MRS. PROUDIE’S CONVERSAZIONE.
It was grievous to think of the mischief and danger into which Griselda
Grantly was brought by the worldliness of her mother in those few weeks
previous to Lady Lufton’s arrival in town—very grievous, at least, to
her ladyship, as from time to time she heard of what was done in London.
Lady Hartletop’s was not the only objectionable house at which Griselda
was allowed to reap fresh fashionable laurels. It had been stated openly
in the _Morning Post_ that that young lady had been the most admired
among the beautiful at one of Miss Dunstable’s celebrated _soirées_,
and then she was heard of as gracing the drawing-room at Mrs. Proudie’s
conversazione.
Of Miss Dunstable herself Lady Lufton was not able openly to allege any
evil. She was acquainted, Lady Lufton knew, with very many people of the
right sort, and was the dear friend of Lady Lufton’s highly conservative
and not very distant neighbours, the Greshams. But then she was also
acquainted with so many people of the bad sort. Indeed, she was intimate
with everybody, from the Duke of Omnium to old Dowager Lady Goodygaffer,
who had represented all the cardinal virtues for the last quarter of a
century. She smiled with equal sweetness on treacle and on brimstone;
was quite at home at Exeter Hall, having been consulted—so the world
said, probably not with exact truth—as to the selection of more than
one disagreeably Low Church bishop; and was not less frequent in her
attendance at the ecclesiastical doings of a certain terrible prelate in
the Midland counties, who was supposed to favour stoles and vespers, and
to have no proper Protestant hatred for auricular confession and fish on
Fridays. Lady Lufton, who was very stanch, did not like this, and would
say of Miss Dunstable that it was impossible to serve both God and Mammon.
But Mrs. Proudie was much more objectionable to her. Seeing how sharp was
the feud between the Proudies and the Grantlys down in Barsetshire, how
absolutely unable they had always been to carry a decent face towards
each other in church matters, how they headed two parties in the diocese,
which were, when brought together, as oil and vinegar, in which battles
the whole Lufton influence had always been brought to bear on the Grantly
side;—seeing all this, I say, Lady Lufton was surprised to hear that
Griselda had been taken to Mrs. Proudie’s evening exhibition. “Had the
archdeacon been consulted about it,” she said to herself, “this would
never have happened.” But there she was wrong, for in matters concerning
his daughter’s introduction to the world the archdeacon never interfered.
On the whole, I am inclined to think that Mrs. Grantly understood the
world better than did Lady Lufton. In her heart of hearts Mrs. Grantly
hated Mrs. Proudie—that is, with that sort of hatred one Christian lady
allows herself to feel towards another. Of course Mrs. Grantly forgave
Mrs. Proudie all her offences, and wished her well, and was at peace
with her, in the Christian sense of the word, as with all other women.
But under this forbearance and meekness, and perhaps, we may say, wholly
unconnected with it, there was certainly a current of antagonistic
feeling which, in the ordinary unconsidered language of every day, men
and women do call hatred. This raged and was strong throughout the whole
year in Barsetshire, before the eyes of all mankind. But, nevertheless,
Mrs. Grantly took Griselda to Mrs. Proudie’s evening parties in London.
In these days Mrs. Proudie considered herself to be by no means the least
among bishops’ wives. She had opened the season this year in a new house
in Gloucester Place, at which the reception rooms, at any rate, were all
that a lady bishop could desire. Here she had a front drawing-room of
very noble dimensions, a second drawing-room rather noble also, though
it had lost one of its back corners awkwardly enough, apparently in a
jostle with the neighbouring house; and then there was a third—shall we
say drawing-room, or closet?—in which Mrs. Proudie delighted to be seen
sitting, in order that the world might know that there was a third room;
altogether a noble suite, as Mrs. Proudie herself said in confidence to
more than one clergyman’s wife from Barsetshire. “A noble suite, indeed,
Mrs. Proudie!” the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire would usually
answer.
For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort of
party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and suppers
were of course out of the question. She did not object to her daughters
dancing all night at other houses—at least, of late she had not objected,
for the fashionable world required it, and the young ladies had perhaps
a will of their own—but dancing at her house—absolutely under the shade
of the bishop’s apron—would be a sin and a scandal. And then as to
suppers—of all modes in which one may extend one’s hospitality to a large
acquaintance, they are the most costly.
“It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for
the mere sake of eating and drinking,” Mrs. Proudie would say to the
clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire. “It shows such a sensual propensity.”
“Indeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!” those ladies would
reply.
But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing,
open-handed hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of
Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was whose
answer had not been so courteous—
“When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have sensual
propensities.”
“It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all
that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I
must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide.
But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor
occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual
propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was
not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use
and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion of
the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable. But,
nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited her, and one
may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps
not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly
burnished gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first
hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?
Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they would,
or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more could be
got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many as the
furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially with the
two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back closet—the
small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the clergymen’s wives
from Barsetshire—and to let the others stand about upright, or “group
themselves,” as she described it. Then four times during the two hours’
period of her conversazione tea and cake was to be handed round on
salvers. It is astonishing how far a very little cake will go in this
way, particularly if administered tolerably early after dinner. The men
can’t eat it, and the women, having no plates and no table, are obliged
to abstain. Mrs. Jones knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake
in her hand till it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best
dress. When Mrs. Proudie, with her weekly books before her, looked into
the financial upshot of her conversazione, her conscience told her that
she had done the right thing.
Going out to tea is not a bad thing, if one can contrive to dine early,
and then be allowed to sit round a big table with a tea urn in the
middle. I would, however, suggest that breakfast cups should always be
provided for the gentlemen. And then with pleasant neighbours,—or more
especially with a pleasant neighbour, the affair is not, according to my
taste, by any means the worst phase of society. But I do dislike that
handing round, unless it be of a subsidiary thimbleful when the business
of the social intercourse has been dinner.
And indeed this handing round has become a vulgar and an intolerable
nuisance among us second-class gentry with our eight hundred a year—there
or thereabouts;—doubly intolerable as being destructive of our natural
comforts, and a wretchedly vulgar aping of men with large incomes.
The Duke of Omnium and Lady Hartletop are undoubtedly wise to have
everything handed round. Friends of mine who occasionally dine at such
houses tell me that they get their wine quite as quickly as they can
drink it, that their mutton is brought to them without delay, and that
the potato-bearer follows quick upon the heels of carnifer. Nothing
can be more comfortable, and we may no doubt acknowledge that these
first-class grandees do understand their material comforts. But we of
the eight hundred can no more come up to them in this than we can in
their opera-boxes and equipages. May I not say that the usual tether of
this class, in the way of carnifers, cup-bearers, and the rest, does not
reach beyond neat-handed Phyllis and the greengrocer? and that Phyllis,
neat-handed as she probably is, and the greengrocer, though he be ever so
active, cannot administer a dinner to twelve people who are prohibited by
a Medo-Persian law from all self-administration whatever? And may I not
further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders dining
out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner at all.
Phyllis, with the potatoes, cannot reach us till our mutton is devoured,
or in a lukewarm state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the
greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness
of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry.
Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without the small
modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion,
I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head
at her, she looked at me withall her eyes, struck with amazement.
Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian war-dance,
with nothing on but my paint, her face could not have shown greater
astonishment. And yet I should have thought she might have remembered the
days when Christian men and women used to drink wine with each other.
God be with the good old days when I could hobnob with my friend over the
table as often as I was inclined to lift my glass to my lips, and make a
long arm for a hot potato whenever the exigencies of my plate required it.
I think it may be laid down as a rule in affairs of hospitality, that
whatever extra luxury or grandeur we introduce at our tables when guests
are with us, should be introduced for the advantage of the guest and not
for our own. If, for instance, our dinner be served in a manner different
from that usual to us, it should be so served in order that our friends
may with more satisfaction eat our repast than our everyday practice
would produce on them. But the change should by no means be made to
their material detriment in order that our fashion may be acknowledged.
Again, if I decorate my sideboard and table, wishing that the eyes of my
visitors may rest on that which is elegant and pleasant to the sight,
I act in that matter with a becoming sense of hospitality; but if my
object be to kill Mrs. Jones with envy at the sight of all my silver
trinkets, I am a very mean-spirited fellow. This, in a broad way, will be
acknowledged; but if we would bear in mind the same idea at all times,—on
occasions when the way perhaps may not be so broad, when more thinking
may be required to ascertain what is true hospitality, I think we of the
eight hundred would make a greater advance towards really entertaining
our own friends than by any rearrangement of the actual meats and dishes
which we set before them.
Knowing, as we do, that the terms of the Lufton-Grantly alliance had been
so solemnly ratified between the two mothers, it is perhaps hardly open
to us to suppose that Mrs. Grantly was induced to take her daughter to
Mrs. Proudie’s by any knowledge which she may have acquired that Lord
Dumbello had promised to grace the bishop’s assembly. It is certainly
the fact that high contracting parties do sometimes allow themselves a
latitude which would be considered dishonest by contractors of a lower
sort; and it may be possible that the archdeacon’s wife did think of that
second string with which her bow was furnished. Be that as it may, Lord
Dumbello was at Mrs. Proudie’s, and it did so come to pass that Griselda
was seated at the corner of a sofa close to which was a vacant space in
which his lordship could—“group himself.”
They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself.
“Fine day,” he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss
Grantly’s elbow.
“We were driving to-day, and we thought it rather cold,” said Griselda.
“Deuced cold,” said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat
and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any
other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped
himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to
Mrs. Proudie.
“This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,” said that lady, coming up to
him and shaking his hand warmly; “so very kind of you to come to my poor
little tea-party.”
“Uncommon pleasant, I call it,” said his lordship. “I like this sort of
thing—no trouble, you know.”
“No; that is the charm of it: isn’t it? no trouble, or fuss, or parade.
That’s what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in
giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts—what we call
conversation.”
“Aw, yes, exactly.”
“Not in eating and drinking together—eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the
practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those
animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world
in this has surely made a great mistake.”
“I like a good dinner all the same,” said Lord Dumbello.
“Oh, yes, of course—of course. I am by no means one of those who would
pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our
enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?”
“A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,” said
Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.
“An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any
rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can we?”
“No,” said Lord Dumbello, “not always.” And he looked as though he
lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.
And then Mrs. Proudie passed on to Mrs. Grantly. The two ladies were
quite friendly in London; though down in their own neighbourhood they
waged a war so internecine in its nature. But nevertheless Mrs. Proudie’s
manner might have showed to a very close observer that she knew the
difference between a bishop and an archdeacon. “I am so delighted to see
you,” said she. “No, don’t mind moving; I won’t sit down just at present.
But why didn’t the archdeacon come?”
“It was quite impossible; it was indeed,” said Mrs. Grantly. “The
archdeacon never has a moment in London that he can call his own.”
“You don’t stay up very long, I believe.”
“A good deal longer than we either of us like, I can assure you. London
life is a perfect nuisance to me.”
“But people in a certain position must go through with it, you know,”
said Mrs. Proudie. “The bishop, for instance, must attend the house.”
“Must he?” asked Mrs. Grantly, as though she were not at all well
informed with reference to this branch of a bishop’s business. “I am very
glad that archdeacons are under no such liability.”
“Oh, no; there’s nothing of that sort,” said Mrs. Proudie, very
seriously. “But how uncommonly well Miss Grantly is looking! I do hear
that she has quite been admired.”
This phrase certainly was a little hard for the mother to bear. All the
world had acknowledged, so Mrs. Grantly had taught herself to believe,
that Griselda was undoubtedly the beauty of the season. Marquises and
lords were already contending for her smiles, and paragraphs had been
written in newspapers as to her profile. It was too hard to be told,
after that, that her daughter had been “quite admired.” Such a phrase
might suit a pretty little red-cheeked milkmaid of a girl.
“She cannot, of course, come near your girls in that respect,” said Mrs.
Grantly, very quietly. Now the Miss Proudies had not elicited from the
fashionable world any very loud encomiums on their beauty. Their mother
felt the taunt in its fullest force, but she would not essay to do battle
on the present arena. She jotted down the item in her mind, and kept it
over for Barchester and the chapter. Such debts as those she usually paid
on some day, if the means of doing so were at all within her power.
“But there is Miss Dunstable, I declare,” she said, seeing that that
lady had entered the room; and away went Mrs. Proudie to welcome her
distinguished guest.
“And so this is a conversazione, is it?” said that lady, speaking, as
usual, not in a suppressed voice. “Well, I declare, it’s very nice. It
means conversation, don’t it, Mrs. Proudie?”
“Ha, ha, ha! Miss Dunstable. There is nobody like you, I declare.”
“Well, but don’t it? and tea and cake? and then, when we’re tired of
talking, we go away,—isn’t that it?”
“But you must not be tired for these three hours yet.”
“Oh, I’m never tired of talking; all the world knows that. How do,
bishop? A very nice sort of thing this conversazione, isn’t it now?”
The bishop rubbed his hands together and smiled, and said that he thought
it was rather nice.
“Mrs. Proudie is so fortunate in all her little arrangements,” said Miss
Dunstable.
“Yes, yes,” said the bishop. “I think she is happy in these matters. I
do flatter myself that she is so. Of course, Miss Dunstable, you are
accustomed to things on a much grander scale.”
“I! Lord bless you, no! Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do. Of course
I must do as I am told. I must live in a big house, and have three
footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy wig, and
horses so big that they frighten me. If I did not, I should be made
out a lunatic and declared unable to manage my own affairs. But as for
grandeur, I hate it. I certainly think that I shall have some of these
conversaziones. I wonder whether Mrs. Proudie would come and put me up to
a wrinkle or two.”
The bishop again rubbed his hands, and said that he was sure she would.
He never felt quite at his ease with Miss Dunstable, as he rarely could
ascertain whether or no she was earnest in what she was saying. So
he trotted off, muttering some excuse as he went, and Miss Dunstable
chuckled with an inward chuckle at his too evident bewilderment. Miss
Dunstable was by nature kind, generous, and open-hearted; but she was
living now very much with people on whom kindness, generosity, and
open-heartedness were thrown away. She was clever also, and could be
sarcastic; and she found that those qualities told better in the world
around her than generosity and an open heart. And so she went on from
month to month, and year to year, not progressing in a good spirit as she
might have done, but still carrying within her bosom a warm affection
for those she could really love. And she knew that she was hardly living
as she should live,—that the wealth which she affected to despise was
eating into the soundness of her character, not by its splendour, but
by the style of life which it had seemed to produce as a necessity. She
knew that she was gradually becoming irreverent, scornful, and prone to
ridicule; but yet, knowing this and hating it, she hardly knew how to
break from it.
She had seen so much of the blacker side of human nature that blackness
no longer startled her as it should do. She had been the prize at which
so many ruined spendthrifts had aimed; so many pirates had endeavoured
to run her down while sailing in the open waters of life, that she
had ceased to regard such attempts on her money-bags as unmanly or
over-covetous. She was content to fight her own battle with her own
weapons, feeling secure in her own strength of purpose and strength of
wit.
Some few friends she had whom she really loved,—among whom her inner self
could come out and speak boldly what it had to say with its own true
voice. And the woman who thus so spoke was very different from that Miss
Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Omnium fêted, and
Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she could find
among such one special companion on whom her heart might rest, who would
help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world! But where was she to
find such a friend?—she with her keen wit, her untold money, and loud
laughing voice. Everything about her was calculated to attract those whom
she could not value, and to scare from her the sort of friend to whom she
would fain have linked her lot.
And then she met Mrs. Harold Smith, who had taken Mrs. Proudie’s noble
suite of rooms in her tour for the evening, and was devoting to them a
period of twenty minutes. “And so I may congratulate you,” Miss Dunstable
said eagerly to her friend.
“No, in mercy’s name do no such thing, or you may too probably have to
uncongratulate me again; and that will be so unpleasant.”
“But they told me that Lord Brock had sent for him yesterday.” Now at
this period Lord Brock was Prime Minister.
“So he did, and Harold was with him backwards and forwards all the day.
But he can’t shut his eyes and open his mouth, and see what God will send
him, as a wise and prudent man should do. He is always for bargaining,
and no Prime Minister likes that.”
“I would not be in his shoes if, after all, he has to come home and say
that the bargain is off.”
“Ha, ha, ha! Well, I should not take it very quietly. But what can we
poor women do, you know? When it is settled, my dear, I’ll send you a
line at once.” And then Mrs. Harold Smith finished her course round the
rooms, and regained her carriage within the twenty minutes.
“Beautiful profile, has she not?” said Miss Dunstable, somewhat later in
the evening, to Mrs. Proudie. Of course, the profile spoken of belonged
to Miss Grantly.
“Yes, it is beautiful, certainly,” said Mrs. Proudie. “The pity is that
it means nothing.”
“The gentlemen seem to think that it means a good deal.”
“I am not sure of that. She has no conversation, you see; not a word. She
has been sitting there with Lord Dumbello at her elbow for the last hour,
and yet she has hardly opened her mouth three times.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Proudie, who on earth could talk to Lord Dumbello?”
Mrs. Proudie thought that her own daughter Olivia would undoubtedly be
able to do so, if only she could get the opportunity. But, then, Olivia
had so much conversation.
And while the two ladies were yet looking at the youthful pair, Lord
Dumbello did speak again. “I think I have had enough of this now,” said
he, addressing himself to Griselda.
“I suppose you have other engagements,” said she.
“Oh, yes; and I believe I shall go to Lady Clantelbrocks.” And then he
took his departure. No other word was spoken that evening between him
and Miss Grantly beyond those given in this chronicle, and yet the world
declared that he and that young lady had passed the evening in so close
a flirtation as to make the matter more than ordinarily particular; and
Mrs. Grantly, as she was driven home to her lodgings, began to have
doubts in her mind whether it would be wise to discountenance so great an
alliance as that which the head of the great Hartletop family now seemed
so desirous to establish. The prudent mother had not yet spoken a word
to her daughter on these subjects, but it might soon become necessary to
do so. It was all very well for Lady Lufton to hurry up to town, but of
what service would that be, if Lord Lufton were not to be found in Bruton
Street?