway. After wait-
ing a bit, a man said he would drive us, anyhow, as far as “The
Angel,” at Islington, and we could easily get another cab from
there. It was a tedious journey; the rain was beating against the
windows and trickling down the inside of the cab.
When we arrived at “The Angel” the horse seemed tired out.
Carrie got out and ran into a doorway, and when I came to pay,
to my absolute horror I remembered I had no money, nor had
Carrie. I explained to the cabman how we were situated. Never
in my life have I ever been so insulted; the cabman, who was a
rough bully and to my thinking not sober, called me every name
he could lay his tongue to, and positively seized me by the beard,
which he pulled till the tears came into my eyes. I took the
number of a policeman (who witnessed the assault) for not
taking the man in charge. The policeman said he couldn’t inter-
fere, that he had seen no assault, and that people should not ride
in cabs without money.
We had to walk home in the pouring rain, nearly two miles,
and when I got in I put down the conversation I had with the
cabman, word for word, as I intend writing to the Telegraph for
the purpose of proposing that cabs should be driven only by men
under Government control, to prevent civilians being subjected
to the disgraceful insult and outrage that I had had to endure.
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April . No water in our cistern again. Sent for Putley, who
said he would soon remedy that, the cistern being zinc.
April . Water all right again in the cistern. Mrs. James, of
Sutton, called in the afternoon. She and Carrie draped the mantel-
piece in the drawing-room, and put little toy spiders, frogs and
beetles all over it, as Mrs. James says it’s quite the fashion. It was
Mrs. James’ suggestion, and of course Carrie always does what Mrs.
James suggests. For my part, I preferred the mantelpiece as it was;
but there, I’m a plain man, and don’t pretend to be in the fashion.
April . Our next-door neighbour, Mr. Griffin, called, and in
a rather offensive tone accused me, or “some one,” of boring a
hole in his cistern and letting out his water to supply our cistern,
which adjoined his. He said he should have his repaired, and send
us in the bill.
April . Cummings called, hobbling in with a stick, saying he
had been on his back for a week. It appears he was trying to shut
his bedroom door, which is situated just at the top of the stair-
case, and unknown to him a piece of cork the dog had been
playing with had got between the door, and prevented it shut-
ting; and in pulling the door hard, to give it an extra slam, the
handle came off in his hands, and he fell backwards downstairs.
On hearing this, Lupin suddenly jumped up from the couch
and rushed out of the room sideways. Cummings looked very
indignant, and remarked it was very poor fun a man nearly
breaking his back; and though I had my suspicions that Lupin
was laughing, I assured Cummings that he had only run out to
open the door to a friend he expected. Cummings said this was
the second time he had been laid up, and we had never sent to
inquire. I said I knew nothing about it. Cummings said: “It was
mentioned in the Bicycle News.”
April . I have of late frequently noticed Carrie rubbing her
nails a good deal with an instrument, and on asking her what she
was doing, she replied: “Oh, I’m going in for manicuring. It’s all
the fashion now.” I said: “I suppose Mrs. James introduced that
Treating one’s own hands cosmetically, or having it done as a specialised service, was
apparently introduced (at least under the name “manicuring”) in the late s
(OED).
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into your head.” Carrie laughingly replied: “Yes; but everyone
does it now.”
I wish Mrs. James wouldn’t come to the house. Whenever she
does she always introduces some new-fandangled rubbish into
Carrie’s head. One of these days I feel sure I shall tell her she’s
not welcome. I am sure it was Mrs. James who put Carrie up to
writing on dark slate-coloured paper with white ink. Nonsense!
April . Received a letter from Mrs. Lupkin, of Southend,
telling us the train to come by on Saturday, and hoping we will
keep our promise to stay with her. The letter concluded: “You
must come and stay at our house; we shall charge you half what
you will have to pay at the Royal, and the view is every bit as
good.” Looking at the address at the top of the note-paper, I
found it was “Lupkin’s Family and Commercial Hotel.”
I wrote a note, saying we were compelled to “decline her kind
invitation.” Carrie thought this very satirical, and to the point.
By-the-by, I will never choose another cloth pattern at night.
I ordered a new suit of dittos for the garden at Edwards’, and
chose the pattern by gaslight, and they seemed to be a quiet
pepper-and-salt mixture with white stripes down. They came
home this morning, and, to my horror, I found it was quite a
flash-looking suit. There was a lot of green with bright yellow-
coloured stripes.
I tried on the coat, and was annoyed to find Carrie giggling.
She said: “What mixture did you say you asked for?”
I said: “A quiet pepper and salt.”
Carrie said: “Well, it looks more like mustard, if you want to
know the truth.”
Like the toy spiders on the mantelpiece mentioned earlier, this ridicules another
“Aesthetic” affectation. One of George Grossmith’s most successful roles was as the
artistic poseur Bunthorne (loosely based on Oscar Wilde) in Gilbert & Sullivan’s
opera Patience (), so he was well-placed to parody the excesses of Aestheticism.
A suit made of all the same material and colour, probably so called from a tailor’s order,
where ditto marks were used to save having to write out the same items repeatedly.
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Chapter Nineteen
Meet Teddy Finsworth, an old schoolfellow.We have a pleasant and
quiet dinner at his uncle’s, marred only by a few awkward mistakes
on my part respecting Mr. Finsworth’s pictures. A discussion on
dreams.
April . Kept a little later than usual at the office, and as I was
hurrying along a man stopped me, saying: “Hulloh! That’s a face
I know.” I replied politely: “Very likely; lots of people know me,
although I may not know them.” He replied: “But you know
me—Teddy Finsworth.” So it was. He was at the same school
with me. I had not seen him for years and years. No wonder I
did not know him! At school he was at least a head taller than I
was; now I am at least a head taller than he is, and he has a thick
beard, almost grey. He insisted on my having a glass of wine (a
thing I never do), and told me he lived at Middlesboro’, where
he was Deputy Town Clerk, a position which was as high as the
Town Clerk of London—in fact, higher. He added that he was
staying for a few days in London, with his uncle, Mr. Edgar Paul
Finsworth (of Finsworth and Pultwell). He said he was sure his
uncle would be only too pleased to see me, and he had a nice
house, Watney Lodge, only a few minutes’ walk from Muswell
Hill Station. I gave him our address, and we parted.
In the evening, to my surprise, he called with a very nice letter
from Mr. Finsworth, saying if we (including Carrie) would dine
with them to-morrow (Sunday), at two o’clock, he would be
delighted. Carrie did not like to go; but Teddy Finsworth pressed
us so much we consented. Carrie sent Sarah round to the
butcher’s and countermanded our half-leg of mutton, which we
had ordered for to-morrow.
April , Sunday. We found Watney Villa farther off than we
anticipated, and only arrived as the clock struck two, both feel-
ing hot and uncomfortable. To make matters worse, a large collie
dog pounced forward to receive us. He barked loudly and
jumped up at Carrie, covering her light skirt, which she was
wearing for the first time, with mud. Teddy Finsworth came out
and drove the dog off and apologised. We were shown into the
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drawing-room, which was beautifully decorated. It was full of
knick-knacks, and some plates hung up on the wall. There were
several little wooden milk-stools with paintings on them; also a
white wooden banjo, painted by one of Mr. Paul Finsworth’s
nieces—a cousin of Teddy’s.
Mr. Paul Finsworth seemed quite a distinguished-looking
elderly gentleman, and was most gallant to Carrie. There were a
great many water-colours hanging on the walls, mostly different
views of India, which were very bright. Mr. Finsworth said they
were painted by “Simpz,” and added that he was no judge of
pictures himself but had been informed on good authority that
they were worth some hundreds of pounds, although he had
only paid a few shillings apiece for them, frames included, at a
sale in the neighbourhood.
There was also a large picture in a very handsome frame, done
in coloured crayons. It looked like a religious subject. I was very
much struck with the lace collar, it looked so real, but I unfor-
tunately made the remark that there was something about the
expression of the face that was not quite pleasing. It looked
pinched. Mr. Finsworth sorrowfully replied: “Yes, the face was
done after death—my wife’s sister.”
I felt terribly awkward and bowed apologetically, and in a whis-
per said I hoped I had not hurt his feelings. We both stood look-
ing at the picture for a few minutes in silence, when Mr. Finsworth
took out a handkerchief and said: “She was sitting in our garden
last summer,” and blew his nose violently. He seemed quite
affected, so I turned to look at something else and stood in front
of a portrait of a jolly-looking middle-aged gentleman, with a red
face and straw hat. I said to Mr. Finsworth: “Who is this jovial-
looking gentleman? Life doesn’t seem to trouble him much.” Mr.
Finsworth said: “No, it doesn’t. He is dead too—my brother.”
An allusion not only to the decorated furniture typical of the Arts and Crafts move-
ment, but perhaps also to Oscar Wilde’s house in Chelsea, which was painted almost
entirely in white. He lived there from until his downfall in .
No painter of this name can be identified with certainty. It may be that Pooter is
made to mishear the name “Simpson.” William Simpson (–) was a minor
painter, illustrator and engraver who came to notice for his sketches of the Crimean
War. He travelled and painted in India, Kashmir and Tibet, –.
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I was absolutely horrified at my own stupid awkwardness.
Fortunately at this moment Carrie entered with Mrs. Finsworth,
who had taken her upstairs to take off her bonnet and brush her
skirt. Teddy said: “Short is late,” but at that moment the gentle-
man referred to arrived, and I was introduced to him by Teddy,
who said: “Do you know Mr. Short?” I replied, smiling, that I
had not that pleasure, but I hoped it would not be long before I
knew Mr. Short. He evidently did not see my little joke, although
I repeated it twice with a little laugh. I suddenly remembered it
was Sunday, and Mr. Short was perhaps very particular.
In this I was mistaken, for he was not at all particular in several
of his remarks after dinner. In fact I was so ashamed of one of his
observations that I took the opportunity to say to Mrs. Finsworth
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that I feared she found Mr. Short occasionally a little embarrass-
ing. To my surprise she said: “Oh! he is privileged you know.” I
did not know as a matter of fact, and so I bowed apologetically.
I fail to see why Mr. Short should be privileged.
Another thing that annoyed me at dinner was that the collie
dog, which jumped up at Carrie, was allowed to remain under
the dining-room table. It kept growling and snapping at my
boots every time I moved my foot. Feeling nervous rather, I
spoke to Mrs. Finsworth about the animal, and she remarked: “It
is only his play.” She jumped up and let in a frightfully ugly-look-
ing spaniel called Bibbs, which had been scratching at the door.
This dog also seemed to take a fancy to my boots, and I discov-
ered afterwards that it had licked off every bit of blacking from
them. I was positively ashamed of being seen in them. Mrs.
Finsworth, who, I must say, is not much of a Job’s comforter,
said: “Oh! we are used to Bibbs doing that to our visitors.”
Mr. Finsworth had up some fine port, although I question
whether it is a good thing to take on the top of beer. It made me
feel a little sleepy, while it had the effect of inducing Mr. Short
to become “privileged” to rather an alarming extent. It being
cold even for April, there was a fire in the drawing-room; we sat
round in easy-chairs, and Teddy and I waxed rather eloquent
over the old school days, which had the effect of sending all the
others to sleep. I was delighted, as far as Mr. Short was
concerned, that it did have that effect on him.
We stayed till four, and the walk home was remarkable only
for the fact that several fools giggled at the unpolished state of
my boots. Polished them myself when I got home. Went to
church in the evening, and could scarcely keep awake. I will not
take port on the top of beer again.
April . I am getting quite accustomed to being snubbed by
Lupin, and I do not mind being sat upon by Carrie, because I
think she has a certain amount of right to do so; but I do think
it hard to be at once snubbed by wife, son, and both my guests.
Gowing and Cummings had dropped in during the evening,
Presumably Pooter’s misuse of the phrase is a deliberate touch. A “Job’s comforter”
is someone who claims to comfort you, but does the opposite. See Job, xv.–. So
Mrs. Finsworth is a Job’s comforter, not “not much” of one.
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and I suddenly remembered an extraordinary dream I had a few
nights ago, and I thought I would tell them about it. I dreamt I
saw some huge blocks of ice in a shop with a bright glare behind
them. I walked into the shop and the heat was overpowering. I
found that the blocks of ice were on fire. The whole thing was
so real and yet so supernatural I woke up in a cold perspiration.
Lupin in a most contemptuous manner, said: “What utter rot.”
Before I could reply, Gowing said there was nothing so
completely uninteresting as other people’s dreams.
I appealed to Cummings, but he said he was bound to agree
with the others and my dream was especially nonsensical. I said:
“It seemed so real to me.” Gowing replied: “Yes, to you perhaps,
but not to us.” Whereupon they all roared.
Carrie, who had hitherto been quiet, said: “He tells me his
stupid dreams every morning nearly.” I replied: “Very well, dear,
I promise you I will never tell you or anybody else another
dream of mine the longest day I live.” Lupin said: “Hear! hear!”
and helped himself to another glass of beer. The subject was
fortunately changed, and Cummings read a most interesting arti-
cle on the superiority of the bicycle to the horse.
Chapter Twenty
Dinner at Franching’s to meet Mr. Hardfur Huttle.
May . Received a letter from Franching, of Peckham, asking us
to dine with him to-night, at seven o’clock, to meet Mr. Hardfur
Huttle, a very clever writer for the American papers. Franching
apologised for the short notice; but said he had at the last moment
Likely based on the editor and man-about-town Frank Harris (–): Harris’s
two most reliable biographers, Kingsmill () and Pullar (), assume so. Both
Weedon Grossmith’s illustration and Huttle’s opinions do represent Harris quite well.
The Grossmiths leave it unclear, seemingly deliberately, whether Huttle actually is an
American or just talks like one, and the same ambiguity hung around Harris. Since
Harris had been the editor of the Fortnightly Review, a journal of advanced opin-
ion. He was notorious for expressing outrageous views loudly and tactlessly in public.
He is most remembered for his erotic autobiography, My Life and Loves, published in
the s and ’s, which mentions George Grossmith.
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been disappointed of two of his guests and regarded us as old
friends who would not mind filling up the gap. Carrie rather
demurred at the invitation; but I explained to her that Franching
was very well off and influential, and we could not afford to offend
him. “And we are sure to get a good dinner and a good glass of
champagne.” “Which never agrees with you!” Carrie replied,
sharply. I regarded Carrie’s observation as unsaid. Mr. Franching
asked us to wire a reply. As he had said nothing about dress in the
letter, I wired back: “With pleasure. Is it full dress?” and by leav-
ing out our name, just got the message within the sixpence.
Got back early to give time to dress, which we received a
telegram instructing us to do. I wanted Carrie to meet me at
Franching’s house; but she would not do so, so I had to go home
to fetch her. What a long journey it is from Holloway to
Peckham! Why do people live such a long way off? Having to
change ’buses, I allowed plenty of time—in fact, too much; for we
arrived at twenty minutes to seven, and Franching, so the servant
said, had only just gone up to dress. However, he was down as the
clock struck seven; he must have dressed very quickly.
I must say it was quite a distinguished party, and although we
did not know anybody personally, they all seemed to be quite
swells. Franching had got a professional waiter, and evidently
spared no expense. There were flowers on the table round some
fairy-lamps, and the effect, I must say, was exquisite. The wine
was good and there was plenty of champagne, concerning which
Franching said he, himself, never wished to taste better. We were
ten in number, and a menû card to each. One lady said she always
preserved the menû and got the guests to write their names on
the back.
The fixed charge of sixpence to send up to twelve words was a government initia-
tive of to make the telegram service accessible to more people. It invited verbal
ingenuity.
The distance is about seven miles. Pooter is too complacent to wonder why it is he
who lives a long way from other people.
Small candle lights with coloured shades.
Pooter means there were ten guests, plus the host. It was customary at formal private
dinner-parties for a menu to be placed before each guest. Even though at least one
etiquette manual denounced it as “an affectation of refinement,” the menu would be
in French, another anxiety-maker for people like the Pooters.
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We all of us followed her example, except Mr. Huttle, who
was of course the important guest.
The dinner-party consisted of Mr. Franching, Mr. Hardfur
Huttle, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Hillbutter, Mrs. Field, Mr. and Mrs.
Purdick, Mr. Pratt, Mr. R. Kent, and, last but not least, Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Pooter. Franching said he was sorry he had no lady for me
to take in to dinner. I replied that I preferred it, which I afterwards
thought was a very uncomplimentary observation to make.
I sat next to Mrs. Field at dinner, she seemed a well-informed
lady, but was very deaf. It did not much matter, for Mr. Hardfur
Huttle did all the talking. He is a marvellously intellectual man and
says things which from other people would seem quite alarming.
How I wish I could remember even a quarter of his brilliant
conversation. I made a few little reminding notes on the menû card.
One observation struck me as being absolutely powerful—
though not to my way of thinking of course. Mrs. Purdick
happened to say: “You are certainly unorthodox, Mr. Huttle.” Mr.
Huttle, with a peculiar expression (I can see it now), said in a slow
rich voice: “Mrs. Purdick, ‘orthodox’ is a grandiloquent word
implying sticking-in-the-mud. If Columbus and Stephenson had
been orthodox, there would neither have been the discovery of
America nor the steam-engine.” There was quite a silence.
It appeared to me that such teaching was absolutely danger-
ous, and yet I felt—in fact we must all have felt—there was no
answer to the argument. A little later on, Mrs. Purdick, who is
Franching’s sister and also acted as hostess, rose from the table,
and Mr. Huttle said: “Why, ladies, do you deprive us of your
company so soon? Why not wait while we have our cigars?”
The effect was electrical. The ladies (including Carrie) were
in no way inclined to be deprived of Mr. Huttle’s fascinating
society, and immediately resumed their seats, amid much laugh-
ter and a little chaff. Mr. Huttle said: “Well, that’s a real good sign;
There were only four women, and a man never took his wife in to dinner.
Nothing better suggests Huttle’s thrilling unorthodoxy than this invitation, since one
of the firmest conventions was that the hostess led all the women off to the draw-
ing-room as soon as dessert was finished. Etiquette manuals differed on whether men
should smoke in the dining-room, but all forbade doing so there in women’s
company.
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you shall not be insulted by being called orthodox any longer.”
Mrs. Purdick, who seemed to be a bright and rather sharp
woman, said: “Mr. Huttle, we will meet you half-way—that is,
till you get half-way through your cigar. That, at all events, will
be the happy medium.”
I shall never forget the effect the words, “happy medium,” had
upon him. He was brilliant and most daring in his interpretation
of the words. He positively alarmed me. He said something like
the following: “Happy medium, indeed. Do you know ‘happy
medium’ are two words which mean ‘miserable mediocrity.’ I say,
go first class or third; marry a duchess or her kitchenmaid. The
happy medium means respectability, and respectability means
insipidness. Does it not, Mr. Pooter?”
I was so taken aback by being personally appealed to, that I
could only bow apologetically, and say I feared I was not compe-
tent to offer an opinion. Carrie was about to say something; but
she was interrupted, for which I was rather pleased, for she is not
clever at argument, and one has to be extra clever to discuss a
subject with a man like Mr. Huttle.
He continued, with an amazing eloquence that made his
unwelcome opinions positively convincing: “The happy
medium is nothing more or less than a vulgar half-measure. A
man who loves champagne and, finding a pint too little, fears to
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face a whole bottle and has recourse to an imperial pint, will
never build a Brooklyn Bridge or an Eiffel Tower. No, he is half-
hearted, he is a half-measure—respectable—in fact, a happy
medium, and will spend the rest of his days in a suburban villa
with a stucco-column portico, resembling a four-post bedstead.”
We all laughed.
“That sort of thing,” continued Mr. Huttle, “belongs to a soft
man, with a soft beard with a soft head, with a made tie that
hooks on.”
This seemed rather personal and twice I caught myself look-
ing in the glass of the cheffonière; for I had on a tie that hooked
on—and why not? If these remarks were not personal they were
rather careless, and so were some of his subsequent observations,
which must have made both Mr. Franching and his guests rather
uncomfortable. I don’t think Mr. Huttle meant to be personal,
for he added: “We don’t know that class here in this country: but
we do in America, and I’ve no use for them.”
Franching several times suggested that the wine should be
passed round the table, which Mr. Huttle did not heed; but
continued as if he were giving a lecture:
“What we want in America is your homes. We live on wheels.
Your simple, quiet life and home, Mr. Franching, are charming.
No display, no pretension! You make no difference in your
dinner, I dare say, when you sit down by yourself and when you
invite us. You have your own personal attendant—no hired
waiter to breathe on the back of your head.”
I saw Franching palpably wince at this.
Mr. Huttle continued: “Just a small dinner with a few good
things, such as you have this evening.You don’t insult your guests
by sending to the grocer for champagne at six shillings a bottle.”
I could not help thinking of “Jackson Frères” at three-and-six!
“In fact,” said Mr. Huttle, “a man is little less than a murderer
who does. That is the province of the milksop, who wastes his
evening at home playing dominoes with his wife. I’ve heard of
A “pint” of wine, also known as an “American” pint, was slightly less than an “impe-
rial” pint. Champagne was sold in bottles of various sizes larger than either.
A type of small sideboard, usually spelt “chiffonière.”
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these people. We don’t want them at this table. Our party is well
selected. We’ve no use for deaf old women, who cannot follow
intellectual conversation.”
All our eyes were turned to Mrs. Field, who fortunately, being
deaf, did not hear his remarks; but continued smiling approval.
“We have no representative at Mr. Franching’s table,” said Mr.
Huttle, “of the unenlightened frivolous matron, who goes to a
second class dance at Bayswater and fancies she is in Society.
Society does not know her; it has no use for her.”
Mr. Huttle paused for a moment, and the opportunity was
afforded for the ladies to rise. I asked Mr. Franching quietly to
excuse me, as I did not wish to miss the last train, which we very
nearly did, by-the-by, through Carrie having mislaid the little
cloth cricket-cap which she wears when we go out.
It was very late when Carrie and I got home; but on enter-
ing the sitting-room I said: “Carrie, what do you think of Mr.
Hardfur Huttle?” She simply answered: “How like Lupin!” The
same idea occurred to me in the train. The comparison kept me
awake half the night. Mr. Huttle was, of course, an older and
more influential man; but he was like Lupin, and it made me
think how dangerous Lupin would be if he were older and more
influential. I feel proud to think Lupin does resemble Mr. Huttle
in some ways. Lupin, like Mr. Huttle, has original and sometimes
wonderful ideas; but it is those ideas that are so dangerous. They
make men extremely rich or extremely poor. They make or
break men. I always feel people are happier who live a simple
unsophisticated life. I believe I am happy because I am not ambi-
tious. Somehow I feel that Lupin, since he has been with Mr.
Perkupp, has become content to settle down and follow the foot-
steps of his father. This is a comfort.
A round tight-fitting cap with a very broad and wide peak to shade the eyes. Women’s
bonnets ceased to be fashionable in the s and were replaced by a variety of hat
styles. However, one of the Diary’s reviewers picked out this detail, apparently to
imply it was both unfashionable and vulgar.
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Chapter Twenty One
Lupin is discharged.We are in great trouble. Lupin gets engaged
elsewhere at a handsome salary.
May . A terrible misfortune has happened: Lupin is discharged
from Mr. Perkupp’s office; and I scarcely know how I am writ-
ing my diary. I was away from office last Sat, the first time I have
been absent through illness for twenty years. I believe I was
poisoned by some lobster. Mr. Perkupp was also absent, as Fate
would have it; and our most valued customer, Mr. Crowbillon,
went to the office in a rage, and withdrew his custom. My boy
Lupin not only had the assurance to receive him, but recom-
mended him the firm of Gylterson, Sons, and Co. Limited. In
my own humble judgment, and though I have to say it against
my own son, this seems an act of treachery.
This morning I receive a letter from Perkupp, informing me
that Lupin’s services are no longer required, and an interview
with me is desired at eleven o’clock. I went down to the office
with an aching heart, dreading an interview with Mr. Perkupp,
with whom I have never had a word. I saw nothing of Lupin
in the morning. He had not got up when it was time for me
to leave, and Carrie said I should do no good by disturbing
him. My mind wandered so at the office that I could not do
my work properly.
As I expected, I was sent for by Mr. Perkupp, and the follow-
ing conversation ensued as nearly as I can remember it.
Mr. Perkupp said: “Good-morning, Mr. Pooter! This is a very
serious business. I am not referring so much to the dismissal of
your son, for I knew we should have to part sooner or later. I am
the head of this old, influential, and much-respected firm; and
when I consider the time has come to revolutionise the business,
I will do it myself.”
I could see my good master was somewhat affected, and I said:
“I hope, sir, you do not imagine that I have in any way counte-
nanced my son’s unwarrantable interference?” Mr. Perkupp rose
from his seat and took my hand, and said: “Mr. Pooter, I would
as soon suspect myself as suspect you.” I was so agitated that in
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the confusion, to show my gratitude, I very nearly called him a
“grand old man.”
Fortunately I checked myself in time, and said he was a “grand
old master.” I was so unaccountable for my actions that I sat
down, leaving him standing. Of course, I at once rose, but Mr.
Perkupp bade me sit down, which I was very pleased to do. Mr.
Perkupp, resuming, said: “You will understand, Mr. Pooter, that
the high-standing nature of our firm will not admit of our bend-
ing to anybody. If Mr. Crowbillon chooses to put his work into
other hands—I may add, less experienced hands—it is not for us
to bend and beg back his custom.” “You shall not do it, sir,” I said
with indignation. “Exactly,” replied Mr. Perkupp; “I shall not do
it. But I was thinking this, Mr. Pooter. Mr. Crowbillon is our
most valued client, and I will even confess—for I know this will
not go beyond ourselves—that we cannot afford very well to lose
him, especially in these times, which are not of the brightest.
Now, I fancy you can be of service.”
I replied: “Mr. Perkupp, I will work day and night to serve you!”
Mr. Perkupp said: “I know you will. Now, what I should like
you to do is this.You yourself might write to Mr. Crowbillon—
you must not, of course, lead him to suppose I know anything
about your doing so—and explain to him that your son was only
taken on as a clerk—quite an inexperienced one in fact—out of
the respect the firm had for you, Mr. Pooter. This is, of course, a
fact. I don’t suggest that you should speak in too strong terms of
your own son’s conduct; but I may add, that had he been a son
of mine, I should have condemned his interference with no
measured terms. That I leave to you. I think the result will be
that Mr. Crowbillon will see the force of the foolish step he has
taken, and our firm will neither suffer in dignity nor in pocket.”
I could not help thinking what a noble gentleman Mr.
Perkupp is. His manners and his way of speaking seem to almost
thrill one with respect.
I said: “Would you like to see the letter before I send it?”
“Grand Old Man” was the universally-known nickname of William Gladstone, who
became Prime Minister for the fourth and last time in . Mr Perkupp, presum-
ably a Conservative like Pooter, would hardly have relished a comparison with the
Liberal leader.
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Mr. Perkupp said: “Oh no! I had better not. I am supposed to
know nothing about it, and I have every confidence in you.You
must write the letter carefully. We are not very busy; you had
better take the morning to-morrow, or the whole day if you like.
I shall be here myself all day to-morrow, in fact all the week, in
case Mr. Crowbillon should call.”
I went home a little more cheerful, but I left word with Sarah
that I could not see either Gowing or Cummings, nor in fact
anybody, if they called in the evening. Lupin came into the
parlour for a moment with a new hat on, and asked my opinion
of it. I said I was not in the mood to judge of hats, and I did not
think he was in a position to buy a new one. Lupin replied care-
lessly: “I didn’t buy it; it was a present.”
I have such terrible suspicions of Lupin now that I scarcely
like to ask him questions, as I dread the answers so. He, however,
saved me the trouble.
He said: “I met a friend, an old friend, that I did not quite
think a friend at the time; but it’s all right. As he wisely said,
‘all is fair in love and war,’ and there was no reason why we
should not be friends still. He’s a jolly, good, all-round sort of
fellow, and a very different stamp from that inflated fool of a
Perkupp.”
I said: “Hush, Lupin! Do not pray add insult to injury.”
Lupin said: “What do you mean by injury? I repeat, I have
done no injury. Crowbillon is simply tired of a stagnant stick-in-
the-mud firm, and made the change on his own account. I simply
recommended the new firm as a matter of biz—good old biz!”
I said quietly: “I don’t understand your slang, and at my time
of life have no desire to learn it; so, Lupin, my boy, let us change
the subject. I will, if it please you, try and be interested in your
new hat adventure.”
Lupin said: “Oh! there’s nothing much about it, except I have
not once seen him since his marriage, and he said he was very
pleased to see me, and hoped we should be friends. I stood a
drink to cement the friendship, and he stood me a new hat—
one of his own.”
I said rather wearily: “But you have not told me your old
friend’s name?”
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Lupin said, with affected carelessness: “Oh didn’t I? Well, I
will. It was Murray Posh.”
May . Lupin came down late, and seeing me at home all the
morning, asked the reason of it. Carrie and I both agreed it was
better to say nothing to him about the letter I was writing, so I
evaded the question.
Lupin went out, saying he was going to lunch with Murray
Posh in the City. I said I hoped Mr. Posh would provide him
with a berth. Lupin went out laughing, saying: “I don’t mind
wearing Posh’s one-priced hats, but I am not going to sell them.”
Poor boy, I fear he is perfectly hopeless.
It took me nearly the whole day to write to Mr. Crowbillon.
Once or twice I asked Carrie for suggestions; and although it
seems ungrateful, her suggestions were none of them to the point,
while one or two were absolutely idiotic. Of course I did not tell
her so. I got the letter off, and took it down to the office for Mr.
Perkupp to see, but he again repeated that he could trust me.
Gowing called in the evening, and I was obliged to tell him
about Lupin and Mr. Perkupp; and, to my surprise, he was quite
inclined to side with Lupin. Carrie joined in, and said she
thought I was taking much too melancholy a view of it. Gowing
produced a pint sample-bottle of Madeira, which had been given
him, which he said would get rid of the blues. I dare say it would
have done so if there had been more of it; but as Gowing helped
himself to three glasses, it did not leave much for Carrie and me
to get rid of the blues with.
May . A day of great anxiety, for I expected every moment
a letter from Mr. Crowbillon. Two letters came in the evening—
one for me, with “Crowbillon Hall” printed in large gold-and-
red letters on the back of the envelope; the other for Lupin,
which I felt inclined to open and read, as it had “Gylterson, Sons,
and Co. Limited,” which was the recommended firm. I trem-
bled as I opened Mr. Crowbillon’s letter. I wrote him sixteen
pages, closely written; he wrote me less than sixteen lines.
His letter was: “Sir,—I totally disagree with you.Your son, in
“Gylterson” puns on “gilts,” a type of government bond, therefore suggesting a stable
and secure business.
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the course of five minutes’ conversation, displayed more intelli-
gence than your firm has done during the last five years.—Yours
faithfully, Gilbert E. Gillam O. Crowbillon.”
What am I to do? Here is a letter that I dare not show to Mr.
Perkupp, and would not show to Lupin for anything. The crisis
had yet to come; for Lupin arrived, and, opening his letter,
showed a cheque for £ as a commission for the recommen-
dation of Mr. Crowbillon, whose custom to Mr. Perkupp is
evidently lost for ever. Cummings and Gowing both called, and
both took Lupin’s part. Cummings went so far as to say that
Lupin would make a name yet. I suppose I was melancholy, for
I could only ask: “Yes, but what sort of a name?”
May . I told Mr. Perkupp the contents of the letter in a
modified form, but Mr. Perkupp said: “Pray don’t discuss the
matter; it is at an end.Your son will bring his punishment upon
himself.” I went home in the evening, thinking of the hopeless
future of Lupin. I found him in most extravagant spirits and in
evening dress. He threw a letter on the table for me to read.
To my amazement, I read that Gylterson and Sons had
absolutely engaged Lupin at a salary of £ a year, with other
advantages. I read the letter through three times and thought it
must have been for me. But there it was—Lupin Pooter—plain
enough. I was silent. Lupin said: “What price Perkupp now? You
take my tip, Guv.—‘off ’ with Perkupp and freeze on to Gylterson,
the firm of the future! Perkupp’s firm? The stagnant dummies have
been standing still for years, and now are moving back. I want to
go on. In fact I must go off, as I am dining with the Murray Poshs’
to-night.”
In the exuberance of his spirits he hit his hat with his stick,
gave a loud war “Whoo-oop,” jumped over a chair, and took the
liberty of rumpling my hair all over my forehead, and bounced
out of the room, giving me no chance of reminding him of his
age and the respect which was due to his parent. Gowing and
Cummings came in the evening, and positively cheered me up
with congratulations respecting Lupin.
Originally American and Australian slang for “attach oneself to,” used in Britain from
the early s.
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Gowing said: “I always said he would get on, and, take my
word, he has more in his head than we three put together.”
Carrie said: “He is a second Hardfur Huttle.”
Chapter Twenty Two
Master Percy Edgar Smith James. Mrs. James (of Sutton) visits us
again and introduces “Spiritual Séances.”
May , Sunday. We went to Sutton after dinner to have meat-
tea with Mr. and Mrs. James. I had no appetite, having dined well
at two, and the entire evening was spoiled by little Percy—their
only son—who seems to me to be an utterly spoiled child.
Two or three times he came up to
me and deliberately kicked my shins.
He hurt me once so much that the
tears came into my eyes. I gently
remonstrated with him, and Mrs. James
said: “Please don’t scold him; I do not
believe in being too severe with young
children.You spoil their character.”
Little Percy set up a deafening yell
here, and when Carrie tried to pacify
him, he slapped her face.
I was so annoyed, I said: “That is
not my idea of bringing up children,
Mrs. James.”
Mrs. James said. “People have differ-
ent ideas of bringing up children—
even your son Lupin is not the standard of perfection.”
A Mr. Mezzini (an Italian, I fancy) here took Percy in his lap.
The child wriggled and kicked and broke away from Mr.
Mezzini, saying: “I don’t like you—you’ve got a dirty face.”
A very nice gentleman, Mr. Birks Spooner, took the child by
the wrist and said: “Come here, dear, and listen to this.”
He detached his chronometer from the chain and made his
watch strike six.
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To our horror, the child snatched it from his hand and
bounced it down upon the ground like one would a ball.
Mr. Birks Spooner was most amiable, and said he could easily
get a new glass put in, and did not suppose the works were
damaged.
To show you how people’s opinions differ, Carrie said the
child was bad-tempered, but it made up for that defect by its
looks, for it was—in her mind—an unquestionably beautiful
child.
I may be wrong, but I do not think I have seen a much uglier
child myself. That is my opinion.
May . I don’t know why it is, but I never anticipate with
any pleasure the visits to our house of Mrs. James, of Sutton. She
is coming again to stay for a few days. I said to Carrie this morn-
ing, as I was leaving: “I wish, dear Carrie, I could like Mrs. James
better than I do.”
Carrie said: “So do I, dear; but as for years I have had to put
up with Mr. Gowing, who is vulgar, and Mr. Cummings, who is
kind but most uninteresting, I am sure, dear, you won’t mind the
occasional visits of Mrs. James, who has more intellect in her little
finger than both your friends have in their entire bodies.”
I was so entirely taken back by this onslaught on my two dear
old friends, I could say nothing, and as I heard the ’bus coming,
I left with a hurried kiss—a little too hurried, perhaps, for my
upper lip came in contact with Carrie’s teeth and slightly cut it.
It was quite painful for an hour afterwards. When I came home
in the evening I found Carrie buried in a book on Spiritualism,
called There is No Birth, by Florence Singleyet. I need scarcely
say the book was sent her to read by Mrs. James, of Sutton. As
she had not a word to say outside her book, I spent the rest of
the evening altering the stair-carpets, which are beginning to
show signs of wear at the edges.
Mrs. James arrived and, as usual, in the evening took the entire
management of everything. Finding that she and Carrie were
Pun on the name of Florence Marryat (–): an inappropriate pun too, for she
married at sixteen and bore eight children to her first husband. She had toured with
George Grossmith in – and toured again in Patience in . For her spiritu-
alism, see Introduction.
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making some preparations for table-turning, I thought it time
really to put my foot down. I have always had the greatest
contempt for such nonsense, and put an end to it years ago when
Carrie, at our old house, used to have séances every night with
poor Mrs. Fussters (who is now dead). If I could see any use in
it, I would not care. As I stopped it in the days gone by, I deter-
mined to do so now.
I said: “I am very sorry Mrs. James, but I totally disapprove of
it, apart from the fact that I receive my old friends on this
evening.”
Mrs. James said: “Do you mean to say you haven’t read There
is No Birth?” I said: “No, and I have no intention of doing so.”
Mrs. James seemed surprised and said: “All the world is going
mad over the book.” I responded rather cleverly: “Let it. There
will be one sane man in it, at all events.”
Mrs. James said she thought I was very unkind, and if people
were all as prejudiced as I was, there would never have been the
electric telegraph or the telephone.
I said that was quite a different thing.
Mrs. James said sharply: “In what way, pray—in what way?”
I said: “In many ways.”
Mrs. James said: “Well, mention one way.”
I replied quietly: “Pardon me, Mrs. James; I decline to discuss
the matter. I am not interested in it.”
Sarah at this moment opened the door and showed in
Cummings, for which I was thankful, for I felt it would put a stop
to this foolish table-turning. But I was entirely mistaken; for, on
the subject being opened again, Cummings said he was most
interested in Spiritualism, although he was bound to confess he
did not believe much in it; still, he was willing to be convinced.
I firmly declined to take any part in it, with the result that my
presence was ignored. I left the three sitting in the parlour at a
One method,of contacting spirits, dating from the s. Participants sat around a
table touching it lightly, and it might move, levitate or bump out messages accord-
ing to a simple code. The other method, first used in America from , required a
planchette or a ouija board.
Marryat’s There Is No Death was one of the best-sellers of ,and its fantastic stories about
events at séances were taken seriously by many. See Introduction and Appendix E.
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small round table which they had taken out of the drawing-room.
I walked into the hall with the ultimate intention of taking a little
stroll. As I opened the door, who should come in but Gowing!
On hearing what was going on, he proposed that we should
join the circle and he would go into a trance. He added that he
knew a few things about old Cummings, and would invent a few
about Mrs. James. Knowing how dangerous Gowing is, I declined
to let him take part in any such foolish performance. Sarah asked
me if she could go out for half an hour, and I gave her permis-
sion, thinking it would be more comfortable to sit with Gowing
in the kitchen than in the cold drawing-room. We talked a good
deal about Lupin and Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh, with whom he
is as usual spending the evening. Gowing said: “I say, it wouldn’t
be a bad thing for Lupin if old Posh kicked the bucket.”
My heart gave a leap of horror, and I rebuked Gowing very
sternly for joking on such a subject. I lay awake half the night
thinking of it—the other half was spent in nightmares on the
same subject.
May . I wrote a stern letter to the laundress. I was rather
pleased with the letter, for I thought it very satirical. I said: “You
have returned the handkerchiefs without the colour. Perhaps you
will return either the colour or the value of the handkerchiefs.”
I shall be rather curious to know what she will have to say.
More table-turning in the evening. Carrie said last night was
in a measure successful, and they ought to sit again. Cummings
came in, and seemed interested. I had the gas lighted in the draw-
ing-room, got the steps, and repaired the cornice, which has been
a bit of an eyesore to me. In a fit of unthinkingness—if I may use
such an expression,—I gave the floor over the parlour, where the
séance was taking place, two loud raps with the hammer. I felt
sorry afterwards, for it was the sort of ridiculous, foolhardy thing
that Gowing or Lupin would have done.
However, they never even referred to it, but Carrie declared
that a message came through the table to her of a wonderful
Weedon Grossmith recorded in his memoirs From Studio to Stage () how, during
a séance at his home at the Old House, Canonbury, a friend, hidden in a small room
beforehand, hit the walls with a brick to liven up the proceedings, and eventually
appeared to the sitters dressed in a sheet (–).
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description, concerning someone whom she and I knew years
ago, and who was quite unknown to the others.
When we went to bed, Carrie asked me as a favour to sit to-
morrow night, to oblige her. She said it seemed rather unkind
and unsociable on my part. I promised I would sit once.
June . I sat reluctantly at the table in the evening, and I am
bound to admit some curious things happened. I contend they
were coincidences, but they were curious. For instance, the table
kept tilting towards me, which Carrie construed as a desire that
I should ask the spirit a question. I obeyed the rules, and I asked
the spirit (who said her name was Lina) if she could tell me the
name of an old aunt of whom I was thinking, and whom we used
to call Aunt Maggie. The table spelled out C A T. We could make
nothing out of it, till I suddenly remembered that her second
name was Catherine, which it was evidently trying to spell. I
don’t think even Carrie knew this. But if she did, she would never
cheat. I must admit it was curious. Several other things happened,
and I consented to sit at another séance on Monday.
June . The laundress called, and said she was very sorry about
the handkerchiefs, and returned ninepence. I said, as the colour
was completely washed out and the handkerchiefs quite spoiled,
ninepence was not enough. Carrie replied that the two hand-
kerchiefs originally only cost sixpence, for she remembered bring
them at a sale at the Holloway Bon Marché. In that case, I insisted
that threepence should be returned to the laundress. Lupin has
gone to stay with the Poshs’ for a few days. I must say I feel very
uncomfortable about it. Carrie said I was ridiculous to worry
about it. Mr. Posh was very fond of Lupin, who, after all, was only
a mere boy.
In the evening we had another séance, which, in some
respects, was very remarkable, although the first part of it was a
An example of how the participants in a séance force nonsensical or ambiguous
communications to make some sort of sense.
This proves that the authors kept to the / calendar for the new book material.
Although it does not say so, the day of this entry was a Saturday in , so no séance
could be held on the following day.
The original Bon Marché was a famous Parisian store built in . The name was
taken over by the first purpose-built department store in London, at Brixton, but
other shops used the name as well.
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little doubtful. Gowing called as well as Cummings, and begged
to be allowed to join the circle. I wanted to object, but Mrs.
James, who appears a good Medium (that is, if there is anything
in it at all), thought there might be a little more spirit power if
Gowing joined; so the five of us sat down.
The moment I turned out the gas, and almost before I could
get my hands on the table, it rocked violently and tilted, and
began moving quickly across the room. Gowing shouted out:
“Way oh! steady, lad, steady!” I told Gowing if he could not
behave himself I should light the gas, and put an end to the
séance. To tell the truth, I thought Gowing was playing tricks,
and I hinted as much; but Mrs. James said she had often seen the
table go right off the ground. The spirit Lina came again, and
said, “WARN” three or four times, and declined to explain. Mrs.
James said Lina was stubborn sometimes. She often behaved like
that, and the best thing to do was to send her away.
She then hit the table sharply, and said: “Go away, Lina; you
are disagreeable. Go away!” I should think we sat nearly three-
quarters of an hour with nothing happening. My hands felt quite
cold, and I suggested we should stop the séance. Carrie and Mrs.
James, as well as Cummings, would not agree to it. In about ten
minutes’ time there was some tilting towards me. I gave the
alphabet, and it spelled out S P O O F. As I have heard both
Gowing and Lupin use the word, and as I could hear Gowing
silently laughing, I directly accused him of pushing the table. He
denied it; but, I regret to say, I did not believe him.
Gowing said: “Perhaps it means ‘Spook,’ a ghost.”
I said: “You know it doesn’t mean anything of the sort.”
Gowing said: “Oh! very well—I’m sorry I ‘spook,’” and he
rose from the table.
No one took any notice of the stupid joke, and Mrs. James
suggested he should sit out for a while. Gowing consented and
sat in the arm-chair.
The table began to move again, and we might have had a
wonderful séance but for Gowing’s stupid interruptions. In
answer to the alphabet from Carrie the table spelt “NIPUL,”
then the “WARN” three times. We could not think what it meant
till Cummings pointed out that “NIPUL” was Lupin spelled
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backwards. This was quite exciting. Carrie was particularly
excited, and said she hoped nothing horrible was going to happen.
Mrs. James asked if Lina was the spirit. The table replied
firmly: “No,” and the spirit would not give his or her name. We
then had the message, “NIPUL will be very rich.”
Carrie said she felt quite relieved, but the word “WARN” was
again spelt out. The table then began to oscillate violently, and
in reply to Mrs. James, who spoke very softly to the table, the
spirit began to spell its name. It first spelled “DRINK.”
Gowing here said: “Ah! that’s more in my line.”
I asked him to be quiet as the name might not be completed.
The table then spelt “WATER.”
Gowing here interrupted again, and said: “Ah! that’s not in my
line. Outside if you like, but not inside.”
Carrie appealed to him to be quiet.
The table then spelt “CAPTAIN,” and Mrs. James startled us
by crying out: “Captain Drinkwater, a very old friend of my
father’s, who has been dead some years.”
This was more interesting, and I could not help thinking that
after all there must be something in Spiritualism.
Mrs. James asked the spirit to interpret the meaning of the
word “Warn” as applied to “NIPUL.” The alphabet was given
again, and we got the word “BOSH.”
Gowing here muttered: “So it is.”
Mrs. James said she did not think the spirit meant that, as
Captain Drinkwater was a perfect gentleman, and would never
have used the word in answer to a lady’s question. Accordingly
the alphabet was given again.
This time the table spelled distinctly “POSH.” We all thought
of Mrs. Murray Posh and Lupin. Carrie was getting a little
distressed, and as it was getting late we broke up the circle.
We arranged to have one more to-morrow, as it will be Mrs.
James’ last night in town. We also determined not to have
Gowing present.
Cummings, before leaving, said it was certainly interesting, but
he wished the spirits would say something about him.
June . Quite looking forward to the séance this evening. Was
thinking of it all the day at the office.
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Just as we sat down at the table we were annoyed by Gowing
entering without knocking.
He said: “I am not going to stop, but I have brought with me
a sealed envelope, which I know I can trust with Mrs. Pooter. In
that sealed envelope is a strip of paper on which I have asked a
simple question. If the spirits can answer that question, I will
believe in Spiritualism.”
I ventured the expression that it might be impossible.
Mrs. James said: “Oh no! it is of common occurrence for the
spirits to answer questions under such conditions—and even for
them to write on locked slates. It is quite worth trying. If Lina
is in a good temper, she is certain to do it.”
Gowing said: “All right; then I shall be a firm believer. I shall
perhaps drop in about half-past nine or ten, and hear the result.”
He then left and we sat a long time. Cummings wanted to
know something about some undertaking in which he was
concerned, but he could get no answer of any description what-
ever—at which he said he was very disappointed and was afraid
there was not much in table-turning after all. I thought this
rather selfish of him. The séance was very similar to the one last
night, almost the same in fact. So we turned to the letter. Lina
took a long time answering the question, but eventually spelt out
“ROSES, LILIES, AND COWS.” There was a great rocking of
the table at this time, and Mrs. James said: “If that is Captain
Drinkwater, let us ask him the answer as well?”
It was the spirit of the Captain, and, most singular, he gave the
same identical answer: “ROSES, LILIES, AND COWS.”
I cannot describe the agitation with which Carrie broke the
seal, or the disappointment we felt on reading the question, to
which the answer was so inappropriate. The question was,
“What’s old Pooter’s age?”
This quite decided me.
As I had put my foot down on Spiritualism years ago, so I
would again.
I am pretty easy-going as a rule, but I can be extremely firm
when driven to it.
I said slowly, as I turned up the gas: “This is the last of this
nonsense that shall ever take place under my roof. I regret I
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permitted myself to be a party to such tomfoolery. If there is
anything in it—which I doubt—it is nothing of any good, and
I won’t have it again. That is enough.”
Mrs. James said: “I think, Mr. Pooter, you are rather over-step-
ping—”
I said: “Hush, madam. I am master of this house—please
understand that.”
Mrs. James made an observation which I sincerely hope I was
mistaken in. I was in such a rage I could not quite catch what
she said. But if I thought she said what it sounded like, she should
never enter the house again.
Chapter Twenty Three
Lupin leaves us.We dine at his new apartments, and hear some
extraordinary information respecting the wealth of Mr. Murray
Posh. Meet Miss Lilian Posh.Am sent for by Mr. Hardfur Huttle.
Important.
July . I find, on looking over my diary, nothing of any conse-
quence has taken place during the last month. To-day we lose
Lupin, who has taken furnished apartments at Bayswater, near
his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh, at two guineas a week.
I think this is most extravagant of him, as it is half his salary.
Lupin says one never loses by a good address, and, to use his own
expression, Brickfield Terrace is a bit “off.” Whether he means
it is “far off ” I do not know. I have long since given up trying
to understand his curious expressions. I said the neighbourhood
That is, a rent of over £ a year, a recklessly large amount for a man with Lupin’s
income. Bayswater was then a West End area of new and lavish, if rather florid, terrace
houses surrounding communal gardens, which could never be called “suburban.”
Lupin’s annual salary is therefore about £, an excellent salary for such a young
bachelor with no particular qualifications. It would leave him more than £ a week
to live on, after his large rent. Many entire families sustained life on half that, and paid
rent out of it as well.
“Off ” in the sense of (socially) unacceptable seems to have become a common collo-
quial expression around the time of the First World War. Lupin, as usual, is ahead of
the pack.
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had always been good enough for his parents. His reply was: “It
is no question of being good or bad. There is no money in it,
and I am not going to rot away my life in the suburbs.”
We are sorry to lose him, but perhaps he will get on better by
himself, and there may be some truth in his remark that an old
and a young horse can’t pull together in the same cart.
Gowing called, and said that the house seemed quite peace-
ful, and like old times. He liked Master Lupin very well, but he
occasionally suffered from what he could not help—youth.
July . Cummings called, looked very pale, and said he had
been very ill again, and of course not a single friend had been
near him. Carrie said she had never heard of it, whereupon he
threw down a copy of the Bicycle News on the table, with the
following paragraph: “We regret to hear that that favourite old
roadster, Mr. Cummings (‘Long’ Cummings), has met with what
might have been a serious accident in Rye Lane. A mischievous
boy threw a stick between the spokes of one of the back wheels,
and the machine overturned, bringing our brother tricyclist
heavily to the ground. Fortunately he was more frightened than
hurt, but we missed his merry face at the dinner at Chingford,
where they turned up in good numbers. ‘Long’ Cummings’
health was proposed by our popular Vice, Mr. Westropp, the
prince of bicyclists, who in his happiest vein said it was a case of
‘Cumming(s) thro’ the Rye, but fortunately there was more wheel
than woe,’ a joke which created roars of laughter.”
We all said we were very sorry, and pressed Cummings to stay
to supper. Cummings said it was like old times being without
Lupin, and he was much better away.
July , Sunday. In the afternoon, as I was looking out of the
parlour window, which was open, a grand trap, driven by a lady,
with a gentleman seated by the side of her, stopped at our door.
Not wishing to be seen, I withdrew my head very quickly, knock-
The song Comin’Through the Rye was in the repertoire of Yvette Guilbert (–)
and Jenny Lind (–), among others. The words are from a poem of the same
name by Robert Burns. The second pun is on the phrase “weal and woe,” which
occurs in another poem by Burns, “O’er the Water to Charlie.”
All the ascertainable days of the entries are correctly given except this one:
July was a Wednesday. Waterhouse () mentions it as a “solitary lapse.”
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ing the back of it violently against the sharp edge of the window-
sash. I was nearly stunned. There was a loud double-knock at the
front door; Carrie rushed out of the parlour, upstairs to her room,
and I followed, as Carrie thought it was Mr. Perkupp. I thought it
was Mr. Franching. I whispered to Sarah over the banisters: “Show
them into the drawing-room.” Sarah said, as the shutters were not
opened, the room would smell musty. There was another loud rat-
tat. I whispered: “Then show them into the parlour, and say Mr.
Pooter will be down directly.” I changed my coat, but could not
see to do my hair, as Carrie was occupying the glass.
Sarah came up, and said it was Mrs. Murray Posh and Mr.
Lupin.
This was quite a relief. I went down with Carrie, and Lupin
met me with the remark: “I say, what did you run away from the
window for? Did we frighten you?”
I foolishly said: “What window?”
Lupin said: “Oh, you know. Shut it.You looked as if you were
playing at Punch and Judy.”
On Carrie asking if she could offer them anything, Lupin said:
“Oh, I think Daisy will take on a cup of tea. I can do with a B.
and S.”
I said: “I am afraid we have no soda.”
Lupin said: “Don’t bother about that.You just trip out and
hold the horse; I don’t think Sarah understands it.”
They stayed a very short time, and as they were leaving, Lupin
said: “I want you both to come and dine with me next Wednesday,
and see my new place. Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh, Miss Posh
(Murray’s sister) are coming. Eight o’clock sharp. No one else.”
I said we did not pretend to be fashionable people, and would
like the dinner earlier, as it made it so late before we got home.
Lupin said: “Rats! You must get used to it. If it comes to that,
Daisy and I can drive you home.”
A mobile puppet show for children, featuring much quarrelling and comic violence,
generally given on a small stage that looks like a window at the top of a tall box
concealing the puppeteer.
Lupin jokingly orders his father out to hold the horse’s head, normally the duty of
a servant.
This usage, meaning “nonsense,” dates from and like much of Lupin’s slang was
American in origin (OED).
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We promised to go; but I must say in my simple mind the
familiar way in which Mrs. Posh and Lupin address each other
is reprehensible. Anybody would think they had been children
together. I certainly should object to a six months’ acquaintance
calling my wife “Carrie,” and driving out with her.
July . Lupin’s rooms looked very nice; but the dinner was, I
thought, a little too grand, especially as he commenced with
champagne straight off. I also think Lupin might have told us
that he and Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh and Miss Posh were going
to put on full evening dress. Knowing that the dinner was only
for us six, we never dreamed it would be a full dress affair. I had
no appetite. It was quite twenty minutes past eight before we sat
down to dinner. At six I could have eaten a hearty meal. I had a
bit of bread-and-butter at that hour, feeling famished, and I
expect that partly spoiled my appetite.
We were introduced to Miss Posh, whom Lupin called “Lillie
Girl,” as if he had known her all his life. She was very tall, rather
plain, and I thought she was a little painted round the eyes. I hope
I am wrong; but she had such fair hair, and yet her eyebrows were
black. She looked about thirty. I did not like the way she kept
giggling and giving Lupin smacks and pinching him. Then her
laugh was a sort of a scream that went right through my ears, all
the more irritating because there was nothing to laugh at. In fact,
Carrie and I were not at all prepossessed with her. They all
smoked cigarettes after dinner, including Miss Posh, who startled
Carrie by saying: “Don’t you smoke, dear?” I answered for
Carrie, and said: “Mrs. Charles Pooter has not arrived at it yet,”
whereupon Miss Posh gave one of her piercing laughs again.
Mrs. Posh sang a dozen songs at least, and I can only repeat
what I have said before—she does not sing in tune; but Lupin sat
by the side of the piano, gazing into her eyes the whole time. If
I had been Mr. Posh, I think I should have had something to say
about it. Mr. Posh made himself very agreeable to us, and even-
tually sent us home in his carriage, which I thought most kind.
Machine-rolled cigarettes became available in the s and enormously increased
the market for them. Women smoking cigarettes in public would still have been
“fast” behaviour in Pooter’s class, although novels were starting to portray respectable
women smoking privately.
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He is evidently very rich, for
Mrs. Posh had on some beauti-
ful jewellery. She told Carrie
her necklace, which her
husband gave her as a birthday
present, alone cost £.
Mr. Posh said he had a great
belief in Lupin, and thought he
would make rapid way in the
world.
I could not help thinking of
the £ Mr. Posh lost over the
Parachikka Chlorates through
Lupin’s advice.
During the evening I had an opportunity to speak to Lupin, and
expressed a hope that Mr. Posh was not living beyond his means.
Lupin sneered, and said Mr. Posh was worth thousands.
“Posh’s one-price hat” was a household word in Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool, and all the big towns throughout
England. Lupin further informed me that Mr. Posh was opening
branch establishments at New York, Sydney, and Melbourne, and
was negotiating for Kimberley and Johannesburg.
I said I was pleased to hear it.
Lupin said: “Why, he has settled over £, on Daisy, and
the same amount on ‘Lillie Girl.’ If at any time I wanted a little
capital, he would put up a couple of ‘thou’ at a day’s notice, and
could buy up Perkupp’s firm over his head at any moment with
ready cash.”
On the way home in the carriage, for the first time in my life,
I was inclined to indulge in the radical thought that money was
not properly divided.
On arriving home at a quarter-past eleven, we found a
hansom cab, which had been waiting for me for two hours with
a letter. Sarah said she did not know what to do, as we had not
If this is taken literally as a marriage settlement, it gives Lillie Girl expectations in
present terms of well over half a million pounds, making her a very attractive catch
for Lupin.
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left the address where we had gone. I trembled as I opened the
letter, fearing it was some bad news about Mr. Perkupp. The note
was: “Dear Mr. Pooter,—Come down to the Victoria Hotel
without delay. Important.Yours truly, Hardfur Huttle.”
I asked the cabman if it was too late. The cabman replied that
it was not; for his instructions were, if I happened to be out, he
was to wait till I came home. I felt very tired, and really wanted
to go to bed. I reached the hotel at a quarter before midnight. I
apologised for being so late, but Mr. Huttle said: “Not at all; come
and have a few oysters.” I feel my heart beating as I write these
words. To be brief, Mr. Huttle said he had a rich American friend
who wanted to do something large in our line of business, and
that Mr. Franching had mentioned my name to him. We talked
over the matter. If, by any happy chance, the result be successful,
I can more than compensate my dear master for the loss of Mr.
Crowbillon’s custom. Mr. Huttle had previously said: “The glori-
ous ‘Fourth’ is a lucky day for America, and, as it has not yet struck
twelve, we will celebrate it with a glass of the best wine to be had
in the place, and drink good luck to our bit of business.”
I fervently hope it will bring good luck to us all.
It was two o’clock when I got home. Although I was so tired,
I could not sleep except for short intervals—then only to dream.
I kept dreaming of Mr. Perkupp and Mr. Huttle. The latter
was in a lovely palace with a crown on. Mr. Perkupp was wait-
ing in the room. Mr. Huttle kept taking off this crown and hand-
ing it to me, and calling me “President.”
He appeared to take no notice of Mr. Perkupp, and I kept
asking Mr. Huttle to give the crown to my worthy master. Mr.
Huttle kept saying: “No, this is the White House of Washington,
and you must keep your crown, Mr. President.”
We all laughed long and very loudly, till I got parched, and
then I woke up. I fell asleep, only to dream the same thing over
and over again.
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Chapter the Last
One of the happiest days of my life.
July .The excitement and anxiety through which I have gone the
last few days have been almost enough to turn my hair grey. It is all
but settled. To-morrow the die will be cast. I have written a long
letter to Lupin—feeling it my duty to do so,—regarding his atten-
tion to Mrs. Posh, for they drove up to our house again last night.
July . I find my eyes filling with tears as I pen the note of
my interview this morning with Mr. Perkupp. Addressing me,
he said: “My faithful servant, I will not dwell on the important
service you have done our firm.You can never be sufficiently
thanked. Let us change the subject. Do you like your house, and
are you happy where you are?”
I replied: “Yes, sir; I love my house and I love the neighbour-
hood, and could not bear to leave it.”
Mr. Perkupp, to my surprise, said: “Mr. Pooter, I will purchase
the freehold of that house, and present it to the most honest and
most worthy man it has ever been my lot to meet.”
He shook my hand, and said he hoped my wife and I would
be spared many years to enjoy it. My heart was too full to thank
him; and, seeing my embarrassment, the good fellow said: “You
need say nothing, Mr. Pooter,” and left the office.
I sent telegrams to Carrie, Gowing, and Cummings (a thing
I have never done before), and asked the two latter to come
round to supper.
On arriving home I found Carrie crying with joy, and I sent
Sarah round to the grocer’s to get two bottles of “Jackson Frères.”
My two dear friends came in the evening, and the last post
brought a letter from Lupin in reply to mine. I read it aloud to
them all. It ran: “My dear old Guv.,—Keep your hair on.You are
on the wrong tack again. I am engaged to be married to ‘Lillie
Girl.’ I did not mention it last Thursday, as it was not definitely
settled. We shall be married in August, and amongst our guests
we hope to see your old friends Gowing and Cummings. With
much love to all, from The same old Lupin.”
THE END
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Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews
. From Baron de B.W. & Co. “Our Booking Office,”
Punch, ( June ):
And, by the way, à propos of Weedon, the Baron has to congratulate
the Brothers Grossmith on their Diary of a Nobody, republished from
Mr. Punch’s pages, but with considerable additions. The Diary is very
funny, not a page of it but affords matter for a good laugh; and yet
the story is not without a touch of pathos, as it is impossible not to
pity the steady, prim, old-fashioned, jog-trot Nobody, whose son,
but just one remove above a regular ’Arry, treats him with such
unfilial rudeness.
. From The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and
Art, ( June ):
This study of lower middle-class life is admirable, and in some of its
touches it goes near to genius. It is the diary, extending over about
a year and a half, of a highly respectable clerk in the City, one Mr
Charles Pooter, who seems to be verging on fifty years of age,
although he still preserves a considerable vivacity of spirits. He has
a wife, Carrie, the devoted partner of his joys and sorrows, and a
son, William Lupin Pooter, commonly known as Willie. Mr and
Mrs Pooter have recently come into possession of a new house, The
Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, from which Mr Pooter goes
up every morning to the establishment of Mr Perkupp in the City,
where there are many other clerks, but where, as time goes on, the
reader observes the diarist to be more and more highly respected.
Mr Pooter’s great ambition is to get Willie, who is now twenty years
of age, appointed to a clerkship at Perkupp & Co.’s; but we gather
that Willie has been something of a trial, and that his father has been
very fortunate in getting a place for him in a bank at Oldham. The
incidents recorded in the Diary are not merely exceedingly natural
in themselves, but they are precisely those which such a person as
Mr Pooter might be expected to think worth recording. In that part
A stereotypical youth notable for his vulgarity and coarseness, invented by E.J.
Milliken in his ’Arry Ballads ().
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of Holloway in which The Laurels is situated two or three friends
of the Pooters have already settled, and this seems to have decided
the latter in choosing a residence. Accordingly a sort of small soci-
ety immediately forms itself around them. We are made to feel that
the Pooters, with all their poverty and ineptitude, are essentially
hospitable, and the little visits of their friends, and Carrie’s ingen-
ious artifices for entertaining them, occupy a great deal of Mr
Pooter’s thoughts, and therefore of his Diary. He launches out
further and further, and at last they have a party, with a paid waiter
and several guests in evening dress, to which they even go to the
length of inviting Mr Perkupp. This, however, is going too far, and
ambition o’erleaps itself.
In process of time they are surprised by the advent of Willie, who
announces that he has dropped his first name, and must be hence-
forth addressed as “Lupin.” The indignation of Mr Pooter, and his
struggles to prevent the innovation, are pathetically useless. But worse
is behind. When the Bank Holiday is over, and it is time to catch the
train for Oldham, Lupin mentions that he has “resigned” his place in
the bank, and, under pressure, that “if you want the good old truth,
he’s got the chuck.” This dreadful news, and the presence of the ardent
Lupin at home, are endured with great philosophy; but Lupin now
becomes an integral part of the story. Like onion’s atom in Sydney
Smith’s salad, he animates the whole. He is a perfect specimen of the
ordinary sensual clerklet. But we think that Messrs Grossmith treat
this very unpleasant outcome of our “so-called nineteenth century”
with uncommon skill. Lupin is brutal, but he stops short of absolutely
disgusting us; he is vapid and ignorant, but he has a certain smartness
and adventurous humour which force us to follow his history with
attention. At the end of the story no harm has been done by him,
and comes off well enough, yet not exasperatingly well.
Such is the story of The Diary of a Nobody, reduced to its simplest
elements; but the charm and the skill of it reside in little touches
which it must be left to the reader to discover for himself. When
Mr Pooter tells the company of the dreadful dream he has had—
that he saw some huge blocks of ice in a shop, with a bright glare
behind them, and found that the blocks of ice were on fire—the
Quoted from Macbeth: “Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/And falls on the
other.”
Quoted from the poem “Receipt for a Salad” by the wit Sydney Smith (–):
“Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,/And, scarce-suspected, animate the whole.”
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reader rises up and calls the unfilial Lupin blessed for remarking,
“What utter rot!” After the Franchings’ party, the Pooters very
nearly miss the train, “through Carrie having mislaid the little cloth
cricket-cap which she wears when we go out.” When they have the fear-
ful blow of Lupin’s losing his second engagement:—
We all ate our breakfast in deep silence.
In fact, I could eat nothing. I was not only too worried, but I
cannot and will not eat cushion of bacon. If cannot get streaky
bacon I will do without anything.
When, by a most extraordinary good fortune, the Pooters are invited
to meet the Representatives of Trade and Commerce at a ball in the
Mansion House, where they know nobody, Pooter fancies at last that
he sees an acquaintance, and is “moving towards him,” when Carrie
“seized me by the coat-tails, and said quite loudly,‘Don’t leave me!’
which caused an elderly gentleman in a Court suit, and a chain round
him, and two ladies to burst out laughing.” When Mr Perkupp came
to the party, and Frank and Lupin happened (alas!) to be personating
the Blondin Donkey, he would not “come right into the room”:—
I apologized for the foolery, but Mr Perkupp said:—“Oh, it
seems amusing!” I could see that he was not a bit amused.
There may be people who are like Mr Perkupp, and who, in the
mad pride of intellectuality, will be not a bit amused by these and a
hundred other touches in The Diary of a Nobody. We venture to
believe that they will find themselves in a minority. The book is so
natural that it appeals irresistibly to the natural man, and no one need
be so genteel as not to confess that the troubles of Pooter touch him
here or there through the carapace of his social savoir-faire. If we have
anything to advance against the Diary, it is a certain air of the old-
fashioned. The Messrs Grossmith have not been studying their lower
middle-class quite up to date. When Mrs James tells Carrie that
“smocking” is all the rage, she means that it was so several years ago.
We think that people in the condition of the Pooters would have
their cuffs and fronts repaired at home. There seems a little excess in
Actually the Grossmiths were as up to date as usual, as “smocking” as a noun dates
only from (OED). The reviewer had not noticed that the Diary’s entries, even
in the book version, date distinctly to –.
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the drinking of champagne, even though the brand be “Jackson
Frères.” But these are motes in the sunbeam, and we may ourselves
be ill informed on these great subjects. What we are sure of is that
The Diary of a Nobody has amused us from cover to cover.
. From The Athenaeum ( August ):
The republication from Punch of The Diary of a Nobody, by G. and
W. Grossmith (Arrowsmith) was hardly a happy thought, or calcu-
lated to profit anybody. A Society Clown had perhaps sufficiently
shown the world that that delightful comedian Mr. George
Grossmith could be vulgar, if he chose; but it is rather hard on
Punch that these leaves from the diary of Mr. Pooter, which may
have escaped unnoticed amid better jokes, should be collected and
pointedly dedicated to the editor. For it must be confessed that the
book has no merit to compensate for its hopeless vulgarity, not even
that of being amusing. The satire—if a photographic representation
of middle-class boredom and horseplay can be dignified with the
name—is not only dreary, but has a cruel ring about it which is
positively offensive. Half the jests in the book seem directed against
the straits to which the poverty of an underpaid City clerk reduces
him; as, for example, the necessity for the appearance of crambe
repetita at his table. Such jibes argue unpardonable bad taste in the
maker thereof, and cause no hilarity to the readers except at his
expense. Besides, it is all so dull. The illustrations, by Mr. Weedon
Grossmith, are admirably suited to the text.
. From The Literary World, ( July ): –
The Diary of a Nobody strikes us as best fitted for reading in a train.
It is not so funny that an occasional interruption would be resented,
and such thread of story as runs through it can be grasped and
followed without much strain on the attention. The writer of the
Diary is a City clerk of the old school; his son is a City clerk of the
new school. There is, of course, perpetual friction between the pair,
the mild tastes and pleasures of the one constantly clashing with the
larger ambitions of the other; but however true to life the characters
George Grossmith’s partial autobiography, published in August .
Literally “reheated cabbage,” or more generally any dish served up again. In the Diary,
the dish is question is a plate of blancmange.
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may be, it is rather difficult to get really interested in the sayings and
doings of either the Pooter family or their friends.
. From The Speaker, ( August ):
The reminiscences of Mr Charles Pooter, of The Laurels, Brickfield
Terrace, Holloway, as set forth in The Diary of a Nobody, form one
of the most adequate, artistic, and impressive studies of vulgarity that
have yet come under our notice. The book is throughout appalling,
merciless, horribly true. As there is no historical instance of any
person who believed himself, or herself, to be vulgar, we may take
it for granted that all readers will delight in this study of vulgarity,
and will find in it much that reminds them of their friends and infe-
riors. The terms, by the way, are not synonymous; your friend is, we
are sure, your inferior, but your inferior cannot always hope to be
your friend. We have said that the book is artistic, and we do not
mean anything less than that. These authors have realised the
tremendous extent of vulgarity; they have seen that to make your
character talk about money and be deficient in his aspirates is an
easy but hardly a convincing method.Vulgarity is too large for that;
it has touched, and soiled, almost everybody; it has countless forms
and manifests itself in innumerable ways. There is no attempt to give
an exhaustive representation of vulgarity in The Diary of a Nobody.
Its authors have only attempted to depict that particular kind of
vulgarity which is suburban and clerkly; and yet most readers will
feel that the book is too short. It contains, it is true, pages; but
the headings of the chapters are, for inscrutable reasons, repeated
three times, and there also many illustrations which are somewhat
humorous, although we are sorry that Mr Weedon Grossmith
cannot draw. Even suburban vulgarity has its varieties. Mr Pooter is
vulgar and Mrs Pooter is vulgar, but they are not vulgar in the same
way. Mr Pooter’s friends and Mr Pooter’s son, Lupin, all have their
distinct shades of vulgarity finely marked and excellently observed
in the pages of this book. It would have been a natural mistake—a
mistake that has often been made before—to have allowed this diary
to become the record of a string of blunders on the part of Mr
Pooter; but it is a bad farce which shows the tragedy at the back of
it, and we feel that it is, artistically, right that in the course of the
story Mr Pooter succeeds, with a success that is somewhat clerkly
and commercial, but still a success. In less capable hands this diary
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would have become monotonous; as it is, it has plenty of variety
and contains an interesting story. Owing to the unfortunate refine-
ment of English authors, any adequate study of vulgarity is rare, and
we feel particularly grateful for this book.
. From The New York Times ( December ): .
[The Diary was published in the United States by Tait & Sons.Until
the previous year British books had been pirated freely by American
publishers and the authors received nothing. However, the
Grossmiths were presumably able to benefit from the limited provi-
sions of the American/British Copyright (Chase) Act of .]
It is supposedly a hit at the recent literary movement described as
the memoir one. Pooter is the Nobody, who apologizes for writing
his memoirs.... Pooter is a clerk living in Holloway. The vicissitudes
of a little household are told. There is that kind of quiet, common-
place, everyday joking in it which we are to suppose is highly satis-
factory to our cousins across the water. The Englishman doesn’t care
much for the business end of the tack. Our way of manufacturing
fun is different. We do not use the same material, or, if we do, we
weave it in quite another way. The diary is written to be funny, and
so it is, in a moderate degree.
. Publisher’s Note to the “new edition” of
( October )
[This note was probably composed by J.W. Arrowsmith himself,
and he correctly assessed this edition as marking the start of the
Diary’s enduring popularity.]
What makes a book sell? is a question often asked. It frequently
happens that however good the reviews may be, and however much
it may be advertised, a really good book hangs fire.
The Diary of a Nobody is a case in point. Originally published
eighteen years ago, well reviewed and well advertised, it did not
appear to attract much attention. There seem indications, however,
that the book “is coming into its own,” and unmistakable signs that
a handy Pocket Edition will prove acceptable to an increasing
number of readers. The Publisher, therefore, trusts that this re-issue
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printed from new type and from re-engraved drawings by Weedon
Grossmith, will meet with approval.
Among others who have recognised the subtle humour of the
book are Lord Rosebery and the Rt. Honble. Augustine Birrell,
M.P., and they have expressed their appreciation in letters which
the Publisher is allowed to insert in this volume; there is also
inserted (by permission) an extract from Mr. Hilaire Belloc’s essay
“On People in Books.”
. From The Bookman [London], (December ): –
[This review was of the “new edition” of .]
Nearly twenty years ago The Diary of a Nobody appeared serially in
Punch; in it came out between covers. It did not enjoy any
prompt or noisy boom, but people who were able to recognise a
good thing when they saw it knew how good it was and went about
talking of it, and so in the best possible way it was talked into fame,
and is now re-issued in a new edition. If you read it, you will have
to go and talk about it, too; the humour of it is so quaint, so quietly
rich, so delightful that you feel bound to communicate your enjoy-
ment of it—to pass such an exquisite and unique humour on that
others may share it. Mr. Belloc did not exaggerate when he said, in
one of his essays, that this book is “one of the half-dozen immortal
achievements of our time.” Mr. Charles Pooter, who keeps the
Diary, is an authentic creation; a kindly, chivalrous, upright, very
simple man; proud of his son; handy in his home, but not always
reliably so; hospitable to his friends; laughing consumedly over his
own feeble little jests; pathetically pleased to be patronised by his
employer—just a commonplace, humdrum, highly respectable city
clerk, who is the funnier for having no sense of humour, and he
enters all the events of his daily life into his Diary, all his small trou-
bles, his humble aspirations—everything that counts in his placid
days as an event, and all manner of household details that give you
a perfect idea of his environment.You laugh at him—at his small
absurdities, his droll mishaps, his well-meaning fussiness; but he wins
Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister – and a biographer; Augustine Birrell
(–) was a lawyer, politician and humorous essayist.
Hilaire Belloc (–), hugely prolific and eccentric Catholic historian, poet and
man of letters.
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upon you and obtains your affection, and even your admiration, he
is so transparently honest, so delightfully and ridiculously human.
“I dare not tell you my view of Charles Pooter,” Mr. Birrell writes
to the publisher. “I rank him with Don Quixote.” And when you
have read the book you will not think this is too much to say of it.
. From The Bookman [London], (December ):
[This review was of Arrowsmith’s edition of November .]
It is going on for thirty years since The Diary of a Nobody was first
published. It had no boom: it even hung fire for a while; but it was
always alive, and, from selling slowly, quickened and began to go the
pace, and for the last ten years has held a secure place in the popular
favour. Somehow it got itself talked about, and people have read it
solely because it was worth reading. It has had many imitators, and
some of the imitations have met with considerable success, but not
one of them has rivalled the original, and they have all faded away,
and still The Diary of a Nobody has held its ground, and this Christmas
appears in yet another new edition with a full and admirably-writ-
ten prefatory memoir of the authors by B.W. Findon. Who can define
the charm of the book? Charles Pooter, who keeps the Diary, is an
absurd person, a fussy, mildly conceited, blundering figure of fun, and
yet in all his follies and ridiculous simplicities he remains wonderfully
human and curiously likeable. He not only amuses you and keeps you
laughing at his unconscious humour, but he interests you in himself,
in his wife and his friends, in all the everyday ambitions, mishaps,
triumphs, and public and domestic doings of his city and suburban
life. The present reviewer had just read the book for the third time,
with undiminished enjoyment of its quaint drollery, its whimsical
satire and delightfully quiet irony, and he strongly recommends it to
all who love humour and the best sort of laughter.
The deluded knight-errant in Miguel Cervantes’ novel of –, whose outdated
chivalric code of conduct is affectionately mocked. George Orwell later drew the
same parallel between Pooter and Don Quixote.
The reviewer is probably thinking of novels that tried, in the wake of the Diary, to
paint humorous pictures of young married couples establishing themselves in subur-
bia. See Introduction, and for examples see Appendix D.
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. From Xanthias, Queen’s Quarterly, ():
[This review was of a Macmillan reprint published in Canada.]
It is not till the second or third reading—and you are bound to
reread it—that the really consummate art of this artless book
becomes apparent. It would have been the easiest thing in the world
to exaggerate the character of this guileless, humourless city clerk,
who loves pottering about his house and possesses an absurd sense
of dignity; but the authors, with admirable self-restraint, have
allowed him to give a rounded portrait of himself that is entirely
lovable and worthy of respect
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Appendix B:The Clerk’s Lot in Life
. From Charles Edward Parsons, Clerks;Their Position and
Advancement.Addressed to Parents, Employers, and Employed.
London: Provost (): –
[In this small guide the author expresses the same attitude—a
mixture of scorn and indignation—which is repeated over and
over in the selections which follow. Notice the phrase “no youth
of spirit would condescend to entertain” the intrusive question-
ing that appeared on employment forms: Parsons implies that
few clerks fell into the category of spirited youths.]
Having referred once or twice to Railway Companies, I may here
allude to the miserable salaries they, as employers of clerks in particu-
lar, are accustomed to pay to competent men. For instance, the appli-
cant for a clerkship on one of the railways in the South of England is
required to answer upon the Company’s “form of application,”a multi-
tude of questions so insulting and impertinent that no youth of spirit
would condescend to entertain them; and to fulfil a host of conditions
quite out of keeping with his salary or position. The following are but
a few taken from a long list of these questions and regulations:—
“Are you in debt? if so, to what amount?”
“Are you married, or single? If any children, how many?”
“Are you engaged in any business or partnership?” etc etc.
After these come the “conditions of accepting service,” which,
under Section I., comprise forty-five separate rules. Some of these
are so unique that I give a few par example:—
Applicants must send doctor’s certificate that he is free from illness,
lameness, etc, etc, and a declaration that he is of steady and sober habits.
If appointed to the service he must strictly observe every regu-
lation issued by the Company, and may be required to carry a book
or copy of such regulations about his person when not on duty.
Must devote himself exclusively to the Company’s service and inter-
est, not only during regular hours, but at all other times when
required. Must reside very near to his customary place of duty.
Must agree to forego a fortnight’s pay, to be kept in hand “as a
security for good conduct.”
Must provide security to the extent of £ or over, for his faithful
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service. Is required, “when not on duty, to avoid the risk of impairing
his strength or efficiency by fatigue, exertion, or exposure of any kind”
(the “fatigue, exertion, or exposure” apparently being condoned if
incurred while on duty)....
Is expected, “whether off or on duty, to be at all times neat and
cleanly in his person and dress; to avoid all foppishness and affecta-
tion of singularity (!) in dress, in person, or in manner.”...
Must behave “decorously” when off duty, “on pain of instant
dismissal from the service;” and must have led a blameless life before
entering the service, otherwise, “although the offender has not been
convicted of the misdemeanour laid to his charge, he is subject to instant
dismissal, with forfeiture of all back pay and other emoluments!”
For a model youth in full possession of all these qualifications, for
such an embodiment of simplicity,amiability,virtue,and business capac-
ity, “the Directors are accustomed to allow a salary at the rate of—”
how much think you? What would such a clerk be fairly worth to any
firm or company? Bear in mind the various attainments and obser-
vances which are demanded, and you will scarcely be prepared to be
told that the remuneration offered is—£ per annum for the first six
months, “when it will be raised or lowered in proportion to the then
ascertained value of the services and general aptitude of the clerk.”...
I speak with moderation when I say that now-a-days parents are
far too prone to think a youth’s good fortune certain from the
moment his legs dangle from the stool in a mercantile office. “A good
clerk is always sure of being employed” is their consoling and frequent
reflection. It is a mistake. The belief alleviates anxiety and generally
brings comfort to those whose young friends are apparently doing
well in their respective offices; but it is thoroughly erroneous to lay
to heart the flattering unction that a clerk, even of proved efficiency
and integrity, can secure constant employment. A large proportion of
those who are at this present time seeking situations are thoroughly
qualified by commercial training and by uprightness of character to
accept employment involving the greatest care and responsibility, and
are willing to do so for salaries somewhere about £ per week! I have
seen sober, well-educated, well-recommended clerks, possessed of
first-rate business qualifications, and conversant with one or two
foreign languages, walking the streets of London almost barefoot,
A soothing ointment. The allusion is to Hamlet’s words to his guilty mother: “Lay
not that flattering unction to your soul.”
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reduced to the lowest depths of genteel poverty, and have known such
men calling at upwards of sixty offices a day in the hope of obtain-
ing employment, but without success.
. From The Clerk:A Sketch in Outline of His Duties and
Discipline. London: Houlston
[From Chapter “Affectation in Dress and Manner”: ]
Few annoyances are more irritating than to be the object of ridicule:
to be the constant butt of it is a trial that the best tempers can scarcely
withstand. Ridicule, however, will not attach to a man permanently
unless the provocation of it is habitual: but the provocation is easily
and often unconsciously given: any personal peculiarity, indicative of
conceit, is certain to draw out the laugh of ill-nature; an affected singu-
larity of dress, of gait, or even of tone, will suffice. The dress of every
man, the young especially, ought to conform to the fashion of the day:
he cannot afford to be an exquisite, and it is not desirable that he
should; a fop rarely proves a good man of business, nor can the clerk
indulge in a new coat as often as his vanity and his tailor may desire;
but he can avoid any thing remarkable either in the colour or the cut
of it. To be quiet and unassuming in dress argues a becoming modesty
of mind; the contrary extreme implies vulgarity.
[From Chapter “Prospects and Position of the Clerk—
Conclusion”: –]
If the young man succeeds in his first or second adventure, it is
indeed by “chance”; if he would succeed in a series of adventures,
he must learn to exclude the term from his commercial vocabulary.
The clerk sees but little of this during his clerkship; he is but a wheel
in the machine; he knows little of the power that sets every wheel
in motion; we say nothing of the delusive nature of borrowed capi-
tal, or of the unstable character of fortuitous connection. Even when
sustained by abundant knowledge, it is heavy work to build upon
such a treacherous foundation; but without that knowledge, it is
more arduous labour than rolling the stone of Sisyphus.
In Greek myth Sisyphus was condemned forever to push uphill a boulder that rolled
down again just as he reached the summit.
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Yet though the path is difficult and tedious, the door is not
closed, even to the moneyless and friendless clerk: his natural course
to promotion is, as we have before hinted, by making himself indis-
pensable to his employer; the head must, sooner or later, take the
right hand into its confidence; and perhaps for one who has pros-
pered by his own independent effort, twenty clerks might be quoted
by any man versed in business, whether commercial or professional,
who have risen to wealth and eminence as partners in the house
where their years of clerkship were expended.
And is this the end of a long career of assiduous preparation and
patient labour? of a youth spent in the severity of study, and a
manhood devoted to the service and caprice of others? In too many
cases, alas, we must acknowledge that it is. It is the penalty which
man pays for the much coveted advantage of earning his bread by
the toil of his brains instead of the sweat of his brow—an advantage
far more nominal than real, apart from the abstract pleasure of intel-
lectual cultivation.
The station of the clerk is not one of self-aggrandisement, and
except accidentally, it rarely secures more than a bare independence.
But neither is it attended by anxiety or drudgery of labour—it
admits of all the necessary comforts, and many of the elegancies of
superior life.
. From Francis Davenant, Starting in Life: Hints for Parents on
the Choice of a Profession or Trade for Their Sons. London:
Chatto & Windus : –
No one will propose to make his son a clerk if he can possibly get
anything better for him to do—not that there is anything in the
slightest degree dishonourable or menial in the occupation of a
clerk, but because of the poor prospect it presents of better things
to come. Forty pounds a year to begin with, and the prospect ulti-
mately, should the house prosper and the clerk be industrious, capa-
ble, etc, of perhaps £, is not a very bright look out. Of course,
there are clerks and clerks, and it is always possible, nay, likely, that
a really valuable clerk, who has by his energy and ability struck out
new paths of business for his employers, has been assiduous in their
behalf, and has made himself a power in the trade, will get taken
into partnership, though he may not have a sixpence of capital. This
is the hope that animates many a young man—this, or that other
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hope of being some day able to start on his own account in one of
those agency or brokering businesses in which capital is not so
much needed as brains. In banks, insurance offices, railway compa-
nies’ offices, and the like, there is little or no prospect of general
improvement of position beyond that which is held out by increase
of pay. The prizes of such offices are few, though out of the office
should come managers, secretaries, and actuaries; but it is obvious
that these appointments can be inducements to a few only, and that
there must always remain in what solicitors call “the outer office”
a large number of persons without hope of anything but a slender
maintenance. Still, it happens over and over again, that no other
means of getting a livelihood present themselves, and people are
obliged to take what they can get, and be thankful. The number of
persons thus dependent on clerkships is gauged immediately it is
known by advertisement or other means that there is a clerkship
vacant. The rush of candidates on such occasions is like the scram-
ble of minnows for a piece of bread ...
. From The Story of a London Clerk:A Faithful Narrative
Faithfully Told. London: Leadenhall Press
[Osmond Ormesby comes from the provinces on the promise of
a job as a clerk. He is cheated by everyone from landladies to
hairdressers; the firm he works for soon fails and he is forced to
fall back on his savings while he searches for work. The anony-
mous author uses a drab, documentary style, and his story has the
ring of truth. We may assume it is based on personal experience.]
[From Chapter “Out of Work in London”: –]
Could he not get another situation in London? At any rate, he could
try. The great dread was whether his meagre means would hold out
long enough. If he were not successful in the first few weeks his
scanty sum would dwindle away, and he would find himself in
London without a farthing or a friend....
Five pounds without work did not afford a cheering outlook,
but it was sufficient to bestir a less sanguine soul than Osmond
Ormesby. It was sufficient to tide him over six weeks, at least. In that
period he felt he could search the whole of London. He was
prepared to undergo any hardship in attempting to secure work, and
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to sell his labour at almost any price, in almost any market. To ward
off the coming of that dreaded sixth week, when his pockets would
be penniless, he would search high and low from morn to eve.
Westminster is intoxicated with pride in the possession of the
Parliamentary pile, and it needs must go and distinguish many of its
streets—insignificant, unsightly little byways, many of them—by the
appellation of “Great.” Out of Great College Street Osmond
dropped into Great Smith Street, where he would have least
expected to discover a public library.Yet there, by mere chance, he
stumbled across one, and his heart flowed out with gratitude to the
parochial fathers who, by thus blessing the locality, came to benefit
him in a singularly happy fashion. It was a quaint place for newspa-
pers and books—the first free library in London—looking like a
transformed chapel. The big modern building which has since
grown up on the other side of the road, and superseded as
completely as it has overawed its little unassuming predecessor, does
not possess half the charm.
In the old place Osmond began his search for work by scanning
the advertisements of the morning papers....
Three of them demanded written applications only, and two
invited personal interviews. Having copied carefully the particulars
of each he hastened round to Great College Street, to dispatch letters
to the three, and prepare himself to apply in person for the others.
The first call was at Gresham Street. He entered some trading
company’s office in hope, and retreated in disappointment. Some one
had been before him, and, as the firm was hard pressed, had snatched
up the situation on the spot, and was already body-bent over a desk
when Osmond called. This occasioned him surprise. Others besides
himself were apparently industrious in the search for work. He had
thought it almost impossible for any one to be more prompt than he
had been; now he thought it almost mean for any one to have dared
to be as prompt. There was a scrap of satisfaction in knowing that
the firm had taken his name and address, and had promised to
communicate with him should another vacancy arise. Had he been
older he would have hung up no further hope on such a promise.
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[From Chapter “How to Live on Next-to-nothing a Year”:
–]
To understand clearly how Osmond Ormesby lived on next-to-
nothing a year, it is necessary to enter details distinctly personal.
First of all, he started well; for he wore good health and good
clothes, and consequently was free to reserve his money strictly to
the necessaries of life. Out of his twelve shillings, five had to be
deducted for rent; so he had to face each week with seven shillings,
and come out at the end of the seventh day, with a balance in hand.
To live on next-to-nothing a year is impossible under modern
conventions; so Osmond began by upsetting convention. He told
the Nilsons’ housekeeper, to that good lady’s horror, that he would
not require breakfast or tea any longer. Breakfast and tea, in the
conventional style, are expensive luxuries, not to be approved by
those who wish to live on next-to-nothing a-year. Osmond
provided his own breakfast and tea.
But here, again, it was necessary to depart from convention.
Convention says you can’t have a breakfast without a fire; but next-
to-nothing a year says you can’t afford a fire in the morning. What
Osmond did was to content himself with water. A glass of water
and plain bread and butter can make a most nourishing breakfast.
It is wonderful how well one can thrive on that fare, if it be tried.
Besides, look at the saving in time. Osmond could munch his bread
and butter while dressing, toss off the glass of water just before
putting on his hat, and be out in the street or buried in a book
within a few minutes of rising from bed....
With a little care, a marvellous amount of variety can be intro-
duced into living on next-to-nothing a-year. Osmond found this
to be the case in an especial manner with regard to his midday meal
in the City. He had cut down the expense as low as twopence, and
fixed a maximum of fourpence.
Osmond could dine better than a prince on these sums. He had a
thousand advantages over the prince. The prince is compelled to dine
in a manner eminently calculated to create indigestion and weariness;
but for twopence Osmond could get a satisfying dinner, with health
and vitality assured. It was simple enough. All he did was to enter a
restaurant and order a bowl of oatmeal, which used to be served with
He has secured a miserable post as a lawyer’s clerk, and has to live on twelve shillings
a week, or £ a year.
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milk and sugar. Twopence down, and the thing was done. For an
expenditure of fourpence, in the same restaurant, he had the choice
of two courses from a menu containing twenty or more varied dishes.
He secured variety in another way. An adjoining establishment, not
quite so respectable, supplied him with a different kind of dinner for
threepence ha’penny. Twopence ha’penny commanded sausage and
mash. The balance would admit to almost any kind of pudding, from
a slice of the real genuine plum to a plate of transparent tapioca!...
Washing is also an expensive item in London, especially with
regard to collars; and Osmond, who recognized the benefit of a good
personal appearance, found himself wearing two or three every
week, and thus running up a bill. He discovered that guttapercha
collars could be bought, looking quite as well as those of linen, only
possessing much greater advantages. They seldom got dirty, and
could be cleaned in a moment with cold water and flannel. Again,
in about a fortnight he saved on his washing account as much as
covered the original investment, and afterwards there was clear gain.
. From Charles Booth, ed., Life and Labour of the People in
London.Vol.VII. Population Classified by Trades (Continued).
London: Macmillan : –
[Charles Booth (–) was a rich ship owner and social
reformer. He devoted sixteen years to his master work, published
between and , which revolutionised the emerging
science of sociological statistics.]
[From Part III.—Dealers and Clerks. Chapter III. “Merchants
and Clerks. Commercial Clerks”]
A good appearance, unobtrusive dress, and neat handwriting, are the
most essential qualifications for a clerk. Further, if he is to stand the
constant strain of office life, a sound constitution is required. It is
usually chance that determines the exact branch of clerical life he
will pursue, and answering advertisements is the most generally
adopted method of invoking the fickle goddess. Well-known
Detachable collars made out of a type of rubber. The tone of all this section is heav-
ily ironical.
Fortuna, the goddess of chance, often shown standing on a ball to indicate her fickleness.
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commercial houses have waiting lists on which they enter the names
of those recommended to them, and commonly give preference to
sons of clerks already in their employ. The ranks of bankers’ and
insurance clerks are recruited in the same way, and sometimes candi-
dates are made to pass an examination to test their acquirements. It
is in commercial houses that the English clerk most severely feels
the competition of foreigners, and especially of Germans.
A junior clerk in a commercial house, starting at fifteen, sixteen
or seventeen years of age, earns less for his age than (for instance) a
van-boy, influenced perhaps by the social feeling which places clerks’
work above manual employment. He may hope to become manager
or master in his turn, seeing how many have done so before him,
and is thus content not only to work for a nominal wage for two or
three years, but for many years to earn no more than, if as much as,
an artisan. As in the legal profession, the eminence of a small minor-
ity dazzles the eyes of a large number whose talents might perhaps
have been more profitably directed elsewhere....
The relations between a clerk and his employer, or between him
and the work he undertakes, are usually close and personal. No one
man is to be replaced exactly by another. No two office boys are
quite alike in the mistakes they make. This variety in value is true
to some extent even if the work is of the dullest routine character;
far more so I believe than is the case with even highly skilled arti-
sans; and is beyond calculation when the work entrusted to the clerk
becomes confidential and responsible. The value of a clerk’s serv-
ices thus depends closely and somewhat curiously on relations with
the employer, that is to say, upon possibilities of combination in action
between men who have learnt to know each other’s ways and who
suit each other. Such relations are usually formed gradually and are
the essence of all high value in clerks’ work. It follows that with
clerks a secure tenure of employment is of the greatest importance;
he is more likely to reap the fullest return for his work by waiting
than by pushing for an early advantage. His apples ripen best on the
tree. This fact is often recognized in the terms of payment. In banks
and insurance offices the scale of remuneration is nearly always
regulated so as to encourage those who have once entered to remain
as long as they are fit for work.
Financially the great mass of clerks are on a level with the great
mass of artisans, £ to £ a year comparing with s, s, and
s a week. But socially, and economically too, they are on an
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entirely different footing. From top to bottom clerks associate with
clerks and artisans with artisans—but comparatively seldom with
each other. A clerk lives an entirely different life from an artisan—
marries a different kind of wife—has different aims and different
ideas, different possibilities and different limitations. A clerk differs
from an artisan in the claims each make on society no less than the
claims society makes on them. It is not by any means only a ques-
tion of clothes, of the wearing or not wearing of a white shirt every
day, but of differences which invade every department in life, and at
every turn affect the family budget. More undoubtedly is expected
from the clerk than the artisan, but the clerk’s money goes further—
is on the whole much better spent.
There is good reason for the flocking of young men into the
ranks of clerical labour. There has been and there still is a growing
demand for such services, and no services are more useful to the
community. Beyond this the profession of clerk does seem to lead
to a genuine rise in the social standard of living which is a worthy
object of ambition.
. From Robert White, “Wanted: A Rowton House for
Clerks,” Nineteenth Century, (October ):
[Nothing is known of this author: he appears to be writing from
personal experience. Rowton Houses were founded in to
provide decent lodgings in separate rooms,not dormitories,for poor
working men.They were named after their philanthropic founder.]
The clerk class has a first claim on the social reformer and the philan-
thropist. Its members are notoriously over-worked and under-paid.
They are, admittedly, the worst paid section of the community. All
the drudgery and but little of the rewards of commercial enterprise
fall to their lot. Too peaceful to form unions and commit assaults;
too orderly to assemble on Tower Hill and threaten riots; too sensi-
tive and self-respecting to mouth out their grievances in Trafalgar
Square or Hyde Park, the clerks of the metropolis have been driven
by force of competition and the greed of many callous employers to
the extremes of poverty. Though their pay is lower than that of the
lowest class of artisans they are nevertheless expected to live well, to
dress trimly, and generally to bear themselves as gentlemen.
Go into the cheap coffee-houses in the City and its environs and
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note the appearance of the young men who patronise them. The sort
of life they are forced to live is proclaimed in the shiny black coat,
the frayed collar, the shabby cuffs, and, above all, in the pale, haggard,
“washed-out” look on their faces. From the misery of lodgings they
sometimes seek relief in matrimony, only to find very frequently that
their last state is worse than their first. The perpetual struggle to make
ends meet and to reconcile gentility with poverty is heart-breaking.
And it is the more bitter because it is concealed. In short, their priva-
tions are past finding out. The day labourer on fifteen shillings a week
has more pleasure in existence than the clerk who gets thirty.Yet the
clerks are, so to say, the machinery by which the industrial, commer-
cial, and financial activity and progress of London are maintained.
They have done, and they are doing, their full share of the work
which has made it and keeps it the first city of the world.
. From Shan Bullock, Robert Thorne:The Story of a London
Clerk. London: T. Werner Laurie
[Shan Bullock (–) was raised on a large estate where his
father was bailiff. Robert Thorne is highly autobiographical, for
Bullock spent the whole of his working life as a civil servant in
London. In the novel, his hero is the son of a Devon schoolmas-
ter who, to the horror of his father, seeks a “man clerkship” after
hearing about the pleasures of London from Jack, a visiting
friend. Note that his starting salary is a high £, but places in
government service were highly competitive, and he has passed
a tough entrance examination.]
[From Chapter I: –]
I heard a great deal about Jack’s office, much of it I fear a little rose-
coloured. His picture of official life pleased me: easy hours, easy
work, pleasant company, long holidays, good pay and prospects. It
was just the thing, said Jack, for decent fellows who wanted a safe
billet. The examination was nothing. A while’s grinding with a
good Coach, a clear head and a bit of luck, and the thing was done.
Why did I not have a go? It was ridiculous, said Jack, wasting one’s
life in the country. No fun, no chance, no anything....
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[Thorne’s father objects to his plans]
“You want to be like him, perched on a stool all day with your nose
to a ledger.You want his pale face, and his slouch, and his simper. I
suppose he’s been telling you about his London experiences too and
all the devilments he’s learnt.... “Sir,” cried father at last, “haven’t I
told you better. Haven’t I taught you that what a man owes to himself
is to strive after manhood. A clerk with a clerk’s narrow little soul—
is that your idea of a man! I’d rather see you carrying letters like Job
Hawkins. I’d sooner see you serving cheese behind Jago’s counter ...
“No, you can’t help yourself. And why? Because yourself is not
worth helping.You have the spirit of a slave, sir. A clerk! A creature
with a pen behind its ear!”
[From Chapter III: Thorne’s first day as a clerk: (–)]
At Mr Cherry’s bidding I hung my hat on a certain peg, signed my
name in the attendance book, and in a round-backed wooden chair
sat down. I was initiated. I was one of Her Majesty’s servants. On
everything about me, the table, the chair, the hat-rack, the tumblers
and water-bottle on the mantel, the pens and pencils and paper
which Mr Higgs, otherwise Bill, brought me, on the blue and white
duster with which Mr Cherry polished my table, was stamped the
potent V.R.; yes, and I myself was branded, and already, whatever
might happen now, I had right to one three hundred and sixty-fifth
part of eighty pounds a year.
[Thorne’s cynical friend Oliver instructs him on life in the Tax
Office]
“You didn’t choose the Tax Office, I suppose? No. Of course not.
What place had you on the list? Eighty-sixth. I thought so. If you’d
been a bit higher up they might have given you a chance some-
where; as it is—” Oliver gave a vicious stab at the fire and flung the
poker into the fender. “Well, you’re here,” he finished.
I hardly knew what he meant; but I gathered that, for some
reason, he was not content. “Isn’t the Tax Office a good one, then?”
I asked.
“Victoria Regina,” signifying that all these items were in theory the Queen’s property.
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“It isn’t, then. It’s one of the worst. Wait till you’ve been here a
while—five years, we’ll say, like myself—and you’ll know. A man
gets no chance. What chance have we, anyway? They take us and
call us Men clerks. Men clerks! Just as they talk of Buck niggers.
And they put us in gangs in offices, and there we are with prospect
of two-fifty a year some time when we’re grey headed and the kick-
out at sixty with what they call a pension.”
Such talk was not pleasant to hear, and it was mystifying. “But
one needn’t stay a Man clerk,” I ventured.
“Oh, no. That’s true. I used to think like that myself. We all do.
Of course you’ve got the usual notions.You’re going to study and
get on....Yes. Well, I won’t call you a fool,” said Oliver, with his harsh
little laugh, “but I’ll bet you my month’s screw that before two years
you’re thinking more of marrying than studying.”
“Oh,” said I, and thought instantly of Nell. “Do you really think
that? And why?”
“Because I know,” answered Oliver. “There’s something in the
air—there’s something in the breed of us. I suppose we’re fit for
nothing else. D’you think if we were men we’d be content to sit
here toasting our toes at an office fire? Not likely! We’d be out
doing something—policemen, or driving a bus or something.”
It was almost father’s talk; only less sincere, I thought. “Then why
are you here?” I asked.
“Because I’m of the breed,” said Oliver. “I was born to be a fossil.
I gave up studying some time ago. I’m—”
“What, married?”
Oliver nodded and bent towards the fire. I noticed then how
worn he was, how shabby too and not very cleanly; and I understood
also why he did not have even ninepennyworth of food in the base-
ment. “Yes, I’m married,” he said. “Of course I am. Clerks are made
to get married and keep up the population....” He sat back and put
his feet upon the mantelshelf. “No matter,” he said. “Another year
of London diggings would have killed me. Where are you staying?”
I told him; then, by way of satisfying my curiosity, asked if there
were not chances for Men clerks even in the Tax Office.
He shrugged his shoulders, and blew a stream of smoke at the
ceiling. “There’s what you might call outside chances,” he answered,
The text contains a footnote here by the novelist addressing the reader, explaining
and justifying the “derisive air” inherent in the phrase “Men clerks.”
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“—about a hundred to one. Oh, that’s another delusion of the
greenhorn. Wait a minute.”
He rose, went to a drawer, and came back with an office
Establishment list. “This will show you the chances. See all these
men,” he said and drew a finger down a long list of names. “Well,
they’re the top-hats of this establishment—Commissioners, Chiefs,
Principals, Heads of Sections, and all the rest. Look at their salaries,
anything from two thousand to four hundred. How they got there
is no matter. Some of them deserve their luck. Hughes does. Philpot
does. Winter does—maybe you’ve seen him—he’s a real good un....
The rest, well, some of them are better than old Cherry-blossom,
and the others aren’t. What’s wanted here is another Cromwell that
knows how to purge. The Tax Office will never be worth tuppence
till most of that gang is cleared out and the big thick line wiped
with it. What’s the Line? There it is. It’s what’s below them and above
us, and it’s what we can’t pass. We’re not good enough. We aren’t
class enough. Look at us, a hundred and twenty Men clerks all in a
bunch like sheep in a pen. Do you see how we’re labelled, each man
with his little Mister, and his little salary? That’s official etiquette.
Above the Line you’re an Esquire, below it you’re plain Mister and
be damned to you!... Here’s my name down here.Yours will be there
at the bottom one of these days. And there we’ll stay, never any
higher—not a derned inch except someone above us cuts his throat.
Garn!” said Oliver and flung the office list upon his table. “I wonder
we don’t put dynamite in the cellars, like the Fenians.”
[From Chapter VIII: An unsympathetic study of a middle-aged
clerk very like Pooter: –]
Mr Hope was the head of our room. His official position was just
over the thick black Line. Age forty-six. Salary about three hundred
pounds a year. In person he was middle-sized, somewhat portly and
florid; his face a little weak, a little stupid; his mouth hidden beneath
a thick grey moustache; his crown bald and shining; his eyes good-
natured, heavy, tired. In his worn frock-coat, striped trousers, spot-
ted double-breasted waistcoat, full black scarf, thick square-toed
An irreverent pun on the name of their superior; Cherry Blossom was and still is the
name of a shoe polish.
A terrorist organization which was trying to secure the independence of Ireland by
violence.
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shoes and drab gaiters, he had a decorous and respectable air. He
was always clean and neat as a new pin; always wore a frock-coat
and silk hat; always carried an umbrella; always in official hours had
protectors of cartridge paper over his cuffs. As a man he was kindly,
just, narrow in mind and rigid, a thorough Tory, a staunch
Churchman, without pretensions to education or culture; but what
Mr Hope was, as man and citizen, does not matter I think. Before
everything, in everything, he was an official. He lived for the office.
It had his heart, filled his thoughts. Through the most of thirty years
he had slaved devotedly; had shaped himself and been shaped into
an almost perfect part of the machine. He never made a mistake. He
knew every strand of the ropes. He seemed tireless. He was order
itself. Like a planet he moved in eternal routine.You might set your
watch by his doings. At ten o’clock precisely he came in; at eleven
drank a glass of water; at one-fifteen cleansed and brushed himself,
drew his chair near a window, spread a red silk handkerchief over
his knees, and spent half-an-hour in munching sandwiches, sipping
water, and slowly assimilating the political leader of the morning’s
Times. Luncheon done he carefully folded his sandwich-tin in
brown paper and laid it beside his gloves on the mantel; then wiped
his fingers on a duster; then lighted a cigarette, returned to the
window, and for ten minutes stood looking upon the world with-
out. So, for nearly every day of nearly thirty years, at the same
minutes of every hour, Mr Hope had stood smoking his cigarette
and gazing out upon London. He never wearied of the sight. He
loved all that—the Embankment, the traffic, the trees, the river and
all upon it, the buildings, the bridges, the murky sky, the colour, the
very smell of London. It was part of his existence, of his career, of
his tape-swathed self. London and the office: there was Mr Hope....
At last we came to Mr Hope’s residence in Uffra Road, Brixton.
It was a semi-detached villa of red brick; a grass patch between iron
railing and bow window in front, a longer patch bordered with
flower beds behind; cork-faced plant boxes on the sills; flat brass
bands adorning the bedroom windows; right and left a hundred
other residences exactly like it.
“Not a bad little place I have here, Thorne? Quiet, commodi-
ous, and all that. Bought it through a Building society. Best way.
Nothing like having your own house....
Shall we—ah—go in? Perhaps you’d like to see my little snug-
gery?”
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The snuggery was a small back room on the first floor, simply
furnished with a chair and table, a square of carpet, and a little book-
case holding dictionaries, some yellow-backed novels, and a complete
set of Tax Office reports. On the walls were a few framed photographs
of London. The table might have been the same at which Mr Hope
laboured every day—trays, inkpots, pencils, scissors, all complete. Here
of an evening he toiled often over papers that he had carried home
in a despatch bag; here sat engaged on the documents and books of
his private affairs. The documents were tied about with red tape. The
books, as he pridefully explained, were kept on strict official princi-
ples, each item of receipt and expenditure with its own Vote and elab-
orate system of Sub-heads.Vote I.—Household Expenses, .Vote
II.—Personal Expenses, .Vote V.—Coals, : and so on.
“Like to know where I am, Thorne,” said Mr Hope. “Order—
economy—system, those are my principles. Quite impossible it is
for there to be any extravagance without discovering it. Waste of
coals, or gas, by the servant: there is last year’s expenditure. Butcher,
baker, provision merchant: here they all are. Outlay on clothes: here
it is. Boots—soap—kindling wood—furniture—tobacco—
liquors—postage stamps: here is the amount allotted to each and the
expenditure to a farthing.”
[From Chapter : . While walking out with his baby son on
Peckham Rye on a Sunday,Thorne meets two “seniors,”both bach-
elors. Neither knows he is married and a father. Hull greets him:]
“By Jove! I congratulate you, old man. Would never have
thought of it, dashed if I should. Taking him for a little ride in the
pram-pram, eh?”
I felt like hitting the man. I knew now that he was contemning me,
thinking at the back of his head, “By Jove—little Thorne married—
and with a kid. Whew! And the fellow can’t have much more than a
hundred a year. Little bounder in his silk hat, and wheeling a peram-
bulator like any counter-jumper. This is how the Service is let down
by bringing in these Board School cads.” I do not say that I gave Hull
credit just then for all of that, but I did afterwards, and for more than
A shop assistant, particularly one who apes the manners of his customers on the other
side of the counter.
A person (implicitly an upstart from the lower classes) who has been educated at a
government school, at taxpayers’ expense.
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that. “Yes,” I replied stoutly, “I’m taking him for a ride. I always do on
Sunday mornings. Perhaps I’ll meet you both here again. Good-bye.”
And I passed on with the pram-pram.
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Appendix C: Domestic Economy at
The Laurels
. From G.S. Layard, “Family Budgets. II. A Lower-Middle-
Class Budget,” Cornhill Magazine, (Jan-June ): –
[George Somes Layard (–) was a barrister and prolific
journalist, author, editor and bibliophile. His article, which
appeared in a series run by Cornhill, is the one that matches most
closely the Pooters’ annual income, though its maximum figure
(£) is somewhat lower than theirs must have been. At the
end the Cornhill editor added another budget to supplement
Layard’s, one totalling £ a year, which must be close to
Pooter’s income. The larger items allowed £ for rent, £ for
housekeeping, and another £ for “breadwinner’s lunches and
frequent teas in town,” £.s. for clothing, £ for a servant,
£.s. for insurances, £ for holidays.]
That the subject is one of the highest importance to the nation as
well as to the individual will be at once apparent when we remem-
ber that domestic economy (by which I do not mean mere domes-
tic economicalness) is the unit of political economy, just as the
family is the primordial unit of society; and that the lower middle
class of which we write is the backbone of the commonwealth.
Let us take a moment to consider some of the elements of which
this great class is composed. Among the earners of a yearly wage of
£ to £ we find certain skilled mechanics; bank clerks;
managing clerks to solicitors; teachers in the London Board Schools
(in there were about male teachers receiving from £
to £ per annum); the younger reporters on the best metropol-
itan papers; the senior reporters on the best local papers; second
division clerks in the Colonial, Home, and India Offices; second-
class examining officers in the Customs; senior telegraphists; first-
class overseers in the General Post Office; Government
office-keepers; sanitary inspectors; relieving officers; many vestry
officials; clerks under the County Councils; police inspectors; chief
warders of prisons; barristers’ clerks; photographers employed in the
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manufacture of process blocks; assistant painters in the leading
theatres; organists, and curates in priest’s orders. This is but naming
a few of the diverse elements of the class with which we are
concerned. So that it will be seen at once that anything like gener-
alisation or hard and fast rules of life are wholly out of the question.
I have therefore thought it best to take a typical example of this
financial section of society and show how life can be, and is, lived
in many hundreds of homes on a minimum income of £ a year,
from which it will follow as a corollary that a somewhat easier life
on the same lines can be lived on any sum between that and a maxi-
mum of £.
The case that I am fortunately enabled to take as my text is that
of a cashier in a solicitor’s office—a man of high character, good
education, and high ideals, who, from his fourteenth to his fortieth
year, has earned his living in his chosen profession. For ten years he
has been married to the daughter of a once well-to-do farmer, who
for some time before her marriage had found it necessary, in conse-
quence of agricultural depression, to go out into the world and earn
her own living in a house of business. In her father’s house she had
learned the domestic arts. In her independent life she had learned
the value of money. And here we must remember that the value of
a man’s earnings will vary with the value of his wife’s qualities and
capabilities. A wife may be the very best investment that a man ever
made, or she may be the very worst. “Better a fortune in a wife than
with a wife,” says the proverb, for with the former no evil can come
which a man cannot bear. And, in choosing a wife, let a man with
a limited income incidentally remember (if indeed a man ever does
or ought to remember anything so practical at such a moment) the
advice of the Talmud to descend rather than ascend a step, or it
will be found the harder to make both ends meet.
Our typical couple are fortunate in having but two children—
fortunate not merely because there will be fewer mouths to feed but
because the wage-earner’s mobility will not be unduly checked. The
size of his family is of peculiar importance when a man is young and
coming to find out his powers and capabilities. It is only with a small
one that he will be able to make a favourable disposition of his
The written body of Jewish traditional law. The advice in full is often given as: “Be
quick in buying land; be deliberate in taking a wife. Come down a step in choosing
your wife; go up a step in selecting your friend.”
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labour. With an increasing family he will find it harder and harder
to move about in search of his best market.
Granted then that we have a family, the question at once arises,
how that family shall be housed; and it is in the proportion of his
income that must be expended on the item “Rent” that a man of
small means is more particularly handicapped. What should we
think of a man with £ a year spending £ on rent? We
should be justified in regarding him as almost madly extravagant.
And this is proportionately what the married man with £ a year
is forced to do, and will continue to be forced to do, until a great
advance has been made in the practice of co-operation.
Personally I am sanguine enough to look forward to the time
when, not only in the matter of rent but in the whole circle of living,
the cares of management shall be taken off the shoulders of the wage-
earner and his wife; and when a man will find a Phalanstery suited
to his means, where everything will be arranged for at an inclusive
charge, as certainly as now he finds that he must provide everything
for himself at ruinous retail prices. But this is dreaming dreams, and
the paradise in which “you press the button and we do the rest” is
only coming. That there are signs of its approach we learn quite
lately from Mr. Leonard Snell’s speech to the “Auctioneers’ Institute,”
in which he tells of a block of mansions where the table d’hôte meals
are served at twelve shillings a week, as well as from the co-operative
kitchen movement which is now showing signs of renewed vitality.
In the meantime we must deal with immediate possibilities, for, as at
present advised, every Englishman prefers to have his own castle,
however unmachicolated it may be.
To the worker in the City of London, where, as a matter of fact,
our solicitor’s clerk worked for twenty years, or in Westminster,
where he worked for four, one of three courses is practically open.
Either he must live within easy distance in lodgings in some such
locality at Trinity Square, S.E., or Vincent Square, S.W., or in one of
those huge blocks of flats to be found in the neighbourhood of
London’s heart in such districts as Finsbury, Lambeth, or Southwark;
or he must go further afield and find an inexpensive house in one
A type of socialist commune proposed by Charles Fourier (–): a few based
on his principles were briefly attempted in the nineteenth century.
A famous advertising slogan coined in to sell the Kodak box camera.
Layard is probably thinking of the suburban “castle” built by the clerk Wemmick in
Dickens’ Great Expectations.
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of the cheaper suburbs, Clapham, Forest Gate, Wandsworth,
Walthamstow, Kilburn, Peckham, or Finsbury Park. That he will be
well advised in adopting the latter course there can, I think, be no
possible doubt, although he will have to add to his rent the cost of
travelling to and fro.
In the first place he will be able to house himself at a lower
rental; in the second place his surroundings will be far more healthy;
in the third place his neighbours will be of his own class, a matter
of chiefest importance to his wife and children, the greater part of
whose lives must be spent in these surroundings. There are thou-
sands of snug little suburban six-roomed houses which can be had
for a weekly rental of from s. to s. d. a week, and it is in these
that the vast majority of London Benedicts who earn from £
to £ a year are to be run to earth. Those who live in lodgings
or flats near by their work pay a higher rent for two or three small
rooms. And when we get into what we may call essentially the
clerks’ suburbs—Leytonstone, Forest Gate, Walthamstow, and such
like—it is astonishing what a difference an extra shilling or two a
week will make in the general character of our surroundings.
Our specimen couple were fortunate in being enabled to live in
a twelve-and-sixpenny house, in a very different road from the road
of ten-shilling houses, by the fact that a relative rented one of their
rooms. A parallel arrangement is of course open to any couple who
care to take in a lodger.
In the budget at the end of this article, however, I have put down
s. as the weekly rent, as a lodger’s accounts would in various ways
complicate matters. The result is that we have, with rates and taxes at
£. s. d., the sum of £. s. d. gone in housing our family, a terri-
bly large but necessary slice out of an income of £ a year. Just
compare this with the proportion of one-tenth of income generally
set aside for that purpose amongst the so-called “Upper Middles.”
Having then decided upon a home in the suburbs, the next
expenditure which has to be faced is the wage-earner’s railway fare
to and from his work. In all probability the distance will be from
four to six miles. This would mean at least sixpence a day spent in
travelling, were it not that all the railway companies issue season
The higher amount comes to £. s. a year, perhaps a little less than Pooter’s rent
for The Laurels.
Newly married men—the allusion is to the character in Much Ado About Nothing.
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tickets at reduced rates. Some of them, however, do not offer these
facilities to third-class passengers. We must, therefore, in a typical
case put down at least £ a year for a second-class “season.” A ticket
of this sort has of course the further advantage of covering the
expense of extra journeys to town for churches, picture galleries, or
Albert Hall concerts on Sundays, or for evening lectures or amuse-
ments on weekdays; and this to a man who cannot spend much on
luxuries, but who is hungry for religious or intellectual refreshment,
is a matter of no little importance.
So much for the housing problem with its immediate corollary
of a sufficiently convenient access to work. Our wage-earner had
now to face the very considerable expenditure which, in the budget
at the end of this article, comes under the three headings dealing
with Dress. And in approaching this matter we must remember that
not only has dress “a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind,”
but, so far as the individual is concerned, has very often a determin-
ing effect upon his success as a wage-earner. And in this particular
the unit of the class with which we are concerning ourselves is in a
very different position from the skilled mechanic who may be earn-
ing a like income. It is more and more recognised as an axiom in
those businesses and professions which are in immediate touch with
the client, that the employees, whether they be salesmen in shops or
clerks in banks or offices, must be habited in what may be called a
decent professional garb. The bank-clerk who is content to ignore
the fact and looks needy, or the solicitor’s clerk who is out-at-elbows,
will find that he has little chance of retaining his position. He is
clearly at a disadvantage compared with the man who works with
his hands and who only has to keep a black coat for high days and
holidays. Thus, through the action of certain economic laws, the
average “lower-middle” bread-winner is forced into an extravagance
in the matter of clothes out of all proportion to his income. He may
well exclaim with Teufelsdröckh: “Clothes which began in foolish-
est love of ornament, what have they not become!”
Nor is it his own clothes alone that will be a matter of anxiety,
for whatever may be said of false pride and suchlike, a man is most
properly not content to see his wife and children dressed in a
The quotations on Dress come, slightly misquoted, from Book One, Chapter Five of
Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus:The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three
Books (–).
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manner unbecoming their station. He recognises, too, that there is
truth in Jean Paul’s sententious saying, that “the only medicine that
does a woman more good than harm is dress.” And here we are
back again at the question whether to have a fortune in the wife or
a fortune with her. If the former, things will go well in this matter
of dress as in all others. If she is neither slovenly nor extravagant
here, she will not be slovenly or extravagant in other respects. She
must of course be her own and her children’s dressmaker, for it is a
fact that hardly needs stating that “making up” is out of all propor-
tion to the cost of material. This applies more particularly to the
children’s clothing. To take an example—the material for an excel-
lent boy’s cloth suit can easily be obtained for ten shillings. Made
up by a tailor it will cost at least a guinea. Or take a flannel blouse,
for which excellent material may be obtained for four shillings. The
charge for making it up will not cost a penny less than three shillings
and sixpence. Then, too, a clever mother will cut down and alter
her old skirts into serviceable frocks for the girls; and the father’s
discarded waistcoats and trousers will be metamorphosed by her deft
fingers into second-best suits for the boys. She will take care in
buying dress materials for herself to wait for the drapery sales at the
end of the summer and winter seasons and obtain them at half the
price paid by her less thoughtful neighbour. But the wise woman
will not be tempted by the offers of cheap made-up millinery at
these times, knowing well that they will have become hopelessly
out of the mode by the time that the season for wearing them has
come round again; and mind you, the “lower-middle” is as mind-
ful of the fashion as is her richer sister.
However, it is a parlous matter for a mere man to speak of these
things. Let him only add that he respectfully salutes the Madonna
of the knitting needles, for she will not only make less costly and
more durable socks and stockings for the family, but will be a
constant reminder to those around her that “Sloth makes all things
difficult but industry all things easy.”
This matter of hosiery brings us by a natural transition to that of
boots, an expensive and important item which will run away with
at least four per cent. of our income, and more if we try in the outset
An aphorism of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (–), a German humorist, novel-
ist and miscellaneous writer.
An invented phrase playing on the common formula for titles of paintings of the
Virgin: Madonna of the Book (Botticelli); Madonna of the Chair (Raphael), etc.
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to be unwisely economical. The far-seeing housewife will take care
that each of her family has at least two, and more wisely three, good
strong pairs in use at the same time. She will thus not only materi-
ally reduce the doctor’s bill, for the children will be able to be out
and about in all weathers and so rarely take cold, but she will also
effect a final saving in the boots themselves, which will last half as
long again if the leather is given proper time to dry. I am aware that
these matters may appear too self-evident to need stating, and that
the scoffer will cry out, “It needs no ghost to tell us that.” But let
me tell you that it is just in these matters of small moment that
reminders are wanted. It is the larger things that are too obvious to
be overlooked....
Plain living will be a matter of course on an income of £ a
year, but this does not necessarily connote cheap food, for as Ruskin
says in another connection: “What is cheapest to you now is likely to
prove dearest in the end.” Not only is good food more palatable and
more nourishing, but it is cheaper in the upshot because there is less
waste. This particularly applies to the classes with which we are deal-
ing, for their occupations are mainly sedentary and their appetites and
digestions as a consequence less active. Manual labourers will get
nourishment out of food which will not do for the brain worker.
Take, for example, half a leg of mutton at tenpence a pound
(quoting for a moment the local butcher’s price). The first day it
will be served hot with vegetables, the second day cold with salad,
the third day tastily hashed, and there will be no appreciable waste.
Compare this with a neck of mutton of the same weight costing
something less per pound. Not only will a large proportion of its
weight be made up of fat and bone, but it will make a far less
appetising and far less nourishing dish.
But there is another question for the housewife to consider
besides “What shall I buy?” and that is, “Where shall I buy it?” And
on this subject alone a treatise might be written. It will be only
possible here to point out that in this, as in everything else, the
housewife must use her best wits and not merely follow the lead of
her neighbours. I will indicate what I mean by an example or two.
To return to the mutton. The local butcher will charge about
Adapted from Horatio’s words to Hamlet: “There needs no ghost, my lord, come
from the grave/To tell us this.”
Quoted from John Ruskin, A Joy for Ever (), an expansion of The Political Economy
of Art ().
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tenpence a pound for a prime leg, but the thoughtful housekeeper
will instruct her husband to call in before leaving town at some such
market as Leadenhall, where he will get the very best “New
Zealand” at sixpence—a saving of nearly three shillings on an eight-
pound joint! The same in the matter of groceries. Here, again, the
wise woman will get her husband to do her marketing for her at
one of the great central stores where he will pay cash, and because
of the rapid sale get goods of the best quality and of the freshest at
prices well worth comparing with those of the small local dealer,
who will be only too anxious to book orders and deliver goods.
The same will apply to the matter of fish.
This is, of course, calculating on the complaisancy of the
husband. If he is too proud to carry the fish-basket or parcel of tea
home with him she must do the best she can near at hand. In some
districts she will find large local stores only second to those to be
found in the City. There is not, however, much room for false pride
on £ a year. Indeed, it is the most expensive of all luxuries to
indulge in. If you have it and can’t get rid of it, at least make an inner
pocket in your coat for it and sew that pocket up....
The budget is no imaginary one. It is the outcome of actual
experience, and has the special advantage of being applicable to all
incomes between £ and £. It would be totally irrelevant to
a man earning £ a year less, but the man with £ a year more
will find no difficulty in expanding the items, especially if his quiver
is unduly filled. As it stands, it is a budget of strict necessity, and
every extra £ available may spell a certain degree of affluence. One
thing, however, must not be forgotten, and that is that immediately
£ a year is exceeded we shall become liable to the payment of
a modified Income Tax, but this will not prove a very serious matter
even to the earner of £ a year, for the first £ in his case, as
indeed in the case of anyone with a less income than £ a year,
is totally exempt.
Probably an allusion to the vicar Mr Quiverful in Trollope’s Barchester Towers (),
who has fourteen children.
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Appendix D: Suburban Fictions in the Wake of
the Diary
. From R. Andom, Martha and I: Being Scenes from Our
Suburban Life. London: Jarrold : –
[“R. Andom” was a pseudonym of Arthur Walter Barrett
(–). Little is known of Barrett other than that he was a
prolific comic novelist. Martha and I is dedicated “to all who
dwell in suburbia.” It is an episodic novel telling of the usual
suburban afflictions: abortive home improvements, dealing with
pestering tradesmen, and so on. In this scene the narrator and his
wife Martha have recently moved to Myrtle Villa, Epping, and
after a series of disasters their servant has left them.]
[From Chapter “The day after the girl left—The economy and
beauty of doing your own housework—The dignity of domes-
tic labour, which I advocate—I illustrate the perils of the same—
My ‘day in the country’—Jane’s successor”]
The day after our Jane—our unpoetical, dirty-faced, slab-footed
Jane—left us, I had an experience. In fact, I may say, I had a succes-
sion of experiences, and I learnt a lot of things that I previously had
no idea of; and chiefly did I learn to sympathise with woman’s lot....
As I have already recorded, my feelings towards Jane were decid-
edly antagonistic, and on the morning after she left us, when I got
down to breakfast, the place seemed so bright and peaceful and
well-arranged, that I began to think we should do better without a
servant, and I said as much to Martha.
There was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in Martha’s response,
and one or two objections to my idea, which she immediately
produced, struck me as being trivial. I gathered from her remarks that
she failed to see a permanent prospect of pleasure in rising at half-
past six every morning, and that conquering a stubborn and smoky
fire and dish-washing did not appear to her to hold out any great
inducement towards adding to the joys of life. This, she admitted,
might be due to short-sightedness on her part, but as a conscientious,
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straightforward woman, she felt bound to record such impressions of
the matter as her limited vision would allow her to take.
I argued the matter out with Martha at length.
“Of course,” I admitted, “there are bound to be some vexatious
incidents; but you cannot really class domestic affairs with the seri-
ous duties of life.”
Martha said “Indeed!”
She said it in rather a nasty way that gave an irritating effect to
an otherwise innocent ejaculation. It suggested to my mind that,
had I been smaller and a less important member of the household,
Martha would really have enjoyed giving me a good slapping. As it
was, she was making an effort to content herself with an assump-
tion of amused pity for my benighted state, in which was infused a
strong element of contempt.
I hastened forward some of my ideas in support of my case.
“In the first place,” said I, “domestic jobs are so natural and easy,
that no training is necessary as in the case of every important and
serious duty which mankind is called upon to fulfil. A raw country
girl, fresh from school, can come into the house and undertake
them—eh?”
Martha repeated the remark which had interrupted me.
“I was wondering,” she said, “if a raw man, fresh from the writ-
ing-desk, could undertake as much.”
“Yes,” said I firmly, “without a shadow of doubt he could, and
regard it as a pleasant little diversion to the stern affairs of life at that.
It would be a rest and recreation to him—as good as a day in the
country.”
Martha then suggested that I take a holiday. I had long been
wanting one, she told me, and now that such a splendid opportu-
nity offered itself, it would be little short of sinful to neglect so
cheap and handy a substitute for a country outing.
That wasn’t what I meant exactly. Of course, I had been speak-
ing generally; but Martha is so practical! She reduces poesy to a
literal application, so to speak, to the needs and necessities of every-
day life.
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. From W. Pett Ridge, Outside the Radius: Stories of a London
Suburb. London: Hodder & Stoughton : –
[William Pett Ridge (–) worked for a while as a clerk, and
was the author of some thirty novels and story-collections dealing
sympathetically with life in the lower social realms, from the slums
to the lower middle classes. He first found success with Mord Em’ly
(), whose heroine (Maud Emily) is sent to a reform school,
where she runs rings round the warders. Other of his novels and
stories deal with suburban life in a light comic vein: Nine to Six-
thirty () and Love at Paddington () are typical titles.]
[From Chapter “The Crescent”]
The Crescent has been built for something like twelve years, and is
thus an historic road compared with other streets near, which are
one day blank spaces, next day a row of thirty-five-pound villas; the
day after inhabited by joyful young married people, taking the
brightest views of everything.
“The best of it is,” say the new inhabitants, artfully, “that they
don’t dare build opposite.”
But they do build opposite, and two rows of houses are up with
lanky, shivering, unrobed trees on either side, baby Virginia creep-
ers beginning to crawl up the walls, and titles over every front door,
before you have realized the fact that building has commenced.
Perhaps it is because of our age that now and again a house in The
Crescent splits down near to its bow windows and has to be
doctored and sticking-plastered with wooden supports, for crutches.
As to the rest, houses in The Crescent are alike in most respects.
Every house has its front lawn, which is not perhaps so much a
lawn as a rather large sod of turf; green iron railings with head orna-
ments (which ornaments young Mohawks from the Old Town and
the riverside loot on dark evenings, and take home, I assume, to
decorate their rooms as other men bring home the skins of big
game); a tessellated pavement leading from the gate to the front
door, a suggestion of a porch. Lace curtains drape the ground-floor
windows in summer, but fly away when in October the signal is
given by Number Nine, otherwise The Limes, leaving for a day a
Here, hooligans; originally vicious street gangs in eighteenth-century London.
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blank space, filled later by dark curtains which take duty for the
winter. In the windows occur here and there attempts in the direc-
tion of individuality, and of these I give a complete inventory:
Bamboo stands with ferns in giant egg-shells.
Webster’s Dictionary.
A stuffed cockatoo.
St. Paul’s Cathedral in white wax.
Bust of the late Mr. Spurgeon.
Photograph of Her Majesty.
The Three Graces under a glass shade.
Upstairs, glistening brass lines bisect the windows horizontally,
and backs of lounging mirrors fill the lower space between curtains.
It is perhaps in names that The Crescent shows adventure. Quite
recently, to our great annoyance, the County Council, or the Vestry,
or the House of Lords decided that we should give numbers to our
houses as well as titles, and for a time The Crescent became so excited
that I feared the worst. Mrs. Lade, who does charing, and thanks to
whom life in The Crescent is but a glass window, declared in excess
of sympathy with her various lady employers that if she were in their
place she would rather go to the Tower than permit of this inter-
ference; but the ladies of The Crescent, whilst grateful to Mrs. Lade
for her encouragement, did not see their way to take her advice, and
gave in to the order reluctantly. We still retain our titles. The early
numbers went on conventional lines, and called themselves for no
reason The Firs, The Oaks, The Elms, The Beeches; these being
exhausted, there came turmoil of the mind and the summoning up
of daring conceit. Thus you have Plas-Newydelln, which I do not
doubt to be Welsh; La Maisonette, which finds itself beaten on its own
grounds by Beau Rivage; Ben Nevis, Beethoven Villa, St. Moritz....
At about eight-twenty every week-day morning The Crescent
dispatches its grown-up male inhabitants in search of gold. The
This would have been not Noah Webster’s famous American dictionary, but the
International Dictionary of .
Charles Spurgeon (–), charismatic preacher at the Metropolitan Tabernacle;
derided by intellectuals but enormously popular among the middle classes for his
dramatic appeals to the individual conscience.
Usually spelt “charring”: household cleaning services.
The Tower of London is traditionally the jail for those accused of sedition.
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adventurers set out, each with a small brown bag, and, excepting on
rainy mornings, are silk-hatted, because there are many ways of
getting on in the City, but none apparently in which a silk hat is not
indispensable. Some of these pioneers leave home with a good-
tempered wave of the hand to a wife who is at the window urging
a baby to make gestures of adieu with its small plump hands; others
pull the door after them as far as they can and usually attempt to
open the gate the incorrect way (than which nothing aggravates so
much the crossness of a man.) They hurry across the Common to
the station muttering as men will who have been prevented by
time’s progress from finishing a debate with the opposition. I like
to see the cheerful kind....
Then it is that mothers say sternly, “Now at last I’ve a moment
to call my own,” and instantly apply themselves to a red-bound
cookery book which acts as life-belt in the matrimonial voyage, and
having to provide modest lunch for say three mouths, read carefully
through with foreheads wrinkled, the instructions which tell how
to provide a dinner for twenty-five persons at a cost of £. s. d.
Sometimes the servant is invited to assist in these deliberations, who
called upon to suggest a pleasing novelty, usually says, after a period
of thought, “How about chops, mem?” and this being rejected, says
with sudden inspiration, “Tell you what, mem,—steaks!” Tradesmen
clatter round inflicting loud single knocks on the door, with a sharp
shout of “FLIBBLE!” who is the local grocer, and of “MILLER!” who
is the leading butcher; firing also other names of lesser importance.
Several responsible-looking men with books call for the water rates
and the Queen’s taxes and other demands, relaxing sometimes when
they receive money, and going so far, in rare instances, as to give a
hopeful opinion about the weather, but refraining from any such
outburst of cordiality in cases when they are not bribed with cash.
. From Barry Pain, Eliza []. London: Cassell : –
[Barry Eric Odell Pain (–) was a journalist, editor,
humorist,and prolific novelist.Between and he published
the five small volumes of the Eliza stories, all but the last told in the
first person by Eliza’s husband, a City clerk. Pain’s unnamed narra-
tor is closely modelled after Pooter: complacent, rather pompous,
and eager to prove he is master of his house: “I managed Eliza, and
the girl, and the home generally; in fact, I showed what could be
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done by a man of small income.” In fact he is no match at all for his
high-spirited, slightly vulgar, and rather bossy wife, who invariably
proves to be right.This extract shows just how closely Pain followed
the scene of Pooter’s promotion in the Diary.]
[From “Promotion”]
At breakfast-time one or two other little circumstances occurred to
put me out. A teacup which is filled so full that it overflows into the
saucer is a perfect thorn in the flesh to me. So is bacon which is
burnt to a cinder. I hardly did more than mention it, but Eliza
seemed to be put out; she said I did nothing but find fault, and as
for the bacon, I had better go into the kitchen and find fault with
the girl, for it was the girl who had cooked it.
“On the contrary,” I said, “in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
when a servant does wrong it is her mistress who deserves the
censure.”
“Go it!” said Eliza, an expression which I do not think to be
quite ladylike. “And if a hansom-cab runs over you in Oxford
Street, you go and get the damages out of the Shah of Persia. That’s
the line to take.”
This answer exasperated me by its silliness, and I had quite made
up my mind not to say another word of any kind during breakfast.
Indeed, but for the fact that I had not quite finished my bacon and
that I hate waste, I should have got up and walked out of the room
there and then.
A little later I happened to look up, and it struck me from Eliza’s
face that she might be going to cry. I therefore made a point of
saying that the butter was better than we had been having lately, and
that it looked like being a fine day after all. Anything like weakness
is repellent to me, but still, when one sees that one’s words have
gone home one is justified in not pressing the matter further.
Still, I am prepared to own that I started for the City in but low
spirits, and with no inclination to join in the frivolous conversation
that was going on in the railway carriage. On arriving at the office I
was surprised to find that Figgis, our head clerk, was not there. He gave
me the tonic port, and was inclined to be dictatorial, but I must confess
that he was always a most punctual man. I was very much surprised.
* * *
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Our senior partner, Mr Bagshawe, came much earlier than usual—
., to be precise—and sent for me at once. He is a big, fat man;
he speaks in short sentences, and breathes hard in between them.
At the moment of entering his room I was as certain that I was
about to be sacked, as I have ever been of anything that I did not
really know. I was wrong.
He made me sit down, glared at me, and began:
“Yesterday evening we detained Mr Figgis for a few minutes. At
the end of our interview with him he left this office for ever, never
to return—never!”
I said that I was very much astonished.
“We weren’t. We’ve known there was a leakage. People knew
what we were doing—people who oughtn’t to know. He sold infor-
mation. We put on detectives. They proved it. See?”
I said that I saw.
“So you’ve got Figgis’s place for the future. See?”
At that moment you might have knocked me down with a
feather; it was so absolutely unexpected. Give me time, and I think
I can provide a few well-chosen words suitable to the occasion as
well as any man. But now I could think of nothing to say but
“Thank you.”
He went on to explain that this would mean an immediate rise
of £, and a prospective rise of a further £ at the end of a year
if my work was satisfactory. He said that I had not Figgis’s abilities,
of course, but that a very close eye had been kept on me lately, and
I had shown myself to be honest, methodical, and careful in details.
It was also believed that I should realise the importance of a respon-
sible and confidential position, and that I should keep the men
under me up to the mark.
The rest of our conversation was concerned with my new duties,
and at the close of it he handed me Figgis’s keys—my own name
and the office address had been already put on the label.
I should not be fair to myself if I did not make some reference
to Mr Bagshawe’s comparison of Figgis’s abilities and my own. I will
merely state the fact that on more than one occasion Figgis had
gained success or avoided failure from suggestions made to him by
myself. That he did not give me the credit for this with the firm is
precisely what I should have expected from a man of that charac-
ter. However, I have my opportunity now, and the firm will see....
On my way to the station I purchased a small bottle of cham-
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pagne,—it cost half a crown, but the price for this wine is always
pretty stiff. I also took back with me in my bag a tinned tongue
and some pears.
Eliza was waiting for me, and was obviously excited. She had
guessed what had happened.
“Got Figgis’s berth?” she said.
“Yes. Let’s get off the platform as soon as we can. Everybody’s
looking at us.”
We walked home very quickly, Eliza asking questions all the way,
and looking, as I noticed, quite five years younger. After what I have
said as to my purchases, I need not add that supper that night was a
perfect banquet.
We had a long discussion as to our future, and did not get to bed
until past eleven. I was at first in favour of taking a rather better
house, but Eliza thought we should do more wisely to spend the
money over making ourselves more comfortable generally. When
she came to go into it in detail, I found that on the whole hers was
the preferable course. New curtains for the drawing-room are to be
put in hand at once. The charwoman is to come regularly once a
week. We raised the girl’s wages a pound, and she went into hyster-
ics. Eliza has insisted that I am to have a first-class season ticket in
future. There is much that can be done with £.
On the whole, about the happiest evening of my life.
. From Keble Howard, The Smiths of Surbiton:A Comedy
without a Plot. London: Chapman & Hall, : –
[“Keble Howard” was the pseudonym of John Keble Bell
(–), an editor of The Sketch newspaper and a prolific
writer of featherweight situation comedies and novels. In this
novel, Ralph and Enid Smith, a newly-married couple, take a
house in Surbiton. Ralph, aged , earns £ a year as a clerk
in an insurance office, a rather implausibly high salary. In this
extract Enid persuades Ralph to give an account of his City day.
The Smiths belong to the generation after the Pooters, but the
account of a clerk’s routine day is otherwise similar, as is the stress
on the domestic idyll.]
At a shilling a bottle cheaper than even Pooter’s dubious “Jackson Frères,” this is not
champagne of quality.
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[From Chapter “The Day’s Work”]
“Arrived at the station, I nod to some of the men I know, pass by those
I don’t know, and avoid those I don’t like. Then, when the train comes
up, I get into it. It’s generally quite impossible to find a spare seat in a
first-class smoker, so most of the season-ticket holders have to choose
between travelling second-class or knocking their pipes out.”
“Which do you do?”
“Travel second-class.”
“I might have guessed that!”
“Very well, then you can guess all the rest.”
“I apologize, I apologize!” And she made good the apology with
a kiss.
“Well, where were we? Oh yes, the train starts, and, sooner or
later, we get to London. Sooner, if it’s fine and there’s nothing special
happening; later, if there’s a fog or a race-meeting on. Then I climb
into another train that takes me to the City.”
“Of course you hurry straight to your office?”
“Of course. At lunch-time—”
“Wait, wait, wait! It isn’t lunch-time yet. That’s just like a man! I
want to know exactly what you do at the office.”
“Do you think it would interest you?”
“Certainly it would interest me. Everything that you do inter-
ests me.You ought to know that.”
“All right. I go into the office, change my coat, make myself a
pair of paper cuffs, put them on—”
“Not always, dear.”
“Nearly always. Then, if the chief wants me, I see him in his
room. After that I sit down at my desk, enter things in books, turn
up references, check dates, interview callers, write some letters—”
“Who to?”
“Business letters. Then I go out to lunch.”
“I should think so, poor old boy! Where do you go?”
“Parkins’s, as a rule. After lunch—”
“What do you have?”
“Oh, a cut off the joint, some vegetables, and a bit of cheese.”
“No sweets?”
“Sometimes I have some tart or stewed fruit. It all depends.”
“Is that all you have?”
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“Isn’t that enough? What do you think I had?”
“I don’t know. Go on. What do you do after lunch?”
“Generally play a game of dominoes.”
“Who with?”
“One of the waitresses, of course.”
“Ralph!”
Mr. Smith laughed delightedly.
“I was only chaffing you, baby. I play with anybody there that I
happen to know. It’s generally the same set, you see, who lunch at
Parkins’s. Then I go back to the office, do some more of the same
sort of work as I do in the morning, catch my train, and arrive, safe
and sound, at The Pleasance. And that’s the end!”
“Doesn’t it get rather monotonous?”
Ralph shrugged his shoulders.
“It might, perhaps, if I were a restless sort of chap. Luckily for
me, I’m fairly placid.”
“Dear old fellow! There’s a”—pause—“reward for you.”
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Appendix E: Séances in the Suburbs
. From Morell Theobald, Spirit Workers in the Home Circle:
An Autobiographic Narrative of Psychic Phenomena in Family
Daily Life Extending over a Period of Twenty Years. London: T.
Fisher Unwin : –
[Morell Theobald was an affluent businessman in suburban
London in the s. A committed spiritualist, he wrote credu-
lous accounts of wonderful supernatural happenings in his own
home that were too much even for some of his fellow-believers.
Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research investi-
gated the case in – and concluded unsurprisingly that
Theobald was being duped by members of his family. It is prob-
able that the Grossmiths knew of the case; certainly the unin-
tentional humour of these accounts is irresistibly reminiscent of
the similar events at the Pooters’.]
[From Part II, Chapter VIII: “A Few Sunday Evening Séances in
.Various and Curious Phenomena in Daily Life. Direct Spirit
Writings with a Few Facsimiles”]
Sunday, March [].—On coming home from church the front
door (having been chained after former experiences) was opened for
us by Pompom, who drew the chain and opened the door while
Mary was downstairs.
At séance during the evening we had five direct writings, one
being addressed to a friend who was sitting with us and who came
in about an hour beforehand. One to Tom on school life, and telling
him not to work so hard for his exam, as it tried his health too much,
with a page of good advice, and others of great interest to us. Spirit
voices now frequently joined with us during the singing at séances.
Some of these details are taken from the chapter “At Home with the Theobald
Family” in Owen ().
An alleged mischievous child spirit.
Mary was the Theobalds’ servant, but when she was virtually adopted by the family
on account of her supposed mediumistic gifts, the other servants resigned in protest.
After that Mary and a Theobald daughter handled the domestic chores together.
Obviously the two girls were responsible for the “phenomena,” and an adequate
motive for the deception may be found in the last sentence.
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Our friend sitting with us was told by Pompom of two of his spirit
guides by name—neither being known to Mary nor, as such, to any
of us. He was so struck with it that he wrote to me two days after,
as follows:—
“What was known to me individually was actually corroborated
at the circle last Sunday. The spirit child could not have guessed that
those two spirits were present with me, S. and B., although I was
aware of the fact—it is a most conclusive test for me—Pompom had
probably never heard of such names, for you remember how she
spelt them letter by letter, and the first she could not pronounce.
Pompom was right! I think one of your guides was with me yester-
day, and filled me with the freshness of heaven, it is a most delicious
aura, cooling and strengthening.”...
We had such visits to this friend confirmed at home.
Hands were now materialized and put outside the cabinet,
frequently at the very top (out of Mary’s reach: though, I may remark,
she was at these times deeply entranced). A long list of spirit workers
in our midst and then present was given (twenty in all); and we were
told that while sitting, there was a band of spirits, dressed in white
with coloured scarfs, taking hands and forming an outside ring....
May.—Having workmen in the house for painting, etc, the
conditions for mediumship were somewhat disturbed: any new
person introduced into the house is liable to alter these conditions.
A planchette recently obtained was put on the table sometimes
during the séance, and it was put on one side during the week. On
one occasion we had a few writings, done during the week, outside
a thick pad, composed of several sheets of paper, fastened together
by string passed through two corners (top and bottom) and tied
closely together. I said jokingly, “Any one could do that!” So they
did something which would be very difficult, if not impossible, for
anyone to do. They wrote a sheet full, from top to bottom, in the
middle of the pad, to which three names are signed. The writing is
clear and distinct, but belongs to no one in the house, i.e., to no one
in the body! This mode of writing was repeated during the week
inside a private pad belonging to my daughter, and fastened up at
four corners. Space would fail me to tell of every-day occurrences
at this time, in which not only fires were frequently lit under the
eyes of my daughter, but cookery of all kinds done to the amaze-
ment and amusement of all! Much power was used for new phases
of mediumship, and Mary was frequently unfit for much work.
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. From Florence Marryat, There Is No Death. London:
Kegan, Paul, Trench & Trubner
[Florence Marryat (–) was an acting associate of George
Grossmith’s in his early days. In her later years she became a spir-
itualist, and once persuaded the sceptical actor to take part in a
séance. There Is No Death had a huge sale, and Mrs. James was
not exaggerating much when she claimed, to Pooter’s disgust,
that “all the world is going mad over the book.” Marryat’s biog-
rapher wrote: “The book has done more to convince many
people of the truth of Spiritualism than any yet written....
Whether her readers sympathise with her or not, or whether
they believe that she really saw and heard all the marvels related
in There Is No Death, the book must remain as a remarkable
record of the experiences of a woman whose friends know her
to be incapable of telling a lie and especially on a subject which
she holds to be sacred.”]
[From Chapter XV “The Mediumship of Mrs Guppy
Volckman”: ]
As soon as Mrs Guppy had rejoined us, the order was given to put
out the light and to wish for something. We unanimously asked for
flowers, it being the middle of December, and a hard frost.
Simultaneously we smelt the smell of fresh earth, and were told to
light the gas again, when the following extraordinary sight met our
view. In the middle of the sitters, still holding hands, was piled up
on the carpet an immense quantity of mould, which had been torn
up apparently with the roots that accompanied it. There were
laurustinus, and laurels, and holly, and several others, just as they had
been pulled out of the earth and thrown down in the midst of us.
Mrs. Guppy looked anything but pleased at the state of her carpet,
and begged the spirits would bring something cleaner next time ...
He mentions this dismissively in A Society Clown, –.
Black (), –.
The medium in whose house this séance was being held.
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[From Chapter XVI “The Mediumship of Florence Cook”:
–]
My readers, therefore, will find no description here of marvels
which—whether true or false—can be accounted for upon natural
grounds. Miss Florence Cook, now Mrs. Elgie Corner, is one of the
media who have been most talked of and written about. Mr. Alfred
Crookes took an immense interest in her, and published a long
account of his investigation of Spiritualism under her mediumship.
Mr. Henry Dunphy, of the Morning Post, wrote a series of papers for
London Society (of which magazine I was then the editor), describ-
ing her powers, and the proof she gave of them. The first time I ever
met Florence Cook was in his private house, when my little daugh-
ter appeared through her (vide The Story of my Spirit Child). On that
occasion, as we were sitting at supper after the séances—a party of
perhaps thirty people—the whole dinner table, with everything
upon it, rose bodily in the air to a level with our knees, and the
dishes and glasses swayed about in a perilous manner, without,
however, coming to any permanent harm. I was so much astonished
at, and interested by, what I saw that evening, that I became most
anxious to make the personal acquaintance of Miss Cook....
On another very warm evening [Katie King] sat on my lap
amongst the audience, and I felt perspiration on her arm. This
surprised me; and I asked her if, for the time being, she had the
veins, nerves, and secretions of a human being; if blood ran through
her body, and she had a heart and lungs. Her answer was, “I have
everything that Florrie has.” On that occasion also she called me
after her into the back room, and dropping her white garment,
stood perfectly naked before me. “Now,” she said, “you can see that
I am a woman.” Which indeed she was, and a most beautifully-made
woman too; and I examined her well, whilst Miss Cook lay beside
us on the floor.
Marryat inexplicably calls the eminent physicist William Crookes by this name
throughout. Hall () made a strong case that Crookes’ promotion of the pretty
Florence Cook was not entirely scientific.
The materialized spirit “Katie King” was supposedly produced by the entranced
medium Florence Cook.
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[From Chapter XVII “The Mediumship of Katie Cook”:
–]
One more example of Katie Cook’s powers and I have done. We
were assembled one evening by the invitation of Mr. Charles
Blackburn at his house, Elgin Crescent. We sat in a small breakfast
room on the basement floor, so small indeed, for the size of the party,
that as we encircled a large round table, the sitters’ backs touched the
wall on either side, thus entirely preventing any one crossing the room
whilst we were established there. The only piece of furniture of any
consequence in the room, beside the chairs and table, was a trichord
cabinet piano, belonging to Mrs. Cook (who was keeping house at
the time for Mr. Blackburn), and which she much valued.
Katie Cook sat amongst us as usual. In the middle of the séance
her control Lily, who was materialised, called out, “Keep hands fast.
Don’t let go, whatever you do!” And at the same time, without
seeing anything (for we were sitting in complete darkness), we
became conscious that something large and heavy was passing or
being carried over our heads. One of the ladies of the party became
nervous, and dropped her neighbour’s hand with a cry of alarm,
and, at the same moment, a weighty body fell with a fearful crash
on the other side of the room. Lily exclaimed, “Some one has let
go hands,” and Mrs. Cook called out, “Oh! it’s my piano.” Lights
were struck, when we found the cabinet piano had actually been
carried from its original position right over our heads to the oppo-
site side of the room, where it had fallen on the floor and been seri-
ously damaged. The two carved legs were broken off, and the
sounding board smashed in. Any one who had heard poor Mrs
Cook’s lamentations over the ruin of her favourite instrument, and
the expense it would entail to get it restored, would have felt little
doubt as to whether she had been a willing victim to this unwel-
come proof of her daughter’s physical mediumship.
Florence Cook’s sister.
A rich, elderly businessman and the dupe of the Cook family, which benefited greatly
from his patronage.
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. From Barry Pain, Eliza Getting On. London: Cassell :
–
[This extract from Pain’s Eliza stories is obviously derived from
the chapter in the Diary dealing with the séances held at The
Laurels and takes a similar mocking approach, except that the
clerk husband is far more credulous than Mr Pooter.]
[From Chapter : “Psychic Investigations”]
“These mediums do table-rapping, don’t they?” [said Eliza]
“That might of course come into it.”
“I can do that myself.”
“Really? You surprise me. Why have you never told me?”
“Might have done if I’d happened to have thought of it. Why,
it’s years and years since I’ve done it. But I could do it when I was
a girl and I expect I can do it now.”
“Then you have in you, Eliza, the beginning of a great psychic
gift. We must have a demonstration at once. This is most interest-
ing. It must be gone into.”
“I don’t mind,” said Eliza. “Wait till I’ve finished this sock.”
I asked her if she preferred any particular table. She said any old
table would do, and it would not be necessary to turn down the
lights, or to have a musical-box playing, or to concentrate the mind.
“It’s just a bit of fair heel-and-toe spiritualism,” said Eliza, which
was not at all the kind of language that the gentleman at the vege-
tarian restaurant had used in discussing the subject.
She spread her hands on the table. “Now, then,” she said, “one rap
means “Yes,” and two raps mean “No.” Are there any spirits present?”
There was a loud and decided rap under the table.Yet I could see
for myself that Eliza had not moved.
“Wonderful,” I said.
“Will they answer questions?” Eliza went on; and again came one
rap for “Yes.”
“Now,” said Eliza to me, “you ask any questions you like.”
“Have I,” I said, “any great psychical gifts unknown to myself?”
There came two sharp raps in quick succession, and then Eliza
jumped up and burst out laughing. “Why, you old silly, you needn’t
That is, commonplace or simple: Eliza draws her metaphor from darning socks.
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gape like that. It’s just a trick. I learned that when I was working at
Butterson’s before I ever met you. It was a girl called Bella Ware
taught me, and she got it from her father, who worked for
Blackley’s—one of those professional conjurors that they send out
for parties. Look here, I’ll show you how it’s done, if you like. It’s easy
enough, if you’ve got the right kind of joints for it.”
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Appendix F: Suburban Life and its Critics
. From Geoffrey Mortimer, The Blight of Respectability:An
Anatomy of the Disease and a Theory of Curative Treatment.
Watford: The University Press, : –
[“Geoffrey Mortimer” was the pseudonym of Walter Matthes
Gallichan (–), a busy journalist and miscellaneous
author who turned his pen to anything that might make a
saleable book. He wrote on subjects as various as trout fishing,
tourist guides to Spain, popular psychology and sex education.]
[From Chapter , “Villadom”]
[W]e have no option, many of us; we have to live in Villadom at some
time or another in our lives. Thackeray, Guy de Maupassant, George
Gissing, and George Moore have given us some clever studies of the
kind of folk who live in these genteel residences in the suburbs....
Villadom cares nothing for naturalness, nor liberty of opinion
and conduct; and, unconscious of the madness of its severe conven-
tionality, it deems those insane who cultivate ideas and try to live
up to them. What! Is there one man in ten in this great sheep-pen
who would like to be seen blacking his own boots or sweeping the
snow from the front of his house? No, they prefer to ill-pay some
man’s daughter to do all their irksome and dirty work. What does
Villadom read, talk of, and think upon? The fathers read the news-
papers, the mothers and daughters peruse John Halifax, and such
like literature of the Pap-boat and Pumplighter sort; and the talk
is of money, the neighbours, and the back-parlour window curtains
and carpets—all good themes enough in their season, but not the
only things in life of vast importance. The denizens of Villadom tell
you that they have their livings to earn, dinners to cook, and houses
to control; therefore there is no time for cultivating their intellects,
and developing their sense of the beautiful in nature and art. No
time! It is the old plea of the men and women who squander hours
John Halifax, Gentleman (): a morally improving novel by Dinah Mullock, whose
hero rises from nowhere to become a “gentleman” by sheer industry.
A pap-boat was a utensil for feeding baby food to infants. “Pumplighter” is obscure:
possibly an abusive term for temperance advocates.
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in tittle-tattle and loafing. Gerald Massey, a barge-man’s son, and a
fag in a factory; Elihu Burritt, a blacksmith; Thomas Edward, a
shoemaker; Walt Whitman, a compositor; Bradlaugh, a soldier,
and afterwards a clerk; James Hosken, a postman, not to mention
a hundred other hard-working men, found time to read, and think,
and improve themselves. It is the will, and not the leisure, that is lack-
ing in Villadom, the will to be something better than mere
Respectables in the eyes of society.
The foppery and frippery of Villadom are miserable outlets for
human energy. If this is the end of civilised beings, give me rather
the wildest life of primitive barbarians, for they, at least, wish to learn
higher arts of living. No past civilisation presents this picture of
Philistine apathy to the nobler interests of life.
. From H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. London: William
Heinemann, : –
[In his novel of Martian invasion and conquest, during which
London is virtually destroyed, Wells (–) puts these anti-
suburban sentiments into the mouth of the artilleryman whom
the narrator meets when all hope for humanity seems to be over.
Though the artilleryman is soon revealed to be more talk than
action in his plans for a guerrilla war against the blood-sucking
Martians, there is no doubt that Wells did hold views similar to
these at the time.]
[From Chapter , “The Man on Putney Hill”]
“All these—the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those
damn little clerks that used to live down that way—they’d be no
good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no
Massey (–) was a Chartist, poet and spiritualist: George Eliot is said to have
based her novel Felix Holt on his career.
Burritt (–) was known as the “learned blacksmith” because of his skills as a
linguist.
Edward (–) was a self-taught writer on natural history.
Walt Whitman (–), the famous American poet.
Bradlaugh (–) was a controversialist, birth-control pioneer, and MP, notorious
for his atheism.
Hosken (–) was a pioneer of steam navigation who rose to be a vice-admiral.
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proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord! what is
he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to
work—I’ve seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running
wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d
get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to
take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they would-
n’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the
back-streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because
they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would
make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the
world. Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on
Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well,
the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages,
fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week of chasing
about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be
caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder
what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.”
. From T.W.H. Crosland, The Suburbans. London: John
Long,
[Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (–) gave out visit-
ing cards which announced his occupation as “jobbing poet ...
N.B. Funerals Attended.” But verse was only one of his literary
outlets: he was a hard-bitten, combative journalist. One of his
many enemies described him as “a huge, bloated verminous
creature like a cockroach,” with a mouthful of teeth “like a
bombed graveyard.” Crosland specialised in writing pieces of
social observation that were as malicious as they were diverting.
His first two books, The Unspeakable Scot () and Lovely
Woman () are said to have sold , copies each.]
[From Chapter III, “How to Get There”: ]
Indeed, for most men who are not excessively rich, philosophy is a
snare and a delusion. There never was a philosophy yet—that is to say,
a philosophy for poor men—that did not in the long-run teach that
whatever is, is best. It is this assumption which saps away the spirit and
courage of the large mass of mankind. It is this assumption that makes
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Suburbia content, and even proud to be Suburbia. It is this assump-
tion that has induced in the bosoms of the suburbans a sublime appre-
ciation of red-brick villas, seven-guinea saddle-bag suites, ceraceous
fruit in glass shades, pampas grass, hire-system gramophones, anecdotal
oleographs, tinned soups, music in the parks, and kindred horrors.
Despite their peevishness and touchiness and want of conduct,
despite their backbitings and slanderings and petty squabblings,
despite their financial stringencies and the general narrowness of
their affairs, domestic and otherwise, it cannot be denied that the
suburbans do contrive to extract from life feelings of security,
complacency, and completeness. For the individual suburban of our
own time this is fortunate.
[From Chapter IV “The Male Suburban”: –]
You can tell the male suburban wherever you meet him. Consider
him. Look at the unscrupulous respectability of him. Regard his
well-brushed silk hat, his frock-coat with the pins in the edge of the
lapel (they are always there) and the short sleeves, the trousers that
are forever about to have a fringe on them, the cuffs with paper
protectors and a pocket-handkerchief stuffed up one of them, the
“gamp” and its valuable case, the cheap ring, the boisterous watch-
chain, the dainty side-whiskers, and the blue shaven jowl. The man’s
coats decline to sit properly on his back, because, truth to tell, he is
all back; his trousers bag at the knees, because he is largely knees; and
his boots burst at the sides, because he always buys them too small.
If it were a case of neglect or scorn of appearances, the male subur-
ban might conceivably be pardoned. But there is something in the
preposterous air of the man which convinces you at sight that, so far
from being a scorner of appearances, he is a zealous, assiduous, and
never-flagging worshipper of them. He believes himself to be the
glass of fashion and the mould of form. If he were otherwise, he
Furniture upholstered in fabric resembling that used to make camel saddlebags in the East;
popular with those who shared the “Arts and Crafts”taste for the home-made in the s.
A print imitating an oil painting. Genre paintings, which told a story with a moral
message, were popular.
To protect his lapels from fraying.
Slang for an umbrella, named after the one owned by Sairey Gamp in Dickens’s
Martin Chuzzlewit. The “valuable case” is sarcastic.
An allusion to Ophelia’s admiring description of Hamlet: “The glass of fashion and
the mould of form,/Th’observ’d of all observers.”
Diary of a Nobody end 9/16/08 10:13 AM Page 245
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thinks he might die. His tailor has guaranteed him “West End cut
and style.” Inside his twelve-and-sixpenny silk topper you may read
“Extra best quality,” and beneath, “West End finish.” The fact that
the whole contrivance might with accuracy be described as “late
property of a nobleman” does not occur to him.
. From C.F.G. Masterman, In Peril of Change: Essays Written
in Time of Tranquillity. London: T. Fisher Unwin, : –
[Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman (–) was an MP,
editor, and journalist. He was ostensibly a Liberal but his politi-
cal allegiances were complex and contradictory. Though he
believed strongly in the virtues of free enterprise, he believed also
that the gulf between rich and poor was becoming dangerous
and had to be closed by radical state intervention. Therefore he
had much in common with the Socialists of the s like H.G.
Wells and Beatrice Webb, though in these extracts his patrician
disdain for “clerkdom” and the ever-expanding London suburbs
is very obvious.]
[From “The Burden of London”]
The city is, for the most part, an endless series of replicas—similar
streets, similar people, similar occupations: crowded existence, drift-
ing through the choked and narrow ways.You journey on the tardy
trams by stages linking together conspicuous gin-palaces, the only
landmarks of successive regions: now you are in “Walworth,” now
in “Peckham,” again in “Deptford.” The varying titles are useful
but deluding. The stuff is homogenous, woven of drab buildings
and a life set in grey. Lay down an interminable labyrinth of mean
two-storied cottages. Pepper the concoction plentifully with
churches, school-buildings, and block-dwellings of an assorted vari-
ety of ugliness. Cram into this as much labouring humanity as it
will hold, and then cram in some more. Label with any name, as
Stepney or Kentish Town.You have in essence the particular ghetto
that you desire....
That is, the clothes look as though they are the used garments of some nobleman’s
servant, who has sold his late master’s property to a second-hand dealer.
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On other margins of the city the texture insensibly is trans-
formed into something quaint and strange. The lines of cottages
protrude into bow windows. Children are scooped inside instead of
discharged outside the houses. The population clothes itself in black
coats, entertains yearnings after respectability, and attends on Sunday
places of public worship. This is Clerkdom: Dulwich and Clapham
and Harringay; where pale men protest Imperialism and women are
driven by the tedium of nothingness into Extension Lectures or the
Primrose League—an uncanny and humorous region, illuminated
with perplexing ideals.... And we recognise a population destined
ever to extend. Greater London in less than thirty years is to amount
to ten millions. The main part of this increase will be woven of this
drab material. North, east, south, and west the aggregation is silently
pushing outwards like some gigantic plasmodium: spreading slimy
arms over the surrounding fields, heavily dragging after them the
ruin of its desolation.
. From C.F.G. Masterman, The Condition of England.
London: Methuen, : –
[The Condition of England is Masterman’s most important book.
It offers a political and social overview of Edwardian England,
but its patronising tone will alienate many readers today. Though
Masterman found distasteful many of the social changes he had
seen in his lifetime, he was perceptive when it came to grasping
what they portended. In this chapter Masterman analyses the
suburban way of life at a slightly later stage than the Diary, show-
ing among other things the new self-assurance of the following
generation of suburbanites: the Lupin Pooter generation, one
might say.]
[From Chapter III “The Suburbans”]
They are easily forgotten: for they do not strive or cry; and for the
most part only ask to be left alone.... They are the creations not of
the industrial, but of the commercial and business activities of
A genteel organization within the Conservative Party, founded in to promote
the ideology of Imperialism.
A thin sheet of living tissue, like a slime mould.
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London. They form an homogenous civilization—detached, self-
centred, unostentatious—covering the hills along the northern and
southern boundaries of the city, and spreading their conquests over
the quiet fields beyond. They are the peculiar product of England
and America; of the nations which have pre-eminently added
commerce, business and finance to the work of manufacture and
agriculture. It is a life of Security; a life of Sedentary occupation; a
life of Respectability; and these three qualities give the key to its
special characteristics. Its male population is engaged in all its work-
ing hours in small, crowded offices, under artificial light, doing
immense sums, adding up other men’s accounts, writing other men’s
letters. It is sucked into the City at daybreak, and scattered again as
darkness falls. It finds itself towards evening in its own territory in
the miles and miles of little red houses in little silent streets, in
number defying imagination. Each boasts its pleasant drawing-
room, its bow-window, its little front garden, its high-sounding
title—“Acacia Villa” or “Camperdown Lodge”—attesting uncon-
quered human aspiration. There are many interests beyond the
working hours: here a greenhouse filled with chrysanthemums,
there a tiny green patch with bordering flowers; a chicken-house, a
bicycle shed, a tennis lawn. The women, with their single domes-
tic servants, now so difficult to get, and so exacting when found,
find time hang rather heavy on their hands. But there are excur-
sions to shopping centres in the West End, and pious sociabilities,
and occasional theatre visits, and the interests of home. ...
Why does the picture of this suburban life, presented by however
kindly a critic, leave the reader at the end with a sense of dissatisfac-
tion? The query is aroused by examination of its actual condition. It
is excited not only by works written in revolt, such as those of Mr
Wells or George Gissing, but also by the writings of Mr Keble
Howard and Mr Shan Bullock and Mr Pett Ridge and others, who
have attempted, with greater or less success, to exhibit a kindly picture
of suburban society. At first this society appeared in literature as
depicted by cleverness, delighting in satire at the expense of bour-
geois ideals. Its historians were always in protest against its limitations,
The pseudonym of John Keble Bell (–). See Appendix D.
Shan Bullock (–), author of many novels, and himself a government clerk.
See Appendix B.
William Pett Ridge (–), novelist associated with the New Humorists. See
Appendix D.
Diary of a Nobody end 9/16/08 10:13 AM Page 248
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its complacencies, its standards of social success and intellectual attain-
ment. But in later time this somewhat crude attitude of scornful
superiority has passed. Many writers with an intimate knowledge of
suburban and English Middle Class provincial life have attempted a
sympathetic and truthful description: the sincere representation of a
civilization. But in all their efforts the general effect is of something
lacking; not so much in individual happiness, or even in bodily and
mental development, as of a certain communal poverty of interest
and ideal. The infinite boredom of the horrible women of The Year
of Jubilee—with its vision of Camberwell villadom as idle and deso-
late as Flaubert’s vision of French provincial bourgeois life in Madame
Bovary—has been replaced by a scene of busy activity, with interest
in cricket and football results, “book talk,” love-making, croquet and
tennis parties for young men and women. And yet at the end, with
the best will in the world, one closes the narrative with a feeling of
desolation; a revolt against a life which, with all its energies and satis-
factions, has somehow lost from it that zest and sparkle and inner
glow of accepted adventure which alone would seem to give human
life significance....
Listen to the conversation in the second-class carriages of a
suburban railway train, or examine the literature and journalism
specially constructed for the suburban mind: you will often find
endless chatter about the King, the Court, and the doings of a desig-
nated “Society”; personal paragraphs, descriptions of clothes, smile,
or manner; a vision of life in which the trivial and heroic things are
alike exhibited, but in which there is no adequate test or judgement,
which are the heroic, which the trivial. Liberated from the devils of
poverty, the soul is still empty, swept and garnished; waiting for other
occupants. That is the explanation of the so-called “snobbery” of
the suburbs. Here is curiosity, but curiosity about lesser occupations;
energies,—for the suburbs in their healthy human life, the swarms
of happy, physically efficient children, are a storehouse of the nation’s
energy,—but energies which tend to scatter and degrade themselves
in aimless activities; “random and meaningless sociabilities” which
neither hearten, stimulate, nor inspire. So into a feud with a neigh-
bour over a disputed garden fence, or a bustling and breezy church
or chapel’s mundane entertainment, or a criticism of manners and
In the Year of Jubilee () is a novel by George Gissing; the “horrible women” are
three French sisters, all realistic studies of types of middle-class vulgarity.
This quotation has not been traced.
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fashion, dress and deportment, will be thrown force and determi-
nation which might have been directed to effort of permanent
worth, in devotion to one of the great causes of the world.
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Works Cited and Recommended Reading
Footnotes and notes in the text give author or title, date and page
number only. Full details of all references may be found here. A date
in square brackets is the year of first publication.
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