Blanche and I are stopping here for a few days before going home. After all the gaiety of Lucerne Blanche declared it would give her the blues to drop suddenly back into Somersetshire, with its biking and tennis and gossip, so we decided to break the fall in London. Of course, town is still en villégiature as the French say, but I like it, as one can be so much freer than in the Season.
Bond Street is triste in the mornings, and as for the Park, oh, là là!—the only people one sees there are the hospital nurses and the policemen. We don't get up till eleven, and then go straight to Paquin, till one. The first day we had lunch at Prince's, but there were such funny-looking people there that we have been to the Trocadero since. I am sure those who were at Prince's were there because they had heard it was fashionable. The maître d'hôtel, who was chef to the bishop of St. Esau, told me that there hadn't been even a baronet across the threshold for two months. I am sure the people came from Leeds and Birmingham, and they stared at one another as if they expected to read Burke or Debrett written on their faces. At the Trocadero the music is good, and though you would never dream of calling the people smart, yet they are interesting. The women look like problem-plays, and I am sure the men spend their time between Sandown Park and St. John's Wood.
We went once to the Empire, but it was awfully stupid, and I never want to go again. Being September, the boxes were empty, and only a few of the orchestra stalls were taken, but the gallery and the pit seemed full, and the Aubrey Beardsley women were walking about just as usual. But such a performance! Blanche and I never laughed once for the night; we were told afterwards that you are not supposed to expect anything funny at the first-class music halls now-a-days; if you want to laugh you must go to the cheap places. A fat woman in tights and a stage smile had some performing parrots and birds, and one or two people in evening-dress, who have left the chorus of the Opera to star, sang something, and there was a huge ballet whose chief features appear to be the time and cost it takes to produce—that was all. You couldn't imagine anything more deadly dull, and a man near us slept all through the ballet. Blanche and I felt utterly exhausted after it; it was so boring. They say the Palace and the Alhambra are not a bit different; only the Palace, in place of the ballet has a Biograph, which wiggles and makes you feel cross-eyed.
We found it much jollier to spend the evenings in the drawing-room at Claridge's. I don't know why we came to such a place, and I certainly never will again. There are very few people stopping in the hotel, a couple of Grand Dukes, some Americans, and the Duchess of Rougemont, who is up in town for a few days. This morning Something Pasha, with a fez, arrived from Cairo, and Eleanora, Countess of Merryone and her boy husband. I am sure it is a love-match, for he won't let her out of his sight, and looks at her as if she were something good to eat. She must be fully twenty-five years older than he and looks it, for he hasn't a hair on his face, and blushes when you speak to him. But she keeps her youth, and when the Society papers call her beautiful they speak the truth for once.
I remember her quite well when I was your age; she was known then as the beautiful Lady Merryone, and Society was divided into two parties, one of which declared that she was the most beautiful woman in England, and the other that Mrs. Palsgrave was. Their photographs were in all the shop windows, and their portraits in every Academy, and fashions were named after them. There was the Palsgrave toque and the Merryone bolero, and everything they did was chronicled in the papers, just as if it mattered. Each tried to outdo the other, and Mrs. Palsgrave, who had the most beautiful feet you ever saw out of marble, went to an historical fancy-ball as Cleopatra, and her feet were absolutely bare. Her portrait was afterwards painted in the costume, but it was hung at the salon, as it was considered too indecent for the Academy. And what a sensation it was when Mr. Palsgrave blew his brains out in the height of a London Season, and left so many debts that Mrs. Palsgrave to get rid of them went on the stage, where a Serene Highness saw her and fell in love with her, and married her. They say you wouldn't recognise her now, she has changed so; she lives somewhere in Germany and is as grey as a badger and as red as a lobster and bloated with beer.
But Eleanora, Countess of Merryone, is still to the fore. Merryone, who was old enough to be her grandfather, died of a fit of jealousy; then she turned Roman Catholic and went into a convent, but it sounds better in books than it is in practice, and she came out again in six months and married a Bishop within a year of Merryone's death, and buried him within another year. She has been a Primrose Dame and a Temperance lecturer and a Theosophist, and kept a stud at Newmarket, and edited a daily, and started for the North Pole but turned back at Iceland, and now she has married this boy. And she isn't a lunatic at large, but a woman who ought to have borne children, and had cares and anxieties.
It makes me feel quite old, when I think of her and Mrs. Palsgrave, and see all the changes of the last eighteen years. But I won't think of time and the Burial Service yet awhile. I saw Valmond in Piccadilly to-day, and I believe I could catch him myself if I tried, for I haven't got a grey hair, at least Thérèse manages to hide them; and I haven't got a moustache, and my eyes haven't got wrinkles round the corners, and my neck hasn't begun to shrink. I am only thirty-five, Elizabeth, and a Society belle's star sets late.—Your dearest Mamma.
Claridge's Hotel, London
16th September
Darling Elizabeth:
We met Sir Charles Bevon in Regent Street this morning. He had just arrived from the continent, and looked it, for he wore a Glengarry cap and a yellow and brown check travelling suit, and carried on his arm a hideous ulster-looking thing that had stripes all over it. He said he was going to the Café Royal to lunch, and asked us if we would join him, and, as we wanted to hear what had happened at Lucerne after we left, we accepted his invitation.
The Wertzelmanns' ball ended the season; when Sir Charles left a week after us the National was almost empty. The great sensation that followed the ball was what he called "l'affaire Colorado." You remember my mentioning the angelically beautiful creature stopping at Schloss Gessler? Well, it seems Count Fosca gave a breakfast-party at the Gütsch, and said in chaff that he believed Madame Colorado was the "dame voilée" of the Dreyfus Affair. This was repeated, and Madame Colorado, it seems, nearly died of mortification. Her brother was telegraphed for, and he came over at once from St. Moritz and challenged Count Fosca. He was a tiny little man, with red hair and a pale face, and looked as if Fosca's pistols would blow him to atoms. He asked Sir Charles and Mr. Vanduzen to be his témoins, but both of course refused. Mr. Vanduzen got positively funky, and said his Government would take away his pension, if he had anything to do with duelling. So Madame Colorado's brother asked the Marquis and the Vicomte, who jumped at the chance. I don't know whom Fosca asked. The duel excited no end of talk and scandal. The most awful things were said about Madame Colorado and Mr. Wertzelmann, and poor Madame Colorado, who had had such an unhappy marriage, and had thought of entering a convent, was simply picked to pieces. Every one made the affaire his or her own business, and the Duchesse de Vaudricourt declared that Madame Colorado had behaved so badly with a priest that the nuns wouldn't have her at any price. The upshot of it all was that, after the greatest publicity and scurrility, Count Fosca apologised, said his words had been entirely misquoted, that he had the greatest respect for Madame Colorado, and he took her brother and the témoins over to Berne in his automobile, and they all signed documents before the French Minister.
Sir Charles said that after that, Madame Colorado and her brother left Lucerne with Mrs. Wertzelmann, and Mr. Wertzelmann went to Berne to transact some diplomatic business. Sir Charles left himself immediately afterwards, and spent some days in Paris, where he met the Vicomte, who told him that Mrs. Isaacs had come back and broken off the engagement between Rosalie and Count Albert. As far as the Vicomte could ascertain she had been to Vienna to make enquiries about the Count, and found out to her horror that he had a wife and several children, and that he wasn't divorced. Mrs. Johnson gave the Count his congé and threatened him with all sorts of condign vengeance, but Sir Charles said Count Albert probably laughed, as no doubt it was not the first time he had tried the same little game.
It was fun for a fortnight, but I am sure the society at Lucerne would have bored me if I had stopped much longer. Of course it hasn't got the backbone of ours at home, and all sorts of people mix in it, as you see, from millionaires to clerks. All that is asked of one is to be amusing, and, if you are an American, to spend your money. Nobody knows anything really about anybody else, and, as everybody wants to be distracted, there are no scruples as to the means employed. I should not like to see Lucerne customs adopted in England, but after all one meets the same sort of people in London, and, to give the devil his due, I believe that the Hotel National set is no worse than Lord Valmond's or Mrs. Smith's.
Sir Charles thinks we ought to try a winter at Rome. But I shall settle down quietly at Monk's Folly for some time to come. There is one thing I would willingly exchange with our Continental friends, and that is the domestics in our smart hotels. Here, in England, they give themselves the airs of royal servants, and condescend to wait on us inferior mortals; they make me feel positively uncomfortable with their impudent solemnity. I hear Blanche warning me from the next room not to miss the train, so good-bye till I get home.—Your dearest Mamma.
Monk's Folly, 18th September
Darling Elizabeth:
Home once more! I never knew how much I had missed it till I got back. I wonder how I ever left it, everything is so comfortable and refined. I feel quite clean again—I mean morally clean, and that's a sensation that we in our station and particular set get so seldom. I believe the return to an English home is a moral douche. I feel virtuous; I went to hear Mr. Frame preach in the morning and almost went again this evening. I half made up my mind to put aside Paquin and make a guy of myself, I felt so good; but a glimpse of Lady Beatrice in church this morning with a Taunton milliner's dream on her back, put me off, and as soon as I had taken a tiny blue pill and driven the hypochondria of Lucerne dissipation away, I shall be my old self again—the self you know, Elizabeth, all Paquin and Henry Arthur Jones.
What an awful imposition tipping is. Servants won't look at small change now-a-days, and when I gave the boy who works the lift five shillings, his "Thank you" sounded just like "Damn you." Mrs. Chevington, who came over this afternoon, told me of an experience she had the last time she was in town, but I am sure I should never have had the courage to do what she did. She was only three days in some hotel in the West End; she had tipped the chamber-maid, the man in the lift, the maître d'hôtel, the waiter, and sent a half-sovereign in to the cook, and was waiting for a hansom, when up rushed a man she had never seen before to help her into it. He took off his hat and was very polite; hotel-porter was written all over him, and she supposed she ought to tip him, but said her gorge rose at it, as he had never done anything for her. However, she put a half-crown in his hat, and he never said "Thank you," which made her so savage that she took it back again. The result was that at Paddington the cabman thought she was stingy, and he was so abusive that she had to call a policeman, and compel the man to take the right fare.
But then Mrs. Chevington is masterful, and doesn't mind attracting a crowd and being insulted, while I should have fainted with mortification. I am sending you a cheque expressly for tips, for I know that in country houses they are even more grasping than in hotels. I wish Royalty would stop it, for I don't think any other means will ever avail.
Blanche came over to supper, and to spend the night, for she said she wanted to talk of the National and old times, and at home it was nothing but tennis, bicycles, and church. Things have been rather uneventful while we were away; we missed some races at Bath, to which the Parkers took a Pullman-full of people. Lady Beatrice gave a dance, and there was a Sunday-school feast at Braxome, when the boys pulled up all of Lady Beatrice's geraniums, and threw stones on the roof of the stables for the fun of hearing the horses plunge in the stalls, and, to Mr. Frame's terror, when Lady Beatrice scolded them, they made faces at her.
The Blaines have had to send away Monsieur Malorme; he made love to Daisy, and when she told him it was impertinent, he was so cut up that one of the footmen found him trying to hang himself with his handkerchief from a nail in the wall of his room, having first taken down a snow-storm that Mrs. Elaine had painted when she was twelve. But the only damage he succeeded in doing was to put his foot through the canvas, and pull down half the wall. The Blaines have since heard that he did a similar thing when coaching the Duke of FitzArthur. Since then, Daisy has received threatening letters in a female hand from Soho, giving her the choice between being summoned as a co-respondent, and paying ten guineas. Poor Mrs. Blaine has been awfully upset about it, and has put the matter in Mr. Rumple's hands.
I don't think there is any more gossip to tell you, save that Tom Carterville, who was at Eton with Charlie Carriston, and went out with the Yeomanry to South Africa, has come back. Lady Beatrice is so glad to have him home safe and sound that she intends to return thanks to the Almighty by entertaining a good deal.
Mrs. Chevington told me in the afternoon that she had read in one of the Society papers that the Smiths have taken a house in Park Lane, and that Mr. Wertz, the African millionaire you met at Nazeby, is engaged to marry Cushla O'Cork, the Irish agitatress. But then, you know, the Society papers will say anything to fill up their columns, and it must be so hard to find something new and true every week. I like your habit of always practising the ingénue, even in your letters to me, it helps you to act it the better. I hope you will meet Lord Valmond soon again, but of course you will, as he is sure to be visiting at the same houses. Write me all that happens, just as I write to you. There is nothing so nice as a letter full of what other people are doing.—Your dearest Mamma.
Monk's Folly, 29th October
Darling Elizabeth:
The hockey season has begun here, and the game is played somewhere every day. Of course, I only go to look on, and can't imagine myself, in a short skirt and thick boots, rushing about a damp field. Yesterday the Blaines had a party, and I have been having twinges of neuralgia all day from it, for it was awfully wet and cold. Mrs. Blaine and I sat on an iron roller, till we were chilled to the bone. There was a fog so thick that nobody knew which side they belonged to, and Lady Beatrice, who really at her age ought to stop, got a blow on her forehead just above the nose. The play only stopped a minute for people to shout, "Dear Lady Beatrice, hope you are not hurt!" and Tom Carterville took advantage of the momentary distraction to sneak a goal. Mrs. Blaine took Lady Beatrice indoors, and, as Lady Beatrice described it to me, she filled a basin with blood. She showed me her ankles, and there wasn't a bit of white skin from the knees down, but she said hockey was great fun, and kept her in health. They always put her to keep goal, for she is so fat it is only one chance in a hundred that a ball will pass her.
Father Ribbit came to look on, and walked back to the house with me when the match was over. He said tea was the best part of hockey, and I agreed with him; he tried nearly everything on the tea-table, and talked with his mouth full of chocolate cake about the price of incense. I really can't understand how the Blaines go to his church, but Blanche says it is on account of her mother, who thinks Low Church schismatic. You should have seen Father Ribbit glare at Mr. Frame when he came into the room, looking in his hockey things as if he had been mending the roads. Father Ribbit wears a silk neckcloth with I.H.S. embroidered on it, and Blanche says he puts ashes on his head in Holy Week. Mrs. Dorking, who is a Roman Catholic, told me nothing made her laugh so much as a High Church Anglican; they were always doing odd things, which the Low Church people called "Popish Practices," but in reality nothing was more erroneous, and that she had heard that no two Ritualist priests did the same things. Mrs. Blaine had induced her once to go to Father Ribbit's, and assured her she wouldn't find any difference between her own service and his. Mrs. Dorking said she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to keep from shrieking, for Father Ribbit seemed to be making up rites as he went along, and didn't at all look or act like a real priest. Lady Beatrice, who happened to overhear us, and looks on Rome and Ritualism as the abomination of abomination, said she wished Henry the Eighth was alive, and that she would as soon think of inviting "that Ribbit to Braxome as a play-actor."
Tom Carterville is much improved since he went to South Africa. Before he went out he was only an overgrown boy, but the experience has made him quite manly. His mother is always telling people in his hearing what dangers he ran, and how brave he was. Like everybody else, she likes to play Aunt Sally with the poor War Office, but her grievance is that Tom hasn't been recommended for the V.C. Tom declares he never ran any danger at all, for he was never sent to the front, and never saw a Boer the whole time; and he didn't even get enteric, or kicked by a horse. But Lady Beatrice fairly beams, and says it's his modesty, and she wishes he had been shut up in Ladysmith, for she knows he would have found a way to raise the siege, and Tom looks quite foolish, and says, "Damn!"
One of the maids at Braxome dressed up in his khaki uniform the other day, and went into the kitchen, where she frightened the servants out of their wits at her audacity. It seems Lady Beatrice went to the servants' hall that day, a thing she has never been known to do before, and arrived there in time to hear the butler say to the maid:
"What would you do if Mr. Tom should catch you in his uniform?" To which the girl replied, suiting the action to her words, "I should salute him!"
Tom, who told me the story and put a double entendre in it, like a horrid boy, said it would be hard to say whether the servants were more horrified to see his mother, or his mother at the unheard-of fastness of the upper housemaid, who, he added, was a pretty little wench, and brought him his tea in the mornings before he got out of bed.
I am almost inclined to make my peace with those bores who are always talking servants. Mine have been troubling me so much lately that I feel quite martyrised. I ordered the carriage to go to Taunton the other morning, and got myself ready, when, would you believe, that Perkins sent in to say that I couldn't go, as the roads were too heavy and the horses would slip! I sent for him and implored him to relent, and he finally let Alfred drive me in the dog-cart, and Alfred drove so fast, I thought I should be pitched out. I call it quite unkind of Perkins, and he has been with us ten years too. Then, again, the other morning Tom Carterville came to ask me if I could lend him any golf balls, and Thérèse told me afterwards that she found James peeping through the keyhole, and when she remonstrated, he threatened to blackmail me; now I know why Lord Froom got rid of him, and I have given him notice. But the worst of all, Elizabeth, is the new page. You know how hard it is to get one at all. Well, finally, in despair, I followed Mrs. Chevington's advice and sent to the workhouse in Bath for a boy. They sent me such a pretty little fellow, about twelve years old. I had him measured for his livery, and he looked such a dear in it, and was picking up his duties so quickly, but I have had to send him back to Bath to his workhouse. The kitchen cat had kittens, and cook, very foolishly, gave them to the boy, and told him to get rid of them. Some little while later, I heard a horrid miaouing on the lawn, and went to the window to see what it was. I found the new page digging a hole in the geranium beds, and something sputtering about in the earth. Fancy, Elizabeth, he was burying the poor little kittens alive, the little monster! Of course I couldn't keep him after that, could I?
So you see, darling, even if you are a pretty and rich widow, and only live for Paquin and a good time, you still have your troubles. Lady Beatrice says the question of servants is more troublesome than Home Rule, and I agree with her.
Give my love to Lady Theodosia, but don't tell her that I am glad she doesn't live in this part of the country.—Your dearest Mamma.
Monk's Folly, 31st October
Darling Elizabeth:
Tom Carterville came again this morning to ask if I would lend him Jerry to ride to Wellington, as the equestrian cook has lamed the three saddle-horses at Braxome. I sent to ask Perkins for permission, and after I got it, Tom didn't seem in a hurry to go, and stopped so long that I had to ask him to lunch, and then he waited till tea. He is an amusing boy, but I wish he didn't look so much like his mother. When he is a little older he is going to be enormous. You know he was at Eton with Charlie Carriston, and declares there wasn't a greater sneak in the school.
I told him about Cora de la Haye and the diamond necklace, and Tom says she is just the sort of woman to make trouble, and that Lady Carriston had better put on her life-preserver, for there is going to be a storm of Charlie's brewing. He told me all about the Daintree affair; he called Daintree a rotter, and says he will never marry the girl.
You know Lady Daintree went to the War Office herself, and refused to leave till they promised to order Daintree out to South Africa at once. The girl is suing for breach of promise,—ten thousand pounds damages,—Tom says that the Daintree barony will never stand it, for it hasn't recovered from the late lord's plunging on the turf. He says that Connie Metcalfe is good enough for Daintree, who is an awful mug, and that a Gaiety girl would make as good a ladyship as a coryphée at the Empire. It seems to me that Lady Daintree is herself to blame for it all; if she had used tact with her son and brought him up sensibly, she wouldn't have to eat her pride now.
I asked Tom if he intended to follow the fashion and marry in the theatrical world, and have Lady Beatrice begging the War Office to send him to the Front, so that he might die sooner than disgrace her. He looked at me with a queer expression and said he preferred to follow the other fashion now in vogue, and marry a beauty twice his age. I told him I believed he was thinking of Miss Tancred of Exeter, the temperance lecturer, who read "L'Assommoir" to the Braxome tenantry last week, and who wears short hair, green goggles and a bicycle skirt, and is fifty, if she is a day. Tom laughed, and said I had hit the right nail on the head. A jolly youngster, and might do for you, Elizabeth, if Valmond turns sour. He will have Braxome and twenty thousand a year when Lady Beatrice dies.
To-night I dined at Astley Court; the Parkers have a large house-party. Miss Parker is to marry Clandevil in ten days, the invitations have been out some time; it is to be a very grand affair. Both she and the Duke appear bored with one another already, and Mr. Parker has been heard to say to a compatriot that his daughter had made him promise her a title, and that he had bought her an English duke; it was a bit off colour, but good at the price.
I went in to dinner with an odious man, a Mr. Sweetson; he is Mr. Parker's partner in America, and was so patronising. He wore a button with the American flag on it, just like Mr. Wertzelmann the night of the ball at Schloss Gessler, and underneath it there was another one of white enamel with "Let her go, Gallagher," in black letters on it. I wonder what it could have meant; I would have asked him, but I thought it might seem rude. The people at Croixmare couldn't have eaten worse than Mr. Sweetson; he put his napkin in his collar, and it was well he did, for he spilled his soup all over it, and he sucked his teeth when he had finished. I asked him what he thought of England, and he replied that he preferred to spend his money in his own country, and couldn't see how a man like Mr. Parker, who had the brains to make the big fortune he had, could settle down in one of the effete countries of the Old World. And he added if he had his way he would put the Monroe Doctrine into force and drive Europe altogether out of America. He became quite farouche, and I am sure he is an Irish-American, for they say they hate us more than the other Americans. Algy Chevington told me that Mr. Sweetson is a Tammany Tiger, whatever that is; at any rate it isn't anything nice, and I am sure Mr. Parker had better put him to eat in the servants' hall hereafter. He is some relation to Mrs. Parker, for he called her Cousin Petunia; Clandevil looked as if he could have strangled him, and Algy says Mr. Parker must have put down millions in hard cash, or Clandevil would never go through with the marriage.
Mr. Sweetson stepped on Lady Beatrice's yellow brocade after dinner, and ripped out fully a yard of stitches. You should have seen the glance she gave him; it was more terrible than the one she bestowed on Mr. Frame the day he was unlucky enough to beat her at tennis. Mr. Sweetson was awfully embarrassed; if it had been anyone less objectionable, I should have felt sorry for him. He only made matters worse by asking her what it cost, for he would send her ladyship a dress the following day at double the price. Lady Beatrice put up her pince-nez, and stared at him without uttering a word; then she sailed across the room and sat down beside Mrs. Chevington. "Cousin Petunia" told Mr. Sweetson that if he wanted to smoke, he would find the gentlemen in the billiard-room. He took the hint.
Tom Carterville came and sat down next to me, and made me nearly choke with the funny things he said about the Parkers, and he believes his mother will drop them. There is such a garrulous old lady stopping at Astley, Mrs. Dot; Tom took her in to supper. She came across the room and joined us. She began to talk about the nobility, and told us she considered she belonged to it, for though she was an American, she could trace her ancestry back to the Scottish Chiefs, and she asked Tom what he thought it would cost to have Burke put her in the peerage among the collateral branches. Then she told us she was descended also from Admiral Coligny. Poor dear Coligny, she called him, and she certainly would have been a Roman Catholic, if it hadn't been for Coligny. Tom asked her quite innocently if she had left Coligny in America, and when he intended to come over. "When he comes to Astley, Mrs. Dot," he said, "be sure you let me know, I'll give him a run with the West Somerset Harriers."
"He's dead! Mr. Carterville," she fairly shrieked.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said. "I thought from the way you spoke that he was in New York or Chicago, making money like all nice Americans."
"Oh, is it possible, Mr. Carterville," she went on, "that you have never heard of Coligny, poor dear Coligny, who was killed in the St. Bartholomew Massacre!"
"With all due respect to your relation," Tom said, "I never heard of the sad catastrophe; I don't read any but the sporting papers. I suppose the what-do-you-call-it massacre was in one of your little wars on the frontier. I hope they didn't get his scalp, Mrs. Dot."
Miss Parker, who was sitting quite near and heard every word, turned round and said, "Don't you see they are making fun of you, Aunt?" Mrs. Dot turned very red and simpered, and Tom and I felt as if we were looking for the North Pole.
I do call it unkind for people to make you feel uncomfortable in their houses. These Parkers are not at all like the Wertzelmanns and the other Americans I met at Lucerne. And I am sure if Lady Beatrice does call on them, that Lady Archibald Fairoaks and the Marchioness of Runymede, who are the nicest kind of Americans, wouldn't. Good-night, darling, I shall expect to hear from you to-morrow.—Your dearest Mamma.
P. S.—When I got back from Astley to-night, I had the greatest difficulty to get into the house. No one answered the bell, and finally Perkins, who has a key to the kitchen, let me in that way. I went into the dining-room and rang and called; still no one came. I then went upstairs and found Thérèse, the two maids, the cook, and the new page, sitting round a blazing wood fire in my bed-room, and cook was reading "The Master Christian" to them aloud!
I cried from pure vexation, for one can't send all one's servants away at the same time. I am sure I can't see why the lower classes should have novelists, but they have everything just like us now-a-days. And when I was in town last month, at Claridge's, the Duchess of Rougemont told me she didn't know what the world was coming to, for her maid belonged to a Corelli Society, and she had actually sat next her own footman at a Paderewski Recital the last time the pianist was in London.
Monk's Folly, 2nd November
Darling Elizabeth:
The Blaines had some theatricals yesterday in St. Leo's school-house, to raise money to give Father Ribbit a host. In spite of the weather being horrid I went. They acted "My Lord in Livery," and a manager came down from a West End theatre to stage it. They only cleared two guineas when all expenses were paid, which of course won't buy a host, though Mrs. Blaine suggested they might find a second-hand one cheap in an old curiosity shop. I thought the acting was atrocious, but they were all mightily pleased with themselves, and are now thinking of playing "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," and renting the Taunton theatre. But that is always the way with amateurs.
Lady Beatrice is getting up tableaux at Braxome in opposition, and Mr. Frame came to-day to ask me to help. Tom brought me a nice note from his mother, imploring me to say Yes, and I have consented, and there is to be a lunch at Braxome to-morrow to decide on what we shall do. Lady Beatrice says she feels it her duty to use all her influence with the Bishop to have Father Ribbit tried by the Ecclesiastical Court. There is every sign of a church war, for Mrs. Blaine declares she will write to her uncle, who is in the Cabinet, to back up Father Ribbit. And it's nothing but church and theatricals; as you know down here in the country it is always church and something else. I shall do all I can to fan the fire, and Tom has promised to help me, for we are so terribly dull, anything will serve to wake us up a bit.
I have called on the Vane-Corduroys, who have leased Shotover Park from the De Mantons. Poor Lady de Manton cried when she left it, and is living in a boarding-house on the Parade at Weston-super-mare; old Lord de Manton has gone up to London, where he thinks he can get a Chairmanship of a City Company for the sake of his name. The Honourable Agatha has gone out to South Africa on a hospital ship, and her brother, the Honourable de Montgomery de Manton, whom, you remember, we met once on the Promenade at Cannes, and I wouldn't let you bow to him because he was walking with such an impossible woman, has joined the Imperial Yeomanry as a trooper. The family seems quite broken up; it is rather a pity, as they had been at Shotover since the Conquest. Mrs. Blaine says it is all due to Kaffirs; that Lord de Manton would set up as a stockbroker, and you know what a mess he got the lunatic asylum accounts into the year he was treasurer. But, as Mrs. Blaine says, he will probably be back at Shotover within a year, for he is just the sort of man they like to get on directorates in London, and that is such a paying profession now-a-days. He told Lady Beatrice that if worse became worst with him he knew the Colonial Office would give him an island to govern. He didn't seem very depressed when he left, but Lady de Manton was completely bouleversée. Tom told me that she had written to his mother to say that Weston-super-mare was intolerable; they gave her Brussels sprouts and boiled beef six days running; she wanted Lady Beatrice to help her get the post of stewardess on one of the new West Indian line steamers to Jamaica; she makes a point of the fact that she was never sick when crossing the Channel. She seems willing to do anything till poor Lord de Manton "arrives."
How I digress! I started to tell you of the Vane-Corduroys, and I shunted off to the De Mantons; you will think me as garrulous as an old maid.
I don't know how the Vane-Corduroys got their money, but I think it was out of "Sparklets," though Tom says he is sure he has seen "Corduroy's Lung Tonic" on the signboards at the Underground stations. Lady Beatrice, who takes up every new person out of sheer curiosity, called, and of course everybody else had to. But Lady Beatrice, who always has a reason for everything she does, said that she did it for Lady de Manton's sake, who had told her that if the Vane-Corduroys were properly rangé, it would help Lord de Manton in the City. Mr. Vane-Corduroy is the very type of a company-promoter; you know what I mean—they are always paunchy, and wear frock-coats, and top-hats, and have a President-of-a-Republic air. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy has dyed hair, the colour of tawny port, and she dresses like the ready-made models at Peter Robinson's. She looks exactly like a doll, and all the time I was talking to her, I felt that if I pinched her waist, she would say "Made in England." I am sure you wind her up with a key. They have completely changed the drawing-room at Shotover—you remember what a splendid air there was about it, with the old, worm-eaten Flemish tapestry, and the oak panelling—well, they have had the upholsterers down from Maple's, and it is now spick-and-span Louis Quinze; there are foot-stools in front of all the chairs, and the De Manton ancestors have all got new gilt frames. They have two children, a boy and a girl. The girl is about twelve, and has a French governess, a strange-looking woman, something like Louise Michel, with a moustache. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy told me she had the highest references, and that she had come to them from a Russian Grand-Duke's family. The boy is at Eton.
I asked them how they thought they would like Somersetshire. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy said she missed town—there was no Church Parade, no Prince's, no Bond Street, and no dear little Dog Cemetery, like the one in the Park. She thought the latter was such a peaceful spot, and she felt quite happy to think that Fido would rest there till the Resurrection, under his little Carrara marble cross. It was evidently a very depressing subject, and Mr. Vane-Corduroy hastened to change it by saying that his wife found the country a bit lonely just at first, but people had been very kind in calling on them, and that he was sure they would like it immensely, as he intended to fill the house with people from town, and that they should always spend the season at their house in Grosvenor Square, and part of the winter at Nice; and when they were not visiting, they would either be yachting, or at their shooting-box in the highlands. In fact, he gave me to understand that they would probably never be more than a couple of months in the year at Shotover.
They have taken seats at Father Ribbit's, and they have subscribed most liberally to all the local charities. I must say I think it rather an imposition, for they hadn't been in the county a week, before they were inundated with appeals for money; but, as Lady Beatrice says, that if such people will mix in our set, they must pay for it, and besides, their names and the sums they give are published in the Taunton papers, so that it is not as if they were not getting any return for their money.
I suppose it does pay in the end, for the Rector of St. William's preached a regular eulogy on Mr. Parker last Sunday, who is restoring the whole church, for he found some old dilapidated tablets in it with "Parker" on them, and he is sure they are his ancestors. He had a letter of thanks from the Bishop about it, and the Times devoted a column to it; said it was such things that drew America and England together, and that Mr. Parker's love of architecture was only equalled by his knowledge of it, and that St. William's restored would be an everlasting monument, in Early English Gothic, to his memory. And I don't believe Mr. Parker knows a gargoyle from a reredos.
I must stop now, darling, for Mrs. Chevington has just called, and I must go down and see her. I shall expect to hear from you to-morrow.—Your dearest Mamma.
Monk's Folly, 4th November
Darling Elizabeth:
Such a frightful thing happened yesterday. The Vane-Corduroys came to return my call in their motor-car, and it blew up at the front door. One of the wheels fell into the conservatory, and the groom was picked up insensible on the lawn. He had to be brought into the house, where he has been ever since, and is likely to be for some days, for Dr. Smart says if he is moved in his present state he will die. Fortunately for the Vane-Corduroys they had just entered the house, or they might have been killed. You never heard such a noise; it sounded like a cannonade, and Perkins says it will cost me at least one hundred pounds to repair the damage. The Vane-Corduroys apologised profusely, and looked as if they wished they had been blown up along with the groom to hide their confusion. Perkins and the gardener have been picking up bits of motor-car all over the grounds to-day. I had to send the Vane-Corduroys back to Shotover in the victoria.
We had a rehearsal of the tableaux at Braxome in the evening. Lady Beatrice looked absurd as Britannia; she posed herself after the tail of a penny; Mr. Parker as Uncle Sam, and Mr. Vane-Corduroy as John Bull, shaking hands, were quite good, but Mr. Frame, who was working the red, white, and blue light, set fire to himself, and might have been burned to death, but for his presence of mind. He put himself out by wrapping himself in Lady Beatrice's Gobelin tapestry, which she had specially made in Paris last year. You should have seen Lady Beatrice's face, and she called him "Frame," as she always does when she is angry with him, and she told him he might have waited till they brought some water to throw over him. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy, as Lady Macbeth going to murder Duncan, would have been effective, if she hadn't laughed in the middle of it. Everybody said that Tom and I in "The Black Brunswicker's Farewell" were the best, but Tom squeezed me so, I could hardly breathe, and when the curtain dropped he said we must do it over again for an encore.
We think the tableaux will be a great success, for all the tickets on sale at Mr. Dill's, the chemist, have been sold, and he wrote to ask Lady Beatrice if he could have some more printed. Mrs. Parker told Lady Beatrice it was awfully good of her to give her drawing-room over to the "peasantry," as she calls the Taunton people.