Molyneux,” he said, greatly impressed.
“I am not,” I answered. “I don’t know anything about any of them, but
you are in my district, so I was bound to come and take an interest in
you, wasn’t I?”
The dear thing was so nice about it, and talked so charmingly about the
Pre-Raphaelites, and the _Saturday Review_, and the ungracefulness of
crinolines, that I felt there was no room in him for improvement, so I
would go to some more deserving case. I called next upon Mr. Figgins
who writes books. I found him writing in his study.
“Good afternoon, Figgins, hard at work as usual,” I began.
He was very nice to me, and pretended he was not at all busy, so I sat
down on the edge of my chair, and looked about.
“This is my day for the district,” I said, “and I knew I should find
you at home just now. I suppose you are beginning to make plenty of
money with your books? I hope you are putting some of it by.”
Mr. Figgins looked at me rather curiously, and said he would order tea.
“No, no, by and by, Figgins,” I said, stopping him on his way to the
bell; “by and by, when we have had our little chat. You know money is
a great responsibility, and I sometimes think that you do not quite
realise this with regard to your dear wife; you know, when the husband
makes money just in order to gamble it away it means that he and his
self-respect are rapidly going down the hill together. It is quite time
you began to think about your old age, and what would happen to the
boys if the bread-winner were called away.”
“I wish you would tell me what it is,” said Mr. Figgins. “If you are
rehearsing a play I will help you, but I must have the book and know
all about it--you can’t go on like this.”
“But I have told you,” I insisted. “I am district-visiting and you are
in my parish, so I have to take you on a certain day and you have to
sit and listen to me. I am going to poke all round your room presently
and leave some literature.”
That really angered him, and he became dreadfully polite. At last we
compromised, he agreeing to take me home in his motor if I would stop
and have tea first, but I was pledged to leave his income and his
habits alone.
Mrs. Figgins came in while we were having tea. We explained what I had
come about. She said it was a thing that ought to be done more, that
she was right down glad I had spoke straight to Figgins, and she hoped
now that he would begin and make a change for the better.
“But, my dear,” she said, “what we want here is a mothers’ meeting. It
is all very well to tell one lot of mothers not to give a new-born baby
stewed rhubarb, but it is equally necessary to tell mothers like Mrs.
Van Dieman not to give their infants raw theory. I have to hold the
next meeting of the Parents’ Guild in my house. Will you come and do a
little district-visiting there?”
I promised her that although James would not wish me to initiate any
form of outrage, I would back her up in any she liked to commit. The
meeting was held during the next week. I arrived early, and we awaited
events together. Presently the door-bell rang. We peeped vulgarly
through the window. There was a terrible thing upon the door-step--all
face, like my enemy the fish before it is filleted--it had the same
lifeless eye, and a flat hat balanced on the top like a sheet of
note-paper. It was looking round in a dreadful vacant manner waiting
for admission. I remembered a story heard in my infancy about some
children who had a stepmother with a glass eye and a wooden tail. We
were told how their flesh used to creep with horror when they heard her
coming upstairs. In another minute she would be in the room. We darted
to our places and listened with beating hearts to the pat-pat on the
stairs.
“Mrs. Flockson,” said the maid.
“Quite a large membership now, have we not?” said Mrs. Flockson,
sitting down in an attitude of faded gloom that infected us both
like a disease. I began to be conscious of my back, and my legs, and
petticoats and things that I was usually unaware of. “I shall be so
interested to hear what Miss Jamieson has to say about children’s toys.
It is so important, is it not?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Figgins crisply. “I don’t think it is
at all important, but they would have it. I had much rather they
had spoken about children’s manners; they are dreadful in this
neighbourhood.”
“Yes, of course, some are very bad,” sighed Mrs. Flockson, “but it is
so difficult, isn’t it, to know just where to draw the line without
being too severe. They say now it is so important that the character
should be developed along its natural lines. It is so difficult not to
impose one’s own individuality too much, and yet to preserve the idea
of everything that is sweet and gracious.”
Now, if I had been alone I could have managed her perfectly. I could
have kept Mrs. Flockson happy without doing her an atom of harm, but
Mrs. Figgins is so abrupt.
“I can’t stop to think about individuality when a child is gobbling
and talking nonsense at the same time,” she said. “I tell it at once,
‘Don’t eat like a pig,’ and then it doesn’t. I don’t care whether I am
imposing my individuality or that of any other self-respecting person
who wishes to eat with Christians.”
Several more people came in then. They were mostly badly dressed,
and evidently put all their money on expression so far as charm was
concerned; but then when people are very much in earnest about things
that are of no consequence, and have as much consciousness as rabbits,
and are not very healthy, it is difficult to make them look nice.
Miss Jamieson, a capable pink lady in a well-made dress with irrelevant
trimming, spoke for half an hour on the question of children’s toys.
She told us what toys ought to mean, and the qualities they ought to
foster in the child. How, if his taste were trained in this manner, he
would more easily distinguish the good from the bad later on. I asked
whether a good taste in dolls acquired in the nursery would help my son
not to fall in love with the wrong kind of minx. I did not put it in
just those words, but Miss Jamieson did not give me much comfort. She
smiled kindly, and said my question hardly came within the scope of her
paper, but she was sure a taste in dolls would help very much, only
boys did not play much with dolls, did they?
Then some one got up and said there was just one question she would
like to ask, and that was, when Miss Jamieson recommended us to get
those beautifully modelled animals for the nursery--she would ask
presently for the address where they could be got--was there any one
particular animal more than another that she recommended? And was it
better to begin with the tame animals, as being less alarming, and work
gradually up to the jungle animals, or would that be giving the child
a wrong idea of evolution, as, of course, the wild animals did come
first, didn’t they?
Miss Jamieson disposed of this lady by saying that, so long as they
were animals of noble instinct, she did not think it mattered in what
order they came, but she thought that unpleasant animals, such as the
glutton or the sloth, should be kept for more advanced study.
Other inquiries, such as whether a Noah’s Ark were bad in case it
biased the mind towards the dogmatic side of religion, instead of
dwelling on the larger and more comprehensive issues, and whether
playing at soldiers ever resulted in the child becoming brutalised,
were dealt with in their turn, and then a vote of thanks to Miss
Jamieson was proposed, seconded, and carried, and we had tea.
On the way home I passed a house where a young friend of mine lives
with his barbarous parents. I felt it my duty to ask how his father
was.
“We ain’t seen ’im for three days,” said Jimmy. “He’s been on the drunk
and pawned everything in the ’ouse--’e’s a fat-’ead, ’e is.”
I thought, as I walked home, that Mrs. Flockson perhaps exaggerated the
difficulty that parents may have in preserving all that is sweet and
gracious without imposing their own individuality too much upon their
children.
_CHAPTER XXIII_: FOREIGN TRAVEL
A superfluity of efficient females and inefficient Mrs. Muffs, combined
with the slow poison of County Society, may disagree with anyone in
time. I explained this to our country doctor, who is of a different
variety to Dr. Smithson. He wants everything boiled, and is a great
believer in the emotions.
Anyhow, we went abroad just to be out of the way of the fish, and the
best people, and all the other things that annoyed me.
Packing up was a nightmare. I used to let Louise pack for me, but
then I arrived at the end of my journey with a complete outfit of
clothes none of which I wanted; besides such trifling mistakes as three
combs--just because they happened to be on the dressing-table--and no
Aspirin nor water-softener.
No one can pack for another without asking questions; neither can
those who have not Mrs. Simpson’s strong head remember what they want
to take so long as they are being asked. When I was thinking whether
I could get my gloves cleaned by sending them in at once, and whether
I had better take them myself or let Pierce leave them with a message
when he called for the fish, Louise would say: “You will take your grey
whipcord coat, I suppose.”
I said “No,” because it is inevitable to say “No” when anyone supposes
we shall do so-and-so. Of course, when I arrived I wanted the coat, and
could not remember having said anything about it.
How does Mrs. Simpson meet such a question as “How many evening dresses
will you take?” Especially as they always ask just at the moment when
one’s whole soul is with a missing pair of silk stockings. I undertook
to pack for myself with even more disastrous results.
I could think of nothing I wanted to take until the last moment. I said
to myself: “Dresses?--I must put them in last. Underclothes?--they
will not be back from the wash until to-morrow. Shoes?--yes, they go in
first.” I wedged my dressing-table pots and pans between my shoes and
boots and then I remembered that I should want to wash next morning, so
I took the pots and pans out again and wandered round the room looking
for more things to pack. I collected note-paper and books, stamps and a
pen-knife, and put them on a remote table while I went to write a note
about stopping the newspaper. While I was doing this, Ruth asked me to
come and look at something, and, by the time that was done, I felt I
had broken the back of the packing business. There were only the clean
clothes from the laundry to put in; and my dresses; there did not seem
to be anything else.
How different from the morning of departure! Then every table in every
room swarmed with things which had to go, and my box was already full
of boots! By the time all the fat three-cornered things had gone
in, the box shut comfortably; but there were no dresses in it and no
underclothes.
I asked James very gently whether he could take a few small things.
“Oh, easily,” he said, “anything you like.” (He now adds “within
reason,” when he undertakes to help me.)
So I took him just a few small things, such as my writing-case. He
said it had an utterly unmanageable figure, but that was because I was
taking a lot of unanswered letters to do while we were away. That was
all except a tin of biscuits, a bottle of bath salts--I had to get a
good-sized one, as we were to be away for some time--a case of tools
and my work-basket. Really nothing to what I had managed to fit into my
own box; besides, I offered to take some of his shirts in exchange.
The carriage was at the door when I ran upstairs to get a pin for
my veil, and there, on the dressing-table, I found all the writing
things I had collected two days before, my hair-pins, brush and comb,
and powder-box. James said they could not all go in his pocket, so I
carried them under my arm, intending to repack my dressing-case in the
train.
James’s account of our journey contains much that is unfair and
exaggerated. He says, for instance, that during the long night journey
from Calais to Rome I showed want of consideration for the comfort of
our fellow-passengers. The train was very crowded; we could not have a
sleeping compartment to ourselves, so it was arranged that Louise and
I and a strange lady should be huddled together in one dog’s-hole of a
place, and James would join a man’s party in the next.
The lady who dangled a pair of fat, booted ankles above my head
possessed an over-anxious husband; therefore, I suppose, she had a
surname, but I never discovered it. To me she was, and always will
be, “Georgie.” We had settled down for the night in considerable
irritability, and the atmosphere of hell, when the door was pushed
gently open.
“Georgie, my dear, are you all right?” inquired a timid little voice.
Georgie, who was determined to enjoy everything and look on the bright
side, said, “Yes, thank you, dear,” in a crisp voice, and composed
herself to sleep. Presently there was a knock at the door.
“Georgie, my dear, would you care for a little chocolate?”
Dear, good-natured Georgie had already begun to sleep; I heard her
quite distinctly. But she awoke--out of that first blissful state, just
imagine! and with all the discomfort of sleeping in her stockings and
everything--and gratefully accepted the chocolate.
Next time there was a knock I nearly choked myself in efforts
for politeness. I longed to say, “Go away. I will give Georgie a
pocket-handkerchief, and the nut-crackers, and some Balsam of Peru
when she wakes.” Fortunately, Georgie was breathing so loudly that
even he understood that for the moment all the husbands in Christendom
could not improve her condition, and, therefore, retired for some
hours. The crisis was next morning. Anyone who has travelled knows
how easy it is to mislay anything, however large, in a sleeping berth.
If you put a hippopotamus under your pillow at night, it will be gone
in the morning. My hair-pins, side-combs, hat, waistband, and shoes
were all rescued from different parts of the train by Louise, but my
jewellery I was determined not to part with. I put my watch, rings, and
ear-rings into my purse, and put the purse into a travelling-case which
I strapped to the rack by my side. It was there in the morning when I
awoke, and remained there while I dressed. I then unfastened the strap,
and laid the case on the bed for a moment, while I pinned my hat. I
looked round and it was gone. I threw the bedclothes into the passage
and shook them; I took off the mattress and turned it; Louise and I
took her bed to pieces and threw it also into the passage. My condition
was desperate. In a quarter of an hour we should be at the end of our
journey, and the train would disappear into an everlasting nowhere,
carrying the beloved companions of my life embedded in its ugly,
screaming, joggling anatomy. Some shameless, painted, French official’s
wife would eventually wear my darlings on her fingers, and dangling
from her ears. I could never get any more, because they were James’s
wedding presents. Life and happiness were blotted from my imagination.
“Georgie, my dear,” said the little voice at that moment, “can you come
down?”
A small step-ladder scraped gently across my shins. “Pardon me, one
moment,” I was requested, and there was Georgie’s plump little kid leg
dangling in front of my nose once more. That was the crisis!
“Oh, damn Georgie,” I cried. “Go away, I’ve lost my bag.”
The little kid leg drew up hurriedly into its place, and dear, kind,
shocked Georgie peered down upon me from above. Her over-anxious
husband had fled, and was, I suppose, sipping a little cold water
in the lavatory in order to pull himself together after “such an
exhibition.”
“If I stay in this beastly train for a thousand years and pick it to
pieces myself with a pair of nail-scissors, I will find that thing,” I
said.
“My dear, don’t upset yourself,” urged Georgie. “Shall I not call your
husband?”
The venturesome little boot was longing to get down, for the train was
nearly at its destination, but, in my agitation, I forgot that I had
overturned its only means of escape.
When James came in and picked up the bag from behind the hold-all, I
felt inclined to take Georgie in my arms and lift her down, but there
was so little room in the compartment that I decided to smile at her
instead, and say I “had found my bag, thank you,” leaving her where she
was. I tactfully withdrew to the corridor and made no sign, even when
I heard the pattering feet and consolatory “Georgie, my dear,” close
behind the door of our den.
James has a passion for sight-seeing, which I do not share. As soon as
I know that there is anything to be seen I no longer want to see it. To
have an alert, smiling man come up and say, “You want spik English; you
come with me,” gives me another sort of Mrs. Simpson. She is a lively,
early-breakfast Mrs. Simpson, full of exclamation points. She replies
at once: “Ach! you spik English! that is capital! Rosbif! Goddam! I
come vis you,” and off they go in ecstasies.
An English guide who takes one over a ruin has a certain dreary charm.
One can go to sleep and dream happily while he grinds away: “This
portion of the Castle was erected in 1647. Notice the remains of moat
and transept with traces of fine oriel window in memory of the seventh
Lord. During the encounter with the rebellious forces Oliver Cromwell
took possession of the east wing, when the enemy was repulsed with
great loss. The marks on the bastion show remains of staircase leading
to the old ’all which was reserved for the use of the ladies of the
family during time of siege. In the museum will be seen famous portrait
of wife of the tenth Earl, destroyed by fire in the year 1754--come
along there, please, and mind your heads.”
But, in Rome, if you escape from one voluble tormentor you fall into
the hands of a dozen worse, and there are the reverent, industrious
sight-seers with red books, mixed up among the irreverent ones with
walking-sticks.
“On the right hand, and a little to the left, are the famous baths of
Caracalla,” may be heard from behind one pillar. “Note the exquisite
workmanship of the masonry, and the height of the columns leading to
the Peplon or outer court of the Vestal Virgins.”
From the other side of the same pillar comes a voice like a saw cutting
through wood.
“Here, you, Sparghetti, Antonio, what’s your name? Was there any
charge, can you tell me, for mixed bathing in those days? Bagno
melange, Caracalla’s time, how much, eh?”
James understands pictures, and enjoys them. I tested my own taste in
these matters, but did not force the experiment in any way. As soon
as I became quite certain that I did not like pictures, I waited for
him outside, dabbling my fingers in the water (it was in Venice that I
definitely made up my mind), and enjoying the smells. Perhaps it was
indigestion from eating too much Italian food, but the Tintorettos got
on my nerves from their invariable suggestion of vermicelli. There
were acres of canvas representing nude figures falling in hundreds
from great heights. Some of them may have been climbing up, but the
places were so dark that it was not easy to see the difference; anyhow,
vermicelli being thrown into the air or vermicelli falling into a pan
look pretty much alike. So I stayed outside and forgot all about the
Day of Judgment.
The longer I live, the more I believe in Adam and Eve. Good gains
nothing by comparison with evil. There is no pleasure like ignorance
in fine weather, and the most illuminating conversation is no gain to
those who are able to “go into a field and make a noise like a turnip.”
I know few people with whom I can go abroad without bringing on an
attack of Mrs. Simpson. From the guides with their “You want spik
English, you come with me,” and the waiters who seek favour with
promises of “Rosbif” or “Nice hammonekks,” to our kind foreign
friends who ask us whether we are not missing the fog and would we
like brandy in our tea?--it is evident that Mrs. Simpson has set her
mark upon every continent. Mrs. Simpson abroad is different from the
furniture-remover’s goddess. She is timid to the verge of idiocy, and
bold where reticence would be more graceful; she is always unmarried,
except in such cases where she has a male creature attached to her by
such a tie as unites a pair of frogs. She is fabulously rich, and so
devoid of discrimination in what she buys that it would be ill-bred in
shopkeepers to practise deception on her were it not that she does not
believe in God; and, therefore, it is right that good persons should
have her money before she is removed to hell.
People of other countries, who have lived or stayed in England or have
made English friends abroad, know nothing of this Mrs. Simpson; she
is a product of the foreign railways and hotels, like the American
whom we all know by sight and hearsay but who is unrecognised by his
own countrymen. All the same, it was a long time before I could enjoy
myself anywhere out of England without feeling the spell cast upon
my spirit by the dreary, woebegone, helpless mothers and daughters,
husbands and wives, who wandered away to their bedrooms in single file
between meals, were always blocking up the bureau, asking questions
about baths and the English services, and who stared at one another in
the lifts, and talked in undertones at their little tables. There was
one couple, in an hotel in Rome, who made conversation to each other
for a week on what I judged from their faces to be such subjects as
mausoleums, dentists, cold cream, and muffins. At last the husband said
something really amusing--I heard it with great pleasure--to which his
wife made a grimace and said: “Really, dear, you are quite beyond me
altogether.”
Henry--I remember that was his name--ought not to have stood it, but
he did. He ought to have slapped her, and kicked over the table and
left the room for ever. I should have rejoiced, more than I can say,
on account of the blow that it would have given, in every town in
Baedeker, to the continental Mrs. Simpson.
I paid dearly for my rashness in leaving the shores of England. When I
returned the sword had fallen.
Mullins had been saving steadily during the past years, and Ruth had
undertaken to marry him in the spring. Much as she disliked being
interfered with, she disliked still more being left to herself; but
whether marriage forms any solution to this dilemma, it will be for
her to decide. I shall encourage the young Mullinses if there are any,
remembering always that a wife and mother cannot give notice.
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