The Emily Emmins Papers

This being accomplished, I next proceeded in a desultory and inconsequent fashion to explore Mayfair.

Aided, like John Gay, by the goddess Trivia, I knew I could

securely stray
Where winding alleys lead the doubtful way;
The silent court and opening square explore,
And long perplexing lanes untrod before.

And as I trod, I suddenly found myself in Curzon Street. This was a pleasant sensation, for did I not well know the name of Curzon Street from all the English novels I had ever read? Moreover, I knew that in one of its houses Lord Beaconsfield died, and in another the Duke of Marlborough lived. The detail of knowing which house was which possessed no interest for me.

I rambled on, marvelling at the suddenness with which streets met each other, and their calm disregard of all method or symmetry, till I began to feel like “the crooked man who walked a crooked mile.”

Attracted by the name of Half-Moon Street, I left Curzon Street for it. Shelley once lived in this street, and I selected three houses any one of which might have been his home. I went back, I traversed some delightful mewses (what is the plural of mews?), crossed Berkeley Square, and then, somehow or other, I found myself in Bond Street, and my mood changed. At first the shops seemed unattractive and I felt disappointment edging itself into my soul.

But like an ugly woman, possessed of charm, the crammed-full windows began to fascinate me, and I forgot the inadequate sidewalks and unpretentious façades in the absorbing displays of wares.

Bond Street shop-windows are hypnotic. Fifth Avenue windows stolidly hold their exhibits up to one’s view, without a trace of invitation, but Bond Street windows compel one to enter, by a sort of uncanny influence impossible to resist.

Though I expected to shop in London, there was only one article that I was really anxious to buy. This was a jade cube. For many years I had longed for a jade cube, and American experts had contented themselves with stating there was no such thing in existence. Time after time, I had begged friends who were going to the ends of the earth to bring me back a jade cube from one of the ends, but none had accomplished my errand.

I determined therefore to use every effort to secure a jade cube for myself, and forthwith began my quest.

A mineralogist on Bond Street showed more interest at once than any of my personal friends had ever evinced. Though he declared there was no such thing in existence, he further remarked his entire willingness to cut one for me from the best quality of Chinese jade.

He was quite as interested as I was myself, and, though it seemed inartistic to end so quickly what I had expected to be a long and difficult quest, I left the order.

The cube turned out a perfect success, and will always be one of my dearest and best-loved possessions. It has the same charm of perfection that characterizes a Japanese rock-crystal ball, and the added interest of being unique. There was, too, a charm in the interest shown in the cube by the old mineralogist, and also by his wife.

The day I went after the completed polished cube, the elderly madame came into the shop from a back room, to congratulate me on the attainment of my desire.

Incidentally, the good people endeavored (and successfully) to persuade me to buy further of their wares.

They had a bewildering assortment of semi-precious stones, curious minerals, and wrought metals and strange bits of handiwork from foreign countries. Beads, of course, in profusion, and fascinatingly ugly little idols. As all these things have great charm for me, and as I am always easily persuaded to buy, I bought largely, to the great satisfaction of the elderly shopkeepers. But, as I had learned a little of their tricks and their manners I offered them, a bit shamefacedly, a lower price in each instance than they asked. To my relief, they took this proceeding quite as a matter of course, and cheerfully accepted the smaller sum without demur.

But to return to that first morning, after my interview with the mild-mannered mineralogist I strolled along Old Bond Street back to Piccadilly.

The Tennyson’s Brook of omnibuses was still going on, and I stood on the corner to watch them again. From this point of view the effect is quite different from that seen from an upstairs window.

You cease to generalize about the procession, and regard the individual ’bus with a new awe.

The ocean may be wider, – the Flatiron Building may be taller, – but there’s nothing in all the world so big as a London omnibus.

V

A Hostess at Home

An English telephone is a contradiction in terms. If it is in England, it isn’t a telephone. It is a thing that looks something like a broken ox-yoke, that is manipulated something like a trombone, and is about as effectual as the Keeley Motor.

A course of lessons is necessary to learn to use one, but the lessons are wasted, as the instrument is invariably out of order, and moreover, nobody has one, anyhow.

But one morning, before I had discovered all this, I was summoned to the telephone booth of the Pantheon Club, and blithely grasped the cumbersome affair, with its receiver on one end and its transmitter on the other. I ignorantly held it wrong end to, but that made no difference, as it wouldn’t work either way.

“Grawsp it stiffer, madame,” advised the anxious Buttons who engineered it. At length I discovered that this meant to press firmly on a fret, as if playing a flute, but by this time the party addressing me had been disconnected from the other end, and all attempts to regain communication were futile.

The boy took the instrument, and I have never seen a finer display of human ingenuity and patience than he showed for the next half-hour trying to hear that chord again. Then he gave it up, and, laying the horrid thing gently in its cradle, he nonchalantly informed me that if the party awrsked for me again, he’d send me naotice, and then demanded tuppence.

This I willingly paid, as I was always glad to get rid of those copper heavy-weights; and, too, it seemed a remarkably small price even for a telephone call, – until I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t made the call, – nor had I received it.

The call was repeated later, and after another distracting session of incoherent shouting, and painfully-cramped finger muscles, I learned that I was invited to an informal dinner that evening at Mrs. Marchbanks’s at seven-thirty.

I had not intended to plunge into the social whirl so soon, and had declined all the many invitations which had come to me by mail.

But somehow the telephone invitation took me unawares, and, too, I was so pleased to succeed in getting the message at all that it seemed ungracious and ungrateful to refuse. So, I took a fresh grip on the fretted monster, and, aiming my voice carefully at the far-away transmitter, I shouted an acceptance. I hoped it reached the goal, but as there was nothing but awful silence afterward, I had to take it on faith, and I went away to look over my dinner gowns.

The invitation had been classed as “informal,” but I knew the elasticity of that term, and so, though I did not select my very best raiment, I chose a pretty décolleté frock, that had “New York” legibly written on its every fold and pucker.

So late is the dusk of the London spring that I easily made my toilette by daylight, and was all ready at seven o’clock.

Carefully studying my Baedeker maps and plans to make sure of the distance, I stepped into my hansom just in time to reach my destination at a minute or two before half past seven, assuming that New York customs prevailed in England.

The door was opened to me by an amazed-looking maid, who seemed so uncertain what to do with me that I almost grew embarrassed myself.

Finally, she asked me to follow her up-stairs, and then ushered me into a room where my hostess, in the hands of her maid, was in the earliest stages of her toilette.

“You dear thing,” she said, “how sweet of you to come. Yes, Louise, that aigrette is right. Here is the key of my jewel case.”

“I fear I have mistaken the hour,” I said; “the telephone was a bit difficult, – but I understood half past seven.”

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Marchbanks, studying the back of her head in a hand-mirror, “but in London seven-thirty means eight, you know.”

This was definite information, and I promptly stored it away for future use. Also, it was reliable information, for it proved true, and at eight the guests began to arrive.

Dinner was served at quarter to nine, and all was well.

Incidentally I had learned my lesson.

The half-hour in the drawing-room before dinner was an interesting “first impression” of that indescribable combination of warmth and frost known as a London Hostess.

Further experience taught me that Mrs. Marchbanks was a typical one.

The London hostess’s invariable mode of procedure is a sudden, inordinate gush of welcome, followed immediately by an icy stare. By the time you have politely responded to the welcome, your hostess has forgotten your existence. Nay, more, she seems almost to have forgotten her own. She is vague, self-absorbed, and quite oblivious of your existence. I have heard of a lady with a gracious presence. The London hostess is best described by a gracious absence.

But having adapted yourself to this condition, your hostess is likely to whirl about and dart a remark or a question at you.

On the evening under discussion, my hostess suddenly broke off her own greeting to another guest, to say to me, “Of course you’ll be wanting to buy some new clothes at once.”

This statement was accompanied by a deliberate survey, from berthe to hem, of my palpably American-made gown, and as the incident pleased my sense of humor, I felt no resentment, and amiably acquiesced in her decision.