In my day Howard’s social relations with Eton were limited, at least as far as his guests were concerned, to taking us to call now and then on Mrs. Cornish or Mr. Ainger. But on one occasion we were bidden there for a public ceremony, and one I would not willingly have missed: the inauguration by King Edward VII of the beautiful hall which had been recently built in commemoration of the Etonians who fell in the Boer War. I had never seen King Edward before, and my recollection of the simple and dignified ceremony is naturally centred in his stout but stately figure. I remember being at first slightly shocked by the thick guttural intonation so reminiscent of his Hanoverian descent, and then captivated by the simplicity of his manner and the genuine emotion which his words expressed. Between the King’s disquietingly Teutonic presence, and his audience of so deeply English subjects, the mourning relatives of the dead, one felt at once the current of understanding, the sharing of private grief and national pride, which gives such symbolic value to inherited rule.
As far as I can remember I was taken only once to see Mrs. Cornish, and on this occasion, as so often happened, my incorrigible shyness turned the meeting into a damp-match affair. Mrs. Cornish, wife of the distinguished Vice-Provost of Eton, was one of the most striking figures of that highly specialized world; wherever Eton was mentioned people always said: “You don’t know Mrs. Cornish? Oh, but you MUST know her!”
Mrs,nike shox. Cornish had once been thrown with the Bourgets, of whom she kept an admiring recollection, and when she heard that I was an intimate friend of theirs she instructed Howard to bring me to tea at the Vice-Provost’s lodge. The only day on which I was free was one on which she happened to have invited a party of Eton boys, and she excused herself for this; but I thought their rosy faces and shining collars well suited to the serene and studious beauty of The Cloisters, with its long low-studded drawing-room, and the flowers and turf of the garden seen through mullioned windows. Mrs. Cornish was eager to hear all I could tell her of the Bourgets, but in spite of my desire to enjoy (and be enjoyed), the silent pink audience communicated its shyness to me. At any rate, no other topic of interest occurred to me or to my hostess when we had used up the theme of our serviceable friends; and after a while Mrs. Cornish, visibly aware of my distress, and herself affected by it, caught at the Bourgets again, like a man overboard swimming back to the spar he has abandoned. One of the Eton boys, a dark good-looking lad, who had been introduced to us as Prince Ruspoli, suddenly fixed her attention, and she swept around on him with her great dominant air.
“And you, Carlo Ruspoli — have you ever read the novels of Paul Bourget,nike shox torch ii white sliver?” she abruptly challenged him. All the boys turned pinker at the startling enquiry, and the young prince pinkest.
“I— n-no — I’m afraid I haven’t,” he stammered, disconcerted.
Mrs. Cornish’s inquiring gaze darkened to disapproval. “What, you’ve not read them? Not any of them? Then you should, Carlo Ruspoli; you should read ALL OF THEM immediately,” she surprisingly commanded — for a counsel from Mrs. Cornish was always a command. An inarticulate murmur and a deeper blush were the only response; and thereafter the conversation so excitingly begun trailed off again into commonplaces — or I fear it must have, no doubt through my fault,nike training 3.0, for I remember of it nothing else of moment.
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