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THE THIRD
MISS SYMONS
F. M. Mayor
_With a Preface by John Masefield_
First published in Great Britain 1913
Copyright F. M. Mayor 1913
PREFACE
Miss Mayor's story is of a delicate quality, not common here, though
occurring at intervals, and always sure of a choice, if not very large,
audience among those who like in art the refined movement and the gentle
line. Her subject, like her method, is one not commonly chosen by women
writers; it is simply the life of an unmarried idle woman of the last
generation, a life (to some eyes) of wasted leisure and deep futility,
but common enough, and getting from its permitted commonness a
justification from life, who is wasteful but roughly just. Miss Mayor
tells this story with singular skill, more by contrast than by drama,
bringing her chief character into relief against her world, as it passes
in swift procession. Her tale is in a form becoming common among our
best writers; it is compressed into a space about a third as long as the
ordinary novel, yet form and manner are so closely suited that all is
told and nothing seems slightly done, or worked with too rapid a hand.
Much that is tiresome in the modern novel, the pages of analysis and of
comment, the long descriptions and the nervous pathology, are omitted by
Miss Mayor's method, which is all for the swift movement and against the
temptations to delay which obstruct those whose eyes are not upon life;
she condenses her opportunities for psychology and platitude into a
couple of shrewd lines and goes on with her story, keeping her freshness
and the reader's interest unabated. The method is to draw the central
figure rapidly past a succession of bright lights, keeping the lights
various and of many colours and allowing none of them to shine too long.
This comparatively passive creative method suits the subject; for her
heroine has the fate to be born in a land where myriads of women of her
station go passively like poultry along all the tramways of their
parishes; life is something that happens to them, it is their duty to
keep to the tracks, and having enough to eat and enough to put on
therewith to be content, or if not content, sour, but in any case to
seek no further over the parochial bounds. Her heroine, born into such a
tradition, continues in it, partly by the pressure of custom and family
habit, both always very powerful and often deadly in this country, and
partly from a want of illumination in herself, her instructors, and in
the life about her. The latter want is the fatal defect in her: it is
the national defect, "the everlasting prison remediless" into which so
many thousands of our idle are yearly thrown; it is from this that she
really suffers; it is to this that she succumbs, while the ivy of her
disposition grows over and smothers whatever light may be in her. Like
water in flood-time revolving muddily over the choked outlet, her life
revolves over the evil in it without resolution or escape; her brain,
like so many of the brains in civilization, is but slightly drawn upon
or exercised; she is not so much wasted as not used. Having by fortune
and tradition nothing to do, she remains passive till events and time
make her incapable of doing, while the world glitters past in its
various activity, throwing her incapacity into ever stronger relief,
till her time is over and the general muddle is given a kind of
sacredness, even of beauty, by ceasing. She has done nothing but live
and been nothing but alive, both to such passive purpose that the
ceasing is pitiful; and it is by pushing on to this end, instead of
shirking it, and by marking the last tragical fact which puts a dignity
upon even the meanest being, that Miss Mayor raises her story above the
plane of social criticism, and keeps it sincere. A lesser writer would
have been content with less, and having imagined her central figure
would have continued to stick pins into it, till the result would have
been no living figure, but a record of personal judgments, perhaps even,
as sometimes happens, of personal pettiness, a witch's waxen figure
plentifully pricked before the consuming flame. Miss Mayor keeps on the
side of justice, with the real creators, to whom there is nothing simple
and no one unmixed, and in this way gets beauty, and through beauty the
only reality worth having.
In a land like England, where there is great wealth, little education
and little general thought, people like Miss Mayor's heroine are common;
we have all met not one or two but dozens of her; we know her emptiness,
her tenacity, her futility, savagery and want of light; all circles
contain some examples of her, all people some of her shortcomings; and
judgment of her, even the isolation of her in portraiture, is dangerous,
since the world does not consist of her and life needs her. In life as
in art those who condemn are those who do not understand; and it is
always a sign of a writer's power, that he or she keeps from direct
praise or blame of imagined character. Miss Mayor arrives at an
understanding of her heroine's character by looking at her through a
multitude of different eyes, not as though she were her creator, but as
if she were her world, looking on and happening, infinitely active and
various, coming into infinite contrast, not without tragedy, but also
never without fun. The world is, of course, the comparatively passive
feminine world, but few modern books (if any) have treated of that
world so happily, with such complete acceptance, unbiassed and
unprejudiced, yet with such selective tact and variety of gaiety. She
comes to the complete understanding of Henrietta by illuminating all the
facets in her character and all the threads of her destiny, and this is
an unusual achievement, made all the more remarkable by a brightness and
quickness of mind which give delightful life to a multitude of incidents
which are in themselves new to fiction. Her touch upon all her world is
both swift and unerring; but the great charm of her work is its
brightness and unexpectedness; it lights up so many little unsuspected
corners in a world that is too plentifully curtained.
JOHN MASEFIELD, 1913
THE THIRD MISS SYMONS
CHAPTER I
Henrietta was the third daughter and fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Symons,
so that enthusiasm for babies had declined in both parents by the time
she arrived. Still, in her first few months she was bound to be
important and take up a great deal of time. When she was two, another
boy was born, and she lost the honourable position of youngest. At five
her life attained its zenith. She became a very pretty, charming little
girl, as her two elder sisters had done before her. It was not merely
that she was pretty, but she suddenly assumed an air of graciousness and
dignity which captivated everyone. Some very little girls do acquire
this air: what its source is no one knows. In this case certainly not
Mr. and Mrs. Symons, who were particularly clumsy. Etta, as she was
called, was often summoned from the nursery when visitors came; so were
Minna and Louie her elder sisters, but all the ladies wanted to talk to
Etta. Minna and Louie had by this time, at nine and eleven, advanced to
the ugly, uninteresting stage, and they owed Henrietta a grudge because
she had annexed the petting that used to fall to them. They had their
revenge in whispering interminable secrets to one another, of which Etta
could hear stray sentences. "Ellen says she knows Arthur was very
naughty, because ... But we won't tell Etta." She was very susceptible
to notice, and the petting was not good for her.
When she was eight her zenith was past, and her plain stage began. Her
charm departed never to return, and she slipped back into
insignificance. At eight she could no longer be considered a baby to
play with, and a good deal of fault-finding was deemed necessary to
counteract the previous spoiling. In Henrietta's youth, sixty years ago,
fault-finding was administered unsparingly. She did not understand why
she was more scolded than the others, and decided that it was because
Ellen and Miss Weston and her mother had a spite against her.
Mrs. Symons was not fond of children, and throughout Henrietta's
childhood she was delicate, so that Henrietta saw very little of her.
Her chief recollections of her mother were of scoldings in the
drawing-room when she had done anything specially naughty.
If she had been one of two or one of three in a present-day family she
would have been more precious. But as one of four daughters--another
girl was born when she was eight--she was not much wanted. Mr. Symons
was a solicitor in a country town, and the problem of providing for his
seven, darkened the years of childhood for the whole Symons family. The
children felt that their parents found them something of a burden, and
in those days there was no cult of childhood to soften the hard reality.
The two older boys had a partnership together, into which they
occasionally admitted Minna and Louie. Minna and Louie had, beside their
secrets, a friend named Rosa. Harold, the youngest boy, did not want any
person--only toy engines. He and Etta should have been companions, but
he said she cried and told tales, though she told no more tales than he
did.
A large family should be such a specially happy community, but it
sometimes occurs that there is a girl or boy who is nothing but a middle
one, fitting in nowhere. So it was with Henrietta, till the youngest
child was born.
Unfortunately she had an almost morbid longing, unusual in a child, to
be loved and of importance. Now she would have given anything to have
heard Minna and Louie's secrets, not for the sake of the secrets, but as
a sign that she was thought worthy of confidence. She ran everyone's
errands continually, but she broke the head off Arthur's carnation as
she was bringing it from his bedroom to the garden, and she let out
William's secret, which he had told her in an unusual fit of affability,
in order that she might curry favour with Minna. This infuriated
William, and did not conciliate Minna. She grew fast and was a little
delicate. It made her irritable, but her brothers and sisters, who were
all growing with great regularity, could not be expected to understand
delicacy. She always said she was sorry after she had been cross, but
they, who did not have tempers, could not see that that made things any
better.
In her loneliness she made for herself, like many other forlorn
children, a phantom friend. It was a little girl two years older than
she was, for Henrietta preferred to look up, and be herself in an
inferior position. For this reason she did not much care for dolls,
where she was decidedly the superior. She called her friend Amy. Amy
slept with her, helped her with her lessons, told her secrets
perpetually, and grumbled about the other children.
One day they all had a game at Hide and Seek. The lot fell on her and
William, now fourteen, to hide. They ensconced themselves in a dark spot
in a little grove at the end of the garden. The others could not find
them, and there was plenty of time for talk. William was a kind boy and
rather a chatterbox, ready to expand to any listener, even a sister of
nine. Henrietta never knew how it was that she told him about Amy. It
had always been her firm resolve that this was to be her own dead
secret, never revealed. But the unusual warmth of the interview went to
her head. It was in a kind of intoxication of happiness that she poured
out her confidence. The shrubbery was so dark that William's face could
not be seen, but he began fidgeting, and soon broke in: "I say, what
hours the others are, it must be tea-time. Let's go and find them."
It was kind of William to snub her confidence so gently, but the
disappointment was cruel. She had been lifted up to such a height of
happiness. When Ellen brushed her hair at night she noticed her dismal
looks, and being really concerned at Henrietta's want of control, she
said bracingly that little girls must never be whiney-piney. When the
lamp was put out, Henrietta sobbed herself to sleep, and she looked back
on that evening as the most miserable of her childhood.
It was not long after this that the last child was born, the baby girl.
They had all been sent away, and Henrietta, who had gone by herself to
an aunt, came back later than the others; they had seen the new arrival,
and had got over their very moderate excitement. Ellen asked Henrietta
if she would like to have a peep at her little sister. When Henrietta
saw it, she determined that it should be her own baby. "Oh, you little
darling, you darling, darling baby!" she murmured over and over again.
"Now you are happy, aren't you, Miss Etta?" said Ellen; she had always
felt sorry for Henrietta out in the cold.
The baby very much improved Etta's circumstances. Ellen allowed her to
help, and she had something to care for, so she had less occasion for
interviews with her phantom friend. As she grew older the baby Evelyn
requited her affection with a gratifying preference, but she was very
sweet-natured and would like everybody, and not make a party against
Minna and Louie as Henrietta desired. She came to the pretty age, and
was prettier and more charming than any of them. When the pretty age
ought to have passed she remained as attractive as ever, and continued
to enjoy a universal popularity. This was disappointing to Henrietta;
she would have preferred them to be pariahs together. Still, it was
always Etta that Evelyn liked best.
When Evelyn was four and Henrietta thirteen, Evelyn was given a canary.
It never became interesting, for it would not eat off her finger, but
she cared for it as much as a child of four can be considered to care
for anything. The canary died and was buried when Evelyn had a cold and
was in bed, and Henrietta went by herself into the town, contrary to
rules, and spent all her savings at a little, low bird-shop getting a
mangey canary. She brought it back and put it into the cage, and when
Evelyn, convalescent, came into the nursery, she attempted to palm off
the new canary as Evelyn's original bird. This strange behaviour brought
her to great disgrace. Her only explanation was, "I didn't want Evelyn
to know that Dickie was dead. I think death is so dreadful, and I don't
want her to know anything dreadful." Mrs. Symons and the governess
thought this most inexplicable.
"Etta is a very difficult child," said Mrs. Symons; "she always has been
so unlike the others, and now this dreadful untruth. I always feel an
untruth is very different from anything else. Going into that horrid,
dirty little shop! You must watch her most carefully, Miss Weston, and
let me know if there is any further deceit."
"I never had noticed anything before, Mrs. Symons, but I will be
particularly careful." And Miss Weston took the most elaborate
precautions that there should be no cheating at lessons, which Henrietta
resented keenly, having, like the majority of girls, an extreme horror
of cheating.