The Freaks of Mayfair

by E. F. Benson

On week-days the devotional needs of his congregation are not so sumptuously attended to, for Mr. Sandow, certainly as wise as most children of light, is aware that his flock are very busy people, and does not care to risk the institution of a failure. Besides he has very strong notions of the duty of every man and woman to do their work in the world, even if, apparently, their work chiefly consists in the passionate pursuit of pleasure. But he likes splendour (as well as simplicity) in those advantageously situated, just as he likes splendour in his Sunday services. He is, too, himself, a very busy man, for since he makes it his duty to know his flock individually, and since his flock are that sort of sheep which gives luncheon and dinner-parties and balls in great profusion, it follows that he has a great many invitations to these festivities, and accepts as many as he can possibly manage. But he always practises the observance of fasts, and never eats meat on Fridays. To make meagre on Fridays and vigils therefore has become rather fashionable also, and since most of his entertainers have excellent chefs, Friday, though a meatless day, is an extremely well-fed one, for with salmon trout and caviare, and a dish of asparagus and some truffles, and an ice pudding and some soufflé of cheese, you can make a very decent pretence of lunching, especially if particularly good wines flow fast as a compensation for this ecclesiastical abstinence. It is a pastime for hostesses also to exercise the ingenuity of their chefs in producing dishes, strictly vegetarian, in which a subtle combination of herbs and condiments produces a meaty flavour, and to observe Mr. Sandow’s face when he thinks he tastes veal. But he is formally assured that no four-legged or two-legged animal has as much as walked into the stew-pot, and in consequence, with many compliments, he asks for a second helping.

All this endears Mr. Sandow to his people; they say, ‘He is so very human and not the least like a clergyman.’ He would not be pleased with this expression if it came to his ears, though if he was told he was not in the least like most other clergymen there would be no complaint. For he thinks that the office of a priest is to enter into the joys and pleasures of those he ministers to, not only to exact their attendance at church, and, as he modestly says of himself, ‘bore them stiff’ with his interminable sermons, and who shall say he is wrong? Indeed to see him at a ball, it is more the other guests that enter into his pleasures than he into theirs, for he is one of the best dancers that ever stepped, and there is a queue of ladies, as at the booking-office of Victoria Station on a Bank Holiday, waiting to have a turn with the Terpsichorean vicar. But, like some modified Cinderella, he keeps early hours, and vanishes on the stroke of one, in order to be up in good time in the morning, and at his work. For in addition to all his parties, his interviews, his dances, his Sunday services, his games of racquets, he has a further life of his own, being a voluminous and widely-read author.

This literary profession of his is no mere matter of a parish-magazine, or of letters to the Guardian about the Eastward position, or the Spectator about early buttercups, but he publishes on his own account at least two volumes every year. Usually those take the form of essays, written in the second or pair-of-wooden-shoes manner, and probably each of them contains a greater number of true and edifying reflections than have ever before appeared between the covers of a single volume. It is no disparagement of them to say that they seem to go on for ever, for so do the waters of a spring, except in times of such severe drought as is unknown to the pen of this ready writer. They all begin in an enticing manner, for Mr. Sandow tells you how he was walking across the Park one morning, when he observed two sparrows quarrelling over a piece of bread that some kind bystander had thrown them. This naturally gives rise to reflections as to the distressing manner in which ill-temper spoils our day. The kind bystander is, of course, Providence, who throws quantities of bread, and Mr. Sandow tells us that it is the truer wisdom not to behave like silly sparrows and all wrangle over one piece, but hop cheerfully away, with a blessing, in the certainty of finding plenty more. Or again Mr. Sandow describes how he was hurrying to the station to catch a train, fussing himself with the thought that he would not be in time for it, and not noticing the limpid blue of the sky and the white clouds that floated across it. When he came to the station he found he had still five minutes to spare and so need not have hurried at all, but drunk in the gladness of God’s spring. From this lesson, he humbly hopes, he will be less disposed to fuss in the future, but trust to the wise hand that guides him. We are not told what would have been the moral if Mr. Sandow had missed his train, but then, after all he did not write about that, and one can only conjecture that it would have been a lesson to him as to how to wait patiently (picking up edifying crumbs at the station) for the next train. Or he sees a house in process of being pulled down, with gaping wall showing the internal decoration, and tenderly wonders what sweet private converse took place in front of the denuded fire-place. His vivid imagination pictures charming scenes: on one wall on the third storey was a paper with repeated images of Jack and Jill and Red Riding Hood and Little Miss Muffit, and he conjectures that here was the nursery, and the paper looked down on children at play. But the children are grown up now; they have outlived their nursery, as we all do, but instead of regretting days that are no more we must go on from strength to strength, till we reach the imperishable house of many mansions which nobody will ever pull down. At the end of each of these musings written in the pair-of-wooden-shoes mode comes a passage of this kind in the second manner, a sudden purple patch about imperishable houses, or the towers of Beulah, or the dawning of the everlasting day.

It is just possible that this skeleton-analysis of Mr. Sandow’s works may faintly produce the impression that there is something a shade commonplace about them, that they lack the clarion of romance, of excitement, of distinction in thought, or whatever it is that we look for when we read books. And it is idle to deny that this impression is ill-founded: no flash of blinding revelation ever surprises the reader, nor does he ever feel that the perusal of them has added a new element to or presented a fresh aspect of life; only that here, gracefully expressed, is precisely what he had always thought. This probably is the secret of their amazing popularity, for there is nothing more pleasing than to find oneself in complete harmony with one’s author. Anybody might have written them, provided only he had a fluent pen and an edifying mind. Mr. Sandow never gave one of his readers, even the most squeamish and sensitive, the smallest sense of discomfort or anxiety. He flows pleasantly along, faintly stimulating, and though he suggests no soul-questionings that could possibly keep anybody awake o’ nights, a very large number of the public are delighted to read a little more in the morning. For Mr. Sandow never fails you; his fund of mild and pleasant reflection is absolutely unending, and if from a mental point of view the study of his works is rather like eating jam from a spoon, you can at least be certain that you will never bite on a stone and jar your teeth. And if you do not by way of intellectual provender like eating jam, why, you need not read Mr. Sandow’s books, but those of somebody else.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SING FOR YOUR DINNER’

THAT AMIABLE LITTLE FOWL, THE Piping Bullfinch, has very pretty manners. If he is a well-bred bird, as most Piping Bullfinches are (though they come from Germany), he will, when he sees you approach his cage, put his head on one side, make two or three polite little bows, and whistle to you with very melodious and tuneful flutings. But it is not entirely his love of melody that inspires him, for he is rather greedy also (though he comes from Germany), and perhaps the politeness of his bows and the tunes that he so pleasantly pipes, would be considerably curtailed if he found that he was not generally given, as a reward for his courtesy, something equally pleasant to eat. But if he feels that you are willing to supply him with the morsels in which his rather limited soul delights, he will continue to bow and pipe to you until he is stuffed. And, as soon as ever his appetite begins to assert itself again (and he is a remarkably steady feeder), he will resume his bows and his tunes.

Quite a large class of people, the numerical majority of which consists of youngish men, may be most aptly described as Singers for their Dinner or Piping Bullfinches. Girls and young women are not of so numerous a company, for if unmarried they have generally some sort of home where they are given their dinners, without singing for them, or if married are occupied in their duties as providers to their husbands. But there is a large quantity of young or youngish unmarried men who, living in bachelor chambers or flats, find it both more economical and pleasanter to sing for their dinner than to eat it less sociably at their own expense at their clubs or to entertain others, and they are therefore prepared to make themselves extremely agreeable for the price of their food. The bargain is not really very one-sided; indeed, as bargains go it is a very tolerably fair one; for there are great handfuls of people who, either from a natural dislike of old friends or for lack of them, are constantly delighted to see a Piping Bullfinch or two at their tables. They even go further than this, and take these neat little birds to the theatre or the opera (paying of course for their tickets), and invite them down to week-ends in the country and to shooting-parties. Thus their houses are gay with pleasant conversation, and the Piping Bullfinches have better balances at their banks.

Leonard Bashton is among the most amiable and successful of these birds. He lives in two pleasant little rooms in a discreet and quiet house that lies between Mount Street and Oxford Street, for which he pays an extremely moderate rent. Exteriorly the street has little to recommend it, for it is narrow and shabby, and at the back, Number 5, where his rooms are situated on the first floor, looks out on to mews. These, a few years ago, would not have been agreeable neighbours just outside a bedroom window, but Leonard had the sense to see that with the incoming of motors there would be fewer horses, so that before long the disadvantage of having mews so close to the head of his bed would be sensibly diminished. Thus, being a young man of very acute instincts, he procured a yearly lease of these apartments, with option on his side to renew, at a very small rental. In this he has reaped a perfectly honest reward for his foresightedness, since horses nowadays are practically extinct animals in these mews, and similar sets of rooms on each side of him are let for twice the sum that he pays for his.