I would introduce you to this person (I thought it so nice of her not to stick on the offensive words little or young!) only it strikes me I dont know her name. She didnt ask it, but went on, Its a most original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in a year, my dear boy!
Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadnt tried, and I do think you should leave off calling children it after the first six months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didnt think her quite polite, I told her my nameTempe Vero-Taylorin a low voice so that she could introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same table. I thought there wouldnt be a childrens table, as she didnt speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have no conversation.
Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didnt introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didnt suppose I should ever meet him again, so it didnt matter.
We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered rice-pudding! I wouldnt have believed it, in a house like this. I refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldnt taste champagne when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not meet some this afternoon at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (thats her name) said she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldnt very well say no.
You may come too, Simmy, she said to the young man; it will be exciting, I can promise you!
Not if I know it, he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, What is the lecture about?
The Uses of Fiction.
None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an income.
Thats a mans view.
It is, he said, a man, and not a monkeys. You dont call your literary crowd men, do you?
I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on
Youre quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy your receptions.
I dont see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because youre a fifth cousin. Thats the worst of being well connected, so many people think they have the right to lecture one!
All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine and Ve
Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldnt come to the lecture he must go, and pushed me out of the room in front of her and on up-stairs.
Good-bye! she called to him over the bannisters. Let yourself out, and dont steal the spoons.
That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We went up into her bedroom, and her old nurseI suppose it was her nurse, for she wore no cap and bullied her like anythingcame forward.
Put me into another gown, Miller! she said, flopping into a chair. Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying me.
Dont bother. The childs all right. Shes so pretty she can wear anything.
I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her cheek that I hadnt noticed there before. It was real.
CHAPTER IV
WE went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly is a member of the committee.
Where will you sit, Lady Scilly? said this person, and she asked a good many other questions, using Lady Scillys name very often.
I shall sit quite at the back this time, Lady Scilly answered. Too many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out! As she said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why.
We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a great friend of Lady Scillys. He spoke to me while she was discussing some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her.
How do you like going about with a fairy? he asked me.
Im not, I said. Shes a grown-up woman, old enough to know
Worse! he interrupted me. She is what I call a fairy!
What is a fairy? I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only trying to make conversation.
A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likesand as other people sometimes dont like.
I see, I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, just as grown-up people do.
But she isnt pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a fairy? No, I think not, you dont look as if you could tell a lie.
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 didnt like that, and said Jeunesse oblige, and Place aux dames, and Juniores ad prioresevery 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. Its in Ollendorff.
The lecture-room was quite full, and weLady Scilly and Isqueezed 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, Dont 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 fairythat meant a tease, and I wasnt 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 authors 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 readers 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 childs 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 wordsas 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, dont 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 elsesto 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 novelists counsel of perfection. There is no second class in the literary railway.
Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for instanceonly for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my illustrationif our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tootingeven Clapham Rise or Upper Tootingwe 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 novelists 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.
Dont nip me, please, I said. I think somebody ought to get up and tell George hes drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will.
Bless the child! she said. You may answer him when hes 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 Mothers 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-Taylors speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that George and all of them could see me, and I didnt feel a bit shyno, for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who wasnt there to speak up for herself.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I saidI noticed that George began like thatI dont agree at all with what the gentlemanwho is my fatherhas been saying about TootingUpper 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 neednt do it unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell everybody that Mother doesnt read novels about Duchesses or anybody. She hasnt time, shes much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and cooking specially for George, and so on. Thats 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 dont know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I didnt feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home.
He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didnt talk, but I am sure he wasnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt 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 doesnt 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 dont 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!