"Was he a foreigner?" I asked. "It's clearly a French name. I suppose
it was his name?"
"Oh, he didn't invent it. He was born to it, in Bethnal Green, as it
came out during the proceedings. He was in the habit of alluding to his
Scotch connections. But every great man has done that. The mother, I
believe, was Scotch, right enough. The father de Barral whatever his
origins retired from the Customs Service (tide-waiter I think), and
started lending money in a very, very small way in the East End to people
connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners, ship-chandlers,
tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his living at it. He
was a very decent man I believe. He had enough influence to place his
only son as junior clerk in the account department of one of the Dock
Companies. "Now, my boy," he said to him, "I've given you a fine start."
But de Barral didn't start. He stuck. He gave perfect satisfaction. At
the end of three years he got a small rise of salary and went out
courting in the evenings. He went courting the daughter of an old sea-
captain who was a churchwarden of his parish and lived in an old badly
preserved Georgian house with a garden: one of these houses standing in a
reduced bit of "grounds" that you discover in a labyrinth of the most
sordid streets, exactly alike and composed of six-roomed hutches.
Some of them were the vicarages of slum parishes. The old sailor had got
hold of one cheap, and de Barral got hold of his daughter--which was a
good bargain for him. The old sailor was very good to the young couple
and very fond of their little girl. Mrs. de Barral was an equable,
unassuming woman, at that time with a fund of simple gaiety, and with no
ambitions; but, woman-like, she longed for change and for something
interesting to happen now and then. It was she who encouraged de Barral
to accept the offer of a post in the west-end branch of a great bank. It
appears he shrank from such a great adventure for a long time. At last
his wife's arguments prevailed. Later on she used to say: 'It's the only
time he ever listened to me; and I wonder now if it hadn't been better
for me to die before I ever made him go into that bank.' You may be surprised at my knowledge of these details. Well, I had them
ultimately from Mrs. Fyne. Mrs. Fyne while yet Miss Anthony, in her days
of bondage, knew Mrs. de Barral in her days of exile. Mrs. de Barral was
living then in a big stone mansion with mullioned windows in a large damp
park, called the Priory, adjoining the village where the refined poet had
built himself a house.