_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
July 2d
The people have been here several days now, and the lake looks very
gay. When the men are not fishing the boats are filled with the
children, ducky little things in white pinnys and bright ribbons. I am
going to have them all over by themselves for luncheon some day, for,
so far, I like them better than their “mommers.” The men are a well
turned-out lot, but look tired, and--anæmic. So far, I have seen little
of them, as Mr. Rogers has delayed bringing them over to call--possibly
until the mountain air has made them feel a little more fit. New York
is said to be unbearably hot, and, you know, the rich men in this
country work as hard as the poor ones. Did I tell you that they all
dine at the Club House? This cottage would have been impracticable
for us did not Mr. Rogers have an invalid mother who could not leave
the house--which is quite apart from the others--for days at a time.
Therefore, we have here a complete kitchen, pantry, etc., and are
quite independent of what would be to us all a detestable arrangement,
even if Bertie were well. He is quite fit again, by the way, and has
several times been fishing with Mr. Rogers. He has met a number of the
men and says he likes most of them, but has taken a violent dislike to
an author that this admiring circle has made a fool of, and longs to be
well enough to kick him. He likes the women as little as I do.
They have all called on us. They came singly and in battalions. I
have a general impression of thin carefully modulated voices, fluffy
well-groomed hair, delicate features, light eyes, a discontented
expression--which is reflected in their voices--an unbounded
self-confidence, an annoying and persistent self-consciousness, and the
most perfect gowns imaginable. In the morning they wear the triggest
serge or tweed costumes, on hot days linen of various colours, in the
afternoon they flit about in pretty lawns, and in the evening they are
very smart indeed--several of them called after dinner.
As they will doubtless flit in and out of my letters very often I will
do my poor best to introduce several of them to you that you may see
some sort of object behind the names.
The four that have impressed me most so far are Mrs. Chenoweth, the
wife of a “great” editor; Mrs. Hammond, the wife of a “great” art
publisher; Mrs. Laurence, a “wonderfully successful” authoress, and
Miss Simpson, the editor of a “great” woman’s magazine; her name is
Margaret E. Simpson. She left a card!
Mrs. Chenoweth is the least objectionable of the four, because in
spite of her sleepy self-content and air of gentle superiority, there
is something sweet and domestic about her, and occasionally her eyes
seem to fill up with sympathy; and there is a placid note in her voice,
unique in her “set.” She talked about her husband most of the time, and
left me wondering how the universe had room for two magazines. But if
she did not show so plainly that she was used to flattery and adulation
I’d like her rather.
Mrs. Hammond sits forward on the edge of the chair and talks all the
time. Her small expensively dressed figure looks as if her eager soul
might burst through it at any moment, every nerve seems to be on the
jump at once; and as for her face I followed its play of expression
bewildered. She is what is vulgarly and aptly called a “gusher.” She
gushed steadily for three quarters of an hour about literature and
art. Art is her passion; she almost faints before a great painting,
and etching gives her thrills which she can express in French only, so
inadequate is our commonplace language. She told me with great pride
that foreigners always took her for a French woman, so perfect was her
mastery of the language; and when I told her it was a relief to meet
an American who was not proud of being one, she looked embarrassed and
said of course she wouldn’t really be anything else. She then leaped
into the midst of literature, but somewhat to my surprise had little
to say about American. I was given to understand how deeply read the
ambitious active little lady was in English, French, Russian, German,
Norwegian, Danish, Italian, and even Spanish classics, old and new, but
her only reference to those of her own country was at the end of the
homily, when she gushed out eulogies of Mrs. Laurence, and Mr. Henry
Walker Rolfs.
“Mrs. Laurence is quite the most brilliant woman in America,” she
assured me. “Of course you know her novels--they sell immensely--so
full of style and brilliant pictures and illusiveness and delicate
satire and purity of thought; but she is even more fascinating herself.
I don’t believe there is a woman living who can say so many clever
things in the course of an hour, and she is quite a beauty, and dresses
deliciously--superlatively--even for New York. And Mr. Rolfs! Of course
you love his work--he has the immense sales he deserves to have--such
style, such word-painting, such spiritual insight--real interpretation
of God. He is so great I involuntarily lower my voice to speak to him,
and I think the two most wonderful sights I ever have witnessed are
Henry Walker Rolfs _fishing_ and _eating_. It seems incredible that he
can do anything just like other men. But indeed he spends most of his
time in the woods alone--thinking, thinking, interpreting Nature and
God. Oh, I know, dear Lady Helen, you will be perfectly delighted with
all our friends, and find us _very_ different from those exaggerated
Americans who are constantly bombarding London Society with their
vulgar millions.”
“You _are_ different,” I thought. “I never dreamed of anything in
Heaven or on Earth like you.”
Now, as it happens, Mrs. Laurence’s and Mr. Rolfs’ books are Bertie’s
and my pet abominations. We think the former trivial, thin, and
insincere to a degree that her pretty manner in no way compensates
for, and Mr. Rolfs equally insincere and anæmic, and laboured and dull
in the bargain. His style certainly is polished to an unusual degree,
even for an American, and he _engraves_--never paints--quite wonderful
pictures. But his characters never come to life for a moment and there
is no atmosphere or perspective in his work--it is flat against the
canvas--like the paintings of the Chinese. Read ---- ---- ----[A] and
---- ----[A] and see if you do not agree with me. By the way, he is
the man Bertie wants to kick.
I will describe Miss Simpson next, for as Mrs. Laurence is always
the last to arrive or to call on a new-comer, I will reserve for
her the _éclat_ she covets. Miss Simpson is extremely handsome,
tall, massive, with brown strong-looking hair, grey eyes with an
expression of haughty surprise--as if lesser mortals were in the habit
of taking liberties with her--a goodish complexion, a rather thick
round profile, and a small hard mouth with a downward bend. Success
is emblazoned upon her, as well as gratified power and ambition. She
began life, I am informed by one of her enthusiastic admirers, as
a clerk in a bank “out West,” but soon--feeling that her education
and gifts fitted her for the higher life--“came East” and engaged in
journalism. I cannot express the pride with which--Mrs. Chenoweth, I
think it was--told me that Miss Simpson had never brushed her skirts
against yellow journalism; although she came here quite unknown
and from that hybrid region known as the “West,” it appears that
her instincts were aristocratic from the first. She made herself
invaluable on one of the “very best papers,” gradually wedged her
way--I fear that expression is my own--into conservative circles,
dropping such acquaintances as were detrimental, and finally graduated
as a full-fledged editor of a woman’s magazine, capitalised by an
eccentric but appreciative millionairess. It was only a year or so ago,
however, that she “arrived” in this upper and rarefied stratum, and
is here not as a member, but as the guest of Mrs. Chenoweth. It must
be a jolly sensation to have striven for something so high above your
reach and finally achieved it. What contempt for those left below,
what constant self-gratulation. Miss Simpson quite chilled me with the
silent hauteur of her manner, the level dissecting rays of her fine
eyes. She holds herself aloft, as it were, with the rigid spine of the
traditional queen; but let me confide to you, Polly dear, she looks
like a successful business woman, _tout même_, not at all like what I
fancy she wishes to resemble. And if she is a success as a business
person I will venture to say she is a failure as a woman. Her ambition
has been so positive, so undeviating, so remorseless (I have listened
to six biographies of her), that the human attributes have withered up
just as unused muscles do. I asked Bertie what he thought of her, and
he said he had more respect for a harlot, as women had been created for
two offices only--mothers and strumpets. “If a woman fills neither of
these offices she is a failure and had better be dead.” That is a nice
primitive view and I’d enjoy hearing it exploded in the midst of this
select camp. They exult in Miss Simpson’s virtue--it is monumental--and
has flourished like a green bay tree in spite of New York and its
mysterious temptations. Personally, I should say her virtue was purely
a negative quality due to absence of temptation, within and without. So
far, she is rather in this well-uniformed set than of it; she speaks
with a slight twang and expresses herself in rather shoppy language.
But she is ambitious and determined, and no doubt will adapt herself in
time.
Mrs. Laurence! She was of those who called after dinner. She was in
full evening dress--black--and came into the room with a rustling of
skirts I never have known equalled. I should say that her train had at
least six inner silk flounces and it switched about on the bare floor
like an angry tiger’s tail. I think she changed her seat seven times
and always with that portentous rustling. I noticed that this occurred
whenever some one else had spoken consecutively for five minutes. She
is a pretty woman, and the old word “elegant” exactly expresses her;
our grandmothers would have called her “most genteel.” She has a cloud
of cendré hair, softly curled, and the pretty contrast of baby blue
eyes, although they, as well as her red thin lips, are petulant in
expression. Her features are delicate to the vanishing point and her
figure very graceful. She is, undoubtedly, an old hand at aristocracy,
for her voice, in spite of its fretful note, is exquisitely trained,
her language polished in the extreme, with every comma and semicolon in
its proper place; and her manner quite that of the grande dame of the
American novel. She mentioned eighteen people of title she had met in
England--among them Milly Seton--and alluded, with a fretful sigh, to
her many visits in England’s “enchanting homes.”
“I wish I could marry an Englishman,” she said, with her little pout,
“I have had so many offers from my own countrymen but not one from an
Englishman--I think it is too bad! Of course I shall marry again, I’m
so feminine and I hate work--I always am so amused when the critics
rave over my quick brilliant style and verbal felicities; I grind out
every sentence and hate the very sight of the paper. I want to marry a
rich man who will pet me and leave me nothing to do but to be charming
and to dress exquisitely. That is all a woman ever was made for, not to
write tiresome books that other people think clever. Of course, I am
glad I am such a success; but I’m sure I’d a great deal rather be you.
You look the real thing, and we are all just creditable imitations. I
am sure I was English once--in a former state--I feel so _at home_ when
I am in one of your old castles, surrounded by people who are all that
I should like to be, and I am such a success with them; I could not be
more so if I were to the manor born; I am sure I cannot understand why
some flower of nobility has not fairly flung himself and his hereditary
acres at my feet.”
All this before Bertie, and it reads like the most engaging candour;
but as she fairly breathes insincerity and self-consciousness one does
not believe _anything_ she says, and I think she knows it. When she
left, I asked Bertie if she was feminine enough to suit him, and he
said that she was a cat, whose proper place was in a fancy basket in
the drawing-room; no English Tom, at least, would ever invite her on
to the roof. Bertie is coarse at times, but nobody can deny that he is
expressive.
Polly, are these people merely snobs? What do you make of them? You
write me, you dear thing, that my letters are profoundly interesting
to you and that I pop the people I meet right into your imagination.
I am so glad, for they certainly interest me. It is like living in a
novel--an American one, it is true, but fresh and new, and full of
unsolved problems to the mere outsider. They certainly are not snobs
in the old meaning of the word, not in the least like those of their
country who work so hard to be taken up by us, and imitate our manners
and pronunciation. No, they are either snobs and something more, or not
snobs at all, but a different manifestation of the struggle for the
Ideal. That sounds better, at all events; let them go at that.
Mr. Rogers told me that they all admired me very much, but found me
rather “cold and haughty.” I could not help laughing aloud, and of
course Mr. Rogers understands. You know how shy and frightened of
strangers I am, a failing I never shall get over. I suppose that makes
me sit cold and rigid when, in reality, I would give a good deal to
talk as fast as they do--and as I can when I know and like people well
enough. I did feel myself growing stiffer and stiffer as Mrs. Hammond
gushed, but that was quite natural, it seems to me. Agatha was rather
bewildered at first by their facile and unrestrained speech, but she
likes them all, dear soul. She takes them on their face value, and they
each gave her material to admire without looking for it.
July 4th.
Yesterday I went to the Club House to dinner; Mr. Rogers rowed me over
and back. The dining-room is rather pretty, with three long tables. Mr.
Rogers sits at the head of the middle table and I sat on his right.
Mrs. Laurence was very “brilliant.” Every time she began to speak,
and that was usually, everybody stopped talking and leaned forward.
“I would not miss a word,” whispered my neighbour. “Her wit _lives_
on the tip of her tongue and never sleeps.” I cannot transcribe her
brilliancy, Polly dear, because it is of the quality known as elusive,
not the old-fashioned kind that you repeat and hand down to your
grand-children. She delivered her witticisms, too, at the rate of one
every three minutes, and I should like to know _who_ could keep track
of them. I wondered if her fascinating, fretful, spoilt-darling voice
has not something to do with the belief that she is witty and unique.
For, Polly, I must admit it, she bored me to death, and at times I felt
like protesting. But I scarcely opened my mouth; and I don’t doubt
they think I am stupid and have a typical English lack of the sense
of humour. But I do not blame Mrs. Laurence, and do not dislike her as
much as I did, for she is merely a hot-house product, forced into an
abnormal artificial growth by these foolish people, who must have their
lion, or the times would be out of joint.
The great Mr. Rolfs sat opposite me, but he does not go in for
brilliancy; to amuse, he doubtless holds, is beneath the dignity of
a great mind. He ate his excellent dinner in a ponderous and solemn
manner, oblivious of the admiring eyes riveted upon him when Mrs.
Laurence was not speaking; his vision introspective, as if he still
pondered the last of the Almighty’s confidences, and, when spoken to,
responding with a sweet but absent graciousness. I wanted to throw my
ice-cream at him--only it was very good ice-cream, made of crushed
strawberries, and would have been wasted on such a muff.
In the fine large cosy living-room afterward they _played intellectual
games_. My dear, I thought I should die. I could not leave in common
decency before ten o’clock, and for a mortal hour I listened to
the brilliant Mrs. Laurence exhibit the most wonderful fertility,
ingenuity, and resource, switching her noisy tail round the polished
floor till it hissed like a harassed snake. She was in white
embroidered mousseline de soie and silk--Oh, much and noisy silk--and
she wore turquoises, and altogether looked like an advertisement for
the calling of letters. Her rival, Mr. Rolfs, had retreated from the
field--probably to the roof--and I don’t exaggerate when I say that the
others never took their eyes off her, with the exception of some of
the men, who went to sleep. Finally, I could stand it no longer, and I
went over and sat down by Miss Simpson, who seemed to be as much out of
it as I was, and who, since she had failed to catch the spirit of the
thing, was endeavouring to look superior to contemptible frivolities.
“A very brilliant woman,” I said, beginning with the obvious.
“I guess there’s not much use disputing that fact,” she answered with
an expression which conveyed to me that this remark was intended as
grim humour. “And if she were not, she’s clever enough to make people
think so.”
“Do you admire that particular form of brilliancy?” I asked, longing to
hear her say what I thought; but she answered emphatically:
“I admire success. When you strive for that and get it you’re entitled
to all the applause there is, whether it is the brand some one else
would strike out for or not. I have succeeded in my way and she
acknowledges it and me; therefore, I take off my hat to her. I have
aimed for something more solid; but because I prefer to spend my
money on oil paintings there is no law against my patting the dainty
water-colourist on the back. And I do--every time. So long as a person
does not get in my way he can have a whole road to himself and welcome.”
Here was genuine frankness, no doubt of that. She prided herself upon
it and was quite aware that she was impressing me, but it was the sort
of insolent frankness that compels belief. I asked her if she was
not the author of ----[A] which I had read recently, and she thawed
perceptibly and even gave me a very charming smile. To draw her on I
praised the novel highly--it was clever but sketchy and betrayed no
knowledge of the world whatever--and she thanked me very pleasantly and
admitted that she hoped to make an even greater success with her second
one.
“I have had some very fortunate experiences since I wrote that,” she
said. “I have watched a love affair progress right under my nose, and I
was visiting a friend of mine when her husband was accidentally killed.
She was a wonderful psychological study in her grief!” and she set her
mouth, as if overcome by the responsibility of her own brain.
“Good God!” I exclaimed.
She turned slowly and gave me a look of such haughty inquiry that I
almost wilted.
“I beg your pardon,” I said meekly, “but it seemed to me rather a
shocking advantage to take. Really--how _could_ you?”
“Of course, as you don’t write you don’t know that a true artist sees
copy in everything, that human nature was made to be studied, and that
when a palpitating leaf is torn out and flung into an author’s lap he
would be seven different kinds of fool if he didn’t read it.”
“I can understand now why your literature is heartless,” I retorted,
“for you kill your own heart before you write it. But, if you go in for
brain-picking to that extent, why do you so persistently ignore the
motive power of human life--sex?”
“Oh,” she said with an accent of contempt and disgust. “_We_ don’t want
any of that. We leave that to the decadent civilisations. It’s not the
fashion in this country. _We’re_ healthy.”
“I think you are decidedly unhealthy,” I made bold to retort--“and
if you don’t take care the water in your blood will prevent you from
attaining full growth. Well, at all events you will escape decadency,”
I added lightly. “Good night.”
I crossed the room toward Mr. Rogers, determined upon retreat, but was
intercepted by Mrs. Chenoweth. She gave me so sweet a smile that I was
obliged to pause.
“Do sit and talk to me a moment,” she said. “I have been longing to
see more of you. I am glad you were so kind to Miss Simpson. I think
she is a type that should be encouraged and I am doing all I can for
her. Of course she is what is called self-made, she has no family tree,
but, as Junot said, ‘Some of us must be ancestors’--you remember that
is quoted in the Rémusat Memoirs; delightful reading, whether they are
authentic or not. I thought I would tell you just how Miss Simpson
stands, lest you should wonder a little at her accent and stiffness;
but she is so estimable and capable and altogether superior--and bound
to go so far--I am sure you will think I am right to take her up.”
“I don’t see any reason in the world why you shouldn’t,” I replied,
“and it certainly has interested me very much to meet her. I really
must go, if you don’t mind. I am so very tired.”
On the way back I told Mr. Rogers of my conversation with Miss Simpson
and of my disgust. He smiled good naturedly.
“Oh, that is only the zeal of the amateur,” he said. “They get less
shoppy every year.”
“But don’t they lose a good deal meanwhile?” I asked.
“Well, perhaps,” he admitted.
The children are making such a racket with firecrackers I can scarcely
think, but I send you much love and sympathy.