The Little Vanities of Mrs. Whittaker: A Novel

by John Strange Winter

“Are you going out to-day, mother?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I’m going out.”

“Yes, but where?” Then follows a string of questions—“What are you going to do? What are you going to get? What time shall you be in? Do you want me to go with you? Is daddy going with you?” and so on. The simple answer, “I’m going out and about,” or “I’m going for a walk,” would in no wise serve that mother. If she managed to slip out without her family knowing the exact details of her programme she would certainly have to explain how she had spent every minute of her time when she got home again. “Well, where did you go? Who did you see? Where did you have tea? How many teas did you have? Did you have a good time? Are you tired? Why didn’t you let me know you were going? I wanted to go with you.” These are only a few of the questions that this particular mother has to answer whenever she happens to go out without attendance; and I say lucky it was for Regina that she had early inculcated the liberty of the subject into the hearts of her daughters twain.

Just at first, after giving up public life, she had made a feeble effort to assert the ordinary rôle of motherhood, but she had found herself brought sharply to a realization of her own principles, that she was free as air, to do as she liked, and that Julia had the same privileges as herself. Fortunate it was for Regina that it was so, for she was able to continue her work of regeneration, carried out on the most twentieth-century lines, without being hindered by objections and comments from her husband and daughters. For Julia was accustomed to spend her days among her own friends and to follow her own inclinations, and Regina had been for many years accustomed to come and go without hindrance or comment.

Now, at this time, she became almost too busy to worry about even the existence of the hussy. Twice a week she spent an hour at The Dressing-Room, having her hair brushed and kept beautiful. Twice a week she attended the salons of her beauty specialist, who did all manner of quaint things to her complexion, smoothing, washing, patting, kneading, dabbing, spraying, using electricity and washes, and employing various other modes of rendering her skin beautifully smooth. Then twice a week she attended the classes of a fashionable expert in physical culture, and at her bidding Regina, clad in black satin knickers and a white blouse, innocent of corsets or any other artificial means of making a figure, went through a series of antics, from blowing her nose scientifically to hopping about in attitudes suggestive of a gigantic frog—only that Regina grew less and less gigantic, and more and more approached to the proportions of her daughters. And then Regina took to learning the bicycle. Her modesty suggested that she should start on a machine with three wheels, but the professor of that art, who ran a show in Regent’s Park—well removed from Regina’s own domain—assured her that it was absurd for a person of her age and generally healthy aspect to begin on a machine that he would recommend to anyone old enough to be her mother. So Regina, with many misgivings, set out to learn the bicycle. She was not an easy pupil to teach, but there is no doubt that the nose blowing, hopping, rolling over and over on the floor, and going through the many exercises which the expert in physical culture ordained for her had given her a degree of lissomeness which she had never enjoyed in the whole course of her existence.

These pursuits necessitated her lunching in town every single day in the week, and, having some time still on her hands, she devoted one hour in the week to learning fencing, and then she joined a bridge class connected with her club. And truly she proved what marvelous changes an ordinary, stout, podgy, somewhat self-indulgent woman, getting near her half century, can make in herself if she chooses.

“Regina,” said Alfred, one evening when she came down to dinner wearing a bewitching little confection of silk and lace, which, if he had only known it, was called a coffee-coat, “my dear, are you still going to that doctor of yours?”

“Yes.”