Mr. Clutterbuck's Election

by Hilaire Belloc

It was not a little thing to have gained the devotion of such a man, and it was, in a sense, the summit of Mary Smith's achievement: but she was more than a sympathetic and universal friend; she was also—as such friends must always be—a power in both Political parties—and perhaps in three.

It was said—I know not with how much justice—that young Pulborough (who was his own father) owed his Secretaryship of State more to her direct influence than to his blood relationship to the aunt by marriage of her second brother-in-law, The MacClure; and there were rumours, certainly exaggerated, that when the Board of Trade was filled after Illingsbury had fled the country, Paston's marriage with her niece Elizabeth had decided his appointment.

I am careful to omit any reference to the Attorney-General of the day—it was mere gossip—nor will I tarry upon her brother at the Home Office, or her Uncle Harry at Dublin Castle, lest I should lead the reader to imagine that her well-earned influence depended on something other than her great soul and admirable heart.

It was a generous impulse in such a woman to send the large gilt oblong of pasteboard which was the key to her house, and to a seat at her board, to the lonely and now ageing couple in their retirement in the Caterham Valley. But Mrs. Smith, even in her most heartfelt and spontaneous actions, had always in view the nature of our political institutions. The sudden fortune of Mr. Clutterbuck had no doubt been exaggerated in the numerous conversations upon it which had enlivened her drawing-room; if so, it was an error upon the right side, and her instinct told her that she could not be much to blame in giving such a man the opportunity to enter into the fuller life of his country.

Every rank in our carefully ordered society has its conventions; one, which will doubtless appear ridiculous to many of my readers, is that which forbids, among the middle classes, the extension of a warm invitation to people whom one never happens to have seen. The basis for this suburban convention it would be impossible to discover, but then, convention is not logical; and whatever may be the historic origin of the fetich, certain it is that most of our merchants and professional men would never dream of asking a Cabinet minister or a peer to their houses until at least a formal introduction had passed between them and the statesman so honoured.

The converse is not true at all; our public men would accept or reject such an invite as convenience dictated, and would hardly remember whether they had the pleasure of an acquaintance or no: they approach men of lesser value with unaffected ease and find it difficult to tolerate the strict ritual of a narrower class; but their own society, as they would be the first to admit, has its own body of unreasoning etiquette, the more difficult to recognise because it is so familiar; Buffle himself, for instance, would hardly tolerate a question in Parliament upon his recent escapade.

The varying codes of varying strata of society are the cause of endless misunderstandings; such a misunderstanding might have arisen now, but once again it was a woman that saved the jar. Mary Smith had unwittingly gone near to the line of offence, in the eyes of Mr. Clutterbuck at least, when she posted her well-meant card for July 2. Mrs. Clutterbuck had not only a wider social experience than her husband, but could also rely upon the instinctive psychology of her sex. She overruled at once, and very wisely, the petty objections of her husband to the form in which the acquaintance had been offered them, and returned, by the morning's post in the third person and upon pink paper, an acceptance to the kindly summons.

There were three weeks only in which to anticipate and prepare for this novel experience, but they were three weeks during which Mr. Clutterbuck was so thoroughly convinced by his wife, as very sincerely to regret the first comments he had made upon a custom to which his ignorance of life had made him take exception.

Meanwhile, in St. James's Place, the large and comfortable rooms which had once been those of the exiled Bourbons and later of the Boxing Club were the scene of more than one conversation between Mary Smith and her friends in the matter of those whom Charlie Fitzgerald lightly called "the mysterious guests."

"The less mysterious they are to you," said Mary Smith, nodding at this same Charlie Fitzgerald one very private afternoon at tea, "the better for you." She shut her lips and nodded again at him with emphasis.