Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

  I have not met my lady patroness yet. I imagine her exactly like Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She has gone away to superintend the confinement of a daughter. It appears that she does this every autumn. She has 4 daughters, 3 of whom are married and have autumnal babies in rotation, so Ravonsbridge gets a holiday from Lady Frances in October.

  She is also the mother of Charles Millwood, of whom we all speak with bated breath, though we never see him because he despises the Institute and never comes near us except to a General Meeting, which he has to do because he is our President. He is a director at the M.M. and is always just flying to America. Bess sat next to him once at a tea-party, at Cyre Abbey, where they live, 6 miles off, in Slane forest. The Staff are asked out there in a drove, occasionally, and are fed with buns. No — I invented the buns. But I daresay it’s true. And pray Bess, what was he like? Oh, says Bess, her eyes popping, he’s TERRIFIC! Why? What could he have said to you? Nothing. Not a word. For which Bess is profoundly grateful, as she would have died if she had been expected to talk to him. But he is said to be frightfully good-looking and frightfully brainy (Bess’s language, not mine) and stinkingly rich (my language). Which is, I suppose, rather terrific.

  You have asked me, more than once, what the Ravonsbridge Institute is for. My dear, it’s no use asking, for I don’t know, unless it is to provide Bess and Rickie and me with three square meals a day.

  I have read a little book explaining what it was meant to be for: a Memoir of Matthew Millwood which all the Staff are supposed to study. It gives a short account of his career, with 2 photographs. One is of a solemn young man in the 80’s, with his hair in a cow-lick, sitting beside a potted plant. This was before he became a millionaire, when he was just a town boy and his father kept a hardware shop in Market Square. The other is after: a snapshot of a stocky old man on the lawn at Cyre Abbey, snapping his fingers at a dog; his face is completely obscured by a panama hat.

  It seems that he was a clever boy and wanted to go to Oxford, and would have gone if his father hadn’t had a stroke, so he had to stay in Ravonsbridge and run the shop. But you can’t keep a good man down, so he went into partnership with Marsden who had a small factory, down by the bridge, round about 1900. They made sewing-machines and mowing-machines and then they made motorcars and then they made millions. The M.M. works now seem to extend for miles and all the New Town grew up round them. And he bought Cyre Abbey and eventually married Lord Ravonsclere’s daughter.

  But, says the Memoir, he always regretted not having the opportunity to read more, and hear more music and learn to know good pictures from bad pictures. So he built the Institute, so that Ravonsbridge should have the best of everything in Art and Culture. His idea was that no Ravonsbridge boy, kept at home as he was, should have to eat his heart out, thinking of all he was missing. The best was to be on his doorstep. It was to be a privilege to live in Ravonsbridge, and people of culture from all over the world were to flock to it.

  There were to be first-rate concerts and plays and lectures, and schools for Painting, Music and Drama, where the citizens could study these things. For townspeople or workers from M.M. the fees are nominal, though students from elsewhere pay.

  He built it and endowed it handsomely and presented it to the town and died a fortnight after the opening ceremony, leaving Lady F. to carry out his great project; and she, unfortunately, knows as much about Art as my Uncle Bob does.

  And anyway, Ravonsbridge doesn’t happen to want Art and Culture. Nobody ever comes to the concerts, plays, etc., and nobody uses the library. Except, of course, at the Festivals, and they have nothing to do with the Institute. The buildings are hired out during the Summer Vacation for a nice sum, which helps to check the drain on the endowments. During the rest of the year concerts and plays are given by the students, which are not worth going to. We get no outside talent: it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s while to come here.

  As for the schools: the Music School has collapsed. There are no full-time students. Rickie and his aides, Harry Dent and Mrs. Carstairs, give music lessons on various instruments to anybody who wants them, and Rickie conducts a very bad amateur orchestra at rehearsals. Occasionally Dr. Pidgeon, our Senior Director, turns up from Severnton, tells everybody how hopeless they are, and conducts contemptuously at a concert.

  The Drama School isn’t as bad as I thought at first. Mr. T.’s productions are the bottom, but the students get quite good voice training, etc. from Miss Frogmore and Miss Payne, and they do seem to get jobs when they leave us — not often on the stage, but semi-educational jobs. It’s quite an efficient concern, in its way, and we have 20 resident full-time students. Mr. T. is an amazing man. I never met anybody so pleased with himself or so sure he knows all about the Drama. He’s written a lot of plays for amateurs, and what he really loves is travelling round and judging at amateur dramatic competitions, and lecturing. He knows nothing whatever about the professional stage. But he is rather an old pet and doesn’t pinch the students’ behinds and I can see why Lady F. appointed him.

  The Art School is her lucky strike; and that’s not because she knows about pictures, apparently, but because Mr. T. got her to appoint Angera, who is really first rate, and seems to be an inspired teacher.

  Angera improves on acquaintance. He can be very nice when he forgets his grievances. He’s quite the most interesting person here — I mean to talk to. But he is horribly moody. Sometimes he is quite embarrassingly affectionate to Nancy (we are on Emil-Nancy-Lucy terms now), fondling her in front of me till I don’t know where to look. And then he will snarl and sneer at her, till I want to hit him. In her shoes I should go mad. And I suspect him of being slightly lupine; he looks at one, well — you know, the way foreigners do. Still and all, I find I’m getting to like them both in a way. In fact, I’m getting to like everybody, in a way.

  The only person I don’t like better is Mr. Hayter, whom I started by liking best. I have this feeling that he wants to set me against Thornley. Whenever I meet him he asks how I’m getting on, as if he hoped I’d criticise. And he smiles too much.

  Oct. 20th

  My dear, I must write at once to tell you: I’ve met Lady Frances! Not really like Lady Catherine de Bourgh though quite as formidable. She bounced into the theatre this morning, wearing Wellingtons and a sou’wester, as it was pouring with rain. She has a fleet of cars at Cyre Abbey but I expect they were all busy taking sick people to hospital and voters to polls and lecturers to village institutes. If ever you see a Millwood car, it is always going on some public errand.

  She is tall and bony and stern and rather lame, with a beaky nose and piercing dark eyes and an abrupt voice. She asked me a million questions about how I was getting on, and if I’d got a bassoon yet (how on earth did she know I was learning the bassoon?), and ended by saying I didn’t look very well and she would send me some vitamin tablets. I can’t think why I didn’t resent her impertinence more.

  She wanted a detailed account of my English classes. I don’t think I’ve mentioned them yet, have I? It’s a dull topic. I give them twice a week for the Drama Students, and any burghers of Ravonsbridge, or M.M. workers, who take an interest in English Literature. They are, needless to say, a flop. The students are supposed to come, but most of them cut it as often as they can; the ones who don’t are those dreary girls you get in every Drama School who can’t act for toffee and think to make up for it by knowing what Shakespeare really meant. Of Ravonsbridge burghers I have 7: the assistant of Orson the chemist, who wants to be a writer, and thinks this will help, though he doesn’t know what he wants to write about. A Mrs. Beasly, who tells us about her psychic experiences during the discussions. A Mr. Cottesmore, who has a thing about Kipling. Mr. and Mrs. Chick, from the lower town, who are rather pathetic; he is a clerk at the goods station, and they are solemnly crazy about culture and are teaching themselves French on a gramophone. Miss Foss, a tiny little old lady who is on the Council and comes to every Institute activity but never utters. And Mr. Meeke
r, stone blind, a retired schoolmaster, who knows much more about literature than I do and is a standby in discussions. I tried to express my gratitude to him once, for his kindness in coming, and he said, rather snubbingly: “I wish to support our Institute.”

  No M.M. workers have ever turned up.

  While all this was being extracted from me, Lady Anne Chadwick came in, who is Lady F.’s sister and very like her. Same costume, same rather Spanish handsomeness, but softer and less emphatic. Imagine, in fact, an early and a late Domingo Theotocopouli. Ha! My dearest creature, pray do not start! Where did I pick up all this culture? From Emil, who talked like an angel for hours the other night, explaining to me about composition lines, and the influence of Italy and Spain, respectively, on Greco’s art. I will now draw a diagram of (1) Tintoretto’s line (see Bacchus and Ariadne in Venice) and (2) Greco’s development of it after

  he’d lived some years among the hidalgos. (See the funeral of Conde Orgaz, and the Nativity in the N.Y. Metropolitan.) Personally I prefer a composition line which keeps inside the picture and doesn’t go soaring off to tracts unknown, and I said so to Emil, who said I am a materialist, and obliged me by a précis of his religious position which was a bore. On any subject outside Art he is liable to be second rate and woolly. Foreigners are strange: so much more cultured than we, yet hardly educated at all. I happened to quote: “Know then thyself, and seek not God to scan. The proper study of mankind, etc.” and he was much struck, and wouldn’t believe it was not by Byron. He is quite certain we have only 2 poets: Byron and Wilde, who were both driven into exile by British hypocrisy. “Unser Shakespeare” doesn’t count as British.

  Where was I before this digression? Oh yes, Lady Anne. She had come to a Council meeting; the Council is quite a family affair. And, said she to me, apropos of my lectures: “But do the Poor come?”

  Nov. 1st

  You say I tell you all about Ravonsbridge but nothing about myself. There is nothing to tell. I am quite well, though always a little hungry, owing to Nancy’s horrible cooking. I am making progress with the bassoon. On Sundays I explore Slane forest on a bicycle or go to read to Mr. Meeker who is blind and has nobody to read to him. I am quite all right, only my hair is falling out. Do you know of a good tonic?

  Mr. Meeker lives in the new town, where I said I’d never go. He lives with his son, who is a doctor there, and he went to school, in his youth, with Matthew Millwood. Their fathers kept neighbouring shops on Market Square. He got to Oxford and has been a poorly paid schoolmaster all his life, while Matthew, who didn’t, made all these millions. I asked him what Matthew was like, and he said: “Not merely the most lovable man I ever met but the most lovable I ever heard of, or read about.” I was astonished; I didn’t know anybody lovable could get so rich.

  But I got the same impression from the Mildmays (Librarian), with whom I had tea the other day. Mrs. Mildmay is very amusing, though crippled with arthritis; she talked a lot about the Millwoods and the Ravonscleres, a little, I think, to the disapproval of Mr. M. who didn’t like to discuss his patrons with one of the Junior Staff. She is a flippant old thing and made me laugh a great deal. But you know, I think they are both very fond of Lady Frances and admire her; and it’s plain they adored Matthew Millwood.

  Mrs. Mildmay says all the Ravonsclere women are the way they are because of their mother — old Lady Ravonsclere, the Reforming Countess. She used to pray with her maids for an hour every day, and always got up at 6 A.M. and never spent more than £20 a year on her clothes. She brought up her daughters to believe that it is not only wrong, but very vulgar, to waste time in pleasure or spend any money on themselves. They were Earl’s daughters; God had given them rank and wealth in order that they might do good, and they must never forget it.

  Lady Frances was, it seems, rather a problem daughter; she took up women’s suffrage and insisted on going to prison, which Mrs. Mildmay says was probably a good deal more luxurious than anything she was used to at Ravonsclere Castle. But she settled down when she met Matt Millwood on a committee for the improvement of rural housing. They fell in love while poring over plans for septic tanks.

  I told them about Lady Anne’s question: Do the Poor come? which had convulsed me. Mrs. Mildmay said that was the whole trouble. Lady Frances has spent her whole life working for the Poor and now there aren’t any — not as there were when she was young. Most of the things she fought for have been won: votes for women, sickness insurance, old-age pensions, etc. And now, as a general rule, the workers in M.M. eat more than she does, their women dress better, and a lot of them have television, which she has never heard of. She can’t get the hang of this new world. She thinks of the Institute as a scheme for keeping the Poor out of the public-house by acting Shakespeare at them.

  I have an idea that the Mildmays don’t like Mr. Hayter. Mr. M. said it is a pity the younger staff are encouraged to criticise the Senior Directors, and I’m sure he had Hayter in mind. And incidentally I learnt the truth about the ‘little friend’ of Mr. Thornley’s who was, according to Emil, after my job. She was an elderly spinster, who once worked for Thornley and is now on the rocks, and, being the kindest of men, he wanted to do her a good turn.

  Bess is quite right. One shouldn’t believe a word Emil says. I ventured to ask them a little about Terrific Charles, because Emil is always particularly scabrous about him. An instance: a draughtsman at M.M. had a very pretty wife, who is said to have caught Charles’ eye. A rival firm offered the draughtsman a much better job and he departed to London. Gossips said that Lady F. had arranged it all so as to put harm out of Charles’ way. But Emil knows better. He has it that Lady F. knew nothing of the matter. Charles he says, arranged it because an intrigue in London is much easier for him than one in Ravonsbridge. I apologise for the squalor of this, but it shows you what a cloaca maxima Emil’s mind is, the moment he gets off Greco. He’s the oddest mixture.

  Well, the Mildmays didn’t speak up for Charles as much as I’d hoped. They say he really is clever; he got the Ireland or the Hertford, I forget which, at Oxford, and Mr. M. said: Oh, a promising young man! Very promising! He has everything in front of him. So Mrs. M. said: Yes. The only thing he needs is something behind him. And then she muttered something that sounded like: One good kick in the pants. She looks such a meek little old invalid, but she has a devilish eye. Mr. M. coughed reprovingly. I don’t think they like him — not, I’m sure, on account of squalid little mutterings about employees’ wives, for I don’t suppose they’ve ever heard them. But I think they are hurt by the despisery he shows for the Institute and the town, when his father was such a good citizen. Whenever there is an election his mother makes him stand as Liberal candidate, and he always forfeits his deposit. Mr. M. said that’s not surprising when he is so little known in the district. He never shows up at any local functions, and ignores his father’s old friends. I know he has never once taken any notice of Mr. Meeker, who would love an occasional chat with him, for his father’s sake.

  A letter from you has just arrived. What on earth has my mother been saying? I have not been ill. But my hands and feet went numb. I couldn’t feel anything in them. So Emil said I had pernicious anaemia and would die. I pointed out that people don’t die nowadays; they take liver extract. But he wouldn’t have any of that. He insisted, with gloomy relish, that liver extract kills more people than P.A. does. So I floated off to the Doc. who said I wasn’t anaemic, it is merely polineuritis, if that is how you spell it. So I said, what is that? So he said, oh nothing at all, just numb hands and feet. So I said: For the rest of my life? So he said, get plenty of sleep and lots of fresh air and it will pass off.

  Well, I pay 7/1 a week, at least the Institute pays 3/3 of it, for Nat. Insurance and I really thought I ought to get some of it back, so I said: Won’t you give me some medicine, please? So he said, oh yes, what medicine would I like? I said prussic acid, but that didn’t go down well, because this doc. never had a patient who made jokes before. He got into a flap that
I might be mentally deranged and it seems that he wrote to my Ma, who wrote back and gave him a flea in his ear for not giving me Vitamin B injections, which are expensive, so he doesn’t prescribe them but just asks patients what medicine they’d like, which shuts them up. So then he gave me injections and it has passed off. It was a sell for him, her being a doctor too!

  Nov. 12

  What do you mean — why don’t I go out more? There is nobody to go out with, except Rickie, and a little of him, as you know, goes a long way. Harry Dent has buck teeth and is engaged to a girl in Gloucester. And why do you keep asking if I’ve met Charles Millwood yet? You can’t have grasped the first thing about Ravonsbridge if you think I’m ever likely to, or that he’d take me out if I did. Do get it into your head that I am only one step above the Poor.

  Anyway, I’d rather be alone. I get on all right with everybody here, but I couldn’t care less about anything or anybody, so now you know. I’m quite all right, except that I don’t sleep very well and I’m going bald, like Emil, probably for the same reason: Nancy’s catering.

  Dec. 8th

  I am sorry (a) not to have written for so long, (b) that my last letter was cross.

  What good news about Hump! I’m so glad he has at last spotted the carrier fly. But what is an ichneumon parasite? Is it the carrier, or something he means to import that will kill the carrier off?

  And it surely must be good news that Kolo is marrying the High Yellow heiress? She must really have something to her, to be leaving civilisation and American plumbing to live in the Orchard Bush. She must be violently in love with Kolo, for I cannot believe it’s very nice there. It will be a great standby for her to have somebody there like Hump, with whom she can play Toscanini on her Victrola. In a novel there would be complications: one knows what would happen next as one knows tomorrow is Sunday. But real life is less inevitable.