You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had tried to get some insight into the position of woman in England, and, being here with Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good opportunity to get a little more. I’ve asked her a great deal about it, but she doesn’t seem able to tell me much. The first time I asked her she said the position of a lady depended on the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her husband—all on somebody else; and they, as to their position, on something quite else (than themselves) as well. She told me her own position was very good because her father was some relation—I forget what—to a lord. She thinks everything of this; and that proves to me their standing can’t be really good, because if it were it wouldn’t be involved in that of your relations, even your nearest. I don’t know much about lords, and it does try my patience—though she’s just as sweet as she can live—to hear her talk as if it were a matter of course I should.
I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she doesn’t consider every one equal; but she always says she doesn’t, and she confesses that she doesn’t think she’s equal to Lady Something-or-Other, who’s the wife of that relation of her father. I try and persuade her all I can that she is; but it seems as if she didn’t want to be persuaded, and when I ask her if that superior being is of the same opinion—that Miss Vane isn’t her equal—she looks so soft and pretty with her eyes and says “How can she not be?” When I tell her that this is right down bad for the other person it seems as if she wouldn’t believe me, and the only answer she’ll make is that the other person’s “awfully nice.” I don’t believe she’s nice at all; if she were nice she wouldn’t have such ideas as that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we think such ideas vulgar, but then she looks as though she had never heard of Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she is so sweet. If she isn’t angry with the people who make her feel that way at least I’m angry for her. I’m angry with her brother too, for she’s evidently very much afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject. She thinks everything of her brother; she thinks it natural she should be afraid of him not only physically—for that is natural, as he’s enormously tall and strong, and has very big fists—but morally and intellectually. She seems unable, however, to take in any argument, and she makes me realise what I’ve often heard—that if you’re timid nothing will reason you out of it.
Mr. Vane also, the brother, seems to have the same prejudices, and when I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister’s not his subordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and perhaps in some respects his superior, and that if my brother in Bangor were to treat me as he treats this charming but abject creature, who has not spirit enough to see the question in its true light, there would be an indignation-meeting of the citizens to protest against such an outrage to the sanctity of womanhood—when I tell him all this, at breakfast or dinner, he only bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter on the table.
But at such a time as this there’s always one person who seems interested in what I say—a German gentleman, a professor, who sits next to me at dinner and whom I must tell you more about another time. He’s very learned, but wants to push further and further all the time; he appreciates a great many of my remarks, and after dinner, in the salon, he often comes to me to ask me questions about them. I have to think a little sometimes to know what I did say or what I do think. He takes you right up where you left off, and he’s most as fond of discussing things as William Platt ever was. He’s splendidly educated, in the German style, and he told me the other day that he was an “intellectual broom.” Well, if he is he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been talking to me I feel as if I hadn’t got a speck of dust left in my mind anywhere. It’s a most delightful feeling. He says he’s a remorseless observer, and though I don’t know about remorse—for a bright mind isn’t a crime, is it?—I’m sure there’s plenty over here to observe. But I’ve told you enough for to-day. I don’t know how much longer I shall stay here; I’m getting on now so fast that it has come to seem sometimes as if I shouldn’t need all the time I’ve laid out. I suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as usual; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very dull and damp, and I often suffer from the want of bracing.
VI
FROM MISS EVELYN VANE IN PARIS TO THE LADY AUGUSTA FLEMING AT BRIGHTON
Paris, September 30.
Dear Lady Augusta,
I’m afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I’m so very very sorry; it’s an immense disappointment. But I’ve just heard that it has been settled that mamma and the children come abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyères, where Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she’s very poorly indeed; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors. They all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn’t agree about the place; so that mamma herself decided for Hyères, because it’s the most economical. I believe it’s very dull, but I hope it will do Georgina good. I’m afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more care of herself; I’m afraid she’s very wild and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa’s positive orders to make her stop indoors. She’s very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn’t seem at all to mind the expense papa has been put to—talks very ill-naturedly about her loss of the hunting and even perhaps of the early spring meetings. She expected to begin to hunt in December and wants to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyères. Fancy that rot when she’s too ill to sit a horse or to go anywhere. But I daresay that when she gets there she’ll be glad enough to keep quiet, as they say the heat’s intense. It may cure Georgina, but I’m sure it will make the rest of us very ill.
Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide abroad with her: the others will remain at Kingscote till February (about the 3rd) when they’ll go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss Turnover, the new governess, who has proved such a very nice person. She’s going to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but is only qualified for the younger children, to Hyères, and I believe some of the Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T.; it’s only a pity the poor woman has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name; she gives £5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she calls them; I think it’s Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady’s maid). Governesses shouldn’t have too pretty a name—they shouldn’t have a nicer name than the family.
I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I didn’t go back to England with them. When it began to be talked about that Georgina should be taken abroad mamma wrote to me that I had better stop in Paris for a month with Harold, so that she could pick me up on their way to Hyères. It saves the expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, and gives me the opportunity to “finish” a little in French.