secs.
Comic Singers alluding to the _pulex irritans_, the mother-in-law, or
to Nausea-Marina .... Rec. 30 secs.
3.0 till 5.15 p.m. STANDING JUMPS (Habitual Patrons of Matinee
Performances only)--First Prize, The Basket of Flowers nightly passed
up by the Musical Conductor to Miss ---- ---- (and haven't the
Property Masters of the metropolis fairly nursed it!). The jumps are
to be acquired on the crude grain spirit invariably sold as whisky
and brandy at certain variety theatres. Competitors taking soda or
seltzer water to carry 7 lb. extra; youthful scions of the
aristocracy who can truthfully say--betwixt you and me, man to man,
pal to pal, 'and to 'and, and 'eart to 'eart--that they have within
the past month knocked a stranger's glass over and then flatly
declined to apologise, allowed one gill.
As in this practical and prosaic time, when a peninsula in Manchuria
can be rendered perfectly untenable by a protracted rain of cast-iron
kitcheners filled with the most objectionable explosives and fired
across six miles of the Yellow Sea, it makes deuced little
difference, I think, whether you are elbowed by the makings of
to-morrow's red-hot divorce case at an athletic meeting in the
afternoon, or sit next the weekend's flash suicide at the Opera in
the evening, I fully intend going.
I am too pressed for time just now to discuss with you the matter of
a suitable background for your little French friend's prospective
photograph, but I do not endorse the close-clipt yew, the lichened
wall, the white-stoled lilies' bending stalks, idea; surely an
expectant attitude on the kerb-stone outside the County Fire Office
would be more akin to accuracy; but in the matter of Lavinia
Rowbotham's ailment, pray tell her I have seen Dr Morbus Brighteye,
and he does not consider that a floating kidney is any bar to early
matrimony, especially in the case of a debutante with fifteen hundred
a year. Of course, from a medical point of view, it should be
stitched down, and it would quite depend on Lavinia herself whether
the stitches showed. Even if they did, she could have them finished
off with some silk cords and tassels (which are still enjoying a
truly remarkable vogue) or a couple of chiffon bows of some bright
shade; but the point is probably quite unimportant to a bridegroom
who has long ceased wondering what bread-and-cheese is like to live
on, and whose dress clothes are so shiny that he can see to shave in
them. It was not a heroic act of his when declaring his passion to
magnify his captaincy into a majority, although had Lavinia been
passing the St James's several hours later, as I was, when he was
being thrown out after celebrating her acceptance, she would have had
to admit that he was drunk enough for a Field Marshal, at least! As
one of the buds of Flying Fox's year, she is probably none too
squeamish, however; I confess that I never set eyes on her without
calling to mind those frayed and worn, but still unpunctured, rubber
tyres which they show in the windows of the cycle shops on Holborn
Viaduct ticketed "Been in constant use for five years!" She compels
one to admit at last that she has not carried a plain gold wedding
ring in her purse for sixty months for nothing!
And so adieu for to-day, kid; Mars in conjunction with the Sun
attracts me to the park.
Yours always,
VIOLA.
EPISTLE III
R.Y.S. _Dido_, OFF COWES, _August_ 4_th._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
How admirably, I must say, is everything in life ordained by
prescient Kismet! Fate, for instance, clearly forsees the appalling
total of torn frills which, at the close of the season, must be
replaced by new ones, and with August gives the social rosebud just
the time she needs by putting her into flannel--and Cowes. Then how
the sea-water bath, distributed over her fagged limbs by means of a
small organdie-muslin bag filled with bran and benzoin, which
Aphrodite so loved, that she arose from it each morning only with the
greatest possible reluctance, causes her to glow and tingle! Under
its mellifluent influences I have already ceased to trouble my head
about Evelyn, who, with a system of love-making so amateurish that it
comes within the Colonial Secretary's definition of "unskilled
labour," wishes to know the reason for my not writing to him!
Is not that a man all over? He regards plighting his troth in the
light of setting his foot upon my neck and holding me in bondage till
he is ready to slay his passion by indulging it. No, no, Sammy Slow,
no modern woman with a grain of sense ever sends little notes to an
unmarried man--not until after she is married, anyway. Moreover,
most girls are partial to most things that begin with f--flowers, and
fruit, and flirting, for three instances--and it is not because you
squeezed my waist at Ascot that I should now sit at your feet and
gaze into your eyes till I die with my head in your lap. When a man
extorts from a woman a promise of love, he looks for a certain show
of gratitude with it. Little less exacting than the crude Walcheren
Islander who expects his bride elect to go out into the fields to
gather sufficient wild carrots to pay the priest and to stand and
sell them in the market-place without violating the proprieties, he
digs no subway himself; even should he make a sacrifice at all, it is
only with an incipient heartache and a profound conviction of regret
to follow.
Men are creatures of insane impulses; recall, if you please, Archie
Toddington, whose wardrobe (since he never went out until the
evening) consisted entirely of dress suits and overcoats. I am
inclined to the belief, by the way, that he was but one of a numerous
type, for I heard them talking at dinner the other evening of a
certain young gentleman, the son of a rural Bishop, who once took his
father to dine at the Orleans Club, the boy belonging only to a now
defunct institution called the Pelican besides. Now the Prelate was
not without some misgivings concerning the Orleans as a manger for
the cloth, but whatever were his prejudices they were dissipated on
the instant of his entering the dining-room, at the sight of a
gentleman, immaculately clean and most correctly clothed, who was
dining all alone off a long-bone chop, a little toast, and--a pot of
tea!
"Dear me!" exclaimed the Bishop, as he took his seat, "I had no idea,
Octavius, that the members of this club had such simple, pastoral
tastes. I am indeed agreeably surprised to find that one of them at
least drinks tea with his dinner."
"I ask your pardon, sir," replied Octavius, "but will you kindly
speak a little lower lest Mr Thornhill should overhear you. Tea, I
would not impertinently remind you, is an ideal beverage for a deep
thinker, and my friend yonder is quite the ruling brain of the
_Athenæum_. His cogitative faculties, I have no doubt, are even now
immersed in some profound distich for his next edition."
Never did a Bishop feel in better company; whereas, as a matter of
fact, Mr Thornhill, being only just out of bed, was taking his "early
evening breakfast" and inwardly debating whether he should devote
himself to Bessie Bellwood at the Pavilion or Lottie Dettmar at the
Trocadero, and which of the two houses possessed the easiest
fauteuils to go to sleep in!
But I am neglecting Archie Toddington of the chronic dress suit.
On a certain Sunday evening at nine o'clock, then, Archie, feeling
fearfully stale and solitary, and, like all misanthropists believing
himself to be the repository of the whole world's suffering, strolled
into St George's Chapel in Albemarle Street, pausing on the threshold
to cough, lest his sudden entrance should cause too great a shock.
It was an "after dinner evensong," and the little proprietary
chapel-of-ease (now alas! swept away) where evening dress was
"indispensable" in the sofa-pews, optional in the gallery, and
ladies' bonnets only allowed in the organ-loft, was very full of
smart people who had dined late. Brave men, groomed to the last gasp
of dilettante exquisiteness, and fair women from whose billowing
bosoms diamonds flashed like beams of white light from Gris-nez, sat
and listened with polished languor to a short, thin discourse on
"Behold a woman came." Then the organ commanded closer attention by
uttering an imperious peal, and Mrs Cora Brown-Potter, looking like
every bird in the tree, in a ravishing low-necked evening frock of
amber silk covered with black Chantilly lace, rendered slightly less
décolleté by a white lace berthe, headed by a band of chiffon, and
depending from the bared shoulders, stood forth. The hat surmounting
her shapely head was of white transparent lace-straw; its raised
crown, supported by circles of mauve and white lilac in entrancing
combinations, the cachepeignes being black cherries and the faint
perfume of fleur-qui-meurt giving the correct signature to the only
possible chapeau in which the beautiful wearer could accurately
realise the entangled and difficult "atmosphere" of _The Holy City_.
It was simply perfection; for a burnt-brown straw, a sheaf of
Annunciation lilies, two silver thistles, a pot of musk, a splash of
amethyst miroir velvet--all of which suggestions emanated from
amiable worshippers in the front rows--would have ruined all.
And then she spoke her allotted lines--slowly and with measured bleat
at first, but louder and louder as the organist, warming to his work,
took up the running, until finally she broke into the the melody
itself, and----
Archibald Toddington sank down within his pew, deeply and seriously
(though happily not fatally) stung. Thirty years had rolled away in
half as many minutes, and once again he was a boy at Eton, hopelessly
in love with the little daughter of the boat-builder, and fearing
nothing but a famine at Layton's. Remorse is, after all, a
thoroughly wholesome and healthy secretion: with what bitter anguish
do we recall those awful early virtues which we now know to have been
only wasted opportunities!
His penitence was very real: from that hour forward he resolved to
reform and lead a new life. He would begin by having a ginger ale,
neat, at the Badminton, that he might the sooner grow accustomed to
that harmless stomachic; again, should he live to be a hundred, he
would be scrupulously careful in future always to substitute
"blooming" for the ordinary embellishments to conversation. Then
with regard to----
An unbidden sigh came from the very pit of his stomach as he dived
his right hand into an unusually deep pocket inserted in the left
breast of his waistcoat and pulled out about two hundred of their
visiting cards. With moisture in his eyes he read the top one:
+-----------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Of course I forgive you, but as for believing |
| you, that is quite another thing. Am leaving |
| Lupus Street to-night. Going to some ripping |
| rooms in Claverton Street, close to the old pitch. |
| Have changed name to Ida Onslowe. If you |
| come up bring some cold stuff from that shop in |
| Piccadilly, as my landlady's brat has got the |
| ringworm, and I am not taking any tiffin from |
| downstairs. _Do come_. KID. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------+
Poor little Ida; and what a thorough little sportsman she always was!
Yet she was but one out of his last two hundred, who, as their bits
of pasteboard attested, haled from half the best-known streets and
roads of the honeymoon districts of this great metropolis. He rose
to leave the chapel and walked towards the door with the cards still
clutched in his right hand. As he joined the fringe of the
communicants who were politely shoving one another through the exit,
he could move forward only at the rate of six inches a shuffle; but
here again was a blessing in disguise. For as he passed through the
porch, there stared him in the face a brass-bound box of polished
oak, having in its lid an oblong aperture, above which was inscribed
in white and gold:
"FOR THE ADDRESSES OF THOSE WHO WISH
TO BE VISITED BY THE CLERGY."
Without an instant's hesitation he raised his hand and dropped the
ten score cards into the slit; so real, so visible, so conspicuous
was the peril of these girls, that no movement tending to their
redemption could possibly be adjudged too momentous. Experiencing
that peculiar glow of satisfaction which comes of earning a halo and
earning it cheaply, Archibald Toddington turned to the right into
Piccadilly, and strolled down the incline to the Badminton.
Never in your life I suppose, dear, have you tasted a drink called
"Three-cornered Sarah," which is said to have been invented by a
subaltern of the King's Dragoon Guards, stationed at Rawal Pindi, who
wished not only to forget the past, but to be oblivious of the
present and contemptuous of the future? Anyway, Archie fell in with
a doughty representative of this famous regiment, and, after a couple
or three goes of "Sarah," felt like carrying civilisation into the
Congo, or putting down an insurrectionary hill tribe single-handed.
The spell of the amber silk frock covered with black Chantilly was
broken into pieces and the pieces lost; the enchantment of the white
lilac hat with the black cherry cachepeignes had evaporated into thin
air, and been blown into Iceland by a gale from the south. Within
one short hour, indeed, Archie, who had undertaken not only to give
the Dragoon a merry evening, but to ring in miracles on him in the
peacherino line, so poignantly repented the loss of all his
addresses, that he was found hammering on the door of the chapel and
objurgating the housekeepers of the surrounding premises because none
of them knew where lived the old verger-johnnie, or whatever they
call him, who kept the keys of the place! Thus the cards were for
ever lost to him; though doubtless the spiritual needs of the
addressees received attention, for that the old-fashioned, one-idea'd
bigot is not believed to exist in the Church in the present day was
amply proved on the night when the Bishop of Barchester was followed
from St James's Hall to the very doorstep of the house opposite the
Green Park, where he was staying for the May meetings, by a foreign
lady who thought that she recognised him. As she dumbly but
persistently refused to accept his assurances that he had never met
her in society--and he would now probably deny the incident in toto,
but that I have, curiously enough, preserved the cutting from the
church paper to which he wrote for editorial advice as to how a
gentleman should get rid of a female who was too persistent in the
street, and the editor suggested going into a Turkish bath and
suddenly disrobing--he had finally to make a swift bolt indoors and
slam the door violently in her face. So loud and despotic, however,
was the subsequent knocking, that the Bishop himself returned to find
not only the lady, but a police constable, on the doorstep, and about
three thousand idle persons gathered around them. "I 'umbly beg yer
lordship's pardon for knockin'," said the policeman, respectful to
the verge of servility, "but when you was a-lettin' this young lady
out just now, you shut her skirt in the door!"
I have often thought that if only our police-constables, who affect
to be _Curii_, but in private live like Bacchanals, were drawn from a
more æsthetic class than is the case, they would, by exercising a
greater sense of delicacy, cause less suffering to the susceptible.
Let me illustrate my contention by admitting that I have for years
been endeavouring in vain to find out what it is that the loquacious
hawker at the street corner has in the pillbox. I have listened to
his breezy bleat so often that I know his yarn by heart (and
sometimes "give" it in congenial company), but never yet have I heard
its conclusion, nor have I beheld the little animal. On every
occasion, just as the Autolycan has been going to raise the lid of
the box, odious P.C. 797 has arrived from the clouds and
blue-pencilled the show. Only yesterday, at the corner of a
_cul-de-sac_ in Regent Street, I came upon the patient person of
bilious temperament and doubtless sedentary habits, who experiences
so many commercial cancellations at the hands of the police. As
usual, he had an admiring, if not a monied audience; and he cried:
"Laidies an' gentlemen,--May I claim yer kind an' perlite attention
for the purpus' of introjuicin' to yer notice a livin' novelty from
the new world beneath the Southern Cross, where every prospec'
pleases, an' female modesty is so pronounced that the clean things
from the laundry is never aired afore the kitchen fire for fear of
upsettin' the mental balance o' the butcher's boy when he brings
round the j'int for dinner, an' looks in at the airy winder? Thanks.
I 'ave 'ere--I say I 'ave 'ere, contained in this small box, the only
insec' overlooked by Adam when he took his seat on the rainbow to
christen the marv'llous creations o' the animal world. It is well
known to, an' 'ighly respected by, the black aboriginals o'
Burragorang, from its intelligent 'abit of manufacturin' its own
lan'marks as it traverses the jungle, by spittin' on the grass an'
stoppin' it from growin', thus renderin' return easy an'
loss-o'-bearin's out o' the question. Though many attempts 'ave been
made to subdue, an' so tame, the little creature, the feat has been
accomplished only thrice within 'istory; once by Timandra Ventidius,
the Macedonian Amazon as led her countrymen in the insurrection
against Turkey, armed with nothin' but an ordinary 'at-pin (tho'
carryin' a quartern o' chloroform in her jeans, in case she should
fall into the 'ands o' the Turks); secondly, by the celebrated
Austrian savant, Yagerwohl, patentee o' the world-famed sensitised
toilet-ware for hospitals, which, ev'ry time a patient washes his
'ands causes a bell to ring in the matron's room; and, thirdly, by
myself, who 'ad it from a well-known 'Arley Street medical man, what
went off his dot after runnin'-up in a local billiard 'andicap, an'
who is at present immured in a private 'ome for the potty, practisin'
nursery-cannons on the kitchen dresser with a tomato, a Spanish
onion, an' a 'ard-boiled egg. But mere assertion is 'ardly the same
thing as proof; what each one of you a-standin' round me requires is
ocular demonstration. With yer kind permission I shall therefore
proceed at once to----"
"Pass away, now, pass away!" cried P.C.s 797 and 798 in chorus, and
the persecuted wizard of the pillbox, bearing his adversity with as
philosophical a fortitude as he could summon, sighed heavily and
sneaked off. But anon, anon.
By all who do not permit the state of the markets to interfere with
social duty, Cowes Regatta is unanimously recognised as the only
possible sequel to Goodwood; but the distinguished tenants of many of
the tiny villas and cottages, half buried in the trees that cluster
on the heights above the town, were witnesses of the diverting sequel
to a much earlier festivity yesterday morning. But perhaps it would
be better for me to present you with the events constituting the
latest edition of The Earl and the Girl--to say nothing of the
Countess--in their chronological order. Let us sit upon the ground,
as Richard II. says.
You have heard of Lord Catterick, haven't you? A none too affluent
but sound old sexagenarian sportsman, dear Kid, with a heart as big
as a hyacinth farm in Zeeland, but matrimonially shackled to an
ogress of fifty, too ill-tempered, domineering, and utterly
unreasonable to exist save in a Trollopian novel. Colour is lent to
the supposition that he married her to win an after-dinner bet by his
seemingly incurable mania for making love to every mortal thing in
petticoats that crosses his path; though that may be no more than
carelessness, since Virtue itself is only a continual struggle
against the promptings of Nature, as I daresay you have found it.
Moreover, he had been much impressed, ten or twelve years ago, by a
certain passage in an erotic novel which said that the only thing to
properly wake up a man suffering from acute melancholia, was a rapid
love-affair with a flamingly red-haired woman, to damage whose
reputation it would be necessary to hug her in broad daylight in
front of the Mansion House--a none too accurate reference to Miss
Jessica Dux, who is a pronounced blonde. Though only a cloak model,
Miss Dux came, I understand, of a good, but impoverished family who
for years accepted money reluctantly from relations, and, when these
dried up, went fut. Then the seven noble girls drew lots to
determine which one of them should sacrifice herself to save pater
from going out to work, and--Jessica pulled out the black bean.
But for the incessant tight-lacing in the showrooms, the wearying
attentions of the manager, and the grotesque air of immeasurable
superiority assumed by the customers before whom she had to strut, to
turn, to pose at command, clad in creations of golden spider's-web,
Jessica would cheerfully have dropped everything else to have stayed
on at Madame Junon's, for though she didn't turn a very deep furrow
in the pay roll, the work was very gratifying and her hips were much
admired. Then, all on a morning early, Lord Catterick in new-milk
innocence dropped in to see a frock "tried on" his liege-madam. His
eyes encountered Jessica's; he pencilled a few warm words on a (must
have been asbestos) visiting card, and that night Miss Dux made her
first acquaintance with the half-guinea dinner at the Berkeley.
It was about four months later, or a week ago, that Lady Catterick
opened a letter addressed to her husband which had come by the
evening post. Seldom or never before had she descended to this
particular meanness, but the indented die on the back of the
envelope--"Impératrice et Cie, Clifford Street, W."--proved an
irresistible lure, and she broke the seal before she fully realised
what she was doing. And it was a half-dead woman she was, dear Pat,
as her little grey eyes ran down the many items in a bill full
fourteen inches long, with a total of £368, 18s. 4d., and a final tag
to the effect that Impératrice et Cie would be glad to receive a
cheque from his lordship at his early convenience!
Smothered gasps and little muffled screams escaped her as she read
such lines as "Chestnut Sunday, May 17th: Tagg's Island toilette of
biscuit Donegal linen trimmed broderie Anglaise with Valenciennes
insertions, £31, 10s.," and "May 22nd: Lemon-tinted chiffon Opera
gown with corsage of pink fuchsias a la Philemon et Baucis, £47, 5s."
Then came on "June 3rd: Ascot toilette of rose-silk voile over white
louisine with Alençon flounces, £52, 10s.," and on the 6th:
"Southend-on-Sea boudoir gown in crépe-de-chine, lined Japanese silk,
£15, 15s.," followed by "Third-class railway fare of special-delivery
porter (Saturday evening), 4s. 4d." Other entries, scarcely less
disturbing, included a "Creation in white mousseline velours
encrusted with black pailletté (Lingfield Park), £63, 0s.," a "Golden
straw plait chapeau with white feathers en suite, £7, 7s. 0d.," and,
somewhat lower down, an "Evening frock of ultramarine chiffon
embroidered silver sequins (Ponymoore's Ball), with bunches of shaded
pink fruit on the décolletage, £21, 0s. 0d.," the lot amounting, as I
said before, to the quite respectable sum of £368, 18s. 4d.! And all
this, my dear, to a woman whose very feminine idea of limiting male
extravagance consisted in continually demonstrating how frocks could
be bought for less money than suits of clothes!