The Ffolliots of Redmarley | Page 3

insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very clean-looking
little tradesman, with trim white whiskers, a bald head, and a round,
rosy face, wherein shrewd, blue eyes twinkled cheerfully.
No, dada bore not the slightest resemblance either to Mr Gladstone or
Mr Bright, and yet, Eloquent reflected, "what a man he was!" Dada was
the chief factor in Eloquent's little world--law-giver, lover, and friend.
It is probable that his childhood would have been more normal and less
politically precocious had his mother lived. But she died when he was
four years old, a fortnight after the birth of a little sister who lived but a
few hours.

Abel Gallup's sister came to keep house for them, and luckily, she, like
his wife, was sensible and kindly, but she stood in great awe of her
brother and never dreamt of criticising his conduct. Now his wife had
never spared him her caustic, common-sense comments. Politics,
especially where they might have affected the well-being of the child,
were strictly kept in their proper place, And naturally she considered
that, in the upbringing of a very small boy, that place should be remote
almost to invisibility.
With her death all this was altered. Abel Gallup was very lonely, and
turned to his little son for comfort. The child was biddable, loving, and
gentle, and "to please his dada" had ever been held before him as his
highest honour and duty.
Before he could read he could repeat long portions from the various
speeches his father particularly admired; he learned by heart easily and
had a retentive memory, and his father had only to say over a sentence
two or three times when the child was word perfect. It gave Abel
Gallup the most exquisite delight to stand his little son between his
knees and hear the stirring, sonorous sentences rolled out in the high,
child voice; and even in those early days he used to impress upon
Eloquent that when he was grown-up he "would have to speak different
to dada."
And little Eloquent, not realising that his father referred merely to
accent and general grammar, would puzzle for hours wondering how
such men as Mr Gladstone or John Bright would express their common
wants. In what lofty terms, for instance, would Mr Gladstone inform
his aunt, if he had an aunt, that his collar was frayed at the back and
was scratching his neck. This, Eloquent felt, was quite a likely
contingency, "seeing as he wore 'em so high." And how, he wondered,
would Mr John Bright intimate delicately to the authorities who ruled
his home that he hoped there would be pork for dinner on Sunday and
plenty of crackling. He felt certain that Mr Bright would be
sympathetic in the matter of crackling; he didn't know why, but he was
sure of it. Equally convinced was he that the great statesman would
express his desire in impressive and rhetorical language. He repeated

"bits" from the speeches that he knew, to see if he could fasten on a
chance phrase here and there that could be introduced into the common
conversations of life; but they never did fit, and he was fain to express
his small wants in the plain language of the folk about him.
Another name floated vague and nebulous among the impressions of
very early childhood: that of one Herbert Spencer; and this was curious,
for Abel Gallup was what he would himself have described as "a
sincere Believer." Nevertheless, he was immensely attracted by the
philosopher's Study of Sociology, and little Eloquent was made to learn
and repeat many long bits from that dispassionate work. There was no
portrait of Mr Herbert Spencer hanging upon the walls; he was not a
living force, a real presence, like Mr Gladstone or Mr Bright; he spake
not with the words of "a great soul greatly stirred"; yet there was
something in his polished and logical sentences that gave Eloquent a
doubtless quite erroneous sense of his personality, and of a certain
aloofness in his attitude. He never called into council the "bits" from
Mr Herbert Spencer in order to find majestic language in which to
express the ordinary wants of life.
Eloquent was taken to his first political meeting when he was six years
old, and he fell asleep before he had been there half an hour. His father
put his arm round the child, rested the heavy little head against his
shoulder and let him sleep in peace. Not even the cheering woke him,
and his father carried him home, still sleeping. Perhaps Abel believed
that in some mysterious manner the child absorbed the opinions of the
speakers through the pores. He was not in the least annoyed with the
little boy for falling asleep, nor did his tender years