XV

Original t is said that there are four hundred people in New York who are exclusive, and there are a few more on Beacon Hill in Boston, and in Philadelphia. But most Americans are opposed to exclusiveness. I know that nothing of the sort flourishes in Chicago. Generally and individually, Americans believe that every man is as good as his neighbour; and we take pains to proclaim our belief whenever the subject of class distinction, is under discussion. Poppa's views, however--representing those of the majority in an individual, as we hope they soon may do in a senator--are strongly against any theory of exclusiveness whatever. And I will say for poppa, that his principles are carried out in his practice; for, to my knowledge, neither his retirement from business and purchase of a suburban lakeside residence, nor even his nomination for the Senate, has made the slightest difference in his treatment of any human being. And yet Americans coming over here with all their social theories in their trunks, so to speak, very carefully packed to be ready at a moment's notice, very seldom seem to find a use for them in England. I was brought up, you might say, on poppa's, and momma agreed with him on most points, with the one qualification that, if you couldn't have nice society, it was much better to go without any--'Scarce company, welcome trumpery!' momma always declared would never be her motto. Yet since I have been in England I have hardly had occasion to refer to them at all. I listened to an American author about it a while ago, before I had any intention of writing my own English experiences, and he said the reason Americans liked the exclusiveness over here was because its operation gave them such perfect types to study, each of its own little circle; while at home we are a great indeterminate, shifting mass, and a person who wanted to know us as a nation must know us very largely as individuals first. I thought that might be a very good reason for an author, especially for an author who liked an occasional cup of tea with a duchess; but I was not sure that it could be claimed by a person like myself, only over on a visit, and not for any special purpose of biological research. So I went on liking the way you shut some people out and let other people in, without inquiring further as to why I did--it did not seem profitable, especially when I reflected that my point of view was generally from the inside. My democratic principles are just the same as ever, though--a person needn't always approve what she likes. I shall take them back quite unimpaired to a country where they are indispensable--where you really want them, if you are going to be comfortable, every day of your life.

Nevertheless, I know it was the 'private' part of the 'Private View'

that made me so anxious to go to the Academy on the first day of May

this year. The pictures would be there the second day, and the day

following, and days indefinitely after that, and for a quarter of a

dollar I could choose my own time and circumstances of going to see

them. I might, weather permitting, have taken my 'view' of the Academy

in the publicity of five or six other people who, like me, would have

paid a shilling a-piece to get in; but I found myself preferring the

privacy of the five or six hundred who did not pay--preferring it

immensely. Besides, I had heard all my life of the 'Private View.' Every

year there are special cablegrams about it in our newspapers--who were

there, and what they wore--generally to the extent of at least a column

and a half. Our special correspondents in London glory in it, and rival

each other, adjectivally, in describing it. Lady Torquilin had been

talking about it a good deal, too. She said it was 'a thing to see,'

and she meant to try to get me an invitation. Lady Torquilin went every

year.

But when the thirtieth day of April came, Lady Torquilin told me in

the evening, after dinner, that she hadn't been able to manage it, and

showed me the card upon which the 'President and Members of the

Royal Academy of Arts "requested" the pleasure of the company of Lady

Torquilin,' only, 'Not transferable.'

'It's very tiresome of them,' said Lady Torquilin, 'to put that on. It

means that you positively must not give it to anybody. Otherwise I would

have handed it over to you, child, with the greatest pleasure--I

don't care a pin's point about going, and you could have gone with the

Pastelle-Browns. But there it is!'

Of course, nothing would have induced me to take Lady Torquilin's

invitation, and deprive her of the pleasure of going; but I pinned her

veil at the back, and saw her off down the elevator, next day at two,

with an intensity of regret which cannot come often in the course of an

ordinary lifetime. I was describing my feelings in a letter, addressed,

I think, to Mr. Winterhazel, when, about an hour later, Lady Torquilin

appeared again, flushed with exertion, and sank panting into a chair.

'Get ready, child!' said she. 'I'd wear your tailor-made; those stairs

will kill me, but there was--no time--to waste on the lift. I can get

you in--hurry up your cakes!'

'But am I invited?' I asked.

'Certainly you are--by a Royal Academician in person--so fly!'

I flew, and in twenty minutes Lady Torquilin and I were engaged in our

usual altercation with a cabman on the way to Burlington House. When he

had got his cab and animal well into a block in Bond Street, and nothing

of any sort could possibly happen without the sanction of a Jove-like

policeman at the crossing, Lady Torquilin took the opportunity of

telling me how it was that she was able to come for me. 'You see,' she

said, 'the very first person I had the good luck to meet when I went

in was Sir Bellamy Bellamy--you remember Sir Bellamy Bellamy at the

Mintherringtons? I tell you frankly that I wouldn't have mentioned it,

my dear, unless he had first, though I knew perfectly well that what Sir

Bellamy Bellamy can't do in that Academy simply can't be done, for you

know I'm the last one to push; but he did. "Where is your young friend?"

said he. Then I took my chance, and told him how I'd asked that old

screw of a Monkhouse Diddlington for two, and only got one, and how

I couldn't possibly give it to you because it was printed "Not

transferable," and how disappointed you were; and he was nice about it.

"My dear Lady Torquilin," he said, "we were children together, and you

never came to me. I should have been delighted!"

'"Well," I said, "Sir Bellamy, can't we do anything about it now?" "It's

rather late in the day," said he. "It is late in the day," said I. "Oh,

I say!" said he, "she must come if she wants to--any friend of yours,

Lady Torquilin"--such a humbug as the man is! "It's a bit irregular," he

went on, "and we won't say anything about it, but if you like to go and

get her, and see that she carries this in with her" (here Lady

Torquilin produced a fat, pale-blue catalogue book), "there won't be

any difficulty. I fancy." So there you are, Miss Wick, provided with

Sir Bellamy Bellamy's own catalogue to admit you--if that's not a

compliment, I don't know what is!'

'I don't feel as if I had been properly invited,' I said; 'I'm afraid I

oughtn't to go, Lady Torquilin.'

'Rubbish, child!' said she. 'Do you want them to send a deputation for

you?' And after that, what could I say?

'Hold up your head, and look perfectly indifferent,' advised Lady

Torquilin, as our hansom deposited us in the courtyard before the outer

steps. 'Don't grasp that catalogue as if it were a banner; carry it

carelessly. Now follow me.' And Lady Torquilin, with great dignity, a

sense of rectitude, and a catalogue to which she was properly entitled,

followed by me with vague apprehensions, a bad conscience, and a

catalogue that didn't belong to me, walked into the Private View. Nobody

said anything, though I fancied one of the two old gentlemen in crimson

and black by the door looked knowingly at the other when I passed, as

much as to say: 'About that tailor-made there is something fraudulent.'

I say I 'fancied,' though at the time I was certain they did, because my

imagination, of course, may have had something to do with it. I know

I was very glad of the shelter of Lady Torquilin's unimpeachable

respectability in front. 'There now,' she said, when we were well into

the crowd, 'we're both here, and it's much nicer, isn't it, dear? than

for you to come with strangers, even if I could have made up my mind

that it was right for you to be admitted on a ticket plainly marked "not

transferable"--which I really don't think, dear. I should have been able

to do.'

We moved aimlessly with the throng, and were immediately overtaken and

possessed by the spirit that seemed to be abroad--a spirit of wonder and

criticism and speculation and searching, that first embraced our

nearest neighbours, went off at random to a curiously-dressed person in

perspective, focussed upon a celebrity in a corner, and spent itself in

the shifting crowd. Lady Torquilin bade me consider whether in all my

life before I had ever seen such remarkable gowns, and I was obliged to

confess that I had not. Some of them were beautiful, and some were not;

many were what you so very properly and aptly call 'smart,' and a few

were artistic. All of them, pretty and ugly, I might have encountered at

home, but there was one species of 'frock' which no American, I think,

could achieve with impunity. It was a protest against conventionalism,

very much gathered, and usually presented itself in colours

unattainable out of a London fog. It almost always went with a rather

discouraged-looking lady having a bad complexion, and hair badly done

up; and, invariably, it dragged a little on one side. I don't know

exactly why that kind of dress would be an impossible adjunct to the

person of an American woman, but I am disposed to believe there is a

climatic reason. We have so much sun and oxygen in the United

States that I think they get into our ideas of clothes; and a person

upholstered in the way I have mentioned would very likely find herself

specially and disrespectfully described in the newspapers. But I do not

wish to be thought impertinent about the development of this particular

English dress ideal. It has undoubted points of interest. I had a better

opportunity of observing it at the Academy Soirée in June, when it shed

abroad the suggestion of a Tennysonian idyll left out all night.

Lady Torquilin had just pointed out to me two duchesses: one large and

round, who was certainly a duchess by mistake, and the other tall and

beautiful, with just such a curved upper lip as a duchess ought to have,

and a coronet easily imaginable under her bonnet, and we were talking

about them, when I saw somebody I knew. He was a middle-aged gentleman,

and I had a very interesting association with his face, though I

couldn't for the moment remember his name or where I had met him. I told

Lady Torquilin about it, with the excited eagerness that a person always

feels at the sight of a familiar face in a foreign land. 'Some friend of

poppa's, I am certain,' I said; and although I had only had a glimpse

of him, and immediately lost him in the crowd, we decided to walk on

in that direction in the hope of seeing him again. He reappeared at

a distance, and again we lost him; but we kept on, and while Lady

Torquilin stopped to chat with her numerous acquaintances I looked out

carefully for my father's friend. I knew that as soon as he saw me he

would probably come up at once and shake hands, and then the name would

come back to me; and I yearned to ask a thousand things of Chicago.

We came face to face with him unexpectedly, and as his eye caught mine

carelessly it dawned upon me that the last time I had seen him it

was not in a long grey overcoat and a silk hat--there was something

incongruous in that. Also, I remembered an insolent grizzled chin and

great duplicity. 'Oh!' I said to Lady Torquilin, 'I don't know him at

all! It's----'

'It's Mr. Bancroft!' said Lady Torquilin.

'Who is Mr. Bancroft?' said I. 'It's the Abbé Latour!'

I had enjoyed 'The Dead Heart' so much a fortnight before, but I was

glad I did not bow before I recognised that it was a gentleman with

whom I had the honour of possessing only ten-and-sixpence worth of

acquaintance.

I saw the various scandals of the year as well. Lady Torquilin mentioned

them, just to call my attention to their dresses, generally giving her

opinion that there had been altogether too much said about the matter.

Lady Torquilin did not know many of the literary people who were

present, but she indicated Mr. Anstey and Mr. William Black, whose works

are extremely popular with us, and it was a particular pleasure to be

able to describe them when I wrote home next day. I wanted to see Mr.

Oscar Wilde very especially, but somebody told Lady Torquilin he was at

the Grosvenor--'and small loss, I consider!' said she; 'he's just like

any other man, dear child, only with more nonsense in his head than most

of them!' But it was not in the nature of things or people that Lady

Torquilin should like Mr. Oscar Wilde. Before we went she showed me two

or three lady-journalists busy taking notes.

'There's that nice Miss Jay Penne,' said Lady Torquilin. 'I know all the

Jay Pennes--such a literary family! And Miss Jay Penne always wants to

know what I've got on. I think I must just speak to her, dear, if you

don't mind waiting one moment; and then we'll go.

'She asked about you, too, dear,' said my friend when she rejoined me,

with a little nudge of congratulation.

I should, perhaps, have stated before that there were a number of

artists walking around trying to keep away from their own pictures;

but this I gathered of myself, for, with the exception of Sir Bellamy

Bellamy, who had gone away, Lady Torquilin did not know any of them. I

noticed, too, that the walls of the rooms we were in were covered with

pictures, but they did not seem to have anything to do with the Private

View.