The Celebrity at Home

“I beg your pardon,” I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn’t like that, and said “Jeunesse oblige,” and “Place aux dames,” and “Juniores ad priores”—every language under the sun, winding up with that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to hang back and keep the king waiting.

“Oh yes, I know that story,” I said, just to prevent him going on bothering. “It’s in Ollendorff.”

The lecture-room was quite full, and we—Lady Scilly and I—squeezed ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were almost in the dark.

“Sit tight, child, whatever happens!” she kept saying, and held my hand as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in I saw why, for it was George!

Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, “Don’t call out, child!”

As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old gentleman had called her a fairy—that meant a tease, and I wasn’t going to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still as she told me, and George began.

I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing—

“A novel,” said my father, “is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, and bounded by the four walls of the author’s experience. His duty is to enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the reader’s own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly disproportionate, to the whole great arcana.” (I do hope I got this down right!) “The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent.” (Once I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child’s play.) “A great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of the supply.” (Loud applause.) “The right man, or peradventure, the right woman” (he bowed at Lady Scilly), “knows, or ought to know, so many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of that one!”

Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and George went on—

“I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways.” (What works both ways? I must have left something out.) “A Duchess of my acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words—as indeed all her words are pregnant and poignant” (he bowed to an old corpulent lady in another part of the room)—“to me the other day. She said that her novel of predilection was not a society novel. ‘I know it all, don’t I, like the palm of my hand?’ she objected. ‘I know how to behave in a drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!’ So she complained. The substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;—what she wants is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, the burglar at his work——”

Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on—

“I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out of our own lives, and put into somebody else’s—to temporarily change our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going on below stairs. Bill Sykes and ‘Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant sprites.” (Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) “The Highest or the Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist’s counsel of perfection. There is no second class in the literary railway.

“Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for instance—only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my illustration—if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting—even Clapham Rise or Upper Tooting—we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes her waking dreams ‘all a wonder and a wild desire.’ Que voulez vous? She is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated by the novelist’s art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses–”

I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady Scilly pinched me in several places at once.

“Don’t nip me, please,” I said. “I think somebody ought to get up and tell George he’s drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will.”

“Bless the child!” she said. “You may answer him when he’s done, if you like, and can. It will be quite amusing.”

I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother’s side. So I waited, though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer Mr. Vero-Taylor’s speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that George and all of them could see me, and I didn’t feel a bit shy—no, for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who wasn’t there to speak up for herself.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” I said—I noticed that George began like that—“I don’t agree at all with what the gentleman—who is my father—has been saying about Tooting—Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn’t do it unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell everybody that Mother doesn’t read novels about Duchesses or anybody. She hasn’t time, she’s much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and cooking specially for George, and so on. That’s all!”

I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted him, perhaps! I don’t know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I didn’t feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home.

He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn’t talk, but I am sure he wasn’t cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed to know I was going to have a bad time.

I did. Even Mother scolded me.

Papa didn’t come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me truthful. Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn’t so bad. She read to me about Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn’t mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way—

“We left behind the painted buoy
That tosses at the harbour-mouth,
And madly danced our hearts with joy

While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don’t suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get the bit between their teeth–!

CHAPTER V

IT is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George Vero-Taylor’s little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there and given him away—such fun, don’t you know! It wasn’t fun for me, for I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if George hadn’t been at home a good deal about that time. I think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with his family, though wearing to the servants.

George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He settled to build a house—a house that should express him and shelter his family as well. Mother didn’t want to build. If we had to move, she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down to the water’s edge. George didn’t stop our doing this and taking so much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John’s Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the world that he can do other things than write books. In Who’s Who, he doesn’t mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that’s what his friend Mr. Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed.

All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once.

As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his prices. He expects to get ten pounds per “thou.” He told Middleman, his literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per “thou.” for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint sense of humour, and that’s the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says Middleman can run up an author’s sales twenty per cent. in no time, if he fancies you personally, or thinks there’s money in you.

George’s new book is going to be not mediæval this time; people have imitated him and The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful was brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and pay his expenses.

Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother’s face grew longer and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped George to arrange the furniture.

Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some interest in her own mansion.

“I do,” Mother said, “but at a distance. I couldn’t be of any use advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George’s own money. He earned it.”

“Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!” sneered my aunt.

“I came to him without a penny, and I haven’t the right to dictate so much as the position of a wardrobe.”

“You’re the man’s lawful wife,” said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One got tired of the expression.

“Yes, unfortunately,” said Mother. “Or I’d have a better chance! But I am not going to fight over George with that minx!”

How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never seen! I once told her she needn’t be cross with Lady Scilly, and how harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of Papa—snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt; and then she was cross with me, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be proud.

Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, and all George’s furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept saying—

“Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!” or else—“That sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and I”—something or other?

She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her laugh consumedly, so she said. It’s extraordinary how he can make people laugh—people out of his own family!

She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present Ariadne at the next Court. It’s to please George, if she does remember to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George ought to insist on it, but he always says “Let them rave!” and that means, Do as you like, but don’t bother me. What he won’t like will be forking out forty pounds for Ariadne’s dress, and it will end by her staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she can get, and make what she can out of George’s “mash,” when well disposed.

About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month’s yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody’s yacht that they were willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. She asked George to go with them—“We shan’t see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write a yachting novel, like William Black’s, and put old Pawky in. He is quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say—dyspeptic and all that. I can’t stand him, but you might bear with him a little in the interests of Art!” George had no objection to visiting the scene of his new book at Mr. Pawky’s expense, in the company of his own pals, and accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of the voyage? It would be just like them.

George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work abominably, and spoil the whole brewing!

“Dear,” said Mother, “I fear we shall do badly without you—you are a man, at least—but I’ll be good, and spare you cheerfully!”

So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen and kitchen utensils from “The Magnolias”—one could hardly suppose Lady Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer “moved” us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate—Sarah had gone, and I never got any better reason than that she “had to”—received them at Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes first fell on it.

We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away.

She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, “Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn’t it! Right alongside the front-door!”

I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to prevent unpleasantness.