Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  He was happy now, sitting in his mother’s room, letting his eyes rest on pretty and luxurious objects, and on his mother herself; lying among the soft feminine delicacies of her bed. He liked the thick carpet, the fire in the grate, the shagreen brushes and boxes on the dressing-table, the quiet, the pale colours, the silver on his breakfast-tray, and Privett moving about with clothes over her arm, at which he was just too shy to look. He was thankful to have escaped from his own bleak little room at Eton, and from the eternal clatter of boots on stone passages, and from the eternal irruption of other boys who upset one’s ink or threw one’s hat out of the window when one was trying to read.

  “How was Eton, Dan?”

  “Oh, all right, Mummy.”

  He said that he had a lot to do in London, and she smiled and let him go, knowing that “a lot to do” meant that he wanted to buy a Christmas present for her. Over his other presents he would ask her advice, producing grubbly little lists written on the back of a Latin exercise, but over his present for her he could consult nobody. It would be a lonely and worrying expedition; she imagined him gazing into shop-windows, then entering the shop, large and awkward, to be jostled by other shoppers and thrown into confusion by assistants asking him what they could show him, and finally leaving the shop again without having bought anything. She thought with great tenderness of the pathetic bewilderment of the young,—not only in shops, but among all the problems which they were so ill-equipped to meet. But apart from his shopping she would give him a good time; she would devote herself to him entirely; she would make him escort her to theatres, giving him the tickets to look after, making him find the motor when they came out, all to give him a sense of responsibility and competence,—things he shrank from,—and she herself would enjoy going about with her tall son, for she was more than a little in love with him, especially when he wore his dinner-jacket. But she must make him wash his hands; and she had forgotten to look at his ears.

  The problem of Dan worried her a good deal. Not that he was not a good boy, for she sometimes thought him almost too good, and wondered uneasily whether he ought not to give her more trouble; but that she felt ill-equipped to deal with his perpetual doubts and conundrums. Too loyal to criticise her, too immature to realise her inadequacy, he referred all his perplexities to her and expected her to provide a satisfactory answer. Taking it for granted that she also troubled about such things, he was always confident that she could illuminate him on vital subjects which, actually, she had never thought about. For Evelyn Jarrold was not a woman who questioned the established order of the civilised world. She was not stupid, but, in such matters, simply acquiescent. Personal relationships were more important to her than social or general controversies. Where did Dan get his intensity from, she wondered? Certainly not from his father, who had never worried about anything in his life beyond the cut of his riding breeches; not from robust old William Jarrold; no, she decided with a sigh, he owed it partly to his own temperament but chiefly to his own generation.

  She dreaded the first open clash between Dan and his grandfather, or between Dan and the rest of the Jarrolds. Dan’s ideas, so far as she could understand them, did not fit. This distressed her. Yet, although all her training was all on the side of the Jarrolds, she had a disturbing feeling that Dan, in his fumbling way, was following the better though not the clearer track.

  She had the sense to realise that the one thing she must really dread in Dan, was a possible weakness in his own character. It was worse than useless to suffer the pains of such strong peculiarities without the courage or the determination to accept their consequences. She did not want Dan to grow up into a weakling with vaguely realised ideals.

  Stock-phrases were useful and comforting to her; she applied one of them to her confused anxiety about, and appreciation of, Dan: “One must have,” she thought, “the conviction of one’s own opinions.”

  Her tyrannical instinct did not apply to Dan. She was genuinely unselfish about him. The maternal instinct in her, oddly enough, did not take the tyrannical form. She was quite willing to let the boy develop along his own lines; she wished only that she were better able to follow and to help him. She must make him talk to her, she thought; though she was alarmed by the depths into which his talk would plunge her, a bather who could not swim.

  It was not easy to make him talk, though he would write her letters of eight pages every other day from school when his feelings became too much for him. She took out the portfolio in which she kept them.

  Eton College, Windsor, October 10, 1931

  My own darling Mummy—You are SO kind and sympathetic that I can’t refrain from putting pen to paper and writing “My own darling Mummy.” But I will not write a sorrowful letter (though, good God! I have reason to!) because I think it depresses you. But I love to get away in the evening from the bloody crowd to whom I am continually, inevitably condemned. It is really like a prison, this place; I feel I could go and ride a horse (or even a bicycle) in Windsor Park and breathe the soft cool air with its sense of freedom and tranquillity. Anything to get away. But I have begun in a different way to what I meant to. I meant to begin with a happy phrase “how lovely the autumn yellow of the trees looks against the dull red of the School Yard.” (I should be telling the naked truth if I said that,—they are fantastically beautiful, and I long to go out of the house, damn Lock-up! and see what they look like in semi-darkness.) Do please come down one Sunday and see me. It brings tears to my eyes when I think of you and the joy of freedom, instead of being coped [sic] up in a prison. Mummy, do please stop reading all this. You see it is rather natural that I should like writing as I hate talking to people here, but if you should get too bored of reading my letters do say if you would like me to stop, and I will stop, even though I should be done out of my sole remaining occupation that I like. Oh if I could only get measles. Do please write darling. What should I do without you? I find it very hard to believe that you should think me worth taking trouble about, as I don’t work properly, I can’t play games, I don’t agree with anybody’s ideas, I am difficult to satisfy, unpunctual, inefficient, and every defect. It is rather a mystery to me. Oh God, what must you think of me!—

  Your loving DANIEL.

  P.S.—Something compels me to go on writing. I know you don’t mind if I go on writing. Perhaps I shan’t send the letter. I wrote another letter the other day, but the boys have thrown away the key of my writing-case so could you please send the duplicate key which I left with you, to unlock my case. That is the worst of being as unpopular as I am. If only I was 19 years old! can’t I skip 2 years?

  DAN.

  Eton College, Windsor, November 1, 1931

  My darling Mummy—We had an O. T. C. field-day today, we just walked for miles and miles, and turned rattles and pointed wooden guns at the enemy when we came across him. It was all so silly and unreal, as all field-days are, and everybody was so serious and earnest about it. I was earnest too, I didn’t want to get into a row again over something so unnecessary. I wish the people who think war uncivilised would hurry up and outnumber the people who say it is “human nature!” Or am I talking rot? I have no right to talk like that at 17, when learned men who do not get white tickets disagree entirely with me. I apparently know absolutely nothing about anything. I am quite prepared to believe that, because whenever I am with you I am getting information the whole time, and I am never told anything I already know, let alone me telling you anything you did not know already! I was so nearly beaten on Saturday, did I tell you in my last letter? We argued for ten minutes [sic] and then he let me off. We had a row about me being slack in football. The same idiotic offence. I am not doing particularly badly in work this half though. I do hope you are not disappointed in me.— Your loving son,

  DANIEL.

  P.S.—They don’t seem to want anything except everybody being like everybody else.

  Evelyn put the letters away
with a sigh. Full of blots and erasures, stumbling, confused, unhappy, they wrung her heart whenever she received them. Poor little Dan! so self-possessed apparently, so self-revealing in those pitiful letters! She had often wished for some friends who could interest and understand him, and on whom he could rely, more securely than he could rely on her,—it was not good for the boy to find his only outlet in his mother, especially a mother with such shortcomings,—but her friends were all of the conventional type who would never sympathise with any of his difficulties or ideals. They would say, behind her back, that Evelyn’s boy was a poseur or a rotter. His father would have had no patience with him; his uncles, she knew, already despised him. But now, thank God, she could introduce him to Miles and Miles’ influence.

  Miles was not in London,—she had persuaded him that she must keep those few days entirely free for Dan,—but on the day before Christmas-eve he telephoned to her unexpectedly, saying that he had returned and hoped that she and Daniel would come to a play with him in the evening. Dan was in the room when the telephone rang, very carefully copying a water-colour of a bridge, on a corner of the table cleared for the purpose. He raised his head to listen to his mother talking.

  “Who is it, Mummy?”

  “Mr. Vane-Merrick,” said Evelyn deliberately. “You don’t know him.—Hold on a moment, Miles; Dan wants to know who I’m talking to.—Mr. Vane-Merrick wants us to go to a play with him tonight, Dan. Shall we?”

  “I want to see Earth,” said Dan. “He won’t want to go to thatt.”

  “Darling, what on earth is Earth?”

  “It’s a Russian film,” said Dan sulkily; “it’s being given at Stratford,—not on-Avon; atte Bow. It’s a very low place. You go to a play with Mr. Vane-Merrick, Mummy, and I’ll go to Stratford by myself.”

  Evelyn was tempted; she had not seen Miles for over a week.

  “No, no,” she said; “I want you to meet Mr. Vane-Merrick. I’m sure he’ll come to Stratford.—Miles,” she said into the telephone, “Dan and I will come with you if you can bear to see a Russian film called Earth at Stratford-atte-Bow.”

  “One doesn’t dress,” said Dan hastily.

  “One doesn’t dress,” said Evelyn into the telephone. “He says,” she interpreted to Dan, “that it is the very thing he wants to see, but that he had supposed you would rather go to the Coliseum.—Will you come to dinner here first?” she asked. “Seven-thirty. All right. Good-bye.”

  “Mummy,” said Dan, “thatt isn’t Miles Vane-Merrick, is it?”

  “Why, what do you know about Miles Vane-Merrick? Yes, it is.”

  “By Jove!” cried Dan. He jumped up in great excitement. “Mummy, you don’t mean to say you know Miles Vane-Merrick? You’ve never mentioned him. I thought it must be a brother or something. I should have thought Miles Vane-Merrick was quite,—well, quite out of your beat,” he said lamely.

  “But, Dan, how do you know anything about him?”

  “Oh, he came down to lecture to the Eton Political Society. He was quite a surprise to me. He said all the things I had always thought,—only, of course, much better. The Political Society simply hated him; hated his opinions, I mean; they couldn’t hate him, he was so funny. Surely I wrote and told you about him?”

  “I don’t remember, Dan,—when was this?”

  “Six months ago, I suppose,—in the summer half.”

  Six months ago, she would not have registered Miles Vane-Merrick’s name, coming to her in Dan’s handwriting. She must look up the letter. Strange!

  “No, I don’t remember. I hope you’ll like him,” she added, suddenly overcome by fearfulness. She had counted so much on Miles’ help with Dan.

  “But, Mummy, he’s the one person I want to meet. But look here, Mummy, you must be tactful. You mustn’t say, Dan wants to meet you. You mustn’t say I heard him at the Political Society. You see, he couldn’t have known I was there. Promise?”

  “I promise.” Evelyn knew how important it was, even for a person of Dan’s independence, to keep school-life apart from home-life. “I won’t put my foot into it.”

  “Mummy, darling, you never do.” Remorseful, he came across and kissed her. She was extraordinarily moved by thatt caress, which expressed Dan’s agitation at the thought of meeting Miles Vane-Merrick. She could now bring herself to utter the words she had been trying to utter ever since Dan arrived. “As a matter of fact, he has asked us both to stay with him during the Christmas holidays.”

  “Us both? But he doesn’t know me.”

  “He knows me, though,” said Evelyn.

  “To stay with him? Where?”

  “In Kent somewhere. He lives in an old castle. Would you like to go?”

  “Would I like to go! When, Mummy? New Year?”

  “Just after New Year,” said Evelyn, remembering the surprise which William Jarrold had in store for his family on New Year’s Day.

  “Oh, Mummy. What fun. How marvellous. Miles Vane-Merrick! How incredibly marvellous!”

  Evelyn and Dan and Privett travelled down to Newlands on Christmas-eve. They went first-class, and Privett went third. The Rolls-Royce and a footman met them at Leatherhead, also the Ford van for Privett and their luggage. (The Jarrold standard of luxury was high, if not actually a little ostentatious. Evelyn wondered how much harm it did to Dan, to climb into a Rolls-Royce and have a grey squirrel rug put over his knees by a footman). He sat back in the motor beside her, outwardly the very model of a rich man’s grandson. On the floor in front of him, however, instead of golf-clubs and a gun-case, lay his painting-box and a rolled-up camp-stool.

  “Are you looking forward to Christmas, Dan?”

  “Yes, I suppose so, Mummy.”

  “No, tell me really.”

  “Well, I hate the Newlands part of it. I mean, I like getting presents and all the rest of it, but I wish you and I could go away together somewhere, instead of having all this family business.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “Well, partly because I like being alone with you, and partly because I hate being expected to be all kinds of things I’m not. And then there’s Robin,—I hate Robin,— little swine.” He was more communicative than usual, because he was bothered and apprehensive, and had been repressing his anticipation for days. “By the way, did you say anything to Grandpapa about my hunting?” He had been longing to ask the question, but had shirked it.

  “Yes, of course I did.”

  “Was he very cross?”

  “He was, rather. I daresay he won’t allude to it at all. If he does, you mustn’t get frightened. I’ll back you up.”

  “He’ll catch me when you aren’t there,” muttered Dan.

  “If he does, darling, you must be firm for yourself You mustn’t count entirely on me.”

  “I hate rows.”

  “Yes, I know, darling, but sometimes one is obliged to have a row.”

  “A matter of principle,” said Dan.

  She was surprised to hear the grown-up expression on his lips.

  “How do you mean, a matter of principle?”

  “Mr. Vane-Merrick said so.”

  “Dan! you’re always quoting Mr. Vane-Merrick.”

  “Am I? Sorry. I won’t if it bores you. But you must admit, Mummy, he is the most extraordinary person. I never met anybody so full of ideas. In fact I never met anybody in the least like him. He seems to be everything one is told not to be, and to believe in everything one is taught not to believe in, and yet I can’t imagine anybody not being impressed and convinced by him,—even old Marsham, or Latimer. They couldn’t put him down as a rotter, could they?”

  “No, I don’t think they could.”

  “The extraordinary thing about him,” said the puzzled Dan, “is that he is interested in general ideas. Now you wouldn’t believe it, Mummy, but at schoo
l I can’t get anybody to take an interest in general ideas.”

  Evelyn was distressed by this outburst, for it was one of Dan’s statements with which she felt herself unable to cope. She really did not like disturbing and upsetting ideas any more than Dan’s schoolfellows or the Jarrolds liked them; she preferred things to go on in their orderly way. Miles in the short but overwhelming period of their acquaintance had already upset her quite sufficiently by his liveliness and irreverence; he in no way resembled the people she was accustomed to. Now she foresaw that he and Dan were destined to an alliance. She sighed, telling herself that it was healthy for the young to be dissatisfied, rebellious, inquisitive. She told herself this, not really believing it. Still, she loved Dan the more for his young eagerness much as it disturbed her. She made an attempt to answer his last remark as Miles would have answered it, wishing meanwhile that Miles were there to catch Dan in this mood and drop seeds of suggestion into him as the seeds of flowers dropped into the soil made warm and open by the rain.

  “At school! but you won’t find everybody so silly in life as they are at school.”

  “Shan’t I? But everybody I know is almost as silly,—Uncle Geoffrey, and Uncle Evan, and all your friends, Mummy, if you don’t mind me saying so. They all slap me on the back and ask how I’m getting on at cricket, or how many days hunting I hope to get this season, or whether I’m a corporal yet in the O. T. C. Thatt’s what I mean by saying I hate being expected to be all kinds of things I’m not. And am I going into the Guards or into the business? And am I in Pop? And if not, why not? And it isn’t because I’m a schoolboy, it’s because those are the things they really think important. They talk like that to each other, with only a little difference. Nobody seems to care about what you are, but only about what you do; and it’s the silliest things that you do that interest them most. They don’t care in the least what you are inside; and what you are inside is a thing to be rather ashamed of anyway.”