The Cardboard Crown

by Martin Boyd

  They could not oppose him as they had no point of contact with him, and so the marriage was reluctantly agreed to, as it were in a vacuum. Maysie proved to be the exception to the rule I have referred to, and in her social descent did not race to the bottom, but stuck in the middle-classes. We may thank Heaven she did, as Uncle Bert made more and more money in his city activities. He gave financial advice to Alice, my father and to all the family which kept us from the workhouse, he steered them through the rocks of the boom and its collapse, and in her old age Aunt Maysie in a Toorak mansion is the only impressive relative we have left. If her grandchildren were to see Julian Byngham arrive in the middle of one of their smart parties, they would die of shame.

  At the time of the marriage however, no one saw any reason for congratulations. It appeared to Alice that her chances of desirable sons-in-law had shrunk from three to one. She did not imagine that any sensible young man would marry Mildy and this reduction had all happened, without warning, in one year. It made her the more determined to safeguard Diana, a beautiful child, for whom she had always cherished particular ambitions. In these years the tide of prosperity was rising to the boom, the Italianate mansions were being built in Toorak and Malvern, and Alice’s income was comfortably into five figures, but as she sat in the ballrooms of the mansions, watching Mildy ogling her partners, or listening to Maysie praising people whom she could not imagine in a London drawing-room, simply because they had a great deal of money, she must have already begun to feel a touch of the disappointment that lies hidden in success.

  Arthur’s description of Mildy at this time, though cruel, was probably fairly true. ‘She was very proud of her blue eyes,’ he said, ‘which she inherited from Austin, but in him they were like the fierce noonday sea, in her like a dewpond in a fog. When a young man was introduced to her at a ball or a lawn party, she opened them wide in a stare of gentle reproach, and pursed her lips in the sweetest smile, so that she looked like some kind of puritan whore soliciting at a Band of Hope meeting. The young man at once became acutely embarrassed and thought he must have already met her and forgotten her, or else that he had seen her leaving the lavatory. He escaped as quickly as possible, and she was left, the expanding flower which could only repel the pollen-bearing bee. Alice tried to instill into her some ideas of sense and dignity, but she was impervious to them. She was convinced that men were attracted by supine imbecility. You never saw anything more indecent than her affectation of female modesty. When at the age of fifty-three she discovered that she had been following the wrong tactics, her intended prey was even more alert to avoid this tigress dressed in blue chiffon.’

  In three years Steven returned from Cambridge and very soon became engaged to Laura Byngham, whom he married with the full approval of both families. Kilawly excelled itself in flowers and champagne, and the duque de Teba had the satisfaction of looking down on what may have been the last uncontaminated full-strength parade of the best families of early Melbourne. I think we grew up rather smug in the knowledge that our mother was the only one of the in-laws of whom our Langton grandparents approved, though this smugness was qualified as we became older, by respect for Uncle Bert’s increasing riches.

  Last year, as soon as Westhill was reasonably in order, I gave a party here, to which moved by snobbery, or piety or a sense of history, I invited only those, or the descendants of those, who would have been present at this wedding. Some were very old, some poor, some still fashionable with fine jewellery, but all were gentle and courteous and pleased, perhaps because seeing so many whom they had imagined long dead, they thought that they were in paradise. One, thanking me as she left, said: ‘I had not seen Emily for sixty years. We had quite a lot to talk about.’ Mrs Briar evidently thought that I did not know people in ‘society’ and was unaware that the list of names which appeared in the newspaper the next day was almost identical with those which were printed sixty years ago, and that the house had been filled, as it were, with the Faubourg St. Germain of Melbourne. It is still possible to hear in some secluded drawing-room in Toorak, one old lady say to another: ‘When we are gone there will be no one.’ Unfortunately Lady Gugglesberg and Mrs Mainprice have no idea that they do not exist, and there is only too much evidence to support them in their misconception. I was the only one conscious of the distinction of the party, as to the guests themselves it seemed merely like the Resurrection Morning with sherry.

  My parents were given Westhill and a good allowance, but the lively harum-scarum existence had come to an end. My mother has often told me how lonely she was here in the first two years of her marriage, after the teeming entertainment at Kilawly. They had no sooner settled in than news came from England of the death of Thomas Langton. His wife had died the previous year, and Austin at last became the Langton of Waterpark, such as it was. He was very impatient to take over his inheritance. It was assumed that the whole family would go back to live in England. This would mean prolonged preparations for departure, packing up and selling the Alma Road house, but not Westhill which had already acquired sentimental associations. Austin could not wait for all this. He left with Alice in a fortnight, the idea being that they should come back in a few months to settle up. Sarah was again installed in charge of Mildred and Diana. George had just reached the age for Cambridge and went with his parents.

  Again we are faced with one of those inexplicable stupidities of history, like Hetty’s being allowed to travel in the same ship with Austin. Alice may have thought that Mildy had reached saturation point and could suffer no further mischief from Cousin Sarah, while the beautiful intelligent apple-of-her-eye Diana was much too sensible to be affected by a silly old maid. Also they did not intend to stay away for so long. But when they arrived they found that not only had the acres shrunk, but that the farm buildings and Waterpark House itself were dilapidated. The pioneering spirit which made Austin blaze roads into the Dandenongs, came upon him in Somerset. They stayed at an inn in Frome while the house was repaired and redecorated, and the damp attacked but never conquered on the staircase wall. Then they moved in and supervised the repair of the remaining farm houses and buildings. Alice paid for it all in spirit as well as in money, as she was longing to get back to Melbourne to collect Diana. She was delayed for a month longer by Austin’s waiting to see unveiled a window which he had put in our chapel in Waterpark Church in memory of Cousin Thomas. This window was full of coats-of-arms and in the three lights were our illustrious collateral, Archbishop Stephen Langton, St. Austin and St. Thomas. It was one of the things which, like the duque de Teba and Uncle Wolfie’s symphony, made us conceited when we were young.

  At last Alice returned to Melbourne to one of the greatest disappointments of her life. Diana, her pride and her hope, who was to compensate her by the brilliance of her life for Mildred’s idiocy and Maysie’s terre-à-terre preoccupations, for whom she had dreams which she half recognised as fantastic, of launching her in the drawing-rooms of London and the palaces of Rome, and whom, the most secret, absurd, and precious hope of all, she planned to marry to one of the three Tunstall boys who were of a suitable age, had fallen in love with a music teacher called Wolfgang von Flugel. Arthur told me about this. He did not really dislike Wolfie, but he did not mind ‘throwing him to the wolves.’ None of the family disliked Wolfie. They thought it outrageous and unspeakable of him to marry Diana, but he made them laugh, and they could not dislike anyone who made them laugh.

  ‘It was madness,’ said Arthur, ‘to engage Flugel as a piano tuner with two unmarried girls in the house.’

  ‘Was he a piano tuner?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Well, music teacher then,’ Arthur growled. ‘I believe that Sarah disliked your grandmother. People often dislike their benefactors and the Mayhews were always envious of the Langtons. She certainly hated Austin. With her curious love of the anaemic, her passion for economy, it was a form of torture for her to live in a household like theirs. She did everything she could to make them drink their champagne
out of kitchen cups, but she didn’t always succeed. I think she brought Flugel there deliberately, hoping he’d marry Diana. She knew that it would be a bitter blow to Alice and then she would be revenged for all the kindness she’d received from her.’

  ‘But even Cousin Sarah couldn’t have been as wicked and silly as that,’ I protested. ‘To feel resentment for kindness. It’s mad! It’s devilish!’

  ‘I’m glad you think so, my boy,’ said Arthur. ‘It may not have been conscious, but people do a lot of evil that is both unconscious and intentional. It was really your uncle Algernon Byngham who precipitated the affair. The Bynghams, you must understand, were very chivalrous. On another occasion Algernon stood a porter on his head on Windsor railway station for speaking impertinently to your mother. Anyhow, Wolfie was engaged for Diana, but Mildred insisted on having singing lessons from him. One day she was having a lesson when Algernon came in. Mildred, as must have been fairly frequent, sang a false note, and Wolfie turned on her with the vicious rudeness of a neurotic musician whose ears have been tickled the wrong way. If he hadn’t been a musician he would have been a very decent chap, but his manners were at the mercy of his ears. He had disintegrated his guts with music. His mind, you see, was full of meaningless patterns of sound, or if they had meaning it was nebulous, not like the forms and ideas in the mind of a painter or writer. So the man who is purely a musician and nothing else is just an empty sponge when he isn’t playing something. But Wolfie was so soaked in music he was like a full sponge all the time, like one of those cakes soaked in rum. You touch them and out squelches some liquid. You touched Wolfie and out squelched a tune. Anyhow he called Mildy a fool and Algernon told him to apologise. He said: “It is my good right to call her so.” Algernon led him out by the ear and pushed him down the front steps, where he fell over and grazed his invaluable hands.

  ‘That started it. Diana was furious. She never forgave Algernon and was very glad when he became a tobacconist. She brought Wolfie in and bathed his hands, and bandaged them, and invited him to stay to dinner, and afterwards Sarah took Mildred along to see Mama, and they were left alone. In a fortnight they announced that they were engaged. A week after that Alice arrived from England. She was always very quiet and patient, whatever happened, and tried to reason with anyone she thought was behaving badly, but this time she was really angry. She gave it properly to Sarah, who although she looked shifty and guilty, had a gleam in her eye that showed she was pleased to have got under Alice’s skin. Alice said it was ridiculous, impossible, and she wouldn’t hear of it, that Diana was too young to marry anyone, let alone a penniless German music teacher, but she made the fatal mistake of calming her anger and beginning to reason about it. Also Austin didn’t mind him so much because he helped him play his bassoons, and he was a ‘von’. He said his cousin was a baron with a castle somewhere or other. I looked him up in the Almanach de Gotha. I did find the name Flugel but I couldn’t find Wolfie, but they don’t give the whole crowd like Debrett.’

  Again the Langtons’ kind hearts or their Australian tolerance betrayed them. In England there would not have been a moment’s hesitation. Wolfie would have been forbidden the house and Diana packed off to an aunt in Aberdeen or Penzance. But here, as Arthur said, they began their fatal discussion, while Austin was always inclined to look with favour on the waifs and strays of old families, as a man who is fond of antiques but has little money, will buy a worm-eaten Chippendale chair.

  While all the furious argument was going on, mostly between Alice and Diana behind the scenes, Wolfie still frequented the house with the perfect self-assurance of an accepted suitor. Nearly every evening he played to the family after dinner, if there was no other engagement. He had round child-like eyes, soft mouse-coloured hair, rather like a baby’s, and a round full face which quivered when he played with emotion. When I was first aware of him he had coarsened, but he must have been quite attractive in the early twenties when Diana fell in love with him. He was very sensitive, but only about his own feelings. Arthur said that Diana was not in love with him at all, but only with the Moonlight Sonata and the other music which he squelched out for her. Arthur himself was very musical, but he attacked Wolfie for being too musical as he was envious of his greater ability.

  Then the family made the even greater mistake of beginning to be amused by him. Alice sent up to Westhill for Steven to come and support her in her stand against the engagement. Steven came into the drawing-room at Alma Road and found Wolfie whom he was supposed more or less to kick out of the house. Wolfie rose, clicked his heels, bowed very politely, and with a beaming smile called Steven his brother, and Steven laughed. All the rows went on behind Wolfie’s back. Alice writes:

  ‘This afternoon I had another talk with Diana. She was quite irrational and obstinate. She said that we were a dull provincial family and that Mr von F. was an artist and came from the great world of European culture. I was astonished as, apart from the fact that he has no money and I think would be very selfish, the very reason I don’t want her to marry him is because I want to introduce her to that world. I said something of the kind. Diana was rude and said I didn’t understand the artistic temperament. It was useless to continue the discussion. Diana is either rude or else she cries. I am afraid that it is a mistake to bring up children in Australia if later one wants to take them into the world. Now that we have Waterpark and adequate money, she would have exceptional opportunities in Europe. It is bitterly disappointing.’

  But still Alice held out. Austin was inclined to give in. He was not ambitious for his daughters, was not concerned about money, and was grateful if they managed to find husbands from what he called ‘real’ families. He said that they could let them have an allowance to live on decently, though of course Wolfie would have to give up teaching music, except the bassoon to himself.

  Alice did not mind using her money to benefit the family, or for such things as the restoration of Waterpark, but she had no wish to reduce her income to enable her daughters to make unsatisfactory marriages. Also she was certain that if Diana who was only eighteen, could recover from this infatuation, she would make a happier marriage under other conditions, and have a much wider and more interesting life in every way than in a suburban villa with Wolfie.

  Suddenly Alice gave in. Nobody knew why, and I only discovered the reason a few weeks ago, when I was reading her diary for that year. One evening Alice, Austin and Diana were sitting listening to Wolfie playing the piano. Sarah and Mildy had gone to a lantern lecture on Chinese missions. Diana’s eyes were dark with weeping and fixed on Wolfie, who himself did not show any signs of anxiety or wastage. At the height of the crisis he said: ‘I eat and sleep well.’ He had paused at the end of a piece of music, and then he began to play the Chopin Prelude in G Alice wrote:

  ‘I could hardly bear it. I felt as if my nerves were the strings of a violin which was being played. I nearly cried out to him to stop. When he had finished I signed to Diana to follow me to my room, and I told her that I would no longer oppose her marriage to Mr von Flugel. Her face was so wonderfully radiant that I had my reward. She embraced me and we both wept. I do not know whether I deserve my reward. I gave way to the feeling that all love is good and must not be opposed, and that is not sensible. I then sent Diana for Austin and told him that I would agree to the marriage. We all went back to the drawing-room, and Austin said in that gruff way he speaks when he is shy: “It’s all right. You can take her.” Mr von F. stood up and bowed very low and said: “Then I understand that Miss Diana is now my affianced.” ’

  After this Alice began to call him Wolfie. He was completely accepted into the family, perhaps rather like a favourite dog, in a way that Uncle Bert never was. Although the latter was our financial salvation Alice always called him Albert. I think it was because they recognised, though quite unconsciously, that Wolfie was on the right of the pale. On the other hand it may simply have been that the name ‘Wolfie’ amused her, while plain Bert suggested a Cockney.
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