MRS. PROUDIE’S CONVERSAZIONE.
It was grievous to think of the mischief and danger into which
Griselda Grantly was brought by the worldliness of her mother in
those few weeks previous to Lady Lufton’s arrival in town—very
grievous, at least, to her ladyship, as from time to time she heard
of what was done in London. Lady Hartletop’s was not the only
objectionable house at which Griselda was allowed to reap fresh
fashionable laurels. It had been stated openly in the _Morning Post_
that that young lady had been the most admired among the beautiful at
one of Miss Dunstable’s celebrated _soirées_, and then she was heard
of as gracing the drawing-room at Mrs. Proudie’s conversazione.
Of Miss Dunstable herself Lady Lufton was not able openly to allege
any evil. She was acquainted, Lady Lufton knew, with very many people
of the right sort, and was the dear friend of Lady Lufton’s highly
conservative and not very distant neighbours, the Greshams. But then
she was also acquainted with so many people of the bad sort. Indeed,
she was intimate with everybody, from the Duke of Omnium to old
Dowager Lady Goodygaffer, who had represented all the cardinal
virtues for the last quarter of a century. She smiled with equal
sweetness on treacle and on brimstone; was quite at home at Exeter
Hall, having been consulted—so the world said, probably not with
exact truth—as to the selection of more than one disagreeably Low
Church bishop; and was not less frequent in her attendance at the
ecclesiastical doings of a certain terrible prelate in the Midland
counties, who was supposed to favour stoles and vespers, and to have
no proper Protestant hatred for auricular confession and fish on
Fridays. Lady Lufton, who was very staunch, did not like this, and
would say of Miss Dunstable that it was impossible to serve both God
and Mammon.
But Mrs. Proudie was much more objectionable to her. Seeing how
sharp was the feud between the Proudies and the Grantlys down in
Barsetshire, how absolutely unable they had always been to carry a
decent face towards each other in church matters, how they headed two
parties in the diocese, which were, when brought together, as oil and
vinegar, in which battles the whole Lufton influence had always been
brought to bear on the Grantly side;—seeing all this, I say, Lady
Lufton was surprised to hear that Griselda had been taken to Mrs.
Proudie’s evening exhibition. “Had the archdeacon been consulted
about it,” she said to herself, “this would never have happened.”
But there she was wrong, for in matters concerning his daughter’s
introduction to the world the archdeacon never interfered.
On the whole, I am inclined to think that Mrs. Grantly understood
the world better than did Lady Lufton. In her heart of hearts Mrs.
Grantly hated Mrs. Proudie—that is, with that sort of hatred one
Christian lady allows herself to feel towards another. Of course Mrs.
Grantly forgave Mrs. Proudie all her offences, and wished her well,
and was at peace with her, in the Christian sense of the word, as
with all other women. But under this forbearance and meekness, and
perhaps, we may say, wholly unconnected with it, there was certainly
a current of antagonistic feeling which, in the ordinary unconsidered
language of every day, men and women do call hatred. This raged and
was strong throughout the whole year in Barsetshire, before the eyes
of all mankind. But, nevertheless, Mrs. Grantly took Griselda to Mrs.
Proudie’s evening parties in London.
In these days Mrs. Proudie considered herself to be by no means the
least among bishops’ wives. She had opened the season this year in a
new house in Gloucester Place, at which the reception rooms, at any
rate, were all that a lady bishop could desire. Here she had a front
drawing-room of very noble dimensions, a second drawing-room rather
noble also, though it had lost one of its back corners awkwardly
enough, apparently in a jostle with the neighbouring house; and then
there was a third—shall we say drawing-room, or closet?—in which
Mrs. Proudie delighted to be seen sitting, in order that the world
might know that there was a third room; altogether a noble suite, as
Mrs. Proudie herself said in confidence to more than one clergyman’s
wife from Barsetshire. “A noble suite, indeed, Mrs. Proudie!” the
clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire would usually answer.
For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort
of party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and
suppers were of course out of the question. She did not object to
her daughters dancing all night at other houses—at least, of late
she had not objected, for the fashionable world required it, and the
young ladies had perhaps a will of their own—but dancing at her
house—absolutely under the shade of the bishop’s apron—would be a
sin and a scandal. And then as to suppers—of all modes in which one
may extend one’s hospitality to a large acquaintance, they are the
most costly.
“It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for
the mere sake of eating and drinking,” Mrs. Proudie would say to
the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire. “It shows such a sensual
propensity.”
“Indeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!” those ladies
would reply.
But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing,
open-handed hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of
Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was
whose answer had not been so courteous—
“When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have
sensual propensities.”
“It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide
for all that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which
opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself
to coincide.
But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor
occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual
propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was
not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use
and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion
of the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable.
But, nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited
her, and one may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion,
it might perhaps not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild
the word with a newly burnished gilding. Some leading person must
produce fashion at first hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?
Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they
would, or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more
could be got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many
as the furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially
with the two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back
closet—the small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the
clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire—and to let the others stand
about upright, or “group themselves,” as she described it. Then four
times during the two hours’ period of her conversazione tea and cake
were to be handed round on salvers. It is astonishing how far a
very little cake will go in this way, particularly if administered
tolerably early after dinner. The men can’t eat it, and the women,
having no plates and no table, are obliged to abstain. Mrs. Jones
knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake in her hand till
it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best dress. When
Mrs. Proudie, with her weekly books before her, looked into the
financial upshot of her conversazione, her conscience told her that
she had done the right thing.
Going out to tea is not a bad thing, if one can contrive to dine
early, and then be allowed to sit round a big table with a tea
urn in the middle. I would, however, suggest that breakfast cups
should always be provided for the gentlemen. And then with pleasant
neighbours,—or more especially with a pleasant neighbour,—the
affair is not, according to my taste, by any means the worst phase
of society. But I do dislike that handing round, unless it be of a
subsidiary thimbleful when the business of the social intercourse has
been dinner.
And indeed this handing round has become a vulgar and an intolerable
nuisance among us second-class gentry with our eight hundred a
year—there or thereabouts;—doubly intolerable as being destructive
of our natural comforts, and a wretchedly vulgar aping of men
with large incomes. The Duke of Omnium and Lady Hartletop are
undoubtedly wise to have everything handed round. Friends of mine who
occasionally dine at such houses tell me that they get their wine
quite as quickly as they can drink it, that their mutton is brought
to them without delay, and that the potato-bearer follows quick upon
the heels of carnifer. Nothing can be more comfortable, and we may no
doubt acknowledge that these first-class grandees do understand their
material comforts. But we of the eight hundred can no more come up to
them in this than we can in their opera-boxes and equipages. May I
not say that the usual tether of this class, in the way of carnifers,
cup-bearers, and the rest, does not reach beyond neat-handed Phyllis
and the greengrocer? and that Phyllis, neat-handed as she probably
is, and the greengrocer, though he be ever so active, cannot
administer a dinner to twelve people who are prohibited by a
Medo-Persian law from all self-administration whatever? And may I not
further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders
dining out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner
at all. Phyllis, with the potatoes, cannot reach us till our mutton
is devoured, or in a lukewarm state past our power of managing; and
Ganymede, the greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie
and the whiteness of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us
going in Sherry.
Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without a small
modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good
digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I
bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all her eyes, struck with
amazement. Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian
war-dance, with nothing on but my paint, her face could not have
shown greater astonishment. And yet I should have thought she might
have remembered the days when Christian men and women used to drink
wine with each other.
God be with the good old days when I could hobnob with my friend over
the table as often as I was inclined to lift my glass to my lips, and
make a long arm for a hot potato whenever the exigencies of my plate
required it.
I think it may be laid down as a rule in affairs of hospitality, that
whatever extra luxury or grandeur we introduce at our tables when
guests are with us, should be introduced for the advantage of the
guest and not for our own. If, for instance, our dinner be served in
a manner different from that usual to us, it should be so served in
order that our friends may with more satisfaction eat our repast than
our everyday practice would produce on them. But the change should
by no means be made to their material detriment in order that our
fashion may be acknowledged. Again, if I decorate my sideboard and
table, wishing that the eyes of my visitors may rest on that which
is elegant and pleasant to the sight, I act in that matter with
a becoming sense of hospitality; but if my object be to kill Mrs.
Jones with envy at the sight of all my silver trinkets, I am a very
mean-spirited fellow. This, in a broad way, will be acknowledged; but
if we would bear in mind the same idea at all times,—on occasions
when the way perhaps may not be so broad, when more thinking may
be required to ascertain what is true hospitality,—I think we
of the eight hundred would make a greater advance towards really
entertaining our own friends than by any rearrangement of the actual
meats and dishes which we set before them.
Knowing as we do, that the terms of the Lufton-Grantly alliance had
been so solemnly ratified between the two mothers, it is perhaps
hardly open to us to suppose that Mrs. Grantly was induced to take
her daughter to Mrs. Proudie’s by any knowledge which she may have
acquired that Lord Dumbello had promised to grace the bishop’s
assembly. It is certainly the fact that high contracting parties
do sometimes allow themselves a latitude which would be considered
dishonest by contractors of a lower sort; and it may be possible that
the archdeacon’s wife did think of that second string with which
her bow was furnished. Be that as it may, Lord Dumbello was at Mrs.
Proudie’s, and it did so come to pass that Griselda was seated at
the corner of a sofa close to which was a vacant space in which his
lordship could—“group himself.”
They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself.
“Fine day,” he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by
Miss Grantly’s elbow.
“We were driving to-day, and we thought it rather cold,” said
Griselda.
“Deuced cold,” said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white
cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not
proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did
Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave
very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie.
“This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,” said that lady, coming up to
him and shaking his hand warmly; “so very kind of you to come to my
poor little tea-party.”
“Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,” said his lordship. “I like this
sort of thing—no trouble, you know.”
“No; that is the charm of it: isn’t it? no trouble, or fuss,
or parade. That’s what I always say. According to my ideas,
society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of
thoughts—what we call conversation.”
“Aw, yes, exactly.”
“Not in eating and drinking together—eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the
practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those
animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The
world in this has surely made a great mistake.”
“I like a good dinner all the same,” said Lord Dumbello.
“Oh, yes, of course—of course. I am by no means one of those who
would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for
our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?”
“A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,”
said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.
“An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at
any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can
we?”
“No,” said Lord Dumbello, “not always.” And he looked as though he
lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.
And then Mrs. Proudie passed on to Mrs. Grantly. The two ladies were
quite friendly in London; though down in their own neighbourhood
they waged a war so internecine in its nature. But nevertheless Mrs.
Proudie’s manner might have showed to a very close observer that she
knew the difference between a bishop and an archdeacon. “I am so
delighted to see you,” said she. “No, don’t mind moving; I won’t sit
down just at present. But why didn’t the archdeacon come?”
“It was quite impossible; it was indeed,” said Mrs. Grantly. “The
archdeacon never has a moment in London that he can call his own.”
“You don’t stay up very long, I believe.”
“A good deal longer than we either of us like, I can assure you.
London life is a perfect nuisance to me.”
“But people in a certain position must go through with it, you know,”
said Mrs. Proudie. “The bishop, for instance, must attend the House.”
“Must he?” asked Mrs. Grantly, as though she were not at all well
informed with reference to this branch of a bishop’s business. “I am
very glad that archdeacons are under no such liability.”
“Oh, no; there’s nothing of that sort,” said Mrs. Proudie, very
seriously. “But how uncommonly well Miss Grantly is looking! I do
hear that she has quite been admired.”
This phrase certainly was a little hard for the mother to bear. All
the world had acknowledged, so Mrs. Grantly had taught herself to
believe, that Griselda was undoubtedly the beauty of the season.
Marquises and lords were already contending for her smiles, and
paragraphs had been written in newspapers as to her profile. It was
too hard to be told, after that, that her daughter had been “quite
admired.” Such a phrase might suit a pretty little red-cheeked
milkmaid of a girl.
“She cannot, of course, come near your girls in that respect,” said
Mrs. Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited
from the fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty.
Their mother felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not
essay to do battle on the present arena. She jotted down the item in
her mind, and kept it over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts
as those she usually paid on some day, if the means of doing so were
at all within her power.
“But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare,” she said, seeing that that
lady had entered the room; and away went Mrs. Proudie to welcome her
distinguished guest.
“And so this is a conversazione, is it?” said that lady, speaking, as
usual, not in a suppressed voice. “Well, I declare, it’s very nice.
It means conversation, don’t it, Mrs. Proudie?”
“Ha, ha, ha! Miss Dunstable, there is nobody like you, I declare.”
“Well, but don’t it? and tea and cake? and then, when we’re tired of
talking, we go away,—isn’t that it?”
“But you must not be tired for these three hours yet.”
“Oh, I’m never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do,
bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn’t it now?”
The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he
thought it was rather nice.
“Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements,” said
Miss Dunstable.
“Yes, yes,” said the bishop. “I think she is happy in these matters.
I do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you
are accustomed to things on a much grander scale.”
“I! Lord bless you, no! Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do. Of
course I must do as I am told. I must live in a big House, and have
three footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy
wig, and horses so big that they frighten me. If I did not, I should
be made out a lunatic and declared unable to manage my own affairs.
But as for grandeur, I hate it. I certainly think that I shall have
some of these conversaziones. I wonder whether Mrs. Proudie will come
and put me up to a wrinkle or two.”
The bishop again rubbed his hands, and said that he was sure she
would. He never felt quite at his ease with Miss Dunstable, as he
rarely could ascertain whether or no she was earnest in what she was
saying. So he trotted off, muttering some excuse as he went, and
Miss Dunstable chuckled with an inward chuckle at his too evident
bewilderment. Miss Dunstable was by nature kind, generous, and
open-hearted; but she was living now very much with people on whom
kindness, generosity, and open-heartedness were thrown away. She
was clever also, and could be sarcastic; and she found that those
qualities told better in the world around her than generosity and an
open heart. And so she went on from month to month, and year to year,
not progressing in a good spirit as she might have done, but still
carrying within her bosom a warm affection for those she could
really love. And she knew that she was hardly living as she should
live,—that the wealth which she affected to despise was eating into
the soundness of her character, not by its splendour, but by the
style of life which it had seemed to produce as a necessity. She knew
that she was gradually becoming irreverent, scornful, and prone to
ridicule; but yet, knowing this and hating it, she hardly knew how to
break from it.
She had seen so much of the blacker side of human nature that
blackness no longer startled her as it should do. She had been the
prize at which so many ruined spendthrifts had aimed; so many pirates
had endeavoured to run her down while sailing in the open waters of
life, that she had ceased to regard such attempts on her money-bags
as unmanly or over-covetous. She was content to fight her own battle
with her own weapons, feeling secure in her own strength of purpose
and strength of wit.
Some few friends she had whom she really loved,—among whom her inner
self could come out and speak boldly what it had to say with its own
true voice. And the woman who thus so spoke was very different from
that Miss Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Omnium
fêted, and Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she
could find among such one special companion on whom her heart might
rest, who would help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world!
But where was she to find such a friend?—she with her keen wit,
her untold money, and loud laughing voice. Everything about her was
calculated to attract those whom she could not value, and to scare
from her the sort of friend to whom she would fain have linked her
lot.
And then she met Mrs. Harold Smith, who had taken Mrs. Proudie’s
noble suite of rooms in her tour for the evening, and was devoting
to them a period of twenty minutes. “And so I may congratulate you,”
Miss Dunstable said eagerly to her friend.
“No, in mercy’s name do no such thing, or you may too probably have
to uncongratulate me again; and that will be so unpleasant.”
“But they told me that Lord Brock had sent for him yesterday.” Now at
this period Lord Brock was Prime Minister.
“So he did, and Harold was with him backwards and forwards all the
day. But he can’t shut his eyes and open his mouth, and see what God
will send him, as a wise and prudent man should do. He is always for
bargaining, and no Prime Minister likes that.”
“I would not be in his shoes if, after all, he has to come home and
say that the bargain is off.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Well, I should not take it very quietly. But what can we
poor women do, you know? When it is settled, my dear, I’ll send you a
line at once.” And then Mrs. Harold Smith finished her course round
the rooms, and regained her carriage within the twenty minutes.
“Beautiful profile, has she not?” said Miss Dunstable, somewhat later
in the evening, to Mrs. Proudie. Of course, the profile spoken of
belonged to Miss Grantly.
“Yes, it is beautiful, certainly,” said Mrs. Proudie. “The pity is
that it means nothing.”
“The gentlemen seem to think that it means a good deal.”
“I am not sure of that. She has no conversation, you see; not a word.
She has been sitting there with Lord Dumbello at her elbow for the
last hour, and yet she has hardly opened her mouth three times.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Proudie, who on earth could talk to Lord
Dumbello?”
Mrs. Proudie thought that her own daughter Olivia would undoubtedly
be able to do so, if only she could get the opportunity. But, then,
Olivia had so much conversation.
And while the two ladies were yet looking at the youthful pair, Lord
Dumbello did speak again. “I think I have had enough of this now,”
said he, addressing himself to Griselda.
“I suppose you have other engagements,” said she.
“Oh, yes; and I believe I shall go to Lady Clantelbrocks.” And then
he took his departure. No other word was spoken that evening between
him and Miss Grantly beyond those given in this chronicle, and yet
the world declared that he and that young lady had passed the evening
in so close a flirtation as to make the matter more than ordinarily
particular; and Mrs. Grantly, as she was driven home to her lodgings,
began to have doubts in her mind whether it would be wise to
discountenance so great an alliance as that which the head of the
great Hartletop family now seemed so desirous to establish. The
prudent mother had not yet spoken a word to her daughter on these
subjects, but it might soon become necessary to do so. It was all
very well for Lady Lufton to hurry up to town, but of what service
would that be, if Lord Lufton were not to be found in Bruton Street?