According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge

Author:Beryl Bainbridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

To Miss Laetitia Hawkins,

2 Sion Row,

Twickenham

December 14th, 1807

Dear Miss Hawkins,

You will forgive my somewhat abbreviated answers to your many questions, but, as you rightly conjecture, I am much preoccupied with preparations for my forthcoming marriage to Admiral Keith.

My mother was indeed a great traveller; her numerous letters give proof of a singular curiosity and an aptitude for enjoyment, which virtues she retains to this day. I recall a letter she wrote from Milan stating her intention of returning to Verona and thence over the Tyrol into Germany, for the sole romantic purpose, as she put it, of washing her mouth in the Danube. Her letters to me often ended with the injunction that I must aim for happiness, movement and gaiety. Alas, I do not feel I have inherited her longing for fresh pastures, nor her capacity for happiness. It is hard to travel and be gay when one is burdened with the baggage of the past.

Of Dr Goldsmith I remember little, apart from the game of Jack and Jill and the tightness of his breeches – that and a remark attributed to him regarding Dr Johnson’s ferocity of argument – ‘If he (Johnson) misses with his pistol, he hits you with the butt end.’ This was told me by my father. Dr Johnson was distressed at Goldsmith’s death; I remember he wept at the mention of his name when we stopped at Lichfield on our way to Wales in the summer of ’74 – but then, as was the fashion of the time, Dr Johnson was not alone in finding it easy to shed tears.

On that same excursion we did indeed become acquainted with Miss Porter. She was somewhat coarse, but worthy. She referred to Dr Johnson’s mother, whom she had nursed when dying, as Grannie. I remember a fish in her kitchen and a dead bird in the garden. There was also a puff-headed mushroom under some cabbages, which burst apart when an old woman fell on it. These bleak memories are possibly to the fore on account of my mother having left behind at Streatham my infant brother, Ralph, whose head was swollen and wanting a brain. My mother loved but two of her many children, the one being Lucy, the other Harry.

To the best of my memory, the story of the drowned man, as told by Dr Johnson, was as follows. A man called Saltmarsh, by trade a brick builder, was walking one Sunday through Hyde Park in the direction of Kensington. He had with him his Newfoundland dog. Idly, he threw a stone into the Serpentine, at which the Newfoundland leapt in and re-emerged carrying a man’s hat – a gentleman’s hat. Laying it down at his master’s feet the dog dived into the water again and this time brought out a wig. A third time he returned, and now he pulled to the surface a man, or rather held the shoulder of a man gripped between his teeth. The dog was not strong enough to carry the man out of the lake, but he dragged him into the shallower water.

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