DEAREST MAMMA,--I think you would like this place better than New York
if you came to America. It is much quieter and less up-to-date, and
there is the most beautiful park; only you have to get at it by going
through the lowest slums of the town, which must rather put one off on
a summer day, and it is dominated by a cemetery on a high cliff above
it, so that as you drive you see the evidences of death always in front
of you; and one of the reporters who came to interview us said it made
"a cunning place to take your best girl on Sunday to do a bit of a
spoon!!" Are they not an astonishing people, Mamma? So devoid of
sentiment that they choose this, their best site, for a cemetery! and
then spend their gayest recreation hours there!! I couldn't have let
even Harry make love to me in a cemetery. Of course it must be only the
working class who go there, as a jaunt, not one's friends; but it
surprised me in any case.
Kitty's house is the sweetest place, rather in the country, and just
made of wood with a shingle roof; but so quaint, and people look at it
with the same sort of reverence we look at Aikin's Farm, which was
built in fourteen hundred, you remember? This one was put up before the
revolution, in Colonial days, and it has a veranda in front running up
with Ionic pillars all in wood like a portico. Inside it is just an
English home--do you hear, Mamma? I said _home!_ because it is the
first we have seen. And it came as some new thing, and to be
appreciated, to find the furniture a little shabby from having been in
the same place so long; and the pictures most of them rather bad, but
really ancestors; and the drawing-room and our bedrooms lovely and
bright with flowery chintzes, fresh and shiny, no tapestry and
wonderful brocade; and the table-cloths plain, and no lace on the
sheets, nor embroideries to scratch the ear. It shows what foolish
creatures of habit we are, because in the other houses there has been
every possible thing one could want, and masterpieces of art and riches
and often beauty; but just because Kitty's house is like a home, and
has the indescribable atmosphere of gentle owners for generations, we
like it the best! It is ridiculous to be so prejudiced, isn't it?
Jim Bond says they are too poor to go to Europe more than once in three
years, and they only run over to New York to stay with Valerie now and
then, and sometimes down South or camping out in the summer, so they
spend all the time at Ringwood, and there is not a corner of the garden
or house they do not tend and love. Jim is a great gardener, so Octavia
and he became absorbed at once. He has not got much business to do, and
only has to go in to Philadelphia about once a week, so his time is
spent with Kitty and books and horses and the trees and flowers; and if
you could see the difference it makes, Mamma, in a man! His eyes do not
have a bit the look of a terrier after a rat, and he does not always
answer literally to everything you say, and if you speak about books or
art or anything of other countries, he is familiar with it all, and
listens and isn't bored, and hardly attending, so anxious to get his
anecdote in, as lots of them were in New York. But on the other hand
the Americans would never be the splendid successful nation they are if
they were all peaceful and cultivated like Jim Bond; so all is as it
should be, and both kinds are interesting.
Kitty is a darling, an immense sense of humour, perfectly indifferent
about dress, and as lanky and unshaped a figure as any sporting
Englishwoman; when she comes to stay with us at Valmond she only brings
two frocks for even a big party! But she is like Octavia, a character,
and everyone loves her, and would not mind if she did not wear any
clothes at all. You must meet her the next time, Mamma. She did not
tremendously apologize because the hot water tap in my bath-room would
not run (as Mrs. Spleist did when one of the twenty electric light
branches round my bed-room would not shine); she just said, "You must
call Ambrosia" (a sweet darkie servant) "and she will bring you a can
from the kitchen."
She sat on the floor by the wood fire in the old-fashioned grate, and
made me laugh so I was late for dinner. They had a dinner party for us,
because they said it was their duty to show us their best, as we had
seen a little of New York; and it was a delightful evening. Several of
the men had moustaches, and they were all perfectly at ease, and not
quite so kind and polite as the others, and you felt more as if they
were of the same sex as Englishmen, and you quite understood that they
could get in love. The one at my right hand was a pet, and has asked us
to a dinner at the Squirrels Club to-night, and I am looking forward to
it so. The women were charming, not so well dressed as in New York, and
perhaps not so pretty, or so very bright and ready with repartee as
there, but sweet all the same. And I am sure they are all as good as
gold, and don't have divorces in the family nearly so often. That was
the impression they gave me. One even spoke to me of her baby, and we
had quite a "young mother's conversation," and I was able to let myself
go and talk of my two angels without feeling I should be a dreadful
bore. It was, of course, while the men stayed in the dining-room,
which they did here just like England.
The Squirrels Club is as old as Kitty's house, and is such a quaint
idea. All the members cook the dinner in a great kitchen, and there are
no servants to wait or lay the table, or anything, only a care-taker
who washes up. We are to go there about seven--it is in the country,
too--and help to cook also; won't it be too delightful, Mamma! Octavia
says she feels young again at the thought. I will finish this
to-morrow, and tell you all about it before the post goes.