The Freaks of Mayfair

by E. F. Benson

‘I want to be run,’ she said.

Madge Newgate was a perfectly honest woman, and now that all ambiguity had been cleared away, she explained what she could do and what she would expect to receive. She could give Mrs. Whitehand the opportunity of meeting practically any one she wished, and she could repeat and again repeat that opportunity. She could bring people to Mrs. Whitehand’s house, and within limits get them to invite her to theirs. But more than that, she frankly admitted she could not do.

‘I can’t make them your friends,’ she said. ‘I can only make them your acquaintances. The other depends on you. You must show yourself useful or charming or striking in some way, if you want more than just to go to balls and dinner-parties. Luckily in London we are very hungry, so that you can always feed people, and very poor, so that you can always tip people, and very dull, so that you can always amuse people.’

‘I see: I quite see that,’ said Mrs. Whitehand.

Madge felt that she understood: that it was worth while explaining.

‘I’m sure you will forgive my plain speaking,’ she said, ‘but it is never any use being vague. And there’s a lot of luck about it. Sometimes a very stupid woman “arrives” and a very clever agreeable one doesn’t, and the Lord knows why. I should be quite American do you know, if I were you; Americans are taking well just now. About—well, why should I beat about the bush?—about what I am to receive for my trouble. I imagine you don’t want my house in the least for the three months after July, and I am willing to take a good deal of trouble for your renting it then. And when some more rent is due, I think I had better tell you, hadn’t I? I am not greedy, I am only very poor.’

Now no climber could possibly have made a better beginning than this. Sarah Whitehand could not have chosen a more admirable godmother, and though she was lucky in having hit on precisely the right one, she had shown true perpendicularity in having gone to the right class. She had aimed at the best and hit it, and in the three months that followed she continued to show a discretion that bore out the early promise of her talents. She neither gave herself airs, nor was she grovellingly humble, she merely enjoyed herself enormously, and since of all social gifts that is the most popular, she rapidly mounted. She threw herself, with Lady Newgate’s sanction, into artistic circles, and firmly annexed as her mascot the chief dancer of the Russian ballet. Unlike poor horizontal Mrs. Howard-Britten, with her disappointing Herr Grossesnoise, she made it quite clear that when she asked a party to meet a bevy of Russian dancers that party was surely going to see the bevy dance, which it did quite delightfully under the stimulus of enormous fees. She did not waste her quails and champagne on unremunerative guests, or guests who so far from helping her would only hinder her, but followed Lady Newgate’s directions precisely as to whom she should ask, and very good directions they were.

She had other modes of access as well. She flattered grossly or delicately as the occasion demanded. When she saw that some one liked to be drenched in flattery she had bucketsful of it ready. At other times she confined herself to telling So-and-so’s friends how lovely So-and-so was looking, or how brilliant So-and-so was. This method she chiefly adopted to those of Lady Newgate’s friends who had somewhat unwillingly come to her house, and plentiful applications of these gratifying assurances usually had their effect sooner or later, for Sarah Whitehand knew that nobody is insensible to flattery, if (and here lay the virtue) the proper brand properly administered was supplied. Sometimes the case required study: it was no use conveying to a beautiful woman the flattery of acknowledging her beauty: you had to find out something on which she secretly prided herself, her tact or her want of tact, her charming manners or her absence of manners, her toes or her teeth, and make little hypodermic injections in the right place. Then again there were people who in spite of all allurements would have nothing to do with her. After two or three unsuccessful direct assaults, she would attempt that no more, but, just as she was outflanking New York by laying siege to London, outflank those obdurate folk by laying siege to their friends. She was infinitely patient over these operations, and nibbled her way round them, until they were cut off, and found themselves devoid of all friends save such as were friends of the accomplished Sarah. By patience, by good humour and by her own enjoyment she moved steadily and rapidly upwards on branches that she gilded beforehand. She often thought about Nittie Vandercrump screaming away in New York, and even adopted a modified version of her yells of pleasure. These she gave vent to when dull people, who for some reason mattered, told her long stupid stories, and found that they had achieved, for the first time in their lives, a brilliant and startling success.

Naturally she made quantities of mistakes. Occasionally a man at her table would find in his neighbour a woman with whom he had not been on speaking terms for years, or again, she solemnly introduced Bob Crawley to the wife he had divorced a year before, and immediately afterwards to the woman concerning whom his wife might have divorced him the year before that. Nor could she at first grasp the fact that a Duchess perhaps did not matter at all, and that Mrs. Smith mattered very much, and she had to drop the Duchess and smooth down Mrs. Smith. But these were mere childish stumbles, and having picked herself up she again clung tightly with one hand to her godmother and with the other to her mascot, the Russian dancer.

And all the time while she was so nimbly climbing, she and Petropopoloffski were sitting on a great egg which was to be hatched in the autumn, when London would be full again for the session. Russian ballet this year was the rage to the exclusion of all other rages, and the great egg was no less than a further six-weeks season of it, financed and engineered by Sarah. Not until when late in July the egg was, so to speak, announced, did any one, even her godmother, know that it was she who had laid it, and she who had Petropopoloffski in her pocket, and she who had taken the Duke of Kent’s theatre for it, and she who had arranged to have the dress-circle and pit taken away and rows of boxes substituted, and she, finally, who had taken thirty-seven boxes herself, so that only through her favour could anybody engage them. It was a great, a brilliant stroke, hazardous perhaps, but then everybody wanted to see Russian ballet so much that they would not stick at being indebted to her for their boxes. But it came off: within a couple of days of the subscription list being opened, all boxes not reserved by her had been let, and she began most cordially to allow applicants to have some of hers. Very wisely, she gratified no private slights by refusing them, she only made friends by granting them. She kept just two or three of the best, in case of emergencies.