PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES
Being extracts from the commonplace book of Penelope Hamilton
by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
To my Boston friend Salemina.
No Anglomaniac, but a true Briton.
Contents.
Part First--In Town.
I. The weekly bill.
II. The powdered footman smiles.
III. Eggs a la coque.
IV. The English sense of humour.
V. A Hyde Park Sunday.
VI. The English Park Lover.
VII. A ducal tea-party.
VIII. Tuppenny travels in London.
IX. A Table of Kindred and Affinity.
X. Apropos of advertisements.
XI. The ball on the opposite side.
XII. Patricia makes her debut.
XIII. A Penelope secret.
XIV. Love and lavender.
Part Second--In the Country.
XV. Penelope dreams.
XVI. The decay of Romance.
XVII. Short stops and long bills.
XVIII. I meet Mrs. Bobby.
XIX. The heart of the artist.
XX. A canticle to Jane.
XXI. I remember, I remember.
XXII. Comfort Cottage.
XXIII. Tea served here.
XXIV. An unlicensed victualler.
XXV. Et ego in Arcadia vixit.
Part First--In Town.
Chapter I. The weekly bill.
Smith's Hotel,
10 Dovermarle Street.
Here we are in London again,--Francesca, Salemina, and I. Salemina is
a philanthropist of the Boston philanthropists limited. I am an artist.
Francesca is-- It is very difficult to label Francesca. She is, at her
present stage of development, just a nice girl; that is about all: the
sense of humanity hasn't dawned upon her yet; she is even unaware that
personal responsibility for the universe has come into vogue, and so she
is happy.
Francesca is short of twenty years old, Salemina short of forty, I short
of thirty. Francesca is in love, Salemina never has been in love, I
never shall be in love. Francesca is rich, Salemina is well-to-do, I am
poor. There we are in a nutshell.
We are not only in London again, but we are again in Smith's private
hotel; one of those deliciously comfortable and ensnaring hostelries in
Mayfair which one enters as a solvent human being, and which one leaves
as a bankrupt, no matter what may be the number of ciphers on one's
letter of credit; since the greater one's apparent supply of wealth,
the greater the demand made upon it. I never stop long in London
without determining to give up my art for a private hotel. There must be
millions in it, but I fear I lack some of the essential qualifications
for success. I never could have the heart, for example, to charge a
struggling young genius eight shillings a week for two candles, and
then eight shillings the next week for the same two candles, which the
struggling young genius, by dint of vigorous economy, had managed to
preserve to a decent height. No, I could never do it, not even if I were
certain that she would squander the sixteen shillings in Bond Street
fripperies instead of laying them up against the rainy day.
It is Salemina who always unsnarls the weekly bill. Francesca spends an
evening or two with it, first of all, because, since she is so young,
we think it good mental-training for her, and not that she ever
accomplishes any results worth mentioning. She begins by making three
columns headed respectively F., S., and P. These initials stand for
Francesca, Salemina, and Penelope, but they resemble the signs for
pounds, shillings, and pence so perilously that they introduce an added
distraction.
She then places in each column the items in which we are all equal, such
as rooms, attendance, fires, and lights. Then come the extras, which are
different for each person: more ale for one, more hot baths for another;
more carriages for one, more lemon squashes for another. Francesca's
column is principally filled with carriages and lemon squashes. You
would fancy her whole time was spent in driving and drinking, if you
judged her merely by this weekly statement at the hotel.
When she has reached the point of dividing the whole bill into three
parts, so that each person may know what is her share, she adds the
three together, expecting, not unnaturally, to get the total amount of
the bill. Not at all. She never comes within thirty shillings of the
desired amount, and she is often three or four guineas to the good or to
the bad. One of her difficulties lies in her inability to remember
that in English money it makes a difference where you place a figure,
whether, in the pound, shilling, or pence column. Having been educated
on the theory that a six is a six the world over, she charged me with
sixty shillings' worth of Apollinaris in one week. I pounced on the
error, and found that she had jotted down each pint in the shilling
instead of in the pence column.
After Francesca had broken ground on the bill in this way, Salemina, on
the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp and puts
on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after identifying our
own extras, we summon the butler to identify his. There are a good
many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that fact we are always
convinced before he proves to the contrary. We can never see (until he
makes us see) why the breakfasts on the 8th should be four shillings
each because we had strawberries, if on the 8th we find strawberries
charged in the luncheon column and also in the column of desserts and
ices. And then there are the peripatetic lemon squashes. Dawson calls
them 'still' lemon squashes because they are made with water, not with
soda or seltzer or vichy, but they are particularly badly named. 'Still'
forsooth! when one of them will leap from place to place, appearing
now in the column of mineral waters and now in the spirits, now in the
suppers, and again in the sundries. We might as well drink Chablis or
Pommery by the time one of these still squashes has ceased wandering,
and charging itself at each station. The force of Dawson's intellect is
such that he makes all this moral turbidity as clear as crystal while
he remains in evidence. His bodily presence has a kind of illuminating
power, and all the errors that we fancy we have found he traces to their
original source, which is always in our suspicious and inexperienced
minds. As he leaves the room he points out some proof of unexampled
magnanimity on the part of the hotel; as, for instance, the fact that
the management has not charged a penny for sending up Miss Monroe's
breakfast trays. Francesca impulsively presses two shillings into his
honest hand and remembers afterwards that only one breakfast was served
in our bedrooms during that particular week, and that it was mine, not
hers.
The Paid Out column is another source of great anxiety. Francesca is a
person who is always buying things unexpectedly and sending them home
C.O.D.; always taking a cab and having it paid at the house; always
sending telegrams and messages by hansom, and notes by the Boots.
I should think, were England on the brink of a war, that the Prime
Minister might expect in his office something of the same hubbub,
uproar, and excitement that Francesca manages to evolve in this private
hotel. Naturally she cannot remember her expenditures, or extravagances,
or complications of movement for a period of seven days; and when she
attacks the Paid Out column she exclaims in a frenzy, 'Just look at
this! On the 11th they say they paid out three shillings in telegrams,
and I was at Maidenhead!' Then because we love her and cannot bear to
see her charming forehead wrinkled, we approach from our respective
corners, and the conversation is something like this:--
Salemina. “You were not at Maidenhead on the 11th, Francesca; it was the
12th.”
Francesca. “Oh! so it was; but I sent no telegrams on the 11th.”
Penelope. “Wasn't that the day you wired Mr. Drayton that you couldn't
go to the Zoo?”
Francesca. “Oh yes, so I did: and to Mr. Godolphin that I could. I
remember now; but that's only two.”
Salemina. “How about the hairdresser whom you stopped coming from
Kensington?”
Francesca. “Yes, she's the third, that's all right then; but what in the
world is this twelve shillings?”
Penelope. “The foolish amber beads you were persuaded into buying in the
Burlington Arcade?”
Francesca. “No, those were seven shillings, and they are splitting
already.”
Salemina. “Those soaps and sachets you bought on the way home the day
that you left your purse in the cab?”
Francesca. “No; they were only five shillings. Oh, perhaps they lumped
the two things; if seven and five are twelve, then that is just what
they did. (Here she takes a pencil.) Yes, they are twelve, so that's
right; what a comfort! Now here's two and six on the 13th. That was
yesterday, and I can always remember yesterdays; they are my strong
point. I didn't spend a penny yesterday; oh yes! I did pay half a crown
for a potted plant, but it was not two and six, and it was a half-crown
because it was the first time I had seen one and I took particular
notice. I'll speak to Dawson about it, but it will make no difference.
Nobody but an expert English accountant could find a flaw in one of
these bills and prove his case.”
By this time we have agreed that the weekly bill as a whole is
substantially correct, and all that Salemina has to do is to estimate
our several shares in it; so Francesca and I say good night and leave
her toiling like Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum. By midnight she
has generally brought the account to a point where a half-hour's fresh
attention in the early morning will finish it. Not that she makes it
come out right to a penny. She has been treasurer of the Boston Band of
Benevolence, of the Saturday Morning Sloyd Circle, of the Club for the
Reception of Russian Refugees, and of the Society for the Brooding of
Buddhism; but none of these organisations carries on its existence by
means of pounds, shillings, and pence, or Salemina's resignation
would have been requested long ago. However, we are not disposed to be
captious; we are too glad to get rid of the bill. If our united thirds
make four or five shillings in excess, we divide them equally; if it
comes the other way about, we make it up in the same manner; always
meeting the sneers of masculine critics with Dr. Holmes's remark that a
faculty for numbers is a sort of detached-lever arrangement that can be
put into a mighty poor watch.