It is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten
thousand copies of a book, you can't get any sort of useful advice on
the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner
consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice
from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can't in fairness
advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that
Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl,
she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a
room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to
ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too
shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see
if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl
like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious.
She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly's aunt, the Countess of
Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she
holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a
feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs
them to invent a fate for her.
"Haven't I got a future like other people?" she whines, and then the
poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in
her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to
have three husbands, although she is already seventy.
Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at
least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see
people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they
would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to
bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in
shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking
silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been
having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very
serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves,
though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne
what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only
two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right
sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as
Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr.
Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite
sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry,
and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece
of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as
she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in
the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than
usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very
smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the
Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never!
Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed
Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a
nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least
that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we
were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to
help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything
countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all
that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds
unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to
go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can
ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good
wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that
George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It
is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and
so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of
one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never
going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance.
I don't know how much that is. She will never tell.
Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn't got. It is odd, how
taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll,
dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And
fashion after all is only a matter of "bulge." You bulge in a different
place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave
off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you
may consider you are a well-dressed woman!
Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence
a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every
week, from _The Bittern_, and for _Wild Oats_. George is "Pease Blossom"
on _The Bittern_. We don't need to subscribe to a library, we live in a
book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers' Row
afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the
smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready
George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in
together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of
_Darnel_, and people thought him clever but malicious.
Papa doesn't know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the
novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has
no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time
for--it depends on how many Ariadne gives me--and then when she is doing
her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper
ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so
it's all right.
Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn't invent, but
found ready made. "Up to the level of this author's reputation" is one;
"marks a distinct advance," "breezy," "strong, or convincing," and the
opposites, "unconvincing," "weak," "morbid," "effete," are useful ones.
She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions "a fine
sense of atmosphere" if she honestly can.
She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She
flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their
books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and
what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not
one of the whole d--d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility,
especially The _Bittern_, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that
ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and
gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote
her own words to her!
Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the
reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of
course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a
pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as
to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he
allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact,
there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but
one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She
was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for
heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up
her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error
and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel
action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society!
It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George,
because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have
the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother
listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner
to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up
and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about.
"D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of
mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!"
It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George,
you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a
regular corker of a review.
"I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal
ineptitude of this author's_----'"
I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though
I never saw it in print.
Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all,
which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes
oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The
Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole
year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went
to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote
about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself
wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but
the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to
frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out,
and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence,
and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the
cookery-book.
That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa,
who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all
about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and
Countesses are interested in mediæval knights and maidens, cooks--nor
yet laundresses--aren't.
"The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!" he says
sometimes. "If I was proper, they wouldn't even look at me!"
"Ay! the suburbs?" George says dreamily; "the kind, the mild, the
tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught
Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in Pall Mall and
Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy----"
"You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!" says Mr. Aix.
"I have shocked them--they love being shocked! I have startled
them--that does them good. I have puzzled them--not altogether
unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with
Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a
common, romantic denominator----"
"You are like those useful earthworms of _le père_ Darwin, bringing up
soil and interweaving strata," said Mr. Aix wearily.
George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. "Yes, I dominate the
lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at
the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you
ever envisage Peckham?"
"I lived there and sold matches once," said she, "and, moreover, I've
kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs."
"Is there anything you haven't done?" said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a
woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living
among his raw material. When he was writing _The Serio-Comic_, in order
to get the serious atmosphere--which I should have thought gin would
have done for well enough--he went every night of his life to some music
hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their
frocks at the back for them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out
just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn't preach
for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn't have told him
anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend
that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina
calls this novel "The Sweetmeat in the Gutter," and loves it, though
George says it is as broad as it's long, and that ladies shouldn't read
it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it
doesn't matter. _I_ have read _The Serio-Comic_, and I can't see
anything wrong. There's more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie
Dulcimer's real name is Frances Raggles, and she's the mother of five in
the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there's a
brandy-and-soda in every chapter.
Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like
Lady Scilly's pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears
spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says "Quite so," as
if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything.
He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like.
Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would
knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks
anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an
exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a
telegram--so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different
ways, and Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for
the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both
at the same time.
He is about the only person who doesn't think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne
naturally dislikes him. She can't help it. If we didn't let her think
she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that
sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won't consider himself snubbed.
It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him.
Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him
if it is to be called _The Dustman_ or _The General_, and what the
_locale_ is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside
London?
I have an idea that it will be called _The Seamstress_, for he has
lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where
we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to
sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle
into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour.
Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep
her eyes open, as she always is after a dance.
"I have often wondered," he began, "what must be the sensations of a
young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled,
is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her
senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous beat of the time,
relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying
frivolity? Is she----?"
He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted--
"I can tell you. She's thinking all the time, 'Is there a hair-pin
sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in
front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. ---- it
depends which Mister is there that evening--think of it all?"
"Don't, Tempe!" said Ariadne.
"No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell
me some more things about women."
"Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a
hansom?"
"No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?"
"Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like," I said. "It is only because
there happens to be a looking-glass there."
George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary
agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in
Surrey and tempted them--to sell him the rights of every novel they did
for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their
heads and said, "You must go to Middleman!" Then he took them to a
London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads
and sent him to Middleman, who makes all their bargains for them, but
he can't control all the reviews.
One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in
his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go.
George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an
effort to be a hero to one's typewriter, or one's daughter.
"I am in a rage!" Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he
looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. "Just let me get hold of
this fellow they have got on _The Bittern_, and see if I don't wring his
neck for him!"
George didn't say anything, and so I asked--somebody had to--"What has
_The Bittern_ man done, please?"
"Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that's all! I'd have the
fellow know that I'm read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England!
Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!"
George read it--at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn't seem to want
to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying--
"Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth--one can
always learn something from criticism, or so I find!"
"What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent
paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding,
that's what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it
him!"
"Well, it wasn't me wrote it, Mr. Aix," I said, "nor Ariadne!" He isn't
supposed to know that George farms out his reviews.
Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it
had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in
for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn't he trouble
to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were
growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have
said to _The Bittern_ editor, "Avaunt! Don't tempt an author to review
his friend's book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many
reasons!" That is my idea of literary morality.