Sarah Whitehand could not have chosen a more admirable godmother, and
though she was lucky in having hit on precisely the right one, she had
shown true perpendicularity in having gone to the right class. She had
aimed at the best and hit it, and in the three months that followed she
continued to show a discretion that bore out the early promise of her
talents. She neither gave herself airs, nor was she grovellingly humble,
she merely enjoyed herself enormously, and since of all social gifts
that is the most popular, she rapidly mounted. She threw herself, with
Lady Newgate’s sanction, into artistic circles, and firmly annexed as
her mascot the chief dancer of the Russian ballet. Unlike poor
horizontal Mrs. Howard-Britten, with her disappointing Herr
Grossesnoise, she made it quite clear that when she asked a party to
meet a bevy of Russian dancers that party was surely going to see the
bevy dance, which it did quite delightfully under the stimulus of
enormous fees. She did not waste her quails and champagne on
unremunerative guests, or guests who so far from helping her would only
hinder her, but followed Lady Newgate’s directions precisely as to whom
she should ask, and very good directions they were.
She had other modes of access as well. She flattered grossly or
delicately as the occasion demanded. When she saw that some one liked to
be drenched in flattery she had bucketsful of it ready. At other times
she confined herself to telling So-and-so’s friends how lovely So-and-so
was looking, or how brilliant So-and-so was. This method she chiefly
adopted to those of Lady Newgate’s friends who had somewhat unwillingly
come to her house, and plentiful applications of these gratifying
assurances usually had their effect sooner or later, for Sarah Whitehand
knew that nobody is insensible to flattery, if (and here lay the
virtue) the proper brand properly administered was supplied. Sometimes
the case required study: it was no use conveying to a beautiful woman
the flattery of acknowledging her beauty: you had to find out something
on which she secretly prided herself, her tact or her want of tact, her
charming manners or her absence of manners, her toes or her teeth, and
make little hypodermic injections in the right place. Then again there
were people who in spite of all allurements would have nothing to do
with her. After two or three unsuccessful direct assaults, she would
attempt that no more, but, just as she was outflanking New York by
laying siege to London, outflank those obdurate folk by laying siege to
their friends. She was infinitely patient over these operations, and
nibbled her way round them, until they were cut off, and found
themselves devoid of all friends save such as were friends of the
accomplished Sarah. By patience, by good humour and by her own enjoyment
she moved steadily and rapidly upwards on branches that she gilded
beforehand. She often thought about Nittie Vandercrump screaming away in
New York, and even adopted a modified version of her yells of pleasure.
These she gave vent to when dull people, who for some reason mattered,
told her long stupid stories, and found that they had achieved, for the
first time in their lives, a brilliant and startling success.
Naturally she made quantities of mistakes. Occasionally a man at her
table would find in his neighbour a woman with whom he had not been on
speaking terms for years, or again, she solemnly introduced Bob Crawley
to the wife he had divorced a year before, and immediately afterwards to
the woman concerning whom his wife might have divorced him the year
before that. Nor could she at first grasp the fact that a Duchess
perhaps did not matter at all, and that Mrs. Smith mattered very much,
and she had to drop the Duchess and smooth down Mrs. Smith. But these
were mere childish stumbles, and having picked herself up she again
clung tightly with one hand to her godmother and with the other to her
mascot, the Russian dancer.
And all the time while she was so nimbly climbing, she and
Petropopoloffski were sitting on a great egg which was to be hatched in
the autumn, when London would be full again for the session. Russian
ballet this year was the rage to the exclusion of all other rages, and
the great egg was no less than a further six-weeks season of it,
financed and engineered by Sarah. Not until when late in July the egg
was, so to speak, announced, did any one, even her godmother, know that
it was she who had laid it, and she who had Petropopoloffski in her
pocket, and she who had taken the Duke of Kent’s theatre for it, and she
who had arranged to have the dress-circle and pit taken away and rows of
boxes substituted, and she, finally, who had taken thirty-seven boxes
herself, so that only through her favour could anybody engage them. It
was a great, a brilliant stroke, hazardous perhaps, but then everybody
wanted to see Russian ballet so much that they would not stick at being
indebted to her for their boxes. But it came off: within a couple of
days of the subscription list being opened, all boxes not reserved by
her had been let, and she began most cordially to allow applicants to
have some of hers. Very wisely, she gratified no private slights by
refusing them, she only made friends by granting them. She kept just two
or three of the best, in case of emergencies.
And so she goes on from height to height. Mr. Whitehand was duly sent
for in the succeeding spring, and sat entranced for a month, as in a
dream of content, in this Valhalla of the gods. But he found he could
not stand much of the rarefied air at a time, and so bought a large
place in the country, where in leather gaiters he feels like an English
squire, and has revolutionized all the sanitary arrangements of the
house. And when Nittie came to London, as she did during the summer, and
screamed a welcome to her darling Sally, her darling Sally was very wise
about it, and instead of kicking her down, which she might easily have
done, she gave her a leg-up by asking her to a particularly dazzling
dinner-party and being quite kind to her. She does not see much of her,
but always treats her with the respect and pity due to a poor relation.
There is no more climbing to be done here, and for a change next autumn
she means to go downstairs to New York and see how they are all getting
on in the kitchen.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR
St. Sebastian’s Church, situated in the centre of Mayfair, is justly
famous for the beauty of its structure, the excellence of its singing,
the splendour of its vestments and the magnificence of its vicar, Mr.
Sandow, who might well be taken, as far as superb physical proportions
go, to be the show-pupil of his hardly less illustrious namesake. He is
‘Hon.’ and ‘Rev.,’ but he prefers his letters to be addressed to him as
‘The Rev. the Hon. J. S. Sandow’ instead of ‘The Hon. the Rev.,’ for, as
he says, the ‘Hon.’ is an accident--not, of course, implying that there
was any irregularity about his birth--and that ‘the Rev.’ is the more
purposeful of his prefixes. To do him justice, he lives up to this fine
pronouncement, and while, if his brother, Lord Shetland, lunches with
him he is regaled with the simplest of family meals, he entertains an
athletic Bishop who is a friend of his with the sumptuousness due from a
Rev. to a Prince of the Church, and takes him down in a motor to Queen’s
Club, where they have a delightful game of racquets together.
His ecclesiastical politics, as exhibited in the services at St.
Sebastian’s, are distinctly High. But they are also Broad, since for
those of his parishioners who prefer it, there is an early celebration
at 8 A.M. conducted by two of his curates. Matins, sung in plain-song by
an admirable choir, follows at 10 A.M., and this is usually attended by
a packed congregation. By eleven, in any case, which is the hour for the
sermon, there is not a seat to be had in the church, for Mr. Sandow
invariably preaches himself, and from Pimlico and the wilds of South
Kensington, from Bayswater and Regent’s Park, eager listeners flock to
hear him. This is no quarter of an hour’s oration: he seldom preaches
less than fifty minutes, and often the large Louis Seize clock below the
organ loft, with its discreetly nude bronze figures of Apollo and Daphne
in the vale of Tempe sprawling over it, chimes noon on its musical bells
before he has finished. A short pause succeeds the conclusion of the
sermon, and the choir enters the church again from the vestry in
magnificent procession and panoply of banners, followed by the clergy in
full vestments. Clouds of the most expensive incense befog the chancel,
and if what is enacted there is not the Mass, it is an uncommonly good
imitation of it.
Mr. Sandow’s ecclesiastical doctrines thus preach themselves, so to
speak, in the manner of this service, and there is little directly
doctrinal in his sermons. He ranges the religions of the world, culling
flowers from Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Fire Worship, Christian Science,
and has even been known to find something totemistic, if not positively
sacramental, in the practice of cannibalism. The first part of these
sermons is always extremely erudite, and out of his erudition there
springs a sort of sunlit Pantheism. He splits no hairs over it, and does
not insist on any definitely limited meaning being attached to the word
‘immanent’; it satisfies him to prove the pervasiveness of Deity. At
other times, instead of rearing his creed as this substructure of
world-religion, he mines into the sciences and gives his congregation
delightful glimpses into the elements of astronomy, with amazing figures
as to the distance of the fixed stars. Or he investigates botany, and
Aquilegia rolls off his tongue as sonorously as Aldebaran. Out of the
arts as well, from music, painting, sculpture he delves his gold, that
gold which he finds so freely distributed throughout the entire
universe. Having got it, he becomes the goldsmith, and shows his
listeners how to turn their lives into wondrous images of pure gold,
the gold of the complete consciousness that there is nothing in this
world common or unclean, or less than Divine. He snaps his fingers in
the face of Satan, and tells him, as if he was a mere Mrs. Harris, that
there is no ‘sich a person.’ All is divine, and therefore we must set
about our businesses with joy and exultation. Not only will sorrow and
sighing flee away, but they actually have fled away: it is impossible
that they should have a place in the world such as he has already proved
the existence of by the aid of botany or music or cannibalism. Indeed if
it were possible to conceive the existence of sin, we should, we could
only expect to find it where, by reason of people not realizing the
splendour of those realities, they allow themselves to be depressed or
gloomy. And (since the Louis Seize clock has already chimed) Now.
There is no doubt that this robust joyousness suits his congregation
very well, for the most of the inhabitants of his parish, the
owners of nice houses in Curzon Street and Park Lane and other
comfortably-situated homes, have really a great deal to be jolly about,
and Mr. Sandow points out their causes for thankfulness in patches so
purple that they almost explode with richness of colour. Another great
theme of his, when for a Sunday or two he has made his hearers feel how
lucky all mankind is to be born into this glorious world, is the duty of
kindliness and simplicity. Indeed his collected sermons rather resemble
the collected works of Ouida, who could write so charmingly about pairs
of little wooden shoes, and with the same pen, make us swoon with the
splendours of Russian princesses, and the gorgeousness of young
guardsmen with their plumes of sunny hair, and their parties at the Star
and Garter hotel where they throw the half-guinea peaches at the
fireflies.[A] If joy is the violins in this perfect orchestra of a
world, simplicity and kindliness are, according to Mr. Sandow, the horns
and the trombones. Crowned heads are of no account to him if accompanied
by cold hearts, but he has found (greatly to their credit) that the
inhabitants of splendid houses, and the owners of broad acres are among
the simplest and kindliest of mankind, and he often takes an opportunity
to tell them so, ex cathedra, from his pulpit. And since it is
impossible not to be gratified in hearing a professional testimonial,
publicly delivered, to your merits, his unbounded popularity with his
congregation is amply accounted for, and the offertories at St.
Sebastian’s rain on him, as on some great male Danae, showers of gold.
[A] A fact.
At the convenient hour of six, so that devotional exercises should not
interfere with tea or dinner, Vespers are celebrated with extreme
magnificence. The church blazes with lights, which shine out through
clouds of incense, and the air is sonorous with the splendour and shout
of plain-song. And at eleven (evening dress optional) is sung Compline.
Here Mr. Sandow makes a wise concession to the more Anglican section of
his flock, and the psalms are sung to rich chants by Stainer and
Havergal and the Rev. P. Henley, while the hymn is some popular
favourite out of the Ancient and Modern book. Though evening dress is
optional, and no beggar in rags, should such ever present himself, would
be turned away, evening dress is the more general, for many people drop
in on their way home from dinner, and the street is a perfect queue of
motor-cars, as if a smart evening-party was going on. And then you shall
see rows of brilliant dames in gorgeous gowns and tiaras, singing
lustily, and young men and maidens and solid substantial fathers all in
a row, with their fat chins rising and falling as they rumble away at
Rev. P. Henley in their throats. For certainly Mr. Sandow has succeeded
in making religion, or at any rate attendance at Sunday services,
fashionable in his parish: it is the Thing to go to church, though
whether like other fashions, such as diabolo or jig-saw puzzles, it is a
temporary enthusiasm remains to be seen.
On week-days the devotional needs of his congregation are not so
sumptuously attended to, for Mr. Sandow, certainly as wise as most
children of light, is aware that his flock are very busy people, and
does not care to risk the institution of a failure. Besides he has very
strong notions of the duty of every man and woman to do their work in
the world, even if, apparently, their work chiefly consists in the
passionate pursuit of pleasure. But he likes splendour (as well as
simplicity) in those advantageously situated, just as he likes splendour
in his Sunday services. He is, too, himself, a very busy man, for since
he makes it his duty to know his flock individually, and since his flock
are that sort of sheep which gives luncheon and dinner-parties and balls
in great profusion, it follows that he has a great many invitations to
these festivities, and accepts as many as he can possibly manage. But he
always practises the observance of fasts, and never eats meat on
Fridays. To make meagre on Fridays and vigils therefore has become
rather fashionable also, and since most of his entertainers have
excellent chefs, Friday, though a meatless day, is an extremely well-fed
one, for with salmon trout and caviare, and a dish of asparagus and some
truffles, and an ice pudding and some soufflé of cheese, you can make a
very decent pretence of lunching, especially if particularly good wines
flow fast as a compensation for this ecclesiastical abstinence. It is a
pastime for hostesses also to exercise the ingenuity of their chefs in
producing dishes, strictly vegetarian, in which a subtle combination of
herbs and condiments produces a meaty flavour, and to observe Mr.
Sandow’s face when he thinks he tastes veal. But he is formally assured
that no four-legged or two-legged animal has as much as walked into the
stew-pot, and in consequence, with many compliments, he asks for a
second helping.
All this endears Mr. Sandow to his people; they say, ‘He is so very
human and not the least like a clergyman.’ He would not be pleased with
this expression if it came to his ears, though if he was told he was not
in the least like most other clergymen there would be no complaint. For
he thinks that the office of a priest is to enter into the joys and
pleasures of those he ministers to, not only to exact their attendance
at church, and, as he modestly says of himself, ‘bore them stiff’ with
his interminable sermons, and who shall say he is wrong? Indeed to see
him at a ball, it is more the other guests that enter into his pleasures
than he into theirs, for he is one of the best dancers that ever
stepped, and there is a queue of ladies, as at the booking-office of
Victoria Station on a Bank Holiday, waiting to have a turn with the
Terpsichorean vicar. But, like some modified Cinderella, he keeps early
hours, and vanishes on the stroke of one, in order to be up in good time
in the morning, and at his work. For in addition to all his parties, his
interviews, his dances, his Sunday services, his games of racquets, he
has a further life of his own, being a voluminous and widely-read
author.
This literary profession of his is no mere matter of a parish-magazine,
or of letters to the _Guardian_ about the Eastward position, or the
_Spectator_ about early buttercups, but he publishes on his own account
at least two volumes every year. Usually those take the form of essays,
written in the second or pair-of-wooden-shoes manner, and probably each
of them contains a greater number of true and edifying reflections than
have ever before appeared between the covers of a single volume. It is
no disparagement of them to say that they seem to go on for ever, for so
do the waters of a spring, except in times of such severe drought as is
unknown to the pen of this ready writer. They all begin in an enticing
manner, for Mr. Sandow tells you how he was walking across the Park one
morning, when he observed two sparrows quarrelling over a piece of bread
that some kind bystander had thrown them. This naturally gives rise to
reflections as to the distressing manner in which ill-temper spoils our
day. The kind bystander is, of course, Providence, who throws quantities
of bread, and Mr. Sandow tells us that it is the truer wisdom not to
behave like silly sparrows and all wrangle over one piece, but hop
cheerfully away, with a blessing, in the certainty of finding plenty
more. Or again Mr. Sandow describes how he was hurrying to the station
to catch a train, fussing himself with the thought that he would not be
in time for it, and not noticing the limpid blue of the sky and the
white clouds that floated across it. When he came to the station he
found he had still five minutes to spare and so need not have hurried at
all, but drunk in the gladness of God’s spring. From this lesson, he
humbly hopes, he will be less disposed to fuss in the future, but trust
to the wise hand that guides him. We are not told what would have been
the moral if Mr. Sandow had missed his train, but then, after all he did
not write about that, and one can only conjecture that it would have
been a lesson to him as to how to wait patiently (picking up edifying
crumbs at the station) for the next train. Or he sees a house in process
of being pulled down, with gaping wall showing the internal decoration,
and tenderly wonders what sweet private converse took place in front of
the denuded fire-place. His vivid imagination pictures charming scenes:
on one wall on the third storey was a paper with repeated images of Jack
and Jill and Red Riding Hood and Little Miss Muffit, and he conjectures
that here was the nursery, and the paper looked down on children at
play. But the children are grown up now; they have outlived their
nursery, as we all do, but instead of regretting days that are no more
we must go on from strength to strength, till we reach the imperishable
house of many mansions which nobody will ever pull down. At the end of
each of these musings written in the pair-of-wooden-shoes mode comes a
passage of this kind in the second manner, a sudden purple patch about
imperishable houses, or the towers of Beulah, or the dawning of the
everlasting day.
It is just possible that this skeleton-analysis of Mr. Sandow’s works
may faintly produce the impression that there is something a shade
commonplace about them, that they lack the clarion of romance, of
excitement, of distinction in thought, or whatever it is that we look
for when we read books. And it is idle to deny that this impression is
ill-founded: no flash of blinding revelation ever surprises the reader,
nor does he ever feel that the perusal of them has added a new element
to or presented a fresh aspect of life; only that here, gracefully
expressed, is precisely what he had always thought. This probably is the
secret of their amazing popularity, for there is nothing more pleasing
than to find oneself in complete harmony with one’s author. Anybody
might have written them, provided only he had a fluent pen and an
edifying mind. Mr. Sandow never gave one of his readers, even the most
squeamish and sensitive, the smallest sense of discomfort or anxiety. He
flows pleasantly along, faintly stimulating, and though he suggests no
soul-questionings that could possibly keep anybody awake o’ nights, a
very large number of the public are delighted to read a little more in
the morning. For Mr. Sandow never fails you; his fund of mild and
pleasant reflection is absolutely unending, and if from a mental point
of view the study of his works is rather like eating jam from a spoon,
you can at least be certain that you will never bite on a stone and jar
your teeth. And if you do not by way of intellectual provender like
eating jam, why, you need not read Mr. Sandow’s books, but those of
somebody else.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SING FOR YOUR DINNER’
That amiable little fowl, the Piping Bullfinch, has very pretty manners.
If he is a well-bred bird, as most Piping Bullfinches are (though they
come from Germany), he will, when he sees you approach his cage, put his
head on one side, make two or three polite little bows, and whistle to
you with very melodious and tuneful flutings. But it is not entirely his
love of melody that inspires him, for he is rather greedy also (though
he comes from Germany), and perhaps the politeness of his bows and the
tunes that he so pleasantly pipes, would be considerably curtailed if he
found that he was not generally given, as a reward for his courtesy,
something equally pleasant to eat. But if he feels that you are willing
to supply him with the morsels in which his rather limited soul
delights, he will continue to bow and pipe to you until he is stuffed.
And, as soon as ever his appetite begins to assert itself again (and he
is a remarkably steady feeder), he will resume his bows and his tunes.
Quite a large class of people, the numerical majority of which consists
of youngish men, may be most aptly described as Singers for their
Dinner or Piping Bullfinches. Girls and young women are not of so
numerous a company, for if unmarried they have generally some sort of
home where they are given their dinners, without singing for them, or if
married are occupied in their duties as providers to their husbands. But
there is a large quantity of young or youngish unmarried men who, living
in bachelor chambers or flats, find it both more economical and
pleasanter to sing for their dinner than to eat it less sociably at
their own expense at their clubs or to entertain others, and they are
therefore prepared to make themselves extremely agreeable for the price
of their food. The bargain is not really very one-sided; indeed, as
bargains go it is a very tolerably fair one; for there are great
handfuls of people who, either from a natural dislike of old friends or
for lack of them, are constantly delighted to see a Piping Bullfinch or
two at their tables. They even go further than this, and take these neat
little birds to the theatre or the opera (paying of course for their
tickets), and invite them down to week-ends in the country and to
shooting-parties. Thus their houses are gay with pleasant conversation,
and the Piping Bullfinches have better balances at their banks.