CHAPTER VIII
A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM
I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for on that day at one-thirty I encountered my first London drawing-room. I recall now as a part of this fortunate adventure that we had been talking of a new development in French art, which Barfleur approved in part and disapproved in part—the Post-Impressionists; and there was mention also of the Cubists—a still more radical departure from conventional forms, in which, if my impressions are correct, the artist passes from any attempt at transcribing the visible scene and becomes wholly geometric, metaphysical and symbolic.
When I reached the house of Mrs. W., which was in one of those lovely squares that constitute such a striking feature of the West End, I was ushered upstairs to the drawing-room, where I found my host, a rather practical, shrewd-looking Dane, and his less obviously Danish wife.
“Oh, Mr. Derrizer,” exclaimed my hostess on sight, as she came forward to greet me, a decidedly engaging woman of something over forty, with bronze hair and ruddy complexion. Her gown of green silk, cut after the latest mode, stamped her in my mind as of a romantic, artistic, eager disposition.
“You must come and tell us at once what you think of the picture we are discussing. It is downstairs. Lady R. is there and Miss H. We are trying to see if we can get a better light on it. Mr. Barfleur has told me of you. You are from America. You must tell us how you like London, after you see the Degas.”
I think I liked this lady thoroughly at a glance and felt at home with her, for I know the type. It is the mobile, artistic type, with not much practical judgment in great matters, but bubbling with enthusiasm, temperament, life.
“Certainly—delighted. I know too little of London to talk of it. I shall be interested in your picture.”
We had reached the main floor by this time.
“Mr. Derrizer, the Lady R.”
A modern suggestion of the fair Jahane, tall, astonishingly lissom, done—as to clothes—after the best manner of the romanticists—such was the Lady R. A more fascinating type—from the point of view of stagecraft—I never saw. And the languor and lofty elevation of her gestures and eyebrows defy description. She could say, “Oh, I am so weary of all this,” with a slight elevation of her eyebrows a hundred times more definitely and forcefully than if it had been shouted in stentorian tones through a megaphone.