Читать книгу Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words - Max Arthur, Max Arthur - Страница 179

At first, the Christmas holidays seemed to have a movable background. At the age of three, I spent them at Gopsall, where lived Lord and Lady Howe, and where I have no recollection of anything except of an enormous grown-up, fancy-dress dinner party on Christmas Eve. To this I was brought down, dressed up as an Admiral of the Fleet, impersonating my great-uncle, Sir Harry Keppel, whom I was said to resemble. My uniform was perfect in every detail, including the sword. But it was hot and smelt nasty, and my white, cotton-wool eyebrows and side-whiskers were gummed on, and were most painful to pull off. Violet was dressed as a Bacchante, and Mamma and Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest were got up as a pair of immense twins, pushed into the room in an enormous double perambulator by Papa, as a very hirsute nurse. I remember an alarming collection of Turks and Chinamen and Eastern houris and Watteau shepherdesses. I felt like Gulliver in Brobdingnag. And, the minute I sat down to dinner (as one Admiral to another), I fell asleep with my head in Lord Charles Beresford's lap.

The journey to Duntreath seemed to take nearly as long as that to Biarritz, but it had compensations. At Carlisle, we were allowed out of the train for ten precious minutes, dogged by my fear that the train might proceed without us. During this time we were allowed a change of magazine, and bottled sweets, at the bookstall. And here too, we took on a luncheon basket. ‘Fee fi fo fum’, we said, as we opened it, taking out mammoth rolls of bread containing sides of chicken. The meal tasted delicious, consisting also of the otherwise forbidden fruits of Cheddar cheese and unripe pears. And there was the fun of putting out the basket at the next station. Later, the inevitable pangs of indigestion were dulled by peppermints from Nannie's bag.