say that it is unnecessary to have any sittings at all, as with a
grain of imagination it would be easy to paint a portrait that would
fit any commercial gentleman. But I am beginning to know something
about the species and to recognize differences between them, just as my
particular one knows a difference between grains of corn. Of course,
in many things there is a certain uniformity between him and others of
his kind. His house, for instance, is like the houses of his friends,
but that is partly because bad architecture is a sort of head-and-hand
disease which breaks out in some architect’s office and spreads rapidly
to others. A man gets a bad house in his head, and the design is
carried from one town to another until people get used to living in
bad houses just as they once got used to being marked with small-pox,
and very few of them have the intelligence and the technical knowledge
to invent a cure even if they have the time or the money. Naturally,
good houses are built sometimes, but their architects are probably in
a state of moral health that can only be transmitted by the slower
process of breeding. It does not seem to be contagious. I wish that
somebody would investigate the pathology of taste.
Neither are my sitter’s habits altogether peculiar to himself, because
of the borrowing propensities of his womenkind. He has not the time
nor the energy, when he gets home in the evening, to think out what he
wants, therefore he exercises his personal taste at the office, and
borrows comfortably, like the others, when he is at home. I hope you
understand all this stuff about borrowing; I know that we have all
got to live on other people, but while it seems suitable to borrow a
neighbour’s fowl if we eat it up and it is made into blood and muscle
and energy, yet it is merely disgusting to swallow it whole and then
treat it as the whale treated Jonah. I have been living lately in
drawing-rooms that are strewn with conversational Jonahs.
But there are bits of the man which are quite his own, and these
bits he keeps in town. Every day at five o’clock he hangs up his
individuality on a nail behind his office door, and when he comes home
he slips on an easy suit of tastes provided for him by his wife. What a
revolution there would be if he once brought home the creature whom he
hangs up at the office! He knows good from bad there; he is not imposed
upon by meaningless phrases; he can conceive a fine scheme, and is
master of the technical details necessary to its perfection. I believe
that his honesty and shrewdness would teach him discrimination in the
things which he buys for his house, but the poor man is too tired to
fight the battle of honesty both against thieves abroad and against
his wife at home, so he gladly accepts any opinions upon unimportant
subjects so long as they admit of comfortable arm-chairs and are not
too expensive.
Now and then he indulges in one of his natural vices, as, for instance,
when he allowed himself to enjoy the over-ripe melons and choir boys
of my pictures, although he knew quite well that his wife would rather
have commissioned some one equally bad but with a safer reputation.
In this case he had enough support from Bessie and her friends to make
it possible for him to indulge his taste without appearing absolutely
eccentric. So now I think you know why I am here.
He met me himself at the station, with the small car, not the
Rolls-Royce. It is about twenty minutes rattle out to Holly Park, where
he lives. “Longmoor” is the name of the house. I noticed it on the
fragile gatepost as we squeezed and scraped up to the front door, just
missing the lobelias. A butler came out, looking exceedingly angry. I
have seen inscrutable, wooden servants, and rough, loutish servants,
and flighty, silly servants, but I never before saw permanently
angry servants, such as they keep in Millport. The creatures are
quite good-tempered when you get to know them; the anger is just a
trade-mark to show that they are the genuine, old, tawny Millport,
and would sooner give a month’s notice than put up with something--I
have not yet discovered what! One imagines that a certain amount of
abstract indignation is necessary to them in the same way as a parrot
requires chillies in its food. It may be difficult to digest “the best
families,” unless one is indignant with everybody who differs from them.
There was a tremendous barking when we arrived; a dog barking in just
the same tone of voice as the butler looked. I could hear it shrieking:
“What’s this? What’s it all about? Who said so? Who has come? What
are they for? Don’t let them in! I shall have to hear something first
before I can give an opinion!”
[Illustration]
When the animal appeared, I thought him less like a dog than an
imitation of one; he ought to have had green wheels and a flannel
tongue. He is a priggish little thing, who knows when there are peas
for dinner, and expects to be asked to beg at tea-time, instead of
being ashamed of his tricks, like a decent dog. He is, actually,
offended if no one asks him to make a fool of himself. I know he
thinks that all ladies ought to like to see a little dog beg so
nicely--it ought to make them laugh. I always smoke in his face when he
does it, which I wouldn’t do to any other dog; but he maddens me. The
merchant threw down his hat wearily, snapped his fingers at “Punch,”
as the little beast is called, looked through the letters that were on
the hall table, and then asked for his wife. She was in the garden, and
there we found her sitting among the remains of tea, struggling with an
acrostic in some magazine. The angry butler caught up the teapot, as
if it had made a face at him, and bore it off to refill it, evidently
against both its wish and his.
Mrs. Merchant has a great deal of a certain quality, definite enough,
but for which I know of no name, which is in part natural goodness
and, in part, only a queenlike unawareness. Whatever it is, it reacts
on some submerged part of my character, and produces in me a sort of
street arab whom I do not recognize. You know that I am not fast nor
vicious nor dishonest, only an ordinary person enjoying life, yet with
this woman I feel like Eve after the Fall. I rush helter-skelter from
every topic of conversation, covering my harmless, natural thoughts
with platitudes. Some serpent has told her that I have an “artistic
temperament,” and I see her straining her mind, enough to rupture it,
in efforts to appear “understanding.” I am supposed to know how many
pictures Lord Leighton painted, and what are “the things to admire” in
the Academy--“all the nice, out-of-the-way things,” she calls them. I
told her once that I should like to draw the huffy butler, and she said
it had never occurred to her that he was picturesque, but perhaps I
was right, and what costume would I like to “do” him in.
Now, please do not remind me that a moment ago I was blaming these
people for covering their instinctive thoughts of kindness, and that I
spoke contemptuously of uniforms and tea-trays, while I now confess to
covering my own thoughts with platitudes. The truth is that this is the
most self-conscious household I ever was in, and when I see them all
rushing for covert, of course I catch the panic without knowing what is
the matter. Then, when all is calm, I get very angry at seeing myself
and them tightly wrapped in moral shawls of one kind or another. The
sight of the others’ shawls makes me conscious of my own, and I begin
to tickle all over and fidget with annoyance.
We had such a good dinner! _Vol-au-vents_, and _mousses_, and
_soufflés_, with ice inside them, and such horrid coffee! Mrs. Merchant
lit a cigarette afterwards, spluttering when she got any smoke, and
chewing the end to ribbons; not as a hospitable fiction, for she
did not begin until after I had finished; but she says she likes an
occasional cigarette. You do not smoke, I know, but you have fifteen
love-affairs a week, so I can explain the absurdity of the occasional
cigarette in terms that you will understand, by saying that it is as
if some one told you she did so enjoy being made love to, now and
then--about once a year--by a really nice old gentleman with a bald
head, so long as he did not attempt to kiss her.
Some people came to dinner that evening. I had forgotten to tell you,
being so busy about the food and tobacco. I shall call every one whom I
meet here--including the Merchants--by the name of whatever they look
like, because then you can tell that inquisitive Bessie, if she asks
you, that you do not know whom I have met. She enjoys everything too
much for it to be quite right to describe people by name to her. She
stores things in her mind, and brings out plums for her guests in a
way that is more hospitable than discreet.
I shall call the people who came Mr. and Mrs. Ritz-Trotter, Miss
Darling, and Mr. Friseur. I am always puzzled as to how the Mr.
Ritz-Trotters get wives. They are all right in an office, or on a
board, or as butlers, or in any kind of man’s work (except soldiering,
or sailoring, or diplomacy). But why does anyone want such a person in
the house to keep? If one had dozens of husbands, it would be useful
to have one Mr. Ritz-Trotter to manage the shares, and tell one where
to sign things; but as we are limited to one, it seems such a waste of
a unique opportunity to choose that sort. When Mr. Ritz-Trotter was
young, he can, at best, only have been like Mr. Friseur, who looks to
me altogether a bad egg so far as companionship is concerned.
I have called the young one Friseur, because he is like a hairdresser’s
assistant, though that is, perhaps, scarcely fair on the hairdressing
profession.
Personally, I do not like the chatty young man at Beau’s, who tells me
that my hair is a very dressy colour, and that Blackpool is likely to
be full this year; but at least he has a definite nervous system and
vertebræ, so that he can jump about. I expect he will develop some day
into a cheery old person, whereas Mr. Friseur, who is only in the first
stage of becoming a Mr. Ritz-Trotter, will go on getting more and more
depressing.
Women like Mrs. Ritz-Trotter are wonderfully adaptable. I think that if
she were taken away now and given to a pirate, the natural fidelity and
cheerfulness that keep her attached to her husband would turn her into
a very attractive woman. But to acquire any decorative value these gems
of character have to be cut by a life of more active horror than her
present one. She was dressed last night in very expensive clothes, just
enough like those of the _demi-monde_ to be thought up to date, but not
sufficiently like them to scare her magnate, who is as conscious of
the habits of such ladies as a jelly-fish is aware of the presence of
titbits on the shore, even if they are not actually within his reach.
[Illustration]
Mr. Friseur took me into dinner, and tired me so much that I was
obliged to drink champagne, which is always bad for me. You know those
dreadful things called Sparklets? You can shoot them into anything,
and make it fizz--“aerate” is the proper word. If you can imagine
aerated mutton--sparkling mutton--you will know what that young man’s
conversation was like. I could see it, in my mind’s eye, advertised as
“Friseur’s Frisky Food for Fascinating Females.” It got up my nose and
stodged my spiritual digestion at the same time. When I let loose any
pleasant fancy, he became sentimental; and when, just to restore his
balance, I talked about bishops, and asked him to pass the mustard, his
ideas frothed clumsily, and he said that he didn’t know artists went to
church--and wasn’t mustard bad for the palette! I know he was trying to
please me, poor thing, and that I was very ungrateful and nasty; but
I felt all the time that he was really resorting to the device of the
curlew, who utters shrill cries to divert the attention of a harmless
traveller from its nest. He was trying to prevent me from remembering
that he had had a respectable commercial home and upbringing. If young
men in business had more outdoor pursuits, they would easily see in
proper proportion such a trifle as their own origin. It is sitting
on an office stool that makes people begin to wish that they were
descended from a long line of Vikings. Miss Darling, I find, loves the
silly thing, and intends to marry him. She is a simple person with a
heart of velvet, and she will grow old with her hairdresser, taking
him out to dinner three times a week, seeing the sparkle subside
and the mutton grow tough. She will have, probably, about three
sententious, knock-kneed little boys, and one anæmic, over-dressed
little girl, and will end her days in a house three times as large as
the one in which she began housekeeping. There ought to be a larger
kind of men who prey upon and eat hairdressers.
I will write next week, and continue the story of what a journalist
would call “A lady artist’s plucky attempt to disarm Provincials.”
Yours ever,
GEORGINA.
_CHAPTER XVI_
“LONGMOOR,” MILLPORT.
My dear Louise,--I have nearly finished Mr. Merchant’s portrait. I
showed it to him yesterday for the first time, and it apparently
“proves satisfactory,” so I shall very likely be here for weeks. He
gives me two hours sitting every day, which, I am beginning to realize,
is a remarkable thing for a business man to do. It is almost the first
time in his life, except during the inevitable August, that he has not
left his house at a quarter to nine every morning. But he has been ill,
and I think that he intends, sooner or later, to retire from business
and live away from town, as this is what they all aspire to. In the
meantime he is only allowed to work for a few hours at a time, so he
has taken the opportunity to have his portrait painted and so fill up
the leisure which might otherwise hang heavy on his hands.
He went off this morning at eleven, and I worked on without him
until luncheon. Then I was shown some more of the social machinery
of Millport; that part of it which decides in what mood the fighting
apparatus shall begin its day’s work--a very important matter, if you
come to think of it. Mrs. Merchant had a party of women representing
different sections of society, and, so far as I could judge, they did
not seem to be working quite in unison. The only one whom I knew was
Miss Darling, who is a great friend of Mrs. Merchant’s and comes to
everything. There was also a fat, elderly thing, in a satin coat and
skirt, plumed hat and boa, besides a prettier edition of Mrs. Merchant,
dressed in tweeds, which are the uniform of the more distant suburbs
and indicate the magic word “county”; and last of all, like a French
squirrel in a hurry, murmuring some domestic apology, the wife of a
professor at the University.
[Illustration]
You know how, in any town which is given up to a University, even the
bald-faced old women with hair like charwomen’s, who stamp through
their social duties with the corsetless aplomb of the born moralizer,
are recognized as forming a sort of aristocracy in keeping with the
spirit of the place. But here all the academic flowers, good and
bad alike, are looked upon as interlopers. I have heard many of the
_vieillesse dorée_ of Millport lump them together indiscriminately as
“peculiar” and “too clever for us.” If I had my way I would make it
criminal libel to apply the word “clever” to any persons but those who
have been found guilty of attempted intelligence. The Romans are spoken
of in history books as having brought the blessing of education to the
untutored savages of ancient Britain. But I can imagine the snuffy look
on the faces of the female aristocracy in woad when the high-browed
matrons of Rome landed among them, armed with copy-books. You may see
the same look spread over a party of Millport Druids and their wives
when the University is mentioned.
I don’t think that everybody by nature likes being educated.
Improvement is forced on some by others who have an inherent morbid
craving for it, and when the victims have been compelled to accept
it, they behave as the fox who was accidentally deprived of his tail
behaved to his friends who had escaped the misfortune. The foxes
of Millport are, one by one, losing their tails. The old-fashioned
appendages of fat and fur no longer command general respect among the
neighbours; yet the fashion dies hard. All the same, how pleasant a
few little feathery tails, sewn with sequins, would be in Oxford or
Cambridge, would they not? It is so tiresome when people insist on all
trying to be one particular thing.
[Illustration]
But to go on with the luncheon-party. The fat elderly fox was invited
to lead the way to the dining-room, and she gave the impression that
if she had not been asked to lead the way she would have led it of her
own accord. She has such an expressive back; it seems to be waiting
impatiently for other people to do right, yet almost hoping they won’t,
so that she may have the pleasure of correcting them. Mrs. County
followed next, with the good-natured politeness of a Prime Minister
sent in to dinner behind a knight; the French squirrel smiled at us
and went after them, and Miss Darling and I scuffled amiably in the
doorway over Mrs. Merchant’s toes.
The hostess’s task was a difficult one, but she showed wonderful tact.
She was conscious of having at her table two persons who represented
the established authority of commerce and landed property (even if it
is only a couple of fields and a carriage sweep for flies to drive
up). Opposed to these were two others, one of whom (myself) belonged
to a community whose wildness and eccentricity, it was rumoured, knew
no bounds, while the other (from the University) was associated with
certain unintelligible heathens who were said to “poke fun” at the
idols of Mrs. Bushytail, Mrs. County and herself. Miss Darling, she
knew, could be relied upon to interpose her soft form as a cushion if
anybody took to throwing anything: still it was anxious work.
“The trees are quite losing their leaves, are they not?” began Miss
Darling, unfolding her napkin. It was like the tuning up of the
violins before the rise of the curtain. I tried to tune up too, but no
words would come. Do you remember how Dick told us that he sometimes
could think of nothing to say but, “Do you wear drawers in autumn?” The
trees reminded me of it.
“Yes, aren’t they, dreadfully?” said Mrs. Merchant. “It is quite sad.”
We had some more tuning up, Mrs. Bushytail (I still refuse to give you
their real names because you and Bessie are too unreliable) taking the
part of the drum.
“Ahem! B-r-r-r-r-r-um!” she coughed. “It is quite impossible to count
on the seasons at all in these days. They are all at sixes and sevens.
Such warm weather at this time of year cannot be healthy.”
Mrs. County gave us a few languid runs on the French horn,
foreshadowing her _leit motif_, the West Cheddar pack, with whom she
hunts now and then. She said that frosts were of no value to anyone
except plumbers, and that now everybody found Christmas such a bore,
it seemed hardly worth while having snow and all that sort of thing,
except that it made an occupation for the poor wretches in town to
shovel it away. It kept them in the fresh air instead of stewing at
home all day.
Perhaps Mrs. Merchant thought that the tuning up was getting too
discordant, for she collected us with her eye and gave out the hymn
of Literature. You see, literature is such a good subject, because it
can never get hackneyed (with so many books coming out each year),
and everybody is sure to have read something. Sooner or later Mrs.
Bushytail’s voice makes itself heard above any babel. She had the upper
hand of us in a moment, and discussion lay dead beside her plate. One
would suppose that the _raison d’être_ of human speech was to further
exchanges of opinion, but Mrs. Bushytail pursues this intention with
relentless ferocity as if were moral vermin.
“No interesting books are written nowadays,” she said, giving a final
throttle to our already extinct debate. “They seem all nonsense about
heredity and character, and things of that sort. That doesn’t make evil
any better. If people had larger families there would be bound to be
some good children among the lot, and the others would soon find their
level.”
Miss Darling interposed her velvet heart between further severity and
us.
“You ought to read some of George Birmingham’s books,” she said
bravely. “They are so amusing, and not a bit morbid.”
“I have read one,” flourished the old lady, “and I never met with
greater nonsense in my life. Most impossible rubbish. I know numbers of
Irish people, and they are indolent and dreamy, with an immense respect
for England. I never heard of any of them poking fun at our Members
of Parliament, and that sort of thing, and they were all far too idle
to think of going on ridiculous adventures. What do you think, Mrs.
Cambridge? Your husband is an authority on literature I am told.” This
was no more an invitation to discussion than is the spider’s lure the
bidding of a genial host, but Mrs. Cambridge is far from ingenuous.
“We both liked some of them,” she said quietly, “but then my husband is
Irish, you know, so you must excuse him.”
Mrs. Bushytail scowled at her and remarked, “Humph! I suppose there are
different grades of society in Ireland, just as there are here. Are any
of you going to the Mayor’s reception?”
“I suppose I ought to go,” said Mrs. County wearily, “but I declined;
they are such dreadful people!”
Mrs. Merchant said that she was going, and asked me if I would like to
go with her. She added, poor dear, that she was “afraid I should not
find it very lively--not like my Bohemian parties with all the great
Academicians, and clever people....”
Dear Louise, why does not a merciful Providence, whose will it is to
fashion us in such humorous variety, put directions for use on our
backs, or send a bottle of medium with us by which we could communicate
with one another? Ought I to have replied, “Dear Mrs. Merchant, I will
make the best of your friends, and when you come to stay with me I will
try to collect some people with double chins and dictatorial manners
who know all about boiling soap and making beef-juice”? I should take
it for granted that she would like my friends, or, at all events, that
she would find something interesting in them, and perhaps enjoy a
change from her own species. So why is it to be supposed that I cannot
live without my own form of shop?
“Who is the present Mayor?” asked Mrs. Cambridge. “He came to the
University the other day, and I thought he looked rather a strange
person to have at the head of a big city like this.”
“Not a gentleman, _of course_,” pronounced our Dictator, helping
herself to another lot of Pêches Melba (the vigorous old creature
had cherry-brandy with it too), “but a very capable man. He is on
our hospital committee and he puts his foot down on the younger men
in a very admirable way; never wastes too much time on discussion. A
splendid financier; doesn’t allow improvements to be carried beyond a
reasonable distance.”
“He has dreadful manners, though,” sighed Mrs. County, who eats nothing
but vegetables, and refuses sweets because she says they spoil her form
at badminton. “The Duchess presided at the annual meeting of our Waifs
and Strays at the Town Hall the other day, and she said that the Mayor
made his speech with his foot on her muff.”
“Then she shouldn’t have left her muff on the floor,” replied Mrs.
Bushytail. “The Duchess was an old friend of mine when you were in the
schoolroom, my dear, and I shall tell her that she ought to take better
care of her things.”
“Lady Seelby said the Town Hall smelt very strong of onions,” Mrs.
County ventured again with her eyes half shut.
I was pleased at things going like this--maliciously pleased. Instead
of the two suspected firebrands setting up a conflagration in the camp,
there were the two representatives of law and order (the town and
the county) sparring together over the personal habits of the chief
magistrate; while the heathen and the anarchist sat with milk and honey
on their lips, ready to pour balm on the wounds of the combatants!