KIPPS

BY
H. G. WELLS

1905
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE. THE MAKING OF KIPPS
Chapter 1. The little Shop at New Romney
Chapter 2. The Emporium
Chapter 3. The Woodcarving Class
Chapter 4. Chitterlow
Chapter 5. ‘Swapped’
Chapter 6. The Unexpected
BOOK TWO. MR. COOTE THE CHAPERON
Chapter 1. The New Conditions
Chapter 2. The Walshinghams
Chapter 3. Engaged
Chapter 4. The Bicycle Manufacturer
Chapter 5. The Pupil Lover
Chapter 6. Discords
Chapter 7. London
Chapter 8. Kipps enters Society
Chapter 9. The Labyrinthodon
BOOK THREE. KIPPSES
Chapter 1. The Housing Problem
Chapter 2. The Callers
Chapter 3. Terminations
 1

BOOK ONE. THE MAKING OF KIPPS

 2

CHAPTER 1. THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY

Until he was nearly arrived at manhood, it did not become clear to Kipps
how it was that he had come into the care of an aunt and uncle instead of
having a father and mother like other little boys. He had vague memories of
a somewhere else, a dim room, a window looking down on white buildings,
and of a some one else who talked to forgotten people and who was his
mother. He could not recall her features very distinctly, but he remembered
with extreme definition a white dress she wore, with a pattern of little
sprigs of flowers and little bows upon it, and a girdle of straight-ribbed
white ribbon about the waist. Linked with this, he knew not how, were
clouded half-obliterated recollections of scenes in which there was weeping,
weeping in which he was inscrutably moved to join. Some terrible tall man
with a loud voice played a part in these scenes, and, either before or after
them, there were impressions of looking for interminable periods out of the
window of railway trains in the company of these two people.
He knew, though he could not remember that he had ever been told, that a
certain faded wistful face that looked at him from a plush and gilt framed
daguerreotype above the mantel of the ‘sitting-room’ was the face of his
mother. But that knowledge did not touch his dim memories with any
elucidation. In that photograph she was a girlish figure, leaning against a
photographer’s stile, and with all the self-conscious shrinking natural to that
position. She had curly hair and a face far younger and prettier than any
other mother in his experience. She swung a Dolly Varden hat by the string,
and looked with obedient, respectful eyes on the photographer-gentleman
who had commanded the pose. She was very slight and pretty. But the
phantom mother that haunted his memory so elusively was not like that,
though he could not remember how she differed.
Perhaps she was older or a little less shrinking, or, it may be, only dressed in
a different way . . . It is clear she handed him over to his aunt and uncle at
New Romney with explicit directions and a certain endowment. One gathers
she had something of that fine sense of social distinctions that subsequently
played so large a part in Kipps’ career. He was not to go to a ‘Common’
school, she provided, but to a certain seminary in Hastings, that was not
only a ‘middle-class academy’ with mortar-boards and every evidence of a
higher social tone, but also remarkably cheap. She seems to have been
 3

animated by the desire to do her best for Kipps even at a certain sacrifice of
herself, as though Kipps were in some way a superior sort of person. She
sent pocket-money to him from time to time for a year or more after
Hastings had begun for him, but her face he never saw in the days of his
lucid memory.
His aunt and uncle were already high on the hill of life when first he came to
them. They had married for comfort in the evening or, at any rate, in the late
afternoon of their days. They were at first no more then vague figures in the
background of proximate realities, such realities as familiar chairs and
tables, quiet to ride and drive, the newel of the staircase, kitchen furniture,
pieces of firewood, the boiler tap, old newspapers, the cat, the High Street,
the back-yard and the flat fields that are always so near in that little town.
He knew all the stones in the yard individually, the creeper in the corner, the
dust-bin and the mossy wall, better than many men know the faces of their
wives. There was a corner under the ironing-board which, by means of a
shawl, could be made, under propitious gods, a very decent cubby-house, a
corner that served him for several years as the indisputable hub of the
world, and the stringy places in the carpet, the knots upon the dresser, and
the several corners of the rag hearthrug his uncle had made, became
essential parts of his mental foundations. The shop he did not know so
thoroughly; it was a forbidden region to him, yet somehow he managed to
know it very well.
His aunt and uncle were, as it were, the immediate gods of this world, and,
like the gods of the world of old, occasionally descended right into it, with
arbitrary injunctions and disproportionate punishments. And, unhappily, one
rose to their Olympian level at meals. Then one had to say one’s ‘grace,’ hold
one’s spoon and fork in mad, unnatural ways called ‘properly,’ and refrain
from eating even nice, sweet things ‘too fast.’ If he ‘gobbled’ there was
trouble, and at the slightest abandon with knife, fork, and spoon his aunt
rapped his knuckles, albeit his uncle always finished up his gravy with his
knife. Sometimes, moreover, his uncle would come pipe in hand out of a
sedentary remoteness in the most disconcerting way when a little boy was
doing the most natural and attractive things, with ‘Drat and drabbit that
young rascal! What’s he a-doing of now?’ and his aunt would appear at door
or window to interrupt interesting conversation with children who were
upon unknown grounds considered ‘low’ and undesirable, and call him in.
The pleasantest little noises, however softly you did them, drumming on tea-
trays, trumpeting your fists, whistling on keys, ringing chimes with a couple
of pails, or playing tunes on the window-panes, brought down the gods in
anger. Yet what noise is fainter than your finger on the window — gently
 4

done? Sometimes, however, these gods gave him broken toys out of the
shop, and then one loved them better — for the shop they kept was, among
other things, a toy-shop. (The other things included books to read and
books to give away, and local photographs; it had some pretentions to be a
china-shop and the fascia spoke of glass; it was also a stationer’s shop with a
touch of haberdashery about it, and in the windows and odd corners were
mats and terra-cotta dishes and milking-stools for painting, and there was a
hint of picture-frames, and firescreens, and fishing-tackle, and air-guns and
bathing-suits, and tents — various things, indeed, but all cruelly attractive to
a small boy’s fingers.) Once his aunt gave him a trumpet if he would promise
faithfully not to blow it, and afterwards took it away again. And his aunt
made him say his catechism, and something she certainly called the ‘Colic for
the Day,’ every Sunday in the year.
As the two grew old as he grew up, and as his impression of them modified
insensibly from year to year, it seemed to him at last that they had always
been as they were when in his adolescent days his impression of things grew
fixed; his aunt he thought of as always lean, rather worried looking, and
prone to a certain obliquity of cap, and his uncle massive, many chinned, and
careless about his buttons. They neither visited nor received visitors. They
were always very suspicious about their neighbours and other people
generally; they feared the ‘low’ and they hated and despised the ‘stuck up’
and so they ‘kept themselves to themselves,’ according to the English ideal.
Consequently Little Kipps had no playmates, except through the sin of
disobedience. By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition. When he
was in the High Street he made a point of saying ‘Hallo!’ to passing cyclists,
and he would put his tongue out at the Quodling children whenever their
nursemaid was not looking. And he began a friendship with Sid Pornick, the
son of the haberdasher next door, that, with wide intermissions, was
destined to last his lifetime through.
Pornick, the haberdasher, I may say at once, was, according to old Kipps, a
‘blaring jackass’; he was a teetotaller, a ‘nyar, nyar, ‘imsinging Methodis’,’
and altogether distasteful and detrimental, he and his together, to true
Kipps ideals so far as little Kipps could gather them. This Pornick certainly
possessed an enormous voice, and he annoyed old Kipps greatly by calling
‘You — Arn’ and ‘Siddee’ up and down his house. He annoyed old Kipps by
private choral services on Sunday, all his family, ‘nyar, nyar’ing; and by
mushroom culture, by behaving as though the pilaster between the two
shops was common property, by making a noise of hammering in the
afternoon when old Kipps wished to be quiet after his midday meal, by
going up and down uncarpeted stairs in his boots, by having a black beard,
 5

by attempting to be friendly, and by — all that sort of thing. In fact, he

annoyed old Kipps. He annoyed him especially with his shop-door mat. Old
Kipps never beat his mat, preferring to let sleeping dust lie, and seeking a
motive for a foolish proceeding, he held that Pornick waited until there was
a suitable wind in order that the dust disengaged in that operation might
defile his neighbour’s shop. These issues would frequently develop into loud
and vehement quarrels, and on one occasion came so near to violence as to
be subsequently described by Pornick (who read his newspaper) as a
‘Disgraceful Frackass.’ On that occasion he certainly went into his own shop
with extreme celerity.
But it was through one of these quarrels that the friendship of little Kipps
and Sid Pornick came about. The two small boys found themselves one day
looking through the gate at the doctor’s goats together; they exchanged a
few contradictions about which goat could fight which, and then young
Kipps was moved to remark that Sid’s father was a ‘blaring jackess.’ Sid said
he wasn’t, and Kipps repeated that he was, and quoted his authority. Then
Sid, flying off at a tangent rather alarmingly, said he could fight young Kipps
with one hand, an assertion young Kipps with a secret want of confidence
denied. There were some vain repetitions, and the incident might have
ended there, but happily a sporting butcher boy chanced on the controversy
at this stage, and insisted upon seeing fair play.
The two small boys, under his pressing encouragement, did at last button up
their jackets, square, and fight an edifying drawn battle until it seemed good
to the butcher boy to go on with Mrs. Holyer’s mutton. Then, according to
his directions and under his experienced stage management, they shook
hands and made it up. Subsequently a little tear-stained, perhaps, but
flushed with the butcher boy’s approval (‘tough little kids’), and with cold
stones down their necks as he advised, they sat side by side on the doctor’s
gate, projecting very much behind, staunching an honourable bloodshed,
and expressing respect for one another. Each had a bloody nose and a black
eye — three days later they matched to a shade — neither had given in, and,
though this was tacit, neither wanted any more.
It was an excellent beginning. After this first encounter the attributes of
their parents and their own relative value in battle never rose between
them, and if anything was wanted to complete the warmth of their regard it
was found in a joint dislike of the eldest Quodling. The eldest Quodling
lisped, had a silly sort of straw hat and a large pink face (all covered over
with self-satisfaction), and he went to the National school with a green-
baize bag — a contemptible thing to do. They called him names and threw
 6

stones at him, and when he replied by threatenings (‘Look ’ere, young Art
Kipth, you better thtoppit!’) they were moved to attack, and put him to
fight.
And after that they broke the head of Ann Pornick’s doll, so that she went
home weeping loudly — a wicked and endearing proceeding. Sid was
whacked, but, as he explained, he wore a newspaper tactically adjusted
during the transaction, and really it didn’t hurt him at all . . . And Mrs.
Pornick put her head out of the shop door suddenly and threatened Kipps as
he passed.
2

‘Cavendish Academy,’ the school that had won the limited choice of Kipps’
vanished mother, was established in a battered private house in the part of
Hastings remotest from the sea; it was called an Academy for Young
Gentlemen, and many of the young gentlemen had parents in ‘India’ and
other unverifiable places. Others were the sons of credulous widows,
anxious, as Kipps’ mother had been, to get something a little ‘superior’ to a
board school education as cheaply as possible, and others, again, were sent
to demonstrate the dignity of their parents and guardians. And of course
there were boys from France.
Its ‘principal’ was a lean, long creature of indifferent digestion and temper,
who proclaimed himself on a gilt-lettered board in his front area, George
Garden Woodrow, F.S.Sc., letters indicating that he had paid certain guineas
for a bogus diploma. A bleak, white-washed outhouse constituted his
schoolroom, and the scholastic quality of its carved and worn desks and
forms was enhanced by a slippery blackboard and two large, yellow, out-of-
date maps — one of Africa and the other of Wiltshire — that he had picked
up cheap at a sale. There were other maps and globes in his study, where he
interviewed inquiring parents, but these his pupils never saw. And in a glass
cupboard in the passage were several shillings-worth of test-tubes and
chemicals, a tripod, a glass retort, and a damaged Bunsen burner,
manifesting that the ‘Scientific laboratory’ mentioned in the prospectus was
no idle boast.
This prospectus, which was in dignified but incorrect English, laid particular
stress on the sound preparation for a commercial career given in the
Academy, but the army, navy, and civil service were glanced at in an
ambiguous sentence. There was something vague in the prospectus about
‘examinational successes’— though Woodrow, of course, disapproved of
‘cram’— and a declaration that the curriculum included ‘art,’ ‘modern
 7

foreign languages,’ and ‘a sound technical and scientific training.’ Then came
insistence upon the ‘moral well-being’ of the pupils, and an emphatic boast
of the excellence of the religious instruction, ‘so often neglected nowadays
even in schools of wide repute.’
‘That’s bound to fetch ’em,’ Mr. Woodrow had remarked when he drew up
the prospectus. And in conjunction with the mortar-boards it certainly did.
Attention was directed to the ‘motherly’ care of Mrs. Woodrow, in reality a
small, partially effaced woman with a plaintive face and a mind above
cookery, and the prospectus concluded with a phrase intentionally vague,
‘Fare unrestricted, and our own milk and produce.’
The memories Kipps carried from that school into afterlife were set in an
atmosphere of stuffiness and mental muddle, and included countless
pictures of sitting on creaking forms, bored and idle; of blot licking and the
taste of ink; of torn books with covers that set one’s teeth on edge; of the
slimy surface of the laboured slates; of furtive marble-playing, whispered
story-telling, and of pinches, blows, and a thousand such petty annoyances
being perpetually ‘passed on’ according to the custom of the place; of
standing up in class and being hit suddenly and unreasonably for imaginary
misbehaviour; of Mr. Woodrow’s raving days, when a scarcely sane injustice
prevailed; of the cold vacuity of the hour of preparation before the bread-
and-butter breakfast; and of horrible headaches and queer, unprecedented
internal feelings, resulting from Mrs. Woodrow’s motherly rather than
intelligent cookery. There were dreary walks when the boys marched two by
two, all dressed in the mortar-board caps that so impressed the widowed
mothers; there were dismal half-holidays when the weather was wet, and
the spirit of evil temper and evil imagination had the pent boys to work its
will on; there were unfair, dishonourable fights, and miserable defeats and
victories; there was bullying and being bullied. A coward boy Kipps
particularly afflicted, until at last he was goaded to revolt by incessant
persecution, and smote Kipps to tolerance with whirling fists. There were
memories of sleeping three in a bed; of the dense, leathery smell of the
school-room when one returned thither after ten minutes’ play; of a
playground of mud and incidental sharp flints. And there was much furtive
foul language.
‘Our Sundays are our happiest days,’ was one of Woodrow’s formulae with
the inquiring parent, but Kipps was not called in evidence. They were to him
terrible gaps of inanity, no work, no play, a dreary expanse of time with the
mystery of church twice and plum-duff once in the middle. The afternoon
was given up to furtive relaxations, among which ‘Torture Chamber’ games
 8

with the less agreeable weaker boys figured. It was from the difference
between this day and common days that Kipps derived his first definite
conceptions of the nature of God and Heaven. His instinct was to evade any
closer acquaintance as long as he could.
The solid work varied, according to the prevailing mood of Mr. Woodrow.
Sometimes that was a despondent lethargy, copy-books were distributed or
sums were ‘set,’ or the great mystery of book-keeping was declared in
being, and beneath these superficial activities lengthy conversations and
interminable guessing games with marbles went on, while Mr. Woodrow sat
inanimate at his desk, heedless of school affairs, staring in front of him at
unseen things. At times his face was utterly inane; at times it had an
expression of stagnant amazement, as if he saw before his eyes with pitiless
clearness the dishonour and mischief of his being . . .
At other times the F.S.Sc., roused himself to action, and would stand up a
wavering class and teach it, goading it with bitter mockery and blows
through a chapter of Ahn’s ‘First French Course’; or, ‘France and the French,’
or a dialogue about a traveller’s washing or the parts of an opera house. His
own knowledge of French had been obtained years ago in another English
private school, and he had refreshed it by occasional weeks of loafing and
mean adventure in Dieppe. He would sometimes in their lessons hit upon
some reminiscence of these brighter days, and then he would laugh
inexplicably and repeat French phrases of an unfamiliar type.
Among the commoner exercises he prescribed the learning of long passages
of poetry from a ‘Potry Book,’ which he would delegate an elder boy to
‘hear’ and there was reading aloud from the Holy Bible, verse by verse — it
was none of your ‘godless’ schools! — so that you counted the verses up to
your turn and then gave yourself to conversation; and sometimes one read
from a cheap History of this land. They did, as Kipps reported, ‘loads of
catechism.’ Also there was much learning of geographical names and lists,
and sometimes Woodrow, in an outbreak of energy, would see these names
were actually found in a map. And once, just once, there was a chemistry
lesson — a lesson of indescribable excitement — glass things of the
strangest shape, a smell like bad eggs, something bubbling in something, a
smash and stench, and Mr. Woodrow saying quite distinctly — they
threshed it out in the dormitory afterwards —‘Damn!’ Followed by the
whole school being kept in, with extraordinary severities, for an hour . . .
But interspersed with the memories of this gray routine were certain
patches of brilliant colour, the Holidays, his holidays, which, in spite of the
feud between their seniors, he spent as much as possible with Sid Pornick,
 9

the son of the irascible black-bearded haberdasher next door. They seemed
to be memories of a different world. There were glorious days of ‘mucking
about’ along the beach, the siege of unresisting Martello towers, the
incessant interest of the mystery and motion of windmills, the windy
excursions with boarded feet over the yielding shingle to Dungeness
lighthouse — Sid Pornick and he far adrift from reality, smugglers and
armed men from the moment they left Great Stone behind them —
wanderings in the hedgeless, reedy marsh, long excursions reaching even to
Hythe, where the machine-guns of the Empire are for ever whirling and
tapping, and to Rye and Winchelsea perched like dream-cities on their little
hills. The sky in these memories was the blazing hemisphere of the marsh
heaven in summer, or its wintry tumult of sky and sea; and there were
wrecks, real wrecks, in it (near Dymchurch pitched high and blackened and
rotting were the ribs of a fishing smack, flung aside like an empty basket
when the sea had devoured its crew), and there was bathing all naked in the
sea, bathing to one’s armpits, and even trying to swim in the warm sea-
water (spite of his aunt’s prohibition) and (with her indulgence) the rare
eating of dinner from a paper parcel miles away from home. Cake and cold
ground-rice puddin’ with plums it used to be — there is no better food at all.
And for the background, in the place of Woodrow’s mean and fretting rule,
were his aunt’s spare but frequently quite amiable figure — for though she
insisted on his repeating the English Church catechism every Sunday, she
had an easy way over dinners that one wanted to take abroad — and his
uncle, corpulent and irascible, but sedentary and easily escaped. And
freedom!
The holidays were, indeed, very different from school. They were free, they
were spacious, and though he never knew it in these words — they had an
element of beauty. In his memory of his boyhood they shone like strips of
stained-glass window in a dreary waste of scholastic wall, they grew
brighter and brighter as they grew remoter. There came a time at last and
moods when he could look back to them with a feeling akin to tears.
The last of these windows was the brightest, and instead of the
kaleidoscopic effect of its predecessors its glory was a single figure. For in
the last of his holidays before the Moloch of Retail Trade got hold of him,
Kipps made his first tentative essays at the mysterious shrine of Love. Very
tentative they were, for he had become a boy of subdued passions, and
potential rather than actual affectionateness.
And the object of these first stirrings of the great desire was no other than
Ann Pornick, the head of whose doll he and Sid had broken long ago, and
 10

rejoiced over long ago, in the days when he had yet to learn the meaning of
a heart.
3

Negotiations were already on foot to make Kipps into a draper before he

discovered the lights that lurked in Ann Pornick’s eyes. School was over,
absolutely over, and it was chiefly present to him that he was never to go to
school again. It was high summer. The ‘breaking up’ of school had been
hilarious; and the excellent maxim, ‘Last Day’s Pay Day,’ had been observed
by him with a scrupulous attention to his honour. He had punched the heads
of all his enemies, wrung wrists and kicked shins; he had distributed all his
unfinished copy-books, all his school books, his collection of marbles, and his
mortar-board cap among such as loved him; and he had secretly written in
obscure pages of their books ‘remember Art Kipps.’ He had also split the
anaemic Woodrow’s cane, carved his own name deeply in several places
about the premises, and broken the scullery window. He had told everybody
so often that he was to learn to be a sea captain, that he had come almost
to believe the thing himself. And now he was home, and school was at an
end for him for evermore.
He was up before six on the day of his return, and out in the hot sunlight of
the yard. He set himself to whistle a peculiarly penetrating arrangement of
three notes, supposed by the boys of the Hastings Academy and himself and
Sid Pornick, for no earthly reason whatever, to be the original Huron war-
cry. As he did this he feigned not to be doing it, because of the hatred
between his uncle and the Pornicks, but to be examining with respect and
admiration a new wing of the dustbin recently erected by his uncle — a
pretence that would not have deceived a nestling tom-tit.
Presently there came a familiar echo from the Pornick hunting-ground. Then
Kipps began to sing, ‘Ar pars eight tra-la, in the lane be’ind the church.’ To
which an unseen person answered, ‘Ar pars eight it is, in the lane be’ind the
church.’ The ‘tra-la’ was considered to render the sentence
incomprehensible to the uninitiated. In order to conceal their operations still
more securely, both parties to this duet then gave vent to a vocalisation of
the Huron war-cry again, and after a lingering repetition of the last and
shrillest note, dispersed severally, as became boys in the enjoyment of
holidays, to light the house fires for the day.
Half-past eight found Kipps sitting on the sunlit gate at the top of the long
lane that runs towards the sea, clashing his boots in a slow rhythm, and
whistling with great violence all that he knew of an excruciatingly pathetic
 11

air. There appeared along by the churchyard wall a girl in a short frock,
brown-haired, quick-coloured, and with dark blue eyes. She had grown so
that she was a little taller than Kipps, and her colour had improved. He
scarcely remembered her, so changed was she since last holidays — if,
indeed, he had seen her during his last holidays, a thing he could not clearly
recollect.
Some vague emotion arose at the sight of her. He stopped whistling and
regarded her, oddly tongue-tied. ‘He can’t come,’ said Ann, advancing
boldly. ‘Not yet.’
‘What — not Sid?’
‘No. Father’s made him dust all his boxes again.’
‘What for?’
‘I dunno. Father’s in a stew’s morning.’
‘Oh!’
Pause. Kipps looked at her, and then was unable to look at her again. She
regarded him with interest. ‘You left school?’ she remarked, after a pause.
‘Yes.’
‘So’s Sid.’
The conversation languished. Ann put her hands on the top of the gate, and
began a stationary hopping, a sort of ineffectual gymnastic experiment.
‘Can you run?’ she said presently. ‘Run you any day,’ said Kipps. ‘Gimme a
start?’
‘Where for?’ said Kipps.
Ann considered, and indicated a tree. She walked towards it and turned.
‘Gimme to here?’ she called. Kipps, standing now and touching the gate,
smiled to express conscious superiority. ‘Farther!’ he said.
‘Here?’
‘Bit more!’ said Kipps; and then, repenting of his magnanimity, said ‘Orf!’
suddenly, and so recovered his lost concession.
They arrived abreast at the tree, flushed and out of breath. ‘Tie!’ said Ann,
throwing her hair back from her face with her hand. ‘I won,’ panted Kipps.
They disputed firmly, but quite politely. ‘Run it again then,’ said Kipps.’ I
don’t mind.’
They returned towards the gate.
 12

‘You don’t run bad,’ said Kipps, temperately, expressing sincere admiration.
‘I’m pretty good, you know.’ Ann sent her hair back by an expert toss of the
head. ‘You give me a start,’ she allowed.
They became aware of Sid approaching them. ‘You better look out, young
Ann’, said Sid, with that irreverent want of sympathy usual in brothers. ‘You
have been out nearly ‘arf-‘our. Nothing ain’t been done upstairs. Father said
he didn’t know where you was, but when he did he’d warm y’r young ear.’
Ann prepared to go.
‘How about that race?’ asked Kipps.
‘Lor!’ cried Sid, quite shocked. ‘You ain’t been racing her!’
Ann swung herself round the end to the gate with her eyes on Kipps, and
then turned away suddenly and ran off down the lane. Kipps’ eyes tried to
go after her, and came back to Sid’s.
‘I give her a lot of start,’ said Kipps apologetically. ‘It wasn’t a proper race.’
And so the subject was dismissed. But Kipps was distrait for some seconds
perhaps, and the mischief had begun in him.
4

They proceeded to the question of how two accomplished Hurons might

most satisfactorily spend the morning. Manifestly their line lay straight
along the lane to the sea. ‘There’s a new wreck,’ said Sid, ‘and my! — don’t it
stink just!’
‘Stink?’
‘Fair make you sick. It’s rotten wheat.’
They fell to talking of wrecks, and so came to ironclads and wars and such-
like manly matters. Half-way to the wreck Kipps made a casual, irrelevant
remark.
‘Your sister ain’t a bad sort,’ he said off-handedly.
‘I clout her a lot,’ said Sidney modestly; and, after a pause, the talk reverted
to more suitable topics.
The new wreck was full of rotting grain, and stank abominably, even as Sid
had said. This was excellent. They had it all to themselves. They took
possession of it in force, at Sid’s suggestion, and had speedily to defend it
against enormous numbers of imaginary ‘natives,’ who were at last driven
off by loud shouts of bang bang, and vigorous thrusting and shoving of
sticks. Then, also at Sid’s direction, they sailed with it into the midst of a
 13

combined French, German, and Russian fleet, demolishing the combination

unassisted, and having descended to the beach, clambered up the side and
cut out their own vessel in brilliant style; they underwent a magnificent
shipwreck (with vocalised thunder) and floated ‘waterlogged’— so Sid
insisted — upon an exhausted sea.
These things drove Ann out of mind for a time. But at last, as they drifted
without food or water upon a stagnant ocean, haggard-eyed, chins between
their hands, looking in vain for a sail, she came to mind again abruptly.
‘It’s rather nice ‘aving sisters,’ remarked one perishing mariner.
Sid turned round and regarded him thoughtfully.
‘Not it!’ he said.
‘No?’
‘Not a bit of it.’
He grinned confidentially. ‘Know too much,’ he said, and afterwards, ‘get
out of things.’
He resumed his gloomy scrutiny of the hopeless horizon. Presently he fell
spitting jerkily between his teeth, as he had read was the way with such ripe
manhood as chews its quid.
‘Sisters,’ he said, ‘is rot. That’s what sisters are. Girls, if you like, but sisters
— No!’
‘But ain’t sisters girls?’
‘N-eaow!’ said Sid, with unspeakable scorn; and Kipps answered, ‘Of course,
I didn’t mean — I wasn’t thinking of that.’
‘You got a girl?’ asked Sid, spitting very cleverly again.
Kipps admitted his deficiency. He felt compunction.
‘You don’t know who my girl is, Art Kipps, I bet.’
‘Who is, then?’ asked Kipps, still chiefly occupied by his own poverty. ‘Ah!’
Kipps let a moment elapse before he did his duty. ‘Tell us!’ Sid eyed him and
hesitated.
‘Secret?’ he said.
‘Secret.’
‘Dying solemn?’
‘Dying solemn!’ Kipps’ self-concentration passed into curiosity.
 14

Sid administered a terrible oath.

Sid adhered lovingly to his facts. ‘It begins with a Nem,’ he said, doling it out
parsimoniously. ‘M-A-U-D,’ he spelt, with a stern eye on Kipps. ‘C-H-A-R-T-E-
R-I-S.’
Now, Maud Charteris was a young person of eighteen and the daughter of
the vicar of St. Bavon’s — besides which, she had a bicycle — so that as her
name unfolded, the face of Kipps lengthened with respect. ‘Get out,’ he
gasped incredulously. ‘She ain’t your girl, Sid Pornick.’
‘She is!’ answered Sid stoutly.
‘What — truth?’
‘Truth.’
Kipps scrutinised his face. ‘Reely?’
Sid touched wood, whistled, and repeated a binding doggerel with great
solemnity.
Kipps still struggled with the amazing new light on the world about him.
‘D’you mean — she knows?’
Sid flushed deeply, and his aspect became stern and gloomy. He resumed his
wistful scrutiny of the sunlit sea. ‘I’d die for that girl, Art Kipps,’ he said
presently; and Kipps did not press a question he felt to be ill-timed. I’d do
anything she asked me to do,’ said Sid; ‘just anything. If she was to ask me to
chuck myself into the sea.’ He met Kipps’ eye. ‘I would,’ he said.
They were pensive for a space, and then Sid began to discourse in fragments
of Love, a theme upon which Kipps had already in a furtive way meditated a
little, but which, apart from badinage, he had never yet heard talked about
in the light of day. Of course, many and various aspects of life had come to
light in the muffled exchange of knowledge that went on under the shadow
of Woodrow, but this of Sentimental Love was not among them. Sid, who
was a boy with an imagination, having once broached this topic, opened his
heart, or, at any rate, a new chamber of his heart, to Kipps, and found no
fault with Kipps for a lack of return. He produced a thumbed novelette that
had played a part in his sentimental awakening; he proffered it to Kipps, and
confessed there was a character in it, a baronet, singularly like himself. This
baronet was a person of volcanic passions, which he concealed beneath a
demeanour of ‘icy cynicism.’ The utmost expression he permitted himself
was to grit his teeth, and, now his attention was called to it, Kipps remarked
that Sid also had a habit of gritting his teeth, and, indeed, had had all the
morning. They read for a time, and presently Sid talked again. The
 15

conception of love, Sid made evident, was compact of devotion and much
spirited fighting and a touch of mystery, but through all that cloud of talk
there floated before Kipps a face that was flushed and hair that was tossed
aside.
So they budded, sitting on the blackening old wreck in which men had lived
and died, looking out to sea, talking of that other sea upon which they must
presently embark.
They ceased to talk, and Sid read; but Kipps, falling behind with the reading,
and not wishing to admit that he read slowlier than Sid, whose education
was of the inferior Elementary School brand, lapsed into meditation.
‘I would like to ‘ave a girl,’ said Kipps.
‘I mean just to talk to, and all that —’
A floating sack distracted them at last from this obscure topic. They
abandoned the wreck, and followed the new interest a mile along the
beach, bombarding it with stones until it came to land. They had inclined to
a view that it would contain romantic mysteries, but it was simply an ill-
preserved kitten — too much even for them. And at last they were drawn
dinner-ward, and went home hungry and pensive side by side.
5

But Kipps’ imagination had been warmed by that talk of love, and in the
afternoon when he saw Ann Pornick in the High Street and said ‘Hallo!’ it
was a different ‘hallo’ from that of their previous intercourse. And when
they had passed they both looked back and caught each other doing so. Yes,
he did want a girl badly —
Afterwards he was distracted by a traction engine going through the town,
and his aunt had got some sprats for supper. When he was in bed, however,
sentiment came upon him again in a torrent quite abruptly and abundantly,
and he put his head under the pillow and whispered very softly, ‘I love Ann
Pornick,’ as a sort of supplementary devotion.
In his subsequent dreams he ran races with Ann, and they lived in a wreck
together, and always her face was flushed and her hair about her face. They
just lived in a wreck and ran races, and were very, very fond of one another.
And their favourite food was rock chocolate, dates, such as one buys off
barrows, and sprats — fried sprats —
In the morning he could hear Ann singing in the scullery next door. He
listened to her for some time, and it was clear to him that he must put things
 16

before her.
Towards dusk that evening they chanced on one another out by the gate by
the church, but though there was much in his mind, it stopped there with a
resolute shyness until he and Ann were out of breath catching cockchafers
and were sitting on that gate of theirs again. Ann sat up upon the gate, dark
against vast masses of flaming crimson and darkling purple, and her eyes
looked at Kipps from a shadowed face. There came a stillness between
them, and quite abruptly he was moved to tell his love.
‘Ann,’ he said, ‘I do like you. I wish you was my girl ‘ . . . ‘I say, Ann. Will you
be my girl?’
Ann made no pretence of astonishment. She weighed the proposal for a
moment with her eyes on Kipps. ‘If you like, Artie,’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t
mind if I am.’
‘All right,’ said Kipps, breathless with excitement, ‘then you are.’
‘All right,’ said Ann.
Something seemed to fall between them, they no longer looked openly at
one another. ‘Lor!’ cried Ann, suddenly, ‘see that one!’ and jumped down
and darted after a cockchafer that had boomed within a yard of her face.
And with that they were girl and boy again . . .
They avoided their new relationship painfully.
They did not recur to it for several days, though they met twice. Both felt
that there remained something before this great experience was to be
regarded as complete; but there was an infinite diffidence about the next
step. Kipps talked in fragments of all sorts of matters, telling particularly of
the great things that were being done to make a man and a draper of him;
how he had two new pairs of trousers and a black coat and four new shirts.
And all the while his imagination was urging him to that unknown next step,
and when he was alone and in the dark he became even an enterprising
wooer. It became evident to him that it would be nice to take Ann by the
hand; even the decorous novelettes Sid affected egged him on to that
greater nearness of intimacy.
Then a great idea came to him, in a paragraph called ‘Lover’s Tokens’ that he
read in a torn fragment of Tit–Bits. It fell in to the measure of his courage —
a divided sixpence! He secured his aunt’s best scissors, fished a sixpence out
of his jejune tin money-box, and jabbed his finger in a varied series of
attempts to get it in half. When they met again the sixpence was still
undivided. He had not intended to mention the matter to her at that stage,
 17

but it came up spontaneously. He endeavoured to explain the theory of

broken sixpences and his unexpected failure to break one.
‘But what you break it for?’ said Ann. ‘It’s no good if it’s broke.’
‘It’s a Token,’ said Kipps.
‘Like —?’
‘Oh, you keep half and I keep half, and when we’re sep’rated, you look at
your half and I look at mine — see? Then we think of each other.’
‘Oh!’ said Ann, and appeared to assimilate this information.
‘Only, I can’t get it in ‘arf nohow,’ said Kipps.
They discussed this difficulty for some time without illumination. Then Ann
had a happy thought.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, starting away from him abruptly and laying a hand
on his arm, ‘you let me ‘ave it, Artie. I know where father keeps his file.’
Kipps handed her the sixpence, and they came upon a pause. ‘I’ll easy do it,’
said Ann.
In considering the sixpence side by side, his head had come near her cheek.
Quite abruptly he was moved to take his next step into the unknown
mysteries of love. ‘Ann,’ he said, and gulped at his temerity, ‘I do love you.
Straight. I’d do anything for you, Ann. Reely — I would.’
He paused for breath. She answered nothing, but she was no doubt
enjoying herself. He came yet closer to her, his shoulder touched hers. ‘Ann,
I wish you’d —’
He stopped.
‘What?’ said Ann.
‘Ann — lemme kiss you.’
Things seemed to hang for a space; his tone, the drop of his courage made
the thing incredible as he spoke. Kipps was not of that bold order of wooers
who impose conditions.
Ann perceived that she was not prepared for kissing after all. Kissing, she
said, was silly, and when Kipps would have displayed a belated enterprise
she flung away from him. He essayed argument. He stood afar off as it were
— the better part of a yard — and said she might let him kiss her, and then
that he didn’t see what good it was for her to be his girl if he couldn’t kiss
her . . .
 18

She repeated that kissing was silly. A certain estrangement took them
homeward. They arrived in the dusky High Street not exactly together, and
not exactly apart, but straggling. They had not kissed, but all the guilt of
kissing was between them. When Kipps saw the portly contours of his uncle
standing dimly in the shop doorway his footsteps faltered, and the space
between our young couple increased. Above, the window over Pornick’s
shop was open, and Mrs. Pornick was visible, taking the air. Kipps assumed
an expression of extreme innocence. He found himself face to face with his
uncle’s advanced outposts of waistcoat buttons.
‘Where ye bin, my boy?’
‘Bin for a walk, uncle.’
‘Not along of that brat of Pornick’s?’
‘Along of who?’
‘That gell’— indicating Ann with his pipe. ‘Oh, no, uncle!’— very faintly.
‘Run in, my boy.’ Old Kipps stood aside, with an oblique glance upward, and
his nephew brushed clumsily by him and vanished out of sight of the street
into the vague obscurity of the little shop. The door closed behind old Kipps
with a nervous jangle of its bell, and he set himself to light the single oil-
lamp that illuminated his shop at nights. It was an operation requiring care
and watching, or else it flared and ‘smelt.’ Often it smelt after all. Kipps, for
some reason, found the dusky living-room with his aunt in it too populous
for his feelings, and went upstairs.
‘That brat of Pornick’s!’ It seemed to him that a horrible catastrophe had
occurred. He felt he had identified himself inextricably with his uncle and cut
himself off from her for ever by saying ‘Oh, no!’ At supper he was so visibly
depressed that his aunt asked him if he wasn’t feeling well. Under this
imminent threat of medicine he assumed an unnatural cheerfulness . . .
He lay awake for nearly half an hour that night, groaning because things had
all gone wrong, because Ann wouldn’t let him kiss her, and because his
uncle had called her a brat. It seemed to Kipps almost as though he himself
had called her a brat . . .
There came an interval during which Ann was altogether inaccessible. One,
two, three days passed and he did not see her. Sid he met several times;
they went fishing and twice they bathed, but though Sid lent and received
back two further love stories, they talked no more of love. They kept
themselves in accord, however, agreeing that the most flagrantly
sentimental story was ‘proper.’ Kipps was always wanting to speak of Ann,
 19

and never daring to do so. He saw her on Sunday evening going off to
chapel. She was more beautiful than ever in her Sunday clothes, but she
pretended not to see him because her mother was with her. But he thought
she pretended not to see him because she had given him up for ever. Brat!
— who could be expected ever to forgive that? He abandoned himself to
despair, he ceased even to haunt the places where she might be found . . .
With paralysing unexpectedness came the end.
Mr. Shalford, the draper at Folkestone to whom he was to be bound
apprentice, had expressed a wish to ‘shape the lad a bit’ before the autumn
sale. Kipps became aware that his box was being packed, and gathered the
full truth of things on the evening before his departure. He became
feverishly eager to see Ann just once more. He made silly and needless
excuses to go out into the yard, he walked three times across the street
without any excuse at all to look up at the Pornick windows. Still she was
hidden. He grew desperate. It was within half an hour of his departure that
he came on Sid.
‘Hallo!’ he said, ‘I’m orf!’
‘Business?’
‘Yes.’
Pause.
‘I say, Sid. You going ‘ome?’
‘Straight now.’
‘D’you mind —. Ask Ann about that.’
‘About what?’
‘She’ll know.’
And Sid said he would. But even that, it seemed, failed to evoke Ann.
At last the Folkestone bus rumbled up, and he ascended. His aunt stood in
the doorway to see him off. His uncle assisted with the box and
portmanteau. Only furtively could he glance up at the Pornick windows and
still it seemed Ann hardened her heart against him. ‘Get up!’ said the driver,
and the hoofs began to clatter. No — she would not come out even to see
him off. The bus was in motion, and old Kipps was going back into his shop.
Kipps stared in front of him, assuring himself that he did not care.
He heard a door slam, and instantly craned out his neck to look back. He
knew that slam so well. Behold! out of the haberdasher’s door a small,
 20

untidy figure in homely pink print had shot resolutely into the road and was
sprinting in pursuit. In a dozen seconds she was abreast of the bus. At the
sight of her Kipps’ heart began to beat very quickly, but he made no
immediate motion of recognition.
‘Artie!’ she cried breathlessly. ‘Artie! Artie! You know! I got that!’
The bus was already quickening its pace and leaving her behind again, when
Kipps realised what ‘that’ meant. He became animated, he gasped, and
gathered his courage together and mumbled an incoherent request to the
driver to ‘stop jest a jiff for sunthin’. The driver grunted, as the disparity of
their years demanded, and then the bus had pulled up and Ann was below.
She leapt up upon the wheel. Kipps looked down into Ann’s face, and it was
foreshortened and resolute. He met her eyes just for one second as their
hands touched. He was not a reader of eyes. Something passed quickly from
hand to hand, something that the driver, alert at the corner of his eye, was
not allowed to see. Kipps hadn’t a word to say, and all she said was, ‘I done
it, ‘smorning.’ It was like a blank space in which something pregnant should
have been written and wasn’t. Then she dropped down, and the bus moved
forward.
After the lapse of about ten seconds, it occurred to him to stand and wave
his new bowler hat at her over the corner of the bus top, and to shout
hoarsely, ‘Goo’-bye, Ann! Don’ forget me — while I’m away!’
She stood in the road looking after him, and presently she waved her hand.
He remained standing unstably, his bright, flushed face looking back at her
and his hair fluffing in the wind, and he waved his hat until at last the bend
of the road hid her from his eyes. Then he turned about and sat down, and
presently he began to put the half-sixpence he held clenched in his hand into
his trouser-pocket. He looked sideways at the driver to judge how much he
had seen.
Then he fell a-thinking. He resolved that, come what might, when he came
back to New Romney at Christmas, he would, by hook or by crook, kiss Ann.
Then everything would be perfect and right, and he would be perfectly
happy.
 21

CHAPTER 2. THE EMPORIUM

When Kipps left New Romney, with a small yellow tin box, a still smaller
portmanteau, a new umbrella, and a keepsake half-sixpence, to become a
draper, he was a youngster of fourteen, thin, with whimsical drakes’-tails at
the pole of his head, smallish features, and eyes that were sometimes very
light and sometimes very dark, gifts those of his birth; and by the nature of
his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and
retreating in his manners. Inexorable fate had appointed him to serve his
country in commerce, and the same national bias towards private enterprise
and leaving bad alone, which had left his general education to Mr.
Woodrow, now indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford of the
Folkestone Drapery Bazaar. Apprenticeship is still the recognised English
way to the distributing branch of the social service. If Mr. Kipps had been so
unfortunate as to have been born a German he might have been educated in
an elaborate and costly special school (‘over-educated — crammed up’—
old Kipps) to fit him for his end — such being their pedagogic way.
He might — But why make unpatriotic reflections in a novel? There was
nothing pedagogic about Mr. Shalford.
He was an irascible, energetic little man with hairy hands, for the most part
under his coat-tails, a long, shiny, bald head, a pointed aquiline nose a little
askew, and a neatly trimmed beard. He walked lightly and with a confident
jerk, and he was given to humming. He had added to exceptional business
‘push,’ bankruptcy under the old dispensation, and judicious matrimony. His
establishment was now one of the most considerable in Folkestone, and he
insisted on every inch of frontage by alternate stripes of green and yellow
down the house over the shops. His shops were numbered 3, 5, and 7 on the
street, and on his bill-heads 3 to 7. He encountered the abashed and awe-
stricken Kipps with the praises of his System and himself. He spread himself
out behind his desk with a grip on the lapel of his coat, and made Kipps a
sort of speech. ‘We expect y’r to work, y’r know, and we expect y’r to study
our interests,’ explained Mr. Shalford, in the regal and commercial plural.
‘Our System here is the best system y’r could have. I made it, and I ought to
know. I began at the very bottom of the ladder when I was fourteen, and
there isn’t a step in it I don’t know. Not a step. Mr. Booch in the desk will
give y’r the card of rules and fines. Jest wait a minute.’ He pretended to be
 22

busy with some dusty memoranda under a paper-weight, while Kipps stood
in a sort of paralysis of awe regarding his new master’s oval baldness. ‘Two
thous’n three forty-seven pounds,’ whispered Mr. Shalford audibly, feigning
forgetfulness of Kipps. Clearly a place of great transactions!
Mr. Shalford rose, and, handing Kipps a blotting-pad and an inkpot to carry,
mere symbols of servitude, for he made no use of them, emerged into a
counting-house where three clerks had been feverishly busy ever since his
door-handle had turned. ‘Booch,’ said Mr. Shalford, ‘‘ave y’r copy of the
Rules?’ and a downtrodden, shabby little old man, with a ruler in one hand
and a quill pen in his mouth, silently held out a small book with green and
yellow covers, mainly devoted, as Kipps presently discovered, to a voracious
system of Fines. He became acutely aware that his hands were full and that
everybody was staring at him. He hesitated a moment before putting the
inkpot down to free a hand.
‘Mustn’t fumble like that,’ said Mr. Shalford as Kipps pocketed the Rules.
‘Won’t do here. Come along, come along,’ cocked his coat-tails high, as a
lady might hold up her dress, and led the way into the shop.
A vast, interminable place it seemed to Kipps, with unending shining
counters and innumerable faultlessly dressed young men and, presently,
Houri-like young women staring at him. Here there was a long vista of gloves
dangling from overhead rods, there ribbons and baby linen. A short young
lady in black mittens was making out the account of a customer, and was
clearly confused in her addition by Shalford’s eagle eye.
A thick-set young man with a bald head and a round very wise face, who was
profoundly absorbed in adjusting all the empty chairs down the counter to
absolutely equal distances, awoke out of his preoccupation and answered
respectfully to a few Napoleonic and quite unnecessary remarks from his
employer. Kipps was told that this young man’s name was Mr. Buggins, and
that he was to do whatever Mr. Buggins told him to do.
They came round a corner into a new smell, which was destined to be the
smell of Kipps’ life for many years, the vague, distinctive smell of
Manchester goods. A fat man with a large nose jumped — actually jumped
— at their appearance, and began to fold a pattern of damask in front of
him exactly like an automaton that is suddenly set going. ‘Carshot, see to
this boy tomorrow,’ said the master. ‘See he don’t fumble. Smart’n ‘imup.’
‘Yussir,’ said Carshot fatly, glanced at Kipps, and resumed his pattern-folding
with extreme zeal.
‘Whatever Mr. Carshot says y’r to do, ye do,’ said Mr. Shalford, trotting
 23

onward; and Carshot blew out his face with an appearance of relief.
They crossed a large room full of the strangest things Kipps had ever seen.
Lady-like figures, surmounted by black, wooden knobs in the place of the
refined heads one might have reasonably expected stood about with a
lifelike air of conscious fashion. ‘Costume Room,’ said Shalford. Two voices
engaged in some sort of argument —‘I can assure you, Miss Mergle, you are
entirely mistaken — entirely, in supposing I should do anything so
unwomanly,’— sank abruptly, and they discovered two young ladies, taller
and fairer than any of the other young ladies, and with black trains to their
dresses, who were engaged in writing at a little table. Whatever they told
him to do Kipps gathered he was to do. He was also, he understood, to do
whatever Carshot and Booch told him to do. And there were also Buggins
and Mr. Shalford. And not to forget or fumble!
They descended into a cellar called The Warehouse, and Kipps had an optical
illusion of errand-boys fighting. Some aerial voice said ‘Teddy!’ and the
illusion passed. He looked again, and saw quite clearly that they were
packing parcels, and always would be, and that the last thing in the world
that they would or could possibly do was to fight. Yet he gathered from the
remarks Mr. Shalford addressed to their busy backs that they had been
fighting — no doubt at some past period of their lives.
Emerging in the shop again among a litter of toys and what are called ‘fancy
articles,’ Shalford withdrew a hand from beneath his coat-tails to indicate an
overhead change carrier. He entered into elaborate calculations to show
how many minutes in one year were saved thereby, and lost himself among
the figures. ‘Seven turns eight seven nine — was it? Or seven eight nine?
Now, now! Why, when I was a boy your age I c’d do a sum like that as soon
as hear it. We’ll soon get y’r into better shape than that. Make you Fishent.
Well, y’r must take my word it comes to pounds and pounds saved in the
year — pounds and pounds. System! System everywhere. Fishency.’ He
went on murmuring ‘Fishency’ and ‘System’ at intervals for some time. They
passed into a yard, and Mr. Shalford waved his hand to his three delivery
vans, all striped green and yellow —‘uniform — green, yell’r — System.’ All
over the premises were pinned absurd little cards, ‘This door locked after
7.30. By order, Edwin Shalford,’ and the like.
Mr. Shalford always wrote ‘By Order,’ though it conveyed no earthly
meaning to him. He was one of those people who collect technicalities upon
them as the Reduvius bug collects dirt. He was the sort of man who is not
only ignorant but absolutely incapable of English. When he wanted to say he
had a sixpenny-ha’penny longcloth to sell, he put it thus to startled
 24

customers: ‘Can DO you one six half, if y’like.’ He always omitted pronouns
and articles and so forth; it seemed to him the very essence of the efficiently
business-like. His only preposition was ‘as’ or the compound ‘as per.’ He
abbreviated every word he could; he would have considered himself the
laughingstock of Wood Street if he had chanced to spell socks in any way
but ‘sox.’ But, on the other hand, if he saved words here he wasted them
there; he never acknowledged an order that was not an esteemed favour,
nor sent a pattern without begging to submit it. He never stipulated for so
many months’ credit, but bought in November ‘as Jan.’ It was not only
words he abbreviated in his London communications. In paying his
wholesalers his ‘System’ admitted of a constant error in the discount of a
penny or twopence, and it ‘facilitated business,’ he alleged, to ignore odd
pence in the cheques he wrote. His ledger clerk was so struck with the
beauty of this part of the System that he started a private one on his own
account with the stampbox that never came to Shalford’s knowledge.
This admirable British merchant would glow with a particular pride of
intellect when writing his London orders.
‘Ah! do y’r think you’ll ever be able to write London orders?’ he would say
with honest pride to Kipps, waiting impatiently long after closing-time to
take these triumphs of commercial efficiency to post, and so end the
interminable day.
Kipps shook his head, anxious for Mr. Shalford to get on.
‘Now, here, f’example, I’ve written — see? ‘1 piece 1 in, cott blk elas 1/or’;
what do I mean by that or — eh? d’ye know?’
Kipps promptly hadn’t the faintest idea.
‘And then, ‘2 ea silk net as per patts herewith’; ea — eh?’
‘Dunno, sir.’
It was not Mr. Shalford’s way to explain things. ‘Dear, dear!
Pity you couldn’t get some c’mercial education at your school. ‘Stid of all this
lit’ry stuff. Well, my boy, if y’r not a bit sharper, y’ll never write London
orders, that’s pretty plain. Jest stick stamps on all those letters and mind y’r
stick ’em right way up, and try and profit a little more by the opportunities
your aunt and uncle have provided ye. Can’t say what’ll happen t’ye if ye
don’t.’ And Kipps, tired, hungry, and belated, set about stamping with
vigour and dispatch.
‘Lick the envelope,’ said Mr. Shalford, ‘lick the envelope, as though he
grudged the youngster the postage-stamp gum. ‘It’s the little things mount
 25

up,’ he would say and, indeed, that was his philosophy of life — to hustle
and save, always to hustle and save. His political creed linked Reform, which
meant nothing, with Peace and Economy, which meant a sweated
expenditure, and his conception of a satisfactory municipal life was to ‘keep
down the rates.’ Even his religion was to save his soul and to preach a similar
cheeseparing to the world.
2

The indentures that bound Kipps to Mr. Shalford were antique and complex;
they insisted on the latter gentleman’s parental privileges, they forbade
Kipps to dice and game, they made him over, body and soul, to Mr. Shalford
for seven long years, the crucial years of his life. In return there were vague
stipulations about teaching the whole art and mystery of the trade to him,
but as there was no penalty attached to negligence, Mr. Shalford being a
sound, practical, business man, considered this a mere rhetorical flourish,
and set himself assiduously to get as much out of Kipps and to put as little
into him as he could in the seven years of their intercourse.
What he put into Kipps was chiefly bread and margarine, infusions of chicory
and tea-dust, colonial meat by contract at threepence a pound, potatoes by
the sack, and watered beer. If, however, Kipps chose to buy any
supplementary material for growth, Mr. Shalford had the generosity to
place his kitchen resources at his disposal free — if the fire chanced to be
going. He was also allowed to share a bedroom with eight other young men,
and to sleep in a bed which, except in very severe weather, could be made,
with the help of his overcoat and private under-linen, not to mention
newspapers, quite sufficiently warm for any reasonable soul. In addition,
Kipps was taught the list of fines, and how to tie up parcels, to know where
goods were kept in Mr. Shalford’s systematised shop, to hold his hands
extended upon the counter, and to repeat such phrases as ‘What can I have
the pleasure —?’ ‘No trouble, I assure you,’ and the like; to block, fold, and
measure materials of all sorts, to lift his hat from his head when he passed
Mr. Shalford abroad, and to practise a servile obedience to a large number
of people. But he was not, of course, taught the ‘cost’ mark of the goods he
sold, nor anything of the method of buying such goods. Nor was his
attention directed to the unfamiliar social habits and fashions to which his
trade ministered. The use of half the goods he saw sold and was presently
to assist in selling he did not understand; materials for hangings, cretonnes,
chintzes, and the like; serviettes, and all the bright, hard whitewear of a
well-ordered house; pleasant dress materials, linings, stiffenings; they were
to him from first to last no more than things, heavy and difficult to handle in
 26

bulk, that one folded up, unfolded, cut into lengths, and saw dwindle and
pass away out into that mysterious, happy world in which the Customer
dwells. Kipps hurried from piling linen table-cloths, that were, collectively, as
heavy as lead, to eat off oil-cloth in a gas-lit dining-room underground, and
he dreamt of combing endless blankets beneath his overcoat, spare
undershirt, and three newspapers, so he had at least the chance of learning
the beginnings of philosophy.
In return for these benefits he worked so that he commonly went to bed
exhausted and footsore. His round began at half past six in the morning,
when he would descend, unwashed and shirtless, in old clothes and a scarf,
and dust boxes and yawn, and take down wrappers and clean the windows
until eight. Then in half an hour he would complete his toilet, and take an
austere breakfast of bread and margarine and what only an Imperial
Englishman wou’d admit to be coffee, after which refreshment he ascended
to the shop for the labours of the day.
Commonly these began with a mighty running to and fro with planks and
boxes and goods for Carshot, the window-dresser, who, whether he worked
well or ill, nagged persistently, by reason of a chronic indigestion, until the
window was done. Sometimes the costume window had to be dressed, and
then Kipps staggered down the whole length of the shop from the costume
room with one after another of those ladylike shapes grasped firmly but
shamefully each about her single ankle of wood. Such days as there was no
window-dressing there was a nightly carrying and lifting of blocks and bales
of goods into piles and stacks. After this there were terrible exercises, at
first almost despairfully difficult; certain sorts of goods that came in folded
had to be rolled upon rollers, and for the most part refused absolutely to be
rolled, at any rate by Kipps; certain other sorts of goods that came from the
wholesalers rolled had to be measured and folded, and folding makes young
apprentices wish they were dead. All of it, too, quite avoidable trouble, you
know, that is not avoided because of the cheapness of the genteeler sorts
of labour and the dearness of forethought in the world. And then
consignments of new goods had to be marked off and packed into paper
parcels, and Carshot packed like conjuring tricks, and Kipps packed like a boy
with tastes in some other direction — not ascertained. And always Carshot
nagged —.
He had a curious formula of appeal to his visceral economy that the
refinement of our times and the earnest entreaties of my friends oblige me
to render by an etiolated paraphrase.
‘My Heart and Liver! I never see such a boy,’ so I will present Carshot’s
 27

refrain; and even when he was within a foot or so of the customer’s face,
the disciplined ear of Kipps would still at times develop a featureless
intercalary murmur into — well, ‘My Heart and Liver!’
There came a blessed interval when Kipps was sent abroad ‘matching.’ This
consisted chiefly in supplying unexpected defects in buttons, ribbon, lining,
and so forth in the dressmaking department. He was given a written paper
of orders with patterns pinned thereto and discharged into the sunshine
and interest of the street. Then until he thought it wise to return and stand
the racket of his delay, he was a free man, clear of all reproach.
He made remarkable discoveries in topography, as, for example, that the
most convenient way from the establishment of Mr. Adolphus Davis to the
establishment of Messrs. Plummer, Roddis, and Tyrrell, two of his principal
places of call, is not, as is generally supposed, down the Sandgate road, but
up the Sandgate road, round by West Terrace and along the Leas to the lift,
watch the lift up and down twice, but not longer, because that wouldn’t do,
back along the Leas, watch the Harbour for a short time, and then round by
the churchyard, and so (hurrying) into Church Street and Rendezvous
Street. But on some exceptionally fine days the route lay through Radnor
Park to the pond where little boys sail ships and there are interesting swans.
He would return to find the shop settling down to the business of serving
customers. And now he had to stand by to furnish any help that was
necessary to the seniors who served, to carry parcels and bills about the
shop, to clear away ‘stuff’ after each engagement, to hold up curtains until
his arms ached, and, what was more difficult than all, to do nothing and not
stare disconcertingly at customers when there was nothing for him to do.
He plumbed an abyss of boredom, or stood a mere carcass with his mind far
away, fighting the enemies of the empire, or steering a dream-ship
perilously into unknown seas. To be recalled sharply to our higher civilisation
by some bustling senior’s ‘Nar then, Kipps. Look alive! Ketch ‘old. (My Heart
and Liver!)’
At half-past seven o’clock — except on late nights — a feverish activity of
straightening ‘up’ began, and when the last shutter was up outside, Kipps,
with the speed of an arrow leaving a bow, would start hanging wrappers
over the fixtures and over the piles of wares upon the counters, preparatory
to a vigorous scattering of wet sawdust and the sweeping out of the shop.
Sometimes people would stay long after the shop was closed. ‘They don’t
mind a bit at Shalford’s,’ these ladies used to say, and while they loitered it
was forbidden to touch a wrapper or take any measures to conclude the day
until the doors closed behind them.
 28

Mr. Kipps would watch these later customers from the shadow of a stack of
goods, and death and disfigurement was the least he wished for them.
Rarely much later than nine, a supper of bread and cheese and watered beer
awaited him downstairs, and, that consumed, the rest of the day was
entirely at his disposal for reading, recreation, and the improvement of his
mind . . .
The front door was locked at half-past ten, and the gas in the dormitory
extinguished at eleven.
3

On Sundays he was obliged to go to church once, and commonly he went

twice, for there was nothing else to do. He sat in the free seats at the back;
he was too shy to sing, and not always clever enough to keep his place in
the Prayer Book, and he rarely listened to the sermon. But he had developed
a sort of idea that going to church had a tendency to alleviate life. His aunt
wanted to have him confirmed, but he evaded this ceremony for some
years.
In the intervals between services he walked about Folkestone with an air of
looking for something. Folkestone was not so interesting on Sundays as on
week-days because the shops were shut; but, on the other hand, there was
a sort of confusing brilliance along the front of the Leas in the afternoon.
Sometimes the apprentice next above him would condescend to go with
him; but when the apprentice next but one above him condescended to go
with the apprentice next above him, then Kipps, being habited as yet in
ready-made clothes without tails, and unsuitable, therefore, to appear in
such company, went alone.
Sometimes he would strike out into the country — still as if looking for
something he missed — but the rope of meal-times haled him home again,
and sometimes he would invest the major portion of the weekly allowance
of a shilling that old Booch handed out to him, in a sacred concert on the
pier. He would sometimes walk up and down the Leas between twenty and
thirty times after supper, desiring much the courage to speak to some other
person in the multitude similarly employed. Almost invariably he ended his
Sunday footsore.
He never read a book, there were none for him to read, and, besides, in spite
of Mr. Woodrow’s guidance through a cheap and cheaply annotated edition
of The Tempest (English Literature), he had no taste that way; he never read
any newspapers except, occasionally, Tit–Bits or a ha’penny ‘comic.’ His
chief intellectual stimulus was an occasional argey-bargey that sprang up
 29

between Carshot and Buggins at dinner. Kipps listened as if to unparalleled

wisdom and wit, and treasured all the gems of repartee in his heart against
the time when he, too, should be a Buggins and have the chance and
courage for speech.
At times there came breaks in this routine — sale-times, darkened by extra
toil and work past midnight, but brightened by a sprat supper and some
shillings in the way of ‘premiums.’ And every year — not now and then, but
every year — Mr. Shalford, with parenthetic admiration of his own
generosity and glancing comparisons with the austerer days when he was
apprenticed, conceded Kipps no less than ten days holiday — ten whole
days every year! Many a poor soul at Portland might well envy the fortunate
Kipps. Insatiable heart of man! but how those days were grudged and
counted as they snatched themselves away from him one after another!
Once a year came stocktaking, and at intervals gusts of ‘marking off’ goods
newly arrived. Then the splendours of Mr. Shalford’s being shone with
oppressive brilliancy. ‘System!’ he would say, ‘system! Come! ‘ussel!’ and
issue sharp, confusing, contradictory orders very quickly. Carshot trotted
about, confused, perspiring, his big nose up in the air, his little eye on Mr.
Shalford, his forehead crinkled, his lips always going to the formula, ‘Oh, my
Heart and Liver!’ The smart junior and the second apprentice vied with one
another in obsequious alacrity. The smart junior aspired to Carshot’s
position and that made him almost violently subservient to Shalford. They all
snapped at Kipps. Kipps held the blotting-pad and the safety inkpot and a
box of tickets, and ran and fetched things. If he put the ink down before he
went to fetch things, Mr. Shalford usually knocked it over, and if he took it
away Mr. Shalford wanted it before he returned. ‘You make my tooth ache,
Kipps,’ Mr. Shalford would say. ‘You gimme n’ralgia. You got no more
System in you than a bad potato.’ And at the times when Kipps carried off
the inkpot Mr. Shalford would become purple in the face, and jab round
with his dry pen at imaginary inkpots and swear, and Carshot would stand
and vociferate, and the smart junior would run to the corner of the
department and vociferate, and the second apprentice would pursue Kipps,
vociferating, ‘Look Alive, Kipps! Look Alive! Ink, Man! Ink!’
A vague self-disgust that shaped itself as an intense hate of Shalford and all
his fellow-creatures filled the soul of Kipps during these periods of storm
and stress. He felt that the whole business was unjust and idiotic, but the
why and the wherefore was too much for his unfortunate brain. His mind
was a welter. One desire, the desire to dodge some, at least, of a pelting
storm of disagreeable comment, guided him through a fumbling
 30

performance of his duties. His disgust was infinite! It was not decreased by
the inflamed ankles and sore feet that form a normal incident in the
business of making an English draper, and the senior apprentice Minton, a
gaunt, sullen-faced youngster with close-cropped, wiry, black hair, a loose,
ugly mouth, and a moustache like a smudge of ink, directed his attention to
deeper aspects of the question and sealed his misery.
‘When you get too old to work they chuck you away,’ said Minton. ‘Lor! you
find old drapers everywhere — tramps, beggars, dock labourers, bus
conductors — Quod. Anywhere but in a crib.’
‘Don’t they get shops of their own?’
‘Lord! ‘Ow are they to get shops of their own? They ‘aven’t any Capital!
How’s a draper’s shopman to save up five hundred pounds even? I tell you it
can’t be done. You got to stick to Cribs until it’s over. I tell you we’re in a
blessed drain-pipe, and we’ve got to crawl along it till we die.’
The idea that fermented perpetually in the mind of Minton was to ‘hit the
little beggar slap in the eye’— the little beggar being Mr. Shalford —‘and
see how his blessed System met that.’
This threat filled Kipps with splendid anticipations whenever Shalford went
marking off on Minton’s department. He would look at Minton and look at
Shalford and decide where he would best like Shalford hit . . . But for
reasons known to himself Shalford never pished and tushed with Minton as
he did at the harmless Carshot, and this interesting experiment upon the
System was never attempted.
4

There were times when Kipps would lie awake, all others in the dormitory
asleep and snoring, and think dismally of the outlook Minton pictured. Dimly
he perceived the thing that had happened to him, how the great stupid
machine of retail trade had caught his life into its wheels, a vast, irresistible
force which he had neither strength of will nor knowledge to escape. This
was to be his life until his days should end. No adventures, no glory, no
change, no freedom. Neither — though the force of that came home to him
later — might he dream of effectual love and marriage. And there was a
terrible something called the ‘swap,’ or ‘the key of the street,’ and ‘crib
hunting,’ of which the talk was scanty but sufficient. Night after night he
would resolve to enlist, to run away to sea, to set fire to the warehouse, or
drown himself, and morning after morning he rose up and hurried
downstairs in fear of a sixpenny fine. He would compare his dismal round of
 31

servile drudgery with those windy, sunlit days at Littlestone, those windows
of happiness shining ever brighter as they receded. The little figure of Ann
seemed in all these windows now.
She, too, had happened on evil things. When Kipps went home for the first
Christmas after he was bound, that great suspended resolve of his to kiss
her flared up to hot determination, and he hurried out and whistled in the
yard. There was a silence, and then old Kipps appeared behind him.
‘It’s no good your whistling there, my boy,’ said old Kipps in a loud, clear
tone, designed to be audible over the wall. ‘They’ve cleared out all you ‘ad
any truck with. She’s gone as help to Ashford, my boy. Help! Slavey is what
we used to call ’em, but times are changed. Wonder they didn’t say lady-‘elp
while they was about it. It ‘ud be like ’em.’
And Sid —? Sid had gone too. ‘Arrand boy or somethink,’ said old Kipps. ‘To
one of these here brasted bicycle shops.’
‘Has ‘e?’ said Kipps, with a feeling that he had been gripped about the chest;
and he turned quickly and went indoors.
Old Kipps, still supposing him present, went on to further observations of an
anti-Pornick tendency . . .
When Kipps got upstairs, safe in his own bedroom, he sat down on the bed
and stared at nothing. They were caught — they were all caught. All life
took on the hue of one perpetual dismal Monday morning. The Hurons were
scattered, the wrecks and the beach had passed away from him, the sun of
those warm evenings at Littlestone had set for evermore . . .
The only pleasure left for the brief remainder of his holiday after that was to
think he was not in the shop. Even that was transient. Two more days, one
more day, half a day. When he went back there were one or two very dismal
nights indeed. He went so far as to write home some vague intimation of his
feelings about business and his prospects, quoting Minton, but Mrs. Kipps
answered him, ‘Did he want the Pornicks to say he wasn’t good enough to
be a draper?’ This dreadful possibility was, of course, conclusive in the
matter. ‘No,’ he resolved they should not say he failed at that.
He derived much help from a ‘manly’ sermon delivered in an enormous voice
by a large, fat, sun-red clergyman, just home from a colonial bishopric he
had resigned on the plea of ill-health, exhorting him that whatever his hand
found to do, he was to do with all his might, and the revision of his
catechism preparatory to his confirmation reminded him that it behoved
him to do his duty in that state of life into which it had pleased God to call
him.
 32

After a time the sorrows of Kipps grew less acute, and, save for a miracle,
the brief tragedy of his life was over. He subdued himself to his position
even as his church required of him, seeing, moreover, no way out of it.
The earliest mitigation of his lot was that his soles and ankles became
indurated to the perpetual standing. The next was an unexpected weekly
whiff of freedom that came every Thursday. Mr. Shalford, after a brave
stand for what he called ‘Innyvishal lib’ty’ and the ‘Idea of my System,’ a
stand which, he explained, he made chiefly on patriotic grounds, was at last,
under pressure of certain of his customers, compelled to fall in line with the
rest of the local Early Closing Association, and Mr. Kipps could emerge in
daylight and go where he listed for long, long hours. Moreover, Minton, the
pessimist, reached the end of his appointed time and left — to enlist in a
cavalry regiment, and go about this planet leading an insubordinate but
interesting life that ended at last in an intimate, vivid, and really, you know,
by no means painful or tragic night grapple in the Terah Valley. In a little
while Kipps cleaned windows no longer; he was serving customers (of the
less important sort) and taking goods out on approval, and presently he was
third apprentice, and his moustache was visible, and there were three
apprentices whom he might legally snub and cuff. But one was (most
dishonestly) too big to cuff, in spite of his greener years.
5

There came still other distractions, the natural distractions of adolescence,

to take his mind off the inevitable. His costume, for example, began to
interest him more; he began to realise himself as a visible object, to find an
interest in the costume-room mirrors and the eyes of the girl-apprentices.
In this he was helped by counsel and example. Pearce, his immediate senior,
was by way of being what was called a Masher, and preached his cult.
During slack times grave discussions about collars, ties, the cut of trouser-
legs, and the proper shape of a boot-toe, were held in the Manchester
department. In due course Kipps went to a tailor, and his short jacket was
replaced by a morning coat with tails. Stirred by this he purchased at his
own expense three stand-up collars to replace his former turndown ones.
They were nearly three inches high, higher than those Pearce wore, and
they made his neck quite sore, and left a red mark under his ears . . . So
equipped, he found himself fit company even for this fashionable apprentice
who had now succeeded Minton in his seniority.
Most potent help of all in the business of forgetting his cosmic disaster was
this, that so soon as he was in tail coats, the young ladies of the
 33

establishment began to discover that he was no longer a ‘horrid little boy.’

Hitherto they had tossed heads at him and kept him in his place. Now they
discovered that he was a ‘nice boy,’ which is next door at least to being a
‘feller,’ and in some ways even preferable. It is painful to record that his
fidelity to Ann failed at their first onset. I am fully sensible how entirely
better this story would be, from a sentimental point of view, if he had
remained true to that early love. Only then it would have been a different
story altogether. And at least Kipps was thus far true, that with none of
these later loves was there any of that particular quality that linked Ann’s
flushed face and warmth and the inner things of life so inseparably together.
Though they were not without emotions of various sorts.
It was one of the young ladies in the costume-room who first showed by her
manner that he was a visible object and capable of exciting interest. She
talked to him, she encouraged him to talk to her, she lent him a book she
possessed, and darned a sock for him and said she would be his elder sister.
She allowed him to escort her to church with a great air of having induced
him to go. Then she investigated his eternal welfare, overcame a certain
affectation of virile indifference to religion, and extorted a promise that he
would undergo ‘confirmation.’ This excited the other young lady in the
costumes, her natural rival, and she set herself with great charm and
subtlety to the capture of the ripening heart of Kipps. She took a more
worldly line. She went for a walk with him to the pier on Sunday afternoon,
and explained to him how a gentleman must always walk ‘outside’ a lady on
a pavement, and how all gentlemen wore, or, at least, carried gloves, and
generally the broad beginnings of the British social ideal. Afterwards the
ladies exchanged ‘words’ upon Sabbatical grounds. In this way was the toga
virilis bestowed on Kipps, and he became recognised as a suitable object for
that Platonic Eros whose blunted darts devastate even the very highest class
establishments. In this way, too, did that pervading ambition of the British
young man to be, if not a ‘gentleman,’ at least mistakably like one, take root
in his heart.
He took to these new interests with a quite natural and personal zest. He
became initiated into the mysteries of ‘flirting’ and — at a slightly later stage
and with some leading hints from Pearce, who was of a communicative
disposition in these matters of the milder forms of ‘spooning.’ Very soon he
was engaged. Before two years were out he had been engaged six times,
and was beginning to be rather a desperate fellow, so far as he could make
out. Desperate, but quite gentlemanly, be it understood, and without let or
hindrance to the fact that he was in four brief lessons ‘prepared’ by a
distant-mannered and gloomy young curate, and ‘confirmed’ a member of
 34

the Established Church.

The engagements in drapery establishments do not necessarily involve a
subsequent marriage. They are essentially more refined, less coarsely
practical, and altogether less binding than the engagements of the vulgar
rich. These young ladies do not like not to be engaged, it is so unnatural, and
Mr. Kipps was as easy to get engaged to as one could wish. There are, from
the young lady’s point of view, many conveniences in being engaged. You
get an escort for Church and walks, and so forth. It is not quite the thing to
walk abroad with a ‘feller’, much more to ‘spoon’ with him, when he is
neither one’s fiance nor an adopted brother; it is considered either a little
fast or else as savouring of the ‘walking-out’ habits of the servant girls. Now,
such is the sweetness of human charity, that the shop young lady in England
has just the same horror of doing anything that savours of the servant girl as
the lady journalist, let us say, has of anything savouring of the shop-girl, or
the really quite nice young lady has of anything savouring of any sort of girl
who has gone down into the economic battlefield to earn herself a living . . .
But the very deepest of these affairs was still among the shallow places of
love, at best it was paddling where it is decreed that men must sink or swim.
Of the deep and dangerous places, and of the huge, buoyant lift of its
waves, he tasted nothing. Affairs of clothes and vanities they were,
jealousies about a thing said, flatteries and mutual boastings, climaxes in the
answering grasp of hands, the temerarious use of Christian names,
culminations in a walk, or a near confidence, or a little pressure more or less.
Close sitting on a seat after twilight with some little fondling was, indeed,
the boldest of a lover’s adventures, the utmost limit of his enterprises in the
service of that stark Great Lady who is daughter of Uranus and the sea. The
‘young ladies’ who reigned in his heart came and went like people in an
omnibus; there was the vehicle, so to speak, upon the road, and they
entered and left it without any cataclysm of emotion. For all that, this
development of the sex interest was continuously very interesting to Kipps,
and kept him going as much as anything through all these servile years . . .
6

For a tailpiece to this chapter one may vignette a specimen minute.

It is a bright Sunday afternoon; the scene is a secluded little seat half-way
down the front of the Leas, and Kipps is four years older than when he
parted from Ann. There is a quite perceptible down upon his upper lip, and
his costume is just as tremendous a ‘mash’ as lies within his means. His collar
is so high that it scars his inaggressive jaw-bone, and his hat has a curly brim,
 35

his tie shows taste, his trousers are modestly brilliant, and his boots have
light cloth uppers and a button at the side. He jabs at the gravel before him
with a cheap cane and glances sideways at Flo Bates, the young lady from
the cash desk. She is wearing a brilliant blouse and a gaily trimmed hat.
There is an air of fashion about her that might disappear under the analysis
of a woman of the world, but which is quite sufficient to make Kipps very
proud to be distinguished as her particular ‘feller,’ and to be allowed at
temperate intervals to use her Christian name.
The conversation is light and gay in the modern style, and Flo keeps on
smiling, good temper being her special charm.
‘Ye see, you don’t mean what I mean,’ he is saying.
‘Well, what do you mean?’
‘Not what you mean!’
‘Well, tell me.’
‘Ah! That’s another story.’
Pause. They look meaningly at one another.
‘You are a one for being roundabout,’ says the lady.
‘Well, you’re not so plain, you know.’
‘Not plain?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t mean to say I’m roundabout?’
‘No. I mean to say — Though —’ Pause.
‘Well?’
‘You’re not a bit plain — you’re’ (his voice jumps up to a squeak) ‘pretty.
See?’
‘Oh, get out!’— her voice lifts also — with pleasure.
She strikes him with her glove, then glances suddenly at a ring upon her
finger. Her smile disappears momentarily. Another pause. Eyes meet and the
smile returns.
‘I wish I knew —’ says Kipps. ‘Knew —?’
‘Where you got that ring.’
She lifts the hand with the ring until her eyes just show (very prettily) over it.
‘You’d just like to know,’ she says slowly, and smiles still more brightly with
 36

the sense of successful effect.

‘I dessay I could guess.’
‘I dessay you couldn’t.’
‘Couldn’t I?’
‘No!’
‘Guess it in three.’
‘Not the name.’
‘Ah!’
‘Ah!’
‘Well, anyhow, lemme look at it.’
He looks at it. Pause. Giggles, slight struggle, and a slap on Kipps’ coat-
sleeve. A passer-by appears down the path and she hastily withdraws her
hand.
She glances at the face of the approaching man. They maintain a bashful
silence until he has passed . . .
 37

CHAPTER 3. THE WOODCARVING CLASS

Though these services to Venus Epipontia, and these studies in the art of
dress, did much to distract his thoughts and mitigate his earlier miseries, it
would be mere optimism to present Kipps as altogether happy. A vague
dissatisfaction with life drifted about him, and every now and again
enveloped him like a sea-fog. During these periods it was grayly evident that
there was something, something vital in life, lacking. For no earthly reason
that Kipps could discover, he was haunted by a suspicion that life was going
wrong, or had already gone wrong in some irrevocable way. The ripening
self-consciousness of adolescence developed this into a clearly felt
insufficiency. It was all very well to carry gloves, open doors, never say ‘Miss’
to a girl, and walk ‘outside’, but were there not other things, conceivably
even deeper things, before the complete thing was attained? For example,
certain matters of knowledge. He perceived great bogs of ignorance about
him, fumbling traps, where other people, it was alleged, real gentlemen and
ladies, for example, and the clergy, had knowledge and assurance, bogs
which it was sometimes difficult to elude. A girl arrived in the millinery
department who could, she said, speak French and German. She snubbed
certain advances, and a realisation of inferiority blistered Kipps. But he tried
to pass the thing off as a joke by saying ‘Parlez-vous Francey’ whenever he
met her, and inducing the junior apprentice to say the same.
He even made some dim, half-secret experiments towards remedying the
deficiencies he suspected. He spent five shillings on five serial numbers of a
Home Educator, and bought (and even thought of reading) a Shakespeare
and a Bacon’s ‘Advancement of Learning,’ and the poems of Herrick from a
chap who was hard up. He battled with Shakespeare all one Sunday
afternoon, and found the ‘English Literature,’ with which Mr. Woodrow had
equipped him, had vanished down some crack in his mind. He had no doubt
it was very splendid stuff, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was all
about. There was an occult meaning, he knew, in literature, and he had
forgotten it. Moreover, he discovered one day, while taunting the junior
apprentice with ignorance, that his ‘rivers of England’ had also slipped his
memory, and he laboriously restored that fabric of rote learning: Ty Wear
Tees ‘Umber —’
I suppose some such phase of discontent is a normal thing in every
 38

adolescence. The ripening mind seeks something upon which its will may
crystallise, upon which its discursive emotions, growing more abundant with
each year of life, may concentrate. For many, though not for all, it takes a
religious direction; but in those particular years the mental atmosphere of
Folkestone was exceptionally free from any revivalistic disturbance that
might have reached Kipps’ mental being. Sometimes they fall in love. I have
known this uneasiness end in different cases in a vow to read one book (not
a novel) every week, to read the Bible through in a year, to pass in the
Honours division of the London Matriculation examination, to become an
accomplished chemist, and never more to tell a lie. It led Kipps finally into
Technical Education, as we understand it in the south of England.
It was in the last year of his apprenticeship that he had pursued his
researches after that missing qualification into the Folkestone Young Men’s
Association, where Mr. Chester Coote prevailed. Mr. Chester Coote was a
young man of semi-independent means, who inherited a share in a house
agency, read Mrs. Humphry Ward, and took an interest in social work. He
was a whitish-faced young man, with a prominent nose, pale blue eyes, and
a quivering quality in his voice. He was very active upon committees; he was
very prominent and useful on all social occasions, in evidence upon
platforms, and upon all those semi-public occasions when the Great
descend. He lived with an only sister. To Kipps and his kind in the Young
Men’s Association he read a stimulating paper on ‘Self–Help.’ He said it was
the noblest of all our distinctive English characteristics, and he was very
much down upon the ‘over-educated’ Germans. At the close a young
German hairdresser made a few commendatory remarks which developed
somehow into an oration on Hanoverian politics. As he became excited he
became guttural and obscure; the meeting sniggered cheerfully at such
ridiculous English, and Kipps was so much amused that he forgot a private
project to ask this Chester Coote how he might set about a little Self–Help
on his own private account in such narrow margins of time as the System of
Mr. Shalford spared him. But afterwards in the night-time it came to him
again. It was a few months later, and after his apprenticeship was over, and
Mr. Shalford had with depreciatory observations taken him on as an
Improver at twenty pounds a year, that this question was revived by a casual
article on Technical Education in a morning paper that a commercial traveller
left behind him. It played the role of the word in season. Something in the
nature of conversion, a faint sort of concentration of purpose, really
occurred in him then. The article was written with penetrating vehemence,
and it stimulated him to the pitch of inquiring about the local Science and
Art Classes; and after he had told everybody in the shop about it, and taken
 39

the advice of all who supported his desperate resolution, he joined. At first
he attended the class in Freehand, that being the subject taught on early
closing night, and he had already made some progress in that extraordinary
routine of reproducing freehand ‘copies’, which for two generations has
passed with English people for instruction in art, when the dates of the
classes were changed. Thereby, just as the March winds were blowing, he
was precipitated into the Woodcarving class, and his mind diverted first to
this useful and broadening pursuit, and then to its teacher.
2

The class in woodcarving was an extremely select class, conducted at that

time by a young lady named Walshingham; and as this young lady was
destined by fortune to teach Kipps a great deal more than woodcarving, it
will be well if the reader gets the picture of her correctly in mind. She was
only a year or so older than he was, she had a pale, intellectual face, dark
gray eyes and black hair, which she wore over her forehead in an original
and striking way that she had adapted from a picture by Rossetti in the
South Kensington Museum. She was slender, so that without ungainliness
she had an effect of being tall, and her hands were shapely and white when
they came into contrast with hands much exercised in rolling and blocking.
She dressed in those loose and pleasant forms and those soft and tempered
shades that arose in England in the socialistic-aesthetic epoch, and remain to
this day among us as the badge of those who read Turgenev’s novels, scorn
current fiction, and think on higher planes. I think she was as beautiful as
most beautiful people, and to Kipps she was altogether beautiful. She had,
Kipps learnt, matriculated at London University, an astounding feat to his
imagination, and the masterly way in which she demonstrated how to prod
and worry honest pieces of wood into useless and unedifying patterns in
relief, extorted his utmost admiration.
At first when Kipps had learnt he was to be taught by a ‘girl’ he was inclined
to resent it, the more so as Buggins had recently been very strong on the
gross injustice of feminine employment. ‘We have to keep wives,’ said
Buggins (though, as a matter of fact, he did not keep even one), ‘and how
are we to do it with a lot of girls coming in to take the work out of our
mouths?’ Afterwards, Kipps, in conjunction with Pearce, looked at it from
another point of view, and thought it would be rather a ‘lark.’ Finally when
he saw her, and saw her teaching and coming nearer to him with an
impressive deliberation, he was breathless with awe and the quality of her
dark, slender femininity.
 40

The class consisted of two girls and a maiden lady of riper years, friends of
Miss Walshingham’s, and anxious rather to support her in an interesting
experiment than to become really expert woodcarvers; an elderly, oldish
young man with spectacles and a black beard, who never spoke to any one,
and who was evidently too shortsighted to see his work as a whole; a small
boy, who was understood to have a ‘gift’ for wood-carving; and a lodging-
house keeper, who ‘took classes’ every winter, she told Mr. Kipps, as though
they were a tonic, and ‘found they did her good.’ And occasionally Mr.
Chester Coote — refined and gentlemanly — would come into the class,
with or without papers, ostensibly on committee business, but in reality to
talk to the less attractive of the two girl-students, and sometimes a brother
of Miss Walshingham’s, a slender, dark young man with a pale face and
fluctuating resemblances to the young Napoleon, would arrive just at the
end of the class-time to see his sister home.
All these personages impressed Kipps with a sense of inferiority that in the
case of Miss Walshingham became positively abysmal. The ideas and
knowledge they appeared to have, their personal capacity and freedom,
opened a new world to his imagination. These people came and went with a
sense of absolute assurance, against an overwhelming background of
plaster casts, diagrams and tables, benches and a blackboard, a background
that seemed to him to be saturated with recondite knowledge and the
occult and jealously guarded tips and secrets that constitute Art and the
Higher Life. They went home, he imagined, to homes where the piano was
played with distinction and freedom, and books littered the tables and
foreign languages were habitually used. They had complicated meals, no
doubt. They ‘knew etiquette,’ and how to avoid all the errors for which
Kipps bought penny manuals —‘What to Avoid,’ ‘Common Errors in
Speaking,’ and the like. He knew nothing about it all, nothing whatever; he
was a creature of the outer darkness blinking in an unsuspected light.
He heard them speak easily and freely to one another of examinations, of
books and paintings, of ‘last year’s Academy’— a little contemptuously —
and once, just at the end of the class-time, Mr. Chester Coote and young
Walshingham and the two girls argued about something or other called, he
fancied, ‘Vagner,’ or ‘Vargner’— they seemed to say it both ways — and
which presently shaped itself more definitely as the name of a man who
made up music. (Carshot and Buggins weren’t in it with them.) Young
Walshingham, it appeared, said something or other that was an ‘epigram,’
and they all applauded him. Kipps, I say, felt himself a creature of outer
darkness, an inexcusable intruder in an altitudinous world. When the
epigram happened he first of all smiled to pretend he understood, and
 41

instantly suppressed the smile to show he did not listen. Then he became
extremely hot and uncomfortable, though nobody had noticed either phase.
It was clear his only chance of concealing his bottomless baseness was to
hold his tongue, and meanwhile he chipped with earnest care and abased
his soul before the very shadow of Miss Walshingham. She used to come
and direct and advise him, with, he felt, an effort to conceal the scorn she
had for him, and, indeed, it is true that at first she thought of him chiefly as
the clumsy young man with the red ears.
And as soon as he emerged from the first effect of pure and awe-stricken
humility — he was greatly helped to emerge from that condition to a
perception of human equality by the need the lodging-house keeper was
under to talk while she worked, and as she didn’t like Miss Walshingham and
her friends very much, and the young man with spectacles was deaf, she
naturally talked to Kipps — he perceived that he was in a state of adoration
for Miss Walshingham that it seemed almost a blasphemous familiarity to
speak of as being in love.
This state, you must understand, had nothing to do with ‘flirting’ or
‘spooning’ and that superficial passion that flashes from eye to eye upon the
Leas and Pier — absolutely nothing. That he knew from the first. Her rather
pallid, intellectual young face beneath those sombre clouds of hair put her in
a class apart; towards her the thought of ‘attentions’ paled and vanished. To
approach such a being, to perform sacrifices and to perish obviously for her,
seemed the limit he might aspire to, he or any man. For if his love was
abasement, at any rate it had this much of manliness that it covered all his
sex. It had not yet come to Kipps to acknowledge any man as his better in
his heart of hearts. When one does that the game is played, and one grows
old indeed.
The rest of his sentimental interests vanished altogether in this great
illumination. He meditated about her when he was blocking cretonne, her
image was before his eyes at teatime, and blotted out the more immediate
faces and made him silent and preoccupied and so careless in his bearing
that the junior apprentice, sitting beside him, mocked at and parodied his
enormous bites of bread and butter unreproved. He became conspicuously
less popular on the ‘fancy’ side, the ‘costumes’ was chilly with him and the
‘millinery’ cutting. But he did not care. An intermittent correspondence with
Flo Bates, that had gone on since she left Mr. Shalford’s desk for a position
at Tunbridge, ‘nearer home,’ and which had roused Kipps in its earlier stages
to unparalleled heights of epistolary effort, died out altogether by reason of
his neglect. He heard with scarcely a pang that, as a consequence, perhaps,
 42

of his neglect, Flo was ‘carrying on with a chap who managed a farm.’
Every Thursday he jabbed and gouged at his wood, jabbing and gouging
intersecting circles and diamond traceries, and that laboured inane which
our mad world calls ornament, and he watched Miss Walshingham furtively
whenever she turned away. The circles, in consequence, were jabbed
crooked, and his panels, losing their symmetry, became comparatively
pleasing to the untrained eye — and once he jabbed his finger. He would
cheerfully have jabbed all his fingers if he could have found some means of
using the opening to express himself of the vague emotions that possessed
him. But he shirked conversation just as earnestly as he desired it; he feared
that profound general ignorance of his might appear.
3

There came a time when she could not open one of the classroom windows.
The man with the black beard pored over his chipping heedlessly . . .
It did not take Kipps a moment to grasp his opportunity. He dropped his
gouge and stepped forward. ‘Lem me,’ he said . . .
He could not open the window either! ‘Oh, please don’t trouble,’ she said.
‘Sno trouble,’ he gasped.
Still the sash stuck. He felt his manhood was at stake. He gathered himself
together for a tremendous effort, and the pane broke with a snap, and he
thrust his hand into the void beyond.
‘There!’ said Miss Walshingham, and the glass fell ringing into the courtyard
below.
Then Kipps made to bring his hand back and felt the keen touch of the edge
of the broken glass at his wrist. He turned dolefully. ‘I’m tremendously
sorry,’ he said, in answer to the accusation in Miss Walshingham’s eyes. ‘I
didn’t think it would break like that’— as if he had expected it to break in
some quite different and entirely more satisfactory manner. The boy with
the gift for woodcarving, having stared at Kipps’ face for a moment, became
involved in a Laocoon struggle with a giggle.
‘You’ve cut your wrist,’ said one of the girl friends, standing up and pointing.
She was a pleasant-faced, greatly freckled girl, with a helpful disposition,
and she said, ‘You’ve cut your wrist’ as brightly as if she had been a trained
nurse.
Kipps looked down and saw a swift line of scarlet rush down his hand. He
perceived the other man-student regarding this with magnified eyes. ‘You
 43

have cut your wrist,’ said Miss Walshingham; and Kipps regarded his damage
with greater interest.
‘He’s cut his wrist,’ said the maiden lady to the lodging-house keeper, and
seemed in doubt what a lady should do.
‘It’s —’ she hesitated at the word ‘bleeding,’ and nodded to the lodging-
house keeper instead. ‘Dreadfully,’ said the maiden lady, and tried to look
and tried not to look at the same time.
‘Of course he’s cut his wrist,’ said the lodging-house keeper, momentarily
quite annoyed at Kipps; and the other young lady, who thought Kipps rather
common, went on quietly with her wood-cutting with an air of its being the
proper thing to do — though nobody else seemed to know it.
‘You must tie it up,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘We must tie it up,’ said the freckled girl.
‘I ‘adn’t the slightest idea that window was going to break like that,’ said
Kipps, with candour. ‘Nort the slightest.’
He glanced again at the blood on his wrist, and it seemed to him that it was
on the very point of dropping on the floor of that cultured class-room. So he
very neatly licked it off, feeling at the same time for his handkerchief. ‘Oh,
don’t!’ said Miss Walshingham as he did so, and the girl with the freckles
made a movement of horror. The giggle got the better of the boy with the
gift, and celebrated its triumph by unseemly noises, in spite of which it
seemed to Kipps at the moment that the act that had made Miss
Walshingham say, ‘Oh, don’t!’ was rather a desperate and manly treatment
of what was, after all, a creditable injury.
‘It ought to be tied up,’ said the lodging-house keeper, holding her chisel
upright in her hand. ‘It’s a bad cut to bleed like that.’
‘We must tie it up,’ said the freckled girl, and hesitated in front of Kipps.
‘Have you got a handkerchief?’ she said.
‘I dunno ‘ow I managed not to bring one,’ said Kipps. ‘I— Not ‘aving a cold, I
suppose some ‘ow I didn’t think —!’ He checked a further flow of blood.
The girl with the freckles caught Miss Walshingham’s eye and held it for a
moment. Both glanced at Kipps’ injury. The boy with the gift, who had
reappeared with a chastened expression from some noisy pursuit beneath
his desk, made the neglected motions of one who proffers shyly. Miss
Walshingham, under the spell of the freckled girl’s eye, produced a
handkerchief. The voice of the maiden lady could be heard in the
 44

background: ‘I’ve been through all the technical education Ambulance

classes twice, and I know you go so if it’s a vein, and so if it’s an artery — at
least you go so for one, and so for the other, whichever it may be — but . . . ’
‘If you will give me your hand,’ said the freckled girl; and proceeded, with
Miss Walshingham’s assistance, to bandage Kipps in a most businesslike
way. Yes, they actually bandaged Kipps. They pulled up his cuffs — happily
they were not a very frayed pair — and held his wrist and wrapped the soft
handkerchief round it, and tightened the knot together. And Miss
Walshingham’s face, the face of that almost divine Over-human came close
to the face of Kipps.
‘We’re not hurting you, are we?’ she said.
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps, as he would have said if they had been sawing his arm
off. ‘We’re not experts, you know,’ said the freckled girl.
‘I’m sure it’s a dreadful cut,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘It ain’t much, reely,’ said Kipps; ‘and you’re taking a lot of trouble. I’m sorry
I broke that window. I can’t think what I could have been doing.’
‘It isn’t so much the cut at the time, it’s the poisoning afterwards,’ came the
voice of the maiden lady. ‘Of course, I’m quite willing to pay for the
window,’ panted Kipps opulently.
‘We must make it just as tight as possible to stop the bleeding,’ said the
freckled girl.
‘I don’t think it’s much, reely,’ said Kipps. ‘I’m awful sorry I broke that
window, though.’
Tut your finger on the knot, dear,’ said the freckled girl.
‘Eh?’ said Kipps. ‘I mean —’
Both the young ladies became very intent on the knot, and Mr. Kipps was
very red and very intent upon the two young ladies.
‘Mortified, and had to be sawn off,’ said the maiden lady.
‘Sawn off,’ said the lodging-house keeper.
‘Sawn right off,’ said the maiden lady, and jabbed at her mangled design.
‘There,’ said the freckled girl, ‘I think that ought to do. You’re sure it’s not
too tight?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps.
He met Miss Walshingham’s eyes and smiled to show how little he cared for
 45

wounds and pain. ‘It’s only a little cut,’ he added.

The maiden lady appeared as an addition to their group. ‘You should have
washed the wound, dear,’ she said. ‘I was just telling Miss Collis —’ She
peered through her glasses at the bandage. ‘That doesn’t look quite right,’
she remarked critically. ‘You should have taken the ambulance classes. But I
suppose it will have to do. Are you hurting?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Kipps; and smiled at them all with the air of a brave soldier in
hospital. ‘I’m sure it must hurt,’ said Miss Walshingham.
‘Anyhow, you’re a very good patient,’ said the girl with the freckles.
Mr. Kipps became bright pink. ‘I’m only sorry I broke the window — that’s
all,’ he said. ‘But who would have thought it was going to break like that?’
Pause.
‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to go on carving to-night,’ said Miss
Walshingham. ‘I’ll try,’ said Kipps. ‘It reely doesn’t hurt — not anything to
matter.’
Presently Miss Walshingham came to him as he carved heroically with his
hand bandaged in her handkerchief. There was a touch of novel interest in
her eyes. ‘I’m afraid you’re not getting on very fast,’ she said.
The freckled girl looked up and regarded Miss Walshingham.
‘I’m doing a little, anyhow,’ said Kipps. ‘I don’t want to waste any time. A
feller like me hasn’t much time to spare.’
It struck the girls that there was a quality of modest disavowal about that
‘feller like me.’ It gave them a light into this obscure person, and Miss
Walshingham ventured to commend his work as ‘promising’ and to ask
whether he meant to follow it up. Kipps didn’t ‘altogether know’—‘things
depended on so much,’ but if he was in Folkestone next winter he certainly
should. It did not occur to Miss Walshingham at the time to ask why his
progress in art depended upon his presence in Folkestone. There were some
more questions and answers — they continued to talk to him for a little time
even when Mr. Chester Coote had come into the room — and when at last
the conversation had died out, it dawned upon Kipps just how much his cut
wrist had done for him . . .
He went to sleep that night revising that conversation for the twentieth
time, treasuring this and expanding that, and inserting things he might have
said to Miss Walshingham — things he might still say about himself — in
relation, more or less explicit, to her. He wasn’t quite sure if he wouldn’t like
 46

his arm to mortify a bit, which would make him interesting, or to heal up
absolutely, which would show the exceptional purity of his blood . . .
4

The affair of the broken window happened late in April, and the class came
to an end in May. In that interval there were several small incidents and
great developments of emotion. I have done Kipps no justice if I have made
it seem that his face was unsightly. It was, as the freckled girl pointed out to
Helen Walshingham, an ‘interesting’ face, and that aspect of him which
presented chiefly erratic hair and glowing ears ceased to prevail.
They talked him over, and the freckled girl discovered there was something
‘wistful’ in his manner. They detected a ‘natural delicacy,’ and the freckled
girl set herself to draw him out from that time forth. The freckled girl was
nineteen, and very wise and motherly and benevolent, and really she greatly
preferred drawing out Kipps to woodcarving. It was quite evident to her
that Kipps was in love with Helen Walshingham, and it struck her as a queer
and romantic and pathetic and extremely interesting phenomenon. And as
at that time she regarded Helen as ‘simply lovely,’ it seemed only right and
proper that she should assist Kipps in his modest efforts to place himself in a
state of absolute abandon upon her altar.
Under her sympathetic management the position of Kipps was presently
defined quite clearly. He was unhappy in his position — misunderstood. He
told her he ‘didn’t seem to get on like’ with customers, and she translated
this for him as ‘too sensitive.’ The discontent with his fate in life, the
dreadful feeling that Education was slipping by him, troubles that time and
usage were glazing over a little, revived to their old acuteness but not to
their old hopelessness. As a basis for sympathy, indeed, they were even a
source of pleasure.
And one day at dinner it happened that Carshot and Buggins fell talking of
‘these here writers,’ and how Dickens had been a labeller of blacking, and
Thackeray ‘an artis’ who couldn’t sell a drawing,’ and how Samuel Johnson
had walked to London without any boots, having thrown away his only pair
‘out of pride.’
‘It’s Luck,’ said Buggins, ‘to a very large extent. They just happen to hit on
something that catches on, and there you are!’
‘Nice easy life they have of it, too,’ said Miss Mergle. ‘Write just an hour or
so, and done for the day! Almost like gentlefolks.’
‘There’s more work in it than you’d think,’ said Carshot, stooping to a
 47

mouthful.
‘I wouldn’t mind changing for all that,’ said Buggins. ‘I’d like to see one of
these here authors marking off with Jimmy.’
‘I think they copy from each other a good deal,’ said Miss Mergle.
‘Even then (chup, chup, chup),’ said Carshot, ‘there’s writing it out in their
own hands.’
They proceeded to enlarge upon the literary life, on its ease and dignity, on
the social recognition accorded to those who led it, and on the ample
gratifications their vanity achieved. ‘Pictures everywhere — never get a new
suit without being photographed — almost like Royalty,’ said Miss Mergle.
And all this talk impressed the imagination of Kipps very greatly. Here was a
class that seemed to bridge the gulf. On the one hand essentially Low, but
by fictitious circumstances capable of entering upon these levels of social
superiority to which all true Englishmen aspire, these levels from which one
may tip a butler, scorn a tailor, and even commune with those who lead
‘men’ into battle. ‘A’most like gentlefolks’— that was it! He brooded over
these things in the afternoon, until they blossomed into daydreams.
Suppose, for example, he had chanced to write a book, a well-known book,
under an assumed name, and yet kept on being a draper all the time . . .
Impossible, of course; but suppose — It made quite a long dream.
And at the next woodcarving class he let it be drawn from him that his real
choice in life was to be a Nawther —‘only one doesn’t get a chance.’
After this there were times when Kipps had the pleasant sense that comes
of attracting interest. He was a mute, inglorious Dickens, or at any rate
something of that sort, and they were all taking him at that. The discovery of
this indefinable ‘something’ in him, the development of which was now
painfully restricted and impossible, did much to bridge the gulf between
himself and Miss Walshingham. He was unfortunate, he was futile, but he
was not ‘common’. Even now with help —? The two girls, and the freckled
girl in particular, tried to ‘stir him up’ to some effort to do his imputed
potentialities justice. They were still young enough to believe that to nice
and niceish members of the male sex — more especially when under the
stimulus of feminine encouragement — nothing is finally impossible.
The freckled girl was, I say, the stage manager of this affair, but Miss
Walshingham was the presiding divinity. A touch of proprietorship came in
her eyes at times when she looked at him. He was hers — unconditionally —
and she knew it.
To her directly, Kipps scarcely ever made a speech. The enterprising things
 48

that he was continually devising to say to her, he usually did not say, or said,
with a suitable modification, to the girl with the freckles. And one day the
girl with the freckles smote him to the heart. She said to him, looking across
the class-room to where her friend reached a cast from the shelf, ‘I do think
Helen Walshingham is sometimes the most lovely person in the world. Look
at her now!’
Kipps gasped for a moment. The moment lengthened, and she regarded him
as an intelligent young surgeon might regard an operation without
anaesthetics. ‘You’re right,’ he said, and then looked at her with an entire
abandonment of visage.
She coloured under his glare of silent avowal, and he blushed brightly. ‘I
think so, too,’ he said hoarsely, cleared his throat, and, after a meditative
moment, proceeded sacramentally with his woodcarving.
‘You are wonderful,’ said the freckled girl to Miss Walshingham, apropos of
nothing, as they went on their way home together. ‘He simply adores you.’
‘But, my dear, what have I done?’ said Helen.
‘That’s just it,’ said the freckled girl. ‘What have you done?’
And then with a terrible swiftness came the last class of the course to
terminate this relationship altogether. Kipps was careless of dates, and the
thing came upon him with an effect of abrupt surprise. Just as his petals
were expanding so hopefully, ‘Finis,’ and the thing was at an end. But Kipps
did not fully appreciate that the end was indeed and really and truly the end
until he was back in the emporium after the end was over.
The end began practically in the middle of the last class, when the freckled
girl broached the topic of terminations. She developed the question of just
how he was going on after the class ended. She hoped he would stick to
certain resolutions of self-improvement he had breathed. She said quite
honestly that he owed it to himself to develop his possibilities. He expressed
firm resolve, but dwelt on difficulties. He had no books. She instructed him
how to get books from the public library. He was to get a form of
application for a ticket signed by a ratepayer, and he said ‘of course’ when
she said Mr. Shalford would do that, though all the time he knew perfectly
well it would ‘never do’ to ask Mr. Shalford for anything of the sort. She
explained that she was going to North Wales for the summer, information
he received without immediate regret. At intervals he expressed his
intention of going on with woodcarving when the summer was over, and
once he added, ‘if —’
She considered herself extremely delicate not to press for the completion of
 49

that ‘if —’
After that talk there was an interval of languid woodcarving and watching
Miss Walshingham.
Then presently there came a bustle of packing, a great ceremony of
handshaking all round by Miss Collis and the maiden lady of ripe years, and
then Kipps found himself outside the class-room, on the landing with his
two friends. It seemed to him he had only just learnt that this was the last
class of all. There came a little pause, and the freckled girl suddenly went
back into the class-room, and left Kipps and Miss Walshingham alone
together for the first time. Kipps was instantly breathless. She looked at his
face with a glance that mingled sympathy and curiosity, and held out her
white hand.
‘Well, good-bye, Mr. Kipps,’ she said.
He took her hand and held it, ‘I’d do anything,’ said Kipps, and had not the
temerity to add ‘for you.’ He stopped awkwardly.
He shook her hand and said ‘Good-bye.’
There was a little pause. ‘I hope you will have a pleasant holiday,’ she said.
‘I shall come back to the class next year, anyhow,’ said Kipps, valiantly, and
turned abruptly to the stairs.
‘I hope you will,’ said Miss Walshingham. He turned back towards her.
‘Really?’ he said.
‘I hope everybody will come back.’
‘I will — anyhow,’ said Kipps. ‘You may count on that;’ and he tried to make
his tones significant.
They looked at one another through a little pause.
‘Good-bye,’ she said.
Kipps lifted his hat.
She turned towards the class-room.
‘Well?’ said the freckled girl, coming back towards her.
‘Nothing,’ said Helen. ‘At least — presently.’
And she became very energetic about some scattered tools on a desk. The
freckled girl went out and stood for a moment at the head of the stairs.
When she came back she looked very hard at her friend. The incident struck
her as important — wonderfully important. It was unassimilable, of course,
 50

and absurd, but there it was, the thing that is so cardinal to a girl, the
emotion, the subservience, the crowning triumph of her sex. She could not
help feeling that Helen took it on the whole a little too hardly.
 51

CHAPTER 4. CHITTERLOW

The hour of the class on the following Thursday found Kipps in a state of
nearly incredible despondency. He was sitting with his eyes on the reading-
room clock, his chin resting on his fists, and his elbows on the accumulated
comic papers, that were comic, alas! in vain. He paid no heed to the little
man in spectacles glaring opposite to him, famishing for Fun. In this place it
was he had sat night after night, each night more blissful than the last,
waiting until it should be time to go to Her! and then — bliss! And now the
hour had come and there was no class! There would be no class now until
next October. It might be there would never be a class, so far as he was
concerned, again.
It might be there would never be a class again, for Shalford, taking
exception at a certain absent-mindedness that led to mistakes, and more
particularly to the ticketing of several articles in Kipps’ Manchester window
upside down, had been ‘on to’ him for the past few days in an exceedingly
onerous manner —
He sighed profoundly, pushed the comic papers back — they were rent
away from him instantly by the little man in spectacles — and tried the old
engravings of Folkestone in the pats that hung about the room. But these,
too, failed to minister to his bruised heart. He wandered about the corridors
for a time and watched the Library Indicator for a while. Wonderful thing
that! But it did not hold him for long. People came and laughed near him,
and that jarred with him dreadfully. He went out of the building, and a
beastly cheerful barrel-organ mocked him in the street. He was moved to a
desperate resolve to go down to the beach. There, it might be, he would be
alone. The sea might be rough — and attuned to him. It would certainly be
dark.
‘If I ‘ad a penny I’m blest if I wouldn’t go and chuck myself off the end of the
pier . . . She’d never miss me . . . ’ He followed a deepening vein of thought.
‘Penny, though! It’s tuppence,’ he said, after a space.
He went down Dover Street in a state of profound melancholia — at the
pace and mood, as it were, of his own funeral procession — and he crossed
at the corner of Tontine Street, heedless of all mundane things. And there it
was that Fortune came upon him, in disguise and with a loud shout, the
 52

shout of a person endowed with an unusually rich, full voice, followed

immediately by a violent blow in the back.
His hat was over his eyes, and an enormous weight rested on his shoulders,
and something kicked him in the back of his calf.
Then he was on all fours in some mud that Fortune, in conjunction with the
Folkestone corporation and in the pursuit of equally mysterious ends, had
heaped together even lavishly for his reception.
He remained in that position for some seconds, awaiting further
developments, and believing almost anything broken before his heart.
Gathering at last that this temporary violence of things in general was over,
and being perhaps assisted by a clutching hand, he arose, and found himself
confronting a figure holding a bicycle and thrusting forward a dark face in
anxious scrutiny.
‘You aren’t hurt, Matey?’ gasped the figure.
‘Was that you ‘it me?’ said Kipps.
‘It’s these handles, you know,’ said the figure with an air of being a fellow-
sufferer. ‘They’re too low. And when I go to turn, if I don’t remember, Bif! —
— and I’m in to something.’
‘Well — you give me a oner in the back — anyhow,’ said Kipps, taking stock
of his damages.
‘I was coming downhill, you know,’ explained the bicyclist. ‘These little
Folkestone hills are a Fair Treat. It isn’t as though I’d been on the level. I
came rather a whop.’
‘You did that,’ said Kipps.
‘I was back-pedalling for all I was worth, anyhow,’ said the bicyclist. ‘Not
that I’m worth much back-pedalling.’
He glanced round and made a sudden movement almost as if to mount his
machine. Then he turned as rapidly to Kipps again, who was now stooping
down, pursuing the tale of his injuries.
‘Here’s the back of my trouser-leg all tore down,’ said Kipps, ‘and I believe
I’m bleeding. You reely ought to be more careful —’
The stranger investigated the damage with a rapid movement. ‘Holy Smoke,
so you are!’ He laid a friendly hand on Kipps’ arm. ‘I say — look here! Come
up to my diggings and sew it up. I’m — Of course I’m to blame, and I say —’
His voice sank to a confidential friendliness. ‘Here’s a slop. Don’t let on I ran
 53

you down. Haven’t a lamp, you know. Might be at bit awkward, for me.’
Kipps looked up towards the advancing policeman. The appeal to his
generosity was not misplaced. He immediately took sides with his assailant.
He stood as the representative of the law drew nearer. He assumed an air
which he considered highly suggestive of an accident not having happened.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘go on!’
‘Right you are,’ said the cyclist, promptly, and led the way; and then,
apparently with some idea of deception, called over his shoulder, ‘I’m
tremendous glad to have met you, old chap.’
‘It really isn’t a hundred yards,’ he said, after they had passed the policeman;
‘it’s just round the corner.’
‘Of course,’ said Kipps, limping slightly. ‘I don’t want to get a chap into
trouble. Accidents will happen. Still —’
‘Oh, rather! I believe you. Accidents will happen. Especially when you get me
on a bicycle.’ He laughed. ‘You aren’t the first I’ve run down, not by any
manner of means! I don’t think you can be hurt much, either. It isn’t as
though I was scorching. You didn’t see me coming. I was back-pedalling like
anything. Only naturally it seems to you I must have been coming fast. And I
did all I could to ease off the bump as I hit you. It was just the treadle, I
think, came against your calf. But it was All Right of you about that
policeman, you know. That was a Fair Bit of All Right. Under the Circs., if
you’d told him I was riding, it might have been forty bob! Forty bob! I’d have
had to tell ’em Time is Money just now for Mr. H. C.’
‘I shouldn’t have blamed you either, you know. Most men, after a bump like
that, might have been spiteful. The least I can do is to stand you a needle
and thread. And a clothes’ brush. It isn’t every one who’d have taken it like
you.’
‘Scorching! Why, if I’d been scorching you’d have — coming as we did —
you’d have been knocked silly.’
‘But, I tell you, the way you caught on about that slop was something worth
seeing. When I asked you — I didn’t half expect it. Bif! Right off. Cool as a
cucumber. Had your line at once. I tell you that there isn’t many men would
have acted as you have done, I will say that. You acted like a gentleman over
that slop.’
Kipps’ first sense of injury disappeared. He limped along a pace or so behind,
making depreciatory noises in response to these flattering remarks, and
taking stock of the very appreciative person who uttered them.
 54

As they passed the lamps he was visible as a figure with a slight anterior
plumpness, progressing buoyantly on knicker-bockered legs, with quite
enormous calves, legs that, contrasting with Kipps’ own narrow practice,
were even exuberantly turned out at the knees and toes. A cycling cap was
worn very much on one side, and from beneath it protruded carelessly
straight wisps of dark-red hair, and ever and again an ample nose came into
momentary view round the corner. The muscular cheeks of this person and
a certain generosity of chin he possessed were blue shaven, and he had no
moustache. His carriage was spacious and confident, his gestures up and
down the narrow, deserted back street they traversed were irresistibly
suggestive of ownership; a succession of broadly gesticulating shadows
were born squatting on his feet, and grew and took possession of the road
and reunited at least with the shadows of the infinite, as lamp after lamp
was passed. Kipps saw by the flickering light of one of them that they were
in Little Fenchurch Street, and then they came around a corner sharply into
a dark court and stopped at the door of a particularly ramshackle-looking
little house, held up between two larger ones, like a drunken man between
policemen.
The cyclist propped his machine carefully against the window, produced a
key and blew down it sharply. ‘The lock’s a bit tricky,’ he said, and devoted
himself for same moments to the task of opening the door. Some
mechanical catastrophe ensued, and the door was open.
‘You’d better wait here a bit while I get the lamp,’ he remarked to Kipps;
‘very likely it isn’t filled,’ and vanished into the blackness of the passage.
‘Thank God for matches!’ he said; and Kipps had an impression of a passage
in the transitory pink flare and the bicyclist disappearing into a farther room.
Kipps was so much interested by these things that for the time he forgot his
injuries altogether.
An interval, and Kipps was dazzled by a pink-shaded kerosene lamp. ‘You go
in,’ said the red-haired man, ‘and I’ll bring in the bike,’ and for a moment
Kipps was alone in the lamp-lit room. He took in rather vaguely the shabby
ensemble of the little apartment, the round table covered with a torn, red,
glass-stained cover on which the lamp stood, a mottled looking-glass over
the fireplace reflecting this, a disused gas-bracket, an extinct fire, a number
of dusty postcards and memoranda stuck round the glass, a dusty, crowded
paper-rack on the mantel with a number of cabinet photographs, a table
littered with papers and cigarette ash, and a siphon of soda-water. Then the
cyclist reappeared, and Kipps saw his blue-shaved, rather animated face,
and bright, reddish-brown eyes for the first time. He was a man, perhaps,
 55

ten years older than Kipps, but his beardless face made them in a way
contemporary.
‘You behaved all right about that policeman, anyhow,’ he repeated as he
came forward.
‘I don’t see ‘ow else I could ‘ave done,’ said Kipps, quite modestly. The
cyclist scanned his guest for the first time, and decided upon hospitable
details.
‘We’d better let that mud dry a bit before we brush it. Whisky there is, good
old Methuselah, Canadian Rye; and there’s some brandy that’s all right.
Which’ll you have?’
‘I dunno,’ said Kipps, taken by surprise; and then seeing no other course but
acceptance, ‘Well, whisky, then.’
‘Right you are, old boy; and if you’ll take my advice you’ll take it neat. I may
not be a particular judge of this sort of thing, but I do know old Methuselah
pretty well. Old Methuselah — four stars. That’s me! Good old Harry
Chitterlow, and good old Methuselah. Leave ’em together. Bif! He’s gone!’
He laughed loudly, looked about him, hesitated, and retired, leaving Kipps in
possession of the room, and free to make a more precise examination of its
contents.
2

He particularly remarked the photographs that adorned the apartment.

They were chiefly photographs of ladies, in one case in tights, which Kipps
thought a ‘bit ‘ot’; but one represented the bicyclist in the costume of some
remote epoch. It did not take Kipps long to infer that the others were
probably actresses, and that his host was an actor, and the presence of the
half of a large coloured playbill seemed to confirm this. A note in an Oxford
frame that was a little too large for it he presently demeaned himself to
read. ‘Dear Mr. Chitterlow,’ it ran its brief course, ‘if, after all, you will send
the play you spoke of, I will endeavour to read it,’ followed by a stylish but
absolutely illegible signature, and across this was written in pencil, ‘What
price Harry now?’ And in the shadow by the window was a rough and rather
able sketch of the bicyclist in chalk on brown paper, calling particular
attention to the curvature of the forward lines of his hull and calves and the
jaunty carriage of his nose, and labelled unmistakably ‘Chitterlow.’ Kipps
thought it ‘rather a take-off.’ The papers on the table by the siphon were in
manuscript, Kipps observed, manuscript of a particularly convulsive and
blottesque sort, and running obliquely across the page.
 56

Presently he heard the metallic clamour as if of a series of irreparable

breakages with which the lock of the front door discharged its function, and
then Chitterlow reappeared, a little out of breath, and with a starry-labelled
bottle in his large, freckled hand.
‘Sit down, old chap,’ he said, ‘sit down. I had to get out for it after all. Wasn’t
a solitary bottle left. However, it’s all right now we’re here. No, don’t sit on
that chair, there’s sheets of my play on that. That’s the one — with the
broken arm. I think this glass is clean, but, anyhow, wash it out with a squizz
of siphon and shy it in the fireplace. Here, I’ll do it! Lend it here!’
As he spoke Mr. Chitterlow produced a corkscrew from a table drawer,
attacked and overcame good old Methuselah’s cork in a style a bar-tender
might envy, washed out two tumblers in his simple, effectual manner, and
poured a couple of inches of the ancient fluid into each. Kipps took his
tumbler, said ‘Thenks’ in an off-hand way, and, after a momentary hesitation
whether he should say ‘Here’s to you!’ or not, put it to his lips without that
ceremony. For a space fire in his throat occupied his attention to the
exclusion of other matters, and then he discovered Mr. Chitterlow with an
intensely bulldog pipe alight, seated on the opposite side of the empty
fireplace, and pouring himself out a second dose of whisky.
‘After all,’ said Mr. Chitterlow, with his eye on the bottle and a little smile
wandering to hide amidst his larger features, ‘this accident might have been
worse. I wanted some one to talk to a bit, and I didn’t want to go to a pub,
leastways not a Folkestone pub, because, as a matter of fact, I’d promised
Mrs. Chitterlow, who’s away, not to, for various reasons, though, of course,
if I’d wanted to, I’m just that sort, I should have all the same — and here we
are! It’s curious how one runs up against people out bicycling!’
‘Isn’t it!’ said Kipps, feeling that the time had come for him to say
something.
‘Here we are, sitting and talking like old friends, and half an hour ago we
didn’t know we existed. Leastways we didn’t know each other existed. I
might have passed you in the street, perhaps, and you might have passed
me, and how was I to tell that, put to the test, you would have behaved as
decently as you have behaved. Only it happened otherwise, that’s all. You’re
not smoking!’ he said. ‘Have a cigarette?’
Kipps made a confused reply that took the form of not minding if he did, and
drank another sip of old Methuselah in his confusion. He was able to follow
the subsequent course of that sip for quite a long way. It was as though the
old gentleman was brandishing a burning torch through his vitals, lighting
 57

him here and lighting him there, until at last his whole being was in a glow.
Chitterlow produced a tobacco-pouch and cigarette-papers, and, with an
interesting parenthesis that was a little difficult to follow about some lady,
named Kitty something or other, who had taught him the art when he was
as yet only what you might call a nice boy, made Kipps a cigarette, and, with
a consideration that won Kipps’ gratitude, suggested that, after all, he might
find a little soda-water an improvement with the whisky. ‘Some people like it
that way,’ said Chitterlow; and then with voluminous emphasis, ‘I don’t.’
Emboldened by the weakened state of his enemy, Kipps promptly
swallowed the rest of him, and had his glass at once hospitably replenished.
He began to feel he was of a firmer consistency than he commonly believed,
and turned his mind to what Chitterlow was saying with the resolve to play a
larger part in the conversation than he had hitherto done. Also he smoked
through his nose quite successfully, an art he had only very recently
acquired.
Meanwhile, Chitterlow explained that he was a playwright, and the tongue
of Kipps was unloosened to respond that he knew a chap or rather one of
their fellows knew a chap, or at least, to be perfectly, correct this fellow’s
brother did, who had written a play. In response to Chitterlow’s inquiries, he
could not recall the title of the play, nor where it had appeared, nor the
name of the manager who produced it, though he thought the title was
something about ‘Love’s Ransom,’ or something like that.
‘He made five ‘undred pounds by it, though,’ said Kipps. ‘I know that.’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Chitterlow, with an air of experience that was
extremely convincing. ‘Nothing. May seem a big sum to you, but I can assure
you it’s just what one gets any day. There’s any amount of money, an-ny
amount, in a good play.’
‘I dessay,’ said Kipps, drinking. ‘Any amount of money!’
Chitterlow began a series of illustrative instances. He was clearly a person of
quite unequalled gift for monologue. It was as though some conversational
dam had burst upon Kipps, and in a little while he was drifting along upon a
copious rapid of talk about all sorts of theatrical things by one who knew all
about them, and quite incapable of anticipating whither that rapid meant to
carry him. Presently, somehow, they had got to anecdotes about well-
known theatrical managers — little Teddy Bletherskite, artful old Chumps
and the magnificent Behemoth, ‘petted to death, you know, fair sickened,
by all these society women.’ Chitterlow described various personal
encounters with these personages, always with modest self-depreciation,
and gave Kipps a very amusing imitation of old Chumps in a state of
 58

intoxication. Then he took two more stiff doses of old Methuselah in rapid
succession.
Kipps reduced the hither end of his cigarette to a pulp as he sat ‘dessaying’
and ‘quite believing’ Chitterlow in the sagest manner, and admiring the easy
way in which he was getting on with this very novel and entertaining
personage. He had another cigarette made for him, and then Chitterlow,
assuming by insensible degrees more and more of the manner of a rich and
successful playwright being interviewed by a young admirer, set himself to
answer questions which sometimes Kipps asked, and sometimes Chitterlow,
about the particulars and methods of his career. He undertook this self-
imposed task with great earnestness and vigour, treating the matter,
indeed, with such fullness that at times it seemed lost altogether under a
thicket of parentheses, footnotes, and episodes that branched and budded
from its stem. But it always emerged again, usually by way of illustration to
its own digressions. Practically it was a mass of material for the biography of
a man who had been everywhere and done everything (including the Hon.
Thomas Norgate, which was a record), and in particular had acted with great
distinction and profit (he dated various anecdotes, ‘when I was getting
thirty, or forty, or fifty dollars a week’) throughout America and the entire
civilised world.
And as he talked on and on in that full, rich, satisfying voice he had, and as
old Methuselah, indisputably a most drunken old reprobate of a whisky,
busied himself throughout Kipps, lighting lamp after lamp until the entire
framework of the little draper was illuminated and glowing like some public
building on a festival, behold Chitterlow, and Kipps with him, and the room
in which they sat were transfigured! Chitterlow became in very truth that
ripe, full man of infinite experience and humour and genius, fellow of
Shakespeare and Ibsen and Maeterlinck (three names he placed together
quite modestly far above his own), and no longer ambiguously dressed in a
sort of yachting costume with cycling knickerbockers, but elegantly if
unconventionally attired, and the room ceased to be a small and shabby
room in a Folkestone slum, and grew larger and more richly furnished, and
the flyblown photographs were curious old pictures, and the rubbish on the
walls the most rare and costly bric-a-brac, and the indisputable paraffin lamp
a soft and splendid light. A certain youthful heat that to many minds might
have weakened old Methuselah’s starry claim to a ripe antiquity vanished in
that glamour; two burnt holes and a clamant darn in the table-cloth,
moreover, became no more than the pleasing contradictions natural in the
house of genius; and as for Kipps — Kipps was a bright young man of
promise, distinguished by recent quick, courageous proceedings not too
 59

definitely insisted upon, and he had been rewarded by admission to a

sanctum and confidences for which the common prosperous, for which
‘society women’ even, were notoriously sighing in vain. ‘Don’t want them,
my boy; they’d simply play old Harry with the Work, you know! Chaps
outside, bank clerks and university fellows, think the life’s all that sort of
thing. Don’t you believe ’em! Don’t you believe ’em!’
And then —!
‘Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . . ’ right in the middle of a most
entertaining digression on flats who join touring companies under the
impression that they are actors, Kipps much amused at their flatness as
exposed by Chitterlow.
‘Lor!’ said Kipps, like one who awakens, ‘that’s not eleven!’
‘Must be,’ said Chitterlow. ‘It was nearly ten when I got that whisky. It’s
early yet —’
‘All the same, I must be going,’ said Kipps, and stood up. ‘Even now —
maybe. Fact is — I ‘ad no idea. The ’ouse door shuts at ‘arf-past ten, you
know. I ought to ‘ave thought before.’
‘Well, if you must go —! I tell you what. I’ll come to . . . Why! There’s your
leg, old man! Clean forgot it! You can’t go through the streets like that. I’ll
sew up the tear. And meanwhile have another whiskey.’
‘I ought to be getting on now,’ protested Kipps, feebly; and then Chitterlow
was showing him how to kneel on a chair in order that the rent trouser leg
should be attainable, and old Methuselah on his third round was busy
repairing the temporary eclipse of Kipps’ arterial glow. Then suddenly
Chitterlow was seized with laughter, and had to leave off sewing to tell
Kipps that the scene wouldn’t make a bad bit of business in a farcical
comedy, and then he began to sketch out the farcical comedy, and that led
him to a digression about another farcical comedy of which he had written a
ripping opening scene which wouldn’t take ten minutes to read. It had
something in it that had never been done on the stage before, and was yet
perfectly legitimate, namely a man with a live beetle down the back of his
neck trying to seem at his ease in a roomful of people . . .
‘They won’t lock you out,’ he said, in a singularly reassuring tone, and began
to read and act what he explained to be (not because he had written it, but
simply because he knew it was so on account of his exceptional experience
of the stage), and what Kipps also quite clearly saw to be, one of the best
opening scenes that had ever been written.
 60

When it was over, Kipps, who rarely swore, was inspired to say the scene
was ‘damned fine’ about six times over, whereupon, as if by way of
recognition, Chitterlow took a simply enormous portion of the inspired
antediluvian, declaring at the same time that he had rarely met a ‘finer’
intelligence than Kipps’ (stronger there might be, that he couldn’t say with
certainty as yet, seeing how little, after all, they had seen of each other, but
a finer never), that it was a shame such a gallant and discriminating
intelligence should be nightly either locked up or locked out at ten — well,
ten-thirty, then — and that he had half a mind to recommend old somebody
or other (apparently the editor of a London daily paper) to put on Kipps
forthwith as a dramatic critic in the place of the current incapable.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever made up anything for print,’ said Kipps, ‘ever. I’d have
a thundering good try, though, if ever I got a chance. I would that! I’ve
written window tickets orfen enough. Made ’em up and everything. But
that’s different.’
‘You’d come to it all the fresher for not having done it before. And the way
you picked up every point in that scene, my boy, was a Fair Treat! I tell you,
you’d knock William Archer into fits. Not so literary, of course, you’d be, but
I don’t believe in literary critics any more than in literary playwrights. Plays
aren’t literature — that’s just the point they miss. Plays are plays. No! That
won’t hamper you, anyhow. You’re wasted down here, I tell you. Just as I
was, before I took to acting. I’m hanged if I wouldn’t like your opinion on
these first two acts of that tragedy I’m on to. I haven’t told you about that.
It wouldn’t take me more than an hour to read.’ . . .
3

Then, so far as he could subsequently remember, Kipps had ‘another,’ and

then it would seem that, suddenly regardless of the tragedy, he insisted that
he ‘really must be getting on,’ and from that point his memory became
irregular. Certain things remained quite clearly, and as it is a matter of
common knowledge that intoxicated people forget what happens to them,
it follows that he was not intoxicated. Chitterlow came with him, partly to
see him home and partly for a freshener before turning in. Kipps recalled
afterwards very distinctly how in Little Fenchurch Street he discovered that
he could not walk straight, and also that Chitterlow’s needle and thread in
his still unmended trouser leg was making an annoying little noise on the
pavement behind him. He tried to pick up the needle suddenly by surprise,
and somehow tripped and fell, and then Chitterlow, laughing uproariously,
helped him up. ‘It wasn’t a bicycle this time, old boy,’ said Chitterlow, and
 61

that appeared to them both at the time as being a quite extraordinarily

good joke indeed. They punched each other about on the strength of it.
For a time after that Kipps certainly pretended to be quite desperately drunk
and unable to walk, and Chitterlow entered into the pretence and supported
him. After that Kipps remembered being struck with the extremely
laughable absurdity of going downhill to Tontine Street in order to go uphill
again to the Emporium, and trying to get that idea into Chitterlow’s head
and being unable to do so on account of his own merriment and
Chitterlow’s evident intoxication; and his next memory after that was of the
exterior of the Emporium, shut and darkened, and, as it were, frowning at
him with all its stripes of yellow and green. The chilly way in which
‘SHALFORD’ glittered in the moonlight printed itself with particular
vividness on his mind. It appeared to Kipps that that establishment was
closed to him for evermore. Those gilded letters, in spite of appearances,
spelt FINIS for him and exile from Folkestone. He would never do wood-
carving, never see Miss Walshingham again. Not that he had ever hoped to
see her again. But this was the knife, this was final. He had stayed out, he
had got drunk, there had been that row about the Manchester window
dressing only three days ago . . . In the retrospect he was quite sure that he
was perfectly sober then and at bottom extremely unhappy, but he kept a
brave face on the matter nevertheless, and declared stoutly he didn’t care if
he was locked out.
Whereupon Chitterlow slapped him on the back very hard and told him that
was a ‘Bit of All–Right,’ and assured him that when he himself had been a
clerk in Sheffield, before he took to acting, he had been locked out
sometimes for six nights running.
‘What’s the result?’ said Chitterlow. ‘I could go back to that place now, and
they’d be glad to have me . . . Glad to have me,’ he repeated, and then
added, ‘That is to say, if they remember me — which isn’t very likely.’
Kipps asked a little weakly, ‘What am I to do?’
‘Keep out,’ said Chitterlow. ‘You can’t knock ’em up now — that would give
you Right away. You’d better try and sneak in in the morning with the Cat.
That’ll do you. You’ll probably get in all right in the morning if nobody gives
you away.’
Then for a time — perhaps as the result of that slap on the back — Kipps felt
decidedly queer, and, acting on Chitterlow’s advice, went for a bit of a
freshener upon the Leas. After a time he threw off the temporary
queerness, and found Chitterlow patting him on the shoulder and telling him
 62

that he’d be all right now in a minute and all the better for it — which he
was. And the wind having dropped and the night being now a really very
beautiful moonlight night indeed, and all before Kipps to spend as he liked,
and with only a very little tendency to spin round now and again to mar its
splendour, they set out to walk the whole length of the Leas to the
Sandgate lift and back, and as they walked Chitterlow spoke first of
moonlight transfiguring the sea and then of moonlight transfiguring faces,
and so at last he came to the topic of Love, and upon that he dwelt a great
while, and with a wealth of experience and illustrative anecdote that
seemed remarkably pungent and material to Kipps. He forgot his lost Miss
Walshingham and his outraged employer again. He became, as it were, a
desperado by reflection.
Chitterlow had had adventures, a quite astonishing variety of adventures, in
this direction; he was a man with a past, a really opulent past, and he
certainly seemed to like to look back and see himself amidst its opulence.
He made no consecutive history, but he gave Kipps vivid momentary
pictures of relations and entanglements. One moment he was in flight —
only too worthily in flight — before the husband of a Malay woman in Cape
Town. At the next he was having passionate complications with the
daughter of a clergyman in York. Then he passed to a remarkable grouping
at Seaford.
They say you can’t love two women at once,’ said Chitterlow. ‘But I tell you
—’ He gesticulated and raised his ample voice. ‘It’s Rot! Rot!’
‘I know that,’ said Kipps.
‘Why, when I was in the smalls with Bessie Hopper’s company there were
Three.’ He laughed, and decided to add, ‘not counting Bessie, that is.’
He set out to reveal Life as it is lived in touring companies, a quite amazing
jungle of interwoven ‘affairs’ it appeared to be, a mere amorous winepress
for the crushing of hearts.
‘People say this sort of thing’s a nuisance and interferes with Work. I tell you
it isn’t. The Work couldn’t go on without it. They must do it. They haven’t
the Temperament if they don’t. If they hadn’t the Temperament they
wouldn’t want to act; if they have — Bif!’
‘You’re right,’ said Kipps. ‘I see that.’
Chitterlow proceeded to a close criticism of certain historical indiscretions of
Mr. Clement Scott respecting the morals of the stage. Speaking in
confidence, and not as one who addresses the public, he admitted
 63

regretfully the general truth of these comments. He proceeded to examine

various typical instances that had almost forced themselves upon him
personally, and with especial regard to the contrast between his own
character towards women and that of the Hon. Thomas Norgate, with
whom it appeared he had once been on terms of great intimacy . . .
Kipps listened with emotion to these extraordinary recollections. They were
wonderful to him, they were incredibly credible. This tumultuous,
passionate, irregular course was the way life ran — except in high-class
establishments! Such things happened in novels, in plays —— only he had
been fool enough not to understand they happened. His share in the
conversation was now, indeed, no more than faint writing in the margin;
Chitterlow was talking quite continuously. He expanded his magnificent
voice into huge guffaws, he drew it together into a confidential intensity, it
became drawlingly reminiscent, he was frank, frank with the effect of a
revelation, reticent also with the effect of a revelation, a stupendously
gesticulating moonlit black figure, wallowing in itself, preaching Adventure
and the Flesh to Kipps. Yet withal shot with something of sentiment, with a
sort of sentimental refinement very coarsely and egotistically done. The
Times he had had! — even before he was as old as Kipps he had had
innumerable Times.
Well, he said with a sudden transition, he had sown his wild oats — one had
to somewhen — and now, he fancied he had mentioned it earlier in the
evening, he was happily married. She was, he indicated, a ‘born lady.’ Her
father was a prominent lawyer, a solicitor in Kentish Town, ‘done a lot of
public-house business’; her mother was second cousin to the wife of Abel
Jones, the fashionable portrait painter —‘almost Society people in a way.’
That didn’t count with Chitterlow. He was no snob. What did count was that
she possessed what he ventured to assert, without much fear of
contradiction, was the very finest completely untrained contralto voice in all
the world. (‘But to hear it properly,’ said Chitterlow, ‘you want a Big Hall.’)
He became rather vague, and jerked his head about to indicate when and
how he had entered matrimony. She was, it seemed, ‘away with her people.’
It was clear that Chitterlow did not get on with these people very well. It
would seem they failed to appreciate his playwriting, regarding it as an
unremunerative pursuit, whereas, as he and Kipps knew, wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice would presently accrue. Only patience and persistence
were needful.
He went off at a tangent to hospitality. Kipps must come down home with
him. They couldn’t wander about all night with a bottle of the right sort
 64

pining at home for them. ‘You can sleep on the sofa. You won’t be worried
by broken springs, anyhow, for I took ’em all out myself two or three weeks
ago. I don’t see what they ever put ’em in for. It’s a point I know about. I
took particular notice of it when I was with Bessie Hopper. Three months we
were, and all over England, North Wales, and the Isle of Man, and I never
struck a sofa in diggings anywhere that hadn’t a broken spring. Not once —
all the time.’
He added, almost absently, ‘It happens like that at times.’
They descended the slant road towards Harbour Street and went on past
the Pavilion Hotel.
4

They came into the presence of old Methuselah again, and that worthy,
under Chitterlow’s direction, at once resumed the illumination of Kipps’
interior with the conscientious thoroughness that distinguished him.
Chitterlow took a tall portion to himself with an air of asbestos, lit the
bulldog pipe again and lapsed for a space into meditation, from which Kipps
roused him by remarking that he expected ‘a nacter ‘as a lot of ups and
downs like, now and then.’
At which Chitterlow seemed to bestir himself. ‘Rather,’ he said. ‘And
sometimes it’s his own fault and sometimes it isn’t. Usually it is. If it isn’t one
thing it’s another. If it isn’t the manager’s wife it’s bar-bragging. I tell you
things happen at times. I’m a fatalist. The fact is, Character has you. You
can’t get away from it. You may think you do, but you don’t.’
He reflected for a moment. ‘It’s that what makes tragedy. Psychology really.
It’s the Greek irony — Ibsen and — all that. Up to date.’
He emitted this exhaustive summary of high-toned modern criticism as if he
was repeating a lesson while thinking of something else; but it seemed to
rouse him as it passed his lips, by including the name of Ibsen.
He became interested in telling Kipps, who was, indeed open to any
information whatever about this quite novel name, exactly where he
thought Ibsen fell short, points where it happened that Ibsen was defective
just where it chanced that he, Chitterlow, was strong. Of course, he had no
desire to place himself in any way on an equality with Ibsen; still, the fact
remained that his own experience in England and America and the colonies
was altogether more extensive than Ibsen could have had. Ibsen had
probably never seen ‘one decent bar scrap’ in his life. That, of course, was
not Ibsen’s fault, or his own merit, but there the thing was. Genius, he knew,
 65

was supposed to be able to do anything or to do without anything; still, he

was now inclined to doubt that. He had a play in hand that might perhaps
not please William Archer — whose opinion, after all, he did not value as he
valued Kipps’ opinion — but which, he thought, was, at any rate, as well
constructed as anything Ibsen ever did.
So with infinite deviousness Chitterlow came at last to his play. He decided
he would not read it to Kipps, but tell him about it. This was the simpler,
because much of it was still unwritten. He began to explain his plot. It was a
complicated plot, and all about a nobleman who had seen everything and
done everything and knew practically all that Chitterlow knew about
women, that is to say, ‘all about women’ and such-like matters. It warmed
and excited Chitterlow. Presently he stood up to act a situation which could
not be explained. It was an extremely vivid situation.
Kipps applauded the situation vehemently. ‘Tha’s dam fine,’ said the new
dramatic critic, quite familiar with his part now, striking the table with his fist
and almost upsetting his third portion (in the second series) of old
Methuselah. ‘Tha’s dam fine, Chit’low!’
‘You see it?’ said Chitterlow, with the last vestiges of that incidental gloom
disappearing. ‘Good old boy! I thought you’d see it. But it’s just the sort of
thing the literary critic can’t see. However, it’s only a beginning —’
He replenished Kipps and proceeded with his exposition.
In a little while it was no longer necessary to give that over-advertised Ibsen
the purely conventional precedence he had hitherto had. Kipps and
Chitterlow were friends, and they could speak frankly and openly of things
not usually admitted. ‘Any’ow,’ said Kipps, a little irrelevantly, and speaking
over the brim of the replenishment, ‘what you read jus’ now was dam fine.
Nothing can’t alter that.’
He perceived a sort of faint buzzing vibration about things that was very
nice and pleasant, and with a little care he had no difficulty whatever in
putting his glass back on the table. Then he perceived Chitterlow was going
on with the scenario, and then that old Methuselah had almost entirely left
his bottle. He was glad there was so little more Methuselah to drink,
because that would prevent his getting drunk. He knew that he was not
now drunk, but he knew that he had had enough. He was one of those who
always know when they have had enough. He tried to interrupt Chitterlow
to tell him this, but he could not get a suitable opening. He doubted
whether Chitterlow might not be one of those people who did not know
when they had had enough. He discovered that he disapproved of
 66

Chitterlow. Highly. It seemed to him that Chitterlow went on and on like a

river. For a time he was inexplicably and quite unjustly cross with Chitterlow,
and wanted to say to him ‘you got the gift of the gab,’ but he only got so far
as to say ‘the gift,’ and then Chitterlow thanked him and said he was better
than Archer any day. So he eyed Chitterlow with a baleful eye until it
dawned upon him that a most extraordinary thing was taking place.
Chitterlow kept mentioning some one named Kipps. This presently began to
perplex Kipps very greatly. Dimly but decidedly he perceived this was
wrong.
‘Look ’ere,’ he said suddenly, ‘what Kipps?’
‘This chap Kipps I’m telling you about.’
‘What chap Kipps you’re telling which about?’
‘I told you.’
Kipps struggled with a difficulty in silence for a space. Then he reiterated
firmly, ‘What chap Kipps?’
‘This chap in my play — man who kisses the girl.’
‘Never kissed a girl,’ said Kipps, ‘leastways —’ and subsided for a space. He
could not remember whether he had kissed Ann or not — he knew he had
meant to. Then suddenly, in a tone of great sadness, and addressing the
hearth, he said, ‘My name’s Kipps.’
‘Eh?’ said Chitterlow.
‘Kipps,’ said Kipps, smiling a little cynically.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s me.’ He tapped his breastbone with his middle finger to indicate his
essential self.
He leant forward very gravely towards Chitterlow. ‘Look ’ere, Chit’low,’ he
said. ‘You haven’t no business putting my name into play. You mustn’t do
things like that. You’d lose me my crib, right away.’ And they had a little
argument — so far as Kipps could remember. Chitterlow entered upon a
general explanation of how he got his names. These he had for the most
part got out of a newspaper that was still, he believed, ‘lying about.’ He
even made to look for it, and while he was doing so Kipps went on with the
argument, addressing himself more particularly to the photograph of the
girl in tights. He said that at first her costume had not commended her to
him, but now he perceived she had an extremely sensible face. He told her
she would like Buggins if she met him, he could see she was just that sort.
 67

She would admit — all sensible people would admit — that using names in
plays was wrong. You could, for example, have the law on him.
He became confidential. He explained that he was already in sufficient
trouble for stopping out all night, without having his name put in plays: He
was certain to be in the deuce of a row, the deuce of a row. Why had he
done it? Why hadn’t he gone at ten? Because one thing leads to another.
One thing, he generalised, always does lead to another . . .
He was trying to tell her that he was utterly unworthy of Miss Walshingham,
when Chitterlow gave up the search, and suddenly accused him of being
drunk and talking ‘Rot —’
 68

CHAPTER 5. ‘SWAPPED’

He awoke on the thoroughly comfortable sofa that had had all its springs
removed, and although he had certainly not been intoxicated, he awoke
with what Chitterlow pronounced to be, quite indisputably, a Head and a
Mouth. He had slept in his clothes, and he felt stiff and uncomfortable all
over, but the head and mouth insisted that he must not bother over little
things like that. In the head was one large, angular idea that it was physically
painful to have there. If he moved his head, the angular idea shifted about in
the most agonising away. This idea was that he had lost his situation and
was utterly ruined, and that it really mattered very little. Shalford was
certain to hear of his escapade, and that, coupled with that row about the
Manchester window —!
He raised himself into a sitting position under Chitterlow’s urgent
encouragement.
He submitted apathetically to his host’s attentions. Chitterlow, who
admitted being a ‘bit off it’ himself and in need of an egg-cupful of brandy,
just an egg-cupful neat, dealt with that Head and Mouth as a mother might
deal with the fall of an only child. He compared it with other Heads and
Mouths that he had met, and in particular to certain experienced by the
Hon. Thomas Norgate. ‘Right up to the last,’ said Chitterlow, ‘he couldn’t
stand his liquor. It happens like that at times.’ And after Chitterlow had
pumped on the young beginner’s head and given him some anchovy paste
piping hot on buttered toast, which he preferred to all the other remedies
he had encountered, Kipps resumed his crumpled collar, brushed his
clothes, tacked up his knee, and prepared to face Mr. Shalford and the
reckoning for this wild, unprecedented night — the first ‘night out’ that ever
he had taken.
Acting on Chitterlow’s advice to have a bit of a freshner before returning to
the Emporium, Kipps walked some way along the Leas and back, and then
went down to a shop near the Harbour to get a cup of coffee. He found that
extremely reinvigorating, and he went on up the High Street to face the
inevitable terrors of the office, a faint touch of pride in his depravity
tempering his extreme self-abasement. After all, it was not an unmanly
headache; he had been out all night, and he had been drinking, and his
physical disorder was there to witness the fact. If it wasn’t for the thought
 69

of Shalford, he would have been even a proud man to discover himself at

last in such a condition. But the thought of Shalford was very dreadful. He
met two of the apprentices snatching a walk before shop began. At the
sight of them he pulled his spirits together, put his hat back from his pallid
brow, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and adopted an altogether
more dissipated carriage; he met their innocent faces with a wan smile. Just
for a moment he was glad that his patch at the knee was, after all, visible,
and that some, at least, of the mud on his clothes had refused to move at
Chitterlow’s brushing. What wouldn’t they think he had been up to? He
passed them without speaking. He could imagine how they regarded his
back. Then he recollected Mr. Shalford . . .
The deuce of a row certainly, and perhaps —! He tried to think of plausible
versions of the affair. He could explain he had been run down by rather a
wild sort of fellow who was riding a bicycle, almost stunned for the moment
(even now he felt the effects of the concussion in his head), and had been
given whisky to restore him, and ‘the fact is, Sir,’— with an upward
inflection of the voice, an upward inflection of the eyebrows, and an air of
its being the last thing one would have expected whisky to do, the
manifestation, indeed, of a practically unique physiological weakness —‘it
got into my ‘ed! ‘ . . .
Put like that it didn’t look so bad.
He got to the Emporium a little before eight, and the housekeeper, with
whom he was something of a favourite (‘There’s no harm in Mr. Kipps,’ she
used to say), seemed to like him, if anything, better for having broken the
rules, and gave him a piece of dry toast and a hot cup of tea.
‘I suppose the G. V. —’ began Kipps.
‘He knows,’ said the housekeeper.
He went down to the shop a little before time, and presently Booch
summoned him to the presence. He emerged from the private office after
an interval of ten minutes.
The junior clerk scrutinised his visage. Buggins put the frank question.
Kipps answered with one word.
‘Swapped!’ said Kipps.
2

Kipps leant against the fixtures with his hands in his pockets and talked to
the two apprentices under him. ‘I don’t care if I am swapped,’ said Kipps. ‘I
 70

been sick of Teddy and his System some time.’

‘I was a good mind to chuck it when my time was up,’ said Kipps. ‘Wish I ‘ad
now.’
Afterwards Pearce came round, and Kipps repeated this.
‘What’s it for?’ said Pearce. ‘That row about the window tickets?’
‘No fear!’ said Kipps, and sought to convey a perspective of splendid
depravity. ‘I wasn’t in las’ night,’ he said, and made even Pearce, ‘man about
town’ Pearce, open his eyes.
‘Why, where did you get to?’ asked Pearce.
He conveyed that he had been ‘fair all round the town, with a Nactor chap’
he knew. ‘One can’t always be living like a curit,’ he said.
‘No fear,’ said Pearce, trying to play up to him.
But Kipps had the top place in that conversation.
‘My lor!’ said Kipps, when Pearce had gone, ‘but wasn’t my mouth and ‘ed
bad this morning before I ‘ad a pick-me-up!’
‘Whad jer ‘ave?’
‘Anchovy on ‘ot buttered toast. It’s the very best pick-me-up there is. You
trust me, Rodgers. I never take no other, and I don’t advise you to. See?’
And when pressed for further particulars, he said again he had been ‘fair all
round the town, with a Nactor chap’ he knew. They asked curiously all he
had done, and he said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ And when they pressed for
still further details, he said there were things little boys ought not to know,
and laughed darkly and found them some huckaback to roll.
And in this manner for a space did Kipps fend off the contemplation of the
‘key of the street’ that Shalford had presented him.
3

This sort of thing was all very well when junior apprentices were about, but
when Kipps was alone with himself it served him not at all. He was
uncomfortable inside, and his skin was uncomfortable, and the Head and
Mouth, palliated, perhaps, but certainly not cured, were still with him. He
felt, to tell the truth, nasty and dirty, and extremely disgusted with himself.
To work was dreadful, and to stand still and think still more dreadful. His
patched knee reproached him. These were the second best of his three pairs
of trousers, and they had cost him thirteen and sixpence. Practically ruined
they were. His dusting pair was unfit for shop, and he would have to
 71

degrade his best, when he was under inspection he affected the slouch of a
desperado, but directly he found himself alone, this passed insensibly into
the droop.
The financial aspect of things grew large before him. His whole capital in the
world was the sum of five pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank, and four
and sixpence cash. Besides, there would be two months’ ‘screw.’ His little
tin box upstairs was no longer big enough for his belongings, he would have
to buy another, let alone that it was not calculated to make a good
impression in a new ‘crib.’ Then there would be paper and stamps needed in
some abundance for answering advertisements and railway fares when he
went ‘crib hunting.’ He would have to write letters, and he never wrote
letters. There was spelling, for example, to consider. Probably if nothing
turned up before his month was up, he would have to go home to his Uncle
and Aunt.
How would they take it? . . .
For the present, at any rate, he resolved not to write to them.
Such disagreeable things as this it was that lurked below the fair surface of
Kipps’ assertion, ‘I been wanting a change. If ‘e ‘adn’t swapped me, I should
very likely ‘ave swapped ’im.’
In the perplexed privacies of his own mind he could not understand how
everything had happened. He had been the Victim of Fate, or at least of one
as inexorable — Chitterlow. He tried to recall the successive steps that had
culminated so disastrously. They were difficult to recall . . .
Buggins that night abounded in counsel and reminiscence.
‘Curious thing,’ said Buggins, ‘but every time I’ve had the swap I’ve never
believed I should get another Crib — never. But I have,’ said Buggins.
‘Always. So don’t lose heart, whatever you do.’
‘Whatever you do,’ said Buggins, ‘keep hold of your collars and cuffs —
shirts, if you can, but collars anyhow. Spout them last. And, anyhow, it’s
summer, you won’t want your coat . . . You got a good umbrella . . .
‘You’ll no more get a shop from New Romney than — anything. Go straight
up to London, get the cheapest room you can find — and hang out. Don’t
eat too much. Many a chap’s put his prospects in his stomach. Get a cup o’
coffee and a slice — egg, if you like — but remember you got to turn up at
the Warehouse tidy. The best places now, I believe, are the old cabmen’s
eating houses. Keep your watch and chain as long as you can . . .
‘There’s lots of shops going,’ said Buggins, ‘Lots!’
 72

And added reflectively, ‘But not this time of year, perhaps.’

He began to recall his own researches. ‘‘Stonishing lot of chaps you see,’ he
said. ‘All sorts. Look like Dukes, some of ’em. High hat. Patent boots.
Frockcoat. All there. All right for a West End crib. Others — Lord! It’s a
caution, Kipps. Boots been inked in some reading-rooms — I used to write in
a Reading Room in Fleet Street, regular penny club — hat been wetted,
collar frayed, tail-coat buttoned up, black chest-plaster tie — spread out.
Shirt, you know, gone —’ Buggins pointed upward with a pious expression.
‘No shirt, I expect?’
‘Eat it.’ said Buggins.
Kipps meditated. ‘I wonder where old Minton is,’ he said at last. ‘I often
wondered about ’im.’
4

It was the morning following Kipps’ notice of dismissal that Miss

Walshingham came into the shop. She came in with a dark, slender lady,
rather faded, rather tightly dressed, whom Kipps was to know some day as
her mother. He discovered them in the main shop, at the counter of the
ribbon department. He had come to the opposite glove counter with some
goods enclosed in a parcel that he had unpacked in his own department.
The two ladies were both bent over a box of black ribbon.
He had a moment of tumultuous hesitations. The etiquette of the situation
was incomprehensible. He put down his goods very quietly and stood, hands
on counter, staring at these two ladies. Then, as Miss Walshingham sat back,
the instinct of flight seized him . . .
He returned to his Manchester shop wildly agitated. Directly he was out of
sight of her he wanted to see her. He fretted up and down the counter, and
addressed some snappish remarks to the apprentice in the window. He
fumbled for a moment with a parcel, untied it needlessly, began to tie it up
again, and then bolted back again into the main shop. He could hear his own
heart beating.
The two ladies were standing in the manner of those who have completed
their purchases and are waiting for their change. Mrs. Walshingham
regarded some remnants with impersonal interest; Helen’s eyes searched
the shop. They distinctly lit up when they discovered Kipps.
He dropped his hands to the counter by habit, and stood for a moment
regarding her awkwardly. What would she do? Would she cut him? She came
 73

across the shop to him.

‘How are you, Mr. Kipps?’ she said, in her clear, distinct tones, and she held
out her hand. ‘Very well, thank you,’ said Kipps; ‘how are you?’
She said she had been buying some ribbon.
He became aware of Mrs. Walshingham very much surprised. This checked
something allusive about the class, and he said instead that he supposed she
was glad to be having her holidays now. She said she was, it gave her more
time for reading and that sort of thing. He supposed that she would be
going abroad, and she thought that perhaps they would go to Knocke or
Bruges for a time.
Then came a pause, and Kipps’ soul surged within him. He wanted to tell her
he was leaving and would never see her again. He could find neither words
nor voice to say it. The swift seconds passed. The girl in the ribbons was
handing Mrs. Walshingham her change. ‘Well,’ said Miss Walshingham,
‘good-bye,’ and gave him her hand again.
Kipps bowed over her hand. His manners, his counter manners, were the
easiest she had ever seen upon him. She turned to her mother. It was no
good now, no good. Her mother! You couldn’t say a thing like that before
her mother! All was lost but politeness. Kipps rushed for the door. He stood
at the door bowing with infinite gravity, and she smiled and nodded as she
went out. She saw nothing of the struggle within him, nothing but a
gratifying emotion. She smiled like a satisfied goddess as the incense
ascends.
Mrs. Walshingham bowed stiffly and a little awkwardly.
He remained holding the door open for some seconds after they had passed
out, then rushed suddenly to the back of the ‘costume’ window to watch
them go down the street. His hands tightened on the window rack as he
stared. Her mother appeared to be asking discreet questions. Helen’s
bearing suggested the off-hand replies of a person who found the world a
satisfactory place to live in. ‘Really, Mumsie, you cannot expect me to cut
my own students dead,’ she was, in fact, saying —
They vanished round Henderson’s corner.
Gone! And he would never see her again — never!
It was as though some one had struck his heart with a whip. Never! Never!
Never! And she didn’t know! He turned back from the window, and the
department, with its two apprentices, was impossible. The whole glaring
world was insupportable.
 74

He hesitated, and made a rush, head down, for the cellar that was his
Manchester warehouse. Rogers asked him a question that he pretended not
to hear.
The Manchester warehouse was a small cellar apart from the general
basement of the building, and dimly lit by a small gas flare. He did not turn
that up, but rushed for the darkest corner, where, on the lowest shelf, the
Sale window-tickets were stored. He drew out the box of these with
trembling hands and upset them on the floor, and so, having made himself a
justifiable excuse for being on the ground with his head well in the dark, he
could let his poor bursting little heart have its way with him for a space.
And there he remained until the cry of ‘Kipps! Forward!’ summoned him
once more to face the world.
 75

CHAPTER 6. THE UNEXPECTED

Now in the slack of that same day, after the midday dinner and before the
coming of the afternoon customers, this disastrous Chitterlow descended
upon Kipps with the most amazing coincidence in the world. He did not call
formally, entering and demanding Kipps, but privately, in a confidential and
mysterious manner. Kipps was first aware of him as a dark object bobbing
about excitedly outside the hosiery window. He was stooping and craning
and peering in the endeavour to see into the interior between and over the
socks and stockings. Then he transferred his attention to the door, and after
a hovering scrutiny, tried the baby-linen display. His movements and
gestures suggested a suppressed excitement.
Seen by daylight, Chitterlow was not nearly such a magnificent figure as he
had been by the subdued nocturnal lightings and beneath the glamour of his
own interpretation. The lines were the same, indeed, but the texture was
different. There was a quality about the yachting cap, an indefinable finality
of dustiness, a shiny finish on all the salient surfaces of the reefer coat. The
red hair and the profile, though still forcible and fine, were less in the quality
of Michelangelo and more in that of the merely picturesque. But it was a
bright, brown eye still that sought amidst the interstices of the baby-linen.
Kipps was by no means anxious to interview Chitterlow again. If he had felt
sure that Chitterlow would not enter the shop, he would have hid in the
warehouse until the danger was past, but he had no idea of Chitterlow’s
limitations. He decided to keep up the shop in the shadows until Chitterlow
reached the side window of the Manchester department, and then to go
outside as if to inspect the condition of the window and explain to him that
things were unfavourable to immediate intercourse. He might tell him he
had already lost his situation . . .
‘‘Ullo, Chit’low,’ he said, emerging.
‘Very man I want to see,’ said Chitterlow, shaking with vigour. ‘Very man I
want to see.’ He laid a hand on Kipps’ arm. ‘How old are you, Kipps?’
‘One-and-twenty,’ said Kipps. ‘Why?’
‘Talk about coincidences! And your name, now? Wait a minute.’ He held out
a finger. ‘Is it Arthur?’
 76

‘Yes,’ said Kipps.

‘You’re the man,’ said Chitterlow.
‘What man?’
‘It’s about the thickest coincidence I ever struck,’ said Chitterlow, plunging
his extensive hand into his breast coat pocket. ‘Half a jiff and I’ll tell you your
mother’s Christian name.’ He laughed and struggled with his coat for a
space, produced a washing-book and two pencils, which he deposited in his
side pocket, then in one capacious handful, a bent but by no means finally
disabled cigar, the rubber proboscis of a bicycle pump, some twine and a
lady’s purse, and finally a small pocket-book, and from this after dropping
and recovering several visiting-cards, he extracted a carelessly torn piece of
newspaper. ‘Euphemia,’ he read, and brought his face close to Kipps’. ‘Eh?’
He laughed noisily. ‘It’s about as fair a Bit of All Right as any one could have
— outside a coincidence play. Don’t say her name wasn’t Euphemia, Kipps,
and spoil the whole blessed show.’
‘Whose name Euphemia?’ asked Kipps.
‘Your mother’s.’
‘Lemme see what it says on the paper.’
Chitterlow handed him the fragment and turned away.
‘You may say what you like,’ he said, addressing a vast, deep laugh to the
street generally.
Kipps attempted to read. ‘WADDY or KIPPS. If Arthur Waddy or Arthur
Kipps, the son of Margaret Euphemia Kipps, who —’
Chitterlow’s finger swept over the print. ‘I went down the column, and
every blessed name that seemed to fit my play I took. I don’t believe in
made-up names. As I told you. I’m all with Zola in that. Documents whenever
you can. I like ’em hot and real. See? Who was Waddy?’
‘Never heard his name.’
‘Not Waddy?’
‘No!’
Kipps tried to read again, and abandoned the attempt. ‘What does it mean?’
he said. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It means,’ said Chitterlow, with a momentary note of lucid exposition, ‘so
far as I can make out, that you’re going to strike it Rich. Never mind about
the Waddy — that’s a detail. What does it usually mean? You’ll hear of
 77

something to your advantage — very well. I took that newspaper up to get

my names by the merest chance. Directly I saw it again and read that — I
knew it was you. I believe in coincidences. People say they don’t happen. I
say they do. Everything’s a coincidence. Seen properly. Here you are. Here’s
one! Incredible? Not a bit of it! See? It’s you! Kipps! Waddy be damned! It’s a
Mascot. There’s luck in my play. Bif! You’re there. I’m there. Fair in it! Snap!’
And he discharged his fingers like a pistol. ‘Never you mind about the
‘Waddy.’’
‘Eh?’ said Kipps, with a nervous eye on Chitterlow’s fingers.
‘You’re all right,’ said Chitterlow, ‘you may bet the seat of your only
breeches on that! Don’t you worry about the Waddy — that’s as clear as
day. You’re about as right side up as a billiard ball . . . whatever you do. Don’t
stand there gaping, man! Read the paper if you don’t believe me. Read it!’
He shook it under Kipps’ nose.
Kipps became aware of the second apprentice watching them from the
shop. His air of perplexity gave place to a more confident bearing.
‘— who was born at East Grinstead.’ I certainly was born there. I’ve ‘eard my
Aunt say —’
‘I knew it,’ said Chitterlow, taking hold of one edge of the paper and
bringing his face close alongside Kipps’. ‘— on September the first, eighteen
hundred and seventy-eight —’
‘That’s all right,’ said Chitterlow. ‘It’s all, all right, and all you have to do is to
write to Watson and Bean and get it —’
‘Get what?’
‘Whatever it is.’
Kipps sought his moustache. ‘You’d write?’ he asked. ‘Ra-ther.’
‘But what do you think it is?’
‘That’s the fun of it!’ said Chitterlow, taking three steps in some as yet
uninvented dance. ‘That’s where the joke comes in. It may be anything — it
may be a million. If so! Where does little Harry come in? Eh?’
Kipps was trembling slightly. ‘But —’ he said, and thought. ‘If you was me —
’ he began. ‘About that Waddy —?’
He glanced up and saw the second apprentice disappear with amazing
swiftness from behind the goods in the window.
‘What?’ asked Chitterlow, but he never had an answer.
 78

‘Lor! There’s the guv’nor!’ said Kipps, and made a prompt dive for the door.
He dashed in, only to discover that Shalford, with the junior apprentice in
attendance, had come to mark off remnants of Kipps’ cotton dresses, and
was demanding him. ‘Hallo, Kipps,’ he said, ‘outside —?’
‘Seein’ if the window was straight, Sir,’ said Kipps. ‘Umph!’ said Shalford.
For a space Kipps was too busily employed to think at all of Chitterlow or the
crumpled bit of paper in his trouser pocket. He was, however, painfully
aware of a suddenly disconnected excitement at large in the street. There
came one awful moment when Chitterlow’s nose loomed interrogatively
over the ground glass of the department door, and his bright little red-
brown eye sought for the reason of Kipps’ disappearance, and then it
became evident that he saw the high light of Shalford’s baldness, and
grasped the situation and went away. And then Kipps (with that
advertisement in his pocket) was able to come back to the business in hand.
He became aware that Shalford had asked a question. ‘Yessir, nosir, rightsir.
I’m sorting up zephyrs tomorrow, Sir,’ said Kipps.
Presently he had a moment to himself again, and, taking up a safe position
behind a newly unpacked pile of summer lace curtains, he straightened out
the piece of paper and re-perused it. It was a little perplexing. That ‘Arthur
Waddy or Arthur Kipps’— did that imply two persons or one? He would ask
Pearce or Buggins. Only —
It had always been impressed upon him that there was something
demanding secrecy about his mother.
‘Don’t you answer no questions about your mother,’ his aunt had been wont
to say. ‘Tell them you don’t know, whatever it is they ask you.’
Now, this —?
Kipps’ face became portentously careful, and he rugged at his moustache,
such as it was, hard.
He had always represented his father as being a ‘gentleman farmer.’ ‘It
didn’t pay,’ he used to say, with a picture in his own mind of a penny
magazine aristocrat prematurely worn out by worry. ‘I’m a Norfan, both
sides,’ he would explain, with the air of one who had seen trouble. He said
he lived with his uncle and aunt, but he did not say that they kept a toy-
shop, and to tell any one that his uncle had been a butler — a servant! —
would have seemed the maddest of indiscretions. Almost all the assistants
in the Emporium were equally reticent and vague, so great is their horror of
‘Lowness’ of any sort. To ask about this ‘Waddy or Kipps’ would upset all
 79

these little fictions. He was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear about his
real status in the world (he was not, as a matter of fact, perfectly clear
about anything), but he knew that there was a quality about his status that
was — detrimental.
Under the circumstances —?
It occurred to him that it would save a lot of trouble to destroy the
advertisement there and then. In which case he would have to explain to
Chitterlow!
‘Eng!’ said Mr. Kipps.
‘Kipps!’ cried Carshot, who was shop-walking. ‘Kipps Forward!’
He thrust back the crumpled paper into his pocket, and sallied forth to the
customer.
‘I want,’ said the customer, looking vaguely about her through glasses, ‘a
little bit of something to cover a little stool I have. Anything would do — a
remnant or anything.’
The matter of the advertisement remained in abeyance for half an hour, and
at the end the little stool was still a candidate for covering, and Kipps had a
thoroughly representative collection of the textile fabrics in his department
to clear away. He was so angry about the little stool that the crumpled
advertisement lay for a space in his pocket, absolutely forgotten.
2

Kipps sat on his tin box under the gas-bracket that evening, and looked up
the name Euphemia, and learnt what it meant in the ‘Inquire Within About
Everything’ that constituted Buggins’ reference library. He hoped Buggins,
according to his habit, would ask him what he was looking for, but Buggins
was busy turning out his week’s washing. ‘Two collars,’ said Buggins, ‘half
pair socks, two dickeys. Shirt? . . . M’m. There ought to be another collar
somewhere’.
‘Euphemia,’ said Kipps at last, unable altogether to keep to himself this
suspicion of a high origin that floated so delightfully about him. ‘Eu-phemia;
it isn’t a name common people would give a girl, is it?’
‘It isn’t the name any decent people would give to a girl,’ said Buggins,
‘common or not.’
‘Lor!’ said Kipps. ‘Why?’
‘It’s giving girls names like that,’ said Buggins, ‘that nine times out of ten
 80

makes ’em go wrong. It unsettles ’em. If ever I was to have a girl, if ever I
was to have a dozen girls, I’d call ’em all Jane. Every one of ’em. You
couldn’t have a better name than that. Euphemia, indeed! What next? . . .
Good Lord! . . . That isn’t one of my collars there, is it, under your bed?’
Kipps got him the collar.
‘I don’t see no great ‘arm in Euphemia,’ he said as he did so.
After that he became restless. ‘I’m a good mind to write that letter,’ he said;
and then, finding Buggins preoccupied wrapping his washing up in the ‘sox,’
added to himself, ‘a thundering good mind.’
So he got his penny bottle of ink, borrowed the pen from Buggins, and with
no very serious difficulty in spelling or composition, did as he had resolved.
He came back into the bedroom about an hour afterwards, a little out of
breath and pale. ‘Where you been?’ said Buggins, who was now reading the
Daily World Manager, which came to him in rotation from Carshot.
‘Out to post some letters,’ said Kipps, hanging up his hat. ‘Crib hunting?’
‘Mostly,’ said Kipps.
‘Rather,’ he added, with a nervous laugh; ‘what else?’
Buggins went on reading. Kipps sat on his bed and regarded the back of the
Daily World Manager thoughtfully.
‘Buggins,’ he said at last.
Buggins lowered his paper and looked.
‘I say, Buggins, what do these here advertisements mean that say so-and-so
will hear of something greatly to his advantage?’
‘Missin’ people,’ said Buggins, making to resume reading.
‘How d’yer mean?’ asked Kipps. ‘Money left and that sort of thing?’
Buggins shook his head. ‘Debts,’ he said, ‘more often than not.’
‘But that ain’t to his advantage.’
‘They put that to get ‘old of ’em’, said Buggins. ‘Often it’s wives.’
‘What you mean?’
‘Deserted wives try and get their husbands back that way.’
‘I suppose it is legacies sometimes, eh? Perhaps if some one was left a
hundred pounds by some one —’
‘Hardly ever,’ said Buggins.
 81

‘Well, ‘ow —?’ began Kipps, and hesitated.

Buggins resumed reading. He was very much excited by a leader on Indian
affairs. ‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘it won’t do to give these here Blacks votes.’
‘No fear,’ said Kipps.
‘They’re different altogether,’ said Buggins. ‘They ‘aven’t the sound sense of
Englishmen, and they ‘aven’t the character. There’s a sort of tricky
dishonesty about ’em — false witness and all that — of which an
Englishman has no idea. Outside their courts of law — it’s a pos’tive fact,
Kipps — there’s witnesses waitin’ to be ‘ired. Reg’lar trade. Touch their ‘ats
as you go in. Englishmen ‘ave no idea, I tell you — not ord’nary Englishmen.
It’s in their blood. They’re too timid to be honest. Too slavish. They aren’t
used to being free like we are, and if you gave ’em freedom they woudn’t
make a proper use of it. Now, we — Oh, Damn!’
For the gas had suddenly gone out, and Buggins had the whole column of
Society Club Chat still to read.
Buggins could talk of nothing after that but Shalford’s meanness in turning
off the gas, and after being extremely satirical about their employer,
undressed in the dark, hit his bare toe against a box, and subsided, after
unseemly ejaculations, into silent ill-temper.
Though Kipps tried to get to sleep before the affair of the letter he had just
posted resumed possession of his mind, he could not do so. He went over
the whole thing again, quite exhaustively.
Now that his first terror was abating, he couldn’t quite determine whether
he was glad or sorry that he had posted that letter. If it should happen to be
a hundred pounds!
It must be a hundred pounds!
If it was he could hold out for a year, for a couple of years even, before he
got a Crib.
Even if it was fifty pounds —!
Buggins was already breathing regularly when Kipps spoke again. ‘Buggins,’
he said.
Buggins pretended to be asleep, and thickened his regular breathing (a little
too hastily) to a snore.
‘I say, Buggins,’ said Kipps, after an interval.
‘What’s up now?’ said Buggins, unamiably.
 82

‘S’pose you saw an advertisement in a paper, with your name in it, see,
asking you to come and see some one, like, so as to hear of something very
much to your —’
‘Hide,’ said Buggins, shortly. ‘But —’
‘I’d hide.’
‘Er?’
‘Goo’-night, o’man,’ said Buggins, with convincing earnestness. Kipps lay still
for a long time, then blew profoundly, turned over and stared at the other
side of the dark.
He had been a fool to post that letter!
Lord! Hadn’t he been a fool!
3

It was just five days and a half after the light had been turned out while
Buggins was reading, that a young man with a white face, and eyes bright
and wide open, emerged from a side road upon the Leas front. He was
dressed in his best clothes, and, although the weather was fine, he carried
his umbrella, just as if he had been to church. He hesitated, and turned to
the right. He scanned each house narrowly as he passed it, and presently
came to an abrupt stop. ‘Hughenden,’ said the gateposts in firm, black
letters, and the fanlight in gold repeated ‘Hughenden.’ It was a stucco
house, fit to take your breath away, and its balcony was painted a beautiful
sea green, enlivened with gilding. He stood looking up at it.
‘Gollys!’ he said at last in an awe-stricken whisper.
It had rich-looking crimson curtains to all the lower windows, and brass-
railed blinds above. There was a splendid tropical plant in a large artistic pot
in the drawing-room window. There was a splendid bronzed knocker (ring
also) and two bells — one marked ‘servants.’
‘Gollys! Servants, eh?’
He walked past away from it with his eyes regarding it, and then turned and
came back. He passed through a further indecision, and finally drifted away
to the sea front and sat down on a seat a little way along the Leas and put
his arm over the back and regarded ‘Hughenden.’ He whistled an air very
softly to himself, put his head first on one side and then on the other. Then
for a space he scowled fixedly at it.
A very stout old gentleman with a very red face and very protuberant eyes
 83

sat down beside Kipps, removed a Panama hat of the most abandoned
desperado cut, and mopped his brow and blew. Then he began mopping the
inside of his hat. Kipps watched him for a space, wondering how much he
might have a year, and where he bought his hat. Then ‘Hughenden’
reasserted itself.
An impulse overwhelmed him. ‘I say,’ he said, leaning forward to the old
gentleman. The old gentleman started and stared.
‘What did you say?’ he asked fiercely.
‘You wouldn’t think,’ said Kipps, indicating with his forefinger, ‘that that ‘ous
there belongs to me.’
The old gentleman twisted his neck round to look at ‘Hughenden.’ Then he
came back to Kipps, looked at his mean little garments with apoplectic
intensity, and blew at him by way of reply.
‘It does,’ said Kipps, a little less confidently.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said the old gentleman, and put his hat on and wiped out
the corners of his eyes. ‘It’s hot enough,’ panted the old gentleman
indignantly, ‘without Fools.’ Kipps looked from the old gentleman to the
house, and back to the old gentleman. The old gentleman looked at Kipps,
and snorted and looked out to sea, and again, snorting very
contemptuously, at Kipps.
‘Mean to say it doesn’t belong to me?’ said Kipps.
The old gentleman just glanced over his shoulder at the house in dispute,
and then fell to pretending Kipps didn’t exist. ‘It’s been lef me this very
morning,’ said Kipps. ‘It ain’t the only one that’s been lef me, neither.’
‘Aw!’ said the old gentleman, like one who is sorely tried. He seemed to
expect the passers-by presently to remove Kipps.
‘It ‘as,’ said Kipps. He made no further remark to the old gentleman for a
space, but looked with a little less certitude at the house . . .
‘I got —’ he said, and stopped.
‘It’s no good telling you if you don’t believe,’ he said.
The old gentleman, after a struggle with himself, decided not to have a fit.
‘Try that game on with me,’ he panted. ‘Give you in charge.’
‘What game?’
‘Wasn’t born yesterday,’ said the old gentleman, and blew. ‘Besides,’ he
added, ‘look at you!’
 84

‘I know you,’ said the old gentleman, and coughed shortly and nodded to
the horizon, and coughed again.
Kipps looked dubiously from the house to the old gentleman and back to
the house. Their conversation, he gathered, was over.
Presently he got up and went slowly across the grass to its stucco portal
again. He stood, and his mouth shaped the precious word, ‘Hughenden.’ It
was all right! He looked over his shoulder as if in appeal to the old
gentleman, then turned and went his way. The old gentleman was so
evidently past all reason!
He hung for a moment some distance along the parade, as though some
invisible string was pulling him back. When he could no longer see the house
from the pavement he went out into the road. Then with an effort he
snapped the string.
He went on down a quiet side street, unbuttoned his coat furtively, took out
three bank-notes in an envelope, looked at them, and replaced them. Then
he fished up five new sovereigns from his trouser pocket, and examined
them. To such confidence had his exact resemblance to his dead mother’s
portrait carried Messrs. Watson and Bean.
It was right enough. It really was all right.
He replaced the coins with grave precaution, and went his way with a
sudden briskness. It was all right — he had it now — he was a rich man at
large. He went up a street and round a corner and along another street, and
started towards the Pavilion, and changed his mind and came round back,
resolved to go straight to the Emporium and tell them all.
He was aware of some one crossing a road far off ahead of him, some one
curiously relevant to his present extraordinary state of mind. It was
Chitterlow. Of course, it was Chitterlow who had told him first of the whole
thing! The playwright was marching buoyantly along a cross street. His nose
was in the air, the yachting cap was on the back of his head, and the large
freckled hand grasped two novels from the library, a morning newspaper, a
new hat done up in paper, and a lady’s net bag full of onions and tomatoes
...
He passed out of sight behind the wine-merchant’s at the corner, as Kipps
decided to hurry forward and tell him of the amazing change in the Order of
the Universe that had just occurred.
Kipps uttered a feeble shout, arrested as it began, and waved his umbrella.
Then he set off at a smart pace in pursuit. He came round the corner, and
 85

Chitterlow had gone; he hurried to the next, and there was no Chitterlow;
he turned back unavailingly, and his eyes sought some other possible
corner. His hand fluttered to his mouth, and he stood for a space on the
pavement edge, staring about him. No good!
But the sight of Chitterlow was a wholesome thing, it connected events
together, joined him on again to the past at a new point, and that was what
he so badly needed . . .
It was all right — all right.
He became suddenly very anxious to tell everybody at the Emporium,
absolutely everybody, all about it. That was what wanted doing. He felt that
telling was the thing to make this business real. He gripped his umbrella
about the middle, and walked very eagerly.
He entered the Emporium through the Manchester department. He flung
open the door (over whose ground glass he had so recently, in infinite
apprehension, watched the nose of Chitterlow), and discovered the second
apprentice and Pearce in conversation. Pearce was prodding his hollow
tooth with a pin and talking in fragments about the distinctive
characteristics of Good Style.
Kipps came up in front of the counter.
‘I say,’ he said. ‘What d’yer think?’
‘What?’ said Pearce over the pin.
‘Guess.’
‘You’ve slipped out because Teddy’s in London.’
‘Something more.’
‘What?’
‘Been left a fortune.’
‘Garn!’
‘I ‘ave.’
‘Get out!’
‘Straight. I been lef twelve ‘undred pounds — twelve ‘undred pounds a
year!’
He moved towards the little door out of the department into the house,
moving as heralds say, regardant passant. Pearce stood with mouth wide
open and pin poised in air.
 86

‘No!’ he said at last.

‘It’s right,’ said Kipps, ‘and I’m going.’
And he fell over the doormat into the house.
4

It happened that Mr. Shalford was in London buying summer sale goods,
and, no doubt, also interviewing aspirants to succeed Kipps.
So that there was positively nothing to hinder a wild rush of rumour from
end to end of the Emporium. All the masculine members began their report
with the same formula. ‘Heard about Kipps?’
The new girl in the cash desk had had it from Pearce, and had dashed out
into the fancy shop to be the first with the news on the fancy side. Kipps had
been left a thousand pounds a year — twelve thousand pounds a year.
Kipps had been left twelve hundred thousand pounds. The figures were
uncertain, but the essential facts they had correct. Kipps had gone upstairs.
Kipps was packing his box. He said he wouldn’t stop another day in the old
Emporium not for a thousand pounds! It was said that he was singing
ribaldry about old Shalford. He had come down! He was in the counting-
house. There was a general movement thither. (Poor old Buggins had a
customer, and couldn’t make out what the deuce it was all about!
Completely out of it, was Buggins.)
There was a sound of running to and fro, and voices saying this, that, and
the other thing about Kipps. Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger went the dinner-
bell, all unheeded. The whole of the Emporium was suddenly bright-eyed,
excited, hungry to tell somebody, to find at any cost somebody who didn’t
know, and be first to tell them, ‘Kipps has been left thirty — forty — fifty
thousand pounds!’
‘What!’ cried the senior porter. ‘Him!’ and ran up to the counting-house as
eagerly as though Kipps had broken his neck.
‘One of our chaps just been left sixty thousand pounds,’ said the first
apprentice, returning after a great absence to his customer.
‘Unexpectedly?’ said the customer. ‘Quite,’ said the first apprentice . . .
‘I’m sure if Any One deserves it, it’s Mr. Kipps,’ said Miss Mergle; and her
train rustled as she hurried to the counting-house.
There stood Kipps amidst a pelting shower of congratulations. His face was
flushed, and his hair disordered. He still clutched his hat and best umbrella in
his left hand. His right hand was any one’s to shake rather than his own.
 87

(Ring-a-dinger, ring-a-dinger, ding, ding, ding, dang you! went the neglected
dinner-bell.)
‘Good old Kipps!’ said Pearce, shaking. ‘Good old Kipps!’ Booch rubbed one
anaemic hand upon the other. ‘You’re sure it’s all right, Mr. Kipps?’ he said in
the background. ‘I’m sure we all congratulate him,’ said Miss Mergle. ‘Great
Scott!’ said the new young lady in the glove department. ‘Twelve hundred a
year! Great Scott! You aren’t thinking of marrying any one, are you, Mr.
Kipps?’
‘Three pounds five and ninepence a day,’ said Mr. Booch, working in his
head almost miraculously . . .
Every one, it seemed, was saying how glad they were it was Kipps, except
the junior apprentice, upon whom — he being the only son of a widow, and
used to having the best of everything as a right — an intolerable envy, a
sense of unbearable wrong, had cast its gloomy shade. All the rest were
quite honestly and simply glad — gladder, perhaps, at that time than Kipps,
because they were not so overpowered . . .
Kipps went downstairs to dinner, emitting fragmentary disconnected
statements. ‘Never expected anything of the sort . . . When this here old
Bean told me, you could have knocked me down with a feather . . . He says,
“You ben lef money.” Even then I didn’t expect it’d be mor’n a hundred
pounds, perhaps. Something like that.’
With the sitting down to dinner and the handing of plates, the excitement
assumed a more orderly quality. The housekeeper emitted congratulations
as she carved, and the maidservant became dangerous to clothes with the
plates — she held them anyhow; one expected to see one upside down,
even — she found Kipps so fascinating to look at. Every one was the brisker
and hungrier for the news (except the junior apprentice), and the
housekeeper carved with unusual liberality. It was High Old Times there
under the gaslight, High Old Times. ‘I’m sure if Any One deserves it,’ said
Miss Mergle —‘pass the salt, please — it’s Mr. Kipps.’
The babble died away a little as Carshot began barking across the table at
Kipps. ‘You’ll be a bit of a Swell, Kipps,’ he said. ‘You won’t hardly know
yourself.’
‘Quite the gentleman,’ said Miss Mergle.
‘Many real gentlemen’s families,’ said the housekeeper, ‘have to do with
less.’
‘See you on the Leas,’ said Carshot. ‘My —!’ He met the housekeeper’s eye.
 88

She had spoken about that expression before. ‘My eye!’ he said tamely, lest
words should mar the day.
‘You’ll go to London, I reckon,’ said Pearce. ‘You’ll be a man about town. We
shall see you mashing ’em, with violets in your button ‘ole, down the
Burlington Arcade.’
‘One of these West End Flats. That’d be my style,’ said Pearce. ‘And a first-
class club.’
‘Aren’t these Clubs a bit ‘ard to get into?’ asked Kipps, open-eyed over a
mouthful of potato.
‘No fear. Not for Money,’ said Pearce. And the girl in the laces, who had
acquired a cynical view of Modern Society from the fearless exposures of
Miss Marie Corelli, said, ‘Money goes everywhere nowadays, Mr. Kipps.’
But Carshot showed the true British strain. ‘If I was Kipps,’ he said, pausing
momentarily for a knifeful of gravy, ‘I should go to the Rockies and shoot
bears.’
‘I’d certainly ‘ave a run over to Boulogne,’ said Pearce, ‘and look about a bit.
I’m going to do that next Easter myself, anyhow — see if I don’t.’
‘Go to Oireland, Mr. Kipps,’ came the soft insistence of Biddy Murphy, who
managed the big workroom, flushed and shining in the Irish way as she
spoke, ‘Go to Oireland. Ut’s the loveliest country in the world. Outside currs.
Fishin’, shoot-in’, huntin’. An’ pretty gals! Eh! You should see the Lakes of
Killarney, Mr. Kipps!’ And she expressed ecstasy by a facial pantomine, and
smacked her lips.
And presently they crowned the event. It was Pearce who said, ‘Kipps, you
ought to stand Sham!’ And it was Carshot who found the more poetical
word ‘Champagne.’
‘Rather!’ said Kipps, hilariously; and the rest was a question of detail and
willing emissaries. ‘Here it comes!’ they said, as the apprentice come down
the staircase, ‘How about the shop?’ said some one. ‘Oh, hang the shop!’
said Carshot; and made gruntulous demands for a corkscrew with a thing to
cut the wire. Pearce, the dog! had a wire-cutter in his pocket-knife. How
Shalford would have stared at the gold-tipped bottles if he had chanced to
take an early train! Bang went the corks, and bang! Gluck, gluck, gluck, and
sizzle!
When Kipps found them all standing about him under the gas flare, saying
almost solemnly ‘Kipps!’ with tumblers upheld, ‘Have it in tumblers,’ Carshot
had said, ‘have it in tumblers. It isn’t a wine like you have in glasses. Not like
 89

port and sherry. It cheers you up, but you don’t get drunk. It isn’t hardly
stronger than lemonade. They drink it at dinner, some of ’em, every day.’
‘What! At three and six a bottle!’ said the housekeeper, incredulously. ‘They
don’t stick at that,’ said Carshot. ‘Not the champagne sort.’ The
housekeeper pursed her lips and shook her head —
When Kipps, I say, found them all standing up to toast him in that manner,
there came such a feeling in his throat and face that for the life of him he
scarcely knew for a moment whether he was not going to cry. ‘Kipps!’ they
all said, with kindly eyes. It was very good of them, and hard there wasn’t a
stroke of luck for them all!
But the sight of upturned chins and glasses pulled him together again . . .
They did him honour. Unenviously and freely they did him honour.
For example, Carshot, being subsequently engaged in serving cretonne, and
desiring to push a number of rejected blocks up the counter in order to have
space for measuring, swept them by a powerful and ill-calculated movement
of the arm, with a noise like thunder, partly on to the floor, and partly on to
the foot of the still gloomily preoccupied junior apprentice. And Buggins,
whose place it was to shopwalk while Carshot served, shopwalked with
quite unparalleled dignity, dangling a new season’s sunshade with a crooked
handle on one finger. He arrested each customer who came down the shop
with a grave and penetrating look. ‘Showing very tractive line new sheason’
sunshade,’ he would remark; and after a suitable pause, ‘Markable thing,
one our ‘sistant leg’sy twelve ‘undred a year. Very tractive. Nothing more
today, mum? No!’ And he would then go and hold the door open for them
with perfect decorum, and with the sunshade dangling elegantly from his
left hand . . .
And the second apprentice, serving a customer with cheap ticking, and
being asked suddenly if it was strong, answered remarkably,
‘Oo, no, mum! Strong! Why, it ain’t ‘ardly stronger than lemonade’ . . .
The head porter, moreover, was filled with a virtuous resolve to break the
record as a lightning packer, and make up for lost time. Mr. Swaffenham of
the Sandgate Riviera, for example, who was going to dinner that night at
seven, received at half-past six, instead of the urgently needed dress shirt he
expected, a corset specially adapted to the needs of persons inclined to
embonpoint. A parcel of summer underclothing selected by the elder Miss
Waldershawe was somehow distributed in the form of gratis additions
throughout a number of parcels of a less intimate nature, and a box of
millinery on approval to Lady Pamshort (at Wampachs) was enriched by the
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addition of the junior porter’s cap . . .

These little things, slight in themselves, witness, perhaps none the less
eloquently to the unselfish exhilaration felt throughout the Emporium at the
extraordinary and unexpected enrichment of Mr. Kipps.
5

The bus that plies between New Romney and Folkestone is painted a British
red, and inscribed on either side with the word Tip-top’ in gold amidst
voluptuous scrolls. It is a slow and portly bus; even as a young bus it must
have been slow and portly. Below it swings a sort of hold, hung by chains
between the wheels and in the summer time the top has garden seats. The
front over those two dauntless, unhurrying horses rises in tiers like a
theatre; there is first a seat for the driver and his company, and above that a
seat, and above that, unless my memory plays me false, a seat. You sit in a
sort of composition by some Italian painter — a celestial group of you. There
are days when it doesn’t go — you have to find out. And so you get to New
Romney. So you will continue to get to New Romney for many years, for the
light railway concession along the coast is happily in the South Eastern
Railway Company’s keeping, and the peace of the marsh is kept inviolate
save for the bicycle bells of such as Kipps and I. This bus it was, this ruddy,
venerable and, under God’s mercy, immortal bus, that came down the
Folkestone hill with unflinching deliberation, and trundled through Sandgate
and Hythe, and out into the windy spaces of the Marsh, with Kipps and all
his fortunes on its brow.
You figure him there. He sat on the highest seat diametrically above the
driver, and his head was spinning and spinning with champagne and this
stupendous Tomfoolery of Luck; and his heart was swelling, swelling indeed
at times as though it would burst him, and his face toward the sunlight was
transfigured. He said never a word, but ever and again as he thought of this
or that, he laughed. He seemed full of chuckles for a time, detached and
independent chuckles, chuckles that rose and burst on him like bubbles in a
wine . . . He held a banjo sceptre-fashion and resting on his knee. He had
always wanted a banjo, now he had got one at Melchior’s, while he was
waiting for the bus.
There sat beside him a young servant, who was sucking peppermint, and a
little boy with a sniff whose flitting eyes showed him curious to know why
ever and again Kipps laughed, and beside the driver were two young men in
gaiters talking about ‘tegs.’ And there sat Kipps, all unsuspected, twelve
hundred a year as it were, except for the protrusion of the banjo, disguised
 91

as a common young man, and the young man in gaiters, to the left of the
driver, eyed Kipps and his banjo, and especially his banjo, ever and again, as
if he found it and him, with his rapt face, an insoluble enigma. And many a
King has ridden into a conquered city with a lesser sense of splendour than
Kipps.
Their shadows grew long behind them, and their faces were transfigured in
gold as they rumbled on towards the splendid west. The sun set before they
had passed Dymchurch, and as they came lumbering into New Romney past
the windmill the dusk had come.
The driver handed down the banjo and the portmanteau, and Kipps having
paid him, ‘That’s aw right,’ he said to the change as a gentleman should,
turned about, and ran the portmanteau smartly into old Kipps, whom the
sound of the stopping of the bus had brought to the door of the shop in an
aggressive mood and with his mouth full of supper.
‘‘Ullo, Uncle, didn’t see you,’ said Kipps.
‘Blunderin’ ninny,’ said old Kipps. ‘What’s brought you here? Ain’t early
closing, is it? Not Toosday?’
‘Got some news for you, Uncle,’ said Kipps, dropping the portmanteau.
‘Ain’t lost your situation, ‘ave you? What’s that you got there? I’m blowed if
it ain’t a banjo, Goolord! Spendin’ your money on banjoes! Don’t put down
your portmanty there — anyhow. Right in the way of everybody. I’m blowed
if ever I saw such a boy as you’ve got lately. Here! Molly! And look here!
What you got a portmanty for? Why! Goolord! You ain’t really lost your
place, ‘ave you?’
‘Somethin’s happened,’ said Kipps, slightly dashed. ‘It’s all right, Uncle. I’ll
tell you in a minute.’ Old Kipps took the banjo as his nephew picked up the
portmanteau again.
The living-room door opened quickly, showing a table equipped with
elaborate simplicity for supper, and Mrs. Kipps appeared.
‘If it ain’t young Artie!’ she said. ‘Why, whatever’s brought you ‘ome?’
‘‘Ullo, Aunt,’ said Artie. ‘I’m coming in. I got somethin’ to tell you. I’ve ‘ad a
bit of luck.’
He wouldn’t tell them all at once. He staggered with the portmanteau round
the corner of the counter, set a bundle of children’s tin pails into clattering
oscillation, and entered the little room. He deposited his luggage in the
corner beside the tall clock, and turned to his aunt and uncle again. His aunt
 92

regarded him doubtfully; the yellow light from the little lamp on the table
escaped above the shade, and lit her forehand and the tip of her nose. It
would be all right in a minute. He wouldn’t tell them all at once. Old Kipps
stood in the shop door with the banjo in his hand, breathing nosily. ‘The fact
is, Aunt, I’ve ‘ad a bit of luck.’
‘You ain’t been backin’ gordless ‘orses, Artie?’ she asked. ‘No fear.’
‘It’s a draw he’s been in,’ said old Kipps, still panting from the impact of the
portmanteau, ‘it’s a dratted draw. Jest look here, Molly. He’s won this ’ere
trashy banjer and throwd up his situation on the strength of it — that’s what
he’s done. Goin’ about singing. Dash and plunge. Jest the very fault poor
Pheamy always ‘ad. Blunder right in, and no one mustn’t stop ‘er!’
‘You ain’t thrown up your place, Artie, ‘ave you?’ said Mrs. Kipps. Kipps
perceived his opportunity. ‘I ‘ave,’ he said. ‘I’ve throwed it up.’
‘What for?’ said old Kipps.
‘So’s to learn the banjo!’
‘Goo Lord!’ said old Kipps, in horror to find himself verified. ‘I’m going about
playing,’ said Kipps, with a giggle.
‘Goin’ to black my face, Aunt, and sing on the beach. I’m going to ‘ave a
most tremenjous lark and earn any amount of money — you see. Twenty-six
fousand pounds I’m going to earn just as easy as nothing!’
‘Kipps,’ said Mrs. Kipps, ‘he’s been drinking!’
They regarded their nephew across the supper table with long faces. Kipps
exploded with laughter, and broke out again when his aunt shook her head
very sadly at him. Then suddenly he fell grave. He felt he could keep it up no
longer. ‘It’s all right, Aunt. Reely, I ain’t mad, and I ain’t been drinking. I been
lef money. I been left twenty-six fousand pounds.’
Pause.
‘And you thrown up your place?’ said old Kipps.
‘Yes,’ said Kipps, ‘rather!’
‘And bort this banjer, put on your best noo trousers, and come right on
’ere?’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Kipps, ‘I— never — did!’
‘These ain’t my noo trousers, Aunt,’ said Kipps, regretfully. ‘My noo trousers
wasn’t done.’
‘I shouldn’t ha’ thought that even you could ha’ been such a fool as that,’
 93

said old Kipps.

Pause.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kipps, a little disconcerted by their distrustful solemnity.
‘It’s all right, reely! Twenny-six thousan’ pounds. And a ’ouse.’
Old Kipps pursed his lips and shook his head.
‘A ’ouse on the Leas. I could have gone there. Only I didn’t. I didn’t care to. I
didn’t know what to say. I wanted to come and tell you.’
‘How d’yer know the ’ouse —?’
‘They told me.’
‘Well,’ said old Kipps, and nodded his head portentously towards his
nephew, with the corners of his mouth pulled down in a strikingly
discouraging way. ‘Well, you are a young Gaby.’
‘I didn’t think it of you, Artie!’ said Mrs. Kipps.
‘Wadjer mean?’ asked Kipps, faintly, looking from one to the other with a
withered face.
Old Kipps closed the shop door. ‘They been ‘avin’ a lark with you,’ said old
Kipps, in a mournful undertone. ‘That’s what I mean, my boy. They jest been
seein’ what a Gaby like you ‘ud do.’
‘I dessay that young Quodling was in it,’ said Mrs. Kipps. ‘‘E’s jest that sort.’
(For Quodling of the green-baize bag had grown up to be a fearful dog, the
terror of New Romney.) ‘It’s somebody after your place, very likely,’ said old
Kipps.
Kipps looked from one sceptical reproving face to the other, and round him
at the familiar shabby little room, with his familiar cheap portmanteau on
the mended chair, and that banjo amidst the supper-things, like some
irrevocable deed. Could he be rich indeed? Could it be that these things had
really happened? Or had some insane fancy whirled him thither?
Still — perhaps a hundred pounds —
‘But,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, reely, Uncle. You don’t think —? I ‘ad a letter.’
‘Got up,’ said old Kipps.
‘But I answered it and went to a norfis.’
Old Kipps felt staggered for a moment, but he shook his head and chins
sagely from side to side. As the memory of old Bean and Shalford’s revived,
the confidence of Kipps came back to him.
 94

‘I saw a nold gent, Uncle — perfect gentleman. And ‘e told me all about it.
Mos’ respectable ‘e was. Said ‘is name was Watson and Bean — leastways ‘e
was Bean. Said it was lef me.’
— Kipps suddenly dived into his breast pocket —‘by my Grandfather —’
The old people started.
Old Kipps uttered an exclamation and wheeled round towards the
mantelshelf, above which the daguerreotype of his lost younger sister
smiled its fading smile upon the world.
‘Waddy, ‘is name was,’ said Kipps, with his hand still deep in his pocket. ‘It
was ‘is son was my father —’
‘Waddy!’ said old Kipps.
‘Waddy!’ said Mrs. Kipps.
‘She’d never say,’ said old Kipps.
There was a long silence.
Kipps fumbled with a letter, a crumpled advertisement and three banknotes.
He hesitated between these items.
‘Why! That young chap what was arsting questions —’ said old Kipps, and
regarded his wife with an eye of amazement.
‘Must ‘ave been,’ said Mrs. Kipps.
‘Must ‘ave been,’ said old Kipps.
‘James,’ said Mrs. Kipps, in an awe-stricken voice. ‘After all — perhaps — it’s
true!’
‘‘Ow much did you say?’ asked old Kipps. ‘‘Ow much did you say ‘e’d lef you,
me b’y?’
It was thrilling, though not quite in the way Kipps had expected. He
answered almost meekly across the meagre supper-things, with his
documentary evidence in his hand —
‘Twelve ‘undred pounds.’ Proximately, he said. Twelve ‘undred pounds a
year. ‘E made ‘is will jest before ‘e died — not mor’n a month ago. When ‘e
was dying, ‘e seemed to change like, Mr. Bean said. ‘E’d never forgiven ‘is
son, never — not till then. ‘Is son ‘ad died in Australia, years and years ago,
and then ‘e ‘adn’t forgiven ’im. You know —‘is son what was my father. But
jest when ‘e was ill and dying ‘e seemed to get worried like, and longing for
some one of ‘is own. And ‘e told Mr. Bean it was ’im that had prevented
them marrying. So ‘e thought. That’s ‘ow it all come about . . . ’
 95

At last Kipps’ flaring candle went up the narrow, uncarpeted staircase to the
little attic that had been his shelter and refuge during all the days of his
childhood and youth. His head was whirling. He had been advised, he had
been warned, he had been flattered and congratulated, he had been given
whisky and hot water and lemon and sugar; and his health had been drunk
in the same. He had also eaten two Welsh rarebits — an unusual supper. His
uncle was chiefly for his going into Parliament, his aunt was consumed with
a great anxiety. ‘I’m afraid he’ll go and marry beneath him.’
‘Y’ought to ‘ave a bit o’ shootin’ somewhere,’ said old Kipps.
‘It’s your duty to marry into a county family, Artie — remember that.’
There’s lots of young noblemen’ll be glad to ‘eng on to you,’ said old Kipps.
‘You mark my words. And borrow your money. And then good-day to ye.’
‘I got to be precious careful,’ said Kipps. ‘Mr. Bean said that.’
‘And you got to be precious careful of this old Bean,’ said old Kipps. ‘We may
be out of the world in Noo Romney, but I’ve ‘eard a bit about solicitors for
all that. You keep your eye on old Bean, me b’y.’
‘‘Ow do we know what ‘e’s up to, with your money, even now?’ said old
Kipps, pursuing his uncomfortable topic.
‘‘E looked very respectable,’ said Kipps.
Kipps undressed with great deliberation and with vast gasps of pensive
margin. Twenty-six thousand pounds!
His aunt’s solicitude had brought back certain matters into the foreground
that his ‘Twelve ‘undred a year!’ had for a time driven away altogether. His
thoughts went back to the wood-carving class. Twelve Hundred a Year. He
sat on the edge of the bed in profound meditation, and his boots fell ‘whop’
and ‘whop’ upon the floor, with a long interval between each ‘whop.’
Twenty-six thousand pounds. ‘By Gum!’ He dropped the remainder of his
costume about him on the floor, got into bed, pulled the patchwork quilt
over him, and put his head on the pillow that had been first to hear of Ann
Pornick’s accession to his heart. But he did not think of Ann Pornick now.
It was about everything in the world except Ann Pornick that he seemed to
be trying to think of — simultaneously. All the vivid happenings of the day
came and went in his overtaxed brain —‘that old Bean’ explaining and
explaining, the fat man who wouldn’t believe, an overpowering smell of
peppermint, the banjo, Miss Mergle saying he deserved it, Chitterlow
 96

vanishing round a corner, the wisdom and advice and warnings of his aunt
and uncle. She was afraid he would marry beneath him, was she? She didn’t
know . . .
His brain made an excursion into the woodcarving class and presented Kipps
with the picture of himself amazing that class by a modest yet clearly
audible remark, ‘I been left twenty-six thousand pounds.’ Then he told them
all quietly but firmly that he had always loved Miss Walshingham — always,
and so he had brought all his twenty-six thousand pounds with him to give
to her there and then. He wanted nothing in return . . . Yes, he wanted
nothing in return. He would give it to her all in an envelope and go. Of
course he would keep the banjo — and a little present for his aunt and uncle
— and a new suit perhaps — and one or two other things she would not
miss. He went off at a tangent. He might buy a motor-car, he might buy one
of these here things that will play you a piano — that would make old
Buggins sit up! He could pretend he had learnt to play — he might buy a
bicycle and a cyclist suit . . .
A terrific multitude of plans of what he might do, and in particular of what
he might buy, came crowding into his brain, and he did not so much fall
asleep as pass into a disorder of dreams in which he was driving a four-horse
Tip–Top coach down Sandgate Hill (‘I shall have to be precious careful’),
wearing innumerable suits of clothes, and through some terrible accident
wearing them all wrong. Consequently, he was being laughed at. The coach
vanished in the interest of the costume. He was wearing golfing suits and a
silk hat. This passed into a nightmare that he was promenading on the Leas
in a Highland costume, with a kilt that kept shrinking, and Shalford was
following him with three policemen. ‘He’s my assistant,’ Shalford kept
repeating; ‘he’s escaped. He’s an escaped Improver. Keep by him, and in a
minute you’ll have to run him in. I know ’em. We say they wash but they
won’t’ . . . He could feel the kilt creeping up his legs. He would have tugged
at it to pull it down, only his arms were paralysed. He had an impression of
giddy crises. He uttered a shriek of despair. ‘Now!’ said Shalford. He woke in
horror, his quilt had slipped off the bed.
He had a fancy he had just been called, that he had somehow overslept
himself and missed going down for dusting. Then he perceived it was still
night, and light by reason of the moonlight, and that he was no longer in the
Emporium. He wondered where he could be. He had a curious fancy that the
world had been swept and rolled up like a carpet, and that he was nowhere.
It occurred to him that perhaps he was mad. ‘Buggins!’ he said. There was
no answer, not even the defensive snore. No room, no Buggins, nothing!
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Then he remembered better. He sat on the edge of his bed for some time.
Could any one have seen his face, they would have seen it white, and drawn,
with staring eyes. Then he groaned weakly. ‘Twenty-six thousand pounds!’
he whispered.
Just then it presented itself in an almost horribly overwhelming mass.
He remade his bed and returned to it. He was still dreadfully wakeful. It was
suddenly clear to him that he need never trouble to get up punctually at
seven again. That fact shone out upon him like a star through clouds. He was
free to lie in bed as long as he liked, get up when he liked, go where he liked;
have eggs every morning for breakfast, or rashers, or bloater-paste, or . . .
Also he was going to astonish Miss Walshingham . . .
Astonish her and astonish her . . .
He was awakened by a thrush singing in the fresh dawn. The whole room
was flooded with warm, golden sunshine. ‘I say!’ said the thrush. ‘I say! I say!
Twelve ‘Undred a Year! Twelve ‘UNDRED a Year! I say! I say! I say!’
He sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his knuckles. Then
he jumped out of bed and began dressing very eagerly. He did not want to
lose any time in beginning the new life.
 98

BOOK TWO. MR. COOTE THE CHAPERON

 99

CHAPTER 1. THE NEW CONDITIONS

There comes a gentlemanly figure into these events, and for a space takes a
leading part therein, a Good Influence, a refined and amiable figure, Mr.
Chester Coote. You must figure him as about to enter our story, walking
with a curious rectitude of bearing through the evening dusk towards the
Public Library, erect, large-headed — he had a great big head, full of the
suggestion of a powerful mind well under control — with a large, official-
looking envelope in his white and knuckly hand. In the other he carries a
gold-handled cane. He wears a silken gray jacket suit, buttoned up, and anon
he coughs behind the official envelope. He has a prominent nose, slaty gray
eyes, and a certain heaviness about the mouth. His mouth hangs breathing
open, with a slight protrusion of the lower jaw. His straw hat is pulled down
a little in front, and he looks each person he passes in the eye, and, directly
his look is answered, looks away.
Thus Mr. Chester Coote, as he was on the evening when he came upon
Kipps. He was a local house-agent, and a most active and gentlemanly
person, a conscious gentleman, equally aware of society and the serious
side of life. From amateur theatricals of a nice refined sort to science classes,
few things were able to get along without him. He supplied a fine full bass, a
little flat and quavery perhaps, but very abundant, to the St. Stylites’ choir
...
He goes on towards the Public Library, lifts the envelope in salutation to a
passing curate, smiles, and enters . . . It was in the Public Library that he
came upon Kipps.
By that time Kipps had been rich a week or more, and the change in his
circumstances was visible upon his person. He was wearing a new suit of
drab flannels, a Panama hat, and a red tie for the first time, and he carried a
silver-mounted stick with a tortoiseshell handle. He felt extraordinarily
different, perhaps more different than he really was, from the meek
Improver of a week ago. He felt as he felt Dukes must feel, yet at bottom he
was still modest. He was leaning on his stick and regarding the indicator
with a respect that never palled. He faced round to meet Mr. Coote’s
overflowing smile.
‘What are you doang hea?’ asked Mr. Chester Coote. Kipps was momentarily
 100

abashed. ‘Oh,’ he said slowly, and then, ‘Mooching round a bit.’

That Coote should address him with this easy familiarity was a fresh
reminder of his enhanced social position. ‘Jest mooching round,’ he said. ‘I
been back in Folkestone free days now. At my ’ouse, you know.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Coote. ‘I haven’t yet had an opportunity of congratulating you
on your good fortune.’
Kipps held out his hand. ‘It was the cleanest surprise that ever was,’ he said.
‘When Mr. Bean told me of it — you could have knocked me down with a
feather.’
‘It must mean a tremendous change for you.’
‘O-o. Rather. Change? Why, I’m like the chap in the song they sing, I don’t
‘ardly know where I are. You know.’
‘An extraordinary change,’ said Mr. Coote. ‘I can quite believe it. Are you
stopping in Folkestone?’
‘For a bit. I got a ’ouse, you know. What my grandfather ‘ad. I’m stopping
there. His housekeeper was kept on. Fancy — being in the same town and
everything!’
‘Precisely,’ said Mr. Coote. ‘That’s it,’ and coughed like a sheep behind four
straight fingers.
‘Mr. Bean got me to come back to see to things. Else I was out in New
Romney, where my uncle and aunt live. But it’s a lark coming back. In a way
...’
The conversation hung for a moment. ‘Are you getting a book?’ asked
Coote.
‘Well, I ‘aven’t got a ticket yet. But I shall get one all right, and have a go in
at reading. I’ve often wanted to. Rather. I was just ‘aving a look at this
Indicator. First-class idea. Tells you all you want to know.’
‘It’s simple,’ said Coote, and coughed again, keeping his eyes fixed on Kipps.
For a moment they hung, evidently disinclined to part. Then Kipps jumped at
an idea he had cherished for a day or more — not particularly in relation to
Coote, but in relation to any one.
‘You doing anything?’ he asked.
‘Just called with a papah about the classes.’
‘Because — Would you care to come up and look at my ’ouse and ‘ave a
smoke and a chat — eh?’ He made indicative back jerks of the head, and was
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smitten with a horrible doubt whether possibly this invitation might not be
some hideous breach of etiquette. Was it, for example, the correct hour? ‘I’d
be awfully glad if you would,’ he added.
Mr. Coote begged for a moment while he handed the official-looking
envelope to the librarian, and then declared himself quite at Kipps’ service.
They muddled a moment over precedence at each door they went through,
and so emerged to the street.
‘It feels awful rum to me at first, all this,’ said Kipps. ‘‘Aving a ’ouse of my
own — and all that. It’s strange, you know. ‘Aving all day. Reely I don’t ‘ardly
know what to do with my time.’
‘D’ju smoke?’ he said suddenly, proffering a magnificent gold-decorated pig-
skin cigarette case, which he produced from nothing, almost as though it
was some sort of trick. Coote hesitated and declined, and then with great
liberality, ‘Don’t let me hinder you . . . ’
They walked a little way in silence, Kipps being chiefly concerned to affect
ease in his new clothes and keeping a wary eye on Coote. ‘It’s rather a big
windfall,’ said Coote presently. ‘It yields you an income —?’
‘Twelve ‘undred a year,’ said Kipps. ‘Bit over — if anything.’
‘Do you think of living in Folkestone?’
‘Don’t know ‘ardly yet. I may. Then again, I may not. I got a furnished ’ouse,
but I may let it.’
‘Your plans are undecided?’
‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.
‘Very beautiful sunset it was to-night,’ said Coote, and Kipps said, ‘Wasn’t it?’
and they began to talk of the merits of sunsets. Did Kipps paint? Not since
he was a boy. He didn’t believe he could now. Coote said his sister was a
painter, and Kipps received this intimation with respect. Coote sometimes
wished he could find time to paint himself, but one couldn’t do everything,
and Kipps said that was ‘jest it.’
They came out presently upon the end of the Leas, and looked down to
where the squat, dark masses of the harbour and harbour station, gemmed
with pin-point lights, crouched against the twilight gray of the sea. ‘If one
could do that,’ said Coote; and Kipps was inspired to throw his head back,
cock it on one side, regard the harbour with one eye shut, and say that it
would take some doing. Then Coote said something about ‘Abend,’ which
Kipps judged to be in a foreign language, and got over by lighting another
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cigarette from his by no means completed first one. ‘You’re right — puff,
puff.’
He felt that so far he had held up his end of the conversation in a very
creditable manner, but that extreme discretion was advisable.
They turned away, and Coote remarked that the sea was good for crossing,
and asked Kipps if he had been over the water very much. Kipps said he
hadn’t been —‘much,’ but he thought very likely he’d have a run over to
Boulogne soon; and Coote proceeded to talk of the charms of foreign travel,
mentioning quite a number of unheard-of places by name. He had been to
them! Kipps remained on the defensive, but behind his defences his heart
sank. It was all very well to pretend, but presently it was bound to come out.
He didn’t know anything of all this —
So they drew near the house. At his own gate Kipps became extremely
nervous. It was a fine impressive door. He knocked neither a single knock
nor a double but about one and a half — an apologetic half. They were
admitted by an irreproachable housemaid with a steady eye, before which
Kipps cringed dreadfully. He hung up his hat and fell about over hall chairs
and things. ‘There’s a fire in the study, Mary?’ he had the audacity to ask,
though evidently he knew, and led the way upstairs panting. He tried to shut
the door and discovered the housemaid behind him coming to light his
lamp. This enfeebled him further. He said nothing until the door closed
behind her. Meanwhile to show his sang-froid, he hummed and flitted
towards the window and here and there.
Coote went to the big hearthrug and turned and surveyed his host. His hand
went to the back of his head and patted his occiput — a gesture frequent
with him.
‘‘Ere we are,’ said Kipps, hands in his pockets, and glancing round him.
It was a gaunt, Victorian room, with a heavy, dirty cornice, and the ceiling
enriched by the radiant plaster ornament of an obliterated gas chandelier. It
held two large glass-fronted bookcases, one of which was surmounted by a
stuffed terrier encased in glass. There was a mirror over the mantel, and
hangings and curtains of magnificent crimson patternings. On the mantel
were a huge black clock of classical design, vases in the Burslem Etruscan
style, spills, and toothpicks in large receptacles of carved rock, large lava
ash-trays, and an exceptionally big box of matches. The fender was very
great and brassy. In a favourable position under the window was a spacious
rosewood writing-desk, and all the chairs and other furniture were of
rosewood and well stuffed.
 103

‘This,’ said Kipps, in something near an undertone, ‘was the o’ gentleman’s

study — my grandfather that was. ‘E used to sit at that desk and write.’
‘Books?’
‘No. Letters to the Times and things like that. ‘E’s got ’em all cut out — stuck
in a book . . . Leastways he ‘ad. It’s in that bookcase . . . Won’t you sit down?’
Coote did, blowing very slightly, and Kipps secured his vacated position on
the extensive black-skin rug. He spread out his legs compass fashion, and
tried to appear at his ease. The rug, the fender, the mantel, and mirror,
conspired with great success to make him look a trivial and intrusive little
creature amidst their commonplace hauteur, and his own shadow on the
opposite wall seemed to think everything a great lark, and mocked and
made tremendous fun of him —.
2

For a space Kipps played a defensive game, and Coote drew the lines of the
conversation. They kept away from the theme of Kipps’ change of fortune,
and Coote made remarks upon local and social affairs. ‘You must take an
interest in these things now,’ was as much as he said in the way of
personalities. But it speedily became evident that he was a person of wide
and commanding social relationships. He spoke of ‘society’ being mixed in
the neighbourhood, and of the difficulty of getting people to work together
and ‘do’ things; they were cliquish. Incidentally he alluded quite familiarly to
men with military titles and once even to some one with a title, a Lady
Punnet.
Not snobbishly, you understand, nor deliberately, but quite in passing. He
had, it appeared, talked to Lady Punnet about private theatricals! In
connection with the hospitals. She had been reasonable, and he had put her
right — gently, of course, but firmly. ‘If you stand up to these people,’ said
Coote, ‘they like you all the better.’ It was also very evident he was at his
ease with the clergy; ‘my friend Mr. Densmore — a curate, you know, and
rather curious, the Reverend and Honourable.’ Coote grew visibly in Kipps’
eyes as he said these things; he became, not only the exponent of ‘Vagner
or Vargner,’ the man whose sister had painted a picture to be exhibited at
the Royal Academy, the type of the hidden thing called culture, but a
delegate, as it were, or at least an intermediary from that great world ‘up
there,’ where there were men-servants, where there were titles, where
people dressed for dinner, drank wine at meals, wine costing very often as
much as three and sixpence the bottle, and followed through a maze of
etiquette, the most stupendous practices . . .
 104

Coote sat back in the arm-chair smoking luxuriously and expanding

pleasantly with the delightful sense of savoir faire; Kipps sat forward, his
elbows on his chair arm, alert, and his head a little on one side. You figure
him as looking little and cheap, and feeling smaller and cheaper amidst his
new surroundings. But it was a most stimulating and interesting
conversation. And soon it became less general, and more serious and
intimate. Coote spoke of people who had got on, and of people who hadn’t;
of people who seemed to be in everything, and people who seemed to be
out of everything; and then he came round to Kipps.
‘You’ll have a good time,’ he said abruptly, with a smile that would have
interested a dentist. ‘I dunno,’ said Kipps.
‘There’s mistakes, of course.’
‘That’s jest it.’
Coote lit a new cigarette. ‘One can’t help being interested in what you will
do,’ he remarked. ‘Of course — for a young man of spirit, come suddenly
into wealth — there’s temptations.’
‘I got to go careful,’ said Kipps. ‘O’ Bean told me that at the very first.’
Coote went on to speak of pitfalls, of Betting, of Bad Companions. ‘I know,’
said Kipps, ‘I know.’
‘There’s Doubt again,’ said Coote. ‘I know a young fellow — a solicitor —
handsome, gifted. And yet, you know — utterly sceptical. Practically
altogether a Sceptic.’
‘Lor!’ said Kipps, ‘not a Natheist?’
‘I fear so,’ said Coote. ‘Really, you know, an awfully fine young fellow —
Gifted! But full of this dreadful Modern Spirit — Cynical! All this Overman
stuff. Nietzsche and all that . . . I wish I could do something for him.’
‘Ah!’ said Kipps, and knocked the ash off his cigarette. ‘I know a chap — one
of our apprentices he was — once. Always scoffing . . . He lef.’
He paused. ‘Never wrote for his refs,’ he said, in the deep tone proper to a
moral tragedy; and then, after a pause, ‘Enlisted!’
‘Ah!’ said Coote.
‘And often,’ he said, after a pause, ‘it’s just the most spirited chaps, just the
chaps one likes best, who Go Wrong.’
‘It’s temptation,’ Kipps remarked.
He glanced at Coote, leant forward, knocked the ash from his cigarette into
 105

the mighty fender. ‘That’s jest it,’ he said, ‘you get tempted. Before you
know where you are.’
‘Modern life,’ said Coote, ‘is so — complex. It isn’t every one is Strong. Half
the young fellows who go wrong aren’t really bad.’
‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.
‘One gets a tone from one’s surroundings —’
‘That’s exactly it,’ said Kipps.
He meditated. ‘I picked up with a chap,’ he said. ‘A Nacter. Leastways, he
writes plays. Clever feller. But —’
He implied extensive moral obloquy by a movement of his head. ‘Of course
it’s seeing life,’ he added.
Coote pretended to understand the full implications of Kipps’ remark. ‘Is it
worth it?’ he asked.
‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.
He decided to give some more. ‘One gets talking,’ he said. Then it’s ‘‘Ave a
drink!’ Old Methuselah three stars — and where are you? ‘I been drunk,’ he
said, in a tone of profound humility, and added, ‘lots of times.’
‘Tt — tt,’ said Coote.
‘Dozens of times,’ said Kipps, smiling sadly; and added, ‘lately.’
His imagination became active and seductive. ‘One thing leads to another.
Cards, p’raps. Girls —’
‘I know,’ said Coote, ‘I know.’
Kipps regarded the fire, and flushed slightly. He borrowed a sentence that
Chitterlow had recently used. ‘One can’t tell tales out of school,’ he said.
‘I can imagine it,’ said Coote.
Kipps looked with a confidential expression into Coote’s face. ‘It was bad
enough when money was limited,’ he remarked. ‘But now’— he spoke with
raised eyebrows —‘I got to steady down.’
‘You must’ said Coote, protruding his lips into a sort of whistling concern for
a moment.
‘I must,’ said Kipps, nodding his head slowly, with raised eyebrows. He
looked at his cigarette end and threw it into the fender. He was beginning to
think he was holding his own in this conversation rather well after all.
Kipps was never a good liar. He was the first to break silence. ‘I don’t mean
 106

to say I been reely bad or reely bad drunk. A ‘eadache, perhaps — three or
four times, say. But there it is!’
‘I have never tasted alcohol in my life,’ said Coote, with an immense
frankness, ‘never!’
‘No?’
‘Never. I don’t feel I should be likely to get drunk at all — it isn’t that. And I
don’t go so far as to say even that in small quantities — at meals — it does
one harm. But if I take it, some one else who doesn’t know where to stop —
you see?’
‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps, with admiring eyes.
‘I smoke,’ admitted Coote. ‘One doesn’t want to be a Pharisee.’
It struck Kipps what a tremendously Good chap this Coote was, not only
tremendously clever and educated and a gentleman, and one knowing Lady
Punnet, but Good. He seemed to be giving all his time and thought to doing
good things to other people. A great desire to confide certain things to him
arose. At first Kipps hesitated whether he should confide an equal desire for
Benevolent activities or for further Depravity — either was in his mind. He
rather affected the pose of the Good Intentioned Dog. Then suddenly his
impulses took quite a different turn — fell, indeed, into what was a far more
serious rut in his mind. It seemed to him Coote might be able to do for him
something he very much wanted done.
‘Companionship accounts for so much,’ said Coote.
‘That’s jest it,’ said Kipps. ‘Of course, you know, in my new position — That’s
just the difficulty.’
He plunged boldly at his most secret trouble. He knew that he wanted
refinement — culture. It was all very well — but he knew. But how was one
to get it? He knew no one, knew no people — He rested on the broken
sentence. The shop chaps were all very well, very good chaps and all that,
but not what one wanted. ‘I feel be’ind,’ said Kipps. ‘I feel out of it. And
consequently I feel it’s no good. And then if temptation comes along —’
‘Exactly,’ said Coote.
Kipps spoke of his respect for Miss Walshingham and her freckled friend. He
contrived not to look too selfconscious. ‘You know, I’d like to talk to people
like that, but I can’t. A chap’s afraid of giving himself away.’
‘Of course,’ said Coote, ‘of course.’
‘I went to a middle-class school, you know. You mustn’t fancy I’m one of
 107

these here board-school chaps, but you know it reely wasn’t a first-class
affair. Leastways he didn’t take pains with us. If you didn’t want to learn you
needn’t. I don’t believe it was much better than one of these here national
schools. We wore mortar-boards, o’ course. But what’s that?
‘I’m a regular fish out of water with this money. When I got it — it’s a week
ago — reely I thought I’d got everything I wanted. But I dunno what to do.’
His voice went up into a squeak. ‘Practically,’ he said, ‘it’s no good shuttin’
my eyes to things — I’m a gentleman.’
Coote indicated a serious assent.
‘And there’s the responsibilities of a gentleman,’ he remarked. ‘That’s jest
it,’ said Kipps.
‘There’s calling on people,’ said Kipps. ‘If you want to go on knowing
Someone you knew before, like. People that’s refined.’ He laughed
nervously. ‘I’m a regular fish out of water,’ he said, with expectant eyes on
Coote.
But Coote only nodded for him to go on.
‘This actor chap,’ he meditated, ‘is a good sort of chap. But ‘e isn’t what I call
a gentleman. I got to ‘old myself in with ’im. ‘E’d make me go it wild in no
time. ‘E’s pretty near the on’y chap I know. Except the shop chaps. They’ve
come round to ‘ave supper once already and a bit of a sing-song afterwards.
I sang. I got a banjo, you know, and I vamp a bit. Vamping — you know.
Haven’t got far in the book —‘Ow to Vamp — but still I’m getting on. Jolly,
of course, in a way, but what does it lead to? . . . Besides that, there’s my
aunt and uncle. They’re very good old people — very — jest a bit interfering
p’r’aps, and thinking one isn’t grown up, but Right enough. Only — It isn’t
what I want. I feel I’ve got be’ind with everything. I want to make it up
again. I want to get with educated people who know ‘ow to do things — in
the regular proper way.’
His beautiful modesty awakened nothing but benevolence in the mind of
Chester Coote. ‘If I had some one like you,’ said Kipps, ‘that I knew regular
like —’
From that point their course ran swift and easy. ‘If I could be of any use to
you,’ said Coote . . . ‘But you’re so busy, and all that.’
‘Not too busy. You know, your case is a very interesting one. It was partly
that made me speak to you and draw you out. Here you are with all this
money and no experience, a spirited young chap —’
 108

That’s jest it,’ said Kipps.

‘I thought I’d see what you were made of, and I must confess I’ve rarely
talked to any one that I’ve found quite so interesting as you have been —’
‘I seem able to say things to you, like, somehow,’ said Kipps. ‘I’m glad. I’m
tremendously glad.’
‘I want a Friend. That’s it — straight.’
‘My dear chap, if I—’
‘Yes; but —’
‘I want a Friend too.’
‘Reely?’
‘Yes. You know, my dear Kipps — if I may call you that.’
‘Go on,’ said Kipps.
‘I’m rather a lonely dog myself. This to-night — I’ve not had any one I’ve
spoken to so freely of my Work for months.’
‘No?’
‘Yes. And, my dear chap, if I can do anything to guide or help you —’
Coote displayed all his teeth in a kindly tremulous smile, and his eyes were
shiny. ‘Shake ‘ands,’ said Kipps, deeply moved; and he and Coote rose and
clasped with mutual emotion.
‘It’s reely too good of you,’ said Kipps. ‘Whatever I can do I will,’ said Coote.
And so their compact was made. From that moment they were friends —
intimate, confidential, high-thinking sotto-voce friends. All the rest of their
talk (and it inclined to be interminable) was an expansion of that. For that
night Kipps wallowed in self-abandonment, and Coote behaved as one who
had received a great trust. That sinister passion for pedagogy to which the
Good–Intentioned are so fatally liable, that passion of infinite presumption
that permits one weak human being to arrogate the direction of another
weak human being’s affairs, had Coote in its grip. He was to be a sort of lay
confessor and director of Kipps; he was to help Kipps in a thousand ways; he
was, in fact, to chaperon Kipps into the higher and better sort of English life.
He was to tell him his faults, advise him about the right thing to do —
‘It’s all these things I don’t know,’ said Kipps. ‘I don’t know, for instance,
what’s the right sort of dress to wear — I don’t even know if I’m dressed
right now —’
 109

‘All these things’— Coote stuck out his lips and nodded rapidly to show he
understood —‘trust me for that,’ he said; ‘trust me.’
As the evening wore on Coote’s manner changed, became more and more
the manner of a proprietor. He began to take up his role, to survey Kipps
with a new, with a critical affection. It was evident the thing fell in with his
ideas. ‘It will be awfully interesting,’ he said. ‘You know, Kipps, you’re really
good stuff.’ (Every sentence now he said ‘Kipps,’ or ‘my dear Kipps,’ with a
curiously authoritative intonation.)
‘I know,’ said Kipps, ‘only there’s such a lot of things I don’t seem to be up
to some’ow. That’s where the trouble comes in.’
They talked and talked, and now Kipps was talking freely. They rambled over
all sorts of things. Among others Kipps’ character was dealt with at length.
Kipps gave valuable lights on it. ‘When I’m reely excited,’ he said, ‘I don’t
seem to care what I do. I’m like that.’ And again, ‘I don’t like to do anything
under’and. I must speak out —’
He picked a piece of cotton from his knee, the fire grimaced behind his back,
and his shadow on the wall and ceiling was disrespectfully convulsed.
3

Kipps went to bed at last with an impression of important things settled,

and he lay awake for quite a long time. He felt he was lucky. He had known
— in fact Buggins and Carshot and Pearce had made it very clear indeed —
that his status in life had changed, and that stupendous adaptations had to
be achieved; but how they were to be effected had driven that adaptation
into the incredible. Here, in the simplest, easiest way, was the adapter. The
thing had become possible. Not, of course, easy, but possible.
There was much to learn, sheer intellectual toil, methods of address,
bowing, an enormous complexity of laws. One broken, you are an outcast.
How, for example, would one encounter Lady Punnet? It was quite possible
some day he might really have to do that. Coote might introduce him. ‘Lord!’
he said aloud to the darkness between grinning and dismay. He figured
himself going into the Emporium, to buy a tie, for example, and there in the
face of Buggins, Carshot, Pearce, and the rest of them, meeting ‘my friend,
Lady Punnet!’ It might not end with Lady Punnet! His imagination plunged
and bolted with him, galloped, took wings, and soared to romantic, to
poetical altitudes —
Suppose some day one met Royalty. By accident, say! He soared to that!
After all — twelve hundred a year is a lift, a tremendous lift. How did one
 110

address Royalty? ‘Your Majesty’s Goodness’ it would be, no doubt —

something like that — and on the knees. He became impersonal. Over a
thousand a year made him an Esquire, didn’t it? He thought that was it. In
which case, wouldn’t he have to be presented at court? Velvet breeches, like
you wear cycling, and a sword! What a curious place a court must be!
Kneeling and bowing; and what was it Miss Mergle used to talk about? Of
course! — ladies with long trains walking about backward. Everybody
walked about backward at court, he knew, when not actually on their knees.
Perhaps, though, some people regular stood up to the King! Talked to him,
just as one might talk to Buggins, say. Cheek, of course! Dukes, it might be,
did that — by permission? Millionaires? . . .
From such thoughts this free citizen of our Crowned Republic passed
insensibly into dreams — turgid dreams of that vast ascent which
constitutes the true-born Briton’s social scheme, which terminates with
retrogressive progression and a bending back.
4

The next morning he came down to breakfast looking grave — a man with
much before him in the world.
Kipps made a very special thing of his breakfast. Daily once hopeless dreams
came true then. It had been customary in the Emporium to supplement
Shalford’s generous, indeed unlimited, supply of bread and butter-substitute
by private purchases, and this had given Kipps very broad artistic
conceptions of what the meal might be. Now there would be a cutlet or so
or a mutton chop — this splendour Buggins had reported from the great
London clubs — haddock, kipper, whiting, or fish-balls, eggs, boiled or
scrambled, or eggs and bacon, kidney also frequently, and sometimes liver.
Amidst a garland of such themes, sausages, black and white puddings,
bubble-and-squeak, fried cabbage and scallops, came and went. Always as
camp followers came potted meat in all varieties, cold bacon, German
sausage, brawn, marmalade, and two sorts of jam; and when he had finished
these he would sit among his plates and smoke a cigarette, and look at all
these dishes crowded round him with beatific approval. It was his principal
meal. He was sitting with his cigarette regarding his apartment with the
complacency begotten of a generous plan of feeding successfully realised,
when newspapers and post arrived.
There were several things by the post, tradesmen’s circulars and cards, and
two pathetic begging letters — his luck had got into the papers — and there
was a letter from a literary man and a book to enforce his request for 10s. to
 111

put down Socialism. The book made it very clear that prompt action on the
part of property owners was becoming urgent, if property was to last out
the year. Kipps dipped in it, and was seriously perturbed. And there was a
letter from old Kipps, saying it was difficult to leave the shop and come over
and see him again just yet, but that he had been to a sale at Lydd the
previous day, and bought a few good old books and things it would be
difficult to find the equal of in Folkestone. ‘They don’t know the value of
these things out here,’ wrote old Kipps, ‘but you may depend upon it they
are valuable,’ and a brief financial statement followed. ‘There is an
engraving some one might come along and offer you a lot of money for one
of these days. Depend upon it, these old things are about the best
investment you could make . . . ’
Old Kipps had long been addicted to sales, and his nephew’s good fortune
had converted what had once been but a looking and a craving — he had
rarely even bid for anything in the old days, except the garden tools or the
kitchen gallipots or things like that, things one gets for sixpence and finds a
use for — into a very active pleasure. Sage and penetrating inspection, a
certain mystery of bearing, tactical bids and Purchase — Purchase! — the
old man had had a good time.
While Kipps was re-reading the begging letters, and wishing he had the
sound, clear common sense of Buggins to help him a little, the Parcels Post
brought along the box from his uncle. It was a large, insecure-looking case,
held together by a few still loyal nails, and by what the British War Office
would have recognised at once as an Army Corps of string — rags, and odds
and ends tied together. Kipps unpacked it with a table knife, assisted at a
critical point by the poker, and found a number of books and other objects
of an antique type.
There were three bound volumes of early issues of Chambers’ Journal, a
copy of Punch’s Pocket Book for 1875, Sturm’s Reflections, an early version
of Gill’s Geography (slightly torn), an illustrated work on Spinal Curvature, an
early edition of Kirke’s Human Physiology, The Scottish Chiefs, and a little
volume on the Language of Flowers. There was a fine steel engraving, oak-
framed, and with some rusty spots, done in the Colossal style and
representing the Handwriting on the Wall. There were also a copper kettle, a
pair of candle-snuffers, a brass shoe-horn, a tea-caddy to lock, two
decanters (one stoppered), and what was probably a portion of an
eighteenth-century child’s rattle. Kipps examined these objects one by one,
and wished he knew more about them. Turning over the pages of the
Physiology again, he came upon a striking plate, in which a youth of
 112

agreeable profile displayed his interior in an unstinted manner to the

startled eye. It was a new view of humanity altogether for Kipps, and it
arrested his mind. ‘Chubes,’ he whispered. ‘Chubes.’
This anatomised figure made him forget for a space that he was ‘practically
a gentleman’ altogether, and he was still surveying its extraordinary
complications when another reminder of a world quite outside those
spheres of ordered gentility into which his dreams had carried him overnight
arrived (following the servant) in the person of Chitterlow.
5

‘‘Ullo!’ said Kipps, rising.

‘Not busy?’ said Chitterlow, enveloping Kipps’ hand for a moment in one of
his own, and tossing the yachting cap upon the monumental carved oak
sideboard.
‘Only a bit of reading,’ said Kipps.
‘Reading, eh?’ Chitterlow cocked the red eye at the books and other
properties for a moment and then, ‘I’ve been expecting you round again one
night.’
‘I been coming round,’ said Kipps; ‘on’y there’s a chap ’ere — I was coming
round last night, on’y I met ’im.’
He walked to the hearthrug. Chitterlow drifted round the room for a time,
glancing at things as he talked. ‘I’ve altered that play tremendously since I
saw you,’ he said.
‘Pulled it all to pieces.’
‘What play’s that, Chitlow?’
‘The one we were talking about. You know. You said something — I don’t
know if you meant it — about buying half of it. Not the tragedy. I wouldn’t
sell my own twin brother a share in that. That’s my investment. That’s my
serious Work. No! I mean that new farce I’ve been on to. Thing with the
business about a beetle.’
‘Oo yes,’ said Kipps. ‘I remember.’
‘I thought you would. Said you’d take a fourth share for a hundred pounds.
You know.’
‘I seem to remember something —’
‘Well, it’s all different. Every bit of it. I’ll tell you. You remember what you
said about a butterfly. You got confused, you know — Old Meth. Kept
 113

calling the beetle a butterfly, and that set me off. I’ve made it quite
different. Quite different. Instead of Popplewaddle — thundering good
farce-name that, you know, for all that it came from a Visitors’ List —
instead of Popplewaddle getting a beetle down his neck and rushing about,
I’ve made him a collector — collects butterflies, and this one you know’s a
rare one. Comes in at window, centre!’ Chitterlow began to illustrate with
appropriate gestures. ‘Pop rushes about after it. Forgets he mustn’t let on
he’s in the house. After that — Tells ’em. Rare butterfly, worth lots of
money. Some are, you know. Every one’s on to it after that. Butterfly can’t
get out of the room; every time it comes out to have a try, rush, and scurry.
Well, I’ve worked on that. Only —’
He came very close to Kipps. He held up one hand horizontally and tapped it
in a striking and confidential manner with the fingers of the other.
‘Something else,’ he said. That’s given me a Real Ibsenish Touch — like the
Wild Duck. You know that woman — I’ve made her lighter — and she sees
it. When they’re chasing the butterfly the third time, she’s on! She looks.
‘That’s me!’ she says. Bif! Pestered Butterfly. She’s the Pestered Butterfly.
It’s legitimate. Much more legitimate than the Wild Duck — where there
isn’t a duck!
‘Knock ’em! The very title ought to knock ’em. I’ve been working like a horse
at it . . . You’ll have a goldmine in that quarter share, Kipps . . . I don’t mind.
It’s suited me to sell it, and suited you to buy. Bif!’
Chitterlow interrupted his discourse to ask, ‘You haven’t any brandy in the
house, have you? Not to drink, you know. But I want just an eggcupful to
pull me steady. My liver’s a bit queer . . . It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. Not
a bit. I’m like that. Yes, whisky’ll do. Better!’
Kipps hesitated for a moment, then turned and fumbled in the cupboard of
his sideboard. Presently he disinterred a bottle of whisky and placed it on
the table. Then he put out first one bottle of soda-water, and, after the
hesitation of a moment, another. Chitterlow picked up the bottle and read
the label. ‘Good old Methuselah,’ he said. Kipps handed him the corkscrew,
and then his hand fluttered up to his mouth. ‘I’ll have to ring now,’ he said,
‘to get glasses.’ He hesitated for a moment before doing so, leaning
doubtfully, as it were, towards a bell.
When the housemaid appeared, he was standing on the hearthrug with his
legs wide apart, with the bearing of a desperate fellow. And after they had
both had whiskies, ‘You know a decent whisky,’ Chitterlow remarked, and
took another, ‘just to drink.’ Kipps produced cigarettes, and the
conversation flowed again.
 114

Chitterlow paced the room. He was, he explained, taking a day off; that was
why he had come round to see Kipps. Whenever he thought of any
extensive change in a play he was writing, he always took a day off. In the
end it saved time to do so. It prevented his starting rashly upon work that
might have to be re-written. There was no good in doing work when you
might have to do it over again — none whatever.
Presently they were descending the steps by the parade en route for the
Warren, with Chitterlow doing the talking and going with a dancing drop
from step to step . . .
They had a great walk, not a long one, but a great one. They went up by the
Sanatorium, and over the East Cliff and into that queer little wilderness of
slippery and tumbling clay and rock under the chalk cliffs — a wilderness of
thorn and bramble, wild rose and wayfaring tree, that adds so greatly to
Folkestone’s charm. They traversed its intricacies, and clambered up to the
crest of the cliffs at last by a precipitous path that Chitterlow endowed in
some mysterious way with suggestions of Alpine adventure. Every now and
then he would glance aside at sea and cliffs with a fresh boyishness of
imagination that brought back New Romney and the stranded wrecks to
Kipps’ memory; but mostly he talked of his great obsession, of plays and
playwriting and that empty absurdity that is so serious to its kind, his Art.
That was a thing that needed a monstrous lot of explaining. Along they
went, sometimes abreast, sometimes in single file, up the little paths and
down the little paths, and in among the bushes and out along the edge
above the beach; and Kipps went along trying ever and again to get an
insignificant word in edgeways, and the gestures of Chitterlow flew wide
and far, and his great voice rose and fell, and he said this and he said that,
and he biffed and banged into the circumambient Inane.
It was assumed that they were embarked upon no more trivial enterprise
than the Reform of the British Stage, and Kipps found himself classed with
many opulent and even royal and noble amateurs — the Honourable
Thomas Norgate came in here — who had interested themselves in the
practical realisation of high ideals about the Drama. Only he had a finer
understanding of these things, and instead of being preyed upon by the
common professional —‘and they are a lot,’ said Chitterlow; ‘I haven’t
toured for nothing’— he would have Chitterlow. Kipps gathered a few
details. It was clear he had bought the quarter of a farcical comedy —
practically a goldmine — and it would appear it would be a good thing to
buy the half. A suggestion, or the suggestion of a suggestion, floated out
that he should buy the whole play and produce it forthwith. It seemed he
 115

was to produce the play upon a royalty system of a new sort, whatever a
royalty system of any sort might be. Then there was some doubt after all,
whether that farcical comedy was in itself sufficient to revolutionise the
present lamentable state of the British Drama. Better, perhaps, for such a
purpose was that tragedy — as yet unfinished — which was to display all
that Chitterlow knew about women, and which was to centre about a
Russian nobleman embodying the fundamental Chitterlow personality. Then
it became clearer that Kipps was to produce several plays. Kipps was to
produce a great number of plays. Kipps was to found a National Theatre —
It is probable that Kipps would have expressed some sort of disavowal, if he
had known how to express it. Occasionally his face assumed an expression
of whistling meditation, but that was as far as he got towards protest.
In the clutch of Chitterlow and the Incalculable, Kipps came round to the
house in Fenchurch Street, and was there made to participate in the midday
meal. He came to the house forgetting certain confidences, and was
reminded of the existence of a Mrs. Chitterlow (with the finest completely
untrained contralto voice in England) by her appearance. She had an air of
being older than Chitterlow, although probably she wasn’t and her hair was
a reddish brown, streaked with gold. She was dressed in one of those
complaisant garments that are dressing-gowns, or tea-gowns, or bathing
wraps, or rather original evening robes, according to the exigencies of the
moment — from the first Kipps was aware that she possessed a warm and
rounded neck, and her well-moulded arms came and vanished from the
sleeves — and she had large expressive eyes, that he discovered ever and
again fixed in an enigmatical manner upon his own.
A simple but sufficient meal had been distributed with careless spontaneity
over the little round table in the room with the photographs and looking-
glass, and when a plate had, by Chitterlow’s direction, been taken from
under the marmalade in the cupboard, and the kitchen fork and a knife that
was not loose in its handle had been found for Kipps, they began and made
a tumultuous repast. Chitterlow ate with quiet enormity, but it did not
interfere with the flow of his talk. He introduced Kipps to his wife very
briefly; she had obviously heard of Kipps before, and he made it vaguely
evident that the production of the comedy was the thing chiefly settled. His
reach extended over the table, and he troubled nobody. When Mrs.
Chitterlow, who for a little while seemed socially self-conscious, reproved
him for taking a potato with a jab of his fork, he answered, ‘Well, you
shouldn’t have married a man of Genius,’ and from a subsequent remark it
was perfectly clear that Chitterlow’s standing in this respect was made no
 116

secret of in his household.

They drank old Methuselah and siphon soda, and there was no clearing
away; they just sat among the plates and things, and Mrs. Chitterlow took
her husband’s tobacco-pouch and made a cigarette and smoked and blew
smoke, and looked at Kipps with her large brown eyes. Kipps had seen
cigarettes smoked by ladies before, for fun, but this was real smoking. It
frightened him rather. He felt he must not encourage this lady — at any rate
in Chitterlow’s presence.
They became very cheerful after the repast, and as there was now no waste
to deplore, such as one experiences in the windy open air, Chitterlow gave
his voice full vent. He fell to praising Kipps very highly and loudly. He said he
had known Kipps was the right sort, he had seen it from the first, almost
before he got up out of the mud on that memorable night. ‘You can,’ he
said, ‘sometimes. That was why —’ He stopped, but he seemed on the verge
of explaining that it was his certainty of Kipps being the right sort had led
him to confer this great Fortune upon him. He left that impression. He threw
out a number of long sentences and material for sentences of a highly
philosophical and incoherent character about Coincidences. It became
evident he considered dramatic criticism in a perilously low condition . . .
About four Kipps found himself stranded, as it were, by a receding
Chitterlow on a seat upon the Leas. He was chiefly aware that Chitterlow
was an overwhelming personality. He puffed his cheeks and blew.
No doubt this was seeing life, but had he particularly wanted to see life that
day? In a way Chitterlow had interrupted him. The day he had designed for
himself was altogether different from this. He had been going to read
through a precious little volume called Don’t that Coote had sent round for
him — a book of invaluable hints, a summary of British deportment, that
had only the one defect of being at points a little out of date.
That reminded him he had intended to perform a difficult exercise called an
Afternoon Call upon the Cootes, as a preliminary to doing it in deadly
earnest upon the Walshinghams. It was no good today, anyhow, now.
He came back to Chitterlow. He would have to explain to Chitterlow he was
taking too much for granted — he would have to do that. It was so difficult
to do in Chitterlow’s presence, though; in his absence it was easy enough.
This half-share, and taking a theatre and all of it, was going too far.
The quarter share was right enough, he supposed, but even that —! A
hundred pounds! What wealth is there left in the world after one has paid
out a hundred pounds from it?
 117

He had to recall that, in a sense, Chitterlow had indeed brought him his
fortune before he could face even that.
You must not think too hardly of him. To Kipps, you see, there was as yet no
such thing as proportion in these matters. A hundred pounds went to his
horizon. A hundred pounds seemed to him just exactly as big as any other
large sum of money.
 118

CHAPTER 2. THE WALSHINGHAMS

The Cootes lived in a little house in Bouverie Square, with a tangle of Virginia
creeper up the veranda.
Kipps had been troubled in his mind about knocking double or single — it is
these things show what a man is made of — but happily there was a bell.
A queer little maid with a big cap admitted Kipps, and took him through a
bead curtain and a door into a little drawing-room, with a black and gold
piano, a glazed bookcase, a Moorish cosy corner, and a draped looking-glass
overmantel, bright with Regent Street ornaments and photographs of
various intellectual lights. A number of cards of invitation to meetings and
the match list of a Band of Hope cricket club were stuck into the looking-
glass frame, with Coote’s name as a Vice–President. There was a bust of
Beethoven over the bookcase, and the walls were thick with conscientiously
executed but carelessly selected ‘views’ in oil and water colours and gilt
frames. At the end of the room, facing the light, was a portrait that struck
Kipps at first as being Coote in spectacles and feminine costume, and that
he afterwards decided must be Coote’s mother. Then the original appeared,
and he discovered that it was Coote’s elder and only sister, who kept house
for him. She wore her hair in a knob behind, and the sight of the knob
suggested to Kipps an explanation for a frequent gesture of Coote’s, a
patting exploratory movement to the back of his head. And then it occurred
to him that this was quite an absurd idea altogether.
She said, ‘Mr. Kipps, I believe,’ and Kipps laughed pleasantly, and said,
‘That’s it!’ and then she told him that ‘Chester’ had gone down to the art
school to see about sending off some drawings or other, and that he would
be back soon. Then she asked Kipps if he painted, and showed him the
pictures on the wall. Kipps asked her where each one was ‘of,’ and when she
showed him some of the Leas slopes, he said he never would have
recognised them. He said it was funny how things looked in a picture very
often. ‘But they’re awfully good,’ he said. ‘Did you do them?’ He would look
at them with his neck arched like a swan’s, his head back and on one side,
and then suddenly peer closely into them. ‘They are good. I wish I could
paint.’
‘That’s what Chester says,’ she answered. ‘I tell him he has better things to
 119

do.’ Kipps seemed to get on very well with her.

Then Coote came in, and they left her and went upstairs together, and had a
good talk about reading and the rules of Life. Or rather Coote talked, and
the praises of thought and reading were in his mouth . . .
You must figure Coote’s study, a little bedroom put to studious uses, and
over the mantel an array of things he had been led to believe indicative of
culture and refinement — an autotype of Rossetti’s ‘Annunciation,’ an
autotype of Watts’s ‘Minotaur,’ a Swiss carved pipe with many joints, and a
photograph of Amiens Cathedral (these two the spoils of travel), a
phrenological bust, and some broken fossils from the Warren. A rotating
bookshelf carried the Encyclopaedia Britannica (tenth edition), and on the
top of it a large official-looking, age-grubby envelope, bearing the mystic
words, ‘On His Majesty’s Service,’ a number or so of the Bookman, and a
box of cigarettes were lying. A table under the window bore a little
microscope, some dust in a saucer, some grimy glass slips, and broken cover
glasses, for Coote had ‘gone in for’ biology a little. The longer side of the
room was given over to bookshelves, neatly edged with pinked American
cloth, and with an array of books — no worse an array of books than you
find in any public library; an almost haphazard accumulation of obsolete
classics, contemporary successes, the Hundred Best Books (including
Samuel Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year), old school-books, directories, the
Times Atlas, Ruskin in bulk, Tennyson complete in one volume, Longfellow,
Charles Kingsley, Smiles, a guide-book or so, several medical pamphlets, odd
magazine numbers, and much indescribable rubbish — in fact a
compendium of the contemporary British mind. And in front of this array
stood Kipps, ill-taught and untrained, respectful, awe-stricken, and, for the
moment at any rate, willing to learn, while Coote, the exemplary Coote,
talked to him of reading and the virtue in books.
‘Nothing enlarges the mind,’ said Coote, ‘like Travel and Books . . . And
they’re both so easy nowadays, and so cheap!’
‘I’ve often wanted to ‘ave a good go in at reading,’ Kipps replied.
‘You’d hardly believe,’ Coote said, ‘how much you can get out of books.
Provided you avoid trashy reading, that is. You ought to make a rule, Kipps,
and read one Serious Book a week. Of course we can Learn even from
Novels, Nace Novels, that is, but it isn’t the same thing as serious reading. I
made a rule, One Serious Book and One Novel — no more. There’s some of
the Serious Books I’ve been reading lately — on that table: Sartor Resartus,
Mrs. Twaddletome’s Pond Life, The Scottish Chiefs, Life and Letters of Dean
Farrar . . . ’
 120

There came at last the sound of a gong, and Kipps descended to tea in that
state of nervous apprehension at the difficulties of eating and drinking that
his aunt’s knuckle rappings had implanted in him for ever. Over Coote’s
shoulder he became aware of a fourth person in the Moorish cosy corner,
and he turned, leaving incomplete something incoherent he was saying to
Miss Coote about his modest respect and desire for literature, to discover
this fourth person was Miss Helen Walshingham, hatless, and looking very
much at home.
She rose at once with an extended hand to meet his hesitation. ‘You’re
stopping in Folkestone, Mr. Kipps?’
‘‘Ere on a bit of business,’ said Kipps. ‘I thought you was away in Bruges.’
‘That’s later,’ said Miss Walshingham. ‘We’re stopping until my brother’s
holiday begins, and we’re trying to let our house. Where are you staying in
Folkestone?’
‘I got a ’ouse of mine — on the Leas.’
‘I’ve heard all about your good fortune — this afternoon.’
‘Isn’t it a Go!’ said Kipps. ‘I ‘aven’t nearly got to believe it’s reely ‘appened
yet. When that Mr. Bean told me of it, you could ‘ave knocked me down
with a feather. It’s a tremenjous change for me.’
He discovered Miss Coote was asking him whether he took milk and sugar. ‘I
don’t mind,’ said Kipps. ‘Jest as you like.’
Coote became active, handing tea and bread-and-butter. It was thinly cut,
and the bread was rather new, and the half of the slice that Kipps took fell
upon the floor. He had been holding it by the edge, for he was not used to
this migratory method of taking tea without plates or table. This little
incident ruled him out of the conversation for a time, and when he came to
attend to it again, they were talking about something or other prodigious —
a performer of some sort — that was coming, called, it seemed, ‘Padrooski!’
So Kipps, who had dropped quietly into a chair, ate his bread-and-butter,
said ‘no, thank you’ to any more, and by this discreet restraint got more
freedom with his cup and saucer.
Apart from the confusion natural to tea, he was in a state of tremulous
excitement on account of the presence of Miss Walshingham. He glanced
from Miss Coote to her brother, and then at Helen. He regarded her over the
top of his cup as he drank. Here she was, solid and real. It was wonderful. He
 121

remarked, as he had done at times before, the easy flow of the dark hair
back from her brow over her ears, the shapeliness of the white hands that
came out from her simple white cuffs, the delicate pencilling of her brow.
Presently she turned her face to him almost suddenly, and smiled with the
easiest assurance of friendship. ‘You will go, I suppose?’ she said, and added
‘to the Recital.’
‘If I’m in Folkestone I shall,’ said Kipps, clearing away a little hoarseness. ‘I
don’t know much about music, but what I do know I like.’
‘I’m sure you’ll like Paderewski,’ she said.
‘If you do,’ he said, ‘I dessay I shall.’
He found Coote very kindly taking his cup.
‘Do you think of living in Folkestone?’ asked Miss Coote in a tone of
proprietorship from the hearthrug.
‘No,’ said Kipps. ‘That’s jest it — I hardly know.’ He also said that he wanted
to look round a bit before doing anything. ‘There’s so much to consider,’
said Coote, smoothing the back of his head.
‘I may go back to New Romney for a bit,’ said Kipps. ‘I got an uncle and aunt
there. I reely don’t know.’ Helen regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.
‘You must come and see us,’ she said, ‘before we go to Bruges.’
‘Oo, rather!’ said Kipps. ‘If I may.’
‘Yes, do,’ she said, and suddenly stood up before Kipps could formulate an
inquiry when he should call.
‘You’re sure you can spare that drawing-board?’ she said to Miss Coote; and
the conversation passed out of range.
And when he had said ‘Good-bye’ to Miss Walshingham, and she had
repeated her invitation to call, he went upstairs again with Coote to look out
certain initiatory books they had had under discussion. And then Kipps,
blowing very resolutely, went back to his own place, bearing in his arm (1)
Sesame and Lilies; (2) Sir George Tressady; (3) an anonymous book on
Vitality that Coote particularly esteemed. And having got to his own sitting-
room, he opened Sesame and Lilies and read with ruthless determination for
some time.
3

Presently he leant back and gave himself up to the business of trying to

imagine just exactly what Miss Walshingham could have thought of him
 122

when she saw him. Doubts about the precise effect of the gray flannel suit
began to trouble him. He turned to the mirror over the mantel, and then got
into a chair to study the hang of the trousers. It looked all right. Luckily she
had not seen the Panama hat. He knew he had the brim turned up wrong,
but he could not find out which way the brim was right. However, that she
had not seen. He might, perhaps, ask at the shop where he bought it.
He meditated for a while on his reflected face — doubtful whether he liked
it or not — and then got down again and flitted across to the sideboard
where there lay two little books, one in a cheap magnificent cover of red
and gold, and the other in green canvas. The former was called, as its cover
witnessed, Manners and Rules of Good Society, by a Member of the
Aristocracy, and after the cover had indulged in a band of gilded decoration,
light-hearted, but natural under the circumstances, it added, ‘TWENTY-FIRST
EDITION.’ The second was that admirable classic, The Art of Conversing.
Kipps returned with these to his seat, placed the two before him, opened
the latter with a sigh, and flattened it under his hand.
Then with knitted brows he began to read onward from a mark, his lips
moving.
‘Having thus acquired possession of an idea, the little ship should not be
abruptly launched into deep waters, but should be first permitted to glide
gently and smoothly into the shallows; that is to say, the conversation
should not be commenced by broadly and roundly stating a fact, or
didactically expressing an opinion, as the subject would be thus virtually or
summarily disposed of, or perhaps be met with a “Really” or “Indeed” or
some equally brief monosyllabic reply. If an opposite opinion were held by
the person to whom the remark were addressed, he might not, if a stranger,
care to express it in the form of a direct contradiction or actual dissent. To
glide imperceptibly into conversation is the object to be attained —’
At this point Mr. Kipps rubbed his fingers through his hair with an
expression of some perplexity, and went back to the beginning.
4

When Kipps made his call on the Walshinghams, it all happened so

differently from the Manners and Rules prescription (‘Paying Calls’) that he
was quite lost from the very outset. Instead of the footman or maidservant
proper in these cases, Miss Walshingham opened the door to him herself.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, with one of her rare smiles.
She stood aside for him to enter the rather narrow passage. ‘I thought I’d
 123

call,’ said he, retaining his hat and stick.

She closed the door and led the way to a little drawing room, which
impressed Kipps as being smaller and less emphatically coloured than that
of the Cootes, and in which, at first, only a copper bowl of white poppies
upon the brown tablecloth caught his particular attention.
‘You won’t think it unconventional to come in, Mr. Kipps, will you?’ she
remarked. ‘Mother is out.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, smiling amiably, ‘if you don’t.’
She walked round the table and stood regarding him across it, with that
same look between speculative curiosity and appreciation that he
remembered from the last of the art-class meetings.
‘I wondered whether you would call or whether you wouldn’t before you
left Folkestone.’
‘I’m not leaving Folkestone for a bit, and any’ow I should have called on
you.’
‘Mother will be sorry she was out. I’ve told her about you, and she wants, I
know, to meet you.’
‘I saw ‘er — if that was ‘er — in the shop,’ said Kipps.
‘Yes — you did, didn’t you? . . . She has gone out to make some duty calls,
and I didn’t go. I had something to write. I write a little, you know.’
‘Reely,’ said Kipps.
‘It’s nothing much,’ she said, ‘and it comes to nothing.’ She glanced at a little
desk near the window, on which there lay some paper. ‘One must do
something.’ She broke off abruptly. ‘Have you seen our outlook?’ she asked,
and walked to the window, and Kipps came and stood beside her. ‘We look
on the Square. It might be worse, you know. That out-porter’s truck there is
horrid — and the railings, but it’s better than staring one’s social replica in
the face, isn’t it? It’s pleasant in early spring — bright green laid on with a
dry brush — and it’s pleasant in autumn.’
‘I like it,’ said Kipps. ‘That laylock there is pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Children come and pick it at times,’ she remarked. ‘I dessay they do,’ said
Kipps.
He rested on his hat and stick and looked appreciatively out of the window,
and she glanced at him for one swift moment. A suggestion that might have
come from The Art of Conversing came into his head. ‘Have you a garden?’
 124

he said.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Only a little one,’ she said, and then, ‘Perhaps
you would like to see it.’
‘I like gardening,’ said Kipps, with memories of a penny worth of
nasturtiums he had once trained over his uncle’s dustbin.
She led the way with a certain relief.
They emerged through a four-seasons’ coloured glass door to a little iron
veranda, that led by iron steps to a minute walled garden. There was just
room for a patch of turf and a flower-bed; one sturdy variegated Euonymus
grew in the corner. But the early June flowers, the big narcissus, snow upon
the mountains, and a fine show of yellow wallflowers, shone gay.
‘That’s our garden,’ said Helen. ‘It’s not a very big one, is it?’
‘I like it,’ said Kipps.
‘It’s small,’ she said, ‘but this is the day of small things.’
Kipps didn’t follow that.
‘If you were writing when I came,’ he remarked, ‘I’m interrupting you.’
She turned round with her back to the railing and rested, leaning on her
hands. ‘I had finished,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get on.’
‘Were you making up something?’ asked Kipps.
There was a little interval before she smiled. ‘I try — quite vainly — to write
stories,’ she said. ‘One must do something. I don’t know whether I shall ever
do any good — at that — anyhow. It seems so hopeless. And, of course —
one must study the popular taste. But now my brother has gone to London
— I get a lot of leisure.’
‘I seen your brother, ‘aven’t I?’
‘He came to the class once or twice. Very probably you have. He’s gone to
London to pass his examinations and become a solicitor. And then I suppose
he’ll have a chance. Not much, perhaps, even then. But he’s luckier than I
am.’
‘You got your classes and things.’
‘They ought to satisfy me. But they don’t. I suppose I’m ambitious. We both
are. And we hadn’t much of a spring board.’ She glanced over her shoulder
at the cramped little garden with an air of reference in her gesture.
‘I should think you could do anything if you wanted to?’ said Kipps.
 125

‘As a matter of fact, I can’t do anything I want to.’

‘You done a good deal.’
‘What?’
‘Well, didn’t you pass one of these here University things?’
‘Oh, I matriculated!’
‘I should think I was no end of a swell if I did — I know that.’
‘Mr. Kipps, do you know how many people matriculate into London
University every year?’
‘How many, then?’
‘Between two and three thousand.’
‘Well, just think how many don’t!’
Her smile came again and broke into a laugh. ‘Oh, they don’t count,’ she
said; and then realising that might penetrate Kipps if he was left with it, she
hurried on to, ‘The fact is, I’m a discontented person, Mr. Kipps. Folkestone,
you know, is a Sea Front, and it values people by sheer vulgar prosperity.
We’re not prosperous, and we live in a back street. We have to live here
because this is our house. It’s a mercy we haven’t to ‘let.’ One feels one
hasn’t opportunities. If one had, I suppose one wouldn’t use them. Still —’
Kipps felt he was being taken tremendously into her confidence. ‘That’s jest
it,’ he said.
He leant forward on his stick and said very earnestly, ‘I believe you could do
anything you wanted to, if you tried.’
She threw out her hands in disavowal.
‘I know,’ said he, very sagely, and nodding his head. ‘I watched you once or
twice when you were teaching that woodcarving class.’
For some reason this made her laugh — a rather pleasant laugh, and that
made Kipps feel a very witty and successful person. ‘It’s very evident,’ she
said, ‘that you’re one of those rare people who believe in me, Mr. Kipps,’ to
which he answered, ‘Oo, I do!’ and then suddenly they became aware of
Mrs. Walshingham coming along the passage. In another moment she
appeared through the four-seasons’ door, bonneted and ladylike, and a little
faded, exactly as Kipps had seen her in the shop. Kipps felt a certain
apprehension at her appearance, in spite of the reassurances he had had
from Coote.
‘Mr. Kipps has called on us,’ said Helen; and Mrs. Walshingham said it was
 126

very, very kind of him, and added that new people didn’t call on them very
much nowadays. There was nothing of the scandalised surprise Kipps had
seen in the shop; she had heard, perhaps, he was a gentleman now. In the
shop he had thought her rather jaded and haughty, but he had scarcely
taken her hand, which responded to his touch with a friendly pressure,
before he knew how mistaken he had been. She then told her daughter that
someone called Mrs. Wace had been out, and turned to Kipps again to ask
him if he had had tea. Kipps said he had not, and Helen moved towards
some mysterious interior. ‘But, I say,’ said Kipps, ‘don’t you on my account
—’
Helen vanished, and he found himself alone with Mrs. Walshingham. Which,
of course, made him breathless and Boreas-looking for a moment.
‘You were one of Helen’s pupils in the wood-carving class?’ asked Mrs.
Walshingham, regarding him with the quiet watchfulness proper to her
position.
‘Yes,’ said Kipps; ‘that’s ‘ow I ‘ad the pleasure —’
‘She took a great interest in her woodcarving class. She is so energetic, you
know, and it gives her an Outlet.’
‘I thought she taught something splendid.’
‘Every one says she did very well. Helen, I think, would do anything well that
she undertook to do. She’s so very clever. And she throws herself into things
so.’
She untied her bonnet-strings with a pleasant informality.
‘She had told me all about her class. She used to be full of it. And about your
cut hand.’
‘Lor!’ said Kipps; ‘fancy telling that!’
‘Oh, yes. And how brave you were!’
(Though, indeed, Helen’s chief detail had been his remarkable expedient for
checking bloodshed.) Kipps became bright pink. ‘She said you didn’t seem to
feel it a bit.’
Kipps felt he would have to spend weeks over The Art of Conversing.
While he still hung fire, Helen returned with the apparatus for afternoon tea
upon a tray. ‘Do you mind pulling out the table?’ asked Mrs. Walshingham.
That again was very homelike. Kipps put down his hat and stick in the
corner, and amidst an iron thunder pulled out a little rusty, green-painted,
 127

iron table, and then in the easiest manner followed Helen in to get chairs.
So soon as he had got rid of his teacup — he refused all food, of course, and
they were merciful — he became wonderfully at his ease. Presently he was
talking. He talked quite modestly and simply about his changed condition,
and his difficulties and plans. He spread what indeed had an air of being all
his simple little soul before their eyes. In a little while his clipped, defective
accent had become less perceptible to their ears, and they began to realise,
as the girl with the freckles had long since realised, that there were passable
aspects of Kipps. He confided, he submitted, and for both of them he had
the realest, the most seductively flattering undertone of awe and reverence.
He remained about two hours, having forgotten how terribly incorrect it is
to stay at such a length. They did not mind at all.
 128

CHAPTER 3. ENGAGED

Within two months, within a matter of three-and-fifty days, Kipps had

clambered to the battlements of Heart’s Desire.
It all became possible by the Walshinghams — it would seem at Coote’s
instigation — deciding, after all, not to spend the holidays at Bruges. Instead
they remained in Folkestone, and this happy chance gave Kipps just all those
opportunities of which he stood in need.
His crowning day was at Lympne, and long before the summer warmth
began to break, while, indeed, August still flamed on high. They had
organised — no one seemed to know who suggested it first — a water
party on the still reaches of the old military canal at Hythe, and they were to
picnic by the brick bridge, and afterwards to clamber to Lympne Castle. The
host of the gathering, it was understood very clearly, was Kipps.
They went a merry party. The canal was weedy, with only a few inches of
water at the shallows, and so they went in three canoes. Kipps had learnt to
paddle; it had been his first athletic accomplishment; and his second — with
the last three or four of ten private lessons still to come — was to be
cycling. But Kipps did not paddle at all badly; muscles hardened by lifting
pieces of cretonne could cut a respectable figure by the side of Coote’s
exertions, and the girl with the freckles, the girl who understood him, came
in his canoe. They raced the Walshinghams, brother and sister; and Coote, in
a liquefying state and blowing mightily, but still persistent, and always quite
polite and considerate, toiled behind with Mrs. Walshingham. She could not
be expected to paddle (though, of course, she ‘offered’), and she reclined
upon specially adjusted cushions under a black-and-white sunshade, and
watched Kipps and her daughter, and feared at intervals that Coote was
getting hot.
They were all more or less in holiday costume; the eyes of the girls looked
out under the shade of wide-brimmed hats; even the freckled girl was
unexpectedly pretty, and Helen, swinging sunlight to her paddle, gave
Kipps, almost for the first time, the suggestion of a graceful body. Kipps was
arrayed in the completest boating costume, and when his fashionable
Panama was discarded and his hair blown into disorder, he became, in his
white flannels, as sightly as most young men. His complexion was a notable
 129

asset.
Things favoured him, the day favoured him, every one favoured him. Young
Walshingham, the girl with the freckles, Coote, and Mrs. Walshingham, were
playing up to him in the most benevolent way, and between the landing-
place and Lympne, Fortune, to crown their efforts, had placed a small
convenient field entirely at the disposal of an adolescent bull. Not a big, real,
resolute bull but, on the other hand, no calf; a young bull, at the same stage
of emotional development as Kipps, ‘where the brook and river meet.’
Detachedly our party drifted towards him.
When they landed, young Walshingham, with the simple directness of a
brother, abandoned his sister to Kipps and secured the freckled girl, leaving
Coote to carry Mrs. Walshingham’s light wool wrap. He started at once in
order to put an effectual distance between himself and his companion on
the one hand, and a certain pervasive chaperonage that went with Coote,
on the other. Young Walshingham, I think I have said, was dark, with a
Napoleonic profile, and it was natural for him therefore to be a bold thinker
and an epigrammatic speaker, and he had long ago discovered great
possibilities of appreciation in the freckled girl. He was in a very happy frame
that day because he had just been entrusted with the management of Kipps’
affairs (old Bean inexplicably dismissed), and that was not a bad beginning
for a solicitor of only a few months’ standing; and, moreover, he had been
reading Nietzsche, and he thought that in all probability he was the Non–
Moral Overman referred to by that writer. He wore fairly large-sized hats. He
wanted to expand the theme of the Non–Moral Overman in the ear of the
freckled girl, to say it over, so to speak, and in order to seclude his
exposition they went aside from the direct path and trespassed through a
coppice, avoiding the youthful bull. They escaped to these higher themes
but narrowly, for Coote and Mrs. Walshingham, subtle chaperones both,
and each indisposed, for excellent reasons, to encumber Kipps and Helen,
were hot upon their heels. These two kept the direct route to the stile of the
bull’s field, and the sight of the animal at once awakened Coote’s innate
aversion to brutality in any shape or form. He said the stiles were too high,
and that they could do better by going round by the hedge, and Mrs.
Walshingham, nothing loath, agreed.
This left the way clear for Kipps and Helen, and they encountered the bull.
Helen did not observe the bull; Kipps did; but that afternoon, at any rate, he
was equal to facing a lion. And the bull really came at them. It was not an
affair of the bull-ring exactly, no desperate rushes and gorings, but he came;
he regarded them with a large, wicked, bluish eye, opened a mouth below
 130

his moistly glistening nose, and booed, at any rate, if he did not exactly
bellow, and he shook his head wickedly, and showed that tossing was in his
mind. Helen was frightened, without any loss of dignity, and Kipps went
extremely white. But he was perfectly calm, and he seemed to her to have
lost the last vestiges of his accent and his social shakiness. He directed her
to walk quietly towards the stile, and made an oblique advance towards the
bull.
‘You be orf!’ he said —
When Helen was well over the stile, Kipps withdrew in good order. He got
over the stile, under cover of a feint, and the thing was done — a small
thing, no doubt, but just enough to remove from Helen’s mind an incorrect
deduction that a man who was so terribly afraid of a teacup as Kipps must
necessarily be abjectly afraid of everything else in the world. In her moment
of reaction she went, perhaps too far in the opposite direction. Hitherto
Kipps had always had a certain flimsiness of effect for her. Now, suddenly,
he was discovered solid. He was discovered possible in many new ways.
Here, after all, was the sort of back a woman can get behind! . . .
As they went past the turf-crowned mass of Portus Lemanus, up the steep
slopes towards the castle on the crest, the thing was almost manifest in her
eyes.
2

Every one who stays in Folkestone goes sooner or later to Lympne. The
Castle became a farm-house, and the farm-house, itself now ripe and
venerable, wears the walls of the castle as a little man wears a big man’s
coat. The kindliest of farm ladies entertains a perpetual stream of visitors,
and shows you her vast mangle and her big kitchen, and takes you out upon
the sunniest little terrace-garden in all the world, and you look down the
sheep-dotted slopes, to where, beside the canal and under the trees, the
crumbled memories of Rome sleep for ever. One climbs the Keep, up a
tortuous spiral of stone, worn to the pitch of perforation, and there one is
lifted to the centre of far more than a hemisphere of view. Away below
one’s feet, almost at the bottom of the hill, the Marsh begins and spreads
and spreads in a mighty crescent that sweeps about the sea, the Marsh
dotted with the church towers of forgotten mediaeval towns, and breaking
at last into the low blue hills by Winchelsea and Hastings; east hangs France
between the sea and sky; and round the north, bounding the wide
perspectives of farms and houses and woods, the Downs, with their hangers
and chalk-pits, sustain the passing shadows of the sailing clouds.
 131

And here it was, high out of the world of every day, and in the presence of
spacious beauty, that Kipps and Helen found themselves agreeably alone.
All six, it had seemed, had been coming for the Keep; but Mrs. Walshingham
had hesitated at the horrid little stairs, and then suddenly felt faint, and so
she and the freckled girl had remained below, walking up and down in the
shadow of the house; and Coote had remembered they were all out of
cigarettes, and had taken off young Walshingham into the village. There had
been shouting to explain between ground and parapet, and then Helen and
Kipps turned again to the view and commended it, and fell silent.
Helen sat fearlessly in an embrasure, and Kipps stood beside her.
‘I’ve always been fond, of scenery,’ Kipps repeated, after an interval. Then
he went off at a tangent. ‘D’you reely think that was right what Coote was
saying?’
She looked interrogation.
‘About my name.’
‘Being really C-U-Y-P-S? I have my doubts. I thought at first — What makes
Mr. Coote add an ‘S’ to Cuyp?’
‘I dunno,’ said Kipps, foiled. I was jest thinking’ . . .
She shot one wary glance at him, and then turned her eyes to the sea.
Kipps was out for a space. He had intended to lead from this question to the
general question of surnames and change of names; it had seemed a light
and witty way of saying something he had in mind, and suddenly he
perceived that this was an unutterably vulgar and silly project. The hitch
about that ‘S’ had saved him. He regarded her profile for a moment, framed
in weatherbeaten stone, and backed by the blue elements.
He dropped the question of his name out of existence, and spoke again of
the view. ‘When I see scenery — and things that — that are beautiful, it
makes me feel —’
She looked at him suddenly, and saw him fumbling for his words. ‘Silly like,’
he said.
She took him in with her glance, the old look of proprietorship it was,
touched with a certain warmth. She spoke in a voice as unambiguous as her
eyes. ‘You needn’t,’ she said. ‘You know, Mr. Kipps, you hold yourself too
cheap.’
Her eyes and words smote him with amazement. He stared at her like a man
who awakens. She looked down. ‘You mean —’ he said; and then, ‘Don’t you
 132

hold me cheap?’ She glanced up again and shook her head.

‘But — for instance — you don’t think of me — as an equal like.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oo! But, reely —’
His heart beat very fast.
‘If I thought —’ he said; and then, ‘You know so much.’
‘That’s nothing,’ she said.
Then for a long time, as it seemed to them, both kept silence — a silence
that said and accomplished many things.
‘I know what I am,’ he said at length . . . ‘If I thought it was possible . . . If I
thought you. . . . I believe I could do anything —’
He stopped, and she sat downcast and strikingly still.
‘Miss Walshingham,’ he said, ‘is it possible that you . . . could care for me
enough to — to ‘elp me? Miss Walshingham, do you care for me at all?’
It seemed she was never going to answer. She looked up at him. ‘I think,’
she said, ‘you are the most generous — look at what you have done for my
brother! — the most generous and the most modest of — men. And this
afternoon — I thought you were the bravest.’
She turned her head, glanced down, waved her hand to some one on the
terrace below, and stood up. ‘Mother is signalling,’ she said. ‘We must go
down.’
Kipps became polite and deferential by habit, but his mind was a tumult that
had nothing to do with that.
He moved before her towards the little door that opened on the winding
stairs —‘always precede a lady down or up stairs’— and then, on the second
step, he turned resolutely ‘But —’ he said, looking up out of the shadow,
flannel clad and singularly like a man.
She looked down on him, with her hand upon the stone lintel.
He held out his hand as if to help her. ‘Can you tell me?’ he said. ‘You must
know —’
‘What?’
‘If you care for me?’
She did not answer for a long time. It was as if every thing in the world was
drawn to the breaking-point, and in a minute must certainly break.
 133

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I know.’

Abruptly, by some impalpable sign, he knew what the answer would be, and
he remained still. She bent down over him and softened to her wonderful
smile.
‘Promise me,’ she insisted.
He promised with his still face.
‘If I do not hold you cheap, you will never hold yourself cheap.’
‘If you do not hold me cheap! You mean?’
She bent down quite close to him. ‘I hold you,’ she said, and then whispered,
‘dear.’
‘Me?’
She laughed aloud.
He was astonished beyond measure. He stipulated lest there might yet be
some misconception. ‘You will marry me?’
She was laughing, inundated by the sense of bountiful power, of possession
and success. He looked quite a nice little man to have. ‘Yes,’ she laughed.
‘What else could I mean?’ and, ‘Yes.’
He felt as a praying hermit might have felt, snatched from the midst of his
quiet devotions, his modest sackcloth and ashes, and hurled neck and crop
over the glittering gates of Paradise, smack among the iridescent wings, the
bright-eyed Cherubim. He felt like some lowly and righteous man dynamited
into Bliss . . .
His hand tightened on the rope that steadies one upon the stairs of stone.
He was for kissing her hand and did not.
He said not a word more. He turned about, and, with something very like a
scared expression on his face, led the way into the obscurity of their descent
...
3

Every one seemed to understand. Nothing was said, nothing was explained;
the merest touch of the eyes sufficed. As they clustered in the castle
gateway, Coote, Kipps remembered afterwards, laid hold of his arm as if by
chance, and pressed it. It was quite evident he knew. His eyes, his nose,
shone with benevolent congratulation; shone, too, with the sense of a good
thing conducted to its climax. Mrs. Walshingham, who had seemed a little
fatigued by the hill, recovered, and was even obviously stirred by affection
 134

for her daughter. There was in passing a motherly caress. She asked Kipps to
give her his arm in walking down the steep. Kipps in a sort of dream obeyed.
He found himself trying to attend to her, and soon he was attending.
She and Kipps talked like sober, responsible people and went slowly, while
the others drifted down the hill together, a loose little group of four. He
wondered momentarily what they would talk about, and then sank into his
conversation with Mrs. Walshingham. He conversed, as it were, out of his
superficial personality, and his inner self lay stunned in unsuspected depths
within. It had an air of being an interesting and friendly talk, almost their
first long talk together. Hitherto he had had a sort of fear of Mrs.
Walshingham, as of a person possibly satirical, but she proved a soul of
sense and sentiment, and Kipps, for all his abstraction, got on with her
unexpectedly well. They talked a little upon scenery and the inevitable
melancholy attaching to old ruins and the thought of vanished generations.
‘Perhaps they jousted here,’ said Mrs. Walshingham.
‘They was up to all sorts of things,’ said Kipps; and then the two came round
to Helen. She spoke of her daughter’s literary ambitions. ‘She will do
something, I feel sure. You know, Mr. Kipps, it’s a great responsibility to a
mother to feel her daughter is — exceptionally clever.’
‘I dessay it is,’ said Kipps. ‘There’s no mistake about that.’
She spoke, too, of her son — almost like Helen’s twin — alike yet different.
She made Kipps feel quite fatherly.
‘They are so quick, so artistic,’ she said, ‘so full of ideas. Almost they frighten
me. One feels they need opportunities — as other people need air.’
She spoke of Helen’s writing. ‘Even when she was quite a little tot she wrote
verse.’
(Kipps, sensation.)
‘Her father had just the same tastes —’ Mrs. Walshingham turned a little
beam of half-pathetic reminiscence on the past. ‘He was more artist than
business man. That was the trouble . . . He was misled by his partner, and
when the crash came every one blamed him . . . Well, it doesn’t do to dwell
on horrid things . . . especially today. There are bright days, Mr. Kipps, and
dark days. And mine have not always been bright.’
Kipps presented a face of Coote-like sympathy.
She diverged to talk of flowers, and Kipps’ mind was filled with the picture
of Helen bending down towards him in the Keep . . .
 135

They spread the tea under the trees before the little inn, and at a certain
moment Kipps became aware that every one in the party was
simultaneously and furtively glancing at him. There might have been a
certain tension had it not been first of all for Coote and his tact, and
afterwards for a number of wasps. Coote was resolved to make this
memorable day pass off well, and displayed an almost boisterous sense of
fun. Then young Walshingham began talking of the Roman remains below
Lympne, intending to lead up to the Overman. ‘These old Roman chaps —’
he said; and then the wasps arrived. They killed three in the jam alone.
Kipps killed wasps, as it were in a dream, and handed things to the wrong
people, and maintained a thin surface of ordinary intelligence with the
utmost difficulty. At times he became aware — aware with an extraordinary
vividness — of Helen. Helen was carefully not looking at him, and behaving
with amazing coolness and ease. But just for that one time there was the
faintest suggestion of pink beneath the ivory of her cheeks . . .
Tacitly the others conceded to Kipps the right to paddle back with Helen; he
helped her into the canoe and took his paddle and, paddling slowly,
dropped behind the others. And now his inner self stirred again. He said
nothing to her. How could he ever say anything to her again? She spoke to
him at rare intervals about reflections and flowers and the trees, and he
nodded in reply. But his mind moved very slowly forward now from the
point at which it had fallen stunned in the Lympne Keep, moving forward to
the beginnings of realisation. As yet he did not say even in the recesses of
his heart that she was his! But he perceived that the goddess had come from
her altar, amazingly, and had taken him by the hand!
The sky was a vast splendour, and then close to them were the dark
protecting trees, and the shining, smooth still water.
He was an erect black outline to her; he plied his paddle with no unskilful
gesture; the water broke to snaky silver and glittered far behind his strokes.
Indeed, he did not seem so bad to her. Youth calls to youth the wide world
through, and her soul rose in triumph over his subjection. And behind him
was money and opportunity, freedom, and London, a great background of
seductively indistinct hopes. To him her face was a warm dimness. In truth
he could not see her eyes, but it seemed to his love-witched brain he did,
and that they shone out at him like dusky stars.
All the world that evening was no more than a shadowy frame of darkling
sky and water and dipping boughs about Helen. He seemed to see through
things with an extraordinary clearness; she was revealed to him certainly as
the cause and essence of it all.
 136

He was, indeed, at his Heart’s Desire. It was one of those times when there
seems to be no future, when Time has stopped and we are at the end. Kipps
that evening could not have imagined a tomorrow; all that his imagination
had pointed towards was attained. His mind stood still, and took the
moments as they came.
4

About nine that night Coote came round to Kipps’ new apartment in the
Upper Sandgate Road — the house on the Leas had been let furnished and
Kipps made an effort towards realisation. He was discovered sitting at the
open window and without a lamp — quite still. Coote was deeply moved,
and he pressed Kipps’ palm and laid a knobby white hand on his shoulder,
and displayed the sort of tenderness becoming in a crisis. Kipps, too, was
moved that night and treated Coote like a very dear brother.
‘She’s splendid,’ said Coote, coming to it abruptly.
‘Isn’t she?’ said Kipps.
‘I couldn’t help noticing her face,’ said Coote . . . ‘You know, my dear Kipps,
this is better than a legacy.’
‘I don’t deserve it,’ said Kipps.
‘You can’t say that.’
‘I don’t. I can’t ‘ardly believe it. I can’t believe it at all. No!’
There followed an expressive stillness.
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Kipps. ‘It takes me like that.’
Coote made a faint blowing noise, and so again they came for a time on
silence.
‘And it began — before your money?’
‘When I was in ‘er class,’ said Kipps solemnly.
Coote speaking out of a darkness which he was illuminating strangely with
efforts to strike a match, said it was beautiful. He could not have wished
Kipps a better fortune.
He lit a cigarette, and Kipps was moved to the same, with a sacramental
expression. Presently speech flowed more freely.
Coote began to praise Helen, and her mother and brother; he talked of
when ‘it’ might be; he presented the thing as concrete and credible. ‘It’s a
county family, you know,’ he said. ‘She is connected, you know, with the
 137

Beauprés family — you know Lord Beauprés.’

‘No!’ said Kipps, ‘reely!’
‘Distantly, of course,’ said Coote. ‘Still —’
He smiled a smile that glimmered in the twilight.
‘It’s too much,’ said Kipps, overcome. ‘It’s so all like that.’
Coote exhaled. For a time Kipps listened to Helen’s praises and matured a
point of view.
‘I say, Coote,’ he said. ‘What ought I to do now?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Coote.
‘I mean about calling on ‘er and all that.’
He reflected. ‘Naturally I want to do it all right.’
‘Of course,’ said Coote.
‘It would be awful to go and do something now — all wrong.’
Coote’s cigarette glowed as he meditated. ‘You must call, of course,’ he
decided. ‘You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Walshingham.’
‘‘Ow?’ said Kipps.
‘Tell her you mean to marry her daughter.’
‘I dessay she knows,’ said Kipps, with defensive penetration.
Coote’s head was visible, shaking itself judicially.
‘Then there’s the ring,’ said Kipps. ‘What ‘ave I to do about that?’
‘What ring do you mean?’
‘‘Ngagement Ring. There isn’t anything at all about that in Manners and
Rules of Good Society — not a word.’
‘Of course you must get something — tasteful. Yes.’
‘What sort of ring?’
‘Something nace. They’ll show you in the shop.’
‘O’ course. I s’pose I got to take it to ‘er, eh? Put it on ‘er finger.’
‘Oh, no! Send it. Much better.’
‘Ah!’ said Kipps for the first time with a note of relief.
‘Then ‘ow about this call? — on Mrs. Walshingham, I mean. ‘Ow ought one
to go?’
 138

‘Rather a ceremonial occasion,’ reflected Coote. ‘Wadyer mean? Frock coat?’

‘I think so,’ said Coote, with discrimination. ‘Light trousers, and all that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rose?’
‘I think it might run to a buttonhole.’
The curtain that hung over the future became less opaque to the eyes of
Kipps. To-morrow, and then other days, became perceptible at least as
existing. Frock coat, silk hat, and a rose! With a certain solemnity he
contemplated himself in the process of slow ‘transformation into an English
gentleman.’ Arthur Cuyps, frock-coated on occasions of ceremony, the
familiar acquaintance of Lady Punnet, the recognised wooer of a distant
connection of the Earl of Beauprés.
Something like awe at the magnitude of his own fortunes came upon him.
He felt the world was opening out like a magic flower in a transformation
scene at the touch of this wand of gold. And Helen, nestling beautiful in the
red heart of the flower. Only ten weeks ago he had been no more than the
shabbiest of improvers and shamefully dismissed for dissipation, the mere
soil-buried seed, as it were, of these glories. He resolved the engagement
ring should be of impressively excessive quality and appearance, in fact the
very best they had.
‘Ought I to send ‘er flowers?’ he speculated.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Coote. ‘Though, of course, it’s an attention’ . . .
Kipps meditated on flowers.
‘When you see her,’ said Coote, ‘you’ll have to ask her to name the day.’
Kipps started. ‘That won’t be just yet a bit, will it?’
‘Don’t know any reason for delay.’
‘Oo, but — a year say.’
‘Rather a long taime,’ said Coote.
‘Is it?’ said Kipps, turning his head sharply. ‘But —’
There was quite a long pause.
‘I say!’ he said at last, and in an altered voice, ‘you’ll ‘ave to ‘elp me about
the wedding.’
‘Only too happy!’ said Coote.
‘O’ course,’ said Kipps. ‘I didn’t think —’ He changed his line of thought.
 139

‘Coote,’ he asked, ‘wot’s a ‘tate-eh-tate’?’

‘A ‘tate-ah-tay,’
‘Â said Coote improvingly, ‘is a conversation alone together.’
‘Lor!’ said Kipps, ‘but I thought — It says strictly we oughtn’t to enjoy a
tater-tay, not sit together, walk together, or meet during any part of the
day. That don’t leave much time for meeting, does it?’
‘The book says that?’ asked Coote.
‘I jest learn it by ’eart before you came. I thought that was a bit rum, but I
‘spose it’s all right.’
‘You won’t find Mrs. Walshingham so strict as all that,’ said Coote. ‘I think
that’s a bit extreme. They’d only do that now in very strict old aristocratic
families. Besides, the Walshinghams are so modern — advanced you might
say. I expect you’ll get plenty of chances of talking together.’
‘There’s a tremendous lot to think about,’ said Kipps, blowing a profound
sigh. ‘D’you mean — p’raps we might be married in a few months or so?’
‘You’ll have to be,’ said Coote. ‘Why not?’ . . .
Midnight found Kipps alone, looking a little tired, and turning over the
leaves of the red-covered text-book with a studious expression. He paused
for a moment at page 233, his eye caught by the words:
‘FOR AN UNCLE OR AUNT BY MARRIAGE the period is six weeks black with
jet trimmings.’
‘No,’ said Kipps, after a vigorous mental effort. That’s not it.’ The pages
rustled again. He stopped and flattened out the little book decisively at the
beginning of the chapter on ‘Weddings.’
He became pensive. He stared at the lamp-wick. ‘I suppose I ought to go
over and tell them,’ he said at last.
5

Kipps called on Mrs. Walshingham attired in the proper costume for

Ceremonial Occasions in the Day. He carried a silk hat, and he wore a deep-
skirted frock-coat; his boots were patent leather, and his trousers a dark
gray. He had generous white cuffs with gold links, and his gray gloves, one
thumb of which had burst when he put them on, he held loosely in his hand.
He carried a small umbrella, rolled to an exquisite tightness. A sense of
singular correctness pervaded his being and warred with the enormity of
the occasion for possession of his soul. Anon he touched his silk cravat. The
 140

world smelt of his rosebud.

He seated himself on a newly re-covered chintz armchair, and stuck out the
elbow of the arm that held his hat.
‘I know,’ said Mrs. Walshingham, ‘I know everything,’ and helped him out
most amazingly. She deepened the impression he had already received of
her sense and refinement. She displayed an amount of tenderness that
touched him.
‘This is a great thing,’ she said, ‘to a mother,’ and her hand rested for a
moment on his impeccable coat-sleeve. ‘A daughter, Arthur,’ she exclaimed,
‘is so much more than a son.’
Marriage, she said, was a lottery, and without love and toleration — there
was much unhappiness. Her life had not always been bright — there had
been dark days and bright days. She smiled rather sweetly. ‘This is a bright
one,’ she said.
She said very kind and flattering things to Kipps, and she thanked him for his
goodness to her son. (‘That wasn’t anything,’ said Kipps.) And then she
expanded upon the theme of her two children. ‘Both so accomplished,’ she
said, ‘so clever. I call them my Twin Jewels.’
She was repeating a remark she had made at Lympne that she always said
her children needed opportunities as other people needed air, when she
was abruptly arrested by the entry of Helen. They hung on a pause, Helen
perhaps surprised by Kipps’ week-day magnificence. Then she advanced
with outstretched hand.
Both the young people were shy. ‘I jest called round,’ began Kipps, and
became uncertain how to end.
‘Won’t you have some tea?’ asked Helen.
She walked to the window, looked at the familiar outporter’s barrow,
turned, surveyed Kipps for a moment ambiguously, said, ‘I will get some
tea,’ and so departed again.
Mrs. Walshingham and Kipps looked at one another, and the lady smiled
indulgently. ‘You two young people mustn’t be shy of each other,’ said Mrs.
Walshingham, which damaged Kipps considerably.
She was explaining how sensitive Helen always had been, even about quite
little things, when the servant appeared with the tea-things; and then Helen
followed, and, taking up a secure position behind the little bamboo tea-
table, broke the ice with officious teacup clattering. Then she introduced the
 141

topic of a forth-coming open-air performance of As You Like It, and steered

past the worst of the awkwardness. They discussed stage illusion. ‘I mus’
say,’ said Kipps, ‘I don’t quite like a play in a theayter. It seems sort of unreal
some’ow.’
‘But most plays are written for the stage,’ said Helen, looking at the sugar. ‘I
know,’ admitted Kipps.
They got through tea. ‘Well,’ said Kipps, and rose.
‘You mustn’t go yet,’ said Mrs. Walshingham, rising and taking his hand. ‘I’m
sure you two must have heaps to say to each other’; and so she escaped
towards the door.
6

Among other projects that seemed almost equally correct to Kipps at that
exalted moment was one of embracing Helen with ardour so soon as the
door closed behind her mother, and one of headlong flight through the
open window. Then he remembered he ought to hold the door open for
Mrs. Walshingham, and turned from that duty to find Helen still standing,
beautifully inaccessible, behind the tea-things. He closed the door and
advanced towards her with his arms akimbo and his hands upon his coat
skirts. Then feeling angular, he moved his right hand to his moustache.
Anyhow, he was dressed all right. Somewhere at the back of his mind, dim
and mingled with doubt and surprise, appeared the perception that he felt
now quite differently towards her, that something between them had been
blown from Lympne Keep to the four winds of heaven —
She regarded him with an eye of critical proprietorship. ‘Mother has been
making up to you,’ she said, smiling slightly. She added, ‘It was nice of you to
come round to see her.’
They stood through a brief pause, as though each had expected something
different in the other, and was a little perplexed at its not being there. Kipps
found he was at the corner of the brown-covered table, and he picked up a
little flexible book that lay upon it to occupy his mind.
‘I bought you a ring today,’ he said, bending the book and speaking for the
sake of saying something, and then he moved to genuine speech. ‘You
know,’ he said, ‘I can’t ‘ardly believe it.’
Her face relaxed slightly again. ‘No?’ she said, and may have breathed, ‘Nor
I.’
‘No,’ he went on. ‘It’s as though everything ‘ad changed. More even than
 142

when I got that money. ‘Ere we are going to marry. It’s like being someone
else. What I feel is —’
He turned a flushed and earnest face to her. He seemed to come alive to her
with one natural gesture. ‘I don’t know things. I’m not good enough. I’m not
refined. The more you see of me, the more you’ll find me out.’
‘But I’m going to help you.’
‘You’ll ‘ave to ‘elp me a fearful lot.’
She walked to the window, glanced out of it, made up her mind, turned and
came towards him, with her hands clasped behind her back.
‘All these things that trouble you are very little things. If you don’t mind — if
you will let me tell you things —’
‘I wish you would.’
‘Then I will.’
They’re little things to you, but they aren’t to me.’
‘It all depends, if you don’t mind being told.’
‘By you?’
‘I don’t expect you to be told by strangers.’
‘Oo!’ said Kipps, expressing much.
‘You know, there are just a few little things — For instance, you know, you
are careless with your pronunciation . . . You don’t mind my telling you?’
‘I like it,’ said Kipps. ‘There aitches.’
‘I know,’ said Kipps, and then endorsingly, ‘I been told. Fact is, I know a
chap, a Nacter, he’s told me. He’s told me, and he’s going to give me a
lesson or so.’
‘I’m glad of that. It only requires a little care.’
‘Of course, on the stage they got to look out. They take regular lessons.’
‘Of course,’ said Helen, a little absently.
‘I dessay I shall soon get into it,’ said Kipps.
‘And then there’s dress,’ said Helen, taking up her thread again. Kipps
became pink, but he remained respectfully attentive.
‘You don’t mind?’ she said.
‘Oo no.’
 143

‘You mustn’t be too — too dressy. It’s possible to be over conventional,

over elaborate. It makes you look like a shop . . . like a common well-off
person. There’s a sort of easiness that is better. A real gentleman looks
right, without looking as though he had tried to be right.’
‘Jest as though ‘e’d put on what came first?’ said the pupil in a faded voice.
‘Not exactly that, but a sort of ease.’
Kipps nodded his head intelligently. In his heart he was kicking his silk hat
about the room in an ecstasy of disappointment.
‘And you must accustom yourself to be more at your ease when you are
with people,’ said Helen. ‘You’ve only got to forget yourself a little and not
be anxious —’
‘I’ll try,’ said Kipps, looking rather hard at the tea-pot. ‘I’ll do my best to try.’
‘I know you will,’ she said; and laid a hand for an instant upon his shoulder
and withdrew it.
He did not perceive her caress. ‘One has to learn,’ he said. His attention was
distracted by the strenuous efforts that were going on in the back of his
head to translate, ‘I say, didn’t you ought to name the day?’ into easy as well
as elegant English, a struggle that was still undecided when the time came
for them to part . . .
He sat for a long time at the open window of his sitting-room with an intent
face, recapitulating that interview. His eyes rested at last almost
reproachfully on the silk hat beside him. ‘‘Ow is one to know?’ he asked. His
attention was caught by a rubbed place in the nap, and, still thoughtful, he
rolled up his handkerchief skilfully into a soft ball and began to smooth this
down.
‘‘Ow the Juice is one to know?’ he said, putting down the hat with some
emphasis.
He rose up, went across the room to the sideboard, and, standing there,
opened and began to read in Manners and Rules.
 144

CHAPTER 4. THE BICYCLE MANUFACTURER

So Kipps embarked upon his engagement, steeled himself to the high

enterprise of marrying above his breeding. The next morning found him
dressing with a certain quiet severity of movement, and it seemed to his
landlady’s housemaid that he was unusually dignified at breakfast. He
meditated profoundly over his kipper and his kidney and bacon. He was
going to New Romney to tell the old people what had happened and where
he stood. And the love of Helen had also given him courage to do what
Buggins had once suggested to him as a thing he would do were he in Kipps’
place, and that was to hire a motor-car for the afternoon. He had an early
cold lunch, and then, with an air of quiet resolution, assumed a cap and coat
he had purchased to this end, and, thus equipped, strolled round, blowing
slightly, to the motor shop. The transaction was unexpectedly easy, and
within the hour, Kipps, spectacled and wrapped about, was tootling through
Dymchurch.
They came to a stop smartly and neatly outside the little toyshop. ‘Make
that thing ‘oot a bit, will you?’ said Kipps. ‘Yes. That’s it.’
‘Whup,’ said the motor-car. ‘Whurrup.’ Both his aunt and uncle came out on
the pavement. ‘Why, it’s Artie!’ cried his aunt; and Kipps had a moment of
triumph.
He descended to hand-claspings, removed wraps and spectacles, and the
motor-driver retired to take ‘an hour off.’ Old Kipps surveyed the machinery
and disconcerted Kipps for a moment by asking him, in a knowing tone,
what they asked him for a thing like that. The two men stood inspecting the
machine and impressing the neighbours for a time, and then they strolled
through the shop into the little parlour for a drink.
‘They ain’t settled,’ old Kipps had said at the neighbours. ‘They ain’t got no
further than experiments. There’s a bit of take-in about each. You take my
advice and wait, me boy, even if it’s a year or two before you buy one for
your own use.’
(Though Kipps had said nothing of doing anything of the sort.)
‘‘Ow d’you like that whisky I sent?’ asked Kipps, dodging the old familiar
bunch of children’s pails.
 145

Old Kipps became tactful. ‘It’s very good whisky, my boy,’ said old Kipps. ‘I
‘aven’t the slightest doubt it’s a very good whisky, and cost you a tidy price.
But — dashed if it soots me! They put this here Foozle Ile in it, my boy, and it
ketches me jest ’ere.’ He indicated his centre of figure. ‘Gives me the
heartburn,’ he said, and shook his head rather sadly.
‘It’s a very good whisky,’ said Kipps. ‘It’s what the actor-manager chaps
drink in London, I ‘appen to know.’
‘I dessay they do, my boy,’ said old Kipps, ‘but then they’ve ‘ad their livers
burnt out — and I aven’t. They ain’t dellicat like me. My stummik always ‘as
been extrydellicat. Sometimes it’s almost been as though nothing would lay
on it. But that’s in passing. I liked those segars. You can send me some more
of them segars . . . ’
You cannot lead a conversation straight from the gastric consequences of
Foozle Ile to Love, and so Kipps after a friendly inspection of a rare old
engraving after Morland (perfect except for a hole kicked through the
centre) that his Uncle had recently purchased by private haggle, came to the
topic of the old people’s removal.
At the outset of Kipps’ great fortunes there had been much talk of some
permanent provision for them. It had been conceded they were to be
provided for comfortably, and the phrase, ‘retire from business,’ had been
very much in the air. Kipps had pictured an ideal cottage with a creeper
always in exuberant flower about the door, where the sun shone for ever,
and the wind never blew, and a perpetual welcome hovered in the doorway.
It was an agreeable dream, but when it came to the point of deciding upon
this particular cottage or that, and on this particular house or that, Kipps
was surprised by an unexpected clinging to the little home, which he had
always understood to be the worst of all possible houses.
‘We don’t want to move in a ‘urry,’ said Mrs. Kipps.
‘When we want to move, we want to move for life. I’ve had enough moving
about in my time,’ said old Kipps. ‘We can do here a bit more now we done
here so long,’ said Mrs. Kipps.
‘You lemme look about a bit fust,’ said old Kipps.
And in looking about old Kipps found perhaps a finer joy than any mere
possession could have given. He would shut his shop more or less effectually
against the intrusion of customers, and toddle abroad seeking a new matter
for his dream; no house was too small and none too large for his knowing
inquiries. Occupied houses took his fancy more than vacant ones, and he
would remark. ‘You won’t be a-livin’ ’ere for ever, even if you think you will,’
 146

when irate householders protested against the unsolicited examination of

their more intimate premises . . .
Remarkable difficulties arose, of a totally unexpected sort.
‘If we ‘ave a larger ’ouse,’ said Mrs. Kipps, with sudden bitterness, ‘we shall
want a servant, and I don’t want no gells in the place larfin’ at me, sniggerin’
and larfin’ and prancin’ and trapesin’, lardy da!’
‘If we ‘ave a smaller ’ouse,’ said Mrs. Kipps, ‘there won’t be room to swing a
cat.’
Room to swing a cat, it seemed, was absolutely essential. It was an
infrequent but indispensable operation. ‘When we do move,’ said old Kipps,
‘if we could get a bit of shootin’—’
‘I don’t want to sell off all this here stock for nothin’,’ said old Kipps. ‘It’s
took years to ‘cumulate. I put a ticket in the winder sayin’, “sellin’ orf,” but it
‘asn’t brought nothing like a roosh. One of these ’ere dratted visitors,
pretendin’ to want an air-gun, was all me ‘ad in yesterday. Jest an excuse for
spyin’ round, and then go away and larf at you. No thanky to everything, it
didn’t matter what . . . That’s ‘ow I look at it, Artie.’
They pursued meandering fancies about the topic of their future settlement
for a space, and Kipps became more and more hopeless of any proper
conversational opening that would lead to his great announcement, and
more and more uncertain how such an opening should be taken. Once,
indeed, old Kipps, anxious to get away from this dangerous subject of
removals, began, ‘And what are you a-doin’ of in Folkestone? I shall have to
come over and see you one of these days,’ but before Kipps could get in
upon that, his uncle had passed into a general exposition of the proper
treatment of landladies and their humbugging, cheating ways, and so the
opportunity vanished. It seemed to Kipps the only thing to do was to go out
into the town for a stroll, compose an effectual opening at leisure, and then
come back and discharge it at them in its consecutive completeness. And
even out-of-doors and alone, he found his mind distracted by irrelevant
thoughts.
His steps led him out of the High Street towards the church, and he leant for
a time over the gate that had once been the winning-post of his race with
Ann Pornick, and presently found himself in a sitting position on the top rail.
He had to get things smooth again, he knew; his mind was like a mirror of
water after a breeze. The image of Helen and his great future was broken
and mingled into fragmentary reflections of remoter things, of the good
name of Old Methuselah Three Stars, of long-dormant memories the High
 147

Street saw fit, by sometrick of light and atmosphere, to arouse that

afternoon . . .
Abruptly a fine full voice from under his elbow shouted, ‘What-o, Art!’ and
behold Sid Pornick was back in his world, leaning over the gate beside him,
and holding out a friendly hand.
He was oddly changed, and yet oddly like the Sid that Kipps had known. He
had the old broad face and mouth, abundantly freckled, the same short
nose, and the same blunt chin, the same odd suggestion of his sister Ann
without a touch of her beauty; but he had quite a new voice, loud, and a
little hard, and his upper lip carried a stiff and very fair moustache.
Kipps shook hands. ‘I was jest thinking of you, Sid,’ he said, ‘jest this very
moment, and wondering if ever I should see you again — ever. And ’ere you
are!’
‘One likes a look round at times,’ said Sid. ‘How are you, old chap?’
‘All right,’ said Kipps. ‘I just been lef —’
‘You aren’t changed much,’ interrupted Sid.
‘Ent I?’ said Kipps, foiled.
‘I knew your back directly I came round the corner. Spite of that ‘at you got
on. Hang it, I said, that’s Art Kipps or the devil. And so it was.’
Kipps made a movement of his neck as if he would look at his back and
judge. Then he looked Sid in the face. ‘You got a moustache, Sid,’ he said.
‘I s’pose you’re having your holidays?’ said Sid. ‘Well, partly. But I just been
lef —’
‘I’m taking a bit of a holiday,’ Sid went on. ‘But the fact is, I have to give
myself holidays nowadays. I’ve set up for myself.’
‘Not down here?’
‘No fear! I’m not a turnip. I’ve started in Hammersmith, manufacturing.’ Sid
spoke off-hand, as though there was no such thing as pride.
‘Not drapery?’
‘No fear! Engineer. Manufacture bicycles.’ He clapped his hand to his breast
pocket and produced a number of pink handbills. He handed one to Kipps,
and prevented him reading it by explanations and explanatory dabs of a
pointing finger. ‘That’s our make — my make, to be exact — the Red Flag —
see? I got a transfer with my name — Pantocrat tyres, eight pounds — yes,
there — Clinchers ten, Dunlops eleven, Ladies’ one pound more — that’s
 148

the lady’s. Best machine at a democratic price in London. No guineas and no

discounts — honest trade. I build ’em — to order. I’ve built,’ he reflected,
looking away seaward, ‘seventeen. Counting orders in ‘and . . .
‘Come down to look at the old place a bit,’ said Sid. ‘Mother likes it at times.’
‘Thought you’d all gone away —’
‘What! after my father’s death? No! My mother’s come back, and she’s living
at Muggett’s cottages. The sea-air suits ‘er. She likes the old place better
than Hammersmith . . . and I can afford it. Got an old crony or so here . . .
Gossip — have tea . . . S’pose you ain’t married, Kipps?
Kipps shook his head. ‘I—’ he began.
‘I am,’ said Sid. ‘Married these two years, and got a nipper. Proper little
chap.’ Kipps got his word in at last. ‘I got engaged day before yesterday,’ he
said. ‘Ah!’ said Sid airily. ‘That’s all right. Who’s the fortunate lady!’
Kipps tried to speak in an off-hand way. He stuck his hands in his pockets as
he spoke. ‘She’s a solicitor’s daughter,’ he said, ‘in Folkestone. Rather’r nice
set. County family. Related to the Earl of Beauprés —’
‘Steady on!’ cried Sid.
‘You see, I’ve ‘ad a bit of luck, Sid. Been lef money.’
Sid’s eye travelled instinctively to mark Kipps’ garments. ‘How much?’ he
asked. ‘‘Bout twelve ‘undred a year,’ said Kipps, more off-handedly than
ever. ‘Lord!’ said Sid, with a note of positive dismay, and stepped back a
pace or two.
‘My granfaver it was,’ said Kipps, trying hard to be calm and simple. ‘‘Ardly
knew I ‘ad a granfaver. And then bang! When o’ Bean, the solicitor, told me
of it, you could ‘ave knocked me down —’
‘Ow much?’ demanded Sid, with a sharp note in his voice. Twelve ‘undred
pound a year — proximately, that is . . . ’
Sid’s attempt at genial unenvious congratulation did not last a minute. He
shook hands with an unreal heartiness, and said he was jolly glad. ‘It’s a
blooming stroke of Luck,’ he said.
‘It’s a blooming’ stroke of Luck,’ he repeated, ‘that’s what it is,’ with the
smile fading from his face. ‘Of course, better you ‘ave it than me, o’ chap. So
I don’t envy you, anyhow. I couldn’t keep it if I did ‘ave it.’
‘Ow’s that?’ said Kipps, a little hipped by Sid’s patent chagrin.
‘I’m a Socialist, you see,’ said Sid. ‘I don’t ‘old with Wealth. What is Wealth?
 149

Labour robbed out of the poor. At most it’s only yours in trust. Leastways,
that’s ‘ow I should take it.’
He reflected. The Present distribution of Wealth,’ he said, and stopped.
Then he let himself go, with unmasked bitterness. ‘It’s no sense at all. It’s
jest damn foolishness. Who’s going to work and care in a muddle like this?
Here first you do — something anyhow — of the world’s work and it pays
you hardly anything, and then it invites you to do nothing, nothing
whatever, and pays you twelve hundred pounds a year. Who’s going to
respect laws and customs when they come to damn silliness like that?’
He repeated, ‘Twelve hundred pounds a year!’
At the sight of Kipps’ face he relented slightly.
‘It’s not you I’m thinking of, o’ man; it’s the system. Better you than most
people. Still —’
He laid both hands on the gate and repeated to himself, ‘Twelve ‘undred a
year — Gee-whiz, Kipps! You’ll be a swell!’
‘I shan’t,’ said Kipps, with imperfect conviction. ‘No fear.’
‘You can’t ‘ave money like that and not swell out. You’ll soon be too big to
speak to —‘ow do they put it? — a mere mechanic like me.’
‘No fear, Siddee,’ said Kipps, with conviction. ‘I ain’t that sort.’
‘Ah!’ said Sid, with a sort of unwilling scepticism, ‘money’ll be too much for
you. Besides — you’re caught by a swell already.’
‘‘Ow d’yer mean?’
‘That girl you’re going to marry. Masterman says —’
‘Oo’s Masterman?’
‘Rare good chap, I know — takes my first-floor front room. Masterman says
it’s always the wife pitches the key. Always. There’s no social differences —
till women come in.’
‘Ah!’ said Kipps profoundly. ‘You don’t know.’
Sid shook his head. ‘Fancy!’ he reflected, ‘Art Kipps! . . . Twelve ‘Undred a
Year!’ Kipps tried to bridge that opening gulf. ‘Remember the Hurons, Sid?’
‘Rather,’ said Sid.
‘Remember that wreck?’
‘I can smell it now — sort of sour smell.’
 150

Kipps was silent for a moment, with reminiscent eyes on Sid’s still troubled
face. ‘I say, Sid, ‘ow’s Ann?’
‘She’s all right,’ said Sid.
‘Where is she now?’
‘In a place . . . Ashford.’
‘Oh!’
Sid’s face had became a shade sulkier than before.
‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘we don’t get on very well together. I don’t hold with
service. We’re common people, I suppose, but I don’t like it. I don’t see why
a sister of mine should wait at other people’s tables. No. Not even if they
got Twelve ‘Undred a Year.’
Kipps tried to change the point of application. ‘Remember ‘ow you came out
once when we were racing here? . . . She didn’t run bad for a girl.’
And his own words raised an image brighter than he could have supposed,
so bright it seemed to breathe before him, and did not fade altogether, even
when he was back in Folkestone an hour or so later.
But Sid was not to be deflected from that other rankling theme by any
reminiscences of Ann.
‘I wonder what you will do with all that money,’ he speculated. ‘I wonder if
you will do any good at all. I wonder what you could do. You should hear
Masterman. He’d tell you things. Suppose it came to me; what should I do?
It’s no good giving it back to the State as things are. Start an Owenite profit-
sharing factory perhaps. Or a new Socialist paper. We want a new Socialist
paper.’
He tried to drown his personal chagrin in elaborate exemplary suggestions
...
3

‘I must be gettin’ on to my motor,’ said Kipps at last, having to a large extent

heard him out. ‘What! Got a motor?’
‘No,’ said Kipps apologetically. ‘Only jobbed for the day.’
‘‘Ow much?’
‘Five pounds.’
‘Keep five families for a week! Good Lord!’ That seemed to crown Sid’s
disgust.
 151

Yet drawn by a sort of fascination, he came with Kipps and assisted at the
mounting of the motor. He was pleased to note it was not the most modern
of motors, but that was the only grain of comfort. Kipps mounted at once,
after one violent agitation of the little shop-door to set the bell ajangle and
warn his uncle and aunt. Sid assisted with the great fur-lined overcoat and
examined the spectacles.
‘Good-bye, o’ chap!’ said Kipps.
‘Good-bye, o’ chap!’ said Sid.
The old people came out to say good-bye.
Old Kipps was radiant with triumph. ‘‘Pon my sammy, Artie! I’m a goo’ mind
to come with you,’ he shouted; and then, ‘I got something you might take
with you!’
He dodged back into the shop and returned with the perforated engraving
after Morland.
‘You stick to this, my boy,’ he said. ‘You get it repaired by some one who
knows. It’s the most vallyble thing I got you so far — you take my word.’
‘Warrup!’ said the motor, and tuff, tuff, tuff, and backed and snorted, while
old Kipps danced about on the pavement as if foreseeing complex
catastrophes, and told the driver, ‘That’s all right.’
He waved his stout stick to his receding nephew. Then he turned to Sid.
‘Now if you could make something like that, young Pornick, you might blow
a bit!’
‘I’ll make a doocid sight better than that before I done,’ said Sid, hands deep
in his pockets. ‘Not you,’ said old Kipps.
The motor set up a prolonged sobbing moan and vanished round the corner.
Sid stood motionless for a space, unheeding some further remark from old
Kipps. The young mechanic had just discovered that to have manufactured
seventeen bicycles, including orders in hand, is not so big a thing as he had
supposed, and such discoveries try one’s manhood . . .
‘Oh, well!’ said Sid at last, and turned his face towards his mother’s cottage.
She had got a hot tea-cake for him, and she was a little hurt that he was dark
and preoccupied as he consumed it. He had always been such a boy for tea-
cake, and then when one went out specially and got him one —!
He did not tell her — he did not tell any one — he had seen young Kipps. He
did not want to talk about Kipps for a bit to any one at all.
152
 153

CHAPTER 5. THE PUPIL LOVER

When Kipps came to reflect upon his afternoon’s work, he had his first
inkling of certain comprehensive incompatibilities lying about the course of
true love in his particular case. He had felt without understanding the
incongruity between the announcement he had failed to make and the circle
of ideas of his aunt and uncle. It was this rather than the want of a specific
intention that had silenced him, the perception that when he travelled from
Folkestone to New Romney he travelled from an atmosphere where his
engagement to Helen was sane and excellent to an atmosphere where it
was only to be regarded with incredulous suspicion. Coupled and associated
with this jar was his sense of the altered behaviour of Sid Pornick, the
evident shock to that ancient alliance caused by the fact of his enrichment,
the touch of hostility in his ‘You’ll soon be swelled too big to speak to a poor
mechanic like me.’ Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth — that
the path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken
friendships. This first protrusion of that fact caused a painful confusion in his
mind. It was speedily to protrude in a far more serious fashion in relation to
the ‘hands’ from the Emporium, and Chitterlow.
From the day at Lympne Castle his relations with Helen had entered upon a
new footing. He had prayed for Helen as good souls pray for Heaven, with as
little understanding of what it was he prayed for. And now that period of
standing humbly in the shadows before the shrine was over, and the
goddess, her veil of mystery flung aside, had come down to him and taken
hold of him, a good strong firm hold, and walked by his side. She liked him.
What was singular was, that very soon she had kissed him thrice, whimsically
upon the brow, and he had never kissed her at all. He could not analyse his
feelings, only he knew the world was wonderfully changed about them; but
the truth was that, though he still worshipped and feared her, though his
pride in his engagement was ridiculously vast, he loved her now no more.
That subtle something, woven of the most delicate strands of self-love and
tenderness and desire, had vanished imperceptibly, and was gone now for
ever. But that she did not suspect in him, nor, as a matter of fact, did he.
She took him in hand in perfect good faith. She told him things about his
accent; she told him things about his bearing, about his costume and his way
of looking at things. She thrust the blade of her intelligence into the
 154

tenderest corners of Kipps’ secret vanity; she slashed his most intimate
pride to bleeding tatters. He sought very diligently to anticipate some at
least of these informing thrusts by making great use of Coote. But the
unanticipated made a brave number . . .
She found his simple willingness a very lovable thing.
Indeed, she liked him more and more. There was a touch of motherliness in
her feelings towards him. But his upbringing and his associations had been,
she diagnosed, ‘awful.’ At New Romney she glanced but little — that was
remote. But in her inventory — she went over him as one might go over a
newly taken house, with impartial thoroughness — she discovered more
proximate influences, surprising intimations of nocturnal ‘sing-songs’— she
pictured it as almost shocking that Kipps should sing to the banjo — much
low-grade wisdom treasured from a person called Buggins —‘Who is
Buggins?’ said Helen — vague figures of indisputable vulgarity — Pearce and
Carshot — and more particularly a very terrible social phenomenon —
Chitterlow.
Chitterlow blazed upon them with unheralded oppressive brilliance, the first
time they were abroad together.
They were going along the front of the Leas to see a school-play in Sandgate
— at the last moment Mrs. Walshingham had been unable to come with
them — when Chitterlow loomed up into the new world. He was wearing
the suit of striped flannel and the straw hat that had followed Kipps’
payment in advance for his course in elocution, his hands were deep in his
side-pockets and animated the corners of his jacket, and his attentive gaze
at the passing loungers, the faint smile under his boldly drawn nose, showed
him engaged in studying character — no doubt for some forthcoming play.
‘What HO!’ said he, at the sight of Kipps, and swept off the straw hat with so
ample a clutch of his great flat hand that it suggested to Helen’s startled
mind a conjurer about to palm a halfpenny.
‘‘Ello, Chitt’low,’ said Kipps, a little awkwardly, and not saluting.
Chitterlow hesitated. ‘Half a mo’, my boy,’ he said, and arrested Kipps by
extending a large hand over his chest. ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ he said, bowing
like his Russian count by way of apology to Helen, and with a smile that
would have killed at a hundred yards. He effected a semi-confidential
grouping of himself and Kipps, while Helen stood in white amazement.
‘About that play,’ he said.
‘‘Ow about it?’ asked Kipps, acutely aware of Helen.
 155

‘It’s all right,’ said Chitterlow. ‘There’s a strong smell of syndicate in the air, I
may tell you. Strong.’
‘That’s aw right,’ said Kipps.
‘You needn’t tell everybody,’ said Chitterlow, with a transitory confidential
hand to his mouth, which pointed the application of the ‘everybody’ just a
trifle too strongly. ‘But I think it’s coming off. However — I mustn’t detain
you now. So long. You’ll come round, eh?’
‘Right you are,’ said Kipps. ‘To-night?’
‘At eight.’
And then, and more in the manner of a Russian prince than any common
count, Chitterlow bowed and withdrew. Just for a moment he allowed a
conquering eye to challenge Helen’s, and noted her for a girl of quality . . .
There was a silence between our lovers for a space.
‘That,’ said Kipps, with an allusive movement of the head, ‘was Chitt’low.’
‘Is he — a friend of yours?’
‘In a way . . . You see, I met Mm. Leastways ‘e met me. Run into me with a
bicycle, ‘e did, and so we got talking together.’
He tried to appear at his ease. The young lady scrutinised his profile. ‘What is
he?’
‘‘E’s a Nacter chap,’ said Kipps. ‘Leastways ‘e writes plays.’
‘And sells them?’
‘Partly.’
‘Whom to.’
‘Different people. Shares he sells — It’s all right, reely —
‘I meant to tell you about him before.’
Helen looked over her shoulder to catch a view of Chitterlow’s retreating
aspect. It did not compel her complete confidence.
She turned to her lover, and said in a tone of quiet authority, ‘You must tell
me all about Chitterlow. Now.’ The explanation began . . .
The School Play came almost as a relief to Kipps. In the flusterment of going
in he could almost forget, for a time, his Laocoon struggle to explain, and in
the intervals he did his best to keep forgetting. But Helen, with a gentle
insistence, resumed the explanation of Chitterlow as they returned towards
Folkestone.
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Chitterlow was confoundedly difficult to explain. You could hardly imagine!

There was an almost motherly anxiety in Helen’s manner, blended with the
resolution of a schoolmistress to get to the bottom of the affair. Kipps’ ears
were soon quite brightly red.
‘Have you seen one of his plays?’
‘‘E’s tole me about one.’
‘But on the stage.’
‘No. He ‘asn’t ‘ad any on the stage yet. That’s all coming . . . ’
‘Promise me,’ she said in conclusion, ‘you won’t do anything without
consulting me.’ And, of course, Kipps promised. ‘Oo no!’
They went on their way in silence.
‘One can’t know everybody,’ said Helen in general.
‘Of course,’ said Kipps, ‘in a sort of way it was him that helped me to my
money.’ And he indicated in a confused manner the story of the
advertisement. ‘I don’t like to drop ’im all at once,’ he added.
Helen was silent for a space, and when she spoke she went off at a tangent.
‘We shall live in London — soon,’ she remarked. ‘It’s only while we are here.’
It was the first intimation she gave him of their postnuptial prospects.
‘We shall have a nice little flat somewhere, not too far west, and there we
shall build up a circle of our own.’
All that declining summer Kipps was the pupil lover. He made an
extraordinarily open secret of his desire for self-improvement; indeed Helen
had to hint once or twice that his modest frankness was excessive, and all
this new circle of friends did, each after his or her manner, everything that
was possible to supplement Helen’s efforts and help him to ease and skill in
the more cultivated circles to which he had come. Coote was still the chief
teacher, the tutor — there are so many little difficulties that a man may take
to another man that he would not care to propound to the woman he loves
— but they were all, so to speak, upon the staff. Even the freckled girl said
to him once in a pleasant way, ‘You mustn’t say ‘centre temps,’ Â you must
say ‘contraytom,’’ when he borrowed that expression from Manners and
Rules, and she tried, at his own suggestion, to give him clear ideas upon the
subject of ‘as’ and ‘has.’ A certain confusion between these words was
becoming evident, the first-fruits of a lesson from Chitterlow on the
aspirate. Hitherto he had discarded that dangerous letter almost altogether,
but now he would pull up at words beginning with ‘h’ and draw a sawing
 157

breath — rather like a startled kitten — and then aspirate with vigour.
Said Kipps one day, ‘As ‘e? — I should say, ah — Has ‘e? Ye know I got a lot
of difficulty over them two words, which is which?’
‘Well, ‘as’ is a conjunction, and ‘has’ is a verb.’
‘I know,’ said Kipps, ‘but when is ‘has’ a conjunction and when is ‘as’ a verb?’
‘Well,’ said the freckled girl, preparing to be very lucid. ‘It’s has when it
means one has, meaning having, but if it isn’t it’s as. As, for instance, one
says ‘e — I mean he — He has. But one says —‘as he has.’’
‘I see,’ said Kipps. ‘So I ought to say ‘‘as ‘e?’’
‘No, if you are asking a question you say has ‘e — I mean he —‘as he?’ She
blushed quite brightly, but still clung to her air of lucidity.
‘I see,’ said Kipps. He was about to say something further, but he desisted. ‘I
got it much clearer now. Has ‘e? Has ‘e as. Yes.’
‘If you remember about having.’
‘Oo, I will,’ said Kipps . . .
Miss Coote specialised in Kipps’ artistic development. She had early formed
an opinion that he had considerable artistic sensibility; his remarks on her
work had struck her as decidedly intelligent, and whenever he called round
to see them she would show him some work of art — now an illustrated
book, now perhaps a colour print of a Botticelli, now the Hundred Best
Paintings, now ‘Academy Pictures,’ now a German art handbook and now
some magazine of furniture and design. ‘I know you like these things,’ she
used to say, and Kipps said, ‘Oo, I do.’ He soon acquired a little armoury of
appreciative sayings. When presently the Walshinghams took him up to the
Arts and Crafts, his deportment was intelligent in the extreme. For a time he
kept a wary silence and suddenly pitched upon a colour print. That’s rather
nace,’ he said to Mrs. Walshingham. ‘That lill’ thing. There.’ He always said
things like that by preference to the mother rather than the daughter unless
he was perfectly sure.
He quite took to Mrs. Walshingham. He was impressed by her conspicuous
tact and refinement; it seemed to him that the ladylike could go no farther.
She was always dressed with a delicate fussiness that was never
disarranged, and even a sort of faded quality about her hair, and face, and
bearing, and emotions, contributed to her effect. Kipps was not a big man,
and commonly he did not feel a big man, but with Mrs. Walshingham he
always felt enormous and distended, as though he was a navy who had
 158

taken some disagreeable poison which puffed him up inside his skin as a
preliminary to bursting. He felt, too, as though he had been rolled in clay and
his hair dressed with gum. And he felt that his voice was strident and his
accent like somebody swinging a crowded pig’s-tail in a free and careless
manner. All this increased and enforced his respect for her. Her hand, which
flitted often and again to his hand and arm, was singularly well shaped and
cool. ‘Arthur,’ she called him from the very beginning.
She did not so much positively teach and tell him as tactfully guide and
infect him. Her conversation was not so much didactic as exemplary. She
would say, ‘I do like people to do’ so and so. She would tell him anecdotes of
nice things done, of gentlemanly feats of graceful consideration; she would
record her neat observations of people in trains and omnibuses, how, for
example, a man had passed her change to the conductor, ‘quite a common
man he looked,’ but he had lifted his hat. She stamped Kipps so deeply with
the hat-raising habit that he would uncover if he found himself in the same
railway ticket-office with a lady, and so stand ceremoniously until the
difficulties of change drove him to an apologetic provisional oblique
resumption of his headgear . . . And robbing these things of any air of
personal application, she threw about them an abundant talk about her two
children — she called them her Twin Jewels quite frequently — about their
gifts, their temperaments, their ambition, their need of opportunity. They
needed opportunity, she would say, as other people needed air . . .
In his conversations with her Kipps always assumed — and she seemed to
assume — that she was to join that home in London Helen foreshadowed;
but he was surprised one day to gather that this was to be the case. ‘It
wouldn’t do,’ said Helen, with decision. ‘We want to make a circle of our
own.’
‘But won’t she be a bit lonely down here?’ asked Kipps.
‘There’s the Waces, and Mrs. Prebble, and Mrs. Bindon Botting, and — lots
of people she knows.’ And Helen dismissed this possibility . . .
Young Walshingham’s share in the educational syndicate was smaller. But he
shone out when they went to London on that Arts and Crafts expedition.
Then this rising man of affairs showed Kipps how to buy the more theatrical
weeklies for consumption in the train, how to buy and what to buy in the
way of cigarettes with gold tips and shilling cigars, and how to order hock
for lunch and sparkling Moselle for dinner, how to calculate the fare of a
hanson cab — penny a minute while he goes — how to look intelligently at
an hotel tape, and how to sit still in a train like a thoughtful man instead of
talking like a fool and giving yourself away. And he, too, would glance at the
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good time coming when they were to be in London for good and all.
That prospect expanded and developed particulars. It presently took up a
large part of Helen’s conversation. Her conversations with Kipps were never
of a grossly sentimental sort; there was a shyness of speech in that matter
with both of them; but these new adumbrations were at least as interesting,
and not so directly disagreeable, as the clear-out intimations of personal
defect that for a time had so greatly chastened Kipps’ delight in her
presence. The future presented itself with an almost perfect frankness as a
joint campaign of Mrs. Walshingham’s Twin Jewels upon the Great World,
with Kipps in the capacity of baggage and supply. They would still be
dreadfully poor, of course — this amazed Kipps, but he said nothing — until
‘Brudderkins’ began to succeed; but if they were clever and lucky they might
do a great deal.
When Helen spoke of London, a brooding look, as of one who contemplates
a distant country, came into her eyes. Already it seemed they had the
nucleus of a set. Brudderkins was a member of the Theatrical Judges, an
excellent and influential little club of journalists and literary people, and he
knew Shimer and Stargate and Whiffle of the ‘Red Dragon,’ and besides
these were the Revels. They knew the Revels quite well. Sidney Revel,
before his rapid rise to prominence as a writer of epigrammatic essays that
were quite above the ordinary public, had been an assistant master at one
of the best Folkestone schools. Brudderkins had brought him home to tea
several times, and it was he had first suggested Helen should try and write.
‘It’s perfectly easy,’ Sidney had said. He had been writing occasional things
for the evening papers and for the weekly reviews even at that time. Then
he had gone up to London, and had almost unavoidably become a dramatic
critic. Those brilliant essays had followed, and then Red Hearts a-Beating,
the romance that had made him. It was a tale of spirited adventure, full of
youth and beauty and naive passion and generous devotion, bold, as the
Bookman said, and frank in places, but never in the slightest degree morbid.
He had met and married an American widow with quite a lot of money, and
they had made a very distinct place for themselves, Kipps learnt, in the
literary and artistic society of London. Helen seemed to dwell on the Revels
a great deal; it was her exemplary story, and when she spoke of Sidney —
she often called him Sidney — she would become thoughtful. She spoke
most of him, naturally, because she had still to meet Mrs. Revel . . . Certainly
they would be in the world in no time, even if the distant connection with
the Beauprés family came to nothing.
Kipps gathered that with his marriage and the movement to London they
 160

were to undergo that subtle change of name Coote had first adumbrated.
They were to become ‘Cuyps,’ Mr. and Mrs. Cuyps. Or was it Cuyp?
‘It’ll be rum at first,’ said Kipps.
‘I dessay I shall soon get into it,’ he said . . .
So in their several ways they all contributed to enlarge and refine and
exercise the intelligence of Kipps. And behind all these other influences, and
as it were presiding over and correcting these influences, was Kipps’ nearest
friend, Coote, a sort of master of the ceremonies. You figure his face,
blowing slightly with solicitude, his slate-coloured, projecting, but not
unkindly eye intent upon our hero. The thing, he thought, was going off
admirably. He studied Kipps’ character immensely. He would discuss him
with his sister, with Mrs. Walshingham, with the freckled girl, with any one
who would stand it. ‘He is an interesting character,’ he would say, ‘likeable
— a sort of gentleman by instinct. He takes to all these things. He improves
every day. He’ll soon get Sang–Froid. We took him up just in time. He wants
now — Well — next year, perhaps, if there is a good Extension Literature
course he might go in for it. He wants to go in for something like that.’
‘He’s going in for his bicycle now,’ said Mrs. Walshingham.
‘That’s all right for summer,’ said Coote, ‘but he wants to go in for some
serious intellectual interest, something to take him out of himself a little
more. Savoir Faire and self-forgetfulness is more than half the secret of
Sang–Froid’ . . .
3

The world, as Coote presented it, was in part an endorsement, in part an

amplification, and in part a rectification of the world of Kipps — the world
that derived from the old couple in New Romney and had been developed in
the Emporium; the world, in fact, of common British life. There was the
same subtle sense of social gradation that had moved Mrs. Kipps to prohibit
intercourse with labourers’ children, and the same dread of anything
‘common’ that had kept the personal quality of Mr. Shalford’s establishment
so high. But now a certain disagreeable doubt about Kipps’ own position
was removed, and he stood with Coote inside the sphere of gentlemen
assured. Within the sphere of gentlemen there are distinctions of rank
indeed, but none of class; there are the Big People, and the modest, refined,
gentlemanly little people, like Coote, who may even dabble in the
professions and counterless trades; there are lords and magnificences, and
there are gentle-folk who have to manage — but they can all call on one
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another, they preserve a general quality of deportment throughout, they

constitute that great state within the state — Society.
‘But reely,’ said the Pupil, ‘not what you call being in Society?’
‘Yes,’ said Coote. ‘Of course, down here, one doesn’t see much of it, but
there’s local society. It has the same rules.’
‘Calling and all that?’
‘Precisely,’ said Coote.
Kipps thought, whistled a bar, and suddenly broached a question of
conscience. ‘I often wonder,’ he said, ‘whether I oughtn’t to dress for dinner
— when I’m alone ’ere.’
Coote protruded his lips and reflected. ‘Not full dress,’ he adjudicated; ‘that
would be a little excessive. But you should change, you know. Put on a mess
jacket, and that sort of thing — easy dress. That is what I should do,
certainly, if I wasn’t in harness — and poor.’
He coughed modestly, and patted his hair behind.
And after that the washing-bill of Kipps quadrupled, and he was to be seen
at times by the bandstand with his light summer overcoat unbuttoned, to
give a glimpse of his nice white tie. He and Coote would be smoking the
gold-tipped cigarettes young Walshingham had prescribed as ‘chic,’ and
appreciating the music highly. ‘That’s — puff — a very nice bit,’ Kipps would
say; or better, ‘That’s nace.’ And at the first grunts of the loyal anthem they
stood with religiously uplifted hats. Whatever else you might call them, you
could never call them disloyal.
The boundary of Society was admittedly very close to Coote and Kipps, and
a leading solicitude of the true gentleman was to detect clearly those
‘beneath’ him, and to behave towards them in a proper spirit. ‘It’s jest there
it’s so ‘ard for me.’ said Kipps. He had to cultivate a certain ‘distance,’ to
acquire altogether the art of checking the presumption of bounders and old
friends. It was difficult, Coote admitted.
‘I got mixed up with this lot ’ere,’ said Kipps. ‘That’s what’s so harkward — I
mean awkward.’
‘You could give them a hint,’ said Coote.
‘Ow?’
‘Oh — the occasion will suggest something.’
The occasion came one early-closing night, when Kipps was sitting in a
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canopy chair near the bandstand with his summer overcoat fully open, and a
new Gibus pulled slightly forward over his brow, waiting for Coote. They
were to hear the band for an hour, and then go down to assist Miss Coote
and the freckled girl in trying over some Beethoven duets, if they
remembered them, that is, sufficiently well. And as Kipps lounged back in his
chair and occupied his mind with his favourite amusement on such evenings,
which consisted chiefly in supposing that every one about him was
wondering who he was, came a rude rap at the canvas back and the voice of
Pearce . . .
‘It’s nice to be a gentleman,’ said Pearce, and swung a penny chair into
position, while Buggins appeared smiling agreeably on the other side, and
leant upon his stick. He was smoking a common briar pipe!
Two real ladies, very fashionably dressed, and sitting close at hand, glanced
quickly at Pearce, and then away again, and it was evident their wonder was
at an end.
‘He’s all right,’ said Buggins, removing his pipe and surveying Kipps.
‘‘Ello, Buggins!’ said Kipps, not too cordially. ‘‘Ow goes it?’
‘All right. Holidays next week. If you don’t look out, Kipps, I shall be on the
Continong before you. Eh?’
‘You going t’ Boologne?’
‘Ra-ther. Parley vous Francey. You bet.’
‘I shall ‘ave a bit of a run over there one of these days,’ said Kipps.
There came a pause. Pearce applied the top of his stick to his mouth for a
space and regarded Kipps. Then he glanced at the people about them.
‘I say, Kipps,’ he said in a distinct loud voice, ‘see ‘er Ladyship lately?’
Kipps perceived the audience was to impressed, but he responded half-
heartedly. ‘No, I ‘aven’t,’ he said.
‘She was along of Sir William the other night,’ said Pearce, still loud and
clear, ‘and she asked to be remembered to you.’ It seemed to Kipps that one
of the two ladies smiled faintly, and said something to the other, and then
certainly they glanced at Pearce. Kipps flushed scarlet. ‘Did she?’ he
answered. Buggins laughed good-humouredly over his pipe. ‘Sir William
suffers a lot from his gout,’ Pearce continued unabashed.
(Buggins much amused with his pipe between his teeth.) Kipps became
aware of Coote at hand. Coote nodded rather distantly to Pearce. ‘Hope I
haven’t kept you waiting, Kipps,’ he said.
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‘I kep’ a chair for you,’ said Kipps, and removed a guardian foot.
‘But you’ve got your friends,’ said Coote. ‘Oh, we don’t mind,’ said Pearce
cordially ‘the more the merrier’; and, ‘Why don’t you get a chair, Buggins?’
Buggins shook his head in a sort of aside to Pearce, and Coote coughed
behind his hand.
‘Been kep’ late at business?’ asked Pearce. Coote turned quite pale, and
pretended not to hear. His eyes sought in space for a time, and with a
convulsive movement he recognised a distant acquaintance and raised his
hat. Pearce had also become a little pale. He addressed himself to Kipps in
an undertone.
‘Mr. Coote, isn’t he?’ he asked.
Coote addressed himself to Kipps directly and exclusively. His manner had
the calm of extreme tension. ‘I’m rather late,’ he said. ‘I think we ought
almost to be going on now.’
Kipps stood up. ‘That’s all right,’ he said.
‘Which way are you going?’ said Pearce, standing also, and brushing some
crumbs of cigarette ash from his sleeve.
For a moment Coote was breathless. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and gasped. Then
he delivered the necessary blow, ‘I don’t think we’re in need of your society,
you know,’ and turned away.
Kipps found himself falling over chairs and things in the wake of Coote, and
then they were clear of the crowd.
For a space Coote said nothing; then he remarked abruptly, and quite angrily
for him, ‘I think that was awful Cheek!’
Kipps made no reply . . .
The whole thing was an interesting little object-lesson in ‘distance,’ and it
stuck in the front of Kipps’ mind for a long time. He had particularly vivid the
face of Pearce with an expression between astonishment and anger.
He felt as though he had struck Pearce in the face under circumstances that
gave Pearce no power to reply. He did not attend very much to the duets,
and even forget at the end of one of them to say how perfectly lovely it was.
4

But you must not imagine that the national ideal of a gentleman, as Coote
developed it, was all a matter of deportment and selectness, a mere
isolation from debasing associations. There is a Serious Side, a deeper
 164

aspect of the true Gentleman. But it is not vocal. The True Gentleman does
not wear his heart on his sleeve. For example, he is deeply religious, as
Coote was, as Mrs. Walshingham was; but outside the walls of a church it
never appears, except perhaps now and then in a pause, in a profound look,
in a sudden avoidance. In quite a little while Kipps also had learnt the pause,
the profound look, the sudden avoidance, that final refinement of
spirituality, impressionistic piety.
And the True Gentleman is patriotic also. When one saw Coote lifting his hat
to the National Anthem, then perhaps one got a glimpse of what patriotic
emotions, what worship, the polish of a gentleman may hide. Or singing out
his deep notes against the Hosts of Midian, in St. Stylites’ choir; then indeed
you plumbed his spiritual side.
‘Christian, dost thou heed them On the holy ground,
How the hosts of Mid-i-an
Prowl and prowl around?
Christian, up and smai-it them . . .
But these were but gleams. For the rest, Religion, Nationality, Passion,
Finance, Politics, much more so those cardinal issues Birth and Death, the
True Gentleman skirted about, and became facially rigid towards, and
ceased to speak, and panted and blew.
‘One doesn’t talk of that sort of thing,’ Coote would say, with a gesture of
the knuckly hand. ‘O’ course,’ Kipps would reply, with an equal significance.
Profundities. Deep, as it were, blowing to deep.
One does not talk, but on the other hand one is punctilious to do. Action
speaks. Kipps — in spite of the fact that the Walshinghams were more than
a little lax — Kipps, who had formerly flitted Sunday after Sunday from one
Folkestone church to another, had now a sitting of his own, paid for duly, at
Saint Stylites. There he was to be seen, always at the surplice evening
service, and sometimes of a morning, dressed with a sober precision, and
with an eye on Coote in the chancel. No difficulties now about finding the
place in his book. He became a communicant again — he had lapsed soon
after his confirmation when the young lady in the costume-room who was
his adopted sister left the Emporium — and he would sometimes go round
to the Vestry for Coote, after the service. One evening he was introduced to
the Hon. and Rev. Densmore, He was much too confused to say anything,
and the noble cleric had nothing to say, but they were introduced . . .
No! You must not imagine that the national ideal of a gentleman is without
 165

its ‘serious side,’ without even its stern and uncompromising side. The
imagination, no doubt, refuses to see Coote displaying extraordinary
refinements of courage upon the stricken field, but in the walks of peace
there is sometimes sore need of sternness. Charitable as one may be, one
must admit there are people who do things — impossible things; people
who place themselves ‘out of it’ in countless ways; people, moreover, who
are by a sort of predestination out of it from the beginning; and against
these Society has invented a terrible protection for its Cootery — the Cut.
The cut is no joke for any one. It is excommunication. You may be cut by an
individual, you may be cut by a set, or you may be — and this is so tragic that
beautiful romances have been written about it —‘Cut by the Country.’ One
figures Coote discharging this last duty and cutting somebody . — Coote,
erect and pale, never speaking, going past with eyes of pitiless slate, lower
jaw protruding a little, face pursed up and cold and stiff . . .
It never dawned upon Kipps that he could one day have to face this terrible
front, to be to Coote not only as one dead, but as one gone more than a
stage or so in decay, cut and passed, banned and outcast for ever. It never
dawned upon either of them.
Yet so it was to be!
One cannot hide any longer that all this fine progress of Kipps is doomed to
end in collapse. So far, indeed, you have seen him ascend. You have seen
him becoming more refined and careful day by day, more carefully dressed,
less clumsy in the uses of social life. You have seen the gulf widening
between himself and his former low associates. I have brought you at last to
the vision of him, faultlessly dressed and posed, in an atmosphere of
candlelight and chanting, in his own sitting, his own sitting! in one of the
most fashionable churches in Folkestone . . . I have refrained from the
lightest touch upon the tragic note that must now creep into my tale. Yet
the net of his low connections has been about his feet, and, moreover, there
was something interwoven in his being . . .
 166

CHAPTER 6. DISCORDS

One day Kipps set out upon his newly mastered bicycle to New Romney, to
break the news of his engagement to his uncle and aunt — positively. He
was now a finished cyclist, but as yet an unseasoned one; the south-west
wind, even in its summer guise, as one meets it in the Marsh, is the
equivalent of a reasonable hill, and ever and again he got off and refreshed
himself by a spell of walking. He was walking just outside New Romney
preparatory to his triumphal entry (one hand off), when abruptly he came
upon Ann Pornick.
It chanced he was thinking about her at the time. He had been thinking
curious things; whether, after all, the atmosphere of New Romney and the
Marsh had not some difference, some faint impalpable quality that was
missing in the great and fashionable world of Folkestone behind there on
the hill. Here there was a homeliness, a familiarity. He had noted as he
passed that old Mr. Clifferdown’s gate had been mended with a fresh piece
of string. In Folkestone he didn’t take notice, and he didn’t care if they built
three hundred houses. Come to think of it, that was odd. It was fine and
grand to have twelve hundred a year; it was fine to go about on trams and
omnibuses and think not a person on board was as rich as oneself; it was
fine to buy and order this and that and never have any work to do, and to be
engaged to a girl distantly related to the Earl of Beauprés; but yet there had
been a zest in the old time out here, a rare zest in the holidays, in sunlight,
on the sea beach, and in the High Street, that failed from these new things.
He thought of those bright windows of holiday that had seemed so glorious
to him in the retrospect from his apprentice days. It was strange that now,
amidst his present splendours, they were glorious still!
All those things were over now — perhaps that was it! Something had
happened to the world, and the old light had been turned out. He himself
was changed, and Sid was changed, terribly changed, and Ann, no doubt,
was changed.
He thought of her with the hair blown about her flushed cheeks as they
stood together after their race . . .
Certainly she must be changed, and all the magic she had been fraught with
to the very hem of her short petticoats gone, no doubt, for ever. And as he
 167

thought that, or before and while he thought it — for he came to all these
things in his own vague and stumbling way — he looked up, and there was
Ann!
She was seven years older, and greatly altered; yet for the moment it
seemed to him that she had not changed at all. ‘Ann!’ he said; and she, with
a lifting note, ‘It’s Art Kipps!’
Then he became aware of changes — improvements. She was as pretty as
she had promised to be, her blue eyes as dark as his memory of them, and
with a quick, high colour; but now Kipps by several inches was the taller
again. She was dressed in a simple gray dress, that showed her very clearly
as a straight and healthy little woman, and her hat was Sunday-fied, with
pink flowers. She looked soft and warm and welcoming. Her face was alight
to Kipps with her artless gladness at their encounter.
‘It’s Art Kipps!’ she said. ‘Rather’ said Kipps.
‘You got your holidays?’
It flashed upon Kipps that Sid had not told her of his great fortune. Much
regretful meditation upon Sid’s behaviour had convinced him that he
himself was to blame for exasperating boastfulness in that affair, and this
time he took care not to err in that direction. So he erred in the other.
‘I’m taking a bit of a ‘oliday,’ he said.
‘So’m I,’ said Ann.
‘You been for a walk?’ asked Kipps.
Ann showed him a bunch of wayside flowers.
‘It’s a long time since I seen you, Ann. Why, ‘ow long must it be? Seven —
eight years nearly.’
‘It don’t do to count,’ said Ann.
‘It don’t look like it,’ said Kipps, with the slightest emphasis.
‘You got a moustache,’ said Ann, smelling her flowers and looking at him
over them, not without admiration. Kipps blushed —
Presently they came to the bifurcation of the roads.
‘I’m going down this way to mother’s cottage,’ said Ann.
‘I’ll come a bit your way, if I may.’
In New Romney social distinctions that are primary realities in Folkestone
are absolutely non-existent, and it seemed quite permissible for him to walk
 168

with Ann, for all that she was no more than a servant. They talked with
remarkable ease to one another, they slipped into a vein of intimate
reminiscence in the easiest manner. In a little while Kipps was amazed to
find Ann and himself at this —
‘You r’member that half-sixpence? What we cut togevver?’
‘Yes?’
‘I got it still.’
She hesitated. ‘Funny, wasn’t it?’ she said, and then, ‘You got yours, Artie?’
‘Rather,’ said Kipps. ‘What do you think?’ and wondered in his heart of
hearts why he had never looked at that sixpence for so long.
Ann smiled at him frankly.
‘I didn’t expect you’d keep it,’ she said. ‘I thought often — it was silly to
keep mine. ‘Besides,’ she reflected, ‘it didn’t mean anything really.’
She glanced at him as she spoke and met his eye.
‘Oh, didn’t it! said Kipps, a little late with his response, and realising his
infidelity to Helen even as he spoke. ‘It didn’t mean much anyhow,’ said Ann.
‘You still in the drapery?’
‘I’m living at Folkestone,’ began Kipps, and decided that that sufficed.
‘Didn’t Sid tell you he met me?’
‘No! Here?’
‘Yes. The other day. ‘Bout a week or more ago.’
‘That was before I came.’
‘Ah, that was it,’ said Kipps.
‘E’s got on,’ said Ann. ‘Got ‘is own shop now, Artie.’
‘‘E tole me.’
They found themselves outside Muggett’s cottages. ‘You’re going in?’ said
Kipps.
‘I s’pose so,’ said Ann.
They both hung upon the pause. Ann took a plunge. ‘D’you often come to
New Romney?’ she asked. ‘I ride over a bit at times,’ said Kipps.
Another pause. Ann held out her hand.
‘I’m glad I seen you,’ she said.
Extraordinary impulses arose in neglected parts of Kipps’ being. ‘Ann,’ he
 169

said, and stopped.

‘Yes,’ said she, and was bright to him.
They looked at one another.
All, and more than all, of those first emotions of his adolescence had come
back to him. Her presence banished a multitude of countervailing
considerations. It was Ann more than ever. She stood breathing close to him
with her soft-looking lips a little apart and gladness in her eyes.
‘I’m awful glad to see you again,’ he said; ‘it brings back old times.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
Another pause. He would have liked to have had a long talk to her, to have
gone for a walk with her or something, to have drawn nearer to her in any
conceivable way, and above all to have had some more of the appreciation
that shone in her eyes, but a vestige of Folkestone, still clinging to him, told
him it ‘wouldn’t do.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must be getting on,’ and turned away reluctantly, with a
will under compulsion —
When he looked back from the corner she was still at the gate. She was
perhaps a little disconcerted by his retreat. He felt that. He hesitated for a
moment, half turned, stood, and suddenly did great things with his hat. That
hat! The wonderful hat of our civilisation! . . .
In another minute he was engaged in a singularly absent-minded
conversation with his uncle about the usual topics.
His uncle was very anxious to buy him a few upright clocks as an investment
for subsequent sale. And there were also some very nice globes, one
terrestrial and the other celestial, in a shop at Lydd that would look well in a
drawing-room, and inevitably increase in value . . . Kipps either did or did not
agree to this purchase, he was unable to recollect.
The south-west wind perhaps helped him back; at any rate he found himself
through Dymchurch without having noticed the place. There came an odd
effect as he drew near Hythe. The hills on the left and the trees on the right
seemed to draw together and close in upon him until his way was straight
and narrow. He could not turn round on that treacherous half-tamed
machine, but he knew that behind him, he knew so well, spread the wide
vast flatness of the Marsh shining under the afternoon sky. In some way this
was material to his thoughts. And as he rode through Hythe, he came upon
the idea that there was a considerable amount of incompatibility between
 170

the existence of one who was practically a gentleman and of Ann.

In the neighbourhood of Seabrook he began to think he had, in some subtle
way, lowered himself by walking along by the side of Ann . . . After all, she
was only a servant.
Ann!
She called out all the least gentlemanly instincts of his nature. There had
been a moment in their conversation when he had quite distinctly thought it
would really be an extremely nice thing for some one to kiss her lips . . .
There was something warming about Ann — at least for Kipps. She
impressed him as having, somewhen during their vast interval of separation,
contrived to make herself in some distinctive way his.
Fancy keeping that half-sixpence all this time!
It was the most flattering thing that ever happened to Kipps.
2

He found himself presently sitting over The Art of Conversing, lost in the
strangest musings. He got up, walked about, became stagnant at the
window for a space, roused himself, and by way of something lighter, tried
Sesame and Lilies. From that, too, his attention wandered. He sat back.
Anon he smiled, anon sighed. He arose, pulled his keys from his pocket,
looked at them, decided, and went upstairs. He opened the little yellow box
that had been the nucleus of all his possessions in the world, and took out a
small Escritoire, the very humblest sort of present, and opened it —
kneeling. And there in the corner was a little packet of paper, sealed as a last
defence against any prying invader with red sealing-wax. It had gone
untouched for years. He held this little packet between finger and thumb for
a moment, regarding it, and then put down the escritoire and broke the
seal —
As he was getting into bed that night he remembered something for the
first time! ‘Dash it!’ he said. ‘Deshed if I told ’em this time . . . Well!
‘I shall ‘ave to go over to New Romney again!’
He got into bed, and remained sitting pensively on the pillow for a space.
‘Rum world,’ he reflected, after a vast interval.
Then he recalled that she had noticed his moustache. He embarked upon a
sea of egotistical musing. He imagined himself telling Ann how rich he was.
What a surprise that would be for her!
 171

Finally he sighed profoundly, blew out his candle, and snuggled down, and in
a little while he was asleep . . .
But the next morning and at intervals afterwards, he found himself thinking
of Ann — Ann the bright, the desirable, the welcoming, and with an extra-
ordinary streakiness he wanted quite badly to go, and then as badly not to
go, over to New Romney again.
Sitting on the Leas in the afternoon, he had an idea. ‘I ought to ‘ave told ‘er,
I suppose, about my being engaged.’
‘Ann!’
All sorts of dreams and impressions that had gone clean out of his mental
existence came back to him, changed and brought up to date to fit her
altered presence. He thought of how he had gone back to New Romney for
his Christmas holidays, determined to kiss her, and of the awful blankness of
the discovery that she had gone away.
It seemed incredible now, and yet not wholly incredible, that he had cried
real tears for her — how many years was it ago?
3

Daily I should thank my Maker that He did not delegate to me the

Censorship of the world of men. I should temper a fierce injustice with a
spasmodic indecision, that would prolong rather than mitigate the
bitterness of the Day. For human dignity, for all conscious human superiority
I should lack the beginnings of charity; for bishops, prosperous
schoolmasters, judges, and all large respect-pampered souls. And more
especially bishops, towards whom I bear an atavistic Viking grudge,
dreaming not infrequently and with invariable zest of galleys and landings,
and well-known living ornaments of the episcopal bench sprinting inland on
twinkling gaiters before my thirsty blade — all these people, I say, I should
treat below their deserts; but, on the other hand, for such as Kipps —
There the exasperating indecisions would come in. The Judgment would be
arrested at Kipps. Every one and everything would wait. The balance would
sway and sway, and whenever it heeled towards an adverse decision, my
finger would set it swaying again. Kings; warriors, statesmen, brilliant
women, ‘personalities’ panting with indignation, headline humanity in
general would stand undamned, unheeded, or be damned in the most
casual manner for their importunity, while my eye went about for anything
possible that could be said on behalf of Kipps . . . Albeit I fear nothing can
save him from condemnation upon this present score, that within two days
 172

he was talking to Ann again.

One seeks excuses. Overnight there had been an encounter of Chitterlow
and young Walshingham in his presence that had certainly warped his
standards. They had called within a few minutes of each other, and the two,
swayed by virile attentions to Old Methuselah Three Stars, had talked
against each other, over and at the hospitable presence of Kipps.
Walshingham had seemed to win at the beginning, but finally Chitterlow had
made a magnificent display of vociferation and swept him out of existence.
At the beginning Chitterlow had opened upon the great profits of
playwrights, and young Walshingham had capped him at once with a cynical
but impressive display of knowledge of the High Finance. If Chitterlow
boasted his thousands, young Walshingham boasted his hundreds of
thousands, and was for a space left in sole possession of the stage, juggling
with the wealth of nations. He was going on by way of Financial Politics to
the Overman, before Chitterlow recovered from his first check, and came
back to victory. ‘Talking of women,’ said Chitterlow, coming in abruptly
upon some things not generally known, beyond Walshingham’s more
immediate circle, about a recently departed Empire-builder; ‘Talking of
Women and the way they Get at a man —’
(Though, as a matter of fact, they had been talking of the Corruption of
Society by Speculation.)
Upon this new topic Chitterlow was soon manifestly invincible. He knew so
much, he had know so many. Young Walshingham did his best with
epigrams and reservations, but even to Kipps it was evident that his was a
book-learned depravity. One felt Walshingham had never known the inner
realities of passion. But Chitterlow convinced and amazed. He had run away
with girls, he had been run away with by girls, he had been in love with
several at a time —‘not counting Bessie’— he had loved and lost, he had
loved and refrained, and he had loved and failed. He threw remarkable lights
upon the moral state of America — in which country he had toured with
great success. He set his talk to the tune of one of Mr. Kipling’s best-known
songs. He told an incident of simple romantic passion, a delirious dream of
love and beauty in a Saturday to Monday steamboat trip up the Hudson, and
tagged his end with ‘I learn about women from ‘er!’ After that he adopted
the refrain, and then lapsed into the praises of Kipling. ‘Little Kipling,’ said
Chitterlow, with the familiarity of affection, ‘he knows,’ and broke into
quotation:—
‘I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it;
I’ve rogued and I’ve ranged in my time; I’ve ‘ad my picking of sweet’earts,
 173

An’ four of the lot was Prime.’ (These things, I say, affect the moral
standards of the best of us.)
‘I’d have liked to have written that,’ said Chitterlow. ‘That’s Life, that is! But
go and put it on the Stage, put even a bit of the Realities of Life on the Stage
and see what they’ll do to you! Only Kipling could venture on a job like that.
That Poem KNOCKED me! I won’t say Kipling hasn’t knocked me before and
since, but that was a Fair Knock Out. And yet — you know — there’s one
thing in it . . . this — ’
I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it.
And now I must pay for my fun, For the more you ‘ave known o’ the others
The less will you settle to one.
Well. In my case anyhow — I don’t know how much that proves, seeing I’m
exceptional in so many things and there’s no good denying it — but so far as
I’m concerned — I tell you two, but, of course, you needn’t let it go any
farther — I’ve been perfectly faithful to Muriel ever since I married her —
ever since . . . Not once. Not even by accident have I ever said or done
anything in the slightest —’ His little brown eye became pensive after this
flattering intimacy, and the gorgeous draperies of his abundant voice fell
into graver folds. ‘I learnt about women from ‘er,’ he said impressively.
‘Yes,’ said Walshingham, getting into the hinder spaces of that splendid
pause, ‘a man must know about women. And the only sound way of learning
is the experimental method.’
‘If you want to know about the experimental method, my boy,’ said
Chitterlow, resuming . . .
So they talked. Ex pede Herculem, as Coote, that cultivated polyglot, would
have put it. And in the small hours Kipps went to bed, with his brain whirling
with words and whisky, and sat for an unconscionable time upon his bed
edge, musing sadly upon the unmanly monogamy that had cast its shadow
upon his career, musing with his thoughts pointing round more and more
certainly to the possibility of at least duplicity with Ann.
4

For some days he had been refraining with some insistence from going off
to New Romney again . . .
I do not know if this may count in palliation of his misconduct. Men, real
Strong–Souled, Healthy Men, should be, I suppose, impervious to
conversational atmospheres, but I have never claimed for Kipps a place at
 174

these high levels. The fact remains, that next day he spent the afternoon
with Ann, and found no scruple in displaying himself a budding lover.
He had met her in the High Street, had stopped her, and almost on the spur
of the moment had boldly proposed a walk, ‘for the sake of old times.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Ann.
Her consent almost frightened Kipps. His imagination had not carried him to
that. ‘It would be a lark,’ said Kipps, and looked up the street and down,
‘Now,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind a bit, Artie. I was just going for a walk along towards St.
Mary’s.’
‘Let’s go that way, be’ind the church,’ said Kipps; and presently they found
themselves drifting seaward in a mood of pleasant commonplace. For a
while they talked of Sid. It went clean out of Kipps’ head, at that early stage
even, that Ann was a ‘girl’ according to the exposition of Chitterlow, and for
a time he remembered only that she was Ann. But afterwards, with the reek
of that talk in his head, he lapsed a little from that personal relation. They
came out upon the beach and sat down in a tumbled pebbly place where a
meagre grass and patches of sea poppy were growing, and Kipps reclined
on his elbow and tossed pebbles in his hand, and Ann sat up, sunlit,
regarding him. They talked in fragments. They exhausted Sid, they
exhausted Ann, and Kipps was chary of his riches.
He declined to a faint lovemaking. ‘I got that ‘arf-sixpence still,’ he said.
‘Reely?’
That changed the key. ‘I always kept mine, some’ow,’ said Ann; and there
was a pause.
They spoke of how often they had thought of each other during those
intervening years. Kipps may have been untruthful, but Ann, perhaps, was
not. ‘I met people here and there,’ said Ann; ‘but I never met any one quite
like you, Artie.’
‘It’s jolly our meeting again, anyhow,’ said Kipps. ‘Look at that ship out
there. She’s pretty close in-’
He had a dull period, became, indeed, almost pensive, and then he was
enterprising for a while. He tossed up his pebbles so that, as if by accident,
they fell on Ann’s hand. Then, very penitently, he stroked the place. That
would have led to all sorts of coquetries on the part of Flo Bates, for
example, but it disconcerted and checked Kipps to find Ann made no
 175

objection, smiled pleasantly down on him, with eyes half shut because of
the sun. She was taking things very much for granted.
He began to talk, and Chitterlow standards resuming possession of him, he
said he had never forgotten her. ‘I never forgotten you either, Artie,’ she
said. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’
It impressed Kipps also as funny.
He became reminiscent, and suddenly a warm summer’s evening came back
to him. ‘Remember them cockchafers, Ann?’ he said. But the reality of the
evening he recalled was not the chase of cockchafers. The great reality that
had suddenly arisen between them was that he had never kissed Ann in his
life. He looked up, and there were her lips.
He wanted to very badly, and his memory leaped and annihilated an interval.
That old resolution came back to him, and all sorts of new resolutions
passed out of mind. And he had learnt something since those boyish days.
This time he did not ask. He went on talking, his nerves began very faintly to
quiver, and his mind grew bright.
Presently, having satisfied himself that there was no one to see, he sat up
beside her, and remarked upon the clearness of the air, and how close
Dungeness seemed to them. Then they came upon a pause again.
‘Ann,’ he whispered, and put an arm that quivered about her.
She was mute and unresisting, and, as he was to remember, solemn.
He turned her face towards him and kissed her lips, and she kissed him back
again — kisses frank and tender as a child’s.
5

It was curious that in the retrospect he did not find nearly the satisfaction in
this infidelity he had imagined was there. It was no doubt desperately
doggish, doggish to an almost Chitterlowesque degree, to recline on the
beach at Littlestone with a ‘girl,’ to make love to her and to achieve the
triumph of her kissing when he was engaged to another ‘girl’ at Folkestone;
but somehow these two people were not ‘girls,’ they were Ann and Helen.
Particularly Helen declined to be considered as a ‘girl.’ And there was
something in Ann’s quietly friendly eyes, in her frank smile, in the naive
pressure of her hand, there was something undefended and welcoming that
imparted a flavour to the business upon which he had not counted. He had
learnt about women from her. That refrain ran through his mind and
deflected his thoughts, but, as a matter of fact, he had learnt about nothing
 176

but himself.
He wanted very much to see Ann some more and explain — He did not
clearly know what it was he wanted to explain.
He did not clearly know anything. It is the last achievement of the
intelligence to get all of one’s life into one coherent scheme, and Kipps was
only in a measure more aware of himself as a whole than is a tree. His
existence was an affair of dissolving and recurring moods. When he thought
of Helen or Ann, or any of his friends, he thought sometimes of this aspect
and sometimes of that — and often one aspect was finally incongruous with
another. He loved Helen, he revered Helen. He was also beginning to hate
her with some intensity. When he thought of that expedition to Lympne,
profound, vague, beautiful emotions flooded his being; when he thought of
paying calls with her perforce, or of her latest comment on his bearing, he
found himself rebelliously composing fierce and pungent insults, couched in
the vernacular. But Ann, whom he had seen so much less of, was a simpler
memory. She was pretty, she was almost softly feminine, and she was
possible to his imagination just exactly where Helen was impossible. More
than anything else, she carried the charm of respect for him, the slightest
glance of her eyes was balm for his perpetually wounded self-conceit.
Chance suggestions it was set the tune of his thoughts, and his state of
health and repletion gave the colour. Yet somehow he had this at least
almost clear in his mind, that to have gone to see Ann a second time, to
have implied that she had been in possession of his thoughts through all this
interval, and, above all, to have kissed her, was shabby and wrong. Only,
unhappily, this much of lucidity had come now just a few hours after it was
needed.
6

Four days after this it was that Kipps got up so late. He got up late, cut his
chin while shaving, kicked a slipper into his sponge bath, and said ‘Dash!’
Perhaps you know those intolerable mornings, dear Reader, when you seem
to have neither the heart nor the strength to rise, and your nervous
adjustments are all wrong and your fingers thumbs, and you hate the very
birds for singing. You feel inadequate to any demand whatever. Often such
awakenings follow a poor night’s rest and commonly they mean
indiscriminate eating, or those subtle mental influences old Kipps ascribed
to ‘Foozle Ile’ in the system, or worry. And with Kipps — albeit Chitterlow
had again been his guest overnight — assuredly worry had played a leading
role. Troubles had been gathering upon him for days, there had been a sort
 177

of concentration of these hosts of Midian overnight, and in the gray small

hours Kipps had held his review. The predominating trouble marched under
this banner —
MR KIPPS.
MRS BINDON BOTTING At Home, Thursday, September 16th. Anagrams, 4 to
6.30. R.S.V.P.
a banner that was the facsimile of a card upon his looking-glass in the room
below. And in relation to this terribly significant document, things had come
to a pass with Helen, that he would only describe in his own expressive
idiom as ‘words.’
It had long been a smouldering issue between them that Kipps was not
availing himself with any energy or freedom of the opportunities he had of
social exercises, much less was seeking additional opportunities. He had, it
was evident, a peculiar dread of that universal afternoon enjoyment, the
Call, and Helen made it unambiguously evident that this dread was ‘silly’ and
had to be overcome. His first display of this unmanly weakness occurred at
the Cootes on the day before he kissed Ann. They were all there, chatting
very pleasantly, when the little servant with the big cap announced the
younger Miss Wace.
Whereupon Kipps manifested a lively horror and rose partially from his chair.
‘‘O Gum!’ he protested. ‘Carn’t I go upstairs?’
Then he sank back, for it was too late. Very probably the younger Miss Wace
had heard him as she came in.
Helen said nothing of that, though her manner may have shown her
surprise, but afterwards she told Kipps he must get used to seeing people,
and suggested that he should pay a series of calls with Mrs. Walshingham
and herself. Kipps gave a reluctant assent at the time, and afterwards
displayed a talent for evasion that she had not expected in him. At last she
did succeed in securing him for a call upon Miss Punchafer of Radnor Park —
a particularly easy call, because Miss Punchafer being so deaf, one could say
practically what one liked — and then outside the gate he shirked again, ‘I
can’t go in’ he said, in a faded voice.
‘You must,’ said Helen, beautiful as ever, but even more than a little hard
and forbidding.
‘I can’t.’
He produced his handkerchief hastily, thrust it to his face, and regarded her
over it with rounded hostile eyes. ‘Impossible,’ he said in a hoarse, strange
 178

voice out of the handkerchief. ‘Nozzez bleedin’’ . . .

But that was the end of his power of resistance, and when the rally for the
Anagram Tea occurred, she bore down his feeble protests altogether. She
insisted. She said frankly, ‘I am going to give you a good talking to about
this’; and she did . . .
From Coote he gathered something of the nature of Anagrams and
Anagram parties. An anagram, Coote explained, was a word spelt the same
way as another, only differently arranged; as, for instance, T.O.C.O.E. would
be an anagram for his own name Coote.
‘T.O.C.O.E.,’ repeated Kipps, very carefully.
‘Or T.O.E.C.O.,’ said Coote.
‘Or T.O.E.C.O.,’ said Kipps, assisting his poor head by nodding it at each
letter. Toe Company, like,’ he said in his efforts to comprehend.
When Kipps was clear what an anagram meant Coote came to the second
heading, the Tea. Kipps gathered there might be from thirty to sixty people
present, and that each one would have an anagram pinned on. ‘They give
you a card to put your guesses on, rather like a dence programme, and then,
you know, you go round and guess,’ said Coote. ‘It’s rather good fun.’
‘Oo, rather!’ said Kipps, with simulated gusto. ‘It shakes everybody up
together,’ said Coote. Kipps smiled and nodded . . .
In the small hours all his painful meditations were threaded by the vision of
that Anagram Tea; it kept marching to and fro and in and out of his other
troubles, from thirty to sixty people, mostly ladies and callers, and a great
number of the letters of the alphabet, and more particularly P.I.K.P.S. and
T.O.E.C.O., and he was trying to make one word out of the whole
interminable procession . . .
This word, as he finally gave it with some emphasis to the silence of the
night, was, ‘Demn!’
Then wreathed as it were in this lettered procession was the figure of Helen
as she had appeared at the moment of ‘words’; her face a little hard, a little
irritated, a little disappointed. He imagined himself going round and
guessing under her eye . . .
He tried to think of other things, without lapsing upon a still deeper
uneasiness that was decorated with yellow sea-poppies, and the figures of
Buggins, Pearce, and Carshot, three murdered friendships, rose
reproachfully in the stillness and changed horrible apprehensions into
 179

unspeakable remorse. Last night had been their customary night for the
banjo, and Kipps, with a certain tremulous uncertainty, had put Old
Methuselah amidst a retinue of glasses on the table and opened a box of
choice cigars. In vain. They were in no need, it seemed, of his society. But
instead Chitterlow had come, anxious to know if it was all right about that
syndicate plan. He had declined anything but a very weak whisky-and-soda,
‘just to drink,’ at least until business was settled, and had then opened the
whole affair with an effect of great orderliness to Kipps. Soon he was taking
another whisky by sheer inadvertency, and the complex fabric of his
conversation was running more easily from the broad loom of his mind. Into
that pattern had interwoven a narrative of extensive alterations in the
Pestered Butterfly — the neck-and-beetle business was to be restored —
the story of a grave difference of opinion with Mrs. Chitterlow, where and
how to live after the play had succeeded, the reasons why the Hon. Thomas
Norgate had never financed a syndicate, and much matter also about the
syndicate now under discussion. But if the current of their conversation had
been vortical and crowded, the outcome was perfectly clear. Kipps was to
be the chief participator in the syndicate, and his contribution was to be two
thousand pounds. Kipps groaned and rolled over, and found Helen again, as
it were, on the other side. ‘Promise me,’ she had said, ‘you won’t do
anything without consulting me.’
Kipps at once rolled back to his former position, and for a space lay quite
still. He felt like a very young rabbit in a trap.
Then suddenly, with extraordinary distinctness, his heart cried out for Ann,
and he saw her as he had seen her at New Romney, sitting amidst the yellow
sea-poppies with the sunlight on her face. His heart called out for her in the
darkness as one calls for rescue. He knew, as though he had known it
always, that he loved Helen no more. He wanted Ann, he wanted to hold her
and be held by her, to kiss her again, to turn his back for ever on all these
other things . . .
He rose late, but this terrible discovery was still there, undispelled by
cockcrow or the day. He rose in a shattered condition, and he cut himself
while shaving, but at last he got into his dining-room, and could pull the bell
for the hot constituents of his multifarious breakfast. And then he turned to
his letters. There were two real letters in addition to the customary electric
belt advertisement, continental lottery circular, and betting tout’s card. One
was in a slight mourning envelope, and addressed in an unfamiliar hand. This
he opened first, and discovered a note. —
MRS. RAYMOND WACE requests the pleasure of MR. KIPPS’ Company at
 180

Dinner on Tuesday, Sept. 21st, at 8 o’clock R.S.V.P.

With a hasty movement Kipps turned his mind to the second letter. It was an
unusually long one from his uncle, and ran as follows:—
‘MY DEAR NEPHEW — We are considerably startled by your letter, though
expecting something of the sort and disposed to hope for the best. If the
young lady is a relation to the Earl of Beauprés well and good but take care
you are not being imposed upon for there are many who will be glad enough
to snap you up now your circumstances are altered. I waited on the old Earl
once while in service and he was remarkably close with his tips and suffered
from corns. A hasty old gent and hard to please — I dare say he has
forgotten me altogether — and anyhow there is no need to rake up
bygones. To-morrow is bus day and as you say the young lady is living near
by we shall shut up shop for there is really nothing doing now what with all
the visitors bringing everything with them down to their very children’s pails
and say how-de do to her and give her a bit of a kiss and encouragement if
we think her suitable — she will be pleased to see your old uncle. We wish
we could have had a look at her first but still there is not much mischief
done and hoping that all will turn out well yet I am —
‘Your affectionate Uncle, ‘EDWARD GEORGE KIPPS.
‘My heartburn still very bad. I shall bring over a few bits of rhubarb I picked
up, a sort you won’t get in Folkestone and if possible a good bunch of
flowers for the young lady.’
‘Comin’ over today,’ said Kipps, standing helplessly with the letter in his
hand. ‘‘Ow the Juice —?’
‘I carn’t.’
‘Kiss ‘er!’
A terrible anticipation of that gathering framed itself in his mind, a hideous,
impossible disaster.
‘I carn’t even face ‘er —!’
His voice went up to a note of despair. ‘And it’s too late to telegrarf and
stop ’em!’
7

About twenty minutes after this, an out-porter in Castle Hill Avenue was
accosted by a young man with a pale, desperate face, an exquisitely rolled
umbrella, and a heavy Gladstone bag.
 181

‘Carry this to the station, will you?’ said the young man. ‘I want to ketch the
nex’ train to London . . . You’ll ‘ave to look sharp; I ‘even’t very much time.’
 182

CHAPTER 7. LONDON

London was Kipps’ third world. There were, no doubt, other worlds, but
Kipps knew only these three: firstly, New Romney and the Emporium,
constituting his primary world, his world of origin, which also contained
Ann; secondly, the world of culture and refinement, the world of which
Coote was chaperon, and into which Kipps was presently to marry, a world,
it was fast becoming evident, absolutely incompatible with the first; and
thirdly, a world still to a large extent unexplored, London. London
presented itself as a place of great gray spaces and incredible multitudes of
people, centring about Charing Cross station and the Royal Grand Hotel, and
containing at unexpected arbitrary points shops of the most amazing sort,
statuary, squares, restaurants — where it was possible for clever people like
Walshingham to order a lunch item by item to the waiters’ evident respect
and sympathy — exhibitions of incredible things — the Walshinghams had
taken him to the Arts and Crafts and to a Picture Gallery — and Theatres.
London, moreover, is rendered habitable by hansom cabs. Young
Walshingham was a natural cab-taker; he was an all-round, large-minded
young man, and he had in the course of their two days’ stay taken Kipps into
no less than nine, so that Kipps was singularly not afraid of these vehicles.
He knew that wherever you were, so soon as you were thoroughly lost, you
said ‘Hi!’ to a cab, and then ‘Royal Grand Hotel.’ Day and night these trusty
conveyances are returning the strayed Londoner back to his point of
departure, and were it not for their activity, in a little while the whole
population, so vast and incomprehensible is the intricate complexity of this
great city, would be hopelessly lost for ever. At any rate, that is how the
thing presented itself to Kipps, and I have heard much the same from
visitors from America.
His train was composed of corridor carriages, and he forgot his troubles for
a time in the wonders of this modern substitute for railway compartments.
He went from the non-smoking to the smoking carriage, and smoked a
cigarette, and strayed from his second-class carriage to a first and back. But
presently Black Care got aboard the train and came and sat beside him. The
exhilaration of escape had evaporated now, and he was presented with a
terrible picture of his aunt and uncle arriving at his lodgings and finding him
fled. He had left a hasty message that he was called away suddenly on
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business, ‘ver’ important business,’ and they were to be sumptuously

entertained. His immediate motive had been his passionate dread of an
encounter between these excellent but unrefined old people and the
Walshinghams, but now that end was secured, he could see how thwarted
and exasperated they would be.
How to explain to them?
He ought never to have written to tell them!
He ought to have got married, and told them afterwards.
He ought to have consulted Helen.
‘Promise me,’ she had said.
‘Oh, desh!’ said Kipps, and got up and walked back into the smoking car and
began to consume cigarettes. Suppose after all, they found out the
Walshinghams’ address and went there!
At Charing Cross, however, were distractions again. He took a cab in an
entirely Walshingham manner, and was pleased to note the enhanced
respect of the cabman when he mentioned the Royal Grand. He followed
Walshingham’s routine on their previous visit with perfect success. They
were very nice in the office, and gave him an excellent room at fourteen
shillings the night.
He went up and spent a considerable time examining the furniture of his
room, scrutinising himself in its various mirrors, and sitting on the edge of
the bed whistling. It was a vast and splendid apartment, and cheap at
fourteen shillings. But finding the figure of Ann inclined to resume
possession of his mind, he roused himself and descended by the staircase,
after a momentary hesitation before the lift. He had thought of lunch, but
he drifted into the great drawing-room, and read a guide to the Hotels of
Europe for a space, until a doubt whether he was entitled to use this palatial
apartment without extra charge arose in his mind. He would have liked
something to eat very much now, but his inbred terror of the table was
strong. He did at last get by a porter in uniform towards the dining-room,
but at the sight of a number of waiters and tables with remarkable
complications of knives and glasses, terror seized him, and he backed out
again with a mumbled remark to the waiter in the doorway about this not
being the way.
He hovered in the hall and lounge until he thought the presiding porter
regarded him with suspicion, and then went up to his room again by the
staircase, got his hat and umbrella, and struck out boldly across the
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courtyard. He would go to a restaurant instead.

He had a moment of elation in the gateway. He felt all the Strand must
notice him as he emerged through the great gate of the hotel. ‘One of these
here rich swells,’ they would say. ‘Don’t they go it just!’ A cabman touched
his hat. ‘No fear,’ said Kipps pleasantly . . .
Then he remembered he was hungry again.
Yet he decided he was in no great hurry for lunch, in spite of an internal
protest, and turned eastward along the Strand in a leisurely manner. He
would find a place to suit him soon enough. He tried to remember the sort
of things Walshingham had ordered. Before all things he didn’t want to go
into a place and look like a fool. Some of these places rook you dreadful,
besides making fun of you. There was a place near Essex Street where there
was a window brightly full of chops, tomatoes, and lettuce. He stopped at
this and reflected for a time, and then it occurred to him that you were
expected to buy these things raw and cook them at home. Anyhow, there
was sufficient doubt in the matter to stop him. He drifted on to a neat
window with champagne bottles, a dish of asparagus, and a framed menu of
a two-shilling lunch. He was about to enter, when fortunately he perceived
two waiters looking at him over the back screen of the window with a most
ironical expression, and he sheered off at once. There was a wonderful smell
of hot food half-way down Fleet Street, and a nice-looking tavern with
several doors, but he could not decide which door. His nerve was going
under the strain.
He hesitated at Farringdon Street, and drifted up to St. Paul’s and round the
churchyard, full chiefly of dead bargains in the shop windows, to Cheapside.
But now Kipps was getting demoralised, and each house of refreshment
seemed to promise still more complicated obstacles to food. He didn’t know
how you went in, and what was the correct thing to do with your hat; he
didn’t know what you said to the waiter or what you called the different
things: he was convinced absolutely he would ‘fumble,’ as Shalford would
have said, and look like a fool. Somebody might laugh at him! The hungrier
he got, the more unendurable was the thought that any one should laugh at
him. For a time he considered an extraordinary expedient to account for his
ignorance. He would go in and pretend to be a foreigner, and not know
English. Then they might understand . . . Presently he had drifted into a part
of London where there did not seem to be any refreshment places at all.
‘Oh, desh!’ said Kipps, in a sort of agony of indecisiveness. ‘The very nex’
place I see, in I go.’
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The next place was a fried-fish shop in a little side street, where there were
also sausages on a gas-lit grill.
He would have gone in, but suddenly a new scruple came to him, that he
was too well dressed for the company he could see dimly through the steam
sitting at the counter and eating with a sort of nonchalant speed.
2

He was half minded to resort to a hansom and brave the terrors of the
dining-room of the Royal Grand — they wouldn’t know why he had gone out
really — when the only person he knew in London appeared (as the only
person one does know will do in London) and slapped him on the shoulder.
Kipps was hovering at a window at a few yards from the fish shop
pretending to examine some really strikingly cheap pink baby-linen, and
trying to settle finally about those sausages. ‘Hallo, Kipps!’ cried Sid,
‘spending the millions?’
Kipps turned and was glad to perceive no lingering vestige of the chagrin
that had been so painful at New Romney. Sid looked grave and important,
and he wore a quite new silk hat that gave a commercial touch to a generally
socialistic costume. For the moment the sight of Sid uplifted Kipps
wonderfully. He saw him as a friend and helper, and only presently did it
come clearly into his mind that this was the brother of Ann.
He made amiable noises.
‘I’ve just been up this way,’ Sid explained, ‘buying a secondhand ‘namelling
stove . . . I’m going to ‘namel myself.’
‘Lor!’ said Kipps.
‘Yes. Do me a lot of good. Let the customer choose his colour. See? What
brings you up?’ Kipps had a momentary vision of his foiled uncle and aunt.
‘Jest a bit of a change,’ he said.
Sid came to a swift decision. ‘Come down to my little show. I got some one
I’d like to see talking to you.’ Even then Kipps did not think of Ann in this
connection.
‘Well,’ he said, trying to invent an excuse on the spur of the moment. ‘Fact
is,’ he explained, ‘I was jest looking round to get a bit of lunch.’
‘Dinner we call it,’ said Sid. ‘But that’s all right. You can’t get anything to eat
hereabout. If you’re not too haughty to do a bit of slumming, there’s some
mutton spoiling for me now —’
The word mutton affected Kipps greatly.
 186

‘It won’t take us ‘arf an hour,’ said Sid, and Kipps was carried.
He discovered another means of London locomotion in the Underground
Railway, and recovered his self-possession in that interest. ‘You don’t mind
going third?’ asked Sid; and Kipps said, ‘Nort a bit of it.’ They were silent in
the train for a time, on account of strangers in the carriage, and then Sid
began to explain who it was he wanted Kipps to meet. ‘It’s a chap named
Masterman — do you no end of good.
‘He occupies our first-floor front room, you know. It isn’t so much for gain I
let as company. We don’t want the whole ’ouse, that’s one thing, and
another is I knew the man before. Met him at our Sociological, and after a
bit he said he wasn’t comfortable where he was. That’s how it came about.
He’s a first-class chap — first class. Science! You should see his books!
‘Properly he’s a sort of journalist. He’s written a lot of things, but he’s been
too ill lately to do very much. Poetry he’s written, all sorts. He writes for the
Commonweal sometimes, and sometimes he reviews books. ‘E’s got ‘eaps
of books —‘eaps. Besides selling a lot.
‘He knows a regular lot of people, and all sorts of things. He’s been a
dentist, and he’s a qualified chemist, and I seen ’im often reading German
and French. Taught ‘imself. He was here —’
Sid indicated South Kensington, which had come opportunely outside the
carriage windows, with a nod of his head, ‘— three years. Studying science.
But you’ll see ’im. When he really gets to talking — he pours it out.’
‘Ah!’ said Kipps, nodding sympathetically, with his two hands on his umbrella
knob.
‘He’ll do big things some day,’ said Sid. ‘He’s written a book on science
already. Physiography, it’s called. Elementary Physiography! Some day he’ll
write an advanced — when he gets time.’
He let this soak into Kipps.
‘I can’t introduce you to lords and swells,’ he went on, ‘but I can show you a
Famous Man, that’s going to be. I can do that. Leastways — Unless —’
Sid hesitated.
‘He’s got a frightful cough,’ he said.
‘He won’t care to talk to me,’ weighed Kipps.
‘That’s all right; he won’t mind. He’s fond of talking. He’d talk to any one,’
said Sid reassuringly, and added a perplexing bit of Londonised Latin.
 187

‘He doesn’t pute anything, non alienum. You know.’

‘I know,’ said Kipps intelligently, over his umbrella knob, though of course
that was altogether untrue.
3

Kipps found Sid’s shop a practical-looking establishment, stocked with the

most remarkable collection of bicycles and pieces of bicycle that he had ever
beheld. ‘My hiring stock,’ said Sid, with a wave to this ironmongery; ‘and
there’s the best machine at a democratic price in London, The Red Flag, built
by me. See?’
He indicated a graceful gray brown framework in the window. ‘And there’s
my stock of accessories — store prices.
‘Go in for motors a bit,’ added Sid.
‘Mutton?’ said Kipps, not hearing him distinctly.
‘Motors, I said . . . ‘Owever, Mutton Department here;’ and he opened a
door that had a curtain-guarded window in its upper panel, to reveal a little
room with red walls and green furniture, with a white-clothed table and the
generous promise of a meal. ‘Fanny!’ he shouted. ‘Here’s Art Kipps.’
A bright-eyed young woman of five or six-and-twenty in a pink print
appeared, a little flushed from cooking, and wiped a hand on an apron and
shook hands and smiled and said it would all be ready in a minute. She went
on to say she had heard of Kipps and his luck, and meanwhile Sid vanished
to draw the beer, and returned with two glasses for himself and Kipps.
‘Drink that,’ said Sid; and Kipps felt all the better for it.
‘I give Mr. Masterman ‘is upstairs a hour ago,’ said Mrs. Sid. ‘I didn’t think ‘e
ought to wait.’
A rapid succession of brisk movements on the part of every one and they
were all four at dinner — the fourth person being Master Walt Whitman
Pornick, a cheerful young gentleman of one and a half, who was given a
spoon to hammer on the table with to keep him quiet, and who got ‘Kipps’
right at the first effort and kept it all through the meal, combining it first
with this previous acquisition and then that. ‘Peacock Kipps,’ said Master
Walt, at which there was great laughter, and also ‘More Mutton Kipps.’
‘He’s a regular oner,’ said Mrs. Sid, ‘for catching up words. You can’t say a
word but what ‘e’s on to it.’
There were no serviettes and less ceremony, and Kipps thought he had
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never enjoyed a meal so much. Every one was a little excited by the meeting
and chatting and disposed to laugh, and things went easily from the very
beginning. If there was a pause, Master Walt filled it in. Mrs. Sid, who
tempered her enormous admiration for Sid’s intellect and his Socialism and
his severe business methods by a motherly sense of her sex and seniority,
spoke of them both as ‘you boys,’ and dilated — when she was not urging
Kipps to have some more of this or that — on the disparity between herself
and her husband.
‘Shouldn’t ha’ thought there was a year between you,’ said Kipps; ‘you seem
jest a match.’
‘I’m his match anyhow,’ said Mrs. Sid, and no epigram of young
Walshingham’s was ever better received. ‘Match,’ said young Walt, coming
in on the tail of the joke and getting a round for himself.
Any sense of superior fortune had long vanished from Kipps’ mind, and he
found himself looking at host and hostess with enormous respect. Really old
Sid was a wonderful chap, here in his own house at two-and-twenty, carving
his own mutton and lording it over wife and child. No legacies needed by
him! And Mrs. Sid, so kind and bright and hearty! And the child, old Sid’s
child! Old Sid had jumped round a bit. It needed the sense of his fortune at
the back of his mind to keep Kipps from feeling abject. He resolved he’d buy
young Walt something tremendous in toys at the very first opportunity.
‘Drop more beer, Art?’
‘Right you are, old man.’
‘Cut Mr. Kipps a bit more bread, Sid.’
‘Can’t I pass you a bit?’ . . .
Sid was all right, Sid was; there was no mistake about that.
It was growing up in his mind that Sid was the brother of Ann, but he said
nothing about her, for excellent reasons. After all, Sid’s irritation at her
name when they had met in New Romney seemed to show a certain
separation. They didn’t tell each other much . . . He didn’t know how things
might be between Ann and Mrs. Sid either.
Still, for all that, Sid was Ann’s brother.
The furniture of the room did not assert itself very much above the cheerful
business of the table, but Kipps was impressed with the idea that it was
pretty. There was a dresser at the end with a number of gay plates and a
mug or so, a Labour Day poster by Walter Crane on the wall, and through
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the glass and over the blind of the shop door one had a glimpse of the
bright-colour advertisement cards of bicycle dealers, and a shelf-ful of boxes
labelled The Paragon Bell, the Scarum Bell, and The Patent Omi! Horn —
It seemed incredible that he had been in Folkestone that morning, that even
now his aunt and uncle —! B-r-r-r. It didn’t do to think of his Aunt and Uncle.
4

When Sid repeated his invitation to come and see Masterman, Kipps, now
flushed with beer and Irish stew, said he didn’t mind if he did, and after a
preliminary shout from Sid that was answered by a voice and a cough, the
two went upstairs.
‘Masterman’s a rare one,’ said Sid over his arm and in an undertone. ‘You
should hear him speak at a meeting . . . If he’s in form, that is.’
He rapped, and went into a large, untidy room.
‘This is Kipps,’ he said. ‘You know, the chap I told you of. With twelve
‘undred a year.’
Masterman sat gnawing an empty pipe, and as close to the fire as though it
was alight and the season midwinter. Kipps concentrated upon him for a
space, and only later took in something of the frowsy furniture, the little bed
half behind and evidently supposed to be wholly behind a careless screen,
the spittoon by the fender, the remains of a dinner on the chest of drawers,
and the scattered books and papers. Masterman’s face showed him a man
of forty or more, with curious hollows at the side of his forehead and about
his eyes. His eyes were very bright, there was a spot of red in his cheeks, and
the wiry black moustache under his short red nose had been trimmed with
scissors into a sort of brush along his upper lip. His teeth were darkened
ruins. His jacket collar was turned up about a knitted white neck-wrap, and
his sleeves betrayed no cuffs. He did not rise to greet Kipps, but he held out
a thin-wristed hand and pointed with the other to a bedroom arm-chair.
‘Glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Sit down and make yourself at home. Will you
smoke?’
Kipps said he would, and produced his store. He was about to take one, and
then with a civil afterthought handed the packet first to Masterman and Sid.
Masterman pretended surprise to find his pipe out before he took one.
There was an interlude of matches. Sid pushed the end of the screen out of
his way, sat down on the bed thus frankly admitted, and prepared, with a
certain quiet satisfaction of manner, to witness Masterman’s treatment of
Kipps.
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‘And how does it feel to have twelve hundred a year?’ asked Masterman,
holding his cigarette to his nose tip in a curious manner.
‘It’s rum,’ confided Kipps, after a reflective interval. ‘It feels juiced rum.’
‘I’ve never felt it,’ said Masterman.
‘It takes a bit of getting into,’ said Kipps. ‘I can tell you that.’ Masterman
smoked and regarded Kipps with curious eyes.
‘I expect it does,’ he said presently.
‘And has it made you perfectly happy?’ he asked abruptly.
‘I couldn’t ‘ardly say that,’ said Kipps.
Masterman smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Has it made you much happier?’
‘It did at first.’
‘Yes. But you got used to it. How long, for example, did the real delirious
excitement last?’
‘Oo, that! Perhaps a week,’ said Kipps.
Masterman nodded his head. ‘That’s what discourages me from amassing
wealth,’ he said to Sid. ‘You adjust yourself. It doesn’t last. I’ve always had
an inkling of that, and it’s interesting to get it confirmed. I shall go on
sponging for a bit longer on you, I think.’
‘You don’t,’ said Sid. ‘No fear.’
‘Twenty-four thousand pounds,’ said Masterman, and blew a cloud of
smoke. ‘Lord! Doesn’t it worry you?’
‘It is a bit worrying at times . . . Things ‘appen.’
‘Going to marry?’
‘Yes.’
‘H’m. Lady, I guess, of a superior social position?’
‘Rather,’ said Kipps. ‘Cousin to the Earl of Beauprés.’
Masterman readjusted his long body with an air of having accumulated all
the facts he needed. He snuggled his shoulder-blades down into the chair
and raised his angular knees. ‘I doubt,’ he said, flicking cigarette ash into the
atmosphere, ‘if any great gain or loss of money does — as things are at
present — make more than the slightest difference in one’s happiness. It
ought to — if money was what it ought to be, the token given for service,
one ought to get an increase in power and happiness for every pound one
got. But the plain fact is, the times are out of joint, and money — money,
 191

like everything else — is a deception and a disappointment.’

He turned his face to Kipps and enforced his next words with the index
finger of his lean lank hand. ‘If I thought other wise,’ he said, ‘I should exert
myself to get some. But — if one sees things clearly one is so discouraged.
So confoundedly discouraged . . . When you first got your money you
thought that it meant you might buy just anything you fancied?’
‘It was a bit that way,’ said Kipps.
‘And you found you couldn’t. You found that for all sorts of things it was a
question of where to buy and how to buy, and what you didn’t know how to
buy with your money, straight away this world planted something else upon
you.’
‘I got rather done over a banjo first day,’ said Kipps.
‘Leastways, my uncle says so.’
‘Exactly,’ said Masterman.
Sid began to speak from the bed. That’s all very well, Masterman,’ he said,
‘but after all, money is Power, you know. You can do all sorts of things —’
‘I’m talking of happiness,’ said Masterman. ‘You can do all sorts of things
with a loaded gun in the Hammersmith Broadway, but nothing — practically
— that will make you or any one else very happy. Nothing. Power’s a
different matter altogether. As for happiness, you want a world in order
before money or property or any of those things have any real value, and
this world, I tell you, is hopelessly out of joint. Man is a social animal with a
mind nowadays that goes round the globe, and a community cannot be
happy in one part and unhappy in another. It’s all or nothing, no patching
any more for ever. It is the standing mistake of the world not to understand
that. Consequently people think there is a class or order somewhere just
above them or just below them, or a country or place somewhere that is
really safe and happy . . . The fact is, Society is one body, and it is either well
or ill. That’s the law. This society we live in is ill. It’s a fractious, feverish
invalid, gouty, greedy, ill-nourished. You can’t have a happy left leg with
neuralgia, or a happy throat with a broken leg. That’s my position, and that’s
the knowledge you’ll come to. I’m so satisfied of it that I sit here and wait
for my end quite calmly, sure that I can’t better things by bothering — in my
time and so far as I am concerned, that is. I’m not even greedy any more —
my egotism’s at the bottom of a pond with a philosophical brick round its
neck. The world is ill, my time is short, and my strength is small. I’m as happy
here as anywhere.’
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He coughed, was silent for a moment, then brought the index finger round
to Kipps again. ‘You’ve had the opportunity of sampling two grades of
society, and you don’t find the new people you’re among much better or
any happier than the old?’
‘No,’ said Kipps reflectively. ‘No. I ‘aven’t seen it quite like that before, but
— No. They’re not.’
‘And you might go all up the scale and down the scale and find the same
thing. Man’s a gregarious beast, a gregarious beast, and no money will buy
you out of your own time — any more than out of your own skin. All the way
up and all the way down the scale there’s the same discontent. No one is
quite sure where they stand, and every one’s fretting. The herd’s uneasy and
feverish. All the old tradition goes or has gone, and there’s no one to make a
new tradition. Where are your nobles now? Where are your gentlemen?
They vanished directly the peasant found out he wasn’t happy and ceased to
be a peasant. There’s big men and little men mixed up together, and that’s
all. None of us know where we are. Your cads in a bank holiday train, and
your cads on a two-thousand-pound motor, except for a difference in scale,
there’s not a pin to choose between them. Your smart society is as low and
vulgar and uncomfortable for a balanced soul as a gin palace, no more and
no less; there’s no place or level of honour or fine living left in the world, so
what’s the good of climbing?’
‘‘Ear, ‘ear,’ said Sid.
‘It’s true,’ said Kipps.
‘I don’t climb,’ said Masterman, and accepted Kipps’ silent offer of another
cigarette.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This world is out of joint. It’s broken up, and I doubt if it’ll heal.
I doubt very much if it’ll heal. We’re in the beginning of the Sickness of the
World.’
He rolled his cigarette in his lean fingers and repeated with satisfaction, ‘The
Sickness of the World.’
‘It’s we’ve got to make it better,’ said Sid, and looked at Kipps.
‘Ah, Sid’s an optimist,’ said Masterman.
‘So you are, most times,’ said Sid.
Kipps lit another cigarette with an air of intelligent participation.
‘Frankly,’ said Masterman, recrossing his legs and expelling a jet of smoke
luxuriously, ‘frankly, I think this civilisation of ours is on the topple.’
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‘There’s Socialism,’ said Sid.

‘There’s no imagination to make use of it.’
‘We’ve got to make one,’ said Sid.
‘In a couple of centuries, perhaps,’ said Masterman. ‘But meanwhile we’re
going to have a pretty acute attack of universal confusion. Universal
confusion. Like one of those crushes when men are killed and maimed for
no reason at all, going into a meeting or crowding for a train. Commercial
and Industrial Stresses. Political Exploitation. Tariff Wars. Revolutions. All
the bloodshed that will come of some fools calling half the white world
yellow. These things alter the attitude of everybody to everybody.
Everybody’s going to feel ’em. Every fool in the world panting and shoving.
We’re all going to be as happy and comfortable as a household during a
removal. What else can we expect?’
Kipps was moved to speak, but not in answer to Masterman’s inquiry. ‘I’ve
never rightly got the ‘eng of this Socialism,’ he said. ‘What’s it going to do,
like?’
They had been imagining that he had some elementary idea in the matter,
but as soon as he had made it clear that he hadn’t Sid plunged at exposition,
and in a little while Masterman, abandoning his pose of the detached man
ready to die, joined in. At first he joined in only to correct Sid’s version, but
afterwards he took control. His manner changed. He sat up and rested his
elbow on his knees, and his cheek flushed a little. He expanded his case
against property and the property class with such vigour that Kipps was
completely carried away, and never thought of asking for a clear vision of
the thing that would fill the void this abolition might create. For a time he
quite forgot his own private opulence. And it was as if something had been
lit in Masterman. His languor passed. He enforced his words by gestures of
his long thin hands. And as he passed swiftly from point to point of his
argument, it was evident he grew angry.
‘To-day,’ he said, ‘the world is ruled by rich men; they may do almost
anything they like with the world. And what are they doing? Laying it waste!’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Sid, very sternly.
Masterman stood up, gaunt and long, thrust his hands in his pockets, and
turned his back to the fire-place.
‘Collectively, the rich today have neither heart nor imagination. No! They
own machinery, they have knowledge and instruments and powers beyond
all previous dreaming, and what are they doing with them? Think what they
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are doing with them, Kipps, and think what they might do. God gives them a
power like the motor-car, and all they can do with it is to go careering about
the roads in goggled masks, killing children and making machinery hateful to
the souls of men! (‘True,’ said Sid, ‘true.’) God gives them means of
communication, power unparalleled of every sort, time, and absolute
liberty! They waste it all in folly! Here under their feet (and Kipps’ eyes
followed the direction of a lean index finger to the hearthrug), under their
accursed wheels, the great mass of men festers and breeds in darkness,
darkness those others make by standing in the light. The darkness breeds
and breeds. It knows no better . . . Unless you can crawl or pander or rob
you must stay in the stew you are born in. And those rich beasts above claw
and clutch as though they had nothing! They grudge us our schools, they
grudge us a gleam of light and air, they cheat us, and then seek to forget us
. . . There is no rule, no guidance, only accidents and happy flukes . . . Our
multitudes of poverty increase, and this crew of rulers makes no provision,
foresees nothing, anticipates nothing!’
He paused, and made a step, and stood over Kipps in a white heat of anger.
Kipps nodded in a non-committal manner, and looked hard and rather
gloomily at his host’s slipper as he talked.
‘It isn’t as though they had something to show for the waste they make of
us, Kipps. They haven’t. They are ugly and cowardly and mean. Look at their
women! Painted, dyed, and drugged, hiding their ugly shapes under a load
of dress! There isn’t a woman in the swim of society at the present time who
wouldn’t sell herself body and soul, who wouldn’t lick the boots of a Jew or
marry a nigger, rather than live decently on a hundred a year! On what
would be wealth for you or me! They know it. They know we know it . . . No
one believes in them. No one believes in nobility any more. Nobody believes
in kingship any more. Nobody believes there is justice in the law . . . But
people have habits, people go on in the old grooves, as long as there’s work,
as long as there’s weekly money . . . It won’t last, Kipps.’
He coughed and paused. ‘Wait for the lean years,’ he cried. ‘Wait for the lean
years.’ And suddenly he fell into a struggle with his cough, and spat a gout
of blood. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said to Kipps’ note of startled horror.
He went on talking, and the protests of his cough interlaced with his words,
and Sid beamed in an ecstasy of painful admiration.
‘Look at the fraud they have let life become, the miserable mockery of the
hope of one’s youth. What have I had? I found myself at thirteen being
forced into a factory like a rabbit into a chloroformed box. Thirteen! —
when their children are babies. But even a child of that age could see what it
 195

meant, that Hell of a factory! Monotony and toil and contempt and
dishonour! And then death. So I fought — at thirteen!’
Minton’s ‘crawling up a drainpipe till you die’ echoed in Kipps’ mind, but
Masterman, instead of Minton’s growl, spoke in a high indignant tenor.
‘I got out at last — somehow,’ he said quietly, suddenly plumping back in his
chair. He went on after a pause. ‘For a bit. Some of us get out by luck, some
by cunning, and crawl on to the grass, exhausted and crippled, to die. That’s
a poor man’s success, Kipps. Most of us don’t get out at all. I worked all day,
and studied half the night, and here I am with the common consequences.
Beaten! And never once have I had a fair chance, never once!’ His lean,
clenched fist flew out in a gust of tremulous anger. ‘These Skunks shut up all
the university scholarships at nineteen for fear of men like me. And then —
do nothing . . . We’re wasted for nothing. By the time I’d learnt something
the doors were locked. I thought knowledge would do it — I did think that!
I’ve fought for knowledge as other men fight for bread. I’ve starved for
knowledge. I’ve turned my back on women; I’ve done even that. I’ve burst
my accursed lung . . . ’ His voice rose with impotent anger. ‘I’m a better man
than any ten princes alive. And I’m beaten and wasted. I’ve been crushed,
trampled, and defiled by a drove of hogs. I’m no use to myself or the world.
I’ve thrown my life away to make myself too good for use in this huckster’s
scramble. If I had gone in for business, if I had gone in for plotting to cheat
my fellowmen . . . Ah, well! It’s too late. It’s too late for that, anyhow. It’s
too late for anything now! And I couldn’t have done it . . . And over in New
York now there’s a pet of society making a corner in wheat!
‘By God!’ he cried hoarsely, with a clutch of the lean hand. ‘By God! if I had
his throat! Even now! I might do something for the world.’
He glared at Kipps, his face flushed deep, his sunken eyes glowing with
passion, and then suddenly he changed altogether.
There was a sound of tea-things rattling upon a tray outside the door, and
Sid rose to open it.
‘All of which amounts to this,’ said Masterman, suddenly quiet again and
talking against time. ‘The world is out of joint, and there isn’t a soul alive
who isn’t half waste or more. You’ll find it the same with you in the end,
wherever your luck may take you . . . I suppose you won’t mind my having
another cigarette?’
He took Kipps’ cigarette with a hand that trembled so violently it almost
missed its object, and stood up, with something of guilt in his manner, as
Mrs. Sid came into the room.
 196

Her eye met his, and marked the flush upon his face. ‘Been talking
Socialism?’ said Mrs. Sid, a little severely.
5

Six o’clock that day found Kipps drifting eastward along the southward
margin of Rotten Row. You figure him a small, respectably attired person
going slowly through a sometimes immensely difficult and always immense
world. At times he becomes pensive, and whistles softly; at times he looks
about him. There are a few riders in the Row; a carriage flashes by every
now and then along the roadway, and among the great rhododendrons and
laurels and upon the green sward there are a few groups and isolated
people dressed — in the style Kipps adopted to call upon the Walshinghams
when first he was engaged. Amid the complicated confusion of Kipps’ mind
was a regret that he had not worn his other things . . .
Presently he perceived that he would like to sit down; a green chair tempted
him. He hesitated at it, took possession of it, and leant back and crossed one
leg over the other. He rubbed his under lip with his umbrella handle, and
reflected upon Masterman and his denunciation of the world.
‘Bit orf ‘is ‘ead, poor chap,’ said Kipps; and added, ‘I wonder —’ He thought
intently for a space.
‘I wonder what ‘e meant by the lean years’ . . .
The world seemed a very solid and prosperous concern just here, and well
out of reach of Masterman’s dying clutch. And yet —
It was curious he should have been reminded of Minton.
His mind turned to a far more important matter. Just at the end Sid had said
to him, ‘Seen Ann?’ and as he was about to answer, ‘You’ll see a bit more of
her now. She’s got a place in Folkestone.’
It had brought him back from any concern about the world being out of joint
or anything of that sort. Ann!
One might run against her any day.
He tugged at his little moustache.
He would like to run against Ann very much . . .
And it would be juiced awkward if he did!
In Folkestone! It was a jolly sight too close . . .
Then at the thought that he might run against Ann in his beautiful evening
dress on the way to the band, he fluttered into a momentary dream, that
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jumped abruptly into a nightmare.

Suppose he met her when he was out with Helen! ‘Oh, Lor!’ said Kipps. Life
had developed a new complication that would go on and go on. For some
time he wished with the utmost fervour that he had not kissed Ann, that he
had not gone to New Romney the second time. He marvelled at his amazing
forgetfulness of Helen on that occasion. He would have to write to Helen, an
easy, off-hand letter to say he had come to London for a day or so. He tried
to imagine her reading it. He would write just such another letter to the old
people, and say he had had to come up on business. That might do for them
all right, but Helen was different. She would insist on explanations.
He wished he could never go back to Folkestone again. That would about
settle the whole affair.
A passing group attracted his attention, two faultlessly dressed gentlemen
and a radiantly expensive lady. They were talking, no doubt, very brilliantly.
His eyes followed them. The lady tapped the arm of the left-hand gentleman
with a daintily tinted glove. Swells! No end . . .
His soul looked out upon life in general as a very small nestling might peep
out of its nest. What an extraordinary thing life was to be sure, and what a
remarkable variety of people there were in it!
He lit a cigarette, and speculated upon that receding group of three, and
blew smoke and watched them. They seemed to do it all right. Probably they
all had incomes of very much over twelve hundred a year. Perhaps not.
Probably they none of them suspected as they went past that he, too, was a
gentleman of independent means, dressed as he was without distinction. Of
course things were easier for them. They were brought up always to dress
well and do the right thing from their very earliest years; they started clear
of all his perplexities; they had never got mixed up with all sorts of different
people who didn’t go together. If, for example, that lady there got engaged
to that gentleman, she would be quite safe from any encounter with a
corpulent, osculatory uncle, or Chitterlow, or the dangerously significant eye
of Pearce.
His thoughts came round to Helen.
When they were married and Cuyps, or Cuyp — Coote had failed to justify
his ‘s’— and in that West–End flat, and shaken free of all these low-class
associations, would he and she parade here of an afternoon dressed like
that? It would be rather fine to do so. If one’s dress was all right.
Helen!
 198

She was difficult to understand at times.

He blew extensive clouds of cigarette smoke.
There would be teas, there would be dinners, there would be calls — Of
course he would get into the way of it. But Anagrams were a bit stiff to
begin with!
It was beastly confusing at first to know when to use your fork at dinner,
and all that. Still —
He felt an extraordinary doubt whether he would get into the way of it. He
was interested for a space by a girl and groom on horseback, and then he
came back to his personal preoccupations.
He would have to write to Helen. What could he say to explain his absence
from the Anagram Tea? She had been pretty clear she wanted him to come.
He recalled her resolute face without any great tenderness. He knew he
would look like a silly ass at that confounded tea! Suppose he shirked it and
went back in time for the dinner! Dinners were beastly difficult too, but not
so bad as anagrams. The very first thing that might happen when he got
back to Folkestone would be to run against Ann. Suppose, after all, he did
meet Ann when he was with Helen!
What queer encounters were possible in the world! Thank goodness they
were going to live in London!
But that brought him round to Chitterlow. The Chitterlows would be coming
to London too. If they didn’t get money they’d come after it; they weren’t
the sort of people to be choked off easily, and if they did, they’d come to
London to produce their play. He tried to imagine some seemly social
occasion invaded by Chitterlow and his rhetoric, by his torrential thunder of
self-assertion, the whole company flattened thereunder like wheat under a
hurricane.
Confound and hang Chitterlow! Yet somehow, somewhen, one would have
to settle accounts with him! And there was Sid! Sid was Ann’s brother. He
realised with sudden horror the social indiscretion of accepting Sid’s
invitation to dinner.
Sid wasn’t the sort of chap one could snub or cut, and besides — Ann’s
brother! He didn’t want to cut him; it would be worse than cutting Buggins
and Pearce — a sight worse. And after that lunch! It would be next thing to
cutting Ann herself. And even as to Ann!
Suppose he was with Helen or Coote! —
 199

‘Oh, Blow!’ he said at last, and then viciously, ‘Blow!’ and so rose and flung
away his cigarette end and pursued his reluctant dubitating way towards
the really quite uncongenial splendours of the Royal Grand . . .
And it is vulgarly imagined that to have money is to have no troubles at all!
6

Kipps endured splendour at the Royal Grand Hotel for three nights and days,
and then retreated in disorder. The Royal Grand defeated and overcame and
routed Kipps not of intention, but by sheer royal grandeur, grandeur
combined with an organisation for his comfort carried to excess. On his
return he came upon a difficulty, he had lost his circular piece of card-board
with the number of his room, and he drifted about the hall and passages in a
state of perplexity for some time, until he thought all the porters and
officials in gold lace caps must be watching him, and jesting to one another
about him. Finally, in a quiet corner down below near the hairdresser’s shop,
he found a kindly-looking personage in bottle green to whom he broached
his difficulty. ‘I say,’ he said, with a pleasant smile, ‘I can’t find my room
nohow.’ The personage in bottle green, instead of laughing in a nasty way,
as he might well have done, became extremely helpful, showed Kipps what
to do, got his key, and conducted him by lift and passage to his chamber.
Kipps tipped him half a crown.
Safe in his room, Kipps pulled himself together for dinner. He had learnt
enough from young Walshingham to bring his dress clothes, and now he
began to assume them. Unfortunately, in the excitement of his flight from
his aunt and uncle, he had forgotten to put in his other boots, and he was
some time deciding between his purple cloth slippers with a golden
marigold and the prospect of cleaning the boots he was wearing with the
towel, but finally, being a little footsore, he took the slippers.
Afterwards, when he saw the porters and waiters and the other guests
catch sight of the slippers, he was sorry he had not chosen the boots.
However, to make up for any want of style at that end, he had his crush hat
under his arm.
He found the dining-room without excessive trouble. It was a vast and
splendidly decorated place, and a number of people, evidently quite au fait,
were dining there at little tables lit with electric red-shaded candles,
gentlemen in evening dress, and ladies with dazzling, astonishing necks.
Kipps had never seen evening dress in full vigour before, and he doubted his
eyes. And there were also people not in evening dress, who no doubt
wondered what noble family Kipps represented. There was a band in a
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decorated recess, and the band looked collectively at the purple slippers,
and so lost any chance they may have had of a donation so far as Kipps was
concerned. The chief drawback to this magnificent place was the excessive
space of floor that had to be crossed before you got your purple slippers
hidden under a table.
He selected a little table — not the one where a rather impudent-looking
waiter held a chair, but another — sat down, and, finding his gibus in his
hand, decided after a moment of thought to rise slightly and sit on it. (It was
discovered in his abandoned chair at a late hour by a supper-party and
restored to him next day.)
He put the napkin carefully on one side, selected his soup without difficulty,
‘Clear, please,’ but he was rather floored by the presentation of a quite
splendidly bound wine-card. He turned it over, discovered a section devoted
to whisky, and had a bright idea.
‘‘Ere,’ he said to the waiter, with an encouraging movement of the head;
and then in a confidential manner, ‘You ‘aven’t any Old Methuselah Three
Stars, ‘ave you?’
The waiter went away to inquire, and Kipps went on with his soup with an
enhanced self-respect. Finally, Old Methuselah being unattainable, he
ordered a claret from about the middle of the list. ‘Let’s ‘ave some of this,’
he said. He knew claret was a good sort of wine.
‘A half bottle?’ said the waiter. ‘Right you are,’ said Kipps.
He felt he was getting on. He leant back after his soup, a man of the world,
and then slowly brought his eyes round to the ladies in evening dress on his
right . . .
He couldn’t have thought it!
They were scorchers. Jest a bit of black velvet over the shoulders!
He looked again. One of them was laughing, with a glass of wine half raised
— wicked-looking woman she was; the other, the black velvet one, was
eating bits of bread with nervous quickness and talking fast.
He wished old Buggins could see them.
He found a waiter regarding him and blushed deeply. He did not look again
for some time, and became confused about his knife and fork over the fish.
Presently he remarked a lady in pink to the left of him eating the fish with an
entirely different implement.
It was over the vol au vent that he began to go to pieces. He took a knife to
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it; then saw the lady in pink was using a fork only, and hastily put down his
knife, with a considerable amount of rich creaminess on the blade, upon the
cloth. Then he found that a fork in his inexperienced hand was an
instrument of chase rather than capture. His ears became violently red, and
then he looked up to discover the lady in pink glancing at him, and then
smiling, as she spoke to the man beside her.
He hated the lady in pink very much.
He stabbed a large piece of the vol au vent at last, and was too glad of his
luck not to make a mouthful of it. But it was an extensive fragment, and
pieces escaped him. Shirtfront! ‘Desh it!’ he said, and had resort to his
spoon. His waiter went and spoke to two other waiters, no doubt jeering at
him. He became very fierce suddenly.’
‘Ere!’ he said, gesticulating; and then, ‘Clear this away!’
The entire dinner-party on his right, the party of the ladies in advanced
evening dress, looked at him . . . He felt that every one was watching him
and making fun of him, and the injustice of this angered him. After all, they
had had every advantage he hadn’t. And then, when they got him there
doing his best, what must they do but glance and sneer and nudge one
another. He tried to catch them at it, and then took refuge in a second glass
of wine.
Suddenly and extraordinarily he found himself a Socialist. He did not care
how close it was to the lean years when all these things would end.
Mutton came with peas. He arrested the hand of the waiter. ‘No peas,’ he
said. He knew something of the danger and difficulty of eating peas. Then,
when the peas went away, he was embittered again . . . Echoes of
Masterman’s burning rhetoric began to reverberate in his mind. Nice lot of
people these were to laugh at any one! Women half undressed — It was
that made him so beastly uncomfortable. How could one eat one’s dinner
with people about him like that? Nice lot they were. He was glad he wasn’t
one of them anyhow. Yes, they might look. He resolved, if they looked at
him again, he would ask one of the men who he was staring at. His
perturbed and angry face would have concerned any one. The band, by an
unfortunate accident, was playing truculent military music. The mental
change Kipps underwent was, in its way, what psychologists call a
conversion. In a few moments all Kipps’ ideals were changed. He who had
been ‘practically a gentleman,’ the sedulous pupil of Coote, the punctilious
raiser of hats, was instantly a rebel, an outcast, the hater of everything
‘stuck up,’ the foe of Society and the social order of today. Here they were
 202

among the profits of their robbery, these people who might do anything
with the world . . .
‘No, thenks,’ he said to a dish.
He addressed a scornful eye at the shoulders of the lady to his left.
Presently he was refusing another dish. He didn’t like it — fussed-up food!
Probably cooked by some foreigner. He finished up his wine and his bread
...
‘No, thenks.’
‘No, thenks’ . . .
He discovered the eye of a diner fixed curiously upon his flushed face. He
responded with a glare. Couldn’t he go without things if he liked?
‘What’s this?’ said Kipps, to a great green cone. ‘Ice,’ said the waiter.
‘I’ll ‘ave some,’ said Kipps.
He seized fork and spoon and assailed the bombe. It cut rather stiffly. ‘Come
up!’ said Kipps, with concentrated bitterness, and the truncated summit of
the bomb flew off suddenly, travelling eastward with remarkable velocity.
Flop, it went upon the floor a yard away, and for a while time seemed
empty.
At the adjacent table they were laughing altogether. Shy the rest of the
bombe at them?
Flight?
At any rate, a dignified withdrawal.
‘No,’ said Kipps, ‘no more,’ arresting the polite attempt of the waiter to
serve him with another piece. He had a vague idea he might carry off the
affair as though he meant the ice to go on the floor — not liking ice, for
example, and being annoyed at the badness of his dinner. He put both
hands on the table, thrust back his chair, disengaged a purple slipper from
his napkin, and rose. He stepped carefully over the prostrate ice, kicked the
napkin under the table, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and marched
out — shaking the dust of the place, as it were, from his feet. He left behind
him a melting fragment of ice upon the floor, his gibus hat, warm and
compressed in his chair, and in addition, every social ambition he had ever
entertained in the world.
7

Kipps went back to Folkestone in time for the Anagram Tea. But you must
 203

not imagine that the change of heart that came to him in the dining-room of
the Royal Grand Hotel involved any change of attitude towards this
promised social and intellectual treat. He went back because the Royal
Grand was too much for him.
Outwardly calm, or at most a little flushed and ruffled, inwardly Kipps was a
horrible, tormented battleground of scruples, doubts, shames, and self-
assertions during that three days of silent, desperate grappling with the big
hotel. He did not intend the monstrosity should beat him without a struggle;
but at last he had sullenly to admit himself overcome. The odds were terrific.
On the one hand himself — with, among other things, only one pair of
boots; on the other a vast wilderness of rooms, covering several acres, and
with over a thousand people, staff and visitors, all chiefly occupied in
looking queerly at Kipps, in laughing at him behind his back, in watching for
difficult corners at which to confront and perplex him and inflict
humiliations upon him. For example, the hotel scored over its electric light.
After the dinner the chambermaid, a hard, unsympathetic young woman
with a superior manner, was summoned by a bell Kipps had rung under the
impression the button was the electric-light switch. ‘Look ’ere,’ said Kipps,
rubbing a shin that had suffered during his search in the dark, ‘why aren’t
there any candles or matches?’ The hotel explained and scored heavily.
‘It isn’t every one is up to these things,’ said Kipps.
‘No, it isn’t,’ said the chambermaid, with ill-concealed scorn, and slammed
the door at him. ‘S’pose I ought to have tipped her,’ said Kipps.
After that Kipps cleaned his boots with a pocket-handkerchief and went for
a long walk, and got home in a hansom; but the hotel scored again by his
not putting out his boots, and so having to clean them again in the morning.
The hotel also snubbed him by bringing him hot water when he was fully
dressed and looking surprised at his collar, but he got a breakfast, I must
admit, with scarcely any difficulty.
After that the hotel scored heavily by the fact that there are twenty-four
hours in the day and Kipps had nothing to do in any of them. He was a little
footsore from his previous day’s pedestrianism, and he could make up his
mind for no long excursions. He flitted in and out of the hotel several times,
and it was the polite porter who touched his hat every time that first set
Kipps tipping.
‘What ‘e wants is a tip,’ said Kipps.
So at the next opportunity he gave the man an unexpected shilling, and,
having once put his hand in his pocket, there was no reason why he should
 204

not go on. He bought a newspaper at the bookstall and tipped the boy the
rest of the shilling, and then went up by the lift and tipped the man
sixpence, leaving his newspaper inadvertently in the lift. He met his
chambermaid in the passage and gave her half a crown. He resolved to
demonstrate his position to the entire establishment in this way. He didn’t
like the place; he disapproved of it politically, socially, morally, but he
resolved no taint of meanness should disfigure his sojourn in its luxurious
halls. He went down by the lift (tipping again), and, being accosted by a
waiter with his gibus, tipped the finder half a crown. He had a vague sense
that he was making a flank movement upon the hotel and buying over its
staff. They would regard him as a ‘character’; they would get to like him. He
found his stock of small silver diminishing and replenished it at a desk in the
hall. He tipped a man in bottle green who looked like the man who had
shown him his room the day before; and then he saw a visitor eyeing him,
and doubted whether he was in this instance doing right . . . Finally he went
out and took chance buses to their destinations, and wandered a little in
remote wonderful suburbs, and returned. He lunched at a chophouse in
Islington, and found himself back in the Royal Grand, now unmistakably
footsore and London-weary, about three. He was attracted to the drawing-
room by a neat placard about afternoon tea.
It occurred to him that the campaign of tipping upon which he had
embarked was perhaps, after all, a mistake. He was confirmed in this by
observing that the hotel officials were watching him, not respectfully, but
with a sort of amused wonder, as if to see whom he would tip next.
However, if he backed out now, they would think him an awful fool. Every
one wasn’t so rich as he was. It was his way to tip. Still —
He grew more certain the hotel had scored again.
He pretended to be lost in thought, and so drifted by, and having put hat
and umbrella in the cloakroom, went into the drawing-room for afternoon
tea.
There he did get what for a time he held to be a point in his favour. The
room was large and quiet at first, and he sat back restfully until it occurred
to him that his attitude brought his extremely dusty boots too prominently
into the light, so instead he sat up, and then people of the upper and upper
middle classes began to come and group themselves about him and have
tea likewise, and so revive the class animosities of the previous day.
Presently a fluffy fair-haired lady came into prominent existence a few yards
away. She was talking to a respectful low-voiced clergyman, whom she was
possibly entertaining at tea. ‘No,’ she said; ‘dear Lady Jane wouldn’t do
 205

that!’
‘Mumble, mumble, mumble,’ from the clergyman.
‘Poor dear Lady Jane was always so sensitive,’ the voice of the lady sang out
clear and emphatic.
A fat, hairless, important-looking man joined this group, took a chair, and
planted it firmly with its back in the face of Kipps, a thing that offended
Kipps mightily. ‘Are you telling him,’ gurgled the fat, hairless man, ‘about
dear Lady Jane’s affliction?’ A young couple, lady brilliantly attired, and the
man in a magnificently cut frock-coat, arranged themselves to the right, also
with an air of exclusion towards Kipps. ‘I’ve told him,’ said the gentleman in
a flat, abundant voice. ‘My!’ said the young lady with an American smile. No
doubt they all thought Kipps was out of it. A great desire to assert himself in
some way surged up in his heart. He felt he would like to cut in on the
conversation in some dramatic way. A monologue, something in the manner
of Masterman? At any rate, abandoning that as impossible, he would like to
appear self-centred and at ease. His eye, wandering over the black surfaces
of a noble architectural mass close by, discovered a slot and an enamelled
plaque of directions.
It occurred to Kipps that he would like some music, that to inaugurate some
would show him a man of taste and at his ease at the same time. He rose,
read over a list of tunes, selected one haphazard, pressed his sixpence — it
was sixpence! — home, and prepared for a confidential refined little
melody.
Considering the high social tone of the Royal Grand, it was really a very loud
instrument indeed. It gave vent to three deafening brays, and so burst the
dam of silence that had long pent it in. It seemed to be chiefly full of the
great-uncles of trumpets, megalo-trombones, and railway-brakes. It made
sounds like shunting trains. It did not so much begin as blow up your
counterscarp and rush forward to storm under cover of melodious shrapnel.
It had not so much an air as a ricochet. The music had, in short, the
inimitable quality of Sousa. It swept down upon the friend of Lady Jane and
carried away something socially striking into the eternal night of the
unheard; the American girl to the left of it was borne off shrieking. ‘HIGH
cockalorum Tootletootle tootle loo. HIGH cockalorum tootle lootle loo.
BUMP, bump, bump — BUMP,’— Native American music, full of native
American notes, full of the spirit of western college yells and election howls,
joyous, exorbitant music from the gigantic nursery of the Future, bearing
the hearer along upon its torrential succession of sounds, as if he was in a
cask on Niagara. Whiroo! Yah! Have at you! The Strenuous Life! Yaha! Stop! A
 206

Reprieve! A Reprieve! No! Bang! Bump!

Everybody looked round, conversation ceased and gave place to gestures.
The friend of Lady Jane became terribly agitated.
‘Can’t it be stopped?’ she vociferated, pointing a gloved finger and saying
something to the waiter about ‘that dreadful young man.’
‘Ought not to be working,’ said the clerical friend of Lady Jane.
The waiter shook his head at the fat, hairless gentleman.
People began to move away. Kipps leant back luxurious and then tapped
with a half-crown to pay.
He paid, tipped like a gentleman, rose with an easy gesture, and strolled
towards the door. His retreat evidently completed the indignation of the
friend of Lady Jane, and from the door he could still discern her gestures as
asking, ‘Can’t it be stopped?’ The music followed him into the passage and
pursued him to the left, and only died away completely in the quiet of his
own room, and afterwards from his window he saw the friend of Lady Jane
and her party having their tea carried out to a little table in the Court.
Certainly that was a point to him. But it was his only score; all the rest of the
game lay in the hands of the upper classes and the big hotel. And presently
he was doubting whether even this was really a point. It seemed a trifle
vulgar, come to think it over, to interrupt people when they were talking.
He saw a clerk peering at him from the office, and suddenly it occurred to
him that the place might get back at him tremendously over the bill.
They would probably take it out of him by charging pounds and pounds.
Suppose they charged more than he had!
The clerk had a particularly nasty face, just the face to take advantage of a
vacillating Kipps. He became aware of a man in a cap touching it, and
produced his shilling automatically, but the strain was beginning to tell. It
was a deuce and all of an expense — this tipping.
If the hotel chose to stick it on to the bill something tremendous, what was
Kipps to do? Refuse to pay? Make a row?
If he did he couldn’t fight all these men in bottle green.
He went out about seven and walked for a long time, and dined at last upon
a chop in the Euston Road; then he walked along to the Edgware Road and
sat and rested in the Metropolitan Music Hall for a time, until a trapeze
performance unnerved him, and finally he came back to bed. He tipped the
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lift-man sixpence, and wished him goodnight. In the silent watches of the
night he reviewed the tale of the day’s tipping, went over the horrors of the
previous night’s dinner, and heard again the triumphant bray of the
harmonicon devil released from its long imprisonment. Every one would be
told about him tomorrow. He couldn’t go on! He admitted his defeat. Never
in their whole lives had any of these people seen such a Fool as he! Ugh! —
His method of announcing his withdrawal to the clerk was touched with
bitterness.
‘I’m going to get out of this,’ said Kipps, blowing windily. ‘Let’s see what you
got on my bill.’
‘One breakfast?’ asked the clerk.
‘Do I look as if I’d ate two?’—
At his departure, Kipps, with a hot face, convulsive gestures, and an
embittered heart, tipped every one who did not promptly and actively resist,
including an absentminded South African diamond merchant who was
waiting in the hall for his wife. He paid his cabman a four-shilling piece at
Charing Cross, having no smaller change, and wished he could burn him
alive. Then in a sudden reaction of economy he refused the proffered help
of a porter, and carried his bag quite violently to the train.
 208

CHAPTER 8. KIPPS ENTERS SOCIETY

Submission to Inexorable Fate took Kipps to the Anagram Tea.

At any rate he would meet Helen there in the presence of other people, and
be able to carry off the worst of the difficulty of explaining his little jaunt to
London. He had not seen her since his last portentous visit to New Romney.
He was engaged to her, he would have to marry her, and the sooner he
faced her again the better. Before wild plans of turning Socialist, defying the
world and repudiating all calling for ever, his heart, on second thoughts,
sank. He felt Helen would never permit anything of the sort. As for the
Anagrams, he could do no more than his best, and that he was resolved to
do. What had happened at the Royal Grand, what had happened at New
Romney, he must bury in his memory and begin again at the reconstruction
of his social position. Ann, Buggins, Chitterlow — all these, seen in the
matter-of-fact light of the Folkestone corridor train, stood just as they stood
before — people of an inferior social position, who had to be eliminated
from his world. It was a bother about Ann, a bother and a pity. His mind
rested so for a space on Ann until the memory of those Anagrams drew him
away. If he could see Coote that evening he might, he thought, be able to
arrange some sort of connivance about the anagrams, and his mind was
chiefly busy sketching proposals for such an arrangement. It would not, of
course, be ungentlemanly cheating, but only a little mystification. Coote,
very probably might drop him a hint of the solution of one or two of the
things — not enough to win a prize, but enough to cover his shame. Or
failing that, he might take a humorous, quizzical line, and pretend he was
pretending to be very stupid. There were plenty of ways out of it if one kept
a sharp lookout . . .
The costume Kipps wore to the Anagram Tea was designed as a
compromise between the strict letter of high fashion and seaside laxity — a
sort of easy semi-state for afternoon. Helen’s first reproof had always
lingered in his mind. He wore a frockcoat, but mitigated it by a Panama hat
of romantic shape with a black band, gray gloves, but, for relaxation, brown
button boots. The only other man besides the clergy present — a new
doctor with an attractive wife — was in full afternoon dress. Coote was not
there.
Kipps was a little pale, but quite self-possessed, as he approached Mrs.
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Bindon Botting’s door. He took a turn while some people went in, and then
faced it manfully. The door opened and revealed — Ann!
In the background, through a draped doorway, behind a big fern in a great
art pot, the elder Miss Botting was visible talking to two guests; the auditory
background was a froth of feminine voices . . .
Our two young people were much too amazed to give one another any
formula of greeting, though they had parted warmly enough. Each was
already in a state of extreme tension to meet the demands of this great and
unprecedented occasion — an Anagram Tea. ‘Lor!’ said Ann, her sole
remark; and then the sense of Miss Botting’s eye ruled her straight again.
She became very pale, but she took his hat mechanically, and he was already
removing his gloves. ‘Ann,’ he said in a low tone, and then ‘Fency!’
The eldest Miss Botting knew Kipps was the sort of guest who requires
nursing, and she came forward vocalising charm. She said it was ‘awfully
jolly of him to come — awfully jolly. It was awfully difficult to get any good
men!’
She handed Kipps forward, mumbling, and in a dazed condition, to the
drawing-room, and there he encountered Helen, looking unfamiliar in an
unfamiliar hat. It was as if he had not met her for years.
She astonished him. She didn’t seem to mind in the least his going to
London. She held out a shapely hand, and smiled encouragingly. ‘You’ve
faced the anagrams?’ she said.
The second Miss Botting accosted them, a number of oblong pieces of
paper in her hand, mysteriously inscribed. ‘Take an anagram,’ she said; ‘take
an anagram,’ and boldly pinned one of these brief documents to Kipps’
lapel. The letters were ‘Cypshi,’ and Kipps from the very beginning
suspected this was an anagram for Cuyps. She also left a thing like a long
dance programme, from which dangled a little pencil, in his hand. He found
himself being introduced to people, and then he was in a corner with the
short lady in a big bonnet, who was pelting him with gritty little bits of small
talk, that were gone before you could take hold of them and reply.
‘Very hot,’ said this lady. ‘Very hot indeed — hot all the summer —
remarkable year — all the years remarkable now — don’t know what we’re
coming to. Don’t you think so, Mr. Kipps?’
‘Oo, rather,’ said Kipps, and wondered if Ann was still in that hall. Ann!
He ought not to have stared at her like a stuck fish, and pretended not to
know her. That couldn’t be right. But what was right?
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The lady in the big bonnet proceeded to a second discharge. ‘Hope you’re
fond of anagrams, Mr. Kipps — difficult exercise — still, one must do
something to bring people together — better than Ludo, anyway. Don’t you
think so, Mr. Kipps?’
Ann fluttered past the open door. Her eyes met his in amazed inquiry.
Something had got dislocated in the world for both of them . . .
He ought to have told her he was engaged. He ought to have explained
things to her. Perhaps, even now, he might be able to drop her a hint.
‘Don’t you think so, Mr. Kipps?’
‘O, rather,’ said Kipps for the third time.
A lady with a tired smile who was labelled conspicuously, ‘Wogdelenk,’
drifted towards Kipps’ interlocutor, and the two fell into conversation. Kipps
found himself socially aground. He looked about him. Helen was talking to a
curate and laughing. Kipps was overcome by a vague desire to speak to Ann.
He was for sidling doorward.
‘What are you, please?’ said an extraordinarily bold, tall girl, and arrested
him while she took down ‘Cypshi.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what it means,’ she explained ‘I’m Sir Bubh. Don’t you
think anagrams are something chronic?’
Kipps made stockish noises, and the young lady suddenly became the
nucleus of a party of excited friends who were forming a syndicate to guess,
and barred his escape. She took no further notice of him. He found himself
jammed against an occasional table and listening to the conversation of Mrs.
‘Wogdelenk’ and his lady with the big bonnet.
‘She packed her two beauties off together,’ said the lady in the big bonnet.
‘Time enough, too. Don’t think much of this girl she’s got as housemaid
now. Pretty, of course, but there’s no occasion for a housemaid to be pretty
— none whatever. And she doesn’t look particularly up to her work either.
Kind of ‘mazed expression.’
‘You never can tell,’ said the lady labelled ‘Wogdelenk’; ‘you never can tell.
My wretches are big enough, Heaven knows, and do they work? Not a bit of
it!’
Kipps felt dreadfully out of it with regard to all these people, and dreadfully
in it with Ann.
He scanned the back of the big bonnet, and concluded it was an extremely
ugly bonnet indeed. It got jerking forward as each short, dry sentence was
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snapped off at the end, and a plume of osprey on it jerked excessively. ‘She
hasn’t guessed even one!’ followed by a shriek of girlish merriment, came
from the group about the tall, bold girl. They’d shriek at him presently,
perhaps! Beyond thinking his own anagram might be Cuyps, he hadn’t a
notion. What a chatter they were all making! It was just like a summer sale!
Just the sort of people who’d give a lot of trouble and swap you! And
suddenly the smouldering fires of rebellion leapt to flame again. These were
a rotten lot of people, and the anagrams were rotten nonsense, and he
(Kipps) had been a rotten fool to come. There was Helen away there still
laughing with her curate. Pity she couldn’t marry a curate, and leave him
(Kipps) alone! Then he’d know what to do. He disliked the whole gathering,
collectively and in detail. Why were they all trying to make him one of
themselves? He perceived unexpected ugliness everywhere about him.
There were two great pins jabbed through the tall girl’s hat, and the swirls
of her hair below the brim, with the minutest piece of tape tie-up showing,
did not repay close examination. Mrs. ‘Wogdelenk’ wore a sort of mumps
bandage of lace, and there was another lady perfectly dazzling with beads
and jewels and bits of trimming. They were all flaps and angles and flounces,
these women. Not one of them looked as neat and decent a shape as Ann’s
clean, trim little figure. Echoes of Masterman woke up in him again. Ladies
indeed! Here were all these chattering people, with money, with leisure,
with every chance in the world, and all they could do was to crowd like this
into a couple of rooms and jabber nonsense about anagrams.
‘Could Cypshi really mean Cuyps?’ floated like a dissolving wreath of mist
across his mind. Abruptly resolution stood armed in his heart. He was going
to get out of this! ‘‘Scuse me,’ he said, and began to wade neck-deep
through the bubbling tea-party. He was going to get out of it all!
He found himself close by Helen. ‘I’m orf,’ he said, but she gave him the
briefest glance. She did not appear to hear. ‘Still, Mr. Spratlingdown, you
must admit there’s a limit even to conformity,’ she was saying . . .
He was in a curtained archway and Ann was before him carrying a tray
supporting several small sugar-bowls.
He was moved to speech. ‘What a Lot!’ he said and then mysteriously, ‘I’m
engaged to her.’ He indicated Helen’s new hat, and became aware of a skirt
he had stepped upon.
Ann stared at him helplessly, borne past in the grip of incomprehensive
imperatives. Why shouldn’t they talk together?
He was in a small room, and then at the foot of the staircase in the hall. He
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heard the rustle of a dress, and what was conceivably his hostess was upon
him.
‘But you’re not going, Mr. Kipps?’ she said. ‘I must,’ he said. ‘I got to.’
‘But, Mr. Kipps!’
‘I must,’ he said. ‘I’m not well.’
‘But before the guessing! Without any tea!’
Ann appeared and hovered behind him.
‘I got to go,’ said Kipps.
If he parleyed with her Helen might awake to his desperate attempt.
‘Of course, if you must go.’
‘It’s something I’ve forgotten,’ said Kipps, beginning to feel regrets. ‘Reely, I
must.’
Mrs. Botting turned with a certain offended dignity, and Ann, in a state of
flushed calm that evidently concealed much, came forward to open the
door.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry,’ half to his hostess and half to her,
and was swept past her by superior social forces — like a drowning man in a
mill-race — and into the Upper Sandgate Road. He half turned upon the
step, and then slam went the door . . .
He retreated along the Leas, a thing of shame and perplexity, Mrs. Botting’s
aggrieved astonishment uppermost in his mind . . .
Something — reinforced by the glances of the people he was passing —
pressed its way to his attention through the tumultuous disorder of his
mind.
He became aware that he was still wearing his little placard with the letters
‘Cypshi.’
‘Desh it!’ he said, clutching off this abomination. In another moment its
several letters, their task accomplished, were scattering gleefully before the
breeze down the front of the Leas.
2

Kipps was dressed for Mrs. Wace’s dinner half an hour before it was time to
start, and he sat waiting until Coote should come to take him round.
Manners and Rules of Good Society lay beside him neglected. He had read
the polished prose of the Member of the Aristocracy on page 96 as far as —
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‘the acceptance of an invitation is, in the eyes of diners out, a binding

obligation which only ill-health, family bereavement, or some all-important
reason justifies its being set on one side or otherwise evaded’— and then he
had lapsed into gloomy thoughts.
That afternoon he had had a serious talk with Helen.
He had tried to express something of the change of heart that had
happened to him. But to broach the real state of the matter had been
altogether too terrible for him. He had sought a minor issue. ‘I don’t like all
this Society,’ he had said.
‘But you must see people,’ said Helen.
‘Yes, but — It’s the sort of people you see.’ He nerved himself. ‘I didn’t think
much of that lot at the Enegram.’
‘You have to see all sorts of people if you want to see the world,’ said Helen.
Kipps was silent for a space, and a little short of breath.
‘My dear Arthur,’ she began almost kindly, ‘I shouldn’t ask you to go to
these affairs if I didn’t think it good for you, should I?’
Kipps acquiesced in silence.
‘You will find the benefit of it all when we get to London. You learn to swim
in a tank before you go out into the sea. These people here are good enough
to learn upon. They’re stiff and rather silly, and dreadfully narrow, and not
an idea in a dozen of them, but it really doesn’t matter at all. You’ll soon get
Savoir Faire.’
He made to speak again, and found his powers of verbal expression lacking.
Instead he blew a sigh. ‘You’ll get used to it all very soon,’ said Helen
helpfully . . .
As he sat meditating over that interview, and over the vistas of London that
opened before him, on the little flat and teas and occasion, and the constant
presence of Brudderkins and all the bright prospect of his new and better
life, and how he would never see Ann any more, the housemaid entered
with a little package, a small, square envelope for ‘Arthur Kipps, Esquire.’
‘A young woman left this, Sir,’ said the housemaid, a little severely.
‘Eh?’ said Kipps. ‘What young woman?’ and then suddenly began to
understand. ‘She looked an ordinary young woman,’ said the housemaid
coldly. ‘Ah!’ said Kipps. ‘That’s orlright.’
He waited till the door had closed behind the girl, staring at the envelope in
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his hand, and then, with a curious feeling of increasing tension, tore it open.
As he did so, some quicker sense than sight or touch told him its contents. It
was Ann’s half-sixpence. And besides, not a word!
Then she must have heard him —!
He was standing with the envelope in his hand when Coote became audible
without.
Coote appeared in evening dress, a clean and radiant Coote, with large
greenish-white gloves, and a particularly large white tie edged with black.
‘For a third cousin,’ he presently explained, ‘Nace, isn’t it?’ He could see
Kipps was pale and disturbed, and put this down to the approaching social
trial. ‘You keep your nerve up, Kipps, my dear chap, and you’ll be all right,’
said Coote, with a big brotherly glove on Kipps’ sleeve.
3

The dinner came to a crisis so far as Kipps’ emotions were concerned with
Mrs. Bindon Botting’s talk about servants, but before that there had been
several things of greater or smaller magnitude to perturb and disarrange his
social front. One little matter that was mildly insurgent throughout the
entire meal was, if I may be permitted to mention so intimate a matter, the
behaviour of his left brace. The webbing — which was of a cheerful scarlet
silk — had slipped away from its buckle, fastened, no doubt, in agitation,
and had developed a strong tendency to place itself obliquely, in the manner
rather of an official decoration, athwart his spotless front. It first asserted
itself before they went in to dinner. He replaced this ornament by a
dexterous thrust when no one was looking, and there-after the suppression
of this novel innovation upon the stereotyped sombreness of evening dress
became a standing preoccupation. On the whole, he was inclined to think
his first horror excessive; at any rate, no one remarked upon it. However,
you imagine him constantly throughout the evening with one eye and one
hand, whatever the rest of him might be doing, predominantly concerned
with the weak corner.
But this, I say, was a little matter. What exercised him much more was to
discover Helen, quite terribly in evening dress.
The young lady had let her imagination rove Londonward, and this costume
was perhaps an anticipation of that clever little flat, not too far west, which
was to become the centre of so delightful a literary and artistic set. It was,
of all the feminine costumes present, most distinctly an evening dress. One
was advised Miss Walshingham had arms and shoulders of a type by no
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means despicable; one was advised Miss Walshingham was capable not only
of dignity but charm, even a certain glow of charm. It was, you know, her
first evening dress, a tribute paid by Walshingham finance to her brightening
future. Had she wanted keeping in countenance, she would have had to
have fallen back upon her hostess, who was resplendent in black and steel.
The other ladies had to a certain extent compromised. Mrs. Walshingham
had dressed with just a refined little V, and Mrs. Bindon Botting, except for
her dear mottled arms, confided scarcely more of her plump charm to the
world. The elder Miss Botting stopped short of shoulders, and so did Miss
Wace. But Helen didn’t. She was — had Kipps had eyes to see it — a quite
beautiful human figure; she knew it, and she met him with a radiant smile
that had forgotten all the little difference of the afternoon. But to Kipps her
appearance was the last release. With that she had become as remote, as
foreign, as incredible as a wife and male, as though the Cnidian Venus
herself, in all her simple elegance, was, before witnesses, declared to be his.
If, indeed, she had ever been credible as a wife and mate!
She ascribed his confusion to modest reverence, and, having blazed smiling
upon him for a moment, turned a shapely shoulder towards him and
exchanged a remark with Mrs. Bindon Botting. Ann’s poor half-sixpence
came against Kipps’ fingers in his pocket, and he clutched at it suddenly as
though it was a talisman. Then he abandoned it to suppress his Order of the
Brace. He was affected by a cough. ‘Miss Wace tells me Mr. Revel is coming,’
Mrs. Botting was saying.
‘Isn’t it delightful?’ said Helen. ‘We saw him last night. He’s stopped on his
way to Paris. He’s going to meet his wife there.’
Kipps’ eyes rested for a moment on Helen’s dazzling deltoid, and then went
inquiringly, accusingly, almost, to Coote’s face.
Where in the presence of this terrible emergence was the gospel of
suppression now? that Furtive treatment of Religion and Politics, and Birth
and Death, and Bathing and Babies and ‘all those things,’ which constitute
your True Gentleman? He had been too modest even to discuss this question
with his Mentor, but surely, surely this quintessence of all that is good and
nice could regard these unsolicited confidences only in one way. With
something between relief and the confirmation of his worst fears he
perceived, by a sort of twitching of the exceptionally abundant muscles
about Coote’s lower jaw, in a certain deliberate avoidance of one particular
direction by those pale but resolute gray eyes, by the almost convulsive grip
of the ample, greenish-white gloves behind him, a grip broken at times for
controlling pats at the black-bordered tie and the back of that spacious
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head, and by a slight but increasing disposition to cough, that Coote did not
approve!
To Kipps Helen had once supplied a delicately beautiful dream, a thing of
romance and unsubstantial mystery. But this was her final materialisation,
and the last thin wreath of glamour about her was dispelled. In some way
(he had forgotten how, and it was perfectly incomprehensible) he was
bound to this dark, solid and determined young person, whose shadow and
suggestion he had once loved. He had to go through with the thing as a
gentleman should. Still —
And then he was sacrificing Ann!
He wouldn’t stand this sort of thing, whatever else he stood . . . Should he
say something about her dress to her — tomorrow?
He could put his foot down firmly. He could say, ‘Look ’ere. I don’t care. I
ain’t going to stand it. See?’ She’d say something unexpected, of course. She
always did say something unexpected. Suppose, for once, he overrode what
she said, and simply repeated his point.
He found these thoughts battling with certain conversational aggressions
from Mrs. Wace, and then Revel arrived and took the centre of the stage.
The author of that brilliant romance, Red Hearts a-Beating, was a less
imposing man than Kipps had anticipated, but he speedily effaced that
disappointment by his predominating manners. Although he lived habitually
in the vivid world of London, his collar and lie were in no way remarkable,
and he was neither brilliantly handsome nor curly, nor long-haired. His
personal appearance suggested arm-chairs rather than the equestrian
exercises and amorous toyings and passionate intensities of his
masterpiece; he was inclined to be fat, with whitish flesh, muddy-coloured
straight hair; he had a rather shapeless and truncated nose, and his chin was
asymmetrical. One eye was more inclined to stare than the other. He might
have been esteemed a little undistinguished-looking were it not for his
beeswaxed moustache, which came amidst his features with a pleasing note
of incongruity, and the whimsical wrinkles above and about his greater eye.
His regard sought and found Helen’s as he entered the room, and they
shook hands presently with an air of intimacy Kipps, for no clear reason,
found objectionable. He saw them clasp their hands, heard Coote’s
characteristic cough — a sound rather more like a very, very old sheep a
quarter of a mile away being blown to pieces by a small charge of
gunpowder than anything else in the world — did some confused
beginnings of a thought, and then they were all going in to dinner, and
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Helen’s shining bare arm lay along his sleeve. Kipps was in no state for
conversation. She glanced at him, and, though he did not know it, very
slightly pressed his elbow. He struggled with strange respiratory
dislocations. Before them went Coote, discoursing in amiable reverberations
to Mrs. Walshingham, and at the head of the procession was Mrs. Bindon
Botting, talking fast and brightly beside the erect military figure of little Mr.
Wace (He was not a soldier really, but he had caught a martinet bearing by
living so close to Shorncliffe.) Revel came at last, in charge of Mrs. Wace’s
queenly black and steel, politely admiring in a flute-like cultivated voice the
mellow wall-paper of the staircase. Kipps marvelled at everybody’s self-
possession.
From the earliest spoonful of soup it became evident that Revel considered
himself responsible for the tabletalk. And before the soup was over it was
almost as manifest that Mrs. Bindon Botting inclined to consider his sense of
responsibility excessive. In her circle Mrs. Bindon Botting was esteemed an
agreeable rattle, her manner and appearance were conspicuously vivacious
for one so plump, and she had an almost Irish facility for humorous
description. She would keep people amused all through an afternoon call
with the story of how her jobbing gardener had got himself married and
what his home was like, or how her favourite butt, Mr. Stigson Warder, had
all his unfortunate children taught almost every conceivable instrument
because they had the phrenological bump of music abnormally large. The
family itself was also abnormally large. ‘They got to trombones, my dear!’
she would say, with her voice coming to a climax. Usually her friends
conspired to draw her out, but on this occasion they neglected to do so, a
thing that militated against her keen desire to shine in Revel’s eyes. After a
time she perceived that the only thing for her to do was to cut in on the talk,
on her own account, and this she began to do. She made several ineffectual
snatches at the general attention, and then Revel drifted towards a topic
she regarded as particularly her own — the ordering of households.
They came to the thing through talk about localities. ‘We are leaving our
house in the Boltons,’ said Revel, ‘and taking a little place at Wimbledon,
and I think of having rooms in Dane’s Inn. It will be more convenient in many
ways. My wife is furiously addicted to golf and exercise of all sorts, and I like
to sit about in clubs — I haven’t the strength necessary for these hygienic
proceedings — and the old arrangement suited neither of us. And besides,
no one could imagine the demoralisation the domestics of West London
have undergone during the last three years.’
‘It’s the same everywhere,’ said Mrs. Bindon Botting.
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‘Very possibly it is. A friend of mine calls it the servile tradition in decay, and
regards it all as a most hopeful phenomenon —’
‘He ought to have had my last two criminals,’ said Mrs. Bindon Botting.
She turned to Mrs. Wace, while Revel came again a little too late with a
‘Possibly —’
‘And I haven’t told you, my dear,’ she said, speaking with voluble rapidity,
‘I’m in trouble again.’
‘That last girl?’
‘The last girl. Before I can get a cook, my hard-won housemaid’— she
paused —‘chucks it.’
‘Panic?’ asked young Walshingham.
‘Mysterious grief! Everything merry as a marriage bell until my Anagram Tea!
Then in the evening a portentous rigour of bearing, a word or so from my
aunt, and immediately — Floods of Tears and Notice!’ For a moment her eye
rested thoughtfully on Kipps as she said, ‘Is there anything heartrending
about Anagrams?’
‘I find them so,’ said Revel. ‘I—’
But Mrs. Bindon Botting got away again. ‘For a time it made me quite uneasy
—’
Kipps jabbed his lip with his fork rather painfully, and was recalled from a
fascinated glare at Mrs. Botting to the immediate facts of dinner.
‘— whether anagrams might not have offended the good domestic’s Moral
Code — you never can tell. We made inquiries. No. No. No. She must go, and
that’s all!’
‘One perceives,’ said Revel, ‘in these disorders, dimly and distantly, the last
dying glow of the age of Romance. Let us suppose, Mrs. Botting, let us at
least try to suppose — it is Love.’
Kipps clattered with his knife and fork.
‘It’s love,’ said Mrs. Botting; what else can it be? Beneath the orderly
humdrum of our lives these romances are going on, until at last they bust up
and give Notice and upset our humdrum altogether. Some fatal, wonderful
soldier —’
‘The passions of the common or house-domestic —’ began Revel, and
recovered possession of the table.
Upon the troubled disorder of Kipps’ table manners, there had supervened a
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quietness, an unusual calm. For once in his life he had distinctly made up his
mind on his own account. He listened no more to Revel. He put down his
knife and fork and refused everything that followed. Coote regarded him
with tactful concern and Helen flushed a little.
About half-past nine that night there came a violent pull at the bell of Mrs.
Bindon Botting, and a young man in a dress-suit and a gibus and other marks
of exalted social position stood without. Athwart his white expanse of
breast lay a ruddy bar of patterned silk that gave him a singular distinction
and minimised the glow of a few small stains of Burgundy. His gibus was
thrust back, and exposed a disorder of hair that suggested a reckless
desperation. He had, in fact, burnt his boats and refused to join the ladies.
Coote, in the subsequent conversation, had protested quietly, ‘You’re going
on all right, you know,’ to which Kipps had answered he didn’t care a ‘Eng’
about that, and so, after a brief tussle with Walshingham’s detaining arm,
had got away. ‘I got something to do,’ he said. ‘‘Ome.’ And here he was —
panting an extraordinary resolve. The door opened, revealing the pleasantly
furnished hall of Mrs. Bindon Botting, lit by rose-tinted lights, and in the
centre of the picture, neat and pretty in black and white, stood Ann. At the
sight of Kipps her colour vanished.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps,’ I want to speak to you. I got something to say to you right
away. See? I’m —’
‘This ain’t the door to speak to me at,’ said Ann.
‘But, Ann! It’s something special.’
‘You spoke enough,’ said Ann.
‘Ann!’
‘Besides, that’s my door, down there. Basement. If I was caught talking at
this door —!’
‘But, Ann, I’m —’
‘Basement after nine. Them’s my hours. I’m a servant, and likely to keep
one. If you’re calling here, what name, please? But you got your friends and I
got mine, and you mustn’t go talking to me.’
‘But, Ann, I want to ask you —’
Some one appeared in the hall behind Ann. ‘Not here,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t
know any one of that name,’ and incontinently slammed the door in his face.
‘What was that, Ann?’ said Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid aunt.
‘Ge’m a little intoxicated, Ma’am — asking for the wrong name, Ma’am.’
 220

‘What name did he want?’ asked the lady doubtfully.

‘No name that we know, Ma’am’ said Ann, hustling along the hall towards
the kitchen stairs. ‘I hope you weren’t too short with him, Ann.’
‘No shorter than he deserved, considering ‘ow he be’aved,’ said Ann, with
her bosom heaving.
And Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid aunt, perceiving suddenly that this call had
some relation to Ann’s private and sentimental trouble, turned, after one
moment of hesitating scrutiny, away.
She was an extremely sympathetic lady was Mrs. Bindon Botting’s invalid
aunt; she look an interest in the servants, imposed piety, extorted
confessions and followed human nature, blushing and lying defensively to
its reluctantly revealed recesses; but Ann’s sense of privacy was strong, and
her manner, under drawing-out and encouragement, sometimes even
alarming . . .
So the poor old lady went upstairs again.
5

The basement door opened, and Kipps came into the kitchen. He was
flushed and panting. He struggled for speech.
‘‘Ere,’ he said, and held out two half-sixpences.
Ann stood behind the kitchen table — face pale and eyes round, and now —
and it simplified Kipps very much — he could see she had indeed been
crying.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Don’t you see?’
Ann moved her head slightly.
‘I kep’ it all these years.’
‘You kep’ it too long.’
His mouth closed and his flush died away. He looked at her. The amulet, it
seemed, had failed to work.
‘Ann!’ he said. ‘Well?’
‘Ann.’
The conversation still hung fire.
‘Ann,’ he said; made a movement with his hands that suggested appeal and
advanced a step.
 221

Ann shook her head more definitely, and became defensive.

‘Look here, Ann,’ said Kipps. ‘I been a fool.’
They stared into each other’s miserable eyes.
‘Ann,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you.’
Ann clutched the table edge. ‘You can’t,’ she said faintly.
He made as if to approach her round the table, and she took a step that
restored their distance.
‘I must,’ he said.
‘You can’t.’
‘I must. You got to marry me, Ann.’
‘You can’t go marrying everybody. You got to marry ‘er.’
‘I shan’t.’
Ann shook her head. ‘You’re engaged to that girl. Lady, rather. You can’t be
engaged to me.’
‘I don’t want to be engaged to you. I been engaged. I want to be married to
you. See? Right away.’ Ann turned a shade paler. ‘But what d’you mean?’ she
asked.
‘Come right off to London and marry me. Now.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Kipps became extremely lucid and earnest.
‘I mean, come right off and marry me now before any one else can. See?’
‘In London?’
‘In London.’
They stared at one another again. They took things for granted in the most
amazing way. ‘I couldn’t,’ said Ann. ‘For one thing, my month’s not up for
mor’n free weeks yet.’ They hung before that for a moment as though it was
insurmountable.
‘Look ’ere, Ann! Arst to go. Arst to go!’’
‘She wouldn’t,’ said Ann.
‘Then come without arsting,’ said Kipps.
‘She’d keep my box —’
‘She won’t.’
 222

‘She will.’
‘She won’t.’
‘You don’t know ‘er.’
‘Well, desh ‘er — let ‘er! LET ‘ER! Who cares? I’ll buy you a ‘undred boxes if
you’ll come.’
‘It wouldn’t be right towards Her.’
‘It isn’t Her you got to think about, Ann. It’s me.’
‘And you ‘aven’t treated me properly,’ she said. ‘You ‘aven’t treated me
properly, Artie. You didn’t ought to ‘ave —’
‘I didn’t say I ‘ad,’ he interrupted, ‘did I? Ann,’ he appealed, ‘I didn’t come to
arguefy. I’m all wrong. I never said I wasn’t. It’s yes or no. Me or not . . . I
been a fool. There! See? I been a fool. Ain’t that enough? I got myself all tied
up with every one and made a fool of myself all round . . . ’
He pleaded, ‘It isn’t as if we didn’t care for one another, Ann.’ She seemed
impassive, and he resumed his discourse.
‘I thought I wasn’t likely ever to see you again, Ann. I reely did. It isn’t as
though I was seein’ you all the time. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I went
and be’aved like a fool — jest as any one might. I know what I want, and I
know what I don’t want now.
‘Ann!’
‘Well?’
‘Will you come? . . . Will you come? . . . ’ Silence.
‘If you don’t answer me, Ann — I’m desprit — if you don’t answer me now,
if you don’t say you’ll come, I’ll go right out now —’
He turned doorward passionately as he spoke, with his threat incomplete.
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I ‘aven’t a friend in the world! I been and throwed
everything away. I don’t know why I done things and why I ‘aven’t. All I
know is I can’t stand nothing in the world any more.’ He choked. ‘The pier,’
he said.
He fumbled with the door-latch, grumbling some inarticulate self-pity, as if
he sought a handle, and then he had it open.
Clearly he was going.
‘Artie!‘said Ann sharply.
He turned about, and the two hung white and tense. ‘I’ll do it,’ said Ann.
 223

His face began to work, he shut the door and came a step back to her,
staring; his face became pitiful, and then suddenly they moved together.
‘Artie!’ she cried, ‘don’t go!’ and held out her arms, weeping. They clung
close to one another . . .
‘Oh, I been so mis’bel!’ cried Kipps, clinging to his lifebuoy; and suddenly his
emotion, having no further serious work in hand, burst its way to a loud
boohoo! His fashionable and expensive gibus flopped off, and fell and rolled
and lay neglected on the floor.
‘I been so mis’bel,’ said Kipps, giving himself vent, ‘Oh, I been so mis’bel,
Ann!’
‘Be quiet,’ said Ann, holding his poor blubbering head tightly to her heaving
shoulder, herself all a-quiver; ‘be quiet. She’s there! Listenin’. She’ll ‘ear you,
Artie, on the stairs . . . ’
6

Ann’s last words when, an hour later, they parted — Mrs. and Miss Bindon
Botting having returned very audibly upstairs — deserve a section to
themselves.
‘I wouldn’t do this for every one, mind you,’ whispered Ann.
 224

CHAPTER 9. THE LABYRINTHODON

You imagine them fleeing through our complex and difficult social system as
it were for life, first on foot and severally to the Folkestone Central Station,
then in a first-class carriage, with Kipps’ bag as sole chaperon to Charing
Cross, and then in a four-wheeler, a long, rumbling, palpitating, slow flight
through the multitudinous swarming London streets to Sid. Kipps kept
peeping out of the window. ‘It’s the next corner after this, I believe,’ he
would say. For he had a sort of feeling that at Sid’s he would be immune
from the hottest pursuit. He paid the cabman in a manner adequate to the
occasion, and turned to his prospective brother-inlaw. ‘Me and Ann,’ he said,
‘we’re going to marry.’
‘But I thought —’ began Sid.
Kipps motioned him towards explanations in the shop.
‘It’s no good my arguing with you,’ said Sid, smiling delightedly as the case
unfolded. ‘You done it now.’ And Masterman, being apprised of the nature
of the affair, descended slowly in a state of flushed congratulation.
‘I thought you might find the Higher Life a bit difficult,’ said Masterman,
projecting a bony hand. ‘But I never thought you’d have the originality to
clear out . . . Won’t the young lady of the superior classes swear! Never mind
— it doesn’t matter anyhow.
‘You were starting a climb,’ he said at dinner, ‘that doesn’t lead anywhere.
You would have clambered from one refinement of vulgarity to another,
and never got to any satisfactory top. There isn’t a top. It’s a squirrel’s cage.
Things are out of joint, and the only top there is in a lot of blazing card-
playing women and betting men, seasoned with archbishops and officials
and all that sort of glossy pandering Tosh . . . You’d have hung on, a
disconsolate, dismal little figure somewhere up the ladder, far below even
the motor-car class, while your wife larked about, or fretted because she
wasn’t a bit higher than she was . . . I found it all out long ago. I’ve seen
women of that sort. And I don’t climb any more.’
‘I often thought about what you said last time I saw you,’ said Kipps.
‘I wonder what I said,’ said Masterman, in parenthesis. ‘Anyhow, you’re
doing the right and sane thing, and that’s a rare spectacle. You’re going to
 225

marry your equal, and you’re going to take your own line, quite
independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you
ought or ought not to do. That’s about the only course one can take
nowadays, with everything getting more muddled and upside down every
day. Make your own little world and your own house first of all; keep that
right side up whatever you do, and marry your mate . . . That, I suppose, it
what I should do —— if I had a mate . . . But people of my sort, luckily for
the world, don’t get made in pairs. No!
‘Besides — However —’ And abruptly, taking advantage of an interruption
by Master Walt, he lapsed into thought.
Presently he came out of his musings. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘there’s Hope.’
‘What about?’ said Sid.
‘Everything,’ said Masterman.
‘Where there’s life there’s hope,’ said Mrs. Sid. ‘But none of you aren’t
eating anything like you ought to.’ Masterman lifted his glass.
‘Here’s to Hope!’ he said, ‘the Light of the World!’
Sid beamed at Kipps, as who should say, ‘You don’t meet a character like
this every dinner-time.’
‘Here’s to Hope!’ repeated Masterman. The best thing one can have. Hope
of life — Yes.’
He imposed his moment of magnificent self-pity on them all. Even young
Walt was impressed.
2

They spent the days before their marriage in a number of agreeable

excursions together. One day they went to Kew by steamboat, and admired
the house full of paintings of flowers extremely; and one day they went
early to have a good long day at the Crystal Palace, and enjoyed themselves
very much indeed. They got there so early that nothing was open inside; all
the stalls were wrappered up, and all the minor exhibitions locked and
barred. They seemed the minutest creatures even to themselves in that
enormous empty aisle, and their echoing footsteps indecently loud. They
contemplated realistic groups of plaster savages, and Ann thought they’d be
queer people to have about. She was glad there were none in this country.
They meditated upon replicas of classical statuary without excessive
comment. Kipps said, at large, it must have been a queer world then; but
Ann very properly doubted if they really went about like that. But the place
 226

at that early hour was really lonely. One began to fancy things. So they went
out into the October sunshine of the mighty terraces, and wandered amidst
miles of stucco tanks, and about those quite Gargantuan grounds. A great
gray emptiness it was, and it seemed marvellous to them, but not nearly so
marvellous as it might have seemed. ‘I never see a finer place, never,’ said
Kipps, turning to survey the entirety of the enormous glass front with
Paxton’s vast image in the centre.
‘What it must ‘ave cost to build!’ said Ann, and left her sentence eloquently
incomplete.
Presently they came to a region of caves and waterways, and amidst these
waterways strange reminders of the possibilities of the Creator. They passed
under an arch made of a whale’s jaws, and discovered amidst herbage,
browsing or standing unoccupied and staring as if amazed at themselves,
huge effigies of iguanodons, and deinotheria, and mastodons and such-like
cattle gloriously done in green and gold.
‘They got everything,’ said Kipps. ‘Earl’s Court isn’t a patch on it.’
His mind was very greatly exercised by these monsters, and he hovered
about them and returned to them. ‘You’d wonder ‘ow they ever got enough
to eat,’ he said several times.
3

It was later in the day, and upon a seat in the presence of the green and gold
Labyrinthodon that looms so splendidly above the lake, that the Kippses fell
into talk about their future. They had made a sufficient lunch in the palace,
they had seen pictures and no end of remarkable things, and that and the
amber sunlight made a mood for them, quiet and philosophical — a haven
mood. Kipps broke a contemplative silence with an abrupt allusion to one
principal preoccupation. ‘I shall offer an ‘pology, and I shall offer ‘er brother
damages. If she likes to bring an action for Breach after that, well — I done
all I can . . . They can’t get much out of reading my letters in court, because I
didn’t write none. I dessay a thousan’ or two’ll settle all that, anyhow. I ain’t
much worried about that. That don’t worry me very much, Ann — No.’
And then, ‘It’s a lark our marrying.
‘It’s curious ‘ow things come about. If I ‘adn’t run against you, where should
I ‘ave been now — eh? . . . Even after we met I didn’t seem to see it like —
not marrying you, I mean — until that night I came. I didn’t — reely.’
‘I didn’t neither,’ said Ann, with thoughtful eyes on the water.
 227

For a time Kipps’ mind was occupied by the prettiness of her thinking face. A
faint tremulous network of lights, reflected, from the ripples of a passing
duck, played subtly over her cheek and faded away.
Ann reflected. ‘I s’pose things ‘ad to be,’ she said.
Kipps mused. ‘It’s curious ‘ow over I got on to be engaged to ‘er.’
‘She wasn’t suited to you,’ said Ann.
‘Suited? No fear! That’s jest it. ‘Ow did it come about?’
‘I expect she led you on,’ said Ann.
Kipps was half minded to assent. Then he had a twinge of conscience. ‘It
wasn’t that, Ann,’ he said. ‘It’s curious. I don’t know what it was, but it
wasn’t that. I don’t recollect . . . No . . . Life’s jolly rum; that’s one thing,
any’ow. And I suppose I’m a rum sort of feller. I get excited sometimes, and
then I don’t seem to care what I do. That’s about what it was reely. Still —’
They meditated, Kipps with his arms folded and pulling at his scanty
moustache. Presently a faint smile came over his face.
‘We’ll get a nice little ’ouse out ‘Ithe way.’
‘It’s ‘omelier than Folkestone,’ said Ann.
‘Jest a nice little ’ouse,’ said Kipps. ‘There’s Hughenden, of course. But that’s
let. Besides being miles too big. And I wouldn’t live in Folkestone again
some’ow — not for anything.’
‘I’d like to ‘ave a ’ouse of my own,’ said Ann. ‘I’ve often thought, being in
service, ‘ow much I’d like to manage a ’ouse of my own.’
‘You’d know all about what the servants was up to, anyhow,’ said Kipps,
amused. ‘Servants! We don’t want no servants,’ said Ann, startled.
‘You’ll ‘ave to ‘ave a servant,’ said Kipps. ‘If it’s only to do the ‘eavy work of
the ’ouse.’
‘What! and not be able ‘ardly to go into my own kitchen?’ said Ann.
‘You ought to ‘ave a servant,’ said Kipps.
‘One could easy ‘ave a woman in for anything that’s ‘eavy,’ said Ann.
‘Besides — If I ‘ad one of the girls one sees about nowadays, I should want
to be taking the broom out of er ‘and and do it all over myself. I’d manage
better without ‘er.’
‘We ought to ‘ave one servant, anyhow,’ said Kipps, ‘else ‘ow should we
manage if we wanted to go out together or anything like that?’
 228

‘I might get a young girl,’ said Ann, ‘and bring ‘er up in my own way.’ Kipps
left the matter at that and came back to the house.
‘There’s little ‘ouses going into Hythe just the sort we want, not too big and
not too small. We’ll ‘ave a kitching and a dining-room and a little room to sit
in of a night.’
‘I mustn’t be a ’ouse with a basement,’ said Ann. ‘What’s a basement?’
‘It’s a downstairs, where there’s not ‘arf enough light and everything got to
be carried — up and down, up and down, all day — coals and everything.
And it’s got to ‘ave a water-tap and sink and things upstairs. You’d ‘ardly
believe, Artie, if you ‘adn’t been in service, ‘ow cruel and silly some ‘ouses
are built — you’d think they ‘ad a spite against servants the way the stairs
are made.’
‘We won’t ‘ave one of that sort,’ said Kipps . . . ‘We’ll ‘ave a quiet little life.
Now go out a bit — now come ‘ome again. Read a book, perhaps, if we got
nothing else to do. ‘Ave old Buggins in for an evening at times. ‘Ave Sid
down. There’s bicycles —’
‘I don’t fancy myself on a bicycle,’ said Ann.
‘‘Ave a trailer,’ said Kipps, ‘and sit like a lady. I’d take you out to New
Romney easy as anything, jest to see the old people.’
‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ said Ann.
‘We’ll jest ‘ave a sensible little ’ouse, and sensible things. No art or anything
of that sort, nothing stuck-up or anything, but jest sensible. We’ll be as right
as anything, Ann.’
‘No Socialism,’ said Ann, starting a lurking doubt.
‘No Socialism,’ said Kipps, ‘just sensible — that’s all.’
‘I dessay it’s all right for them that understand it, Artie, but I don’t agree
with this Socialism.’
‘I don’t neither, reely,’ said Kipps. ‘I can’t argue about it, but it don’t seem
real like to me. All the same, Masterman’s a clever fellow, Ann.’
‘I didn’t like ’im at first, Artie, but I do now — in a way. You don’t understand
’im all at once.’
‘‘E’s so clever,’ said Kipps. ‘‘Arf the time I can’t make out what ‘e’s up to. ‘E’s
the cleverest chap I ever met. I never ‘eard such talking. ‘E ought to write a
book . . . It’s rum world, Ann, when a chap like that isn’t ‘ardly able to earn a
living.’
 229

‘It’s ‘is ‘ealth,’ said Ann.

‘I expect it is,’ said Kipps, and ceased to talk for a little while. ‘We shall be
‘appy in that little ’ouse, Ann, don’t y’ think?’ She met his eyes and nodded.
‘I seem to see it,’ said Kipps, ‘sort of cosy like. ‘Bout tea-time and muffins,
kettle on the ‘ob, cat on the ‘earthrug — we must ‘ave a cat, Ann — and you
there. Eh?’
They regarded each other with appreciative eyes, and Kipps became
irrelevant.
‘I don’t believe, Ann,’ he said, ‘I ‘aven’t kissed you not for ‘arf an hour.
Leastways, not since we was in those caves.’ For kissing had already ceased
to be a matter of thrilling adventure for them.
Ann shook her head. ‘You be sensible and go on talking about Mr.
Masterman,’ she said . . .
But Kipps had wandered to something else. ‘I like the way your ‘air turns
back jest there,’ he said, with an indicative finger. ‘It was like that, I
remember, when you was a girl. Sort of wavy. I’ve often thought of it . . .
‘Member when we raced that time — out be’ind the church?’
Then for a time they sat idly, each following out agreeable meditations. ‘It’s
rum,’ said Kipps.
‘What’s rum?’
‘‘Ow everything’s ‘appened,’ said Kipps. ‘Who’d ‘ave thought of our being
’ere like this six weeks ago? . . . Who’d ‘ave thought of my ever ‘aving any
money?’
His eyes went to the big Labyrinthodon. He looked first carelessly and then
suddenly with a growing interest in its vast face. ‘I’m deshed,’ he murmured.
Ann became interested. He laid a hand on her arm and pointed. Ann
scrutinised the Labyrinthodon, and then came round to Kipps’ face in mute
interrogation.
‘Don’t you see it?’ said Kipps. ‘See what?’ . . .
‘‘E’s jest like old Coote.’
‘It’s extinct,’ said Ann, not clearly apprehending. ‘I dessay ‘e is. But ‘e’s jest
like Old Coote, all the same for that.’
Kipps meditated on the monstrous shapes in sight. ‘I wonder ‘ow all these
old antediluvium animals got extinct,’ he asked. ‘No one couldn’t possibly
‘ave killed ’em.’
 230

‘Why, I know that!’ said Ann. ‘They was overtook by the Flood . . . ’
Kipps meditated for a while. ‘But I thought they had to take two of
everything there was —’
‘Within reason they ‘ad,’ said Ann . . .
The Kippses left it at that.
The great green and gold Labyrinthodon took no notice of their
conversation. It gazed with its wonderful eyes over their heads into the
infinite — inflexibly calm. It might, indeed, have been Coote himself there,
Coote the unassuming, cutting them dead.
There was something about its serenity that suggested patience, suggested
the indifference of a power that waits. In the end this quality, dimly
apprehended, made the Kippses uneasy, and after a while they got up, and
glancing backward, went their way.
4

And in due course these two simple souls married, and Venus Urania, the
Goddess of Wedded Love, who is indeed a very great and noble and kindly
goddess, bent down and blessed their union.
 231

BOOK THREE. KIPPSES

 232

CHAPTER 1. THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Honeymoons and all things come to an end, and you see at last Mr. and Mrs.
Arthur Kipps descending upon the Hythe platform — coming to Hythe to
find that nice little house, to realise that bright dream of a home they had
first talked about in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. They are a valiant
couple, you perceive, but small, and the world is a large, incongruous system
of complex and difficult things. Kipps wears a gray suit, with a wing poke
collar and a neat, smart tie. Mrs. Kipps is the same bright and healthy little
girl-woman you saw in the marsh, not an inch has been added to her stature
in all my voluminous narrative. Only now she wears a hat.
It is a hat very unlike the hats she used to wear on her Sundays out — a
flourishing hat, with feathers and a buckle and bows and things. The price of
that hat would take many people’s breath away — it cost two guineas!
Kipps chose it. Kipps paid for it. They left the shop with flushed cheeks and
smarting eyes, glad to be out of range of the condescending sales-woman.
‘Artie,’ said Ann, ‘you didn’t ought to ‘ave —’
That was all. And, you know, the hat didn’t suit Ann a bit. Her clothes did not
suit her at all. The simple, cheap, clean brightness of her former style had
given place not only to this hat, but to several other things in the same key.
And out from among these things looked her pretty face, the face of a wise
little child — an artless wonder struggling through a preposterous dignity.
They had bought that hat one day when they had gone to see the shops in
Bond Street. Kipps had looked at the passers-by, and it had suddenly
occurred to him that Ann was dowdy. He had noted the hat of a very proud-
looking lady passing in an electric brougham, and had resolved to get Ann
the nearest thing to that.
The railway porters perceived some subtle incongruity in Ann, so did the
knot of cabmen in the station doorway, the two golfers, and the lady with
daughters, who had also got out of the train. And Kipps, a little pale,
blowing a little, not in complete possession of himself, knew that they
noticed her and him. And Ann — It is hard to say just what Ann observed of
these things.
‘‘Ere!’ said Kipps to a cabman, and regretted too late a vanished ‘H.’
 233

‘I got a trunk up there,’ he said to a ticket-inspector, ‘marked A.K.’

‘Ask a porter,’ said the inspector, turning his back.
‘Demn!’ said Kipps, not altogether inaudibly.
2

It is all very well to sit in the sunshine and talk of the house you will have,
and another altogether to achieve it. We English — all the world, indeed,
today — live in a strange atmosphere of neglected great issues, of insistent,
triumphant petty things; we are given up to the fine littlenesses of
intercourse; table manners and small correctitudes are the substance of our
lives. You do not escape these things for long, even by so catastrophic a
proceeding as flying to London with a young lady of no wealth and inferior
social position. The mists of noble emotion swirl and pass, and there you
are, divorced from all your deities, and grazing in the meadows under the
Argus eyes of the social system, the innumerable mean judgments you feel
raining upon you, upon your clothes and bearing, upon your pretensions and
movements.
Our world today is a meanly conceived one — it is only an added meanness
to conceal that fact. For one consequence, it has very few nice little houses.
Such things do not come for the asking; they are not to be bought with
money during ignoble times. Its houses are built on the ground of
monstrously rich, shabbily extortionate land-owners, by poor, parsimonious,
greedy people in a mood of elbowing competition. What can you expect
from such ridiculous conditions? To go house-hunting is to spy out the
nakedness of this pretentious world, to see what our civilisation amounts to
when you take away curtains and flounces and carpets, and all the fluster
and distraction of people and fittings. It is to see mean plans meanly
executed for mean ends, the conventions torn aside, the secrets stripped,
the substance underlying all such Chester Cootery, soiled and worn and left.
So you see our poor dear Kippses going to and fro, in Hythe, in Sandgate, in
Ashford, and Canterbury and Deal and Dover — at last even in Folkestone —
with ‘orders to view,’ pink and green and white and yellow orders to view,
and labelled keys in Kipps’ hand, and frowns and perplexity upon their faces
...
They did not clearly know what they wanted, but whatever it was they saw,
they knew they did not want that. Always they found a confusing multitude
of houses they could not take, and none they could. Their dreams began to
turn mainly on empty, abandoned-looking rooms, with unfaded patches of
 234

paper to mark the place of vanished pictures, and doors that had lost their
keys. They saw rooms floored with boards that yawned apart and were
splintered, skirtings eloquent of the industrious mouse, kitchens with a dead
black-beetle in the empty cupboard, and a hideous variety of coal-holes and
dark cupboards under the stairs. They stuck their little heads through roof
trapdoors, and gazed at disorganised ball-taps, at the black filthiness of
unstopped roofs. There were occasions when it seemed to them that they
must be the victims of an elaborate conspiracy of house agents, so bleak
and cheerless is a second-hand empty house in comparison with the
humblest of inhabited dwellings.
Commonly the houses were too big. They had huge windows that
demanded vast curtains in mitigation, countless bedrooms, acreage of stone
steps to be cleaned, kitchens that made Ann protest. She had come so far
towards a proper conception of Kipps’ social position as to admit the
prospect of one servant. ‘But lor!’ she would say, ‘you’d want a man-servant
in this house.’ When the houses were not too big, then they were almost
always the product of speculative building, of that multitudinous, hasty
building for the extravagant swarm of new births that was the essential
disaster of the nineteenth century. The new houses Ann refused as damp,
and even the youngest of those that had been in use showed remarkable
signs of a sickly constitution — the plaster flaked away, the floors gaped,
the paper moulded and peeled, the doors dropped, the bricks were scaled,
and the railings rusted; Nature, in the form of spiders, earwigs, cockroaches,
mice, rats, fungi, and remarkable smells, was already fighting her way back
...
And the plan was invariably inconvenient, invariably. All the houses they saw
had a common quality for which she could find no word, but for which the
proper word is ‘incivility.’
‘They build these ‘ouses,’ she said, ‘as though girls wasn’t ‘uman beings.’
Sid’s social democracy had got into her blood, perhaps, and, anyhow, they
went about discovering the most remarkable inconsiderateness in the
contemporary house.
‘There’s kitching stairs to go up, Artie!’ Ann would say. ‘Some poor girl’s got
to go up and down, up and down, and be tired out, jest because they
haven’t the sense to leave enough space to give their steps a proper rise —
and no water upstairs anywhere — every drop got to be carried! It’s ‘ouses
like this wear girls out.
‘It’s ‘aving ‘ouses built by men, I believe, makes all the work and trouble,’
said Ann . . .
 235

The Kippses, you see, thought they were looking for a reasonably simple
little contemporary house; but indeed they were looking either for
dreamland or A.D. 1975, or thereabouts, and it hadn’t come.
3

But it was a foolish thing of Kipps to begin building a house.

He did that out of an extraordinary animosity for house-agents he had
conceived.
Everybody hates house-agents, just as everybody loves sailors. It is, no
doubt, a very wicked and unjust hatred, but the business of a novelist is not
ethical principle, but facts. Everybody hates house-agents because they
have everybody at a disadvantage. All other callings have a certain amount
of give and take, the house-agent simply takes. All other callings want you;
your solicitor is afraid you may change him, your doctor cannot go too far,
your novelist — if only you knew it — is mutely abject towards your
unspoken wishes; and as for your tradespeople, milkmen will fight outside
your front door for you, and greengrocers call in tears if you discard them
suddenly; but who ever heard of a house-agent struggling to serve any one?
You want a house; you go to him; you, dishevelled and angry from travel,
anxious, inquiring; he calm, clean, inactive, reticent, quietly doing nothing.
You beg him to reduce rents, whitewash ceilings, produce other houses,
combine the summer-house of No. 6 with the conservatory of No. 4 — much
he cares! You want to dispose of a house; then he is just the same — serene,
indifferent. On one occasion I remember he was picking his teeth all the
time he answered me. Competition is a mockery among house-agents; they
are all alike; you cannot wound them by going to the opposite office, you
cannot dismiss them, you can at most dismiss yourself. They are invulnerably
placed behind mahogany and brass, too far usually even for a sudden swift
lunge with an umbrella; to throw away the keys they lend you instead of
returning them is larceny, and punishable as such . . .
It was a house-agent in Dover who finally decided Kipps to build. Kipps, with
a certain faltering in his voice, had delivered his ultimatum — no basement,
not more than eight rooms, hot and cold water upstairs, coal-cellar in the
house, but with intervening doors to keep dust from the scullery and so
forth. He stood blowing. ‘You’ll have to build a house,’ said the house-agent,
sighing wearily, ‘if you want all that.’ It was rather for the sake of effective
answer than with any intention at the time that Kipps mumbled, ‘That’s
about what I shall do if this goes on.’
Whereupon the house-agent smiled. He smiled!
 236

When Kipps came to turn the thing over his mind, he was surprised to find
quite a considerable intention had germinated and was growing up in him.
After all, lots of people have built houses. How could there be so many if
they hadn’t? Suppose he ‘reely’ did! Then he would go to the house-agent
and say, ‘‘Ere, while you been getting me a sootable ’ouse, blowed if I
‘aven’t built one!’ Go round to all of them — all the house-agents in
Folkestone, in Dover, Ashford, Canterbury, Margate, Ramsgate, saying that
—! Perhaps then they might be sorry.
It was in the small hours that he awoke to a realisation that he had made up
his mind in the matter. ‘Ann,’ he said, ‘Ann’, and also used the sharp of his
elbow.
Ann was at last awakened to the pitch of an indistinct inquiry what was the
matter. ‘I’m going to build a house, Ann.’
‘Eh?’ said Ann, suddenly as if awake.
‘Build a house.’
Ann said something incoherent about he’d better wait until the morning
before he did anything of the sort, and immediately, with a fine trustfulness,
went fast asleep again.
But Kipps lay awake for a long while building his house, and in the morning
at breakfast he made his meaning clear. He had smarted under the
indignities of house-agents long enough, and this seemed to promise
revenge — a fine revenge. ‘And, you know, we might reely make rather a
nice little ’ouse out of it — like we want.’
So resolved, it became possible for them to take a house for a year, with a
basement, no service lift, blackleading to do everywhere, no water upstairs,
no bathroom, vast sash windows to be cleaned from the sill, stone steps
with a twist and open to the rain into the coal-cellar, insufficient cupboards,
unpaved path to the dustbin, no fireplace to the servant’s bedroom, no end
of splintery wood to scrub — in fact, a very typical English middle-class
house. And having added to this house some furniture, and a languid young
person with unauthentic golden hair named Gwendolen, who was engaged
to a sergeant-major and had formerly been in an hotel, having ‘moved in’
and spent some sleepless nights, varied by nocturnal explorations in search
of burglars, because of the strangeness of being in a house for which they
were personally responsible, Kipps settled down for a time and turned
himself with considerable resolution to the project of building a home.
4
 237

At first Kipps gathered advice, finding an initial difficulty in how to begin. He

went into a builder’s shop at Seabrook one day and told the lady in charge
that he wanted a house built. He was breathless, but quite determined, and
he was prepared to give his order there and then; but she temporised with
him, and said her husband was out, and he left without giving his name. Also
he went and talked to a man in a cart, who was pointed out to him by a
workman as the builder of a new house near Saltwood, but he found him
first sceptical and then overpoweringly sarcastic. ‘I suppose you build a
’ouse every ‘oliday,’ he said, and turned from Kipps with every symptom of
contempt.
Afterwards Carshot told alarming stories about builders and shook Kipps’
expressed resolution a good deal, and then Pearce raised the question
whether one ought to go in the first instance to a builder at all, and not
rather to an architect. Pearce knew a man at Ashford whose brother was an
architect, and as it is always better in these matters to get some one you
know, the Kippses decided, before Pearce had gone, and Carshot’s warnings
had resumed their sway, to apply to him. They did so — rather dubiously.
The architect, who was brother of Pearce’s friend, appeared as a small, alert
individual with a black bag and a cylindrical silk hat, and he sat at the dining-
room table, with his hat and his bag exactly equidistant right and left of him,
and maintained a demeanour of impressive woodenness, while Kipps, on
the hearthrug, with a quaking sense of gigantic enterprise, vacillated
answers to his inquiries. Ann held a watching brief for herself, in a position
she had chosen as suitable to the occasion, beside the corner of the carved
oak sideboard. They felt, in a sense, at bay.
The architect began by asking for the site, and seemed a little discomposed
to discover this had still to be found. ‘I thought of building just anywhere,’
said Kipps. ‘I ‘aven’t made up my mind about that yet.’
The architect remarked that he would have preferred to see the site in order
to know where to put what he called his ‘ugly side,’ but it was quite
possible, of course, to plan a house ‘in the air,’ on the level, ‘simply with
back and front assumed’— if they would like to do that. Kipps flushed
slightly, and secretly hoping it would make no great difference in the fees,
said a little doubtfully that he thought that would be all right.
The architect then marked off, as it were, the first section of his subject,
with a single dry cough, opened his bag, took out a spring tape measure,
some hard biscuits, a metal flask, a new pair of dogskin gloves, a clockwork
motor-car partially wrapped in paper, a bunch of violets, a paper of small
brass screws, and, finally, a large distended notebook; he replaced the other
 238

objects carefully, opened his notebook, put a pencil to his lips and said, ‘And
what accommodation will you require?’ To which Ann, who had followed his
every movement with the closest attention and a deepening dread, replied
with the violent suddenness of one who has lain in wait, ‘Cubbuds!’
‘Anyhow,’ she added, catching her husband’s eye.
The architect wrote it down.
‘And how many rooms?’ he said, coming to secondary matters.
The young people regarded one another. It was dreadfully like giving an
order. ‘How many bedrooms, for example?’ asked the architect.
‘One?’ suggested Kipps, inclined now to minimise at any cost.
‘There’s Gwendolen!’ said Ann.
‘Visitors, perhaps,’ said the architect; and temperately, ‘You never know.’
‘Two, p’r’aps?’ said Kipps. ‘We don’t want no more than a little ’ouse, you
know.’
‘But the merest shooting-box —’ said the architect . . .
They got to six, he beat them steadily from bedroom to bedroom, the word
‘nursery’ played across their imaginative skies — he mentioned it as the
remotest possibility — and then six being reluctantly conceded, Ann came
forward to the table, sat down, and delivered herself of one of her prepared
conditions. ‘‘Ot and cold water,’ she said, ‘laid on to each room — any’ow.’
It was an idea long since acquired from Sid.
‘Yes,’ said Kipps, on the hearthrug, ‘‘ot and cold water laid on to each
bedroom — we’ve settled on that.’
It was the first intimation to the architect that he had to deal with a couple
of exceptional originality, and as he had spent the previous afternoon in
finding three large houses in The Builder, which he intended to combine into
an original and copyright design of his own, he naturally struggled against
these novel requirements. He enlarged on the extreme expensiveness of
plumbing, on the extreme expensiveness of everything not already
arranged for in his scheme, and only when Ann declared she’d as soon not
have the house as not have her requirements, and Kipps, blenching the
while, had said he didn’t mind what a thing cost him so long as he got what
he wanted, did he allow a kindred originality of his own to appear beneath
the acquired professionalism of his methods. He dismissed their previous
talk with his paragraphic cough. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind being
unconventional —’
 239

He explained that he had been thinking of a Queen Anne style of

architecture (Ann, directly she heard her name, shook her head at Kipps in
an aside) so far as the exterior went. For his own part, he said, he liked to
have the exterior of a house in a style, not priggishly in a style, but mixed,
with one style uppermost, and the gables and dormers and casements of
the Queen Anne style, with a little roughcast and sham timbering here and
there, and perhaps a bit of an overhang, diversified a house and made it
interesting. The advantages of what he called a Queen Anne style was that it
had such a variety of features . . . Still, if they were prepared to be
unconventional it could be done. A number of houses were now built in the
unconventional style, and were often very pretty. In the unconventional
style one frequently had what perhaps he might call Internal Features — for
example, an old English oak staircase and gallery. White roughcast and
green paint were a good deal favoured in houses of this type.
He indicated that this excursus on style was finished by a momentary use of
his cough, and reopened his notebook, which he had closed to wave about
in a moment of descriptive enthusiasm while expatiating on the unbridled
wealth of External Features associated with Queen Anne. ‘Six bedrooms,’ he
said, moistening his pencil. ‘One with barred windows, suitable for a nursery
if required.’
Kipps endorsed this huskily and reluctantly.
There followed a most interesting discussion upon housebuilding, in which
Kipps played a minor part. They passed from bedrooms to the kitchen and
scullery, and there Ann displayed an intelligent exactingness that won the
expressed admiration of the architect. They were particularly novel upon
the position of the coal-cellar, which Ann held to be altogether too low in
the ordinary house, necessitating much heavy carrying. They dismissed as
impracticable the idea of having coal-cellar and kitchen at the top of the
house, because that would involve carrying all the coal through the house,
and therewith much subsequent cleaning, and for a time they dealt with a
conception of a coal-cellar on the ground floor with a light staircase running
up outside to an exterior shoot. ‘It might be made a Feature,’ said the
architect a little doubtfully, jotting down a note of it. ‘It would be apt to get
black, you know.’
Thence they passed to the alternative of service lifts, and then, by an
inspiration of the architect’s, to the possibilities of gas-heating. Kipps did a
complicated verbal fugue on the theme, ‘gas-heating heats the air,’ with
variable aspirates; he became very red, and was lost to the discussion
altogether for a time, though his lips kept silently moving.
 240

Subsequently the architect wrote to say that he found in his notebook very
full and explicit directions for bow windows to all rooms, for bedrooms, for
water supply, lift, height of stairs and absence of twists therein, for a well-
ventilated kitchen twenty feet square, with two dressers and a large box
window seat, for scullery and out-houses and offices, but nothing whatever
about drawing room, dining-room, library, or study, or approximate cost,
and he awaited further instructions. He presumed there would be a
breakfast-room, dining-room, drawing-room, and study for Mr. Kipps — at
least that was his conception — and the young couple discussed this matter
long and ardently.
Ann was distinctly restrictive in this direction. ‘I don’t see what you want a
drawin’-room and a dinin’ and a kitchen for. If we was going to let in
summer — well and good. But we’re not going to let. Consequently we
don’t want so many rooms. Then there’s a ‘all. What use is a ‘all? It only
makes work. And a study!’
Kipps had been humming and stroking his moustache since he had read the
architect’s letter. ‘I think I’d like a little bit of a study — not a big one, of
course, but one with a desk and bookshelves, like there was in Hughenden.
I’d like that.’
It was only after they had talked to the architect again and seen how
scandalised he was at the idea of not having a drawing-room, that they
consented to that Internal Feature. They consented to please him. ‘But we
shan’t never use it,’ said Ann.
Kipps had his way about a study. ‘When I get that study,’ said Kipps, ‘I shall
do a bit of reading I’ve long wanted to do. I shall make a habit of going in
there and reading something an hour every day. There’s Shakespeare and a
lot of things a man like me ought to read. Besides, we got to ‘ave
somewhere to put the Encyclopaedia. I’ve always thought a study was
about what I’ve wanted all along. You can’t ‘elp reading if you got a study. If
you ‘aven’t, there’s nothing for it, so far’s I can see, but treshy novels.’
He looked down at Ann, and was surprised to see a joyless thoughtfulness
upon her face.
‘Fency, Ann!’ he said not too buoyantly, ‘‘aving a little ’ouse of our own!’
‘It won’t be a little ’ouse,’ said Ann, ‘not with all them rooms.’
Any lingering doubt in that matter was dispelled when it came to plans.
The architect drew three sets of plans on a transparent bluish sort of paper
that smelt abominably. He painted them very nicely; brick-red and ginger,
 241

and arsenic green and a leaden sort of blue, and brought them over to show
our young people. The first set were very simple, with practically no External
Features —‘a plain style,’ he said it was — but it looked a big sort of house,
nevertheless; the second had such extras as a conservatory, bow windows
of various sorts, one roughcast gable and one half-timbered ditto in plaster,
and a sort of overhung veranda, and was much more imposing; and the third
was quite fungoid with External Features, and honeycombed with Internal
ones; it was, he said, ‘practically a mansion,’ and altogether a very noble
fruit of the creative mind of man. It was, he admitted, perhaps almost too
good for Hythe; his art had run away with him and produced a modern
mansion in the ‘best Folkestone style’; it had a central hall with a staircase, a
Moorish gallery, and a Tudor stained-glass window, crenelated battlements
to the leading over the portico, an octagonal bulge with octagonal bay
windows, surmounted by an Oriental dome of metal, lines of yellow bricks
to break up the red, and many other richnesses and attractions. It was the
sort of house, ornate and in its dignified way voluptuous, that a city
magnate might build, but it seemed excessive to the Kippses. The first plan
had seven bedrooms, the second eight, the third eleven; they had, the
architect explained, ‘worked in’ as if they were pebbles in a mountaineer’s
boot.
They’re big ‘ouses,’ said Ann, directly the elevations were unrolled.
Kipps listened to the architect, with round eyes and an exuberant caution in
his manner, anxious not to commit himself further than he had done to the
enterprise, and the architect pointed out the Features and other objects of
interest with the scalpel belonging to a pocket manicure set that he carried.
Ann watched Kipps’ face, and communicated with him furtively over the
architect’s head. ‘Not so big,’ said Ann’s lips.
‘It’s a bit big for what I meant,’ said Kipps, with a reassuring eye on Ann.
‘You won’t think it big when you see it up,’ said the architect; ‘you take my
word for that.’
‘We don’t want no more than six bedrooms,’ said Kipps.
‘Make this one a box-room, then,’ said the architect.
A feeling of impotence silenced Kipps for a time.
‘Now which,’ said the architect, spreading them out, ‘is it to be?’
He flattened down the plans of the most ornate mansion to show it to
better effect.
Kipps wanted to know how much each would cost ‘at the outside,’ which
 242

led to much alarmed signalling from Ann. But the architect could estimate
only in the most general way.
They were not really committed to anything when the architect went away;
Kipps had promised to think it over — that was all.
‘We can’t ‘ave that ’ouse,’ said Ann.
‘They’re miles too big — all of them,’ agreed Kipps.
‘You’d want — Four servants wouldn’t be ‘ardly enough,’ said Ann.
Kipps went to the hearthrug and spread himself. His tone was almost off-
hand. ‘Nex’ time ‘e comes,’ said Kipps, ‘I’ll s’plain to him. It isn’t at all the
sort of thing we want. It’s — it’s a misunderstanding. You got no occasion to
be anxious ‘bout it, Ann.’
‘I don’t see much good reely in building an ’ouse at all,’ said Ann.
‘Oo, we got to build a ’ouse now we begun,’ said Kipps. ‘But now supposin’
we ‘ad —’ He spread out the most modest of the three plans and scratched
his cheek.
6

It was unfortunate that old Kipps came over the next day.
Old Kipps always produced peculiar states of mind in his nephew — a rash
assertiveness, a disposition towards display unlike his usual self. There had
been great difficulty in reconciling both these old people to the Pornick
mésalliance, and at times the controversy echoed in old Kipps’ expressed
thoughts. This, perhaps, it was, and no ignoble vanity, that set the note of
florid successfulness going in Kipps’ conversation whenever his uncle
appeared. Mrs. Kipps was, as a matter of fact, not reconciled at all; she had
declined all invitations to come over on the bus, and was a taciturn hostess
on the one occasion when the young people called at the toy-shop en route
for Mrs. Pornick. She displayed a tendency to sniff that was clearly due to
pride rather than catarrh, and, except for telling Ann she hoped she would
not feel too ‘stuck up’ about her marriage, confined her conversation to her
nephew or the infinite. The call was a brief one, and made up chiefly of
pauses, no refreshment was offered or asked for, and Ann departed with a
singularly high colour. For some reason she would not call at the toy-shop a
second time when they found themselves again in New Romney.
But old Kipps, having adventured over and tried the table of the new
ménage and found it to his taste, showed many signs of softening towards
Ann. He came again, and then again. He would come over by the bus, and,
 243

except when his mouth was absolutely full, he would give his nephew one
solid and continuous mass of advice of the most subtle and disturbing
description until it was time to toddle back to the High Street for the
afternoon bus. He would walk with him to the sea front, and commence
pourparlers with boatmen for the purchase of one of their boats —‘You
ought to keep a boat of your own,’ he said — though Kipps was a singularly
poor sailor — or he would pursue a plan that was forming in his mind in
which he should own and manage what he called ‘weekly’ property in the
less conspicuous streets of Hythe. The cream of that was to be a weekly
collection of rents in person, the nearest approach to feudal splendour left
in this democratised country. He gave no hint of the source of the capital he
designed for this investment, and at times it would appear he intended it as
an occupation for his nephew rather than himself.
But there remained something in his manner towards Ann — in the glances
of scrutiny he gave her unawares, that kept Kipps alertly expansive
whenever he was about; and in all sorts of ways. It was on account of old
Kipps, for example, that our Kipps plunged one day — a golden plunge —
and brought home a box of cummerbundy ninepenny cigars, and
substituted blue label old Methuselah Four Stars for the common and
generally satisfactory white brand.
‘Some of this is whisky, my boy,’ said old Kipps, when he tasted it, smacking
critical lips . . .
‘Saw a lot of young officery fellers coming along,’ said old Kipps. ‘You ought
to join the volunteers, my boy, and get to know a few.’
‘I dessay I shall,’ said Kipps. ‘Later.’
‘They’d make you an officer, you know, ‘n no time. They want officers,’ said
old Kipps. ‘It isn’t every one can afford it. They’d be regular glad to ‘ave you
. . . Ain’t bort a dog yet?’
‘Not yet, Uncle. ‘Ave a segar?’
‘Nor a moty car?’
‘Not yet, Uncle.’
‘There’s no ‘urry about that. End don’t get one of these ’ere trashy cheap
ones when you do get it, my boy. Get one as’ll last a lifetime . . . I’m
surprised you don’t ‘ire a bit more.’
‘Ann don’t seem to fency a moty car,’ said Kipps.
‘Ah,’ said old Kipps, ‘I expect not,’ and glanced a comment at the door. ‘She
 244

ain’t used to going out,’ he said. ‘More at ‘ome indoors.’

‘Fact is,’ said Kipps hastily, ‘we’re thinking of building a ’ouse.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, my boy,’ began old Kipps; but his nephew was routing in
the chiffonier drawer amidst the plans. He got them in time to check some
further comment on Ann. ‘Um,’ said the old gentleman, a little impressed by
the extraordinary odour and the unusual transparency of the tracing-paper
Kipps put into his hands. ‘Thinking of building a ’ouse, are you?’
Kipps began with the most modest of the three projects.
Old Kipps read slowly through his silver-rimmed spectacles, ‘Plan a ’ouse for
Arthur Kipps, Esquire. Um.’
He didn’t warm to the project all at once, and Ann drifted into the room to
find him still scrutinising the architect’s proposals a little doubtfully.
‘We couldn’t find a decent ’ouse anywhere,’ said Kipps, leaning against the
table and assuming an off-hand note.
‘I didn’t see why we shouldn’t run up one for ourselves.’ Old Kipps could not
help liking the tone of that. ‘We thought we might see —’ said Ann.
‘It’s a spekerlation, of course,’ said old Kipps, and held the plan at a distance
of two feet or more from his glasses and frowned. This isn’t exactly the
’ouse I should expect you to ‘ave thought of though,’ he said, ‘Practically,
it’s a villa. It’s the sort of ’ouse a bank clerk might ‘ave. T’isn’t what I should
call a gentleman’s ’ouse, Artie.’
‘It’s plain, of course,’ said Kipps, standing beside his uncle and looking down
at this plan, which certainly did seem a little less magnificent now than it had
at the first encounter.
‘You mustn’t ‘ave it too plain,’ said old Kipps. ‘If it’s comfortable —’ Ann
hazarded.
Old Kipps glanced at her over his spectacles. ‘You ain’t comfortable, my gel,
in this world, not if you don’t live up to your position’— so putting
compactly into contemporary English that fine old phrase noblesse oblige.
‘A ’ouse of this sort is what a retired tradesman might ‘ave, or some little
whipper-snapper of a s’licitor. But you —’
‘Course that isn’t the on’y plan,’ said Kipps, and tried the middle one.
But it was the third one won over old Kipps. ‘Now, that’s a ’ouse, my boy,’
he said at the sight of it.
Ann came and stood just behind her husband’s shoulder, while old Kipps
 245

expanded upon the desirability of the larger scheme. ‘You ought to ‘ave a
billiard-room,’ he said; ‘I don’t see that, but all the rest’s about right! A lot of
these ’ere officers ’ere ‘ud be glad of a game of billiards . . .
‘What’s all these pots? said old Kipps.
‘S’rubbery,’ said Kipps. ‘Flow’ing s’rubs.’
‘There’s eleven bedrooms in that ’ouse,’ said Ann. ‘It’s a bit of a lot, ain’t it,
Uncle?’
‘You’ll want ’em, my girl. As you get on you’ll be ‘aving visitors. Friends of
your ‘usband’s, p’r’aps, from the School of Musketry — what you want ’im
to get on with. You can’t never tell.’
‘If we ‘ave a great s’rubbery,’ Ann ventured, ‘we shall ‘ave to keep a
gardener.’
‘If you don’t ‘ave a s’rubbery,’ said old Kipps, with a note of patient
reasoning, ‘‘ow are you to prevent every jackanapes that goes by starin’ into
your drorin’-room winder — p’r’aps when you get some one a bit special to
entertain?’
‘We ain’t used to a s’rubbery,’ said Ann, mulishly; ‘we get on very well ’ere.’
‘It isn’t what you’re used to,’ said old Kipps, ‘it’s what you ought to ‘ave
now.’ And with that Ann dropped out of the discussion.
‘Study and lib’ry,’ old Kipps read. That’s right. I see a Tantalus the other day
over Brookland, the very thing for a gentleman’s study. I’ll try and get over
and bid for it . . . ’
By bus time old Kipps was quite enthusiastic about the house-building, and it
seemed to be definitely settled that the largest plan was the one decided
upon.
But Ann had said nothing further in the matter.
7

When Kipps returned from seeing his uncle into the bus — there always
seemed a certain doubt whether that portly figure would go into the little
red ‘Tip-top’ box — he found Ann still standing by the table, looking with an
expression of comprehensive disapproval at the three plans.
‘There don’t seem much the matter with Uncle,’ said Kipps, assuming the
hearthrug, ‘spite of ‘is ‘eartburn. ‘E ‘opped up them steps like a bird.’
Ann remained staring at the plans.
 246

‘You don’t like them plans?’ hazarded Kipps.

‘No; I don’t, Artie.’
‘We got to build somethin’ now.’
‘But — It’s a gentleman’s ’ouse, Artie!’
‘It’s — it’s a decent size, o’ course.’
Kipps took a flirting look at the drawing and went to the window.
‘Look at the cleanin’. Free servants’ll be lost in that ’ouse, Artie.’
‘We must ‘ave servants,’ said Kipps.
Ann looked despondently at her future residence.
‘We got to keep up our position any’ow,’ said Kipps, turning towards her. ‘It
stands to reason, Ann, we got a position. Very well! I can’t ‘ave you scrubbin’
floors. You got to ‘ave a servant, and you got to manage a ’ouse. You
wouldn’t ‘ave me ashamed —’
Ann opened her lips and did not speak.
‘What?’ asked Kipps.
‘Nothing,’ said Ann, ‘only I did want it to be a little ’ouse, Artie. I wanted it to
be a ‘andy little ’ouse, jest for us.’
Kipps’ face was suddenly flushed and obstinate. He took up the curiously
smelling tracings again. ‘I’m not agoing to be looked down upon,’ he said.
‘It’s not only Uncle I’m thinking of!’
Ann stared at him.
Kipps went on. ‘I won’t ‘ave that young Walshingham f’r instance, sneering
and sniffing at me. Making out at if we was all wrong. I see ’im yesterday . . .
Nor Coote neether. I’m as good — we’re as good — whatever’s ‘appened.’
Silence, and the rustle of plans.
He looked up and saw Ann’s eyes bright with tears. For a moment the two
stared at one another. ‘We’ll ‘ave the big ’ouse,’ said Ann, with a gulp. ‘I
didn’t think of that, Artie.’
Her aspect was fierce and resolute, and she struggled with emotion. ‘We’ll
‘ave the big ’ouse,’ she repeated. ‘They shan’t say I dragged you down wiv
me — none of them shan’t say that. I’ve thought — I’ve always been afraid
of that.’
Kipps looked again at the plan, and suddenly the grand house had become
very grand indeed. He blew.
 247

‘No, Artie. None of them shan’t say that,’ and, with something blind in her
motions, Ann tried to turn the plan round to her . . . now he did not know
how to say it.
And so the plans went out to the builders, and in a little while Kipps was
committed to two thousand five hundred pounds’ worth of building. But
then, you know, he had an income of twelve hundred a year.
8

It is extraordinary what minor difficulties cluster about housebuilding.

‘I say, Ann,’ remarked Kipps one day. ‘We shall ‘ave to call this little ’ouse by
a name. I was thinking of ‘‘Ome Cottage.’ But I dunno whether ‘Ome
Cottage is quite the thing like. All these little fisherman’s places are called
Cottages.’
‘I like ‘Cottage,’’ said Ann.
‘It’s got eleven bedrooms, y’see’, said Kipps. ‘I don’t see ‘ow you call it a
cottage with more bedrooms than four. Prop’ly speaking, it’s a Large Villa.
Prop’ly it’s almost a Big ‘Ouse. Leastways a ‘Ouse.’
‘Well,’ said Ann, ‘if you must call it Villa — Home Villa . . . I wish it wasn’t.’
Kipps meditated.
‘‘Ow about Eureka Villa?’ he said, raising his voice.
‘What’s Eureka?’
‘It’s a name,’ he said. ‘There used to be Eureka Dress Fasteners. There’s lots
of names, come to think of it, to be got out of a shop. There’s Pyjama Villa. I
remember that in the hosiery. No, come to think, that wouldn’t do. But
Maraposa — sort of oatmeal cloth, that was . . . No! Eureka’s better.’
Ann meditated. ‘It seems silly like to ‘ave a name that don’t mean much.’
‘Perhaps it does,’ said Kipps. ‘Though it’s what people ‘ave to do.’
He became meditative. ‘I got it!’ he cried.
‘Not Oreeka!’ said Ann.
‘No! There used to be a ’ouse at Hastings opposite our school — quite a big
’ouse it was — St. Ann’s. Now that —’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Kipps, with decision. ‘Thanking you kindly, but I don’t have no
butcher boys making game of me . . . ’
They consulted Carshot, who suggested, after some days of reflection,
Waddycombe, as a graceful reminder of Kipps’ grandfather; old Kipps, who
 248

was for ‘Upton Manor House,’ where he had once been second footman;
Buggins, who favoured either a stern, simple number, ‘Number One’— if
there were no other houses there, or something patriotic, as ‘Empire Villa’;
and Pearce, who inclined to ‘Sandringham’; but in spite of all this help they
were still undecided, when amidst violent perturbations of the soul and
after the most complex and difficult haggling, wranglings, fears, muddles,
and goings to and fro, Kipps became the joyless owner of a freehold plot of
three-eighths of an acre, and saw the turf being wheeled away from the site
that should one day be his home.
 249

CHAPTER 2. THE CALLERS

The Kippses sat at their midday dinner-table amidst the vestiges of rhubarb
pie, and discussed two post cards the one o’clock post had brought. It was a
rare, bright moment of sunshine in a wet and windy day in the March that
followed their marriage. Kipps was attired in a suit of brown, with a tie of
fashionable green, while Ann wore one of those picturesque loose robes
that are usually associated with sandals and advanced ideas. But there
weren’t any sandals on Ann or any advanced ideas, and the robe had come
quite recently through the counsels of Mrs. Sid. Pornick. ‘It’s Art-like,’ said
Kipps, but giving way. ‘It’s more comfortable,’ said Ann. The room looked
out by French windows upon a little patch of green and the Hythe parade.
The parade was all shiny wet with rain, and the green-gray sea tumbled and
tumbled between parade and sky.
The Kipps furniture, except for certain chromolithographs of Kipps’
incidental choice, that struck a quiet note amidst the wall-paper, had been
tactfully forced by an expert salesman, and it was in a style of mediocre
elegance. There was a sideboard of carved oak that had only one fault — it
reminded Kipps at times of woodcarving, and its panel of bevelled glass now
reflected the back of his head. On its shelf were two books from Parsons’
Library, each with a ‘place’ marked by a slip of paper; neither of the Kippses
could have told you the title of either book they read, much less the author’s
name. There was an ebonised overmantel set with phials and pots of
brilliant colour, each duplicated by looking-glass, and bearing also a pair of
Japanese jars made in Birmingham, a wedding-present from Mr. and Mrs.
Sidney Pornick, and several sumptuous Chinese fans. And there was a
Turkey carpet of great richness. In addition to these modern exploits of
Messrs. Bunt and Bubble, there were two inactive tall clocks, whose
extreme dilapidation appeal to the connoisseur; a terrestrial and a celestial
globe, the latter deeply indented; a number of good old iron-moulded and
dusty books; and a stuffed owl, wanting one (easily replaceable) glass eye,
obtained by the exertions of Uncle Kipps. The table equipage was as much
as possible like Mrs. Bindon Botting’s, only more costly, and in addition
there were green and crimson wine-glasses — though the Kippses never
drank wine . . .
Kipps turned to the more legible of his two post cards again.
 250

‘‘Unavoidably prevented from seein’ me today,’ ‘e says. I like ‘is cheek. After
I give ’im ‘is start and everything.’
He blew.
‘‘E certainly treats you a bit orf and,’ said Ann.
Kipps gave vent to his dislike of young Walshingham.
‘He’s getting too big for ‘is britches,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to wish she ‘ad
brought an action for breach. Ever since ‘e said the wouldn’t, ‘e’s seemed to
think I’ve got no right to spend my own money.’
‘‘E’s never liked your building the ’ouse,’ said Ann.
Kipps displayed wrath. ‘What the goodness ‘as it got to do wiv ’im?’
‘Overmantel, indeed!’ he added; ‘Overmantel! . . . ‘E tries that on with me —
I’ll tell ’im something ‘e won’t like.’
He took up the second card. ‘Dashed if I can read a word of it. I can just
make out Chit’low at the end, and that’s all.’
He scrutinised it. ‘It’s like some one in a fit writing. This here might be W-H-A-
T— what. P-R-I-C-E— I got it! What price Harry now? It was a sort of saying
of ‘is. I expect ‘e’s either done something or not done something towards
starting that play, Ann.’
‘I expect that’s about it,’ said Ann.
Kipps grunted with effort. ‘I can’t read the rest,’ he said at last, ‘nohow.’
A thoroughly annoying post. He pitched the card on the table, stood up and
went to the window, where Ann, after a momentary reconnaissance at
Chitterlow’s hieroglyphics, came to join him.
‘Wonder what I shall do this afternoon,’ said Kipps, with his hands deep in
his pockets. He produced and lit a cigarette.
‘Go for a walk, I s’pose,’ said Ann.
‘I been for a walk this morning.’
‘S’pose I must go for another,’ he added, after an interval.
They regarded the windy waste of sea for a space.
‘Wonder why it is ‘e won’t see me,’ said Kipps, returning to the problem of
young Walshingham. ‘It’s all lies about ‘is being too busy.’
Ann offered no solution.
‘Rain again!’ said Kipps — as the lash of the little drops stung the window.
 251

‘Oo, bother!’ said Kipps, ‘you got to do something. Look ’ere, Ann! I’ll go orf
for a reg’lar tramp through the rain, up by Saltwood, round by Newington,
over the camp, and so round and back, and see ‘ow they’re getting on about
the ’ouse. See? And look ’ere! — you get Gwendolen to go out a bit before I
come back. If it’s still rainy, she can easy go round and see ‘er sister. Then
we’ll ‘ave a bit of tea, with teacake — all buttery — see? Toce it ourselves,
p’r’aps. Eh?’
‘I dessay I can find something to do in the ’ouse,’ said Ann, considering.
‘You’ll take your mackintosh and leggings, I s’pose? You’ll get wet without
your mackintosh over those roads.’
‘Right-o,’ said Kipps; and went to ask Gwendolen for his brown leggings and
his other pair of boots.
2

Things conspired to demoralise Kipps that afternoon.

When he got outside the house everything looked so wet under the drive of
the south-wester that he abandoned the prospect of the clay lanes towards
Newington altogether, and turned east to Folkestone along the Seabrook
digue. His mackintosh flapped about him, the rain stung his cheek; for a time
he felt a hardy man. And then as abruptly the rain ceased and the wind fell,
and before he was through Sandgate High Street it was a bright spring day.
And there was Kipps in his mackintosh and squeaky leggings, looking like a
fool!
Inertia carried him another mile to the Leas, and there the whole world was
pretending there had never been such a thing as rain — ever. There wasn’t a
cloud in the sky; except for an occasional puddle, the asphalte paths looked
as dry as a bone. A smartly dressed man, in one of those overcoats that look
like ordinary cloth, and are really most deceitfully and unfairly waterproof,
passed him and glanced at the stiff folds of his mackintosh. ‘Demn!’ said
Kipps. His mackintosh swished against his leggings, his leggings piped and
whistled over his boot-tops.
‘Why do I never get anything right?’ Kipps asked of a bright, implacable
universe.
Nice old ladies passed him, refined people with tidy umbrellas, bright,
beautiful, supercilious-looking children. Of course, the right thing for such a
day as this was a light overcoat and an umbrella. A child might have known
that. He had them at home, but how could one explain that? He decided to
turn down by the Harvey monument and escape through Clifton Gardens
 252

towards the hills. And thereby he came upon Coote.

He already felt the most abject and propitiatory of social outcasts when he
came upon Coote, and Coote finished him. He passed within a yard of Coote.
Coote was coming along towards the Leas, and when Kipps saw him his legs
hesitated about their office, and he seemed to himself to stagger about all
over the footpath. At the sight of him Coote started visibly. Then a sort of
rigor vitae passed through his frame, his jaw protruded and errant bubbles
of air seemed to escape and run about beneath his loose skin. (Seemed, I
say — I am perfectly well aware that there is really connective tissue in
Coote, as in all of us, to prevent anything of the sort.) His eyes fixed
themselves on the horizon and glazed. As he went by Kipps could hear his
even, resolute breathing. He went by, and Kipps staggered on into a
universe of dead cats and dust-heaps, rind and ashes — cut!
It was part of the inexorable decrees of Providence that almost immediately
afterwards the residuum of Kipps had to pass a very, very long and
observant-looking girls’ school.
Kipps recovered consciousness again on the road between Shorncliffe
station and Cheriton, though he cannot remember, indeed, to this day he
has never attempted to remember, how he got there. And he was back at
certain thoughts suggested by his last night’s novel-reading, that linked up
directly with the pariah-like emotions of these last encounters. The novel lay
at home upon the chiffonier; it was one about society and politics — there is
no need whatever to give the title or name the author — written with a
heavy-handed thoroughness that overrode any possibility of resistance on
the part of the Kipps’ mind. It had crushed all his poor edifice of ideals, his
dreams of a sensible, unassuming existence, of snugness, of not caring what
people said, and all the rest of it, to dust; it had reinstated, squarely and
strongly again, the only proper conception of English social life. There was a
character in the book who trifled with Art, who was addicted to reading
French novels, who dressed in a loose, careless way, who was a sorrow to
his dignified, silvery haired, politico-religious mother, and met the
admonitions of bishops with a front of brass. He treated a ‘nice girl,’ to
whom they had got him engaged, badly; he married beneath him — some
low thing or other. And sank . . .
Kipps could not escape the application of the case. He was enabled to see
how this sort of thing looked to decent people; he was enabled to gauge the
measure of the penalties due. His mind went from that to the frozen marble
of Coote’s visage.
He deserved it!
 253

That day of remorse! Later it found him upon the site of his building
operations and surveying the disorder of preparation in a mood near to
despair, his mackintosh over his arm.
Hardly any one was at work that day — no doubt the builders were having
him in some obscure manner — and the whole place seemed a dismal and
depressing litter. The builder’s shed, black lettered WILKINS, BUILDER,
HYTHE, looked like a stranded thing amidst a cast-up disorder of
wheelbarrows and wheeling planks, and earth, and sand, and bricks. The
foundations of the walls were trenches full of damp concrete, drying in
patches; the rooms — it was incredible they could ever be rooms — were
shaped out as squares and oblongs of coarse wet grass and sorrel. They
looked absurdly small — dishonestly small. What could you expect? Of
course the builders were having him, building too small, building all wrong,
using bad materials! Old Kipps had told him a wrinkle or two. The builders
were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody was
having him! They were having him and laughing at him because they didn’t
respect him. They didn’t respect him because he couldn’t do things right.
Who could respect him? . . .
He was an outcast, he had no place in the society of mankind. He had had his
chance in the world and turned his back on it. He had ‘behaved badly’— that
was the phrase . . .
Here a great house was presently to arise — a house to be paid for, a house
neither he nor Ann could manage — with eleven bedrooms, and four
disrespectful servants having them all the time!
How had it all happened exactly?
This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had
really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better
everything might have been! If he had got a tutor — that had been in his
mind originally — a special sort of tutor, to show him everything right. A
tutor for gentlemen of neglected education. If he had read more and
attended better to what Coote had said . . .
Coote, who had just cut him! . . .
Eleven bedrooms! What had possessed him? No one would ever come to see
them; no one would ever have anything to do with them. Even his aunt cut
him! His uncle treated him with a half-contemptuous sufferance. He had not
a friend worth counting in the world! Buggins, Carshot, Pearce — shop
assistants! The Pornicks — a low, Socialist lot! He stood among his
foundations like a lonely figure among ruins; he stood among the ruins of his
 254

future, and owned himself a foolish and mistaken man. He saw himself and
Ann living out their shameful lives in this great crazy place — as it would be
— with everybody laughing secretly at them, and the eleven bedrooms and
nobody approaching them — nobody nice and right, that is — for ever. And
Ann!
What was the matter with Ann? She’d given up going for walks lately, got
touchy and tearful, been fitful with her food. Just when she didn’t ought to.
It was all a part of the judgment upon wrong-doing; it was all part of the
social penalties that Juggernaut of a novel had brought home to his mind.
3

He let himself in with his latch-key. He went moodily into the dining-room
and got out the plans to look at them. He had a vague hope that there
would prove to be only ten bedrooms. But he found there were still eleven.
He became aware of Ann standing over him. ‘Look ’ere, Artie!’ said Ann.
He looked up and found her holding a number of white oblongs. His
eyebrows rose.
‘It’s Callers,’ said Ann.
He put his plans aside slowly, and took and read the cards in silence, with a
sort of solemnity. Callers! then perhaps he wasn’t to be left out of the world
after all. Mrs. G. Porrett Smith; Miss Porrett Smith; Miss Mabel Porrett
Smith; and two smaller cards of the Rev. G. Porrett Smith. ‘Lor!’ he said.
‘Clergy!’
‘There was a lady,’ said Ann, ‘and two growed-up gels — all dressed up!’
‘And ’im?’
There wasn’t no ’im.’
‘Not —?’ He held out the little card.
‘No. There was a lady and two young ladies.’
‘But — these cards! Whad they go and leave these two little cards with the
Rev. G. Smith on for? Not if ‘e wasn’t with ’em.’
‘‘E wasn’t with ’em.’
‘Not a little chap — dodgin’ about be’ind the others? And didn’t come in?’
‘I didn’t see no gentleman with them at all,’ said Ann.
‘Rum!’ said Kipps. A half-forgotten experience came back to him. ‘I know,’
he said, waving the reverend gentleman’s card, ‘‘e give ’em the slip; that’s
 255

what he’d done. Gone off while they was rapping before you let ’em in. It’s a
fair call any’ow.’ He felt a momentary base satisfaction at his absence. ‘What
did they talk about, Ann?’
There was a pause. ‘I didn’t let ’em in,’ said Ann.
He looked up suddenly and perceived that something unusual was the
matter with Ann. Her face was flushed, her eyes were red and hard.
‘Didn’t let ’em in?’
‘No! They didn’t come in at all.’ He was too astonished for words.
‘I answered the door,’ said Ann. ‘I’d been upstairs, ‘namelling the floor. ‘Ow
was I to think about Callers, Artie? We ain’t never ‘ad Callers, all the time we
been ’ere. I’d sent Gwendolen out for a bref of fresh air, and there I was
upstairs, ‘namelling that floor she done so bad, so’s to get it done before
she came back. I thought I’d ‘namel that floor and then get tea, and ‘ave it
quiet with you, toce and all, before she came back. ‘Ow was I to think about
Callers?’
She paused. ‘Well,’ said Kipps, ‘what then?’
‘They came and rapped. ‘Ow was I to know? I thought it was a tradesman or
something. Never took my apron off, never wiped the ‘namel off my ‘ands
— nothin’. There they was!’
She paused again. She was getting to the disagreeable part. ‘Wad they say?’
said Kipps.
‘She says, ‘Is Mrs. Kipps at home?’ See? To me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And me all painty and no cap on and nothing, neither missis nor servant like.
There, Artie, I could ‘a sunk through the floor with shame, I really could. I
could ‘ardly get my voice. I couldn’t think of nothing to say but just ‘Not at
‘Ome,’ and out of ‘abit like I ‘eld the tray. And they give me the cards and
went, and ‘ow I shall ever look that lady in the face again I don’t know . . .
And that’s all about it, Artie! They looked me up and down they did, and
then I shut the door on ’em.’
‘Goo!’ said Kipps.
Ann went and poked the fire needlessly with a passion-quivering hand.
‘I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad that ‘appen for five pounds,’ said Kipps. ‘Clergyman and
all!’
Ann dropped the poker into the fender with some éclat, and stood up and
 256

looked at her hot face in the glass. Kipps’ disappointment grew. ‘You did
ought to ‘ave known better than that, Ann! You reely did.’
He sat forward, cards in hand, with a deepening sense of social disaster. The
plates were laid upon the table, toast sheltered under a cover at mid-fender,
the teapot warmed beside it, and the kettle, just lifted from the hob, sang
amidst the coals. Ann glanced at him for a moment, then stooped with the
kettle-holder to wet the tea.
‘Tcha!’ said Kipps, with his mental state developing.
‘I don’t see it’s any use getting in a state about it now,’ said Ann.
‘Don’t you! I do. See? ‘Ere’s these peoples, good people, want to ‘ssociate
with us, and ’ere you go and slap ’em in the face!’
‘I didn’t slap ’em in the face.’
‘You do — practically. You slams the door in their face, and that’s all we see
of ’em ever! I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad this ‘appen not for a ten-pound note.’
He rounded his regrets with a grunt. For a while there was silence, save for
the little stir of Ann’s few movements preparing tea.
‘Tea, Artie,’ said Ann, handing him a cup. Kipps took it.
‘I put sugar once,’ said Ann.
‘Oo, dash it! Oo cares?’ said Kipps, taking an extraordinarily large additional
lump with fury-quivering fingers, and putting his cup, with a slight excess of
force on the recess cupboard. ‘Oo cares?’
‘I wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad that ‘appen,’ he said, bidding steadily against
accomplished things, ‘for twenty pounds.’ He gloomed in silence through a
long minute or so.
Then Ann said the fatal thing that exploded him. ‘Artie!’ she said.
‘What?’
‘There’s Buttud Toce down there! By your foot!’
There was a pause, husband and wife regarded one another.
‘Buttud Toce, indeed!’ he said. ‘You go and mess up them callers, and then
you try and stuff me up with Buttud Toce! Buttud Toce, indeed! ‘Ere’s our
first chance of knowing anyone that’s at all fit to ‘sociate with — Look ’ere,
Ann! Tell you what it is — you got to return that call.’
‘Return that call!’
‘Yes — you got to return that call. That’s what you got to do! I know —’ He
 257

waved his arm vaguely towards the miscellany of books in the recess. ‘It’s in
Manners and Rools of Good S’ity. You got to find jest ‘ow many cards to
leave, and you got to go and leave ’em. See?’
Ann’s face expressed terror. ‘But, Artie!’
‘‘Ow can I?’
‘‘Ow can you?’ ‘Ow could you? You got to do it, any’ow. They won’t know
you — not in your Bond Street ‘At! If they do, they won’t say nothing.’
His voice assumed a note of entreaty. ‘You mus’, Ann.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You mus’.’
‘I can’t, and I won’t. Anything in reason I’ll do, but face those people again I
can’t — after what ‘as ‘appened.’
‘You won’t?’
‘No!’ . . .
‘So there they go — orf! And we never see them again! And so it goes on! So
it goes on! We don’t know nobody, and we shan’t know anybody! And you
won’t put yourself out not a little bit, or take the trouble to find out
anything ‘ow it ought to be done.’
Terrible pause.
‘I never ought to ‘ave merried you, Artie, that’s the troof.’
‘Oh, don’t go into that!’
‘I never ought to have merried you, Artie. I’m not equal to the position. If
you ‘adn’t said you’d drown yourself —’
She choked.
‘I don’ see why you shouldn’t try, Ann — I’ve improved.
‘Why don’t you? ‘Stead of which you go sending out the servant and
‘namelling floors, and then when visitors come —’
‘‘Ow was I to know about y’r old visitors?’ cried Ann in a wail, and suddenly
got up and fled from amidst their ruined tea, the tea of which ‘toce, all
buttery,’ was to be the crown and glory.
Kipps watched her with a momentary consternation. Then he hardened his
heart. ‘Ought to ‘ave known better,’ he said, ‘goin’ on like that!’ He
remained for a space rubbing his knees and muttering. He emitted
scornfully, ‘I carn’t, an’ I won’t.’ He saw her as the source of all his shames.
 258

Presently, quite mechanically, he stooped down and lifted the flowery china
cover. ‘Ter dash ‘er Buttud Toce!’ he shouted at the sight of it, and clapped
the cover down again hard . . .
When Gwendolen came back she perceived things were in a slightly unusual
poise. Kipps sat by the fire in a rigid attitude, reading a casually selected
volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Ann was upstairs and
inaccessible — to reappear at a later stage with reddened eyes. Before the
fire, and still in a perfectly assimilable condition, was what was evidently an
untouched supply of richly buttered toast under a cracked cover.
‘They’ve ‘ad a bit of a tiff,’ said Gwendolen, attending to her duties in the
kitchen with her outdoor hat still on, and her mouth full. ‘They’re rummuns
— if ever! My eye!’
And she took another piece of Ann’s generously buttered toast.
4

The Kippses spoke no more that day to one another.

The squabble about cards and buttered toast was as serious to them as the
most rational of differences. It was all rational to them. Their sense of wrong
burnt within them; their sense of what was owing to themselves, the duty of
implacability, the obstinacy of pride. In the small hours Kipps lay awake at
the nadir of unhappiness, and came near groaning. He saw life as an
extraordinarily desolating muddle; his futile house, his social discredit, his
bad behaviour to Helen, his low marriage with Ann . . .
He became aware of something irregular in Ann’s breathing . . .
He listened. She was awake, and quietly and privately sobbing! . . .
He hardened his heart, resolutely he hardened his heart. And presently Ann
lay still.
5

The stupid little tragedies of these clipped and limited lives!

As I think of them lying unhappily there in the darkness, my vision pierces
the night. See what I can see! Above them, brooding over them, I tell you
there is a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great, clumsy griffin thing,
like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden goddess of
the Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all
that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life. It is matter and darkness,
it is the anti-soul, it is the ruling power of this land, Stupidity. My Kippses live
 259

in its shadow. Shalford and his apprenticeship system, the Hastings

Academy, the ideas of Coote, the ideas of the old Kippses, all the ideas that
have made Kipps what he is — all these are a part of its shadow. But for that
monster they might not be groping among false ideas to hurt one another
so sorely; but for that, the glowing promise of childhood and youth might
have had a happier fruition; thought might have awakened in them to meet
the thought of the world, the quickening sunshine of literature pierced to
the substance of their souls; their lives might not have been divorced, as
now they are divorced, from the apprehension of beauty that we favoured
ones are given — the vision of the Grail that makes life fine for ever. I have
laughed, and I laugh at these two people; I have sought to make you laugh
...
But I see through the darkness the souls of my Kippses as they are, as little
pink strips of quivering, living stuff, as things like the bodies of little, ill-
nourished, ailing, ignorant children — children who feel pain, who are
naughty and muddled and suffer, and do not understand why. And the claw
of this Beast rests upon them!
 260

CHAPTER 3. TERMINATIONS

Next morning came a remarkable telegram from Folkestone. ‘Please come

at once — urgent — Walshinghams,’ said the telegram, and Kipps, after an
agitated but still ample breakfast, departed . . .
When he returned his face was very white, and his countenance disordered.
He let himself in with his latchkey and came into the dining-room, where
Ann sat, affecting to work at a little thing she called a bib. She heard his hat
fall in the hall before he entered, as though he had missed the peg. ‘I got
something to tell you, Ann,’ he said, disregarding their overnight quarrel,
and went to the hearthrug and took hold of the mantel and stared at Ann as
though the sight of her was novel.
‘Well?’ said Ann, not looking up, and working a little faster.
‘‘E’s gone!’
Ann looked up sharply, and her hands stopped. ‘Who’s gone?’ For the first
time she perceived Kipps’ pallor. ‘Young Walshingham — I saw ‘er, and she
tole me.’
‘Gone! What d’you mean?’
‘Cleared out! Gone off for good!’
‘What for?’
‘For ‘is ‘ealth,’ said Kipps, with sudden bitterness. ‘‘E’s been speckylating.
He’s speckylated our money, and ‘e’s speckylated their money, and now ‘e’s
took ‘is hook. That’s all about it, Ann.’
‘You mean —?’
‘I mean ‘e’s orf, and our twenty-four fousand’s orf too! And ’ere we are!
Smashed up! That’s all about it, Ann.’ He panted.
Ann had no vocabulary for such an occasion. ‘Oh, Lor!’ she said, and sat still.
Kipps came about and stuck his hands deeply in his trouser pockets.
‘Speckylated every penny — lorst it all — and gorn.’
Even his lips were white.
‘You mean we ain’t got nothing’ left, Artie?’
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‘Not a penny! Not a bloomin’ penny, Ann. No!’

A gust of passion whirled across the soul of Kipps. He flung out a knuckly
fist. ‘If I ‘ad ’im ’ere,’ he said, ‘I’d — I’d — I’d wring ‘is neck for ’im. I’d — I’d
—’ His voice rose to a shout. He thought of Gwendolen in the kitchen, and
fell to, ‘Ugh!’
‘But, Artie,’ said Ann, trying to grasp it,‘d’you mean to say he’s took our
money?’
‘Speckylated it!’ said Kipps, with an illustrative flourish of the arm that failed
to illustrate. ‘Bort things dear and sold’ em cheap, and played the
‘ankeypankey jackass with everything we got. That’s what I mean ‘e’s done,
Ann.’ He repeated this last sentence with the addition of violent adverbs.
‘D’you mean to say our money’s gone, Artie?’
‘Ter-dash it, Yes, Ann!’ swore Kipps, exploding in a shout. ‘Ain’t I tellin’ you?’
He was immediately sorry. ‘I didn’t mean to ‘oller at you, Ann,’ he said, ‘but
I’m all shook up. I don’t ‘ardly know what I’m sayin’. Ev’ry penny . . . ’
‘But, Artie —’
Kipps grunted. He went to the window and stared for a moment at a sunlit
sea. ‘Gord!’ he swore.
‘I mean,’ he said coming back to Ann, and with an air of exasperation, ‘that
he’s ‘bezzled and ‘ooked it. That’s what I mean, Ann.’
Ann put down the bib. ‘But wot are we going to do, Artie?’
Kipps indicated ignorance, wrath, and despair with one comprehensive
gesture of his hands. He caught an ornament from the mantel and replaced
it. ‘I’m going to bang about,’ he said, ‘if I ain’t precious careful.’
‘You saw ‘er, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say ‘xactly?’ said Ann.
‘Told me to see a s’licitor — tole me to get some one to ‘elp me at once. She
was there in black — like she used to be, and speaking cool and careful like.
‘Elen! . . . She’s precious ‘ard, is ‘Elen. She looked at me straight. ‘It’s my
fault,’ she said. ‘I ought to ‘ave warned you . . . Only under the circumstances
it was a little difficult.’ Straight as anything. I didn’t ‘ardly say anything to ‘er.
I didn’t seem to begin to take it in until she was showing me out. I ‘adn’t
anything to say. Jest as well, perhaps. She talked — like a Call a’most. She
said — what was it she said about her mother? —‘My mother’s overcome
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with grief,’ she said, ‘so naturally everything comes on me.’’

‘And she told you to get some one to ‘elp you?’
‘Yes. I been to old Bean.’
‘O’ Bean?’
‘Yes. What I took my business away from!’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was a bit off ‘and at first, but then ‘e come round. He couldn’t tell me
anything till ‘e knew the facts. What I know of young Walshingham, there
won’t be much ‘elp in the facts. No!’
He reflected for a space. ‘It’s a Smash-up, Ann. More likely than not, Ann —
‘e’s left us over’ead in debt. We got to get out of it just ‘ow we can . . .
‘We got to begin again,’ he went on. ‘‘Ow, I don’t know. All the way ‘ome —
my ‘ead’s been going. We got to get a living some’ow or other. ‘Aving time
to ourselves, and a bit of money to spend, and no hurry and worry; it’s all
over for ever, Ann. We was fools, Ann. We didn’t know our benefits. We
been caught. Gord! — Gord!’
He was on the verge of ‘banging about’ again.
They heard a jingle in the passage, the large, soft impact of a servant’s
indoor boots. As if she were a part, a mitigatory part of Fate, came
Gwendolen to lay the midday meal. Kipps displayed self-control forthwith.
Ann picked up the bib again and bent over it, and the Kippses bore
themselves gloomily, perhaps, but not despairfully, while their dependent
was in the room. She spread the cloth and put out the cutlery with a slow
inaccuracy, and Kipps, after a whisper to himself, went again to the window.
Ann got up and put away her work methodically in the chiffonier.
‘When I think,’ said Kipps, as soon as the door closed again behind
Gwendolen —‘when I think of the ‘ole people, and ‘aving to tell ’em of it all,
I want to smesh my ‘ead against the nearest wall. Smesh my silly brains out!
And Buggins — Buggins, what I’d arf promised to start in a lil’ outfitting
shop in Rendezvous Street . . . ’
Gwendolen returned, and restored dignity.
The midday meal spread itself slowly before them. Gwendolen, after her
custom, left the door open, and Kipps closed it carefully before sitting
down.
He stood for a moment, regarding the meal doubtfully. ‘I don’t feel as if I
 263

could swaller a moufful,’ he said. ‘You got to eat,’ said Ann . . .

For a time they said little, and once swallowing was achieved, ate on with a
sort of melancholy appetite. Each was now busy thinking.
‘After all,’ said Kipps, presently, ‘whatever ‘appens they can’t turn us out or
sell us up before nex’ quarter day. I’m pretty sure about that.’
‘Sell us up!’ said Ann.
‘I dessay we’re bankrup’,’ said Kipps, trying to say it easily, and helping
himself with a trembling hand to unnecessary potatoes.
Then a long silence. Ann ceased to eat, and there were silent tears. ‘More
potatoes, Artie?’ choked Ann.
‘I couldn’t,’ said Kipps. ‘No.’
He pushed back his plate, which was indeed replete with potatoes, got up
and walked about the room. Even the dinner-table looked distraught and
unusual.
‘What to do, I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he ejaculated, and picked up and slapped down a book.
Then his eye fell upon another post card that had come from Chitterlow by
the morning’s post, and which now lay by him on the mantelshelf. He took it
up, glanced at its imperfectly legible message, and put it down.
‘Delayed!’ he said scornfully. ‘Not produced in the smalls. Or is it smells ‘e
says? ‘Ow can one understand that? Any’ow, ‘e’s ‘umbugging again.
Somefing about the Strand. No! . . . Well, ‘e’s ‘ad all the money ‘e’ll ever get
out of me! . . . I’m done.’
He seemed to find a momentary relief in the dramatic effect of his
announcement. He came near to a swagger of despair upon the hearthrug,
and then suddenly came and sat down next to Ann, and rested his chin on
the knuckles of his two clenched hands.
‘I been a fool, Ann,’ he said in a gloomy monotone. ‘I been a brasted fool.
But it’s ‘ard on us, all the same. It’s ‘ard.’
‘‘Ow was you to know?’ said Ann.
‘I ought to ‘ave known. I did in a sort of way know. And ’ere we are! I
wouldn’t care so much if it was myself, but it’s you, Ann! ‘Ere we are!
Regular smashed up! And you —’
He checked at an unspeakable aggravation of their disaster. ‘I knew ‘e
wasn’t to be depended upon, and there I left it! And you got pay . . . What’s
 264

to ‘appen to us all, I don’t know.’

He thrust out his chin and glared at fate.
‘‘Ow do you know ‘e’s specklated everything?’ said Ann, after a silent survey
of him. ‘‘E ‘as,’ said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.
‘She say so?’
‘She don’t know, of course; but you depend upon it, that’s it. She told me
she knew something was on, and when she found ’im gone and a note lef
for her, she knew it was up with ’im. ‘E went by the night boat. She wrote
that telegrarf off to me straight away.’
Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never seen
him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so away
from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her. The
immediate thing was his enormous distress.
‘‘Ow do you know —?’ she said, and stopped. It would irritate him too much.
Kipps’ imagination was going headlong.
‘Sold up!’ he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.
‘Going back to work, day after day. I can’t stand it, Ann, I can’t. And you —’
‘It don’t do to think of it,’ said Ann.
Presently he came upon a resolve. ‘I keep on thinking of it, and thinking of it,
and what’s to be done, and what’s to be done. I shan’t be any good
‘ome’s’arfernoon. It keeps on going round and round in my ‘ead, and round
and round. I better go for a walk or something. I’d be no comfort to you,
Ann. I should want to ‘owl and ‘ammer things if I ‘ung about ‘ome. My
fingers ‘r all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking ‘ow I might ‘ave stopped it, and
callin’ myself a fool . . . ’
He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.
Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.
‘You’d better do what’s good for you, Artie,’ she said . . . ‘I’ll be best
cleaning. It’s no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top
room wants turning out.’ She added with a sort of grim humour, ‘May as
well turn it out now while I got it.’
‘I better go for a walk,’ said Kipps . . .
And presently our poor, exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his
sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house,
and then suddenly he perceived his direction —‘Oh, Lor!’— and turned aside
 265

and went up the steep way to the hill-crest and the Sandling Road, and over
the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide fields
towards Postling — a little, black, marching figure — and so up the Downs
and over the hills, whither he had never gone before . . .
2

He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage. ‘Where you
been, Artie?’ she asked, with a strained note in her voice.
‘I been walking and walking — trying to tire myself out. All the time I been
thinking, what shall I do? Trying to fix something up, all out of nothing.’
‘I didn’t know you meant to be out all this time.’
Kipps was gripped by compunction . . .
‘I can’t think what we ought to do,’ he said presently.
‘You can’t do anything much, Artie, not till you hear from Mr. Bean.’
‘No. I can’t do anything much. That’s jest it. And all this time I keep feelin’ if I
don’t do something the top of my ‘ead’ll bust . . . Been trying to make up
advertisements ‘arf the time I been out —‘bout finding a place; good
salesman and stockkeeper, good Manchester dresses, window-dressing —
Lor! Fancy that all beginning again! . . . If you went to stay with Sid a bit — If
I sent every penny I got to you — I dunno! I dunno!’
When they had gone to bed there was an elaborate attempt to get to sleep
. . . In one of their great waking pauses Kipps remarked in a muffled tone, ‘I
didn’t mean to frighten you, Ann, being out so late. I kep’ on walking and
walking, and some ‘ow it seemed to do me good. I went out to the ‘ill-top
ever so far beyond Stanford, and sat there ever so long, and it seemed to
make me better. Jest looking over the marsh like, and seeing the sunset . . . ’
‘Very likely,’ said Ann, after a long interval, ‘it isn’t so bad as you think it is,
Artie.’
‘It’s bad,’ said Kipps.
‘Very likely, after all, it isn’t quite so bad. If there’s only a little —’
There came another long silence.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps, in the quiet darkness.
‘Yes,’ said Ann.
‘Ann,’ said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon
speech.
 266

‘I kep’ thinking,’ he said, trying again —‘kep’ thinking, after all, I been cross
to you and a fool about things — about them cards, Ann — but’— his voice
shook to pieces —‘we ‘ave been ‘appy, Ann . . . some’ow . . . togever.’
And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping.
They clung very tightly together — closer than they had been since ever the
first brightness of their married days turned to the gray of common life
again . . .
All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at last
with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow. There was
nothing more to be done; there was nothing more to be thought. Time
might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least they still had one
another.
3

Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr. Bean in a state of strange
excitement. He let himself in with his latchkey and slammed the door. ‘Ann!’
he shouted, in an unusual note; ‘Ann!’
Ann replied distantly.
‘Something to tell you,’ said Kipps; ‘something noo!’ Ann appeared
apprehensive from the kitchen.
‘Ann,’ he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his news was
too dignified for the passage, ‘very likely, Ann, o’ Bean says, we shall ‘ave —’
He decided to prolong the suspense. ‘Guess!’
‘I can’t, Artie.’
‘Think of a lot of money!’
‘A ‘undred pounds p’r’aps?’
He spoke with immense deliberation. ‘Over a fousand pounds!’ Ann stared
and said nothing, only went a shade whiter. ‘Over,’ he said. ‘A’most certainly
over.’
He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was
clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete
abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into his
arms.
‘Artie,’ she got to at last, and began to weep, clinging tightly to him. ‘Pretty
near certain,’ said Kipps, holding her. ‘A fousand pounds!’
‘I said, Artie,’ she wailed on his shoulder with the note of accumulated
 267

wrongs, ‘very likely it wasn’t so bad —’

‘There’s things,’ he said, when presently he came to particulars, ‘‘e couldn’t
touch. The noo place! It’s freehold and paid for, and with the bit of building
on it, there’s five or six ‘undred pounds p’r’aps — say worf free ‘undred for
safety.
We can’t be sold up to finish it, like we thought. O’ Bean says we can very
likely sell it and get money. ‘E says you often get a chance to sell a ’ouse
lessen ‘arf done, specially free-old. Very likely, ‘e says. Then there’s
Hughenden. Hughenden ‘asn’t been mortgaged not for more than ‘arf its
value. There’s a ‘undred or so to be got on that, and the furniture, and the
rent for the summer still coming in. ‘E says there’s very likely other things. A
fousand pounds; that’s what ‘e said. ‘E said it might even be more . . . ’
They were sitting now at the table. ‘It alters everything,’ said Ann.
‘I been thinking that, Ann, all the way ‘ome. I came in the motor-car. First
ride I’ve had since the Smash. We needn’t send off Gwendolen; leastways,
not till after. You know. We needn’t turn out of ’ere — not for a long time.
What we been doing for the o’ people we can go on doing a’most as much.
And your mother! . . . I wanted to ‘oller, coming along. I pretty near run
coming down the road by the Hotel.’
‘Oh, I am glad we can stop ’ere and be comfortable a bit,’ said Ann. ‘I am
glad for that.’
‘I pretty near told the driver on the motor — only ‘e was the sort won’t talk
— You see, Ann, we’ll be able to start a shop, we’ll be able to get into
something like. All about our ‘aving to go back to places and that — all that
doesn’t matter any more.’
For a while they abandoned themselves to ejaculating transports. Then they
fell talking to shape an idea to themselves of the new prospect that opened
before them.
‘We must start a sort of shop,’ said Kipps, whose imagination had been
working. ‘It’ll ‘ave to be a shop.’
‘Drapery?’ said Ann.
‘You want such a lot of capital for the drapery; mor’n a thousand pounds
you want by a long way — to start it anything like proper.’
‘Well, outfitting. Like Buggins was going to do.’
Kipps glanced at that for a moment, because the idea had not occurred to
him. Then he came back to his prepossession.
 268

‘Well, I thought of something else, Ann,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve always
thought a little bookshop — It isn’t like drapery —‘aving to be learnt. I
thought even before this Smash Up, ‘ow I’d like to ‘ave something to do,
instead of always ‘aving ‘olidays always like we ‘ave been ‘aving.’
She reflected.
‘You don’t know much about books, do you, Artie?’
‘You don’t want to.’ He illustrated. ‘I noticed when we used to go to that
Lib’ry at Folkestone, ladies weren’t anything like what they was in a draper’s
— if you ‘aven’t got just what they want, it’s ‘Oh, no!’ and out they go.
But in a bookshop it’s different. One book’s very like another — after all,
what is it? Something to read and done with. It’s not a thing that matters
like print dresses or serviettes — where you either like ’em or don’t, and
people judge you by. They take what you give ’em in books and lib’ries, and
glad to be told what to. See ‘ow we was — up at that lib’ry . . . ’
He paused. ‘You see, Ann —’
‘Well, I read ‘n ‘dvertisement the other day — I been asking Mr. Bean. It said
— five ‘undred pounds.’
‘What did?’
‘Branches,’ said Kipps.
Ann failed to understand. ‘It’s a sort of thing that gets up bookshops all over
the country,’ said Kipps. ‘I didn’t tell you, but I arst about it a bit. On’y I
dropped it again. Before this Smash, I mean. I’d thought I’d like to keep a
shop for a lark, on’y then I thought it silly. Besides, it ‘ud ‘ave been beneath
me.’
He blushed vividly. ‘It was a sort of projek of mine, Ann. ‘On’y it wouldn’t
‘ave done,’ he added.
It was a tortuous journey when the Kippses set out to explain anything to
each other. But through a maze of fragmentary elucidations and questions,
their minds did presently begin to approximate to a picture of a compact,
bright little shop, as a framework for themselves.
‘I thought of it one day when I was in Folkestone. I thought of it one day
when I was looking in at a window. I see a chap dressin’ a window, and he
was whistlin’, reg’lar light-hearted . . . I thought — I’d like to keep a
bookshop any’ow, jest for something to do. And when people weren’t
about, then you could sit and read the books. See? It wouldn’t be arf bad . . .
’
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They mused, each with elbows on table and knuckles to lips, looking with
speculative eyes at each other. ‘Very likely we’ll be ‘appier than we
should’ve been with more money’ said Kipps, presently. ‘We wasn’t ‘ardly
suited —’ reflected Ann, and left her sentence incomplete.
‘Fish out of water like,’ said Kipps —
‘You won’t ‘ave to return that call now,’ said Kipps, opening a new branch of
the question. ‘That’s one good thing.’
‘Lor!’ said Ann, ‘no more I shan’t!’
‘I don’t s’pose they’d want you to even if you did — with things as they are.’
A certain added brightness came into Ann’s face. ‘Nobody won’t be able to
come leaving cards on us, Artie, now, any more. We are out of that!’
There isn’t no necessity for us to be Stuck Up,’ said Kipps, ‘any more for
ever! ‘Ere we are, Ann, common people, with jest no position at all, as you
might say, to keep up. No se’v’nts, not if you don’t like. No dressin’ better
than other people. If it wasn’t we been robbed — dashed if I’d care a rap
about losing that money. I b’lieve’— his face shone with the rare pleasure of
paradox —‘I reely b’lieve, Ann, it’ll prove a savin’ in the end.’
4

The remarkable advertisement which had fired Kipps’ imagination with this
dream of a bookshop opened out in the most alluring way. It was one little
facet in a comprehensive scheme of transatlantic origin, which was to make
our old-world methods of bookselling ‘sit up,’ and it displayed an
imaginative briskness, a lucidity and promise, that aroused the profoundest
scepticism in the mind of Mr. Bean. To Kipps’ renewed investigations it
presented itself in an expository illustrated pamphlet (far too well printed,
Mr. Bean thought, for a reputable undertaking) of the most convincing sort.
Mr. Bean would not let him sink his capital in shares in its projected
company that was to make all things new in the world of books, but he
could not prevent Kipps becoming one of their associated booksellers. And
so, when presently it became apparent that an Epoch was not to be made,
and the ‘Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union (Limited)’ receded and
dissolved and liquidated (a few drops) and vanished and went away to talk
about something else, Kipps remained floating undamaged in this
interestingly uncertain universe as an independent bookseller.
Except that it failed, the Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union had all the
stigmata of success. Its fault, perhaps, was that it had them all instead of
only one or two. It was to buy wholesale for all its members and associates
 270

and exchange stock, having a common books-instock list and a common

lending library, and it was to provide a uniform registered shop-front to
signify these things to the intelligent passer-by. Except that it was controlled
by buoyant young Overmen, with a touch of genius in their arithmetic, it
was, I say, a most plausible and hopeful project. Kipps went several times to
London, and an agent came to Hythe, Mr. Bean made some timely
interventions, and then behind a veil of planks and an announcement in the
High Street, the uniform registered shop-front came rapidly into being.
‘Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union,’ said this shop-front, in a refined
artistic lettering that bookbuyers were going to value, as wise men over
forty value the proper label for Berncasteler Doctor, and then, ‘Arthur
Kipps.’
Next to starting a haberdasher’s shop, I doubt if Kipps could have been
more truly happy than during those weeks of preparation.
There is, of course, nothing on earth, and I doubt at times if there is a joy in
heaven, like starting a small haberdasher’s shop. Imagine, for example,
having a drawerful of tapes (one whole piece most exquisitely blocked) of
every possible width of tape, or again, an army of neat, large packages, each
displaying one sample of hooks and eyes. Think of your cottons, your drawer
of coloured silks, the little, less, of the compartments and thin packets of
your needle-drawer! Poor princes and wretched gentlefolk, mysteriously
above retail trade, may taste only the faint unsatisfactory shadow of these
delights with trays of stamps or butterflies. I write, of course, for those to
whom these things appeal; there are clods alive who see nothing, or next to
nothing, in spools of mercerised cotton and endless bands of paper-set pins.
I write for the wise, and as I write I wonder that Kipps resisted
haberdashery. He did. Yet even starting a bookshop is at least twenty times
as interesting as building your own house to your own design in unlimited
space and time, or any possible thing people with indisputable social
position and sound securities can possibly find to do. Upon that I rest.
You figure Kipps ‘going to have a look to see how the little shop is getting
on,’ the shop that is not to be a loss and a spending of money, but a gain. He
does not walk too fast towards it; as he comes into view of it his paces
slacken and his head goes to one side. He crosses to the pavement opposite
in order to inspect the fascia better; already his name is adumbrated in faint
white lines; stops in the middle of the road and scrutinises imaginary details,
for the benefit of his future next-door neighbour, the curiosity-shop man,
and so at last, in . . . A smell of paint and of the shavings of imperfectly
seasoned pinewood! The shop is already glazed, and a carpenter is busy
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over the fittings for adjustable shelves in the side windows. A painter is busy
on the fixtures round about (shelving above and drawers below), which are
to accommodate most of the stock, and the counter — the counter and
desk are done. Kipps goes inside the desk, the desk which is to be the
strategic centre of the shop, brushes away some sawdust, and draws out
the marvellous till; here gold is to be, here silver, here copper — notes
locked up in a cashbox in the well below. Then he leans his elbows on the
desk, rests his chin on his fist and fills the shelves with imaginary stock;
books beyond reading. Every day a man who cares to wash his hands and
read uncut pages artfully may have his cake and eat it, among that stock.
Under the counter to the right paper and string are to lurk, ready to leap up
and embrace goods sold; on the table to the left, art publications —
whatever they may prove to be. He maps it out, serves an imaginary
customer, receives a dream seven-and-sixpence, packs, bows out. He
wonders how it was he ever came to fancy a shop a disagreeable place.
‘It’s different,’ he says at last, after musing on that difficulty, ‘being your
own.’ It is different . . .
Or, again, you figure Kipps with something of the air of a young sacristan,
handling his brightly virginal account books, and looking and looking again,
and then still looking, at an unparalleled specimen of copperplate engraving,
ruled money below, and above bearing the words, ‘In Account with ARTHUR
KIPPS (loud flourishes), The Booksellers’ Trading Union’ (temperate
decoration). You figure Ann sitting and stitching at one point of the
circumference of the light of the lamp, stitching queer little garments for
some unknown stranger and over against her sits Kipps. Before him is one of
those engraved memorandum forms, a moist pad, wet with some thick and
greasy, greenish-purple ink, that is also spreading quietly but steadily over
his fingers, a cross-nibbed pen for first-aid surgical assistance to the patient
in his hand, a dating rubber stamp. At intervals he brings down this latter
with great care and emphasis upon the paper, and when he lifts it there
appears a beautiful oval design, of which ‘Paid, Arthur Kipps. The Associated
Booksellers’ Trading Union,’ and a date, are the essential ingredients,
stamped in purple ink.
Anon he turns his attention to a box of small, round, yellow labels, declaring.
‘This book was bought from the Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union.’ He
licks one with deliberate care, sticks it on the paper before him and defaces
it with great solemnity. ‘I can do it, Ann,’ he says, looking up brightly. For the
Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union, among other brilliant notions and
inspirations, devised an ingenious system of taking back its books again in
 272

part payment for new ones within a specified period. When it failed, all sorts
of people were left with these unredeemed pledges in hand.
5

Amidst all this bustle and interest, all this going to and fro before they
‘moved in’ to the High Street, came the great crisis that hung over the
Kippses, and one morning in the small hours Ann’s child was born . . .
Kipps was coming to manhood swiftly now. The once rabbit-like soul that
had been so amazed by the discovery of ‘chubes’ in the human interior and
so shocked by the sight of a woman’s shoulder-blades, that had found
shame and anguish in a mislaid Gibus and terror in an Anagram Tea, was at
last facing the greater realities. He came suddenly upon the master thing in
life — birth. He passed through hours of listening, hours of impotent fear in
the night and in the dawn, and then there was put into his arms something
most wonderful, a weak and wailing creature, incredibly, heart-stirringly soft
and pitiful, with minute appealing hands that it wrung his heart to see. He
held it in his arms and touched its tender cheek as if he feared his lips might
injure it. And this marvel was his Son!
And there was Ann, with a greater strangeness and a greater familiarity in
her quality than he had ever found before. There were little beads of
perspiration on her temples and her lips, and her face was flushed, not pale,
as he had feared to see it. She had the look of one who emerges from some
strenuous and invigorating act. He bent down and kissed her, and he had no
words to say. She wasn’t to speak much yet, but she stroked his arm with
her hand and had to tell him one thing.
‘He’s over nine pounds, Artie,’ she whispered. ‘Bessie’s — Bessie’s wasn’t no
more than eight.’
To have given Kipps a pound of triumph over Sid seemed to her almost to
justify Nunc Dimittis. She watched his face for a moment, then closed her
eyes in a kind of blissful exhaustion as the nurse, with something motherly in
her manner, pushed Kipps out of the room.
6

Kipps was far too much preoccupied with his own life to worry about the
further exploits of Chitterlow. The man had got his two thousand; on the
whole, Kipps was glad he had it rather than young Walshingham, and there
was an end to the matter. As for the complicated transactions he achieved
and proclaimed by mainly illegible and always incomprehensible post cards,
they were like passing voices heard in the street as one goes about one’s
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urgent concerns. Kipps put them aside, and they got in between the pages
of the stock and were lost for ever, and sold with the goods to customers,
who puzzled over them mightily.
Then one morning as our bookseller was dusting round before breakfast,
Chitterlow returned, appeared suddenly in the shop doorway.
It was the most unexpected thing in the world. The man was in evening
dress, evening dress in that singularly crumpled state it assumes after the
hour of dawn, and above his dishevelled red hair a smallish Gibus had tilted
remarkably forward. He opened the door and stood tall and spread, with
one vast white glove flung out, as if to display how burst a glove might be,
his eyes bright, such wrinkling of brow and mouth as only an experienced
actor can produce, and a singular radiance of emotion upon his whole being
— an altogether astonishing spectacle.
The bell jangled for a bit, and then gave it up and was silent. For a long, long
second everything was quietly attentive. Kipps was amazed to his
uttermost; had he had ten times the capacity, he would still have been fully
amazed. ‘It’s Chit’low!’ he said at last, standing duster in hand.
But he doubted whether it was not a dream.
‘Tzit!’ gasped that most extraordinary person, still in an incredibly expanded
attitude, and then with a slight forward jerk of the starry split glove, ‘Bif!’
He could say no more. The tremendous speech he had had ready vanished
from his mind. Kipps stared at his facial changes, vaguely conscious of the
truth of the teachings of Nisbet and Lombroso concerning men of genius.
Then suddenly Chitterlow’s features were convulsed, the histrionic fell from
him like a garment, and he was weeping. He said something indistinct about
‘Old Kipps! Good old Kipps! Oh, old Kipps!’ and somehow he managed to
mix a chuckle and a sob in the most remarkable way. He emerged from
somewhere near the middle of his original attitude, a merely lifesize
creature. ‘My play, boohoo!’ he sobbed, clutching at his friend’s arm. ‘My
play, Kipps! (sob). You know?’
‘Well?’ cried Kipps, with his heart sinking in sympathy. ‘It ain’t —?’
‘No,’ howled Chitterlow. ‘No. It’s a Success! My dear chap! my dear boy! Oh!
It’s a — Bu — boohoo! — a Big Success!’ He turned away and wiped
streaming tears with the back of his hand. He walked a pace or so and
turned. He sat down on one of the specially designed artistic chairs of the
Associated Booksellers’ Trading Union and produced an exiguous lady’s
handkerchief, extraordinarily belaced. He choked. ‘My play,’ and covered his
 274

face here and there.

He made an unsuccessful effort to control himself, and shrank for a space to
the dimensions of a small and pathetic creature. His great nose suddenly
came through a careless place in the handkerchief.
I’m knocked,’ he said in a muffled voice, and so remained for a space —
wonderful — veiled.
He made a gallant effort to wipe his tears away. ‘I had to tell you,’ he said,
gulping.
‘Be all right in a minute,’ he added, ‘Calm!’ and sat still —
Kipps stared in commiseration of such success. Then he heard footsteps,
and went quickly to the house doorway. ‘Jest a minute,’ he said. ‘Don’t go in
the shop, Ann, for a minute. It’s Chitterlow. He’s a bit essited. But he’ll be
better in a minute. It’s knocked him over a bit. You see’— his voice sank to a
hushed note as one who announces death —’‘e’s made a success with his
play.’
He pushed her back, lest she should see the scandal of another male’s tears
...
Soon Chitterlow felt better, but for a little while his manner was even
alarmingly subdued. ‘I had to come and tell you,’ he said. ‘I had to astonish
some one. Muriel — she’ll be first-rate, of course. But she’s over at
Dymchurch.’ He blew his nose with enormous noise, and emerged instantly,
a merely garrulous optimist.
‘I expect she’ll be precious glad.’
‘She doesn’t know yet, my dear boy. She’s at Dymchurch — with a friend.
She’s seen some of my first nights before . . . Better out of it . . . I’m going to
her now. I’ve been up all night — talking to the Boys and all that. I’m a bit
off it just for a bit. But — it Knocked ’em. It Knocked everybody.’
He stared at the floor and went on in a monotone. ‘They laughed a bit at the
beginning — but nothing like a settled laugh — not until the second act —
you know — the chap with the beetle down his neck. Little Chisholme did
that bit to rights. Than they began — to rights.’ His voice warmed and
increased. ‘Laughing! It made me laugh! We jumped ’em into the third act
before they had time to cool. Everybody was on it. I never saw a first night
go so fast. Laugh, laugh, laugh, LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH’ (he howled the last
repetition with stupendous violence). ‘Everything they laughed at. They
laughed at things that we hadn’t meant to be funny — not for one moment.
Bif! Bizz! Curtain. A Fair Knock Out! — I went on — but I didn’t say a word.
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Chisholme did the patter. Shouting! It was like walking under Niagara —
going across that stage. It was like never having seen an audience before —
‘Then afterwards — the Boys!’
His emotion held him for a space. ‘Dear old Boys!’ he murmured.
His words multiplied, his importance increased. In a little while he was
restored to something of his old self. He was enormously excited. He
seemed unable to sit down anywhere. He came into the breakfast-room so
soon as Kipps was sure of him, shook hands with Mrs. Kipps parenthetically,
sat down and immediately got up again. He went to the bassinet in the
corner and looked absent-mindedly at Kipps junior, and said he was glad if
only for the youngster’s sake. He immediately resumed the thread of his
discourse . . . He drank a cup of coffee noisily and walked up and down the
room talking, while they attempted breakfast amidst the gale of his
excitement. The infant slept marvellously through it all.
‘You won’t mind my not sitting down, Mrs Kipps — I couldn’t sit down for
any one, or I’d do it for you. It’s you I’m thinking of more than any one, you
and Muriel, and all Old Pals and Good Friends. It means wealth, it means
money — hundreds and thousands . . . If you’d heard ’em you’d know.’
He was silent through a portentous moment, while topics battled for him,
and finally he burst and talked of them all together. It was like the rush of
water when a dam bursts and washes out a fair-sized provincial town; all
sorts of things floated along on the swirl. For example, he was discussing his
future behaviour. ‘I’m glad it’s come now. Not before. I’ve had my lesson. I
shall be very discreet now, trust me. We’ve learnt the value of money.’ He
discussed the possibility of a country house, of taking a Martello tower as a
swimming-box (as one might say a shooting-box), of living in Venice because
of its artistic associations and scenic possibilities, of a flat in Westminster or
a house in the West End. He also raised the question of giving up smoking
and drinking, and what classes of drink were especially noxious to a man of
his constitution. But discourses on all this did not prevent a parenthetical
computation of the probable profits on the supposition of a thousand nights
here and in America, nor did it ignore the share Kipps was to have, nor the
gladness with which Chitterlow would pay that share, nor the surprise and
regret with which he had learnt, through an indirect source which had
awakened many associations, of the turpitude of young Walshingham, nor
the distaste Chitterlow had always felt for young Walshingham, and men of
his type. An excursus upon Napoleon had got into the torrent somehow,
and kept bobbing up and down. The whole thing was thrown into the form
of a single complex sentence, with parenthetical and subordinate clauses
 276

fitting one into the other like Chinese boxes, and from first to last it never
even had an air of approaching anything in the remotest degree partaking of
the nature of a full stop.
Into this deluge came the Daily News, like the gleam of light in Watts’
picture, the waters were assuaged while its sheet was opened, and it had a
column, a whole column of praise. Chitterlow held the paper, and Kipps read
over his left hand, and Ann under his right. It made the affair more real to
Kipps; it seemed even to confirm Chitterlow against lurking doubts he had
been concealing. But it took him away. He departed in a whirl, to secure a
copy of every morning paper, every blessed rag there is, and take them all to
Dymchurch and Muriel forthwith. It had been the send-off the Boys had
given him that had prevented his doing as much at Charing Cross — let
alone that he only caught it by the skin of his teeth . . . Besides which, the
bookstall wasn’t open. His white face, lit by a vast excitement, bid them a
tremendous farewell, and he departed through the sunlight, with his
buoyant walk, buoyant almost to the tottering pitch. His hair, as one got it
sunlit in the street, seemed to have grown in the night.
They saw him stop a newsboy.
‘Every blessed rag,’ floated to them on the notes of that gorgeous voice.
The newsboy, too, had happened on luck. Something like a faint cheer from
the newsboy came down the air to terminate that transaction.
Chitterlow went on his way swinging a great budget of papers, a figure of
merited success. The newsboy recovered from his emotion with a jerk,
examined something in his hand again, transferred it to his pocket, watched
Chitterlow for a space, and then in a sort of hushed silence resumed his daily
routine . . .
Ann and Kipps regarded that receding happiness in silence, until it vanished
round the bend of the road. ‘I am glad,’ said Ann at last, speaking with a
little sigh.
‘So’m I,’ said Kipps, with emphasis. ‘For if ever a feller ‘as worked and waited
— it’s ’im . . . ’
They went back through the shop rather thoughtfully and, after a peep at
the sleeping baby, resumed their interrupted breakfast. ‘If ever a feller ‘as
worked and waited, it’s ’im,’ said Kipps, cutting bread.
‘Very likely it’s true,’ said Ann, a little wistfully. ‘What’s true?’
‘About all that money coming.’
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Kipps meditated. ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t be,’ he decided, and handed
Ann a piece of bread on the tip of his knife.
‘But we’ll keep on the shop,’ he said, after an interval for further reflection,
‘all the same . . . I ‘aven’t much trust in money after the things we’ve seen.’
7

That was two years ago, and, as the whole world knows, the Pestered
Butterfly is running still. It was true. It has made the fortune of a once
declining little theatre in the Strand; night after night the great beetle scene
draws happy tears from a house packed to repletion, and Kipps — for all
that Chitterlow is not what one might call a business man — is almost as rich
as he was in the beginning. People in Australia, people in Lancashire,
Scotland, Ireland, in New Orleans, in Jamaica, in New York, and Montreal,
have crowded through doorways to Kipps’ enrichment, lured by the hitherto
unsuspected humours of the entomological drama. Wealth rises like an
exhalation all over our little planet, and condenses, or at least some of it
does, in the pockets of Kipps.
‘It’s rum,’ said Kipps.
He sat in the little kitchen out behind the bookshop and philosophised and
smiled while Ann gave Arthur Waddy Kipps his evening tub before the fire.
Kipps was always present at this ceremony, unless customers prevented;
there was something in the mixture of the odours of tobacco, soap, and
domesticity that charmed him unspeakably.
‘Chuckerdee, o’ man,’ he said affably, wagging his pipe at his son, and
thought incidentally, after the manner of all parents, that very few children
could have so straight and clean a body.
‘Dadda’s got a cheque,’ said Arthur Waddy Kipps, emerging for a moment
from the towel. ‘‘E gets ‘old of everything,’ said Ann. ‘You can’t say a word
—’
‘Dadda got a cheque,’ this marvellous child repeated.
‘Yes, o’ man, I got a cheque. And it’s got to go into a bank for you, against
when you got to go to school. See? So’s you’ll grow up knowing your way
about a bit.’
‘Dadda’s got a cheque,’ said the wonder son, and then gave his mind to
making mighty splashes with his foot. Every time he splashed, laughter
overcame him, and he had to be held up for fear he should tumble out of the
tub in his merriment. Finally he was towelled to his toe-tips, wrapped up in
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warm flannel and kissed and carried off to bed by Ann’s cousin and lady
help, Emma. And then after Ann had carried away the bath into the scullery,
she returned to find her husband with his pipe extinct and the cheque still in
his hand.
‘Two fousand pounds,’ he said. ‘It’s dashed rum. Wot ‘ave I done to get two
fousand pounds, Ann?’
‘What ‘aven’t you — not to?’ said Ann.
He reflected upon this view of the case.
‘I shan’t never give up this shop,’ he said at last.
‘We’re very ‘appy ’ere,’ said Ann.
‘Not if I ‘ad fifty fousand pounds.’
‘No fear,’ said Ann.
‘You got a shop,’ said Kipps, ‘and you come along in a year’s time and there
it is. But money — look ‘ow it comes and goes! There’s no sense in money.
You may kill yourself trying to get it, and then it comes when you aren’t
looking. There’s my ‘riginal money! Where is it now? Gone! And it’s took
young Walshingham with it, and ‘e’s gone, too. It’s like playing skittles.
‘Long comes the ball, right and left you fly, and there it is rolling away and
not changed a bit. No sense in it. ‘E’s gone, and she’s gone — gone off with
that chap Revel, that sat with me at dinner. Merried man! And Chit’low rich!
Lor! — what a fine place that Gerrik Club is to be sure! where I ‘ad lunch wiv’
’im! Better’n any ‘otel. Footmen in powder they got — not waiters, Ann —
footmen! ‘E’s rich and me rich — in a sort of way . . . Don’t seem much sense
in it, Ann —‘owever you look at it.’ He shook his head.
‘I know one thing.’ said Kipps. ‘What?’
‘I’m going to put it in jest as many different banks as I can. See? Fifty ’ere,
fifty there. ‘Posit. I’m not going to ‘nvest it — no fear.’
‘It’s only frowing money away,’ said Ann.
‘I’m arf a mind to bury some of it under the shop. Only I expect one ‘ud
always be coming down at nights to make sure it was there . . . I don’t seem
to trust any one — not with money.’ He put the cheque on the table corner
and smiled and tapped his pipe on the grate, with his eyes on that wonderful
document. ‘S’pose old Bean started orf,’ he reflected . . . ‘One thing —‘e is a
bit lame.’
‘‘E wouldn’t,’ said Ann; ‘not ’im.’
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‘I was only joking like.’ He stood up, put his pipe among the candlesticks on
the mantel, took up the cheque and began folding it carefully to put it back
in his pocket-book.
A little bell jangled.
‘Shop!’ said Kipps. ‘That’s right. Keep a shop and the shop’ll keep you. That’s
‘ow I look at it, Ann.’ He drove his pocket-book securely into his breast-
pocket before he opened the living-room door . . .
But whether, indeed, it is the bookshop that keeps Kipps or whether it is
Kipps who keeps the bookshop, is just one of those commercial mysteries
people of my unarithmetical temperament are never able to solve. They do
very well, the dears, anyhow, thank Heaven!
The bookshop of Kipps is on the left-hand side of the Hythe High Street
coming from Folkestone, between the yard of the livery stable and the shop
window full of old silver and suchlike things — it is quite easy to find — and
there you may see him for yourself, and speak to him and buy this book of
him if you like. He has it in stock, I know. Very delicately I’ve seen to that. His
name is not Kipps, of course, you must understand that; but everything else
is exactly as I have told you. You can talk to him about books, about politics,
about going to Boulogne, about life, and the ups and downs of life. Perhaps
he will quote you Buggins — from whom, by the bye, one can now buy
everything a gentleman’s wardrobe should contain at the little shop in
Rendezvous Street, Folkestone. If you are fortunate to find Kipps in a good
mood, he may even let you know how he inherited a fortune ‘once.’ ‘Run
froo it,’ he’ll say with a not unhappy smile. ‘Got another afterwards —
speckylating in plays. Needn’t keep this shop if I didn’t like. But it’s
something to do . . . ’
Or he may be even more intimate. ‘I seen some things,’ he said to me once.
‘Raver! Life! Why, once I— I loped! I did — reely!’
(Of course, you will not tell Kipps that he is ‘Kipps,’ or that I have put him in
this book. He hasn’t the remotest suspicion of that. And, you know, you
never can tell how people are going to take sort of thing. I am an old and
trusted customer now, and for many amiable reasons I should prefer that
things remained exactly on their present footing.)
8

One early-closing evening in July they left the baby to the servant cousin,
and Kipps took Ann for a row on the Hythe canal. The sun set in a mighty
blaze, and left a world warm, and very still. The twilight came. And there
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was the water, shinning bright, and the sky a deepening blue, and the great
trees that dipped their boughs towards the water, exactly as it had been
when he paddled home with Helen, when her eyes had seemed to him like
dusky stars. He had ceased from rowing and rested on his oars, and
suddenly he was touched by the wonder of life — the strangeness that is a
presence stood again by his side.
Out of the darkness beneath the shallow, weedy stream of his being rose a
question, a question that looked up dimly and never reached the surface. It
was the question of the wonder of the beauty, the purposeless,
inconsecutive beauty, that falls so strangely among the happenings and
memories of life. It never reached the surface of his mind, it never took to
itself substance or form; it looked up merely as the phantom of a face might
look, out of deep waters, and sank again into nothingness.
‘Artie,’ said Ann.
He woke up and pulled a stroke. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Artie.’
He considered.
‘I reely don’t think I was thinking of anything,’ he said at last, with a smile.
‘No.’
He still rested on his oars.
‘I expect,’ he said, ‘I was thinking jest what a Rum Go everything is. I expect
it was something like that.’
‘Queer old Artie!’
‘Ain’t I? I don’t suppose there ever was a chap quite like me before.’
He reflected for just another minute.
‘Oo! — I dunno,’ he said at last, and roused himself to pull.