Mrs Albert Grundy—Observations in Philistia

1st Citizeness. Not at all! Thank you for – for thanking me for – Well —good-bye. (Exit – with family group.)

Husband of 2nd Citizeness (with gloom). And who might those thankful bounders be?

2nd Citizeness (wearily). O, don’t ask me! I don’t know! From Addison Road way, I should think.

1st Citizeness (outside). Well! If that thing gets into the Academy!

Family Group. Did you notice the ridiculous way her hair was done? Did you ever taste such tea in your life? How yellow Mrs. General Wragg is getting to look in the daylight. Yes – there’s our four-wheeler. (Exeunt omnes.)

The above is not intended for presentation upon any stage – not even that of the Independent Theatre. It has been cast into the dramatic mould merely for convenience’ sake. It embodies what I chiefly remember about Picture Sunday.

It has come to be my annual duty – a peculiarly hardy, not to say temerarious, annual – to convoy Mrs Albert Grundy and her party about sections of Chelsea and Brompton on the earlier of the two Show Sabbaths. I drifted into this function through having once shared an attic with a young painter, whose colleagues used to come to borrow florins of him whenever one of his pictures disappeared from any shop window, and so incidentally formed my acquaintance. My claim nowadays upon their recollection is really very slight. I just know them well enough to manage the last Sunday in March: even that might be awkward if they were not such good-natured fellows.

But it would be difficult to persuade Mrs Albert of this. That good lady is wont, when the playfully benignant mood is upon her, to describe me as her connecting link with Bohemia. She probably would be puzzled to explain her meaning; I certainly should. But if she were provided with affidavits setting forth the whole truth – viz., that my entire income is derived from an inherited part-interest in an artificial-ice machine; that there are two clergymen on the committee of my only club; that I am free from debt; and that I play duets on the piano with my sister – still would she cling to the belief that I am a young man with an extremely gay, rakish side, who could make thrilling revelations of Bohemia if I would. Of course, I am never questioned on the subject; but I can see that it is a point upon which the faith of Fernbank is firmly grounded. Often Mrs Albert’s conversation cuts figure-eights on very thin ice when we are alone, as if just to show me that she knows. More than once I have discovered Ermyntrude looking furtively at me, as the wistful shepherd-boy on the plains of Dura might have gazed at the distant haze overhanging bold, unspeakable Babylon. I rarely visit the house but Uncle Dudley winks at me. However, nothing is ever asked me about the dreadful things with which they suppose me to be upon intimate terms.

It seemed for a long time, on Sunday, as if an easy escape had been arranged for me by Providence. At two o’clock, the hour appointed for our crusade, a heavy fog overhung everything. Looking out from the drawing-room windows, only the very nearest of the neatly trimmed firs on the lawn were to be distinguished. The street beyond was utter blackness.

At three o’clock the ladies took off their bonnets. It was really too bad. Uncle Dudley, strolling in from his nap in the library, suggested that with a lantern we might visit some of the nearer studios: “not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.” Mrs Albert turned a look of tearful vexation upon him, before which he fled.

“There’s this consolation,” she remarked presently, holding me with an unwavering eye: “if we are to be defrauded out of our expedition to-day, that will furnish all the more reason why you should take us next Sunday —the Sunday. You have often talked of having us see the Academicians at home – but we’ve never been.”

“I remember that there has been talk about it,” I said; “but hardly that the talk was mine. Truth is, I don’t know a single Academician, even by sight.”

It was clear that they did not believe me. Mrs Albert continued: “Lady Wallaby expressed surprise, only last evening, that we should consent to go about among the outsiders. She and her daughter never do.”

“Outsiders!” I was tempted into saying. “Why, they can paint the head off the Academy!”

Miss Timby-Hucks simpered outright. “You do say such droll things!” she remarked, somewhat obscurely. “Mamma always declares that you remind her of the Sydney Bulletin.”

“Whom do you take to the Academy Show Sunday? – or perhaps I oughtn’t to ask,” came from Ermyntrude.

“No, we have no right to inquire,” said Mrs Albert; and I turned to the window and the enshrouded lawn once more.

All at once the fog lifted. The bonnets were produced again. Nearly three hours of daylight remained to us. Tidings that the horse was too lame to be taken out only staggered Mrs Albert for the briefest fraction of time. There were still four-wheelers in Gilead. Besides, if the driver happened to be sober, he would know the streets so much better than their stupid coachman. This would be of advantage, because time was so limited. We should have to just run in, say “How-d’ye-do,” take a flying look round, and scamper out again, Mrs Albert said. By firmly adhering to this rule, she estimated that we might do sixteen or seventeen studios.

Heaven alone knows how many we did “do.” Nor have I any clear recollections of what we saw. A confused vision remains to me of long hall-ways lined with frames and packing-cases; half-an-acre, more or less, of painted canvas, out of which only here and there a pair of bright eyes, a glowing field of poppies, or the sheen from a satin gown, fixed itself disconnectedly on the memory; hordes and hordes of tall young women helping themselves to tea and cakes; and always the pathetic figure of the artist’s wife, or sister, tired to very death, standing by the door with a wearied smile on her lips, and the polite falsehood, “So good of you to come!” on her tongue. I wondered, I remember, if she never forgot herself and said instead, “So kind of you to go!” But under Mrs Albert’s system there was no time to wait and see.

Once, indeed, we dallied over our task. Mrs Albert encountered a lady from Wormwood Scrubs of her acquaintance, who was indiscreet enough to mention that she had been asked to stop here for supper. The news spread through the petticoated portion of my group as by magic. Miss Timby-Hucks came over and asked me, so audibly that the artist-host had to blush and turn away, if I didn’t think it would be a deliciously romantic experience to sup in one of these lofty studios, with the gaslight on the armour, and the great, solemnly silent pictures looking down upon us as we ate. Mrs Albert lingered for some time looking at this artist’s work with her head on one side, and eyes filled with rapt, dreamy enjoyment – but nothing came of it.

It was after we had been back in Fern-bank for an hour or more – our own cold repast nearly over – that Mrs Albert thought of something. She laid down her fork with a gesture of annoyance. “It has just occurred to me,” she said; “we never went to that Mr Whistler’s, whose pictures are on exhibition in Bond Street. Everybody’s talking about him, and I did so want not to miss his studio.”

“I don’t think he has a Show Sunday,” I said. “I never heard of it, if he has.”

“O no, it is only these last few weeks that anybody has heard of him,”

Mrs Albert replied. “I read the first announcement about his beautiful pictures in The Daily Tarradiddle only the other day.”

“Whistler? Whistler?” put in Uncle Dudley. “Why, surely he’s not new. Why – I remember – he was mixed up in a law-suit, wasn’t it, years ago?”

“O no, Dudley,” responded Mrs Albert; “I was under that same impression, till Lady Wallaby set me right. It seems that was another man altogether – some foreign adventurer who pretended to be able to paint and imposed upon people – don’t you recall how The Tarradiddle exposed him? – and Mr Burnt-Jones had him arrested, or something – O, quite a dreadful person. But this Mr Whistler is an Englishman. I read in The Illustrated London News that he represented modern British Art. That alone would make it quite clear it was a different man. I did so want to see him! Lady-Wallaby tells me she has heard he is extremely amusing in his conversation – and quite presentable manners, too.”

“Why don’t you ask him to dinner?” said Mr Albert Grundy. “If he’s amusing it’s more than most of the men you drum up are.”

“You seem to think everybody can be asked to dinner, Albert,” the lady of the house replied. “Artists don’t dine – unless they are in the Academy, of course. Tea, yes – or perhaps supper; but one doesn’t ask people to meet them at dinner. It’s like actors – and – and non-commissioned officers.”

Affording a Novel and Subdued Scientific Light, by which divers Venerable Problems may be Observed Afresh

It is my opinion,” said Uncle Dudley, stretching out his slippered feet, and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat – “it is my opinion that women are different from men.”

“Several commentators have advanced this view,” I replied. “For example, it has been noted that the gentle sex cross a muddy street on their heels, whereas we skip over on our toes.”

“That is interesting if true,” responded Uncle Dudley. “What I mean is that all this talk about the human race is humbug. There are two human races! And they are getting wider apart every few minutes, too!”

“Have you mentioned this to any one?” I asked.

Uncle Dudley went on developing his theme. “I daresay that for millions of years after the re-separation of the sexes this difference was too slight to be noticed at all. The cave man, for instance – the fellow who went around hunting the Ichthyosaurus with a brick tied on the end of an elm club, and spent the whole winter underground sucking the old bones, and then whittling them up into Runic buttons for the South Kensington Museum: I suppose, now, that his wife and sister-in-law, say, didn’t strike him as being specially different from himself – except, of course, in that they only got plain bones and gristle and so on to eat, whereas all the marrow and general smooth-sailing in meats went his way. You, can’t imagine him saying to himself: ‘These female people here are not of my race at all They are of another species. They are in reality as much my natural enemies as that long-toed, red-headed, brachycephalous tramp living in the gum-tree down by the swamp, who makes offensive gestures as I ride past on my tame Ursus spelous’ – now, can you?”

I frankly shook my head. “No, I don’t seem to be able to imagine that. It would be almost as hard as to guess off-hand where, when, and how you caught this remarkable scientific spasm.”

Uncle Dudley smiled. He rose, and walked with leisurely lightness up and down in front of the chimney-piece, still with his palms spread like little misplaced wings before his armpits. He smiled again. Then he stopped on the hearth-rug and looked down amiably upon me.

“Well – what d’ye think? There’s something in it, eh?”

“My dear fellow,” I began, “what puzzles me is – ”

“O, I don’t mean to say that I’ve worked it all out,” put in Uncle Dudley, reassuringly. “Why, I get puzzled myself, every once in a while. But I’m on the right track, my boy; and, as they say in Adelaide, I’m going to hang to it like a pup to a root.”

“How long have you been this way?” I asked, with an affectation of sympathy.

Uncle Dudley answered with shining eyes. “Why, if you’ll believe me, it seems now as if I’d had the germs of the idea in my mind ever since I came back to England, and began living here at Fernbank. But the thing dawned upon me – that is to say, took shape in my head – less than a fortnight ago. It all came about through being up here one evening with nothing to read, and my toe worse than usual, and Mrs Albert having been out of sorts all through dinner. Somehow, I felt all at once that I’d got to read scientific works. I couldn’t resist it. I was like Joan of Arc when the cows and sheep took partners for a quadrille. I heard voices – Darwin’s and – and – Benjamin Franklin’s – and – lots of others. I hobbled downstairs to the library, and I brought up a whole armful of the books that Mrs Albert bought when she expected Lady Wallaby was going to be able to get her an invitation to attend the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn’s Biological Conversaziones. Look there! What do you say to that for ten days’ work? And had to cut every leaf, into the bargain!”

I gazed with respect at the considerable row of books he indicated: books for the most part bound in the scarlet of the International Series or the maroon of Contemporary Science, but containing also brown covers, and even green “sport” varieties.

“Well, and what is it all about?” I asked. “Why have you read these things? Why not the reports of the Commission on Agricultural Depression, or Lewis Morris’s poems, or even – ” but my imagination faltered and broke.

“It was instinct, my boy,” returned Uncle Dudley, with impressive confidence. “There had been a thought – a great idea – growing and swelling in my head ever since I had been living in this house. But I couldn’t tell what it was. As you might say, it was wrapped up in a cocoon, like the larvæ of the lepidoptera – ahem! – and something was needed to bring it out.”

“When I was here last you were trying Hollands with quinine bitters,” I remarked casually.

“Don’t fool!” Uncle Dudley admonished me. “I’m dead in earnest. As I said, it was pure instinct that led me to these books. They have made everything clear. I only wanted their help to get the husk off my discovery, and hoist it on my back, us it were, and bring it out here in the daylight. And so now you know what I’m getting at when I say: Women are different from Men.”

“That is the discovery, then?” I inquired.

Uncle Dudley nodded several times. Then he went on, with emphasised slowness: “I have lived here now for four years, seeing my sister-in-law every day, watching Ermyntrude grow up to womanhood and the little girls peg along behind her, and meeting the female friends who come here to see them – and, sir, I tell you, they’re not alone a different sex: they’re a different animal altogether! Take my word for it, they’re a species by themselves.”

“Miss Timby-Hucks is certainly very much by herself,” I remarked.

My friend smiled. “And not altogether her own fault either,” he commented. “But, speaking of science, it’s remarkable how, when you once get a firm grip on a big, central, main-guy fact, all the little facts come in of their own accord to support it. Now, there’s that young simpleton you met here at dinner a while ago: I mean Eustace Hump. Do you know that both Ermyntrude and the Timby-Hucks, and even Miss Wallaby, think that that chap is a perfect ideal of masculine wit and beauty? You and I would hesitate about using him to wad a horse-pistol with: but there isn’t one of those girls that wouldn’t leap with joy if he began proposing to her; and as for their mothers, why, the old ladies watch him as a kingfisher eyes a tadpole.”