MANNERS AND CUSTOMS—CLIQUE—THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE—OUT VISITING—HOUSE-PRIDE—DRESSMAKING.
Eleanor and I were not always at home. We generally went visiting somewhere, at least once a year.
I think it was good for us. Great as were the advantages of the life I now shared over an existence wasted in a petty round of ignoble gossip and social struggle, it had the drawback of being almost too self-sufficing, perhaps—I am not certain—a little too laborious. I do think, but for me, it must, at any rate, have become the latter. I am so much less industrious, energetic, clever and good in every way than Eleanor, for one thing, that my very idleness holds us back; and I think a taste for gaiety (I simply mean being gay, not balls and parties), and for social pleasure, and for pretty things, and graceful “situations” runs in my veins with my French blood, and helps to break the current of our labours.
We led lives of considerable intellectual activity, constant occupation, and engrossing interest. We were apt to “foy” at our work to the extent of grudging meal-times and sleep. Indeed, at one time a habit obtained with us of leaving the table in turn as we finished our respective meals. One member of the family after another would rise, bend his or her head for a silent “grace,” and depart to the work in hand. I have known the table gradually deserted in this fashion till Mr. Arkwright was left alone. I remember going back one day into the room, and seeing him so. My entrance partially aroused him from a brown study. (He was at all times very “absent”) He rose, said grace aloud for the benefit of the company—which had dispersed—and withdrew to his library. But we abolished this uncivilized custom in conclave, and thenceforth sat our meals out to the end.
So free were we in our isolation upon those Yorkshire moors from the trammels of conventionality (one might almost say, civilization!), that I think we should have come to begrudge the ordinary interchange of the neighbourly courtesies of life, but for occasional lectures from Mrs. Arkwright, and for going out visiting from time to time.
It was not merely that a life of running in and out of other people’s houses, and chatting the same bits of news threadbare with one acquaintance after another, as at Riflebury, would have been unendurable by us. The rare arrival of a visitor from some distant country-house to call at the Vicarage was the signal for every one, who could do so with decency, to escape from the unwelcome interruption. But as we grew older, Mrs. Arkwright would not allow this. The boys, indeed, were hard to coerce; they “bolted” still when the door-bell rang; but domestic authority, which is apt to be magnified on “the girls,” overruled Eleanor and me for our good, and her mother—who reasoned with us far more than she commanded—convinced us of how much selfishness there was in this, as in all acts of discourtesy.
But what do we not owe to her good counsels? In how many evening talks has she not warned us of the follies, affectations, or troubles to which our lives might specially be liable! Against despising interests that are not our own, or graces which we have chosen to neglect, against the danger of satire, against the love or the fear of being thought singular, and, above all, against the petty pride of clique.
“I do not know which is the worst,” I remember her saying, “a religious clique, an intellectual clique, a fashionable clique, a moneyed clique, or a family clique. And I have seen them all.”
“Come, Mother,” said Eleanor, “you cannot persuade us you would not have more sympathy with the intellectual than the moneyed clique, for instance?”
“I should have warmly declared so myself, at one time,” said Mrs. Arkwright, “but I have a vivid remembrance of a man belonging to an artistic clique, to whose house I once went with some friends. My friends were artists also, but their minds were enlarged, instead of being narrowed, by one chief pursuit. Their special art gave them sympathy with all others, as the high cultivation of one virtue is said to bring all the rest in its train. But this man talked the shibboleth of his craft over one’s head to other members of his clique with a defiance of good manners arising more from conceit than from ignorance of the ways of society; and with a transparent intention of being overheard and admired which reminded me of the little self-conscious conceits of children before visitors. He was one of a large family with the same peculiarities, joined to a devout admiration of each other. Indeed, they combined the artistic clique and the family clique in equal proportions. From the conversation at their table you would have imagined that there was but one standard of good for poor humanity, that of one ‘school’ of one art, and absolutely no one who quite came up to it but the brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, or connections by marriage of your host. Now, I honestly assure you that the only other man really like this one that I ever met, was what is called a ‘self-made’ man in a commercial clique. Money was his standard, and he seemed to be as completely unembarrassed as my artist friend by the weight of any other ideas than his own, or by any feeling short of utter satisfaction with himself. Their contempt for the conventionalities of society was about equal. My artist friend had passed a sweeping criticism for my benefit now and then (there could be no conversation where no second opinion was allowed), and it was with perhaps a shade less of condescension—a shade more of friendliness—that my commercial friend once stopped some remarks of mine with the knowing observation, ‘Look here, ma’am. Whenever I hear this, that, and the other bragged about a party, what I always say is this, I don’t want you to tell me what he his, but what he ’as.’”