FOOTNOTES:
CHAPTER XIX: THE LADY’S MAID
Louise was a treasure: more than that, she is a treasure, for I have her still, and love her the more since it became a certainty that she would not marry Perrin. I forget whose fault it was that I got a maid for myself. Probably Perrin was at the bottom of it; in fact, now I come to think of it, I remember that I began to find it increasingly difficult to get the upper housemaid to fold up my clothes after I had dressed for dinner. That undoubtedly was owing to Perrin’s influence. Before he came there was always plenty of amusement for the housemaid in my room. She added finishing-touches to her hair in front of my big looking-glass, she experimented with the pots and pans on the toilet table, she tried on my hats—I came unexpectedly into my room one day and noticed that she was putting away three hats which I had not worn for a week. I remarked how annoying it was the way hats would hop about a room, and apologised for the trouble they were giving her. She covered me with moral dust and ashes by the pleasant smile with which she answered, as she straightened her hair, that it was no trouble, she enjoyed handling pretty things, so I was obliged to give her one of the hats to show my repentance. After that I vowed that never again would I trifle with sacred feminine instincts. She was so pretty I am not surprised that Perrin sent for her in the evenings to talk to him while he made George wash up, but it was very inconvenient for me. I nearly asked him to let me have her for half an hour, and I would tell the under housemaid to turn down the beds a little earlier, so that she could sit with him until Lizzie was ready, and then I thought that perhaps he might not like it, and I had better engage a maid of my own. Besides, a maid would save having that bitty dressmaker in the house; so Louise came. Why Perrin never took to her I did not at first understand, though I accepted the fact with secret gratitude. Louise is rather a horsy person and, I think, preferred walks with the coachman to sitting in a stuffy room, even with Perrin’s wit to lighten the atmosphere. Like all horsy people she has a quick, kindly nature, and none of that touchy indigestion that spoils so many indoor servants. She is an excellent dressmaker. The only times when I am not well dressed are on the days preceding any race-meeting of importance; then she loses her head and behaves like a feverish bird about to lay a nest-egg.
“Mr. Jenkins’s Hardup seems to be a likely winner for to-morrow, ma’am,” she says excitedly, brushing my hair with such energy that I feel I ought to stand up and straighten my legs while she gets up a good gloss.
“How much have you got on him, Louise?” I ask, setting my teeth.
“Well, ma’am, from what Mr. Pierce tells me of the way he is shaping, according to to-day’s paper, I think I shall have a bit both ways; not very much, of course; half a crown, I dare say.”
“You didn’t pick the winner for me last Newmarket as I told you. There, I am sure that will do beautifully,” I say, trying to escape before her state of mind leads her to throw a blanket over my hind quarters. Some day she will do it, and I shall find it difficult to hit exactly the right note in what I say. On the actual day of the race I can get nothing done, from the time when she brings my tea in the morning and forgets the hot water until the evening when she sends me, by the altogether disapproving Perrin, a paper (with the day’s results marked in a trembling hand) which she and Pierce have walked three miles to buy. She begs to be excused, of course, and would I care to glance at the news.
That is one side of Louise’s character. The other side is very feminine: loves clothes, and scent, and money, and love-making. She will never make what is called a good servant because I cannot teach her not to enjoy her life, and I am bound to say I have not tried. There is only one serious flaw in her so far as I am concerned, and that is her passion for dogs. She began by throwing out hints that I should keep a dog and, when these failed to take effect, she frankly besought me to keep one. I said: “Louise, I have your master and the two children. That is quite as much as I care to undertake.”
“Lord love you, ma’am,” she replied, “poor little darlings! you could keep both, and I would look after him, indeed I would.”
“You can keep an entire pack if you like,” I said, “so long as you chain them to your bed, and don’t let them dribble and roll over me.” The poor thing was in ecstasies, and I learned that Mr. Pierce knew of a splendid bull pup that was wanting a home.
“Remember,” I cautioned her, “if he goes within a mile of the sewing-room he leaves the world, or at any rate this house, within the hour.” She promised faithfully and, I believe, spent a sleepless night planning how he should whittle away his noisy and disorderly days. She asked me to suggest a name for him, and I said that it would be a certain comfort and distraction to me if she called him Rose, but she would not have that, because, in the first place, Rose was a lady’s name, and he was nothing if not a real gentleman, and the smell would soon wear off—she had not noticed it, in fact. I then suggested “Gobble,” “Slop,” “Skid” (because I hated the way he slithered and skated on the polished floors), “Nebuchadnezzar” (because his nails were so long and dirty, and he was always choking over bits of grass), “Keating” (because he appeared to be troubled with them), but she rejected all these and called him Sam, because there was something in his bloodshot eyes that reminded her of a favourite cousin who had died.
“That’s a good idea,” I agreed, “let us hope there is something in a name after all. Did your cousin die of eating too much Limerick lace?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she said proudly, “he died of whooping-cough.” (I have often thought that may be the matter with Sam, was my private reflection.) “And as for the lace, I do hope, ma’am, you will overlook that; it was quite a mistake of the poor boy’s. He was after a rabbit just when I happened to have my work outside, and he was so excited he never stopped to think.”
“Well, he will have all eternity to study Natural History in next time he does it,” I remarked, and we changed the subject. I got to tolerate Sam after a time, because he finished up James’s cigar ends. An ash-tray full of horrors vanished in a moment before his all-embracing slobber—but enough—the dinner-gong will sound in vain for me if I allow my mind to dwell on Sam’s habits. The only dog I have ever loved is dear to me because he is less like a dog than anything else. He is known to his friends as the “occasional table,” because that is what he is like. He has a highly polished oblong surface, and stands on Chippendale legs, and people trip over him, which always amuses me. There is no high-class amusement like this to be got out of Sam; he merely barges into people like a drunken hippopotamus, which is not in the least funny. But the “occasional table” is the only dog I know who appears to possess a pocket-handkerchief and use it, and I have never seen him eat in public. Dearest quality of all, he knows that burglars are not announced in the drawing-room, even that they do not ring the front door bell. What a truly blessed thing life would be if he could spread these glad tidings amongst the rest of his shrieking brotherhood! This seems to be a chapter on race-meetings and dogs rather than on Louise, my maid; but there is very little Louise apart from horses, dogs, good temper and lace, and all these points have been touched upon. I now understand better why Perrin does not like her. As one of the young ladies she would have done well enough; he would have tucked her up in her high dog-cart with a certain admiration, and been pleased with her successes at the Agricultural and Kennel Club shows. But for his own after-dinner conversation he prefers something of a fluffier and less independent nature; something of the tea-making, “Lord, Mr. Perrin, be off with you!” sort.
Louise has excellent taste in clothes. She steers through yards of drapery with the delicate assurance of a surgeon finding his way amongst the cobweb creations of the human body, and she does it all in the same impersonal way. The Claras of this world suggest lumps of animated matter rolling about, spluttering, and disturbing things that would do very well as they are; the Louises seem to be furthering the end of some pleasant universal desire and disentangling the prejudices that cumber its path.
CHAPTER XX: RELATIONS-IN-LAW
Since I have had a son and daughter-in-law, I have begun to think that it is absurd to reflect on the nature of this or that class of individual, because members of the same class are of opposite sexes. I often thought I had found a theory about such and such a class of people, such as servants, cousins, relations-in-law, &c., until one day, when I was being quite truthful with myself, I understood that a great many of my theories were reversible according to sex. This was most strikingly apparent with regard to my children-in-law. I decided that it is very objectionable for strange people to marry into a family and then idealise the being they have married, without reference to the lifelong knowledge of that being’s character possessed by the other members of the family. It seemed to me that my son-in-law made himself ridiculous about Anne; he really sickened me sometimes. He said that she was so delicate and sensitive he was sometimes afraid of crushing her with his blundering, thoughtless criticisms when she appeared to differ from him. That was nonsense, and I told him to go ahead fearlessly, and say what he thought; even if she was my own daughter, I was not blind to her faults. Therefore, logically, according to this theory, my daughter-in-law, Constance, would be not only wise in pointing out his faults to Tom, but she would be neglecting a duty were she not to speak out. Then I saw the reversible nature of my feeling. To be blinded by love is undoubtedly a fault, but in the case of married people both are not equally to blame. As in this diagram, taking A as the mother-in-law, those with a cross representing children of the male sex. The children-in-law are D and E.
Criticism that is right in my child-in-law D (male) is reprehensible and altogether out of the question in my other child-in-law E (female). The blame for idiotic partiality is transferred from my child-in-law D to C (one of the family). In fact, to put it still more simply, I don’t mind my son-in-law criticising my daughter up to a certain point, but if my daughter-in-law begins to criticise my son, I shall probably wring her neck. Constance has no idea how sensitive Tom is, and the way he idealises her is ridiculous. He told me how impossible it was to get her to spare herself at all, she was always thinking of others. Just what Robert said about Anne, but I had different methods of dealing with them. “Stuff and nonsense,” I said to my son-in-law, “Anne is not so delicate as you think, she won’t mind what you say in the least; it is not shrinking that makes her silent, it is because she has not made up her mind what she intends to do. If you do not want to go to the South of France while your partner is ill, don’t go. Anne travelled about alone for three years before you knew her.” I did not mind if he thought me a heartless pig; he was not mine to lose, and Anne, of course, belonged to herself as she always had. But Tom was mine and Constance’s, and the only way in which I could keep my share in him was to make her also mine. We could not pull him in two, and she would pull strongest, so I must change my metaphor and regard her as a growth upon Tom. I could not operate on her, so she must just come with him. Therefore, when he made the same remark about her as Robert made about Anne, I assured him that all really good women worked too hard, and that I had been thinking perhaps a little motor would save her running about so much; would she like one as a Christmas present? Of course, Constance felt that Tom could be safely trusted for week-ends with such a parent. Besides, I never asked him questions about her (to be truthful I wasn’t interested), and I always sent back fowls, and asparagus, and hats, and other useful articles, according to the length of time she let me have him.
I know that Robert would have liked me to show a little more nice feeling about Anne; indeed, once, I was obliged to be quite frank about it. “Anne and I understand each other very well,” I told him, “and you cannot have everything. If I showed nice feeling she would not like it, and although you would be the gainer by her annoyance——”
“I don’t see that,” he interrupted. “How could I be the gainer by Anne’s annoyance?”
“Because you would be the dearer by contrast. You would say, ‘Never mind, darling, you have me.’ But please let me go on. I was going to dwell on your mercies which you do not seem to be counting. Suppose, now, that I sat about in your drawing-room with fancy-work and asked how you were going to manage about the spring cleaning. That would mean telling you at great length how I always did it and how excellent my dear husband thought the arrangement. I should add that, of course, it was for you and Anne to decide.”
“Well, I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it?” he asked foolishly.
“Not if I said it was for you to decide. That would mean that unless you allowed me to arrange it in my own way I should say that no doubt you were right; everything was so altered since my day that I could not attempt to judge. And then I should be ill for a fortnight in your house and have all my meals carried upstairs, and the servants would give notice.”
“Good Lord!” remarked Robert.
“Exactly, then do not complain about my not showing nice feeling, because I don’t make myself a nuisance to Anne.”
Another day I told him just to look, for instance, at Constance’s mother. He said he thought she seemed a very nice old lady. “All right,” I said, “Tom is outside, and he is likely to be open with us to-day, because his mother-in-law is staying for the week-end with Constance—come along.” I dragged him out under the trees where Tom was lying in a hammock, reading. When we had got chairs and explained that we had ordered tea outside to save him the trouble of coming in, I said: “I suppose you can’t stay to dinner if Constance’s mother is with you?”
“Poor girl!” said Tom, “I suppose I had better go and give her a hand.”
“But she is a very nice old lady, isn’t she?” I asked.
“Oh, very,” he agreed flabbily. Then he saw my face, and noticed also Robert’s intelligent, inquiring expression. “What’s the matter with you two?” he asked.
“The fact is, darling,” I explained, “that Robert was a little dissatisfied with me because he thinks I do not take enough part in his household arrangements, so we came out, less to save you the trouble of coming to tea than that you should save me the trouble of explaining to him.”
Tom flung down his book. “I will tell you all about it from beginning to end,” he promised us. “People talk about the mind being a storehouse, but hers is the bottomless pit. And the only things that will go into it are details; if you give her the sort of things that are in most people’s minds they lie about outside the pit and make her uncomfortable. But I get so done up filling her with the stuff, and so does Con. She wants to know every detail of our lives, from the kind of shaving soap I use to whether I put the lights out myself or leave it to the servants. Constance has to tell all hers too. The old lady starves if she doesn’t get it, and no amount of it seems to satisfy her.”
“But, surely, she must know your day pretty well by now,” suggested Robert, taking my hand affectionately.
“You would think so,” said Tom, “but you see you are wrong, because there is just a shade of difference sometimes in what I do every day. For instance, when I go home to-night I shall have to tell her where we all sat this afternoon, and when you came out, and why.” (He tore his hair.) “And what the devil shall I say when she asks what we talked about? I get so giddy with it, you know, that I just keep the scene in my mind and give it her all faithfully. I dare not invent or I should contradict myself.”
Robert apologised to me, and, of course, I said it was nothing; there was no pleasure like setting matters of opinion right. But I returned to Tom for confirmation of my theories of sex.
“What about your father-in-law? He asks a good many questions, too, so far as I remember.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Tom, “his are quite harmless questions. I like telling him what he wants to know; it is generally quite interesting, about my job and things of that sort.”
I turned to Robert and asked: “You never thought my husband wanting in nice feeling towards Anne did you?”
“Oh dear, no,” he said, “of course not. One doesn’t expect a man to take much interest in a house.”
There are two great rocks on which relationships by marriage often split. The first, which is also the chief source of danger to blood-relationships, is the presumption that because we are relations we must love one another; the second is the presumption that because we are relations-in-law we must loathe one another. The only safe line is to avoid any mention of the connection, even to oneself. If, in spite of this absence of prejudice, there is still great natural antipathy, it is possible to think of ourselves as fellow-guests at a boarding-house, obliged to meet pretty constantly at the same table. For the sake of the mistress of the house, who so rashly brought us together, we may as well try to find some redeeming interest in each other’s vices. I never suggested to Constance that we should learn to love one another. It was impossible for me to love anyone because she was Tom’s wife, I could only loathe her for it; so I shut my eyes tight and said the alphabet backwards to myself when the idea of our relationship came into my head. Instead, I thought—or tried to: “This is a person whom Tom has brought with him to the house. I expect she will stay a long time. She must enjoy her visit, and it is horrid to stay in a house where one is entertained. She shall have the best we can give her; we will try not to be rude or dull, and she shall do as she likes.” When she returned my hospitality, I tried to be a good guest and not leave my umbrella and sponge behind me when I went away, and I always remembered her birthday. So we got on all right. I behaved to Robert in the same way. If I allowed myself a little more freedom in advising him about his colds, and so on, that is because any man staying in the house likes to be given ammoniated quinine when he needs it. But I never kissed him unless I wanted to, nor allowed myself to dwell on the involuntary tie between us.
CHAPTER XXI: GENIUS
When Mrs. Van Dieman was describing the neighbourhood to me she mentioned, among other people, a Mr. Figgins who wrote books. She said that she would like to get to know him better, but she did not think he liked her, as she was not clever enough.
“He probably thinks you do not like him because he is not rich enough,” I said.
“Oh, but what utter nonsense,” she protested. “When a man has an intellect like that he can’t suppose one considers his money.”
“There you are,” I replied, “that is exactly what I have been saying. He probably says to himself, ‘When a woman has a purse like that she can’t suppose one considers her brains.’ He must dislike you on other grounds if he does at all; perhaps it is your politics, or the fact that your house faces north.”
“You see, he is so interesting,” pursued Mrs. Van Dieman. “I should love to know him better, but I don’t know what to talk about, I read so little.”
“So does Mr. Figgins, probably,” I said. “But, anyhow, if you are interested in him, talk about that; he will like it far better than anything else—unless you talk about yourself. If you were as candid with him as you are with me, he would think about nothing else for weeks, you would open his eyes such a lot.”
“Anyhow,” I began again presently, “when you meet your baker out at dinner do you read up ‘Bread’ in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ first?”
“We certainly do seem to get on the subject of bread whenever we meet,” she said. “Perhaps that is why I am not interested in him.”
“According to you, the baker’s friends, when they ask him to their houses, would think it complimentary to powder their hair, and embroider their dresses with currants. As for your Mr. Figgins, how could the poor man write books if there were nothing but books to write about?”
By and by, when Mrs. Van Dieman had plucked up courage and invited most of us to an embarrassing tea-party to meet the man of letters, I found that Mrs. Figgins was a friend of my childhood, and we took up our relation to one another just where we had left it. It matured rapidly, and I became very fond of both of them. Their house was often full of people whom Mrs. Van Dieman classified according to the nature of their public life. This habit of classification, which is the county method of making a social order out of the chaos of individual taste, is very infectious. I began to look at geniuses as a class, and to think I noticed certain stripes and spots in their characters which marked them as belonging to one family, however much they differed in other ways. I presented an ode on the subject to the Figginses, and watched them as they read it in turn:
“My Agnes! Did I hear you say
You will not stop to hear us play
The trio I composed to-day?
What! Let Maria come and dust!
I’d sooner starve—yet, Love, I trust
You’ll pardon me, for say I must
That’s not the way to treat a genius!
“Here’s something good by Malloray,
I’ll read it if you’ll only stay.
(Damnation! Take that child away!)
Say I will dine at six to-night,
Something both nourishing and light.
No, dear—my pocket’s empty quite.
That’s not the way to treat a genius!
“Ask me not, Agnes dear, to think
Of anything but pen and ink
(Unless its something new to drink).
There is no need, my love, for you
To live at all, I’ll live for two.
In tears! My darling, that won’t do!
That’s not the way to treat a genius!”
Mrs. Figgins was delighted. “There, Harry,” she exclaimed, “she’s absolutely right, she has seen you through and through; I’ve always told you you were the most selfish beast on earth. It doesn’t matter what happens to me or the children so long as you get your wretched stuff out of your head on to paper. And that about the reading aloud is so good—and the dusting—and yet you complain the house is dirty! Oh dear.”
Mr. Figgins rose, picked his wife out of her comfortable chair, and transferred her to his own, which he said was more her size, then he sat down and read the ode again.
“My dear Jane,” he said, “I have looked this over very carefully, and you are absolutely wrong; it is you she means. Look at that about the children being all over the house, and a beastly housemaid pottering about his study, and no money in the house. He even has to order his own dinner or she gives him indigestible stuff he can’t work on. He does his best to amuse and entertain her, and then she bursts into tears and says she wants to live; it seems to me to be an admirable picture of the sort of thing I go through, only you haven’t the wit to see it.”
I took a stroll round the garden for a quarter of an hour and when I came back they were still disputing.
“Do I or do I not have to sit on the mat for hours at a time listening to you talking? And if so, how can I be ordering dinner at the same time?”
“You could order it the night before and tell them that, whatever happens, I must have it at a certain time.”
“The certain time being anything between ten in the morning and three in the afternoon.”
“Malloray’s wife gets her husband the most excellent food all ready in five minutes, at any moment he may happen to come in.”
“Mr. Malloray gets paid for his dreary stuff and you don’t, so he can afford to have sixteen parlourmaids all sitting about with nothing else to do. And that about your living for two is so good. What life do I have sitting round when you are there, and then working like a galley-slave when you are not to make up for the lost time and clear up the mess?”
“No man except a farm labourer ought to marry,” I heard Mr. Figgins say as I went off again. “What I want is a dear old toothless, very efficient housekeeper, and a mistress exquisitely beautiful, talented, sympathetic——”
We had a great discussion that night at dinner. Several geniuses and their wives were there, and civil war broke out. The geniuses’ complaints were trivial, but apparently rankled deeply. They all said nearly the same thing: that their wives wanted too much, and prevented them from getting on with their work, to which the wives retorted that they also wanted to get on with their work, but it was not possible, because they were always being called off to listen to something, or to pack bags, or remove a spider from the ceiling. Then if they stayed for a few minutes’ chat, they were accused of being in the way, and why wasn’t lunch ready? and why couldn’t they see that the doors didn’t bang upstairs? If they asked for love they were given a manuscript as indigestible as a stone, but, on the other hand, when inspiration had run out and love was required (they being busy at the time doing something else) they were told that women were practical animals and had no ideals; that polygamy was the only feasible arrangement in domestic life, and would they kindly put on more coal, and make that cheque last for six months. The geniuses maintained that we all live much too elaborately. A simple, well-cooked fowl, done to a turn at any minute of the day, was quite enough for anyone; a perfectly proportioned room ascetically bare, save for a few necessary objects of priceless value, was enough to content them. A village girl with a graceful figure and sun-kissed complexion should maintain the room in that spotless order which is essential to a quiet mind. The wife should direct everything, do nothing, be always occupied, always at hand and scarcely ever present. The children should have perfect freedom, intelligence, health, education, no lessons, be full of gaiety and make no noise, be one with their parents at heart, never present (like the wife) for more than a few minutes at a time, occupied in useful and beautiful handicrafts, and make no litter about the house. This is what I gathered from notes made at the time. From what I understand of the allegations brought against geniuses by their wives, there was less detailed complaint and more profound disappointment. To begin with, the work did not pay; the world did not appreciate it, or if it did, it appreciated the wrong bits—the ones that George himself cared least about. Secondly, they worked too hard, and then got so dreadfully depressed; they never seemed able to throw down their work and come out for a little bit of fun in the middle of a sentence. And when something really serious, like the bailiffs, happened, one could not get them to attend. Mrs. Malloray told us that her husband got so interested in talking to the men about Australia that he never noticed until they had gone that all the wrong things had been taken to pay the debt; instead of getting rid of a lot of rubbish, as they had hoped, some of the nicest bits of furniture in the house had gone, although she kept telling him all the time.
We all agreed that a genius should not take his wife about with him. She is there to fulfil ends which are of no interest to society, and if she is the right wife for him she will be as unsocial as a lake by moonlight. If she is the wrong kind she will make him fidgety and spoil the party, so she should amuse herself in other circles, except in houses where she can bring her knitting without exciting compassion. I am told that the Figginses still fight over the spirit of that harmless piece of doggerel, and both find it healing to their wounds. It is nice to think of, isn’t it?
CHAPTER XXII: CHARITY
A few years after she left the cradle, Anne came to the decision that, whatever else she did, she would not be charitable. I found that this meant, more explicitly, that she would not wear a bonnet, nor gloves that were too long in the fingers.
I wonder what it feels like to be one of the poor, and realise that one’s only callers are sure to be people who wear gloves that are too long in the fingers. I am never at home to that kind of visitor myself, but for those who have to answer the door in person there can be no escape. Also, how distressing it must be when the visitor sits down and remarks how clever we have been to make this poky room so nice, and are those our husband’s socks? How many does he get through in the week? I tried it on Mrs. Van Dieman one day, because I know she has a district. My entrance was rather spoilt by the butler being obliged to show me in, but after he had shut the door I tripped up to Mrs. Van Dieman with my most sympathetic smile and said: “What a sweet outlook you have. It must be such a comfort in your sordid life to be able to grow flowers.” I explained that I was district-visiting, and she happened to be first on my list to-day. “I hope your poor husband has been keeping less intoxicated lately?” I added.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said coldly.
“Well, well, we must take the good with the bad, I suppose, and be thankful if he has his health,” I said, shaking my head gloomily, “but you must tell him from me that I hope that he is going to try to keep straight now. And you, dear Mrs. Van Dieman, must try to be less extravagant; they tell me you spend a great deal on dress, you know. I am sure you gave as much for that little thing you have on as I am able to spend in the whole year on my clothes—though it is very pretty, of course.”
Mrs. Van Dieman did not seem to understand about my district, and when I explained again she said it was quite different with that sort of people; they had no one to advise them, and it made a break in the day having some one to take an interest. All the same, I thought I would persevere. There ought not to be one law for the rich and another for the poor, so I said I would continue my visits, and hoped to find her in a better frame of mind next time I called.
I then went to the rector’s house and was shown into his study. He was busy doing accounts.
“Ah, good morning, rector,” I said, “glad to see you at work. I just called round to have a chat with you. Now tell me, do you find yourself well and satisfactorily shepherded here?”
“Pardon me, I think there must be some mistake,” said my dear Mr. Tracy.
“No, indeed,” I said, “no mistake. I only wanted to be a help, if possible. You are in my district, you know, and it is my duty to find out if your spiritual welfare is being attended to. I should be sorry if you suffered from neglect of anything I could do to help or advise.”
“It is very good of you, Mrs. Molyneux,” he replied, though he seemed rather embarrassed. “Of course, I am only too grateful for any assistance, but, indeed, I hardly understand——”
“Well, then,” I said, “let us sit down and talk it over. Do you find you get enough mental stimulus in the town?”
“Do you mean that there is a lack of culture?” he asked. “Because if so you have put your finger on the weakest point in our society. I find an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm for anything really great in literature or painting or music. It is quite deplorable; it has evidently struck you——”
“It has, indeed.” (This was the most successful visit I had paid.) “I should be so glad if there were anything in that direction that I could throw light upon for you.”
“I didn’t know that you were an authority on these things, Mrs. Molyneux,” he said, greatly impressed.
“I am not,” I answered. “I don’t know anything about any of them, but you are in my district, so I was bound to come and take an interest in you, wasn’t I?”
The dear thing was so nice about it, and talked so charmingly about the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Saturday Review, and the ungracefulness of crinolines, that I felt there was no room in him for improvement, so I would go to some more deserving case. I called next upon Mr. Figgins who writes books. I found him writing in his study.
“Good afternoon, Figgins, hard at work as usual,” I began.
He was very nice to me, and pretended he was not at all busy, so I sat down on the edge of my chair, and looked about.
“This is my day for the district,” I said, “and I knew I should find you at home just now. I suppose you are beginning to make plenty of money with your books? I hope you are putting some of it by.”
Mr. Figgins looked at me rather curiously, and said he would order tea.
“No, no, by and by, Figgins,” I said, stopping him on his way to the bell; “by and by, when we have had our little chat. You know money is a great responsibility, and I sometimes think that you do not quite realise this with regard to your dear wife; you know, when the husband makes money just in order to gamble it away it means that he and his self-respect are rapidly going down the hill together. It is quite time you began to think about your old age, and what would happen to the boys if the bread-winner were called away.”
“I wish you would tell me what it is,” said Mr. Figgins. “If you are rehearsing a play I will help you, but I must have the book and know all about it—you can’t go on like this.”
“But I have told you,” I insisted. “I am district-visiting and you are in my parish, so I have to take you on a certain day and you have to sit and listen to me. I am going to poke all round your room presently and leave some literature.”
That really angered him, and he became dreadfully polite. At last we compromised, he agreeing to take me home in his motor if I would stop and have tea first, but I was pledged to leave his income and his habits alone.
Mrs. Figgins came in while we were having tea. We explained what I had come about. She said it was a thing that ought to be done more, that she was right down glad I had spoke straight to Figgins, and she hoped now that he would begin and make a change for the better.
“But, my dear,” she said, “what we want here is a mothers’ meeting. It is all very well to tell one lot of mothers not to give a new-born baby stewed rhubarb, but it is equally necessary to tell mothers like Mrs. Van Dieman not to give their infants raw theory. I have to hold the next meeting of the Parents’ Guild in my house. Will you come and do a little district-visiting there?”
I promised her that although James would not wish me to initiate any form of outrage, I would back her up in any she liked to commit. The meeting was held during the next week. I arrived early, and we awaited events together. Presently the door-bell rang. We peeped vulgarly through the window. There was a terrible thing upon the door-step—all face, like my enemy the fish before it is filleted—it had the same lifeless eye, and a flat hat balanced on the top like a sheet of note-paper. It was looking round in a dreadful vacant manner waiting for admission. I remembered a story heard in my infancy about some children who had a stepmother with a glass eye and a wooden tail. We were told how their flesh used to creep with horror when they heard her coming upstairs. In another minute she would be in the room. We darted to our places and listened with beating hearts to the pat-pat on the stairs.
“Mrs. Flockson,” said the maid.
“Quite a large membership now, have we not?” said Mrs. Flockson, sitting down in an attitude of faded gloom that infected us both like a disease. I began to be conscious of my back, and my legs, and petticoats and things that I was usually unaware of. “I shall be so interested to hear what Miss Jamieson has to say about children’s toys. It is so important, is it not?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Figgins crisply. “I don’t think it is at all important, but they would have it. I had much rather they had spoken about children’s manners; they are dreadful in this neighbourhood.”
“Yes, of course, some are very bad,” sighed Mrs. Flockson, “but it is so difficult, isn’t it, to know just where to draw the line without being too severe. They say now it is so important that the character should be developed along its natural lines. It is so difficult not to impose one’s own individuality too much, and yet to preserve the idea of everything that is sweet and gracious.”
Now, if I had been alone I could have managed her perfectly. I could have kept Mrs. Flockson happy without doing her an atom of harm, but Mrs. Figgins is so abrupt.
“I can’t stop to think about individuality when a child is gobbling and talking nonsense at the same time,” she said. “I tell it at once, ‘Don’t eat like a pig,’ and then it doesn’t. I don’t care whether I am imposing my individuality or that of any other self-respecting person who wishes to eat with Christians.”
Several more people came in then. They were mostly badly dressed, and evidently put all their money on expression so far as charm was concerned; but then when people are very much in earnest about things that are of no consequence, and have as much consciousness as rabbits, and are not very healthy, it is difficult to make them look nice.
Miss Jamieson, a capable pink lady in a well-made dress with irrelevant trimming, spoke for half an hour on the question of children’s toys. She told us what toys ought to mean, and the qualities they ought to foster in the child. How, if his taste were trained in this manner, he would more easily distinguish the good from the bad later on. I asked whether a good taste in dolls acquired in the nursery would help my son not to fall in love with the wrong kind of minx. I did not put it in just those words, but Miss Jamieson did not give me much comfort. She smiled kindly, and said my question hardly came within the scope of her paper, but she was sure a taste in dolls would help very much, only boys did not play much with dolls, did they?
Then some one got up and said there was just one question she would like to ask, and that was, when Miss Jamieson recommended us to get those beautifully modelled animals for the nursery—she would ask presently for the address where they could be got—was there any one particular animal more than another that she recommended? And was it better to begin with the tame animals, as being less alarming, and work gradually up to the jungle animals, or would that be giving the child a wrong idea of evolution, as, of course, the wild animals did come first, didn’t they?
Miss Jamieson disposed of this lady by saying that, so long as they were animals of noble instinct, she did not think it mattered in what order they came, but she thought that unpleasant animals, such as the glutton or the sloth, should be kept for more advanced study.
Other inquiries, such as whether a Noah’s Ark were bad in case it biased the mind towards the dogmatic side of religion, instead of dwelling on the larger and more comprehensive issues, and whether playing at soldiers ever resulted in the child becoming brutalised, were dealt with in their turn, and then a vote of thanks to Miss Jamieson was proposed, seconded, and carried, and we had tea.
On the way home I passed a house where a young friend of mine lives with his barbarous parents. I felt it my duty to ask how his father was.
“We ain’t seen ’im for three days,” said Jimmy. “He’s been on the drunk and pawned everything in the ’ouse—’e’s a fat-’ead, ’e is.”
I thought, as I walked home, that Mrs. Flockson perhaps exaggerated the difficulty that parents may have in preserving all that is sweet and gracious without imposing their own individuality too much upon their children.
CHAPTER XXIII: FOREIGN TRAVEL
A superfluity of efficient females and inefficient Mrs. Muffs, combined with the slow poison of County Society, may disagree with anyone in time. I explained this to our country doctor, who is of a different variety to Dr. Smithson. He wants everything boiled, and is a great believer in the emotions.
Anyhow, we went abroad just to be out of the way of the fish, and the best people, and all the other things that annoyed me.
Packing up was a nightmare. I used to let Louise pack for me, but then I arrived at the end of my journey with a complete outfit of clothes none of which I wanted; besides such trifling mistakes as three combs—just because they happened to be on the dressing-table—and no Aspirin nor water-softener.
No one can pack for another without asking questions; neither can those who have not Mrs. Simpson’s strong head remember what they want to take so long as they are being asked. When I was thinking whether I could get my gloves cleaned by sending them in at once, and whether I had better take them myself or let Pierce leave them with a message when he called for the fish, Louise would say: “You will take your grey whipcord coat, I suppose.”
I said “No,” because it is inevitable to say “No” when anyone supposes we shall do so-and-so. Of course, when I arrived I wanted the coat, and could not remember having said anything about it.
How does Mrs. Simpson meet such a question as “How many evening dresses will you take?” Especially as they always ask just at the moment when one’s whole soul is with a missing pair of silk stockings. I undertook to pack for myself with even more disastrous results.
I could think of nothing I wanted to take until the last moment. I said to myself: “Dresses?—I must put them in last. Underclothes?—they will not be back from the wash until to-morrow. Shoes?—yes, they go in first.” I wedged my dressing-table pots and pans between my shoes and boots and then I remembered that I should want to wash next morning, so I took the pots and pans out again and wandered round the room looking for more things to pack. I collected note-paper and books, stamps and a pen-knife, and put them on a remote table while I went to write a note about stopping the newspaper. While I was doing this, Ruth asked me to come and look at something, and, by the time that was done, I felt I had broken the back of the packing business. There were only the clean clothes from the laundry to put in; and my dresses; there did not seem to be anything else.
How different from the morning of departure! Then every table in every room swarmed with things which had to go, and my box was already full of boots! By the time all the fat three-cornered things had gone in, the box shut comfortably; but there were no dresses in it and no underclothes.
I asked James very gently whether he could take a few small things. “Oh, easily,” he said, “anything you like.” (He now adds “within reason,” when he undertakes to help me.)
So I took him just a few small things, such as my writing-case. He said it had an utterly unmanageable figure, but that was because I was taking a lot of unanswered letters to do while we were away. That was all except a tin of biscuits, a bottle of bath salts—I had to get a good-sized one, as we were to be away for some time—a case of tools and my work-basket. Really nothing to what I had managed to fit into my own box; besides, I offered to take some of his shirts in exchange.
The carriage was at the door when I ran upstairs to get a pin for my veil, and there, on the dressing-table, I found all the writing things I had collected two days before, my hair-pins, brush and comb, and powder-box. James said they could not all go in his pocket, so I carried them under my arm, intending to repack my dressing-case in the train.
James’s account of our journey contains much that is unfair and exaggerated. He says, for instance, that during the long night journey from Calais to Rome I showed want of consideration for the comfort of our fellow-passengers. The train was very crowded; we could not have a sleeping compartment to ourselves, so it was arranged that Louise and I and a strange lady should be huddled together in one dog’s-hole of a place, and James would join a man’s party in the next.
The lady who dangled a pair of fat, booted ankles above my head possessed an over-anxious husband; therefore, I suppose, she had a surname, but I never discovered it. To me she was, and always will be, “Georgie.” We had settled down for the night in considerable irritability, and the atmosphere of hell, when the door was pushed gently open.
“Georgie, my dear, are you all right?” inquired a timid little voice.
Georgie, who was determined to enjoy everything and look on the bright side, said, “Yes, thank you, dear,” in a crisp voice, and composed herself to sleep. Presently there was a knock at the door.
“Georgie, my dear, would you care for a little chocolate?”
Dear, good-natured Georgie had already begun to sleep; I heard her quite distinctly. But she awoke—out of that first blissful state, just imagine! and with all the discomfort of sleeping in her stockings and everything—and gratefully accepted the chocolate.
Next time there was a knock I nearly choked myself in efforts for politeness. I longed to say, “Go away. I will give Georgie a pocket-handkerchief, and the nut-crackers, and some Balsam of Peru when she wakes.” Fortunately, Georgie was breathing so loudly that even he understood that for the moment all the husbands in Christendom could not improve her condition, and, therefore, retired for some hours. The crisis was next morning. Anyone who has travelled knows how easy it is to mislay anything, however large, in a sleeping berth. If you put a hippopotamus under your pillow at night, it will be gone in the morning. My hair-pins, side-combs, hat, waistband, and shoes were all rescued from different parts of the train by Louise, but my jewellery I was determined not to part with. I put my watch, rings, and ear-rings into my purse, and put the purse into a travelling-case which I strapped to the rack by my side. It was there in the morning when I awoke, and remained there while I dressed. I then unfastened the strap, and laid the case on the bed for a moment, while I pinned my hat. I looked round and it was gone. I threw the bedclothes into the passage and shook them; I took off the mattress and turned it; Louise and I took her bed to pieces and threw it also into the passage. My condition was desperate. In a quarter of an hour we should be at the end of our journey, and the train would disappear into an everlasting nowhere, carrying the beloved companions of my life embedded in its ugly, screaming, joggling anatomy. Some shameless, painted, French official’s wife would eventually wear my darlings on her fingers, and dangling from her ears. I could never get any more, because they were James’s wedding presents. Life and happiness were blotted from my imagination.
“Georgie, my dear,” said the little voice at that moment, “can you come down?”
A small step-ladder scraped gently across my shins. “Pardon me, one moment,” I was requested, and there was Georgie’s plump little kid leg dangling in front of my nose once more. That was the crisis!
“Oh, damn Georgie,” I cried. “Go away, I’ve lost my bag.”
The little kid leg drew up hurriedly into its place, and dear, kind, shocked Georgie peered down upon me from above. Her over-anxious husband had fled, and was, I suppose, sipping a little cold water in the lavatory in order to pull himself together after “such an exhibition.”
“If I stay in this beastly train for a thousand years and pick it to pieces myself with a pair of nail-scissors, I will find that thing,” I said.
“My dear, don’t upset yourself,” urged Georgie. “Shall I not call your husband?”
The venturesome little boot was longing to get down, for the train was nearly at its destination, but, in my agitation, I forgot that I had overturned its only means of escape.
When James came in and picked up the bag from behind the hold-all, I felt inclined to take Georgie in my arms and lift her down, but there was so little room in the compartment that I decided to smile at her instead, and say I “had found my bag, thank you,” leaving her where she was. I tactfully withdrew to the corridor and made no sign, even when I heard the pattering feet and consolatory “Georgie, my dear,” close behind the door of our den.
James has a passion for sight-seeing, which I do not share. As soon as I know that there is anything to be seen I no longer want to see it. To have an alert, smiling man come up and say, “You want spik English; you come with me,” gives me another sort of Mrs. Simpson. She is a lively, early-breakfast Mrs. Simpson, full of exclamation points. She replies at once: “Ach! you spik English! that is capital! Rosbif! Goddam! I come vis you,” and off they go in ecstasies.
An English guide who takes one over a ruin has a certain dreary charm. One can go to sleep and dream happily while he grinds away: “This portion of the Castle was erected in 1647. Notice the remains of moat and transept with traces of fine oriel window in memory of the seventh Lord. During the encounter with the rebellious forces Oliver Cromwell took possession of the east wing, when the enemy was repulsed with great loss. The marks on the bastion show remains of staircase leading to the old ’all which was reserved for the use of the ladies of the family during time of siege. In the museum will be seen famous portrait of wife of the tenth Earl, destroyed by fire in the year 1754—come along there, please, and mind your heads.”
But, in Rome, if you escape from one voluble tormentor you fall into the hands of a dozen worse, and there are the reverent, industrious sight-seers with red books, mixed up among the irreverent ones with walking-sticks.
“On the right hand, and a little to the left, are the famous baths of Caracalla,” may be heard from behind one pillar. “Note the exquisite workmanship of the masonry, and the height of the columns leading to the Peplon or outer court of the Vestal Virgins.”
From the other side of the same pillar comes a voice like a saw cutting through wood.
“Here, you, Sparghetti, Antonio, what’s your name? Was there any charge, can you tell me, for mixed bathing in those days? Bagno melange, Caracalla’s time, how much, eh?”
James understands pictures, and enjoys them. I tested my own taste in these matters, but did not force the experiment in any way. As soon as I became quite certain that I did not like pictures, I waited for him outside, dabbling my fingers in the water (it was in Venice that I definitely made up my mind), and enjoying the smells. Perhaps it was indigestion from eating too much Italian food, but the Tintorettos got on my nerves from their invariable suggestion of vermicelli. There were acres of canvas representing nude figures falling in hundreds from great heights. Some of them may have been climbing up, but the places were so dark that it was not easy to see the difference; anyhow, vermicelli being thrown into the air or vermicelli falling into a pan look pretty much alike. So I stayed outside and forgot all about the Day of Judgment.
The longer I live, the more I believe in Adam and Eve. Good gains nothing by comparison with evil. There is no pleasure like ignorance in fine weather, and the most illuminating conversation is no gain to those who are able to “go into a field and make a noise like a turnip.”
I know few people with whom I can go abroad without bringing on an attack of Mrs. Simpson. From the guides with their “You want spik English, you come with me,” and the waiters who seek favour with promises of “Rosbif” or “Nice hammonekks,” to our kind foreign friends who ask us whether we are not missing the fog and would we like brandy in our tea?—it is evident that Mrs. Simpson has set her mark upon every continent. Mrs. Simpson abroad is different from the furniture-remover’s goddess. She is timid to the verge of idiocy, and bold where reticence would be more graceful; she is always unmarried, except in such cases where she has a male creature attached to her by such a tie as unites a pair of frogs. She is fabulously rich, and so devoid of discrimination in what she buys that it would be ill-bred in shopkeepers to practise deception on her were it not that she does not believe in God; and, therefore, it is right that good persons should have her money before she is removed to hell.
People of other countries, who have lived or stayed in England or have made English friends abroad, know nothing of this Mrs. Simpson; she is a product of the foreign railways and hotels, like the American whom we all know by sight and hearsay but who is unrecognised by his own countrymen. All the same, it was a long time before I could enjoy myself anywhere out of England without feeling the spell cast upon my spirit by the dreary, woebegone, helpless mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, who wandered away to their bedrooms in single file between meals, were always blocking up the bureau, asking questions about baths and the English services, and who stared at one another in the lifts, and talked in undertones at their little tables. There was one couple, in an hotel in Rome, who made conversation to each other for a week on what I judged from their faces to be such subjects as mausoleums, dentists, cold cream, and muffins. At last the husband said something really amusing—I heard it with great pleasure—to which his wife made a grimace and said: “Really, dear, you are quite beyond me altogether.”
Henry—I remember that was his name—ought not to have stood it, but he did. He ought to have slapped her, and kicked over the table and left the room for ever. I should have rejoiced, more than I can say, on account of the blow that it would have given, in every town in Baedeker, to the continental Mrs. Simpson.
I paid dearly for my rashness in leaving the shores of England. When I returned the sword had fallen.
Mullins had been saving steadily during the past years, and Ruth had undertaken to marry him in the spring. Much as she disliked being interfered with, she disliked still more being left to herself; but whether marriage forms any solution to this dilemma, it will be for her to decide. I shall encourage the young Mullinses if there are any, remembering always that a wife and mother cannot give notice.
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