Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Eliza
    Eliza
    Eliza
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Eliza

    By Wallace Goldsmith and Barry Pain

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1984

    Read more from Wallace Goldsmith

    Related to Eliza

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Talking RUBBISH

      Jul 1, 2020

      “It was like a moment from a Noël Coward play. You know, the bit where the lovers meet again for the first time in many years and it’s all slightly formal and awkward. There always seems to be a moment like that in a Noël Coward play. Not that I’m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Famous People

      Mar 1, 2022

      Famous People
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Idiots

      Feb 26, 2021

      The Idiots
      18 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Jul 28, 2022

      Woman About Town
      5 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Mature Adults In Your Area

      Aug 8, 2022

      I would say that I don’t normally do this kind of thing, except that on and off over the months and years, I’ve done “these kinds of things” too many times for that to be true. So yeah, I go on dates from time to time. This recent guy wouldn’t choose

      6 min read

    • Article

      Chris Erskine: We're In Need Of A Little Refinishing

      May 1, 2018

      We are a house of half-done things. The tomatoes are semi-planted, and the old dresser may never be refinished. The other day, I noticed the electric pencil sharper has a little stub in it from when someone broke off a tip. One of the inmates was pro

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fall-down COMEDIAN

      Apr 11, 2021

      Fall-down COMEDIAN
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dressing For The Occasion

      Sep 11, 2023

      Dressing For The Occasion
      2 min read

    • Article

      G’day – And Goodbye

      Aug 25, 2021

      G’day – And Goodbye
      4 min read

    • Article

      Dear Father Christmas…

      Nov 19, 2020

      Dear Father Christmas…
      5 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Streets Ahead

      Feb 24, 2021

      Streets Ahead
      2 min read

    • Article

      Diary Of A Country Mouse

      Mar 3, 2020

      THURSDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Giles shows us the sample mice and I am, as if for the first time, overcome with joy. Perhaps when I was a child I had feelings like this—but not in many years. I look, for instance, at a small gray mouse, smaller than the othe

      17 min read

    • Article

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD

      Mar 22, 2023

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD
      7 min read

    • Article

      Walking On TheWild Side…

      Jul 17, 2023

      Walking On TheWild Side…
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Lost Cause

      Dec 6, 2020

      A Lost Cause
      9 min read

    • Article

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD

      Mar 22, 2023

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD
      7 min read

    • Article

      Stumped by MY SISTER

      Jan 10, 2024

      Before we begin, here is something of an apology. I’ve been looking through recent editions of the Rosemary archive, and I fear I might have given a misleading impression of life at Dear Towers. You could, for example, be forgiven for thinking that a

      3 min read

    • Article

      A closet AFFAIR

      Nov 8, 2020

      My birthday cake had a lean on it, I noticed. The youngest daughter, who’d baked it, blamed the floorboards at her new flat, which is in an old house in an old part of the city. “It’s historically listed,” she told me. And also listing, apparently. B

      2 min read

    • Article

      Use It Or LOSE IT!

      Jul 17, 2022

      Musings from our favourite Kiwi funnywoman Today’s visit to the petrol station was something of an emotional rollercoaster. On the downside, I was buying gas. Wow. It’s been a while and at first I thought the pump was broken – the number of litres wa

      2 min read

    Reviews for Eliza

    4/5

    12 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Written at the same time as "Diary of a Nobody", this collection of articles ostensibly written by a clerk about his family life is extremely funny
    • 4/5
      These stories are basically the diaries of Eliza's husband. He is an unnamed pompuos Edwardian. The third story is actually the diary of Eliza's son. His diary entries were written just before World War One when he was 15 - but they could have been written today. They are the diaries of any typical teenager. The humour is laugh out loud funny! Strangely though I couldn't find the book listed anywhere - I picked it up in a charity shop. I cab thoroughly recommend it if you can find a copy.

    Book preview

    Eliza - Wallace Goldsmith

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eliza, by Barry Pain

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Eliza

    Author: Barry Pain

    Illustrator: Wallace Goldsmith

    Release Date: December 9, 2007 [EBook #23783]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELIZA ***

    Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed

    Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

    produced from images generously made available by The

    Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

    Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained.

    ELIZA

    Says ROBERT BARR in The Idler:—

    ... and as for Barry Pain's 'Eliza' I question if anything more deliciously humourous, and of a humour so restrained, has been written since the time of Lamb.

    "It was true I ran into the horse." (See page 24.)

    By

    BARRY PAIN

    ILLUSTRATED BY

    WALLACE GOLDSMITH

    BOSTON

    DANA ESTES & COMPANY

    PUBLISHERS

    Copyright, 1904

    By Dana Estes & Company

    COLONIAL PRESS

    Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.

    Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

    CONTENTS

    ELIZA'S HUSBAND

    Suppose, I said to one of the junior clerks at our office the other day, you were asked to describe yourself in a few words, could you do it?

    His answer that he could describe me in two was no answer at all. Also the two words were not a description, and were so offensive that I did not continue the conversation.

    I believe there are but few people who could give you an accurate description of themselves. Often in the train to and from the city, or while walking in the street, I think over myself—what I have been, what I am, what I might be if, financially speaking, it would run to it. I imagine how I should act under different circumstances—on the receipt of a large legacy, or if for some specially clever action I were taken into partnership, or if a mad bull came down the street. I may say that I make a regular study of myself. I have from time to time recorded on paper some of the more important incidents of our married life, affecting Eliza and myself, and I present them to you, gentle reader, in this little volume. I think they show how with a very limited income—and but for occasional assistance from Eliza's mother I do not know how we should have got along—a man may to a great extent preserve respectability, show taste and judgment, and manage his wife and home.

    The more I think about myself, the more—I say it in all modesty—the subject seems to grow. I should call myself many-sided, and in many respects unlike ordinary men. Take, for instance, the question of taste. Some people would hardly think it worth while to mention a little thing like taste; but I do. I am not rich, but what I have I like to have ornamental, though not loud. Only the other day the question of glass-cloths for the kitchen turned up, and though those with the red border were threepence a dozen dearer than the plain, I ordered them without hesitation. Eliza changed them next day, contrary to my wishes, and we had a few words about it, but that is not the point. The real point is that if your taste comes out in a matter of glass-cloths for the kitchen, it will also come out in antimacassars for the drawing-room and higher things.

    Again, ordinary men—men that might possibly call themselves my equals—are not careful enough about respectability. Everywhere around me I see betting on horse-races, check trousers on Sunday, the wash hung out in the front garden, whiskey and soda, front steps not properly whitened, and the door-handle not up to the mark. I could point to houses where late hours on Sunday are so much the rule that the lady of the house comes down in her dressing-gown to take in the milk—which, I am sure, Eliza would sooner die than do. There are families—in my own neighbourhood, I am sorry to say—where the chimneys are not swept regularly, beer is fetched in broad daylight, and attendance at a place of worship on Sunday is rather the exception than the rule. Then, again, language is an important point; to my mind nothing marks a respectable man more than the use of genteel language. There may have been occasions when excessive provocation has led me to the use of regrettable expressions, but they have been few. As a rule I avoid not only what is profane, but also anything that is slangy. I fail to understand this habit which the present generation has formed of picking up some meaningless phrase and using it in season and out of season. For some weeks I have been greatly annoyed by the way some of the clerks use the phrase What, ho, she bumps! If you ask them who bumps, or how, or why, they have no answer but fits of silly laughter. Probably, before these words appear in print that phrase will have been forgotten and another equally ridiculous will have taken its place. It is not sensible; what is worse, it is not to my mind respectable. Do not imagine that I object to humour in conversation. That is a very different thing. I have made humourous remarks myself before now, mostly of rather a cynical and sarcastic kind.

    I am fond of my home, and any little addition to its furniture or decorations gives me sincere pleasure. Both in the home and in our manner of life there are many improvements which I am prevented by financial considerations from carrying out. If I were a rich man I would have the drawing-room walls a perfect mass of pictures. If I had money I could spend it judiciously and without absurdity. I should have the address stamped in gold on the note-paper, and use boot-trees, and never be without a cake in the house in case a friend dropped in to tea. Nor should I think twice about putting on an extra clean pair of cuffs in the week if wanted. We should keep two servants. I am interested in the drama, if serious, and two or three times every month I should take Eliza to the dress-circle. Our suburb has a train service which is particularly convenient for the theatres. Eliza would wear a dressy blouse,—she shares my objections to anything cut out at the neck,—a mackintosh, and a sailor hat, the two latter to be removed before entering. I should carry her evening shoes in a pretty crewel-worked bag. We have often discussed it. Curiously enough, she already has the bag, though we seldom have an opportunity to

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1