An American Girl in London

XV

It is said that there are four hundred people in New York who are exclusive, and there are a few more on Beacon Hill in Boston, and in Philadelphia. But most Americans are opposed to exclusiveness. I know that nothing of the sort flourishes in Chicago. Generally and individually, Americans believe that every man is as good as his neighbour; and we take pains to proclaim our belief whenever the subject of class distinction, is under discussion. Poppa's views, however – representing those of the majority in an individual, as we hope they soon may do in a senator – are strongly against any theory of exclusiveness whatever. And I will say for poppa, that his principles are carried out in his practice; for, to my knowledge, neither his retirement from business and purchase of a suburban lakeside residence, nor even his nomination for the Senate, has made the slightest difference in his treatment of any human being. And yet Americans coming over here with all their social theories in their trunks, so to speak, very carefully packed to be ready at a moment's notice, very seldom seem to find a use for them in England. I was brought up, you might say, on poppa's, and momma agreed with him on most points, with the one qualification that, if you couldn't have nice society, it was much better to go without any – 'Scarce company, welcome trumpery!' momma always declared would never be her motto. Yet since I have been in England I have hardly had occasion to refer to them at all. I listened to an American author about it a while ago, before I had any intention of writing my own English experiences, and he said the reason Americans liked the exclusiveness over here was because its operation gave them such perfect types to study, each of its own little circle; while at home we are a great indeterminate, shifting mass, and a person who wanted to know us as a nation must know us very largely as individuals first. I thought that might be a very good reason for an author, especially for an author who liked an occasional cup of tea with a duchess; but I was not sure that it could be claimed by a person like myself, only over on a visit, and not for any special purpose of biological research. So I went on liking the way you shut some people out and let other people in, without inquiring further as to why I did – it did not seem profitable, especially when I reflected that my point of view was generally from the inside. My democratic principles are just the same as ever, though – a person needn't always approve what she likes. I shall take them back quite unimpaired to a country where they are indispensable – where you really want them, if you are going to be comfortable, every day of your life.

Nevertheless, I know it was the 'private' part of the 'Private View' that made me so anxious to go to the Academy on the first day of May this year. The pictures would be there the second day, and the day following, and days indefinitely after that, and for a quarter of a dollar I could choose my own time and circumstances of going to see them. I might, weather permitting, have taken my 'view' of the Academy in the publicity of five or six other people who, like me, would have paid a shilling a-piece to get in; but I found myself preferring the privacy of the five or six hundred who did not pay – preferring it immensely. Besides, I had heard all my life of the 'Private View.' Every year there are special cablegrams about it in our newspapers – who were there, and what they wore – generally to the extent of at least a column and a half. Our special correspondents in London glory in it, and rival each other, adjectivally, in describing it. Lady Torquilin had been talking about it a good deal, too. She said it was 'a thing to see,' and she meant to try to get me an invitation. Lady Torquilin went every year.

But when the thirtieth day of April came, Lady Torquilin told me in the evening, after dinner, that she hadn't been able to manage it, and showed me the card upon which the 'President and Members of the Royal Academy of Arts "requested" the pleasure of the company of Lady Torquilin,' only, 'Not transferable.'

'It's very tiresome of them,' said Lady Torquilin, 'to put that on. It means that you positively must not give it to anybody. Otherwise I would have handed it over to you, child, with the greatest pleasure – I don't care a pin's point about going, and you could have gone with the Pastelle-Browns. But there it is!'

Of course, nothing would have induced me to take Lady Torquilin's invitation, and deprive her of the pleasure of going; but I pinned her veil at the back, and saw her off down the elevator, next day at two, with an intensity of regret which cannot come often in the course of an ordinary lifetime. I was describing my feelings in a letter, addressed, I think, to Mr. Winterhazel, when, about an hour later, Lady Torquilin appeared again, flushed with exertion, and sank panting into a chair.

'Get ready, child!' said she. 'I'd wear your tailor-made; those stairs will kill me, but there was – no time – to waste on the lift. I can get you in – hurry up your cakes!'

'But am I invited?' I asked.

'Certainly you are – by a Royal Academician in person – so fly!'

I flew, and in twenty minutes Lady Torquilin and I were engaged in our usual altercation with a cabman on the way to Burlington House. When he had got his cab and animal well into a block in Bond Street, and nothing of any sort could possibly happen without the sanction of a Jove-like policeman at the crossing, Lady Torquilin took the opportunity of telling me how it was that she was able to come for me. 'You see,' she said, 'the very first person I had the good luck to meet when I went in was Sir Bellamy Bellamy – you remember Sir Bellamy Bellamy at the Mintherringtons? I tell you frankly that I wouldn't have mentioned it, my dear, unless he had first, though I knew perfectly well that what Sir Bellamy Bellamy can't do in that Academy simply can't be done, for you know I'm the last one to push; but he did. "Where is your young friend?" said he. Then I took my chance, and told him how I'd asked that old screw of a Monkhouse Diddlington for two, and only got one, and how I couldn't possibly give it to you because it was printed "Not transferable," and how disappointed you were; and he was nice about it. "My dear Lady Torquilin," he said, "we were children together, and you never came to me. I should have been delighted!"

'"Well," I said, "Sir Bellamy, can't we do anything about it now?" "It's rather late in the day," said he. "It is late in the day," said I. "Oh, I say!" said he, "she must come if she wants to – any friend of yours, Lady Torquilin" – such a humbug as the man is! "It's a bit irregular," he went on, "and we won't say anything about it, but if you like to go and get her, and see that she carries this in with her" (here Lady Torquilin produced a fat, pale-blue catalogue book), "there won't be any difficulty. I fancy." So there you are, Miss Wick, provided with Sir Bellamy Bellamy's own catalogue to admit you – if that's not a compliment, I don't know what is!'

'I don't feel as if I had been properly invited,' I said; 'I'm afraid I oughtn't to go, Lady Torquilin.'

'Rubbish, child!' said she. 'Do you want them to send a deputation for you?' And after that, what could I say?

'Hold up your head, and look perfectly indifferent,' advised Lady Torquilin, as our hansom deposited us in the courtyard before the outer steps. 'Don't grasp that catalogue as if it were a banner; carry it carelessly. Now follow me.' And Lady Torquilin, with great dignity, a sense of rectitude, and a catalogue to which she was properly entitled, followed by me with vague apprehensions, a bad conscience, and a catalogue that didn't belong to me, walked into the Private View. Nobody said anything, though I fancied one of the two old gentlemen in crimson and black by the door looked knowingly at the other when I passed, as much as to say: 'About that tailor-made there is something fraudulent.' I say I 'fancied,' though at the time I was certain they did, because my imagination, of course, may have had something to do with it. I know I was very glad of the shelter of Lady Torquilin's unimpeachable respectability in front. 'There now,' she said, when we were well into the crowd, 'we're both here, and it's much nicer, isn't it, dear? than for you to come with strangers, even if I could have made up my mind that it was right for you to be admitted on a ticket plainly marked "not transferable" – which I really don't think, dear. I should have been able to do.'

We moved aimlessly with the throng, and were immediately overtaken and possessed by the spirit that seemed to be abroad – a spirit of wonder and criticism and speculation and searching, that first embraced our nearest neighbours, went off at random to a curiously-dressed person in perspective, focussed upon a celebrity in a corner, and spent itself in the shifting crowd. Lady Torquilin bade me consider whether in all my life before I had ever seen such remarkable gowns, and I was obliged to confess that I had not. Some of them were beautiful, and some were not; many were what you so very properly and aptly call 'smart,' and a few were artistic. All of them, pretty and ugly, I might have encountered at home, but there was one species of 'frock' which no American, I think, could achieve with impunity. It was a protest against conventionalism, very much gathered, and usually presented itself in colours unattainable out of a London fog. It almost always went with a rather discouraged-looking lady having a bad complexion, and hair badly done up; and, invariably, it dragged a little on one side. I don't know exactly why that kind of dress would be an impossible adjunct to the person of an American woman, but I am disposed to believe there is a climatic reason. We have so much sun and oxygen in the United States that I think they get into our ideas of clothes; and a person upholstered in the way I have mentioned would very likely find herself specially and disrespectfully described in the newspapers. But I do not wish to be thought impertinent about the development of this particular English dress ideal. It has undoubted points of interest. I had a better opportunity of observing it at the Academy Soirée in June, when it shed abroad the suggestion of a Tennysonian idyll left out all night.

Lady Torquilin had just pointed out to me two duchesses: one large and round, who was certainly a duchess by mistake, and the other tall and beautiful, with just such a curved upper lip as a duchess ought to have, and a coronet easily imaginable under her bonnet, and we were talking about them, when I saw somebody I knew. He was a middle-aged gentleman, and I had a very interesting association with his face, though I couldn't for the moment remember his name or where I had met him. I told Lady Torquilin about it, with the excited eagerness that a person always feels at the sight of a familiar face in a foreign land. 'Some friend of poppa's, I am certain,' I said; and although I had only had a glimpse of him, and immediately lost him in the crowd, we decided to walk on in that direction in the hope of seeing him again. He reappeared at a distance, and again we lost him; but we kept on, and while Lady Torquilin stopped to chat with her numerous acquaintances I looked out carefully for my father's friend. I knew that as soon as he saw me he would probably come up at once and shake hands, and then the name would come back to me; and I yearned to ask a thousand things of Chicago. We came face to face with him unexpectedly, and as his eye caught mine carelessly it dawned upon me that the last time I had seen him it was not in a long grey overcoat and a silk hat – there was something incongruous in that. Also, I remembered an insolent grizzled chin and great duplicity. 'Oh!' I said to Lady Torquilin, 'I don't know him at all! It's – '

'It's Mr. Bancroft!' said Lady Torquilin.

'Who is Mr. Bancroft?' said I. 'It's the Abbé Latour!'

I had enjoyed 'The Dead Heart' so much a fortnight before, but I was glad I did not bow before I recognised that it was a gentleman with whom I had the honour of possessing only ten-and-sixpence worth of acquaintance.

I saw the various scandals of the year as well. Lady Torquilin mentioned them, just to call my attention to their dresses, generally giving her opinion that there had been altogether too much said about the matter. Lady Torquilin did not know many of the literary people who were present, but she indicated Mr. Anstey and Mr. William Black, whose works are extremely popular with us, and it was a particular pleasure to be able to describe them when I wrote home next day. I wanted to see Mr. Oscar Wilde very especially, but somebody told Lady Torquilin he was at the Grosvenor – 'and small loss, I consider!' said she; 'he's just like any other man, dear child, only with more nonsense in his head than most of them!' But it was not in the nature of things or people that Lady Torquilin should like Mr. Oscar Wilde. Before we went she showed me two or three lady-journalists busy taking notes.

'There's that nice Miss Jay Penne,' said Lady Torquilin. 'I know all the Jay Pennes – such a literary family! And Miss Jay Penne always wants to know what I've got on. I think I must just speak to her, dear, if you don't mind waiting one moment; and then we'll go.

'She asked about you, too, dear,' said my friend when she rejoined me, with a little nudge of congratulation.

I should, perhaps, have stated before that there were a number of artists walking around trying to keep away from their own pictures; but this I gathered of myself, for, with the exception of Sir Bellamy Bellamy, who had gone away, Lady Torquilin did not know any of them. I noticed, too, that the walls of the rooms we were in were covered with pictures, but they did not seem to have anything to do with the Private View.

XVI

LADY POWDERBY'S ball was the first I attended in London, and therefore, I suppose, made the strongest impression upon me. It was quite different from a Chicago ball, though the differences were so intangible – not consisting at all in the supper, or the music, or the dresses, or the decorations – that I am by no means sure that I can explain them; so I beg that you will not be disappointed if you fail to learn from my idea of a London ball what a Chicago ball is like. It is very easy for you to find out personally, if you happen to be in Chicago.

We went in a four-wheeler at about eleven o'clock, and as the driver drew up before the strip of carpet that led to the door, the first thing that struck me was the little crowd of people standing waiting on either side to watch the guests go in. I never saw that in Chicago – that patience and self-abnegation. I don't think the freeborn American citizen would find it consistent with his dignity to hang about the portals of a party to which he had not been invited. He would take pains, on the contrary, to shun all appearance of wanting to go.

Inside I expected to find a crowd – I think balls are generally crowded wherever they are given; but I also expected to be able to get through it, in which for quite twenty minutes I was disappointed. Both Lady Torquilin and I made up our minds, at one time, to spend the rest of the evening in our wraps; but just as we had abandoned ourselves to this there came a breaking and a parting among the people, and a surge in one direction, which Lady Torquilin explained, as we took advantage of it, by the statement that the supper-room had been opened.

In the cloak-room several ladies were already preparing for departure. 'Do you suppose they are ill?' I asked Lady Torquilin, as we stood together, while two of the maids repaired our damages as far as they were able. 'Why do they go home so early?'

'Home, child!' said Lady Torquilin, with a withering emphasis. 'They're going on; I daresay they've got a couple more dances a-piece to put in an appearance at to night.' Lady Torquilin did not approve of what she called 'excessive riot,' and never accepted more than one invitation an evening; so I was unfamiliar with London ways in this respect. Presently I had another object-lesson in the person of a lady who came in and gave her cloak to the attendant, saying, 'Put it where you can get it easily, please. I'll want it again in a quarter of an hour.' I thought as I looked at her that social pleasures must be to such an one simply a series of topographical experiments. I also thought I should have something to say when next I heard of the hurry and high pressure in which Americans lived.

'It's of no use,' said Lady Torquilin, looking at the stairs; 'we can never get up; we might as well go with the rest and – '

'Have some supper,' added somebody close behind us; and Lady Torquilin said: 'Oh, Charlie Mafferton! 'though why she should have been surprised was more than I could imagine, for Charlie Mafferton was nearly always at hand. Wherever we went to – at homes, or concerts, or the theatre, or sight-seeing, in any direction, Mr. Mafferton turned up, either expectedly or unexpectedly, with great precision, and his manner toward Lady Torquilin was always as devoted as it could be. I have not mentioned him often before in describing my experiences, and shall probably not mention him often again, because after a time I began to take him for granted as a detail of almost everything we did. Lady Torquilin seemed to like it, so I, of course, had no right to object; and, indeed, I did not particularly mind, because Mr. Mafferton was always nice in his manner to me, and often very interesting in his remarks. But if Lady Torquilin had not told me that she had known him in short clothes, and if I had not been perfectly certain she was far too sensible to give her affections to a person so much younger than herself, I don't know what I would have thought.

So we went with the rest and had some supper, and, in the anxious interval during which Lady Torquilin and I occupied a position in the doorway, and Mr. Mafferton reconnoitred for one of the little round tables, I discovered what had been puzzling me so about the house ever since I had come into it. Except for the people, and the flower decorations, and a few chairs, it was absolutely empty. The people furnished it, so to speak, moving about in the brilliancy of their dresses and diamonds, and the variety of their manners, to such an extent that I had not been able to particularise before what I felt was lacking to this ball. It was a very curious lack – all the crewel-work, and Japanese bric-à-brac, and flower lamp-shades, that go to make up a home; and the substitute for it in the gay lights and flowers, and exuberant supper-table, and dense mass of people, gave me the feeling of having been permitted to avail myself of a brilliant opportunity, rather than of being invited to share the hospitality of Lady Torquilin's friends.

'Has Lady Powderby just moved in?' I asked, as we sat down around two bottles of champagne, a lot of things glacées, a triple arrangement of knives and forks, and a pyramid of apoplectic strawberries.

'Lady Powderby doesn't live here,' Lady Torquilin said. 'No, Charlie, thank you – sweets for you young people if you like – savouries for me!' and my friend explained to me that Lady Powderby was 'at home' at this particular address only for this particular evening, and had probably paid a good many guineas house-rent for the night; after which I tried in vain to feel a sense of personal gratitude for my strawberries, which I was not privileged even to eat with my hostess's fork – though, of course, I knew that this was mere sentiment, and that practically I was as much indebted to Lady Powderby for her strawberries as if she had grown them herself. And, on general grounds, I was really glad to have had the chance of attending this kind of ball, which had not come within my experience before. I don't think it would occur to anybody in Chicago to hire an empty house to give an entertainment in; and though, now that I think of it, Palmer's Hotel is certainly often utilised for this purpose, it is generally the charity or benevolent society hop that is given there.

During supper, while Lady Torquilin was telling Mr. Mafferton how much we had enjoyed the 'Opening,' and how kind his cousin had been, I looked round. I don't know whether it is proper to look round at a ball in England – it's a thing I never should have thought of doing in Chicago, where I knew exactly what I should see if I did look round – but the impersonal nature of Lady Powderby's ball gave me a sense of irresponsibility to anybody, and the usual code of manners seemed a vague law, without any particular applicability to present circumstances. And I was struck, much struck, with the thorough business-like concentration and singleness of purpose that I saw about me. The people did not seem much acquainted, except by twos and threes, and ignored each other, for the most part, in a calm, high-level way, that was really educating to see. But they were not without a common sentiment and a common aim – they had all come to a ball, where it devolved upon them to dance and sup, and dance again – to dance and sup as often as possible, and to the greatest possible advantage. This involved a measuring-up of what there was, which seemed to be a popular train of thought. There was no undue levity. If a joke had been made in that supper-room it would have exploded more violently than the champagne-bottles. Indeed, there was as great and serious decorum as was possible among so many human beings who all required to be fed at once, with several changes of plates. I observed a great deal of behaviour and a great similarity of it – the gentlemen were alike, and the ladies were alike, except that some of the ladies were a little like the gentlemen, and some of the gentlemen were a little like the ladies. This homogeneity was remarkable to me, considering how few of them seemed to have even a bowing acquaintance with each other. But the impressive thing was the solid unity of interest and action as regarded the supper.

We struggled upstairs, and on the first landing met a lady-relation of our hostess, with whom Lady Torquilin shook hands.

'You'll never find her,' said this relation, referring to Lady Powderby. 'The Dyngeleys, and the Porterhouses, and the Bangley Coffins have all come and gone without seeing her.' But I may just state here that we did find her, towards morning, in time to say good-bye.

When I say that the floor of Lady Powderby's (temporary) ball-room was full, I do not adequately express the fact. It was replete – it ran over, if that is not too impulsive an expression for the movement of the ladies and gentlemen who were twirling round each other upon the floor, all in one direction, to the music. With the exception of two or three couples, whose excited gyration seemed quite tipsy by contrast, the ball upstairs was going on with the same profound and determined action as the ball downstairs. I noticed the same universal look of concentration, the same firm or nervous intention of properly discharging the responsibilities of the evening and the numbers of the programme, on the face of the sweet, fresh debutante, steadily getting pinker; of the middle-aged, military man, dancing like a disjointed foot-rule; of the stout old lady in crimson silk, very low in the neck, who sat against the wall. The popular theory seemed to be that the dancing was something to be Done – the consideration of enjoyment brought it to a lower plane. And it was an improving sight, though sad.

Mr. Mafferton asked me for Numbers seven, and nine, and eleven – all waltzes. I knew he would be obliged to, out of politeness to Lady Torquilin, who had got past dancing herself; but I had been dreading it all the time I spent in watching the other men go round, while Mr. Mafferton sought for a chair for her. So I suggested that we should try Number seven, and see how we got on, ignoring the others, and saying something weakly about my not having danced for so long, and feeling absolutely certain that I should not be able to acquit myself with the erectness – to speak of nothing else – that seemed to be imperative at Lady Powderby's ball. 'Oh! I am sure we shall do very well,' said Mr. Mafferton. And we started.

I admire English dancing. I am accustomed to it now, and can look at a roomful of people engaged in it without a sympathetic attack of vertigo or a crick in my neck. I think it is, perhaps, as good an exposition of the unbending, unswerving quality in your national character as could be found anywhere, in a small way but I do not think an American ought to tamper with it without preliminary training.

Mr. Mafferton and I started – he with confidence, I with indecision. You can make the same step with a pair of scissors as Mr. Mafferton made; I did it afterwards, when I explained to Lady Torquilin how impossible it was that I should have danced nine and eleven with him, Compared with it I felt that mine was a caper, and the height of impropriety. You will argue from this that they do not go together well; and that is quite correct. We inserted ourselves into the moving mass, and I went hopelessly round the May pole that Mr. Mafferton seemed to have turned into, several times. Then the room began to reel. 'Don't you think we had better reverse?' I asked; 'I am getting dizzy, I'm afraid.' Mr. Mafferton stopped instantly, and the room came right again.

'Reverse?' he said; 'I don't think I ever heard of it. I thought we were getting on capitally!' And when I explained to him that reversing meant turning round, and going the other way, he declared that it was quite impracticable – that we would knock everybody else over, and that he had never seen it done. After the last argument I did not press the matter. It took very little acquaintance with Mr. Mafferton to know that, if he had never seen it done, he never would do it. 'We will try going back a bit,' he proposed instead; with the result that after the next four or five turns he began to stalk away from me, going I knew not whither. About four minutes later we went back, at my urgent request, to Lady Torquilin, and Mr. Mafferton told her that we had 'hit it off admirably.' I think he must have thought we did, because he said something about not having 'been quite able to catch my step at first, in a way that showed entire satisfaction with his later performance; which was quite natural, for Mr. Mafferton was the kind of person who, so long as he was doing his best himself, would hardly be aware whether anybody else was or not.

I made several other attempts with friends of Lady Torquilin and Mr. Mafferton, and a few of them were partially successful, though I generally found it advisable to sit out the latter parts of them. This, when room could be found, was very amusing; and I noticed that it was done all the way up two flights of stairs, and in every other conceivable place that offered two seats contiguously. I was interested to a degree in one person with whom I sat out two or three dances running. He was quite a young man, not over twenty-four or five, I should think – a nephew of Lady Torquilin, and an officer in the Army, living at Aldershot, very handsome, and wore an eyeglass, which was, however, quite a common distinction. I must tell you more about him again in connection with the day Lady Torquilin and I spent at Aldershot at his invitation, because he really deserves a chapter to himself. But it was he who told me, at Lady Powderby's ball, referring to the solid mass of humanity that packed itself between us and the door, that it was with the greatest difficulty that he finally gained the ball-room. 'Couldn't get in at all at first,' said he, 'and while I was standin' on the outside edge of the pavement, a bobby has the confounded impudence to tell me to move along. '"Can't,"' says I – "I'm at the party."'

I have always been grateful to the Aldershot officer for giving me that story to remember in connection with Lady Powderby's ball, although Mr. Mafferton, when I retailed it, couldn't see that it was in the least amusing. 'Besides,' he said, 'it's as old as "Punch."' But at the end of the third dance Mr. Mafferton had been sent by Lady Torquilin to look for me, and was annoyed, I have no doubt, by the trouble he had to take to find me. And Mr. Mafferton's sense of humour could never be considered his strong point.