MODERN TYPES.
(By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer.)
No. VIII.—THE INVALID LADY.
The Invalid Lady is, as often as not, the only daughter of parents whose social position is higher than the figure of their yearly income. Nevertheless, they contrive, by means of gallant struggles, to keep on the high level of the sacred appearances. They are seen wherever smart people ought to be seen, they do everything that smart people ought to do; their Victoria is well appointed, their little house in Mayfair is prettily furnished, and both they and their servants are always well dressed. Upon the birth of the frail and solitary pledge of affection, with which fate, after passing them by for many years, at length afflicted them, their situation became almost desperate; but, by a judicious curtailment here, and a discreet omission there, they managed once more to strike a balance slightly in their own favour. Having passed their child safely through the nursery into the school-room, they combined with other parents to secure the services of governesses and teachers, under whose instruction the square pegs of knowledge might be fitted to the round holes of girlish brains. The future Invalid resented this process by frequent head-aches, which were allowed to withdraw her from her studies to the comfortable ignorance of the drawing-room sofa. Eventually, however, she was considered to be finished, and, having been carefully packed and labelled by her mother, was delivered, after a journey through two seasons, to a rich and rising Member of Parliament, who paid the carriage, and married the parcel.
And now the comforts of life, and its laziness, begin for her. For whereas her parents were forced to pinch themselves in many places, in order to assume the flush of wealth, and were unable to relax for a moment the busy society vigilance in which their daughter had to bear her part, there is, in the paradise of her new existence, a moneyed repose, which permits her, on the pretence of weariness, to cease from troubling herself about anything. This does not, however, prevent her from becoming a cause of infinite trouble to others. Her maid is worn to a shadow by the perpetual search for handkerchiefs and eau de Cologne, with which to bathe the aching forehead of her mistress. Her friends are distracted by the recital of her tales of shattered nerves, and merciless migraines; her husband finds his existence embittered by a constant change of butlers, and a perpetual succession of cooks, over whom his feeble wife exercises about as much control as the President of the French Republic over his short-lived Ministries. But, as yet, she has not attained to the full and perfect glory of the Invalid's life.
During the next five years she is still to be seen occasionally at evening parties and afternoon teas in the houses of her friends. She also becomes the mother of two children, a boy and a girl. After her second confinement she is prostrated by a slight illness, and during her convalescence she makes up her mind that life is made tolerable only by illness and the delicate attentions that accompany it. She is confirmed in this opinion by the discovery that her figure is no longer adapted to the prevailing fashion of everyday dress, and that her complexion looks better in her own room and beneath her own arrangement of curtains than in the vulgar glare of unmitigated daylight. She therefore enters with a light heart and a practically unimpaired constitution, upon a prolonged period of tea-gowns, chaises longues, and half-lights, and is recognised everywhere as an Invalid.
Henceforward she takes no concern in the pleasant labours or the social amenities of life. The busy hum of the great world beats outside her chamber, men and women are born, and marry and die, society may be convulsed with scandals, kingdoms may totter to their fall in a crash of wars and tumults, but the Invalid lies through the tedious days propped on pillows, and recks only of her own comfort. Her husband is raised to high office in the Government of the day, her boy plays cricket at Lord's or rows in his University Eight, her daughter grows in years and beauty, but she herself reposes, strong in the blessed luxury of feeble health, and in the impenetrable selfishness with which she exacts a minute and unswerving devotion from those who surround her.
But her life is not altogether or even chiefly passed in England. Every year with the approach of autumn she flits to the Riviera. Three slaves, her husband, her daughter, and her maid, follow humbly the triumphal procession of her invalid carriage, and thus she arrives at the charming villa where for the next few months she will hold her court. For the confirmed invalid is a more highly exalted being in Nice than in London. Whereas beneath our own dull skies there is still some merit in being robust and healthy, in the South of France, precedence both in rank and social influence, often varies directly according to the nature and length of an illness. The Invalid Lady, therefore, is in an unassailable position, and may permit to herself slight indulgences, which in London, might wreck her career as an invalid. She establishes an afternoon for tea and ices and gossip, she attaches to herself a foreign prince, she even organises pic-nics, and enters upon a mild flirtation with a middle-aged Baronet, she reads French novels of the newest school and discusses their tendency with a long-haired lyricist who has lately published a volume of poems entitled, Love and Languor.
Once every winter the Invalid Lady gets up a bazaar for the benefit of the Petites S[oe]urs des Pauvres. Her husband lends his garden, her daughter writes all the letters, makes all the purchases, and, with her young friends, completes all the arrangements, whilst the Invalid Lady herself looks on in occasional disapproval of the work that others are doing. When the great day arrives, and all the company of intending purchasers is gathered together in the garden, the Invalid is drawn gently into their midst in a long, wheeled chair. She is robed in a tea-gown of exquisite taste and design, the prevailing colour of which may be the new "Eau de Carmes," mixed with ivory-coloured chiffons. As it is thoroughly understood that she cannot walk, her feet, which peep from under her laces, are arrayed in delicately open and striped silk stockings, and in tiny shoes, which are decorated each with a single diamond sparkling in the centre of a black bow. Thus apparelled, she is wheeled slowly about, to receive the congratulations of her intimates on her charitable spirit, and on the organising power which would do a strong man credit.
In course of time her daughter marries, and leaves her. She then establishes by her side a poor but devoted friend, with whom she eventually quarrels for not speaking with sufficient respect of one of the five mortal ailments with which she believes herself to be afflicted. Death, whom she apparently courts with a weary longing, will have none of her. The hale and hearty drop off, but the invalid, querulous, weak, and hysterical, survives into a remote future, and having become a great grandmother, fades out of existence in the possession of all her faculties.