Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

THE V. Y. G. Isn’t this the Minerva Club?

  THE H. P. It’s the Minerva, right enough, sir.

  General Impression that if the V. Y. G. knows Infallibility when he meets it, he will do well to retire at this point. Instead of which, he murmurs a faint suggestion about Looking Up Miss Winter’s name in the Book.

  THE H. P. (very sharply indeed). Twelve years hall porter of this Club, sir, and I know the name of every member. I expect it’s the Ladies’ Tribune Club you mean, sir.

  Although it is patent that there is no particular reason why the V. Y. G. should mean the Ladies’ Tribune Club, this defeats him, and he goes away still murmuring wistfully.

  In the Dining-room.

  A MEMBER. Really, the food is disgraceful here. I never have a meal here if I can help it, and one simply can’t invite a guest.

  A FELLOW-MEMBER. I know. Look at the lunch to-day. It’s really too bad. One feels one ought to complain to the Committee, or something.

  1ST MEMBER. I know. One ought to, really.

  They both appear to meditate on this in silence, nevertheless a General Impression is unmistakably afloat that neither of them intends to do anything at all about it, and that in consequence the service will remain at its present low level.

  Upstairs.

  A SPECTACLED MEMBER. I’m looking for the lecture on Art. Where is the Art lecture going on?

  A CLUB SERVANT. The Hall Porter could tell you, madam.

  The Spectacled Member goes to the lift, which is a self-working one, and rings the bell, when it descends, and she is confronted by an extremely aged and rather offended-looking Member.

  THE AGED MEMBER. You brought me down from the third floor. I hadn’t time to get out.

  Apologies from the S. M.

  THE AGED MEMBER. I quite understand. It’s only a little disappointing, that’s all, when one had just gone all the way up, to be brought all the way down again.

  In the Smoking-room. A Member, after ringing the bell five times, manages to arrest a waiter on his way through, and ask for Saxon Cigarettes.

  THE WAITER. No Saxons, madam. I can let you have some other kind — these, or these.

  The Member instantly and meekly acquiesces, and says no more except: Thank You Very Much.

  In the Hall a Country Member enters, and enquires if a gentleman has asked for her.

  THE HALL PORTER. Let me see — the name, Miss?

  THE C. M. Miss Winter.

  THE H. P. (without a quiver). A gentleman did call, Miss, but said he couldn’t wait. He didn’t leave his name.

  In the Drawing-room.

  A NEW MEMBER (triumphantly). And what I always say is, Why shouldn’t a Woman’s Club be just as comfortable, and well run, and efficient, as a man’s?

  General Impression that there is an answer to this, but that nobody is going to give it.

  GENERAL IMPRESSION OF A CHRISTMAS SHOPPING CENTRE

  Christmas comes but once a year.... General Impression, waxing stronger every hour, that even this is rather overdoing it.

  In Our Oriental Bazaar, which displays a profusion of brass ash-trays, raffia bags, hand-painted almanacs, and an occasional carved blackwood elephant to add local colour, about eighty-five ladies, one gentleman, and a sprinkling of children, are competing for the services of Two Young Ladies.

  A SHOPPER. What about Uncle Ernest? He doesn’t smoke, and he doesn’t drink.

  HER FRIEND (understanding that this handsome testimonial merely denotes the limitations imposed upon choosing a present for Uncle Ernest). That makes it so difficult, I always think. What about a fire-screen? For when he sits over the fire in the evenings, I mean.

  THE SHOPPER (doubtfully). Well — he might like it. But I think he always goes to his Club in the evenings, and he wouldn’t want to carry it about with him.... This orange china frog is rather quaint, isn’t it?

  THE FRIEND. Sweet. But I like the hand-screen better, I think. I mean, I think it’s more useful.

  THE SHOPPER (severely). Still, dear, it isn’t what you like, is it? It’s what Uncle Ernest would like.

  She realizes too late that this pungent snub has, in some mysterious way, the effect of committing her to the Orange Frog, for which she subsequently pays, with great reluctance, the sum of seven shillings and sixpence. General Impression that if she expects any enthusiasm about it from Uncle Ernest, she is being unduly optimistic.

  A SOLITARY GENTLEMAN (timidly). I’ll take these Christmas cards, please.

  A SALES-LADY. Sign, please.

  Sign, in the person of a Gentleman in a Frock coat, materializes, bowing affably from the waist.

  THE SALES-LADY. Six at six-three, two at nine and a half, one Pock-Cal. at one-eleven-three, and six at a penny-three. Sign, please.

  General Impression that Sign hasn’t the faintest idea what she means, but will willingly execute a perfectly illegible flourish with a pencil on the bill, in order to get the whole business over and done with.

  In the Toy Department, the floor being entirely packed with shopping Mothers, Aunts, Grandmothers, nurses, governesses, and children, a Christmas Novelty is displayed in the shape of a dejected-looking Santa Claus, driving a Real Sleigh drawn by eight Real Ponies.

  PRACTICALLY EVERY MOTHER IN THE PLACE. Oh, look, darling. Why, there’s Santa Claus!

  General Impression that half the infants present are in tears, between fatigue, bewilderment, and alarm at the appearance of the ponies, and that the other half are only to be held back by brute force from wrecking the whole equipage in their excitement.

  In the Groceries.

  A POLITE VOICE. And what can I have the pleasure of doing for you, madam?

  A VAGUE LADY. I really want a Biscuit, that I used to know very well years ago, but that one simply never sees, nowadays.

  A pause, as though either the owner of the Polite Voice or the Lady herself might here break into a short poem — Amitié d’Autrefois, or something like that, after the style of François Villon, suggested by the subject. Instead of which:

  THE V. L. Not a Cheese biscuit, and yet not exactly a Sweet biscuit. Something between the two, if you know what I mean.

  THE P. V. (with more suavity than sincerity). Perfectly, madam.

  THE V. L. (confidentially). We used to like them so much as children, you know, and I’ve always wanted to get a tin of them for my own children. I’m afraid I can’t remember what they were called, but the shape was oval — rather a small oval.

  The P. V. continues to assent to these, and similar, pieces of information with unabated brightness and readiness. General Impression that between them they will probably run the lost gems to earth in the end, but that it will all take Time.

  On the Ground Floor, the Jewellery Department, unlike any other, exhibits more salesmen than customers. A Moleskin Wrap is, however, talking to a Nutria Coat in the centre aisle.

  THE M. W. My dear, they’re really rather twee — long ruby drops, you know, set in platinum — Peter’s Christmas present.

  THE N. C. My dear — he doesn’t wear ear-rings, does he?

  THE M. W. My dear, what an idea! His Christmas present to me, of course. He does so hate shopping in all the crowd that I always do it for him, you know.

  THE N. C. My dear, how sweet of you! I wonder if Paul would like me to do that —— ?

  General Impression that whether he would or not, this is what will happen.

  MOST PEOPLE (sooner or later). Well, what one always feels is that Christmas is the children’s festival....

  Exeunt, to engage usual table for the usual dinner-dance at the usual London restaurant.

  MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN IN FICTION

  MEN IN FICTION

  PROFESSIONAL MEN

  Novelists, although they do not much like one to say so, are terribly conventional, especially when they write about men. Take professional men in fiction, for instance. They may be all kinds of things, but there are also all kinds of things that they mayn’t be. Who, for instance, ever made
his or her hero a dentist? The present writer does not want to be harsh about this. Beyond a doubt, it is difficult to visualize the scene in which a young man comes to the knowledge that his true vocation lies in fumbling about inside the open mouths of his fellow-creatures — but there must be ways of getting round this, and of making this very important and necessary calling sound as interesting as it really is. Writers, however, have as yet made no attempt to find out these ways.

  Doctors, on the contrary, are numerous in fiction. Mostly, they come out well, but not in detective fiction. In detective fiction, the doctor is only put in because it is absolutely necessary that, after one glance at the corpse, he should look up and say with quiet certainty:

  “The squire has been shot through the left lung, and his head battered in by a short, blunt instrument, almost certainly a poker like the one lying on the floor in a pool of blood beside him. The bruise on his left side was caused by a hobnailed boot. Death must have occurred exactly six hours and fifteen minutes ago, which fixes the time of the murder at precisely quarter-past-eight this morning. There is nothing to be done for him now.”

  After this, the doctor leaves the police in charge, and it isn’t till hours afterwards that someone or other finds out that the old squire’s injuries were all inflicted after death, which was really due to drowning.

  It is never said, in the detective story, whether the doctor’s practice suffers heavily from this professional carelessness in failing to notice that the old squire’s lungs were full of water all the time.

  When the story is not a detective story, but a long novel about a doctor’s whole life, he is a very different type of person. He is never called in to a murder case at all, and, indeed, the only cases of which much notice is taken in the book are confinement cases. These take place usually in distant and obscure farm-houses, in the middle of the night, and to the accompaniment of a fearful gale, or a flood, or a snowstorm, or any other convulsion of Nature which will make it additionally inconvenient for the doctor to attend the scene.

  Authors like obstetrical details, but the present writer does not, and knows, besides, that in real life doctors are quite as often called out in the night on account of croup, or pleurisy, or even a bilious attack if sufficiently violent, as on account of child-birth.

  The doctor in this kind of book always has a frightful financial struggle. He never attains to Harley Street, or anywhere in the least like it. His wife is almost always a perfectly lovely young creature with extravagant tastes that help to ruin him, or else she dies young, leaving him to a housekeeper who never puts flowers in the sitting-room. In the latter case the doctor thinks about his wife when he comes in, from one of his perpetual baby-cases, at three in the morning, with the prospect of the surgery before him at seven. (Doctors in books never get more than four hours’ sleep on any night of the year, and often none at all. But they always persist in opening the surgery at this unreasonable hour.)

  One could go on for a long while about doctors in fiction, but theirs, of course, is not the only profession dear to authors, although certainly one of the most popular.

  Business men are much written about, and curiously enough are treated in an almost exactly opposite way to doctors, since they nearly always have helpful and endearing wives, who would never dream of dying and leaving them to housekeepers, and they end up highly successful, and immensely rich, although starting from a degree of poverty and illiteracy that would seem to make this practically impossible.

  The early parts of the book are almost entirely given up to the most terrifically sordid and realistic description of their early surroundings, the language — one word and two initials — that their fathers and neighbours used when intoxicated, the way in which their elder sisters went wrong, and the diseases that ravaged their mothers. But by degrees, this is worked through. The situation lightens, and the business — which started as a stall in the Warwick Road, or something like that — begins to prosper. Its owner turns his attention to social advancement, and in the course of it marries a pretty, innocent, but extremely practical young thing with quite a short name, like Anne, or Sally, or Jane. They rise in the world together. Then another woman, with a much longer name — more like Madeleine, or Rosalind — and of more exalted social standing, interferes.

  The lengths to which the affair subsequently proceeds depends entirely upon what the author feels about his public: whether that’s the sort of thing they want from him or whether it isn’t. (Publishers are usually helpful about this, although biased on the side of propriety, as a rule, because of the circulating libraries.) Anyway, Anne, or Sally, or Jane takes him back in the long run, absolutely always.

  Unlike real life, affairs of this kind, in books, never lead to the complete wreck of the homestead, or of the business. On the contrary. So that novels about business men have at least the advantage of a happy ending — a thing which some readers like, though others would go miles to avoid it.

  LOVERS

  The well-known saying that All the world loves a lover, is, like so many other well-known sayings, quite inaccurate. There are numbers of people who find lovers more annoying than almost anything, and these include employers, doctors, many parents and grandparents, and others too numerous to mention. Authors of fiction, although such income as they achieve is largely derived from the exploitation of lovers and their various reactions, do not really care much about them in real life, for authors, unfortunately, are usually more than a little egotistical by nature.

  In fiction, however, there is no doubt that lovers are popular. In fact it almost seems, sometimes — judging by the way editors and publishers go on about what they call the love-interest — as if, but for that, fiction wouldn’t ever be read at all, in which case there would be little point in writing it. We will not, however, dwell upon this improbable and melancholy contingency. Instead, we will get started about the men in fiction who are lovers — which, of course, most of them are. And we are bound to say that the first thing that strikes us about nearly all of them is that they attach much more importance to love than do the ordinary men of everyday life.

  Take the agricultural lover — since authors are extraordinarily fond of writing about the passions of farm labourers, although comparatively indifferent to those of navvies, engine-drivers, or stokers.

  The agricultural lover is seldom less than six feet tall, and he wears his shirt open at the neck whatever the weather, although there are many months in the year when a woollen muffler would be a sign of greater common sense; and if the novel is at all a modern one, he takes about with him a smell of soil and sweat wherever he goes. (In our own experience, brilliantine is much more noticeable, at any rate on Sundays, but of this nothing is said.)

  Well, this son of the soil is invariably fated to fall in love with somebody too utterly unsuitable for words, either because she lives in London, which constitutes — for reasons unstated — an immense social gulf between her and the farm labourer, or else because she is so frail and frivolous by nature that anyone, except a lover in a book, would have seen through her at the first glance.

  In the first case, the outlook is bad, but not hopeless. The girl from London either writes, paints, dances, or does all three. She is probably engaged, or semi-engaged, to a talented youth of her own social standing, and they exchange immense letters, full of quotations and similes and things, which are very often given in full. She has, to all appearances, never been in the country in her life before, because she always does something amazingly unpractical, like falling down an old mine-shaft — with which authors seem to think that the countryside is freely peppered — or setting out alone to cross the moors just when a snowstorm is coming up. Then, when she has got herself into serious difficulties, the agricultural lover pulls on his boots — boots play an enormous part in these idylls of the soil — and takes one look at the sky and says with great confidence: “Reckon the moon should be up over the quarry by the time the cock crows from Hangman’s Hill,” and go
es off, finding his way unerringly through pitch darkness, and floods of rain, and drifts of snow, and anything else the author can think of to show how well he understands Nature. And by the time he has found the girl and carried her into the farm as though she were a child, the whole thing is settled.

  Though, personally, we have never thought, and never shall think, that that sort of girl is in the least likely to make a suitable wife for any farm labourer.

  The other kind is quite different. She is a village girl, and is referred to by those who are taken in by her artifices as a “lil’ maid,” and by those who aren’t as “a light o’ love” or “a wanton lass”. Her chief, sometimes her only, characteristics are vanity and sex-appeal. In the end, after the agricultural lover has fought somebody in a pub. for using a Word about her, and has thrown various other fits, she usually goes off and marries his stepbrother from the Colonies, or a rich widower forty years older than herself; and the lover, instead of realizing that this is all for the best, walks out into the night. Common sense tells one that sooner or later he will be obliged to walk out of it again, but before this inevitable, though unromantic, point is reached, the author usually brings the book to an end.

  Lovers in books that are not agricultural are, of course, numerous, but there is not enough space to deal with them all in one article.

  HUSBANDS

  Authors, beyond a doubt, go very wrong indeed when it comes to husbands in fiction. They only seem to know about two kinds. The first and most popular of these is quite young, and most deadly serious. He has a simple and yet manly sort of name, like John or Richard or Christopher. He marries, and his wife is lovely, and he adores her. Instead of getting accustomed to her charms with the rapidity so noticeable in real life, and taking her comfortably for granted by the end of the second year, he adores her more and more, although on every page she is growing colder, more heartless, and more extravagant. She lives, in fact, for nothing except cocktails, night-clubs, clothes, and the admiration of other men.