“What do you think of it, George?” he insisted.
What I said I thought of it I don’t now recall. Only I have very
distinctly the impression of meeting for a moment my aunt’s
impenetrable eye. And anyhow he started in with his accustomed energy
to rape the mysteries of the Costly Life, and become the calmest of its
lords. On the whole, I think he did it—thoroughly. I have crowded
memories, a little difficult to disentangle, of his experimental
stages, his experimental proceedings. It’s hard at times to say which
memory comes in front of which. I recall him as presenting on the whole
a series of small surprises, as being again and again, unexpectedly, a
little more self-confident, a little more polished, a little richer and
finer, a little more aware of the positions and values of things and
men.
There was a time—it must have been very early—when I saw him deeply
impressed by the splendours of the dining-room of the National Liberal
Club. Heaven knows who our host was or what that particular little
“feed” was about now!—all that sticks is the impression of our
straggling entry, a string of six or seven guests, and my uncle looking
about him at the numerous bright red-shaded tables, at the exotics in
great Majolica jars, at the shining ceramic columns and pilasters, at
the impressive portraits of Liberal statesmen and heroes, and all that
contributes to the ensemble of that palatial spectacle. He was betrayed
into a whisper to me, “This is all Right, George!” he said. That
artless comment seems almost incredible as I set it down; there came a
time so speedily when not even the clubs of New York could have
overawed my uncle, and when he could walk through the bowing
magnificence of the Royal Grand Hotel to his chosen table in that
aggressively exquisite gallery upon the river, with all the easy calm
of one of earth’s legitimate kings.
The two of them learnt the new game rapidly and well; they experimented
abroad, they experimented at home. At Chiselhurst, with the aid of a
new, very costly, but highly instructive cook, they tried over
everything they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any
reputation for difficulty, from asparagus to plover’s eggs. They
afterwards got a gardener who could wait at table—and he brought the
soil home to one. Then there came a butler.
I remember my aunt’s first dinner-gown very brightly, and how she stood
before the fire in the drawing-room confessing once unsuspected pretty
arms with all the courage she possessed, and looking over her shoulder
at herself in a mirror.
“A ham,” she remarked reflectively, “must feel like this. Just a
necklace.”...