The dinner-party came off last night. They live in Campden Hill. I was
early and the parlour-maid said Mrs Housman would be down directly, and
I heard Housman shouting upstairs: "Clare, Clare, guests," but he did
not appear himself. I was shown into a large white and heavily gilded
drawing-room, with a candelabra, a Steinway grand, and light blue satin
and ebony furniture, a good many palms, but no flowers. The drawing-room
opened out on to an Oriental back drawing-room with low divans, small
stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a silver lamp (from a mosque)
hanging from the ceiling, heavy curtains too, behind which I suspect
stained-glass windows. Over the chimney-piece an Alma Tadema (a group on
a marble seat against a violet sea). At the other end of the room Walter
Bell's picture. It _was_ the picture I saw before, but more about that
later. On another wall over a sofa a most extraordinary allegorical
picture: a precipice bridged by a large serpent, and walking on the
serpent two small figures, a woman in white draperies and a knight
dressed like Mephistopheles, all these painted in the crudest colours.
The Housmans then appeared, and Housman did the honours of the pictures,
faintly damned the Alma Tadema, and said the Snake Picture was by Mucius
of Munich in what he called _Moderne_ style. He had picked it up for
nothing; some day it would be worth pots of money. Ha! ha! Then the
guests arrived. Sir Herbert Simcox, K.C., Lady Simcox, dressed in amber
velvet and cairngorms; Housman's sister Miss Sarah, black, and very
large, in yellow satin, with enormous emerald ear-rings;
Carrington-Smith, Housman's partner; Mrs Carrington-Smith, naked except
for a kind of orange and red _Reform Kleid_, with a green complexion,
heavily blacked eyebrows, and a _Lalique_ necklace. Then, making a late
entrance, as if on the stage, a Princesse de Carignan, a fine figure, in
rich and tight black satin and a large black ruff, heavily powdered.
Housman whispered to me that she was a legitimate Bourbon. I think he
meant a Legitimist. We went down to dinner into a dark Gothic panelled
dining-room, with a shiny portrait of Mr Housman set in the panelling
over the chimney-piece.
I sat between Mrs Housman and Mrs Carrington-Smith. I talked to Mrs
Housman most of the time. Mrs Carrington-Smith asked me if I liked Henry
James's books. I said I liked the early ones. She said she preferred the
later ones, but she could never feel quite the same about Henry James
again since he had put her into a book. She was, she said, _Kate_ in
_The Wings of the Dove_. After dinner Housman moved up and sat next to
me. He talked about art and _bric-à-brac_. I asked him if I could
possibly have seen Bell's portrait of Mrs Housman in America. He said,
"Certainly." He had bought it cheap and sold it dear, anticipating a
slump in Bell, which was not slow in coming. He had then bought it back
directly Bell died, anticipating a boom, which had also occurred. "It is
now worth double what I gave for it. Ha! ha! ha!"
Randall said he liked a picture to tell a plain story and he could make
nothing of the Snake Picture upstairs. Housman laughed loudly and said
it was the oldest story in the world: the man, the woman, and the
serpent. Ha! ha! We went upstairs, where there was a crowd. I was seized
upon by the Princesse de Carignan, and she whispered to me confidential
secrets about Europe. She preened herself and displayed the deportment
of a queen in exile.
Then we had some music. Esther Lake bawled some Rubinstein, and Ronald
Solway played an interminable sonata by Haydn with variations and all
the repeats. Some of the guests went downstairs, but I was wedged in
between the Princesse and a Mrs Baines, a fluffy, sinuous woman, dressed
in a loose Byzantine robe. Her husband, who is an expert in French
furniture, told me she was once mistaken for _Sarah_, and she has
evidently been living up to the reputation for years. He was careful to
add that it was in the days when Sarah was thin--Mrs Baines being a
wisp.
After the music, which I thought would never stop, we went downstairs
again for a stand-up supper and sweet champagne. I was introduced by
Housman to Ronald Solway. Housman told him I was a musical connoisseur,
so he bored me with technicalities for twenty minutes. I couldn't get
away. He had no mercy on me. Housman has got a box at the Opera. He told
me I must use it whenever I like. How can she have married that man?
Yours,
G.
_Wednesday,_ May 19_th_.