Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn’t got. It is odd, how taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And fashion after all is only a matter of “bulge.” You bulge in a different place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you may consider you are a well-dressed woman!
Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every week, from The Bittern, and for Wild Oats. George is “Pease Blossom” on The Bittern. We don’t need to subscribe to a library, we live in a book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers’ Row afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of Darnel, and people thought him clever but malicious.
Papa doesn’t know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time for—it depends on how many Ariadne gives me—and then when she is doing her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so it’s all right.
Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn’t invent, but found ready made. “Up to the level of this author’s reputation” is one; “marks a distinct advance,” “breezy,” “strong, or convincing,” and the opposites, “unconvincing,” “weak,” “morbid,” “effete,” are useful ones. She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions “a fine sense of atmosphere” if she honestly can.
She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not one of the whole d—d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, especially The Bittern, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote her own words to her!
Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a pity Mr. —— I forget the author’s name—did not relieve our anxiety as to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up her own end. The editor of The Bittern had to acknowledge the error and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel action. Ariadne doesn’t care about meeting that man in society!
It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, because she doesn’t write them. People who write books shouldn’t have the right to say what they think of other people’s; it is like a mother listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about.
“D—m the fellow! He’s stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!”
It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, “Well, then, George, you can use it again.” He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a regular corker of a review.
“I’ll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. ‘The signal ineptitude of this author’s——’”