The Flower Beneath the Foot

by Ronald Firbank

  Table of Contents

  Dedication and Epigraphs

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  Notes

  Dedication and Epigraphs

  To

  Madame Mathieu

  and

  Mademoiselle Dora Gamier-Pages

  “Some girls are born organically good: I wasn’t.”

  St Laura de Nazianzi.

  “It was about my eighteenth year that I conquered my Ego. ”

  Ibid.

  I

  NEITHER her Gaudiness the Mistress of the Robes, or her Dreaminess the Queen were feeling quite themselves. In the Palace all was speculation. Would they be able to attend the Fêtes in honour of King Jotifa, and Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates?—Court opinion seemed largely divided. Countess Medusa Rappa, a woman easily disturbable, was prepared to wager what the Countess of Tolga “liked” (she knew), that another week would find the Court shivering beneath the vaulted domes of the Summer-Palace.

  “I fear I’ve no time (or desire) now, Medusa,” the Countess answered, moving towards the Royal apartments, “for making bets,” though turning before the ante-room door she nodded: “Done!”

  She found her sovereign supine on a couch piled with long Tunisian cushions, while a maid of honour sat reading to her aloud:

  “Live with an aim, and let that aim he high!” the girl was saying as the Countess approached.

  “Is that you, Violet?” her Dreaminess enquired without looking round.

  “How is your condition, Madam?” the Countess anxiously murmured.

  “Tell me, do, of a place that soothes and lulls one?”

  The Countess of Tolga considered.

  “Paris,” she hazarded.

  “Ah! Impossible.”

  “The Summer-Palace, then,” the Countess ejaculated, examining her long slender fingers that were like the tendrils of a plant.

  “Dr Cuncliffe Babcock flatly forbids it,” the Royal woman declared, starting slightly at the sound of a gun: “That must be the Dates!” she said. And in effect, a vague reverberation, as of individuals cheering, resounded fitfully from afar. “Give me my diamond anemones,” the Queen commanded, and motioning to her Maid: “Pray conclude, mademoiselle, those lofty lines.”

  With a slight sigh, the lectress took up the posture of a Dying Intellectual.

  “Live with an aim, and let that aim he high!” she reiterated in tones tinged perceptibly with emotion.

  “But not too high, remember, Mademoiselle de Nazianzi…”

  There was a short pause. And then—

  “Ah Madam! What a dearest he is!”

  “I think you forget yourself,” the Queen murmured with a quelling glance. “You had better withdraw.”

  “He has such strength! One could niche an idol in his dear, dinted chin.”

  “Enough!”

  And a moment later, the enflamed girl left the room warbling softly: Depuis le Jour.

  “Holy Virgin,” the Countess said, addressing herself to the ceiling. “Should his Weariness, the Prince, yield himself to this caprice…”

  The Queen shifted a diamond bangle from one of her arms to the other.

  “She reads at such a pace,” she complained, “and when I asked her where she had learnt to read so quickly, she replied ‘On the screens at Cinemas.’”

  “I do not consider her at all distinguished,” the Countess commented turning her eyes away towards the room.

  It was a carved-ceiled, and rather lofty room, connected by tall glass doors with other rooms beyond. Peering into one of these the Countess could see reflected the “throne,” and a little piece of broken Chippendale brought from England, that served as a stand for a telephone, wrought in ormolu and rock-crystal, which the sun’s rays at present were causing to emit a thousand playful sparks. Tapestry panels depicting the Loves of Mejnoun and Leileh half concealed the silver boisèries of the walls, while far down the room, across old rugs from Chirvan that were a marvellous wonder, showed fortuitous jardinières, filled with every flowering-kind of plant. Between the windows were canopied recesses, denuded of their statues by the Queen’s desire, “in order that they might appear suggestive,” while through the windows themselves, the Countess could catch across the fore-court of the castle, a panorama of the town below, with the State Theatre and the Garrisons, and the Houses of Parliament, and the Hospital, and the low white dome, crowned by turquoise-tinted tiles of the Cathedral, which was known to all churchgoers as the Blue Jesus.

  “It would be a fatal connexion,” the Queen continued, “and it must never, never be!”

  By way of response the Countess exchanged with her sovereign a glance that was known in Court circles as her tortured-animal look: “Their Oriental majesties,” she observed, “to judge from the din, appear to have already endeared themselves with the mob!”

  The Queen stirred slightly amid her cushions.

  “For the aggrandisement of the country’s trade, an alliance with Dateland is by no means to be depreciated,” she replied, closing her eyes as though in some way or other this bullion to the State would allow her to gratify her own wildest whims, the dearest, perhaps, of which was to form a party to excavate (for objects of art) among the ruins of Chedorlahomor, a faubourg of Sodom.

  “Am I right, Madam, in assuming it’s Bananas?…” the Countess queried.

  But at that moment the door opened, and his Weariness the Prince entered the room in all his tinted Orders.

  Handsome to tears, his face, even as a child had lacked innocence. His was of that magnolia order of colouring, set off by pleasantly untamed eyes, and teeth like flawless pearls.

  “You’ve seen them? What are they like… Tell Mother, darling?” the Queen exclaimed.

  “They’re merely dreadful,” his Weariness, who had been to the railway-station to welcome the Royal travellers, murmured in a voice extinct with boredom.

  “They’re in European dress, dear?” his mother questioned.

  “The King had on a frock coat and a cap…”

  “And she?”

  “A tartan-skirt, and checked wool-stockings.”

  “She has great individuality, so I hear, marm,” the Countess ventured.

  “Individuality be ——! No one can doubt she’s a terrible woman.”

  The Queen gently groaned.

  “I see life to-day,” she declared, “in the colour of mould.”

  The Prince protruded a shade the purple violet of his tongue.

  “Well, it’s depressing,” he said, “for us all, with the Castle full of blacks.”

  “That is the least of my worries,” the Queen observed. “Oh, Yousef, Yousef,” she added, “do you wish to break my heart?”

  The young man protruded some few degrees further his tongue.

  “I gather you’re alluding to Laura!” he remarked.

  “But what can you see in her?” his mother mourned.

  “She suits my feelings,” the Prince simply said.

  “Peuh!”

  “She meets my needs.”

  “She’s so housemaid… I hardly know…!” the Queen raised beautiful hands bewildered.

  “Très gutter, ma’am,” the Countess murmured dropping her voice to a half-whisper.

  “She saves us from cliché,” the Prince indignantly said.

  “She saves us from nothing,” his mother returned. “Oh, Yousef, Yousef. And what cerné eyes, my son. I suppose you were gambling all
night at the Château des Fleurs?”

  “Just hark to the crowds!” the Prince evasively said. And never too weary to receive an ovation, he skipped across the room towards the nearest window, where he began blowing kisses to the throng.

  “Give them the Smile Extending, darling,” his mother beseeched.

  “Won’t you rise and place your arm about him. Madam,” the Countess suggested.

  “I’m not feeling at all up to the mark,” her Dreaminess demurred, passing her fingers over her hair.

  “There is sunshine, ma’am… and you have your anemones on…” the Countess cajoled, “and to please the people, you ought indeed to squeeze him.” And she was begging and persuading the Queen to rise, as the King entered the room preceded by a shapely page (of sixteen) with cheeks fresher than milk.

  “Go to the window, Willie,” the Queen exhorted her Consort fixing an eye on the last trouser button that adorned his long, straggling legs.

  The King, who had the air of a tired pastry-cook, sat down.

  “We feel,” he said, “to-day, we’ve had our fill of stares!”

  “One little bow, Willie,” the Queen entreated, “that wouldn’t kill you.”

  “We’d give perfect worlds,” the King went on, “to go, by Ourselves, to bed.”

  “Get rid of the noise for me. Quiet them. Or I’ll be too ill,” the Queen declared, “to leave my room to-night!”

  “Should I summon Whisky, Marm?” the Countess asked, but before there was time to reply the Court physician, Dr Cuncliffe Babcock was announced.

  “I feel I’ve had a relapse, Doctor,” her Dreaminess declared.

  Dr Babcock beamed: he had one blind eye—though this did not prevent him at all from seeing all that was going on with the other.

  “Leave it to me. Madam,” he assured, “and I shall pick you up in no time!”

  “Not Johnnie, doctor?” the Queen murmured with a grimace. For a glass of Johnnie Walker at bed-time was the great doctor’s favourite receipt.

  “No; something a little stronger, I think.”

  “We need expert attention, too,” the King intervened.

  “You certainly are somewhat pale, sir.”

  “Whenever I go out,” the King complained, “I get an impression of raised hats.”

  It was seldom King William of Pisuerga spoke in the singular tense, and Doctor Babcock looked perturbed.

  “Raised hats, sir?” he murmured in impressive tones.

  “Nude heads, doctor.”

  The Queen commenced to fidget. She disliked that the King should appear more interesting than herself.

  “These earrings tire me,” she said, “take them out.”

  But the Prince, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the success of his appearance with the crowd, had already begun tossing the contents of the flower vases into the street.

  “Willie… prevent him! Yousef… I forbid you!” her Dreaminess faintly shrieked. And to stay her son’s despoiling hand she skimmed towards him, when the populace catching sight of her, redoubled their cheers.

  Meanwhile Mademoiselle de Nazianzi had regained again her composure. A niece of her Gaudiness the Mistress of the Robes (the Duchess of Cavaljos), her recent début at Court, had been made under the brightest conceivable of conditions.

  Laura Lita Carmen Etoile de Nazianzi was more piquant perhaps than pretty. A dozen tiny moles were scattered about her face, while on either side of her delicate nose, a large grey eye surveyed the world with a pensive critical glance.

  “Scenes like that make one sob with laughter,” she reflected, turning into the corridor where two of the Maids of Honour, like strutting idols, were passing up and down.

  “Is she really very ill? Is she really dying?” they breathlessly enquired.

  Mademoiselle de Nazianzi disengaged herself from their solicitously entwining arms.

  “She is not!” she answered, in a voice full of eloquent inflections.

  But beguiled by the sound of marching feet, one of the girls had darted forward towards a window.

  “Oh Blanche, Blanche, Blanchie love!” she exclaimed, “I could dance to the click of your brother’s spurs.”

  “You’d not be the first to dear darling!” Mademoiselle de Lambèse replied, adjusting her short shock of hair before a glass.

  Mademoiselle de Lambèse believed herself to be a very valuable piece of goods, and seemed to think she had only to smile to stir up an Ocean of passion.

  “Poor Ann-Jules,” she said: “I fear he’s in the clutches of that awful woman.”

  “Kalpurnia?”

  “Every night he’s at the Opera.”

  “I hear she wears the costume of a shoe-black in the new ballet,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi said, “and is too strangely extraordinary!”

  “Have you decided, Rara, [1] yet, what you’ll wear for the ball?”

  “A black gown and three blue flowers on my tummy.”

  “After a Shrimp-tea with the Archduchess, I feel I want no dinner,” Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast, a girl with slightly hunched shoulders said, returning from the window.

  “Oh? Had she a party?”

  “A curé or two, and the Countess Yvorra.”

  “Her black bordered envelopes make one shiver!”

  “I thought I should have died, it was so dull,” Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast averred, standing aside to allow his Lankiness, Prince Olaf (a little boy wracked by all the troubles of Spring), and Mrs Montgomery, the Royal Governess to pass. They had been out evidently among the crowd, and both were laughing heartily at the asides they had overheard.

  “’Ow can you be so frivolous, your royal ’ighness?” Mrs Montgomery was expostulating: “for shame, wicked boy! For shame!” And her cheery British laugh echoed gaily down the corridors.

  “Well I took tea at the Ritz,” Mademoiselle de Lambèse related.

  “Anybody?”

  “Quite a few!”

  “There’s a rumour that Prince Yousef is entertaining there to-night.”

  Mademoiselle Blumenghast tittered.

  “Did you hear what he called the lanterns for the Fête?” she asked. “A lot of ‘bloody bladders!’”

  “What, what a dearest,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi sighed beneath her breath. And all along the almost countless corridors as far as her bedroom door, she repeated again and again: “What, what a dearest!”

  II

  BENEATH a wide golden ceiling people were dancing. A capricious concert waltz, drowsy, intricate, caressing, reached fitfully the supper-room, where a few privileged guests were already assembled to meet King Jotifa and Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates.

  It was one of the regulations of the Court, that those commanded to the King’s board, should assemble some few minutes earlier than the Sovereigns themselves, and the guests at present were mostly leaning stiffly upon their chair-backs, staring vacuously at the olives and salted almonds upon the table-cloth before them. Several of the ladies indeed had taken the liberty to seat themselves, and were beguiling the time by studying the menu or disarranging the smilax, while one dame went as far as to take, and even to nibble, a salted almond. A conversation of a non-private kind (carried on between the thin, authoritative legs of a Court Chamberlain) by Countess Medusa Rappa and the English Ambassadress, was being listened to by some with mingled signs of interest.

  “Ah! How clever Shakespeare!” the Countess was saying: “How gorgeous! How glowing! I once knew a speech from ‘Julia Sees Her!’… perhaps his greatest oeuvre of all. Yes! ‘Julia Sees Her’ is what I like best of that great, great master.”

  The English Ambassadress plied her fan.

  “Friends, Comrades, Countrymen,” she murmured, “I used to know it myself!”

  But the lady nibbling almonds was exciting a certain amount of comment. This was the Duchess of Varna, voted by many to be one of the handsomest women of the Court. Living in economical obscurity nearly half the year round, her appearances at the palace were becoming
more and more infrequent.

  “I knew the Varnas were very hard up, but I did not know they were starving,” the Countess Yvorra, a woman with a would-be indulgent face, that was something less hard than rock, remarked to her neighbour the Count of Tolga, and dropping her glance from the Count’s weak chin she threw a fleeting smile towards his wife, who was looking “Eastern” swathed in the skin of a blue panther.

  “Yes, their affairs it seems are almost desperate,” the Count returned, directing his gaze towards the Duchess.

  Well-favoured beyond measure she certainly was, with her immense placid eyes, and bundles of loose, blonde hair. She had a gown the green of Nile water, that enhanced to perfection the swan-like fairness of her throat and arms.

  “I’m thinking of building myself a Villa in the Land of Dates!” she was confiding to the British Ambassador, who was standing beside her on her right: “Ah, yes! I shall end my days in a country strewn with flowers.”

  “You would find it I should say too hot. Duchess.”

  “My soul has need of the sun, Sir Somebody!” the Duchess replied, opening with equanimity a great black ostrich fan, and smiling up at him through the sticks.

  Sir Somebody Something was a person whose nationality was written all over him. Nevertheless, he had despite a bluff, and somewhat rugged manner, a certain degree of feminine sensitiveness, and any reference to the soul at all (outside the Embassy Chapel), invariably made him fidget.

  “In moderation. Duchess,” he murmured, fixing his eyes upon the golden head of a champagne bottle.

  “They say it is a land of love!” the Duchess related, raising indolently an almond to her sinuously-chiselled lips.

  “And even, so it’s said, too,” his Excellency returned: “of licence!” when just at this turn of things the Royal cortège entered the supper-room, to the exhilarating strains of King Goahead’s War-March.

  Those who had witnessed the arrival of King Jotifa and his Queen earlier in the afternoon, were amazed at the alteration of their aspect now. Both had discarded their European attire for the loosely-flowing vestments of their native land, and for a brief while there was some slight confusion among those present as to which was the gentleman, or which the lady of the two. The king’s beard long and blonde, should have determined the matter outright, but on the other hand the Queen’s necklet of reeds and plumes was so very misleading… Nobody in Pisuerga had seen anything to compare to it before. “Marvellous, though terrifying,” the Court passed verdict.