Part 9

Bores are of two kinds—active and passive. The active are the worse, and in that category Miss Kittenish must be placed, her special aggravation being that she is so playful, and has a passion for parlour-games—a very virulent form of boredom to practise upon the amiable person. Now, be it remembered that Miss Kittenish is a spinster of a very uncertain age—so uncertain, in fact, that there is no telling what childish prank she may not be up to. But that which may be all very well when directing the rollicking festivities of a school-treat is apt to be aggressively out of place in an assembly of grown-up and presumably reasonable persons. Yet that is just what Miss Kittenish is unable to realise. The fascination of the round game seems to have stunted her mental growth, and all her friends suffer in consequence. Heaven knows, no one is more amenable than I to frivolity of any kind; no one is readier to make a fool of himself at the proper season, and under the necessary inspiration. And as for playing with children, no game is too primitive for me, nothing that they can expect me to do is too idiotic, nothing too undignified.

For the nonce I will set a fool’s cap upon my dignity, and laugh at it. I will sing, “This is the way we wash our clothes,” and act the attendant “business,” as they call it in stage-parlance, till I go perfectly hoarse in my throat. I will “hunt the slipper,” or play “puss in the corner,” and roll and romp on the floor with my little friends, and enjoy it as much as any of them. Let me loose among their toys, and witness my enthusiasm. Give me tops to spin, clockwork engines to set running, tin soldiers to shoot down with spring cannons, or a box of bricks to work my architectural fancy withal, and you shall see a transformation to which fairy lore alone can supply a parallel—you shall see thirty years fly away and leave me a child of six.

But Miss Kittenish is so playful that she is entirely unable to discriminate between the amusements of the very juvenile and the adult; and this is painfully forced upon one whenever one is weak enough to accept an invitation to a social gathering at the Kittenishes’, who, I may add, live in the suburbs. This I do periodically, because they are such old family friends—they are, indeed, a sort of heirloom from the last generation, which has to be kept up. It would sometimes be curious to trace the origin of old family friends, from the cumbersome heirloom point of view.

How I ever came to incur the obligation of visiting the Kittenishes I do not recollect. I know I was taken there as a child, and I remember that in those days there was a series of maiden aunts similar to the present brood, and I can recall playing games with them to my youthful enjoyment, so that the revived acquaintance has now become a traditional duty. But I am grown-up now, and have been so these many years, and so have Miss Kittenish and her five sisters; but it makes no difference. They invite a number of friends to spend the evening there, all of whom have entered upon the business of life, and consequently are, or should be, interested in the events or social problems of the day. Some may belong to the liberal professions, some may be votaries of the arts, others merely competitors in the race for wealth, or idle killers of time. But will these be permitted to converse under the Kittenish roof on topics which appeal to them? Emphatically, no! Miss Kittenish has taken care to leaven her guests with a few persons of her own mind, and as soon as you are on the point of learning from a Stock Exchange wiseacre whether Egyptian Unifieds are going up or down, or from an omniscient journalist the date of the next Parliamentary dissolution, the name of Tennyson’s next poem, the details of Irving’s next play, the winner of the next Derby, and the true particulars of the last Cabinet Council, Miss Kittenish approaches you with that diabolically playful expression on her face, which portends “Dumb Crambo” or something equally terrible, and asks you to go out of the room while the rest of the company thinks of something.

I am usually the first victim, being known for an amiable man—how I wish I had cultivated ferocity from my cradle—and after making a feeble defence to the effect that I am so stupid at that kind of thing, I am led away like a lamb to the slaughter. After a few chilly minutes on the landing, during which I vainly contemplate means of escape, I am called back into the room, and find myself in the centre of a circle of presumably intelligent persons waiting to be asked a number of inconsequent questions. All the Kittenish girls are keenly on the alert, but Miss Kittenish is the mistress of the ceremonies; she explains my duties, and I proceed resignedly. Of course I have not the least idea what it is all about, and when, after the dismal proceedings, I am asked to guess the word or proverb or whatever it was, I make a series of random guesses which are so extravagantly absurd that they provoke roars of laughter, and I am voted most amusing—a fatal success.

Miss Kittenish is now all bustle and playfulness, and she once more takes advantage of my amiability, and I am called upon to act in a charade, then to play “Dumb Crambo,” and eventually to sit cross-legged upon a broomstick poised upon two chairs, an abominable torture if you succeed, while if you do not, you fall with a sudden bump to the ground. In any case you afford boisterous merriment to the spectators, who are neither on the broomstick nor on the ground. After this my amiability is conquered by my increasing mental depression, aided by the bodily torture involved in the fiendish broomstick trick, and I make all sorts of excuses to elude Miss Kittenish in her fresh devices. She is, however, untiring, and her resource in the matter of parlour-games and tricks is positively amazing. Of course, it is impossible to adopt all her suggestions on a single evening. I diplomatically propose that we should keep some novelties for Christmas; but there is no escape, and, after we are physically wearied by the more active games, paper and pencils are handed round, and we are set to play “consequences,” then to write doggerel verses, then to remember as many towns and countries beginning with G as we can in a given number of minutes, and other equally aimless occupations. And what annoys me is that the majority of sycophantic guests actually encourage Miss Kittenish in these suburban atrocities, pretending they are amused, while I am doomed to endure this boredom now and again by family tradition.

If I were not so amiable, I would break from it. I would never go there again, and then I should be accused of inconstancy to old friends. This is chaining myself to a sentiment, certainly; but I would Miss Kittenish were not so playful, or that she confined her volatile spirits to the parish schoolroom, or the seaside boarding-house, where she is quite an acquisition and in her element.

To one of these establishments at Eastbourne Miss Kittenish sometimes accompanies her invalid mother, and the announcement that “Miss Kittenish is coming” produces as much pleasurable excitement as the preliminary announcement of a visit from Sanger’s Circus to the town of Sleepy Hollow. A vision of abnormal festivities and something new in parlour-games is immediately conjured up, while it is well known that Miss Kittenish is a perfect mine of conundrums, old and new. For years past she has collected them in manuscript.

But the skittish propensities of Miss Kittenish do not confine themselves to these mild sports. She is of opinion that her personal charms are peculiarly attractive to men, and it is impossible to talk to her without becoming conscious that she is endeavouring to construe your conversation into a flirtation. She really imagines that she is in a chronic state of defence against siege from our sex, and the various ruses of primitive coquetry by which she endeavours to bring on a general engagement are amusing to watch for a little while, though their sameness soon palls. She perpetually asserts her determination never to marry, until one begins naturally to wonder why she finds it necessary to be so emphatic. I believe there is sufficient chivalry still left among us to protect Miss Kittenish from being forced to any step so avowedly repugnant to her feelings. Yet she will take pains to tell you what pretty things this young man said to her, what attention that old man paid her, and to insinuate that no party is really considered complete unless she graces it. Her enthusiastic eagerness for entertainment is perfectly amazing; offer her tickets for anything, and she will accept them, be it only an amateur theatrical performance, or a dramatic recital at a local institute. Of course, if she be the happy possessor of gratuitous orders for the theatre, she is almost as proud as if she knew an actor off the stage, which, I need hardly say, is considered, in suburban circles, a very high distinction.

Miss Kittenish still looks to attain to this, however, for a friend of the curate’s with whom, of course, she is associated in Sunday-school matters, has promised to bring to their next social gathering an actor who is a member of his angling club. Though he is not perhaps a leading actor, and he still lives domestically with his wife and children, he did once play “Claude Melnotte,” and is now a low comedian at a West-end theatre, so that Miss Kittenish will be quite justified in talking with casual impressiveness of her new acquaintance, when the introduction is an accomplished fact. She and her sisters will lionise him, and make him play games, and expect him to do all sorts of funny things, so that their friends will go away and tell everybody how they met Shoppy, the actor, at the Kittenishes’, and how amusing he was, and how he told them all about “behind the scenes,” the way he studied his own parts and taught all the other actors theirs, and showed the dramatist how to make his play a success, the manager how to produce it, and the leading actress how to act, and then said such clever things about the injustice of the critics. Miss Kittenish has her ambitions and her hero-worship, you see, and she always says that her proper vocation is the stage. Perhaps she will take to it yet, who knows? She is for ever volatile, and she never tires of playing charades.

But I often wonder what Miss Kittenish thinks about when she is alone. She can hardly ask herself conundrums. Can she really persuade herself that she is yet young and fascinating? Can she, at her time of life, find self-delusion so easy? Or does she know the truth, and realise it in solitude? There must be an infinite pathos in the lonely meditations of this skittish old maid, in spite of her invulnerable good nature. And perhaps, after all, one should look with charity upon the parlour-games and the conundrums, for I’m sure Miss Kittenish means well. Nothing bores _her_.

_THE “SMART” WOMAN_

Mrs. Mayfair Smartly is still a very beautiful woman; but when I first knew her she was quite lovely, with all the freshness of youth yet impearled upon her cheek, and in her eyes a newly-kindled light of conscious triumph, for her beauty had brought her fame. From the pretty and petted little wife of a gallant and good-natured major of dragoons, she had suddenly become “the beautiful Mrs. Mayfair Smartly,” thanks to the notice of an illustrious personage. Her photographs were in every shop-window, and no social function was considered complete without her. Admirers swarmed around her wherever she went; and, when she did not put in an appearance anywhere, she was nevertheless talked about—with candour.

Mrs. Mayfair Smartly had been married three or four years before she became really “somebody.” Her husband, Major Mayfair Smartly, was a typical cavalry officer—a tall, well-built man, of the Anglo-Saxon breed, who would lead a forlorn hope or ride a steeplechase with equal readiness and self-possession, a man who loved luxury and ease, but would be dangerous in the face of an enemy. As it happened, however, all his military service had been peaceful, and even in India he had never had the chance of serving on one of the periodical punitive expeditions, for his wife did not let him stay there long enough. She did not like India, it injured her complexion, so she insisted on his exchanging into a regiment at home. He never refused her anything, and, after all, “there is no place like home”; so, having exhausted all the complimentary adjectives of the reporters of the local Indian papers, and furnished as much _gup_ for Simla and Calcutta coteries as propriety would permit, pretty Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, accompanied by her husband, bade farewell to Indian society, and sighing for new fields to conquer, made for London.

Major Mayfair Smartly’s new regiment was stationed at Aldershot, therefore his wife arranged that she should take an elegant flat in Mayfair, and that he should come up to town constantly, attend her at any dinners, receptions, or balls to which she might be going, and return to Aldershot by the early morning train in time for parade. She was soon in the very whirl of Society, and her pretty face and ready wit were attracting attention; but her actual fame as a beauty dated, I think, from one afternoon at Hurlingham. She had been presented at the last drawing-room, and an illustrious personage had made special inquiries about her on account of her good looks. This fact had, of course, reached her, and gladdened her immeasurably, and she was, therefore, in no way surprised when at Hurlingham that afternoon she received a gracious intimation of the Prince’s desire to make her acquaintance. The presentation took place in the presence of a representative Society gathering, and for the rest of the afternoon she was honoured of royalty.

After that eventful day, people began to speak of “the new beauty”; the photographers invited her to sit to them, which she did in every instance, and the journalists began to take particular note of her doings, and of her clothes. Henceforth Mrs. Mayfair Smartly was a social notability; her presence could lend distinction to any party, and her custom could make the fortune of any dressmaker, for she knew how to dress.

This may sound trivial and frivolous, but I am not one of those who profess to think lightly of women for paying much attention to their dress. I have invariably found that those women who really understand the art of dress, who know what to wear and how and when to wear it, possess taste and intelligence of a more refined order than those who regard costume in the light of mere clothing, and who not only reveal no appreciation of a woman’s obligation to look her best at all times, but affect to treat dress altogether as a subject fit only for the attention of frivolous minds. Charles Lamb said he hated a man who swallowed his food affecting not to know what he was eating. He suspected his taste in higher matters. So, when I hear a woman-of-the-world say she does not care how she looks, or what she wears, I feel pretty sure she is a woman of no taste, in spite of possibly much intellectual pretension, and that she is lacking in personal charm. When a woman says she leaves her costume to her dressmaker, I know that she has no mind of her own, no invention, no resource, no sense of the fitness of things, and that, however beautiful a gown her dressmaker may provide her with, she herself is sure to wear some incongruous hat or cloak, gloves or shoes, which will disturb the harmony of her appearance, and so assert her own ignorance.

Now, Mrs. Mayfair Smartly did none of these things; she was an artist in the matter of attire, and her personal charm was thereby all the greater. There be painters, musicians, and poets who may be as daringly original as they will in their compositions, and yet one not only feels that they are absolutely right, but that their innovations must become precedents. So it was with Mrs. Mayfair Smartly. She could dare to dress in styles that had not yet received the authority of the fashion-plates, and so infallibly right was she always that Fashion was bound to follow her. That Mrs. Mayfair Smartly wore such a colour, such a material, or such a design, was sufficient to ensure its general adoption by those who wished to dress well. In fashion, therefore, she was a leader rather than a follower, and, oh, how she was envied while she was admired.

But Mrs. Mayfair Smartly was not one of those stolid and superior human beings who can bear success with equanimity. It intoxicated her. She was “a very woman,” and she loved to be admired. It may have been very vain on her part, but nothing delighted her so much as to read or hear praise of her beauty, her dress, or her talk. She went everywhere, because wherever she went she won fresh admiration. In Society everybody knew her, of course, but she would tire herself to death sooner than miss any reception where she felt that she might shine, while she would never miss the Park, the “private views,” the opera, or the fashionable cricket-matches, or race-meetings. For at these she would always be a centre of attraction, and people would crowd about her, and those who knew her not would ask who she was, and those who knew her would gladly show their knowledge; and much admiration would call forth much envious deprecation, which was a sign of her power, for no success is won without provoking envy.

But it is not possible to sustain the reputation of a Society beauty and leader of fashion without much expenditure of money, and, truth to tell, though in comfortable circumstances, Major Mayfair Smartly was by no means wealthy. What he lacked in wealth, however, he made up in lavish generosity and devotion to his wife. He felt that such a beautiful and charming woman deserved to have her own way in everything; and since she had been good enough to marry him, who had nothing but his good-humour and his stalwart figure, which looked so well in uniform, to recommend him, the least he could do would be to give her all she asked. So he began to sell out stock when her monetary demands far exceeded his income; and so by rapid degrees he encroached upon his principal.

But Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, though very practical in the pursuit of pleasure and admiration, was as innocent as a child in the matter of money. She needed it, and her husband supplied it, but it never occurred to her that to pay for the present it was necessary to draw upon the future—that, in fact, her husband’s income could not expand in proportion to her extravagances. She lived in a fashionable set, and she was not only bound to do as others did, but her fame as a Society beauty demanded that she should do more. She felt that she needed more dresses, more bonnets, and more diamonds, because she was not plain Mrs. Smartly, but the “beautiful Mrs. Mayfair Smartly.” Society expected to see her always in new costumes and she could not disappoint Society. But Mrs. Mayfair Smartly could not dress as she dressed, and live as luxuriantly as she lived, on her husband’s income. So she acquired a habit of accumulating debts, and assuming an innocent surprise when the amounts were brought to her notice by requests for immediate payment. And the Major had to begin to borrow money; for he was too good-natured to suggest to his wife that she should moderate her expenditure, and too considerate to trouble her with such a sordid detail as his financial position.

In the meanwhile she went on as usual, the smartest of the smart, appearing in costumes and jewellery which a princess might have envied, driving in a turn-out that an empress would not have scorned, and living as expensively and pleasantly as ever. But kind friends, who knew that the Major was not a millionaire, began to wonder where all the money came from; and then people began to say unkind things about Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, to couple her name with, not one, but half a dozen wealthy “lords and gentlemen,” who were each and all trusty friends of her husband. This was a scandalous shame, for never was woman more impervious to that kind of temptation; and, after all, Major Mayfair Smartly used to come up from Aldershot nearly every evening, escort his wife to many places, and never interfere with her at any, so that she was really quite fond of him. And a capital fellow he was, except that he erred perhaps on the side of excessive amiability. This it was that brought him to his ruin. He was too amiable, too fond of his wife to take her extravagance in hand, and curb it with a strong rein. Besides, he could spend a pretty penny or two on his own account.

So the crash came at last, and it was quite a surprise to poor Mrs. Mayfair Smartly. She was amazed, she could not understand it at all. Why had her husband never told her about it? He treated her like a child, whereas, had he realised that she was a woman, and told her of the financial crisis at hand in their household, she would willingly have made several retrenchments. But now it was too late. Major Mayfair Smartly was obliged to sell out from the army, and sell up the elegant flat in Mayfair. Then he and his wife retired from Society. The beautiful Mrs. Mayfair Smartly no longer figured in the Society journals or the photographers’ shop-windows. Worth’s knew her no more, and she began to entertain an absolute affection for individual dresses because she wore them—those that she had not sold—so frequently.

They buried themselves in the country, and she tried to convince herself that she liked rural life. He did, because she was part of it to him—all that he knew of it—and he would have liked existence in Timbuctoo if she had only shared it with him. Now, too, he was relieved of those tiring journeys to Aldershot after balls and receptions, and he had his beloved wife all to himself.

But Mrs. Mayfair Smartly was not born for country life, and she felt that she was stagnating. If she could not live in London, in her old set, she would make a set for herself; and if the small remnant of her husband’s income would not support them both in the Metropolis, she must make some money herself. There are many fields of usefulness and profit open to ladies nowadays, she would essay one of them. She knew Society, its ways and persons, why should she not make use of her knowledge, and become a Society journalist? Why should she not write racy sketches of people she had met during her meteoric social career? Few women knew more of dress than she, or had more taste; why should she, then, not employ her pen to impart some of her ideas upon the gentle art of dressing well?

It was a happy thought, and Mrs. Mayfair Smartly has returned to town to regard Society from a new point of view. She is now the critic instead of the criticised. The necessity to live has impelled her to industry, and though she would sooner be spending her days in luxurious ease, which is really in accordance with her disposition, she devotes herself assiduously to work. She always had a ready pen, and now she writes clever stories and articles, and, continuing to dress fashionably and harmoniously, though less expensively, she preserves her reputation as a “smart” woman, though it is now many seasons since she was the much-talked-about Mrs. Mayfair Smartly, the beauty of the season.

_THE GAMBLING WOMAN_