CHAPTER XV: LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN
My dear Louise,—The address on this paper does not mean that I have run away with a rich merchant. There is one in the house, but I am not his affianced bride. What has happened is far more absurd, and bewildering, and unaccountable. He wants me to paint his portrait, and, “if it is satisfactory,” as he says, I have his leave to go on to mamma and the children. Unfortunately, they are not a very reproductive family, or else I might have become a naturalized member of it; while I was painting one child, they could be getting another ready, and so on, until my old hands were hardly able to handle the brush.
What moved these people to choose me for the task is an interesting problem. I rather suspect that it was my weak points. To begin with, it was Bessie Lovelace’s idea; you know she was at school with me, and the merchant’s wife is her second cousin. She told them that I have remarkable talent, and am to be had cheap (God forgive her!). But still, that was only the placing by a master hand of a germinal spot within the protoplasm of their intelligence. A lot more was needed before that spot became the full-blown absurdity which it is now. It had to be fed and kept warm by some natural inclination on their part.
Here it was, I believe, that my weak points came in. You know as well as I do what is bad in my work. A certain sickliness creeps into it, do what I will. I can’t trace this quality in my tastes, except that I have a passion for over-ripe melons, and I feel a stirring in my gizzard when I am in a dark church, and the little choir boys look more saintly than my reason tells me that they are. But the main thing is that I am here and likely to stay some weeks at any rate.
The house is like nothing you can ever have seen unless you have been in one of the large provincial towns. It is not a town house nor a country house nor a cottage. It is more as if its father were a seaside hotel, and its mother were a villa, and it took after an aunt who had been a country house. There are two tennis lawns and a croquet lawn fenced round by netting. There are round flower beds and wide borders full of flowers of the sort that gardeners always delight in. I don’t mean the job gardeners that you and I labour under—they wouldn’t allow us to have any beds at all, because flowers “make work.” I mean the experienced and rather huffy gardeners, who are employed by the rich, and who are indifferent to work because they don’t do any. I think that Waring and Gillow must, originally, have supplied the garden as well as the furniture, because the flowers are all in “suites,” and they go so well with the curtains. They look unusually expensive, and as if they wouldn’t have very much smell. The roses, which all belong to the very best families, and are named after baronets’ wives, live apart in a sheltered elegance of their own. The vegetables and the hens amuse themselves as they like behind the garage. The clean and prosperous-looking garage, dividing the vegetables from the flowers, has a funny resemblance to the position of their owner and his place of business in the social scale. In former days there would have been a discreet plantation of shrubs between the stables and the flower garden, between traffic and the retreat of elegance. Now the shrubs are behind the garage, but still in front of the lowest society (the vegetables and the hens). Next year I confidently expect so see a hen lolling with a parasol under every rose bush, and rhubarb flourishing in the window boxes. It will be quite sad for the poor democrats when they have removed the last social barrier. They will have, as it were, to teach the amœba to check the hens and the vegetables.
The garage shelters an any-number-of-horse-power Rolls-Royce, which must not be used too often, and an open car with a canvas hood. This one jolts so much that when we are all in it we grind against one another the whole way, like stones washed about on the beach. The chauffeur hates it, and has blown it up twice, but they always stick it together again to save the Rolls-Royce. I forgot to say that in the West End, so to speak, of the garden there is a hot-house where they keep the huffiest gardener of all. He must not be spoken to except in questions, but if you ask the right kind—not knowing too much, and yet not being at all silly—he gives you three spiky things, one red, one blue, and one yellow, which don’t look nice in a vase, and which you can’t wear.
Every one here is hospitable in a way that exasperates, because it embarrasses me, and I cannot understand why it should. I have often felt this anger with people who are ill at ease in their bodies. Whenever I find them doing some kindly, simple thing, it is as if I had stumbled into their bedrooms when they were having a bath. In the same way I cannot be as friendly as I feel, because they would dislike it as much as if I wore an unconventionally low-cut dress. The man himself is so nervously suspicious of friendliness that he sometimes makes me think of a darling old scarecrow in a field from which all the crops have been gathered long ago. Or can you imagine a Lifeguards-man feeling so shy and indelicate without his full-dress uniform that he insists on wearing a tea-tray strapped to his chest when he is off duty? That is the sort of defensive attitude that Millport people adopt towards their friends.
The children are a little disappointing. They have cracky voices and want too much. They have been brought up by a nurse who is accustomed to every luxury except freedom of opinion, and has, therefore, no repose of manner, and they themselves are in a perpetual state of discontent, looking for El Dorado in their neighbours’ larders. Children have a certain community with animals, which makes it unnatural for them to desire anything that they cannot—by fair means or foul—get for themselves, and although these twins and their brother are still young enough to have some remnants of individual taste, they are rapidly settling down into their parents’ habit of systematic borrowing—borrowed hopes and fears, borrowed likes and dislikes—everything, in fact, except a borrowed husband. I do not want a borrowed husband, but for the life of me I cannot understand why it should be necessary to draw the line there when everything else, from the phrase on our lips to our idea of Divine Revelation, is borrowed from the borrowings of our neighbours.
To-morrow I am going to begin on the first portrait. You will probably 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!”
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.
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.”