CHAPTER V
“THE TENDER GRACE OF A DAY THAT IS DEAD”
THOSE early days of married life were very gay. We entertained tremendously. We went out enormously. We lived in a perfect social whirl. I enjoyed the privilege of wearing pretty frocks at luncheons, dinners, and dances; of riding in the morning, and driving a Park phaeton and pair of cobs in the afternoon, followed by two brown collies, given me by Sir John Kinloch of Kinloch. One, “Ruby” by name, went everywhere with me, and, clinging to her coat as she perambulated round the dining-room, my babies learnt to walk. They were a pretty sight, those two small boys in Lord Fauntleroy suits, tumbling about on the hearth with the long-haired red collies.
How I loved going to Ascot and Goodwood, taking people down, or being taken down, always feeling I could help to make things “go” and amuse people. Then the dinners; we had eight or ten to dine every Sunday night, quite informally, but as we usually lunched out and were away all day, we used to do this in the evenings. All sorts of charming people came, and I never enjoyed myself more than in the capacity of a hostess. Alec sang well, and we collected good musicians about us; Madame Lemmens-Sherrington, Madame Antoinette Sterling, George Grossmith, Corney Grain, Eugene Oudin, all went to the piano in turn.
My husband was member of a dozen golf clubs, including St. Andrews, Wimbledon, and Sandwich; and we took houses for odd months on different links for the benefit of the children, who were looked after by two excellent nurses, while we ran down to see them for week-ends or slipped over to Paris for a few days.
We went to shooting parties in the autumn, to race-meetings in the spring, were members of Sandown and Hurst Park, were constantly at Ranelagh or Hurlingham, kept a couple of boats on the river (the river was the height of fashion in the ’nineties) and generally enjoyed ourselves.
As a rule, we always lunched at the old Harley-Street house on Sundays when we were in town, went to all the theatres, and, in fact, lived a thoroughly happy, gay, social life, with no thought for the morrow.
I still kept up my painting, did a quantity of embroidery from my own designs for bedspreads, sideboard cloths, babies’ bonnets, or lapels of dresses; once and again wrote a little, but the business of existence was more amusement, and fun and spending, rather than making money and saving.