Jameson

“ Jameson had had dyspepsia ten years on those hard biscuits it was more than any of us had had on our cake and pie. We left the biscuits, and the two paper packages which Mrs. Jameson had brought, in a heap on the table just where she had put them.
After we had replaced the baskets we all scattered about, trying to enjoy ourselves in the sweet pine woods, but it was hard work, we were so much disturbed by what had happened. We wondered uneasily, too, what Flora Clark would say about her jumbles. We were all quiet, peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too fast. ”

“ Steve saw all this and realised the position in which Jameson must find himself. He tried to place himself in Jameson’s position in imagination.
‘What should I do if I were to find myself in such a hole of my own making? Should I surrender and take my chance of getting out alive? Could I expect to get out alive in case I surrendered? No! A filibustering murderer can expect nothing but death. Death would be my sentence, by Human Laws, by Moral Law, by God’s Law. I could not even expect a word of mercy from England. ”

“ She is a smart, handsome woman, and would have been married long ago if it had not been for her temper.
Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to gather up the jumbles; she just went on after that remark of hers, opening the rest of the things; there were only one or two more. Then she took the cracker-box which Harry had brought; he had stolen away to put up his horse, and it looked to me very much as if Harriet had stolen away with him, for I could not see her anywhere.
Mrs. Jameson lifted this cracker-box on to the table and opened it. It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. ”

“ Maurice Beresford (afraid lest Peter should carry out his latest threat—to liquidate Jameson & Co. altogether) suggested a conference. They met, the two accountants and the three principals, at Guthrie’s offices; sat down in his mahogany board-room to a long session. Talk, as usual at such meetings, coiled away from essentials; wound itself into interminable knots over unimportant minutiæ . . . till Peter’s temper, long held in leash, got the better of him. ”

“ Jameson went away. To tell the truth, most of the women in our village had so much work to do, since they kept no servants, that they could not take many ten-mile walks, no matter what length skirts they wore. However, many wore the short ones while doing housework, which was very sensible.
During that morning call, Mrs. Jameson, besides the reformed costume, advocated another innovation which fairly took our breaths away. She was going to beautify the village. We had always considered the village beautiful as it was, and we bridled a little at that. ”

“ THE COMMENCEMENT OF DREAMS § 1 Peter Jameson was no “hero,” only an average decent human being who had gone out to fight the two-legged Beasts which threatened his country, very much as his ancestors might have gone out to wage war against the four-legged beasts which threatened their caves. And being an average human being, his feelings—as the taxi whirled him Savoy-wards—expressed himself in crude song. ”

“ While Jameson is very wealthy and lavishes luxuries and beautiful clothes on her, he reserves the pleasure of buying and spending entirely to himself. Treats her like a child in their financial arrangements, and doles out little allowances as if she couldn't be trusted to spend it intelligently. She's so sensitive that she'd rather go without than ask him for a cent, and it often puts her in an embarrassing position to be without. ”

“ Mrs. Jameson was the only one who did not appear in the least disturbed; she did not seem to realize that she had done anything unusual.
Caroline Liscom was not at church—indeed, she had not been much since the boarders arrived; she had to stay at home to get the dinner. Louisa and I wondered whether she was relieved or disturbed at losing her boarders, and whether we should ever know which. When we passed the Wray house on our way home, and saw the blinds open, and the fresh mould in the garden, and the new shingles shining on the hen-house roof, we speculated about it. ”

“ Louisa, when we were going home that night, said she supposed that Mrs. Jameson would try to improve our literary society also; and she was proved to be right in her supposition at the very next meeting. Mrs. Jameson came, and she not only read selections from Browning, but she started us in that mad problem of Shakespeare and Bacon. Most of the ladies in our society had not an intimate acquaintance with either, having had, if the truth were told, their minds too fully occupied with such humble domestic questions of identity as whether Johnny or Tommy stole the sugar. ”

“ Flora Clark opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. White clutched her arm and looked at her so beseechingly that she kept quiet.
Mrs. Jameson continued, utterly unconscious of having given any offence. We supposed that she did not once think it possible that we knew what the usages of ladies' societies were. “Ladies,” said she, “I am sure that you will all prefer having your minds improved and your spheres enlarged by the study and contemplation of one of the greatest authors of any age, to indulging in narrow village gossip. I will now read to you a selection from Robert Browning.” ”

“ He had three allies: those waves, the fever, and the sun. Especially the sun. The black man goes bare-headed, and the sun lets him pass. The white man covers his head with an inch of cork, and the sun strikes through it and kills him. When Jameson came down the river from Yambuya, the natives fired on his boat. He waved his helmet at them for three minutes, to show them there was a white man in the canoe. Three minutes was all the sun wanted. Jameson died in two days. Where you are going, the sun does worse things to a man than kill him: it drives him mad. ”

“ Jameson,” said Louisa, “but it would be dreadful.”
“Well, there's one comfort,” said I; “Mrs. White will never wear it.”
“Nor anybody else,” said Louisa.
Still we did feel a little nervous about it; there is never any estimating the influence of a reformer. However, we were sure of ourselves. Louisa and I agreed that we never would be seen out in any such costume. Not very many in the village were. There were a few women, who were under the influence of Mrs. Jameson, who did cut off some of their old dresses and make themselves some leggings with hers for a pattern. ”

“ Jameson, as I found that she did not know how to get along at all at all. Mr. McMurray and family and Mrs. Jameson started off on Tuesday morning for Manitouline with a fair wind and fair day, and I think they have had a fine voyage down. Poor Mrs. Jameson cried heartily when she parted with me and my children; she is indeed a woman in a thousand. While here, George came down the rapids with her in fine style and spirits. She insisted on being baptized and named in Indian, after her sail down the falls. ”

“ He was again a hero and his heart was in his work. “There is no need,” said those who introduced him, “to tell you who John Benton is. His devotion to peace shows that the last war was not fought in vain. It is with pride.”... And it was with pride that John faced these audiences on Washington’s or Lincoln’s birthday or on Armistice Day and spoke out of his heart. It was with pride that he became Jameson’s closest friend and heard Jameson say: “It’s on the few of us, John, that civilization depends. We must keep our heads when the world goes mad.” John was keeping his head. ”

“ I don't think the Jamesons paid much for any of the dishes which they bought in our village; we are not very shrewd people, and it did not seem right to ask large prices for articles which had been put to such menial uses. I think many things were given them. I myself gave Harriet Jameson an old blue plate and another brown one which I had been using to bake extra pies in when my regular pie-plates gave out. They were very discolored and cracked, but I never saw anybody more pleased than Harriet was. ”

“ He had always found idleness intolerable, and Jameson’s seemed—regarded as “something to do”—made to his hand. To Francis and other Etonian acquaintances, the choice appeared an amazing one: but the boy’s father—lonely since his wife’s death about a year before, and conscious that his other son Arthur, whatever else he might become, would never be a business man—both understood and stimulated this desire for work.
§ 4 Peter’s entry into Jameson’s, early in 1903, synchronized with the formation of the Havana Tobacco Company—commonly known as “The Trust” ”

“ Began too, for Peter Jameson, a new life—the life which every untrained gentleman of the Empire who could spoof a recruiting doctor into passing him young enough or fit enough for service, was then living. A life neither of comfort nor—as many wrote and made much money by their writing—of good humour. A life of adults gone back to the irritation of school: save that for school-house they had sodden camps; for dining-hall, a draughty tent where fleecing contractors served half-cold meals; for schoolmasters, the incompetence of brave fellows wrongly employed. ”

“ Desperately, he decided to find the nearest cliff and jump from it—head-first! Humanity called; no man lived to companion him. His four metal limbs carried him swiftly to the summit of a nearby precipice. Why not gamble on the hereafter? 25X-987, understanding his trend of thought, did not attempt to restrain him. Instead, the machine man of Zor waited patiently.
As Professor Jameson stood there meditating upon the jump which would hurl him now into a new plane of existence—or into oblivion, the thought transference of 25X-987 reached him. ”

“ The whole village was in an uproar; none of us who had old-fashioned possessions fairly knew where we were living, so many of them were in the Shaw house; we were short of dishes and bureau drawers, and counterpanes and curtains. Mrs. Jameson never asked for any of these things; she simply took them as by right of war, and nobody gainsaid her, not even Flora Clark. However, poor Emily Shaw was the one who displayed the greatest meekness under provocation. The whole affair must have seemed revolutionary to her. She was a quiet, delicate little woman, no longer young. ”

“ After an illness of about six months he died, at 14 Moray Place, Edinburgh, on 21 Nov. 1911, and was buried at Anwoth in Kirkcudbrightshire. In addition to legal and political work Jameson was active in other spheres of public life. ”

“ Louisa and I thought Flora might be right. At all events, we did not wish to set ourselves up in opposition to her. We never carried the books into the society, and we never read Mrs. Jameson's letter about them, though we did feel somewhat guilty, especially as we reflected that Flora had never forgotten the affair of the jumbles, and might possibly have allowed her personal feelings to influence her.
“I should feel very sorry,” said Louisa to me, “if we were preventing the women of this village from improving themselves.” ”

“ There was to be a grand procession, of course, illustrative of the arts, trades, and professions in our village a hundred years ago and at the present time, and Mrs. Jameson engineered that. I never saw a woman work as she did. Louisa and I agreed that she could not be so very delicate after all. She had a finger in everything except the cooking; that she left mostly to the rest of us, though she did break over in one instance to our sorrow. We made pound-cake, and cupcake, and Indian puddings, and pies, and we baked beans enough for a standing army. ”

“ We often think that the younger women don't do as much work when the gentlemen are coming; they are upstairs so long curling their hair and prinking.
I wondered if Flora Clark had said anything. I heard afterward that she had not, but I saw at once that she was endeavoring to wreak a little revenge upon Mrs. Jameson. By a series of very skilfull and scarcely perceptible manœuvres she gently impelled Mrs. Jameson, without her being aware of it, into the seat directly in front of the stove. ”

“ Flora concluded by saying that it seemed to her that if the Linnville folks let Mrs. Jameson's bean-pots alone, she might keep her hands off their coffin-plates.
Mrs. Jameson was quite unmoved even by that. She said that Miss Clark did not realize, as she would do were her sphere wider, the incalculable harm that such a false standard of art might do in a community: that it might even pervert the morals.
“I guess if we don't have anything to hurt our morals any worse than our coffin-plates, we shall do,” returned Flora. ”

“ Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite appropriate. However, I suppose that she was not to blame, poor child, and it may easily be more embarrassing to have old fine clothes than old poor ones. Really, Harriet Jameson would have looked better dressed that day in an old calico gown than the old silk one which she wore. Her waist was blue silk with some limp chiffon at the neck and sleeves, and her skirt was old brown silk all frayed at the bottom and very shiny. ”

“ Jameson offered to pay 20,000l. out of his own purse rather than allow the expedition to be abandoned. In order to place himself in communication with England, he (8 Aug.) left Stanley Falls to go down the Congo to Bangala, where Mr. Herbert Ward, a member of Major Barttelot's party, was known to be awaiting telegrams from the Emin committee. The weather was bad; a chill contracted by Jameson on 10 Aug. developed into hæmaturic fever, and on 17 Aug., the day after his arrival at Bangala, he died. On the 18th he was buried on an island in the Congo opposite the village. ”