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Annie Kilburn by W. D. Howells

W >> W. D. Howells >> Annie Kilburn




"Hello!" he exclaimed. "There's Dr. Morrell. Let's put the case to him." He
opened the door and called down the store, "Come in here, Doc!"

"What?" called back an amused voice; and after a moment steps approached,
and Dr. Morrell hesitated at the open door. He was a tall man, with a
slight stoop; well dressed; full bearded; with kind, boyish blue eyes that
twinkled in fascinating friendliness upon the group. "Nobody sick here, I
hope?"

"Walk right in, sir! come in, Dr. Morrell," said Mr. Gerrish. "Mrs. Munger
and Mrs. Gerrish you know. Present you to Miss Kilburn, who has come to
make her home among us after a prolonged residence abroad. Dr. Morrell,
Miss Kilburn."

"No, there's nobody sick here, in one sense," said Putney, when the doctor
had greeted the ladies. "But. we want your advice all the same. Mrs. Munger
is in a pretty bad way morally, Doc."

"Don't you mind Mr. Putney, doctor!" screamed Mrs. Gerrish.

Putney said, with respectful recognition of the poor woman's attempt to be
arch, "I'll try to keep within the bounds of truth in stating the case,
Mrs. Gerrish."

He went on to state it, with so much gravity and scrupulosity, and with
so many appeals to Mrs. Munger to correct him if he were wrong, that the
doctor was shaking with laughter when Putney came to an end with unbroken
seriousness. At each repetition of the facts, Annie's relation to them grew
more intolerable; and she suspected Putney of an intention to punish her.
"Well, what do you say?" he demanded of the doctor.

"Ha, ha, ha! ah, ha, ha." laughed the doctor, shutting his eyes and
throwing back his head.

"Seems to consider it a _laughing_ matter," said Putney to Mrs.
Munger.

"Yes; and that is all your fault," said Mrs. Munger, trying, with the
ineffectiveness of a large woman, to pout.

"No, no, I'm not laughing." began the doctor.

"Smiling, perhaps," suggested Putney.

The doctor went off again. Then, "I beg--I _beg_ your pardon, Mrs.
Munger," he resumed. "But it isn't a professional question, you know; and
I--I really couldn't judge--have any opinion on such a matter."

"No shirking," said Putney. "That's what Mrs. Munger said to me."

"Of course not," gurgled the doctor. "You ladies will know what to do. I'm
sure _I_ shouldn't," he added.

"Well, I must be going," said Putney. "Sorry to leave you in this fix,
Doc." He flashed out of the door, and suddenly came back to offer Annie his
hand. "I beg your pardon, Annie. I'm going to make Ellen bring me round.
Good morning." He bowed cursorily to the rest.

"Wait--I'll go with you, Putney," said the doctor.

Mrs. Munger rose, and Annie with her. "We must go too," she said. "We've
taken up Mr. Gerrish's time most unconscionably," and now Mr. Gerrish did
not urge her to remain.

"Well, good-bye," said Mrs. Gerrish, with a genteel prolongation of the
last syllable.

Mr. Gerrish followed his guests down the store, and even out upon the
sidewalk, where he presided with unheeded hospitality over the superfluous
politeness of Putney and Dr. Morrell in putting Mrs. Munger and Annie into
the phaeton. Mrs. Munger attempted to drive away without having taken up
her hitching weight.

"I suppose that there isn't a post in this town that my wife hasn't tried
to pull up in that way," said Putney gravely.

The doctor doubled himself down with another fit of laughing.

Annie wanted to laugh too, but she did not like his laughing. She
questioned if it were not undignified. She felt that it might be
disrespectful. Then she asked herself why he should respect her.




IX.


"That was a great success," said Mrs. Munger, as they drove away. Annie
said nothing, and she added, "Don't you think so?"

"Well, I confess," said Annie, "I don't see how, exactly. Do you mean with
regard to Mr. Gerrish?"

"Oh no; I don't care anything about him," said Mrs. Munger, touching her
pony with the tip of her whip-lash. "He's an odious little creature, and I
knew that he would go for the dance and supper because Mr. Peck was opposed
to them. He's one of the anti-Peck party in his church, and that is the
reason I spoke to him. But I meant the other gentlemen. You saw how they
took it."

"I saw that they both made fun of it," said Annie.

"Yes; that's just the point. It's so fortunate they were frank about it. It
throws a new light on it; and if that's the way nice people are going to
look at it, why, we must give up the idea. I'm quite prepared to do so. But
I want to see Mrs. Wilmington first."

"Mrs. Munger," said Annie uneasily, "I would rather not see Mrs. Wilmington
with you on this subject; I should be of no use."

"My dear, you would be of the _greatest_ use," persisted Munger, and
she laid her arm across Annie's lap, as if to prevent her jumping out of
the phaeton. "As Mrs. Wilmington's old friend, you will have the greatest
influence with her."

"But I don't know that I wish to influence her in favour of the supper and
dance; I don't know that I believe in them," said Annie, cowed and troubled
by the affair.

"That doesn't make the slightest difference," said Mrs. Munger impartially.
"All you will have to do is to keep still. I will put the case to her."

She checked the pony before the bar which the flagman at the railroad
crossing had let down, while a long freight train clattered deafeningly
by, and then drove bumping and jouncing across the tracks. "I suppose you
remember what 'Over the Track' means in Hatboro'?"

"Oh yes," said Annie, with a smile. "Social perdition at the least. You
don't mean that Mrs. Wilmington lives 'Over the Track'?"

"Yes. It isn't so bad as it used to be, socially. Mr. Wilmington has built
a very fine house on this side, and there are several pretty Queen Anne
cottages going up."

They drove along under the elms which here stood somewhat at random about
the wide, grassless street, between the high, windowy bulks of the shoe
shops and hat shops. The dust gradually freed itself from the cinders
about the tracks, and it hardened into a handsome, newly made road beyond
the houses of the shop hands. They passed some open lots, and then, on a
pleasant rise of ground, they came to a stately residence, lifted still
higher on its underpinning of granite blocks. It was built in a Boston
suburban taste of twenty years ago, with a lofty mansard-roof, and it was
painted the stone-grey colour which was once esteemed for being so quiet.
The lawn before it sloped down to the road, where it ended smoothly at the
brink of a neat stone wall. A black asphalt path curved from the steps by
which you mounted from the street to the steps by which you mounted to the
heavy portico before the massive black walnut doors.

The ladies were shown into the music-room, from which the notes of a piano
were sounding when they rang, and Mrs. Wilmington rose from the instrument
to meet them. A young man who had been standing beside her turned away.
Mrs. Wilmington was dressed in a light morning dress with a Watteau fall,
whose delicate russets and faded reds and yellows heightened the richness
of her complexion and hair.

"Why, Annie," she said, "how glad I am to see you! And you too, Mrs.
Munger. How _vurry_ nice!" Her words took value from the thick
mellow tones of her voice, and passed for much more than they were worth
intrinsically. She moved lazily about and got them into chairs, and was not
resentful when Mrs. Munger broke out with "How hot you have it!" "Have we?
We had the furnace lighted yesterday, and we've been in all the morning,
and so we hadn't noticed. Jack, won't you shut the register?" she drawled
over her shoulder. "This is my nephew, Mr. Jack Wilmington, Miss Kilburn.
Mr. Wilmington and Mrs. Munger are old friends."

The young fellow bowed silently, and Annie instantly took a dislike to him,
his heavy jaw, long eyes, and low forehead almost hidden under a thick
bang. He sat down cornerwise on a chair, and listened, with a scornful
thrust of his thick lips, to their talk.

Mrs. Munger was not abashed by him. She opened her budget with all her
robust authority, and once more put Annie to shame. When she came to the
question of the invited supper and dance, and having previously committed
Mrs. Wilmington in favour of the general scheme, asked her what she thought
of that part, Mr. Jack Wilmington answered for her--

"I should think you had a right to do what you please about it. It's none
of the hands' business if you don't choose to ask them."

"Yes, that's what any one would think--in the abstract," said Mrs. Munger.

"Now, little boy," said Mrs. Wilmington, with indolent amusement, putting
out a silencing hand in the direction of the young man, "don't you be so
fast. You let your aunty speak for herself. I don't know about not letting
the hands stay to the dance and supper, Mrs. Munger. You know I might feel
'put upon.' I used to be one of the hands myself. Yes, Annie, there was a
time after you went away, and after father died, when I actually fell so
low as to work for an honest living."

"I think I heard, Lyra," said Annie; "but I had forgotten." The fact, in
connection with what had been said, made her still more uncomfortable.

"Well, I didn't work very hard, and I didn't have to work long. But I was
a hand, and there's no use trying to deny it. As Mr. Putney says, he and I
have our record, and we don't have to make any pretences. And the question
is, whether I ought to go back on my fellow-hands."

"Oh, but Mrs. _Wilmington_!" said Mrs. Munger, with intense
deprecation, "that's such a very different thing. You were not brought up
to it; it was just temporary; and besides--"

"And besides, there was Mr. Wilmington, I know. He was very opportune. I
might have been a hand at this moment if Mr. Wilmington had not come along
and invited me to be a head--the head of his house. But I don't know,
Annie, whether I oughtn't to remember my low beginnings."

"I suppose we all like to be consistent," answered Annie aimlessly,
uneasily.

"Yes," Mrs. Munger broke in; "but they were not your beginnings, Mrs.
Wilmington; they were your incidents--your accidents."

"It's very pretty of you to say so, Mrs. Munger," drawled Mrs. Wilmington.
"But I guess I must oppose the little invited dance and supper, on
principle. We all like to be consistent, as Annie says--even if we're
inconsistent in the attempt," she added, with a laugh.

"Very well, then," exclaimed Mrs. Munger, "we'll _drop_ them. As I
said to Miss Kilburn on our way here, 'if Mrs. Wilmington is opposed to
them, we'll drop them.'"

"Oh, am I such an influential person?" said Mrs. Wilmington, with a shrug.
"It's rather awful--isn't it, Annie?"

"Not at all!" Mrs. Munger answered for Annie. "We've just been talking the
matter over with Mr. Putney and Dr. Morrell, and they're both opposed.
You're merely the straw that breaks the camel's back, Mrs. Wilmington."

"Oh, _thank_ you! That's a great relief."

"Well--and now the question is, will you take the part of the Nurse or not
in the dramatics?" asked Mrs. Munger, returning to business.

"Well, I must think about that, and I must ask Mr. Wilmington. Jack," she
called over her shoulder to the young man at the window, "do you think your
uncle would approve of me as Juliet's Nurse?"

"You'd better ask him," growled the young fellow.

"Well," said Mrs. Wilmington, with another laugh, "I'll think it over, Mrs.
Munger."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Munger. "And now we must really be going," she
added, pulling out her watch by its leathern guard.

"Not till you've had lunch," said Mrs. Wilmington, rising with the ladies.
"You must stay. Annie, I shall not excuse you."

"Well," said Mrs. Munger, complying without regard to Annie, "all this
diplomacy is certainly very exhausting."

"Lunch will be on the table in one moment," returned Mrs. Wilmington, as
the ladies sat down again provisionally. "Will you join us, Jack?"

"No; I'm going to the office," said the nephew, bowing himself out of the
room.

"Jack's learning to be superintendent," said Mrs. Wilmington, lifting her
teasing voice to make him hear her in the hall, "and he's been spending the
whole morning here."

In the richly appointed dining-room--a glitter of china and glass and a
mass of carven oak--the table was laid for two.

"Put another plate, Norah," said Mrs. Wilmington carelessly.

There was bouillon in teacups, chicken cutlets in white sauce, and luscious
strawberries.

"_What_ a cook!" cried Mrs. Munger, over the cutlets.

"Yes, she's a treasure; I don't deny it," said Mrs. Wilmington.




X.


By the end of May most of the summer folk had come to their cottages in
South Hatboro'. One after another the ladies called upon Annie. They all
talked to her of the Social Union, and it seemed to be agreed that it was
fully in train, though what was really in train was the entertainment to
be given at Mrs. Munger's for the benefit of the Union; the Union always
dropped out of the talk as soon as the theatricals were mentioned.

When Annie went to return these visits she scarcely recognised even
the shape of the country, once so familiar to her, of which the summer
settlement had possessed itself. She found herself in a strange world--a
world of colonial and Queen Anne architecture, where conscious lines and
insistent colours contributed to an effect of posing which she had never
seen off the stage. But it was not a very large world, and after the young
trees and hedges should have grown up and helped to hide it, she felt sure
that it would be a better world. In detail it was not so bad now, but
the whole was a violent effect of porches, gables, chimneys, galleries,
loggias, balconies, and jalousies, which nature had not yet had time to
palliate.

Mrs. Munger was at home, and wanted her to spend the day, to drive out with
her, to stay to lunch. When Annie would not do any of these things, she
invited herself to go with her to call at the Brandreths'. But first she
ordered her to go out with her to see the place where they intended to have
the theatricals: a pretty bit of natural boscage--white birches, pines, and
oaks--faced by a stretch of smooth turf, where a young man in a flannel
blazer was painting a tennis-court in the grass. Mrs. Munger introduced him
as her Jim, and the young fellow paused from his work long enough to bow to
her: his nose now seemed in perfect repair.

Mr. Brandreth met them at the door of his mother's cottage. It was a very
small cottage on the outside, with a good deal of stained glass _en
évidence_ in leaded sashes; where the sashes were not leaded and the
glass not stained, the panes were cut up into very large ones, with little
ones round them. Everything was very old-fashioned inside. The door opened
directly into a wainscoted square hall, which had a large fireplace with
gleaming brass andirons, and a carved mantel carried to the ceiling. It was
both baronial and colonial in its decoration; there was part of a suit of
imitation armour under a pair of moose antlers on one wall, and at one side
of the fireplace there was a spinning-wheel, with a tuft of flax ready to
be spun. There were Japanese swords on the lowest mantel-shelf, together
with fans and vases; a long old flint-lock musket stretched across the
panel above. Mr. Brandreth began to show things to Annie, and to tell how
little they cost, as soon as the ladies entered. His mother's voice called
from above, "Now, Percy, you stop till _I_ get there!" and in a moment
or two she appeared from behind a _portière_ in one corner. Before she
shook hands with the ladies, or allowed any kind of greeting, she pulled
the _portière_ aside, and made Annie admire the snug concealment of
the staircase. Then she made her go upstairs and see the chambers, and the
second-hand colonial bedsteads, and the andirons everywhere, and the old
chests of drawers and their brasses; and she told her some story about
each, and how Percy picked it up and had it repaired. When they came down,
the son took Annie in hand again and walked her over the ground-floor,
ending with the kitchen, which was in the taste of an old New England
kitchen, with hard-seated high-backed chairs, and a kitchen table with
curiously turned legs, which he had picked up in the hen-house of a
neighbouring farmer for a song. There was an authentic crane in the
dining-room fireplace, which he had found in a heap of scrap-iron at a
blacksmith's shop, and had got for next to nothing. The sideboard he had
got at an old second-hand shop in the North End; and he believed it was
an heirloom from the house of one of the old ministers of the North End
Church. Everything, nearly, in the Brandreth cottage was an heirloom,
though Annie could not remember afterward any object that had been an
heirloom in the Brandreth family.

When she went back with Mr. Brandreth to the hall, which seemed to be also
the drawing-room, she found that Mrs. Brandreth had lighted the fire on
the hearth, though it was rather a warm day without, for the sake of the
effect. She was sitting in the chimney-seat, and shielding her face from
the blaze with an old-fashioned feather hand-screen.

"Now don't you think we have a lovely little home?" she demanded.

Mrs. Munger began to break out in its praise, but she shook the screen
silencingly at her.

"No, no! I want Miss Kilburn's unbiassed opinion. Don't you speak, Mrs.
Munger! Now haven't we?"

Mrs. Brandreth made Annie assent to the superiority of her cottage in
detail. She recapitulated the different facts of the architecture and
furnishing, from each of which she seemed to acquire personal merit, and
she insisted that Percy should show some of them again. "We think it's a
little picture," she concluded, and once more Annie felt obliged to murmur
her acquiescence.

At last Mrs. Munger said that she must go to lunch, and was going to take
Annie with her; Annie said she must lunch at home; and then Mrs. Brandreth
pressed them both to stay to lunch with her. "You shall have a cup of tea
out of a piece of real Satsuma," she said; but they resisted. "I don't
believe," she added, apparently relieved by their persistence, and losing a
little anxiety of manner, "that Percy's had any chance to consult you on a
very important point about your theatricals, Miss Kilburn."

"Oh, that will do some other time, mother," said Mr. Brandreth.

"No, no! Now! And you can have Mrs. Munger's opinion too. You know Miss Sue
Northwick is going to be Juliet?"

"No!" shouted Mrs. Munger. "I thought she had refused positively. When did
she change her mind?"

"She's just sent Percy a note. We were talking it over when you came, and
Percy was going over to tell you."

"Then it is _sure_ to be a success," said Mrs. Munger, with a
solemnity of triumph.

"Yes, but Percy feels that it complicates one point more than ever--"

"It's a question that always comes up in amateur dramatics," said Mr.
Brandreth, with reluctance, "and it always will; and of course it's
particularly embarrassing in _Romeo and Juliet_. If they don't show
any affection--it's very awkward and stiff; and if--"

"I never approved of those liberties on the stage," said Mrs. Brandreth.
"I tell Percy that it's my principal objection to it. I can't make it
seem nice. But he says that it's essential to the effect. Now _I_
say that they might just incline their heads toward each other without
_actually_, you know. But Percy is afraid that it won't do, especially
in the parting scene on the balcony--so passionate, you know--it won't do
simply to--They must _act_ like lovers. And it's such a great point to
get Miss Sue Northwick to take the part, that he mustn't risk losing her by
anything that might seem--"

"Yes," said Mrs. Munger, with deep concern.

Mr. Brandreth looked very unhappy. "It's an embarrassing point. We can't
change the play, and so the difficulty must be met and disposed of at
once."

He did not look at either of the ladies, but Mrs. Munger referred the
matter to Annie with a glance of impartiality. His mother also turned her
eyes upon Annie. "Percy thought that you must have seen so much of amateur
dramatics in Europe that you could tell him just how to do."

"Perhaps you could consult Miss Northwick herself," said Annie dryly, after
a moment of indignation, and another of amusement.

"I thought of that," said Mrs. Brandreth; "but as Percy's to be Romeo--You
see he wishes the play to be a success artistically; but if it's to succeed
socially, he must have Miss Northwick, and she might resign at the first
suggestion of--"

"Bessie Chapley would certainly have been better. She's so outspoken you
could have put the case right to her," said Mrs. Munger.

"Yes," said Mr. Brandreth gloomily.

"But we shall find out a way. Why, you can settle it at rehearsal!"

"Perhaps at rehearsal," said Mr. Brandreth, with a pensive absence of mind.

Mrs. Munger crushed his hand and his mother's in her leathern grasp, and
took Annie away with her. "It isn't lunch-time yet," she explained, when
they were out of earshot, "but I saw she was simply killing you, and so I
made the excuse. She has no mercy. There's time enough for you to make your
calls before lunch, and then you can come home with me."

Annie suggested that this would not do after refusing Mrs. Brandreth.

"Why, it would never have done to _accept_!" Mrs. Munger cried. "They
didn't dream of it!" At the next place she said: "This is the Clevingers'.
_They're_ some of our all-the-year-round people too." She opened the
door without ringing, and let herself noisily in. "This is the way we run
in, without ceremony, everywhere. It's quite one family. That's the charm
of the place. We expect to take each other as we find them."

Her freedom did not find the ladies off their guard anywhere. At all the
houses there was a skurrying of feet and a flashing of skirts out of the
room or up the stairs, and there was an interval for a thorough study of
the features of the room before the hostess came in, with the effect of
coming in just as she was. She had naturally always made some change in
her dress, and Annie felt that she had not really liked being run in upon.
Everywhere they talked to her about the theatricals; and they talked across
her to Mrs. Munger, about one another, pretty freely.

"Well, that's all there is of us at present," said Mrs. Munger, coming down
the main road with her from the last place, "and you see just what we are.
It's a neighbourhood where everybody's just adapted to everybody else.
It's not a mere mush of concession, as Emerson says; people are perfectly
outspoken; but there's the greatest good feeling, and no vulgar display, or
lavish expenditure, or--anything."

Annie walked slowly homeward. She was tired, and she was now aware of
having been extremely bored by the South Hatboro' people. She was very
censorious of them, as we are of other people when we have reason to be
discontented with ourselves. They were making a pretence of simplicity
and unconventionality; but they had brought each her full complement of
servants with her, and each was apparently giving herself in the summer
to the unrealities that occupied her during the winter. Everywhere Annie
had found the affectation of intellectual interests, and the assumption
that these were the highest interests of life: there could be no doubt
that culture was the ideal of South Hatboro', and several of the ladies
complained that in the summer they got behind with their reading, or their
art, or their music. They said it was even more trouble to keep house in
the country than it was in town; sometimes your servants would not come
with you; or, if they did, they were always discontented, and you did not
know what moment they would leave you.

Annie asked herself how her own life was in any wise different from that of
these people. It had received a little more light into it, but as yet it
had not conformed itself to any ideal of duty. She too was idle and vapid,
like the society of which her whole past had made her a part, and she owned
to herself, groaning in spirit, that it was no easier to escape from her
tradition at Hatboro' than it was at Rome.

When she reached her own house again, Mrs. Bolton called to her from the
kitchen threshold as she was passing the corner on her way to the front
door: "Mis' Putney's b'en here. I guess you'll find a note from her on the
parlour table."

Annie fired in resentment of the uncouthness. It was Mrs. Bolton's business
to come into the parlour and give her the note, with a respectful statement
of the facts. But she did not tell her so; it would have been useless.

Mrs. Putney's note was an invitation to a family tea for the next evening.




XI.


Putney met Annie at the door, and led her into the parlour beside the hall.
He had a little crippled boy on his right arm, and he gave her his left
hand. In the parlour he set his burden down in a chair, and the child drew
up under his thin arms a pair of crutches that stood beside it. His white
face had the eager purity and the waxen translucence which we see in
sufferers from hip-disease.

"This is our Winthrop," said his father, beginning to talk at once. "We
receive the company and do the honours while mother's looking after the
tea. We only keep one undersized girl," he explained more directly to
Annie, "and Ellen has to be chief cook and bottlewasher herself. She'll
be in directly. Just lay off your bonnet anywhere."

Letter: Gender roles in the Cinderella story

Doctors assure us that wherever you find an elderly, pompous old writer long past his prime you will find a bottle of scotch nearby. If only that were the case. Hilly hid mine after I fell up the stairs when I came home from the Garrick yesterday, and I've had to make do with a bottle of Blue Nun I found in the maid's parlour. Not that I am an alcoholic. Dipsomaniacs are a breed of the lower orders you meet on street corners: people like myself are bon viveurs who happen to like a drink. Or 12.

My primary observation is that drinking makes the daily grind of dealing with people so much easier. You drink a pint of whisky and become the life and soul of the party. You then start insulting people, before sweating heavily and wetting yourself involuntarily. You will usually find that everyone quickly avoids you, thereby relieving you of the need to make conversation. This is why I prefer to do much of my drinking at home. It saves so much time.

There are a great many drinks on the market - spirits, wines and beers - and I've probably drunk them all. Usually in some kind of combination with one another. Mixing cocktails is one of my favourite hobbies. Here's one I invented last week for my great sycophant, Christopher Hitchens.

The Hitch

One bottle of Babycham

One bottle of absinthe

Five shots of Angostura very bitters

Two tablespoons of bile

Two or three glasses of this tincture can give you a lifetime of self-satisfaction.

At some time you will probably be forced to invite people to your home and they may expect a drink. My advice is to offer them the cheapest tipple you can find; my local off-licence does a ghastly Mosel at 70p a bottle. I've never cared for even the best wines, and this should guarantee those poncing off you neither ask for top-ups nor stay long, thereby leaving you more money and time for the pub.

It is well known that only the very dullest of petit-bourgeois minds fail to over-imbibe on a daily basis, so I regard hangovers as a price worth paying for my brilliance. That said, I have found ways of coping with this metaphysical malaise. The first is to fuck someone; preferably somebody else's wife, but if your own is the only one around then she will do. The second is to read a book by that little shit Mart; it will either remind you you're not that bad a writer or give you some sleep.

The one downside to drinking is that it can make you fat. This is remedied by cutting out food entirely and drinking all spirits without mixers. My weight has gone down to 19st with this diet. There isn't much more to say, but as I'm being paid by the column I'd better repeat myself. And now that I'm dead, there's no harm in Bloomsbury repackaging the same material several times in the same collection.

I don't really like wine. Gin is for pansies, though a snifter with water doesn't go amiss. Liqueurs are best left to patent-shoed Wops. Or Americans. Champagne is an overrated girl's drink, though it can be drunk with any food; as such, it's a perfect breakfast drink because a scotch before 10am is very non-U.

I loathe pubs with loud music, but my utmost detestation is reserved for sanctimonious ex-topers. There's nothing worse than a man who doesn't drink. I once tried not drinking for several hours and my wives and mistresses said how dull it was that I was conscious and they were spared removing my soiled trousers from my bloated legs.

Whisky is my favourite tipple, though I recommend never giving it to a Welshman as it's wasted on someone with an IQ of less than 80. Have I mentioned that I'm partial to a Macallan? Gosh is that the time? Hilly's coming to change my IV drip before I fall unconscious again. The publisher can bloody well pad out the rest of the book with a pointless quiz without me.

Q: Who will buy this?

A: No one.

The digested read digested: The old pub bore.

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Jury clears judge of libelling mother
Sales of 'misery memoirs' fall after they boomed beyond all expectations since Dave Pelzer wrote A Child Called It

Constance Briscoe wins Ugly libel case

A judge who was sued for libel by her mother over allegations of childhood cruelty and neglect in her bestselling "misery memoir" won her case yesterday.

Constance Briscoe burst into tears at the high court in London as a jury unanimously cleared her and publishers Hodder & Stoughton over the claims in Ugly, which her mother Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, had alleged were a "piece of fiction".

During the 10-day trial, Briscoe, 51, who was one of the first black women judges in the UK, told the court her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore", a "potato-head" and "miss piss-a-bed".

She described trying to kill herself by drinking diluted bleach after failing to get taken into care, and told the jury she used a university grant to have plastic surgery to remove the "ugliness" her mother had taunted her over.

Briscoe, of Clapham, south London, also said that when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.

Ugly, published in 2006, has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK. Briscoe and Hodder & Stoughton had denied libel and said the book was substantially true. Andrew Caldecott QC, for Briscoe, said the events occurred between 1964 and 1975.

Briscoe-Mitchell, from Southwark, south-east London, left court without making any immediate comment about her legal defeat. During the trial she had denied all the allegations of verbal and physical abuse and claimed she and her daughter had enjoyed a loving relationship within a happy family.

Her counsel, William Panton, told the jury Briscoe was "spinning a yarn", claiming his client had struggled to bring up her 11 children and had provided for them equally to the best of her ability.

Outside court, Briscoe told reporters she was "very happy" with the jury's verdict, which came after more than a day of deliberation.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me," she said. "Now I just want to get on with my career. I would like to thank all my readers who have sent me messages of support, including the very many children who provided helpful advice.

"I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors it should never be swept under the carpet."

Hodder & Stoughton said it was pleased with the verdict. "We are very proud to be Constance Briscoe's publisher," a statement said. "Her books Ugly and Beyond Ugly have touched hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them children. Sadly, as we know from the news over the past few weeks, child abuse is all too common and nothing and no one should ever stand in the way of the truth."

Asked during the trial why she wrote the book, Briscoe said: "I didn't believe for a split second that I owed my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone who from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, who faced adversity at every turn, could come through."

The court heard she had cleaned offices for two hours every day before school until her studies took her to Newcastle University, the criminal bar and, eventually, to become one of the country's few black women judges.

"I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be whatever you want to be," Briscoe said. "You just have to believe in yourself ... you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar.

"You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe that my book has done an enormous amount of good."

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