7. THE DINING-ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE - THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
A few weeks later there was a friendly dinner-party at the house of
a gentleman called Doncastle, who lived in a moderately fashionable
square of west London. All the friends and relatives present were
nice people, who exhibited becoming signs of pleasure and gaiety at
being there; but as regards the vigour with which these emotions
were expressed, it may be stated that a slight laugh from far down
the throat and a slight narrowing of the eye were equivalent as
indices of the degree of mirth felt to a Ha-ha-ha! and a shaking of
the shoulders among the minor traders of the kingdom; and to a Ho-
ho-ho! contorted features, purple face, and stamping foot among the
gentlemen in corduroy and fustian who adorn the remoter provinces.
The conversation was chiefly about a volume of musical, tender, and
humorous rhapsodies lately issued to the world in the guise of
verse, which had been reviewed and talked about everywhere. This
topic, beginning as a private dialogue between a young painter named
Ladywell and the lady on his right hand, had enlarged its ground by
degrees, as a subject will extend on those rare occasions when it
happens to be one about which each person has thought something
beforehand, instead of, as in the natural order of things, one to
which the oblivious listener replies mechanically, with earnest
features, but with thoughts far away. And so the whole table made
the matter a thing to inquire or reply upon at once, and isolated
rills of other chat died out like a river in the sands.
'Witty things, and occasionally Anacreontic: and they have the
originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried
out by a feminine hand,' said Ladywell.
'If it is a feminine hand,' said a man near.
Ladywell looked as if he sometimes knew secrets, though he did not
wish to boast.
'Written, I presume you mean, in the Anacreontic measure of three
feet and a half--spondees and iambics?' said a gentleman in
spectacles, glancing round, and giving emphasis to his inquiry by
causing bland glares of a circular shape to proceed from his glasses
towards the person interrogated.
The company appeared willing to give consideration to the words of a
man who knew such things as that, and hung forward to listen. But
Ladywell stopped the whole current of affairs in that direction by
saying--
'O no; I was speaking rather of the matter and tone. In fact, the
Seven Days' Review said they were Anacreontic, you know; and so they
are--any one may feel they are.'
The general look then implied a false encouragement, and the man in
spectacles looked down again, being a nervous person, who never had
time to show his merits because he was so much occupied in hiding
his faults.
'Do you know the authoress, Mr. Neigh?' continued Ladywell.
'Can't say that I do,' he replied.
Neigh was a man who never disturbed the flesh upon his face except
when he was obliged to do so, and paused ten seconds where other
people only paused one; as he moved his chin in speaking, motes of
light from under the candle-shade caught, lost, and caught again the
outlying threads of his burnished beard.
'She will be famous some day; and you ought at any rate to read her
book.'
'Yes, I ought, I know. In fact, some years ago I should have done
it immediately, because I had a reason for pushing on that way just
then.'
'Ah, what was that?'
'Well, I thought of going in for Westminster Abbey myself at that
time; but a fellow has so much to do, and--'
'What a pity that you didn't follow it up. A man of your powers,
Mr. Neigh--'
'Afterwards I found I was too steady for it, and had too much of the
respectable householder in me. Besides, so many other men are on
the same tack; and then I didn't care about it, somehow.'
'I don't understand high art, and am utterly in the dark on what are
the true laws of criticism,' a plain married lady, who wore
archaeological jewellery, was saying at this time. 'But I know that
I have derived an unusual amount of amusement from those verses, and
I am heartily thankful to "E." for them.'
'I am afraid,' said a gentleman who was suffering from a bad shirt-
front, 'that an estimate which depends upon feeling in that way is
not to be trusted as permanent opinion.'
The subject now flitted to the other end.
'Somebody has it that when the heart flies out before the
understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains,' came from a
voice in that quarter.
'I, for my part, like something merry,' said an elderly woman, whose
face was bisected by the edge of a shadow, which toned her forehead
and eyelids to a livid neutral tint, and left her cheeks and mouth
like metal at a white heat in the uninterrupted light. 'I think the
liveliness of those ballads as great a recommendation as any. After
all, enough misery is known to us by our experiences and those of
our friends, and what we see in the newspapers, for all purposes of
chastening, without having gratuitous grief inflicted upon us.'
'But you would not have wished that "Romeo and Juliet" should have
ended happily, or that Othello should have discovered the perfidy of
his Ancient in time to prevent all fatal consequences?'
'I am not afraid to go so far as that,' said the old lady.
'Shakespeare is not everybody, and I am sure that thousands of
people who have seen those plays would have driven home more
cheerfully afterwards if by some contrivance the characters could
all have been joined together respectively. I uphold our anonymous
author on the general ground of her levity.'
'Well, it is an old and worn argument--that about the inexpedience
of tragedy--and much may be said on both sides. It is not to be
denied that the anonymous Sappho's verses--for it seems that she is
really a woman--are clever.'
'Clever!' said Ladywell--the young man who had been one of the
shooting-party at Sandbourne--'they are marvellously brilliant.'
'She is rather warm in her assumed character.'
'That's a sign of her actual coldness; she lets off her feeling in
theoretic grooves, and there is sure to be none left for practical
ones. Whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most
prominent virtue in anybody's writing is the one thing you are
safest from in personal dealings with the writer.'
'O, I don't mean to call her warmth of feeling a vice or virtue
exactly--'
'I agree with you,' said Neigh to the last speaker but one, in tones
as emphatic as they possibly could be without losing their proper
character of indifference to the whole matter. 'Warm sentiment of
any sort, whenever we have it, disturbs us too much to leave us
repose enough for writing it down.'
'I am sure, when I was at the ardent age,' said the mistress of the
house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly
those who were diametrically opposed to each other, 'I could no more
have printed such emotions and made them public than I--could have
helped privately feeling them.'
'I wonder if she has gone through half she says? If so, what an
experience!'
'O no--not at all likely,' said Mr. Neigh. 'It is as risky to
calculate people's ways of living from their writings as their
incomes from their way of living.'
'She is as true to nature as fashion is false,' said the painter, in
his warmth becoming scarcely complimentary, as sometimes happens
with young persons. 'I don't think that she has written a word more
than what every woman would deny feeling in a society where no woman
says what she means or does what she says. And can any praise be
greater than that?'
'Ha-ha! Capital!'
'All her verses seem to me,' said a rather stupid person, 'to be
simply--
"Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-la',
Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lu',
Tral'-la-la-lal'-la-la-lalla',
Tral'-la-la-lu'."
When you take away the music there is nothing left. Yet she is
plainly a woman of great culture.'
'Have you seen what the London Light says about them--one of the
finest things I have ever read in the way of admiration?' continued
Ladywell, paying no attention to the previous speaker. He lingered
for a reply, and then impulsively quoted several lines from the
periodical he had named, without aid or hesitation. 'Good, is it
not?' added Ladywell.
They assented, but in such an unqualified manner that half as much
readiness would have meant more. But Ladywell, though not
experienced enough to be quite free from enthusiasm, was too
experienced to mind indifference for more than a minute or two.
When the ladies had withdrawn, the young man went on--
'Colonel Staff said a funny thing to me yesterday about these very
poems. He asked me if I knew her, and--'
'Her? Why, he knows that it is a lady all the time, and we were
only just now doubting whether the sex of the writer could be really
what it seems. Shame, Ladywell!' said his friend Neigh.
'Ah, Mr. Ladywell,' said another, 'now we have found you out. You
know her!'
'Now--I say--ha-ha!' continued the painter, with a face expressing
that he had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing
incomparably superior knowledge of the poetess. 'I beg pardon
really, but don't press me on the matter. Upon my word the secret
is not my own. As I was saying, the Colonel said, "Do you know
her?"--but you don't care to hear?'
'We shall be delighted!'
'So the Colonel said, "Do you know her?" adding, in a most comic
way, "Between U. and E., Ladywell, I believe there is a close
affinity"--meaning me, you know, by U. Just like the Colonel--ha-
ha-ha!'
The older men did not oblige Ladywell a second time with any attempt
at appreciation; but a weird silence ensued, during which the smile
upon Ladywell's face became frozen to painful permanence.
'Meaning by E., you know, the "E" of the poems--heh-heh!' he added.
'It was a very humorous incident certainly,' said his friend Neigh,
at which there was a laugh--not from anything connected with what he
said, but simply because it was the right thing to laugh when Neigh
meant you to do so.
'Now don't, Neigh--you are too hard upon me. But, seriously, two or
three fellows were there when I said it, and they all began
laughing--but, then, the Colonel said it in such a queer way, you
know. But you were asking me about her? Well, the fact is, between
ourselves, I do know that she is a lady; and I don't mind telling a
word--'
'But we would not for the world be the means of making you betray
her confidence--would we, Jones?'
'No, indeed; we would not.'
'No, no; it is not that at all--this is really too bad!--you must
listen just for a moment--'
'Ladywell, don't betray anybody on our account.'
'Whoever the illustrious young lady may be she has seen a great deal
of the world,' said Mr. Doncastle blandly, 'and puts her experience
of the comedy of its emotions, and of its method of showing them, in
a very vivid light.'
'I heard a man say that the novelty with which the ideas are
presented is more noticeable than the originality of the ideas
themselves,' observed Neigh. 'The woman has made a great talk about
herself; and I am quite weary of people asking of her condition,
place of abode, has she a father, has she a mother, or dearer one
yet than all other.'
'I would have burlesque quotation put down by Act of Parliament, and
all who dabble in it placed with him who can cite Scripture for his
purposes,' said Ladywell, in retaliation.
After a pause Neigh remarked half-privately to their host, who was
his uncle: 'Your butler Chickerel is a very intelligent man, as I
have heard.'
'Yes, he does very well,' said Mr. Doncastle.
'But is he not a--very extraordinary man?'
'Not to my knowledge,' said Doncastle, looking up surprised. 'Why
do you think that, Alfred?'
'Well, perhaps it was not a matter to mention. He reads a great
deal, I dare say?'
'I don't think so.'
'I noticed how wonderfully his face kindled when we began talking
about the poems during dinner. Perhaps he is a poet himself in
disguise. Did you observe it?'
'No. To the best of my belief he is a very trustworthy and
honourable man. He has been with us--let me see, how long?--five
months, I think, and he was fifteen years in his last place. It
certainly is a new side to his character if he publicly showed any
interest in the conversation, whatever he might have felt.'
'Since the matter has been mentioned,' said Mr. Jones, 'I may say
that I too noticed the singularity of it.'
'If you had not said otherwise,' replied Doncastle somewhat warmly,
'I should have asserted him to be the last man-servant in London to
infringe such an elementary rule. If he did so this evening, it is
certainly for the first time, and I sincerely hope that no annoyance
was caused--'
'O no, no--not at all--it might have been a mistake of mine,' said
Jones. 'I should quite have forgotten the circumstance if Mr.
Neigh's words had not brought it to my mind. It was really nothing
to notice, and I beg that you will not say a word to him about it on
my account.'
'He has a taste that way, my dear uncle, nothing more, depend upon
it,' said Neigh. 'If I had such a man belonging to me I should only
be too proud. Certainly do not mention it.'
'Of course Chickerel is Chickerel,' Mr. Doncastle rejoined. 'We all
know what that means. And really, on reflecting, I do remember that
he is of a literary turn of mind--not further by an inch than is
commendable, you know. I am quite aware as I glance down the papers
and prints any morning that Chickerel's eyes have been over the
ground before mine, and that he generally forestalls the rest of us
by a chapter or so in the last new book sent home; but in these
vicious days that particular weakness is really virtue, just because
it is not quite a vice.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive
virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on
to the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to
thank generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, and
consider him a benefactor if he does not steal at all.'
'Hear, hear!' said Neigh. 'We will decide that Chickerel is even a
better trained fellow than if he had shown no interest at all in his
face.'
'The action being like those trifling irregularities in art at its
vigorous periods, which seemed designed to hide the unpleasant
monotony of absolute symmetry,' said Ladywell.
'On the other hand, an affected want of training of that sort would
be even a better disguise for an artful man than a perfectly
impassible demeanour. He is two removes from discovery in a hidden
scheme, whilst a neutral face is only one.'
'You quite alarm me by these subtle theories,' said Mr. Doncastle,
laughing; and the subject then became compounded with other matters,
till the speakers rose to rejoin the charming flock upstairs.
In the basement story at this hour Mr. Chickerel the butler, who had
formed the subject of discussion on the floor above, was busily
engaged in looking after his two subordinates as they bustled about
in the operations of clearing away. He was a man of whom, if the
shape of certain bones and muscles of the face is ever to be taken
as a guide to the character, one might safely have predicated
conscientiousness in the performance of duties, a thorough knowledge
of all that appertained to them, a general desire to live on without
troubling his mind about anything which did not concern him. Any
person interested in the matter would have assumed without
hesitation that the estimate his employer had given of Chickerel was
a true one--more, that not only would the butler under all ordinary
circumstances resolutely prevent his face from showing curiosity in
an unbecoming way, but that, with the soul of a true gentleman, he
would, if necessary, equivocate as readily as the noblest of his
betters to remove any stain upon his honour in such trifles. Hence
it is apparent that if Chickerel's countenance really appeared, as
Neigh had asserted, full of curiosity with regard to the gossip that
was going on, the feelings which led to the exhibition must have
been of a very unusual and irrepressible kind.
His hair was of that peculiar bluish-white which is to be observed
when the oncoming years, instead of singling out special locks of a
man's head for operating against, advance uniformly over the whole
field, and enfeeble the colour at all points before absolutely
extinguishing it anywhere; his nose was of the knotty shape in the
gristle and earthward tendency in the flesh which is commonly said
to carry sound judgment above it, his eyes were thoughtful, and his
face was thin--a contour which, if it at once abstracted from his
features that cheerful assurance of single-minded honesty which
adorns the exteriors of so many of his brethren, might have raised a
presumption in the minds of some beholders that perhaps in this case
the quality might not be altogether wanting within.
The coffee having been served to the people upstairs, one of the
footmen rushed into his bedroom on the lower floor, and in a few
minutes emerged again in the dress of a respectable clerk who had
been born for better things, with the trifling exceptions that he
wore a low-crowned hat, and instead of knocking his heels on the
pavement walked with a gait as delicate as a lady's. Going out of
the area-door with a cigar in his mouth, he mounted the steps
hastily to keep an appointment round the corner--the keeping of
which as a private gentleman necessitated the change of the greater
part of his clothes twice within a quarter of an hour--the limit of
his time of absence. The other footman was upstairs, and the
butler, finding that he had a few minutes to himself, sat down at
the table and wrote:--
'MY DEAR ETHELBERTA,--I did not intend to write to you for some few
days to come, but the way in which you have been talked about here
this evening makes me anxious to send a line or two at once, though
I have very little time to spare, as usual. We have just had a
dinner-party--indeed the carriages have not yet been brought round--
and the talk at dinner was about your verses, of course. The thing
was brought up by a young fellow named Ladywell--do you know him?
He is a painter by profession, but he has a pretty good private
income beyond what he gets by practising his line of business among
the nobility, and that I expect is not little, for he is well known,
and encouraged because he is young, and good-looking, and so forth.
His family own a good bit of land somewhere out Aldbrickham way.
However, I am before my story. From what they all said it is pretty
clear that you are thought a great deal of in fashionable society as
a poetess--but perhaps you know this as well as I--moving in it as
you do yourself, my dear.
'The ladies afterwards got very curious about your age, so curious,
in fact, and so full of certainty that you were thirty-five and a
blighted existence, if an hour, that I felt inclined to rap out
there and then, and hang what came of it: "My daughter, ladies, was
to my own and her mother's certain knowledge only twenty-one last
birthday, and has as bright a heart as anybody in London." One of
them actually said that you must be fifty to have got such an
experience. Her guess was a very shrewd one in the bottom of it,
however, for it was grounded upon the way you use those strange
experiences of mine in the society that I tell you of, and dress
them up as if they were yours; and, as you see, she hit off my own
age to a year. I thought it was very sharp of her to be so right,
although so wrong.
'I do not want to influence your plans in any way about things which
your school learning fits you to understand much better than I, who
never had such opportunities, but I think that if I were in your
place, Berta, I would not let my name be known just yet, for people
always want what's kept from them, and don't value what's given. I
am not sure, but I think that after the women had gone upstairs the
others turned their thoughts upon you again; what they said about
you I don't know, for if there's one thing I hate 'tis hanging about
the doors when the men begin to get moved by their wine, which they
did to a large extent to-night, and spoke very loud. They always do
here, for old Don is a hearty giver in his way. However, as you see
these people from their own level now, it is not much that I can
tell you in seeing them only from the under side, though I see
strange things sometimes, and of course--
"What great ones do the less will prattle of,"
as it says in that book of select pieces that you gave me.
'Well, my dear girl, I hope you will prosper. One thing above all
others you'll have to mind, and it is that folk must continually
strain to advance in order to remain where they are: and you
particularly. But as for trying too hard, I wouldn't do it. Much
lies in minding this, that your best plan for lightness of heart is
to raise yourself a little higher than your old mates, but not so
high as to be quite out of their reach. All human beings enjoy
themselves from the outside, and so getting on A LITTLE has this
good in it, you still keep in your old class where your feelings
are, and are thoughtfully treated by this class: while by getting
on TOO MUCH you are sneered at by your new acquaintance, who don't
know the skill of your rise, and you are parted from and forgot by
the old ones who do. Whatever happens, don't be too quick to feel.
You will surely get some hard blows when you are found out, for if
the great can find no excuse for hitting with a mind, they'll do it
and say 'twas in fun. But you are young and healthy, and youth and
health are power. I wish I could have a decent footman here with
me, but I suppose it is no use trying. It is such men as these that
provoke the contempt we get. Well, thank God a few years will see
the end of me, for I am growing ashamed of my company--so different
as they are to the servants of old times.--Your affectionate father,
R. CHICKEREL.
'P.S.--Do not press Lady Petherwin any further to remove the rules
on which you live with her. She is quite right: she cannot keep
us, and to recognize us would do you no good, nor us either. We are
content to see you secretly, since it is best for you.'
