Habits of the House

by Fay Weldon

  News of the Modder Kloof mine disaster had spread through the House. There was much sympathy for Robert – ‘just the kind of thing we’re fighting these Dutch to prevent. To save the diamond and gold mines – our boys will get it back, don’t worry.’ The kind of thing the irritatingly bumptious young Winston Churchill had been saying the other month: no wonder he’d lost his election at Oldham to the Liberals – too brash, too moody, too warlike for the North, but determined not to give in and to stand again.

  But something else Churchill had said in that conversation came back to him now, a sudden shaft of light cutting through into the sepulchre of a subdued House. Churchill, wide-eyed and excitable, animated rather than cast down by obstacles, had declared: ‘The only way to make money is to spend money.’

  ‘But you must have some, to spend it in the first place,’ Robert had pointed out.

  ‘Borrow it,’ said the young man. ‘Borrow more, make more. My late father’s good friend Ernest Cassel could be helpful. You should meet him.’

  ‘As it happens we are acquainted,’ his Lordship observed, and added that his affairs were with Courtney and Baum. To which Winston had said, ‘Then you’re on the right road. My father was a great man for diamonds. Did him no harm. But in my view diamonds and gold are too risky: they cause wars. Best to choose something less sparkly, something that gets less attention. Manganese? Dull stuff, but mix it in with iron and mine flooding ceases to be a serious problem. The supports won’t rust. If you can drain a mine you can save a mine.’ He himself was sailing straight away for Capetown to report the new war for some newspaper. The new ease of communications – telegraph, telephone – was a boon to journalists. Imagination could flourish, feeding on immediate news and extremity of event. He would be back in time to take on Oldham again.

  At lunch the Earl was nodded over to the powerful table for port and brandy, and discovered to his surprise that he was considered as an expert on the troubles in Natal. News travelled almost as fast in the House as it did at home. His voting against the Exportation of Arms Bill had marked him out as someone who at least had opinions on the matter. Having a view on Armstrong and Maxim guns had added to the general perception of Dilberne as a fount of knowledge.

  Robert feared for his country if he was considered thus. Salisbury was an old man: his hands trembled as he took his glass. He forgot what he had just been told. His cabinet was still stuffed with lords, earls, viscounts, the odd marquess – most of them set in their ways, unable even to bring themselves to equip the army with Mausers or Maxims because they were repeater weapons and somehow ungentlemanly. One shot at a time was fair; more was too reliant on vulgar machinery, not valour. If one was to believe Churchill, the fight to crush the Boer was apparently more to protect the diamond and gold mines of the Natal than because the Boers were so unpleasant to the natives, which was the construction given to the public.

  Well, the old chaps hadn’t done much of a job protecting his mine.

  The need was for a steady hand at a steady wicket, one that didn’t tremble with age, as did Salisbury and his cronies, old tremblers all. Perhaps in a coming upheaval something in the War Office might come his way, or in the Colonial Office; bugger Fisheries. He must aim higher. He needed to. The rewards were more attractive. Times were hard when a man must pay more attention to his prospects than his integrity.

  Young Miss Melinda O’Brien could have a very benign influence on his prospects. She was Irish, fine-featured and good-looking enough but with a name like hers presumably a Papist. The Irish Catholics were never renowned for intellect. Too many potatoes. Probably best, if Isobel’s efforts with the O’Brien mother continued to bear fruit, and the O’Brien fortune ended up with Arthur, that Minnie could be persuaded to convert to Church of England. He wondered what his grandchildren would look like? Be like? Could a child inherit republican fervour? Young Churchill’s brashness certainly seemed to have something to do with his American descent on his mother’s side. Hadn’t something gone wrong there – the expected dowry not come through: her father had reneged on the deal – had there been a bankruptcy?

  If Isobel had her way, and Arthur did indeed marry Minnie, there was no absolute guarantee that the father would come up with the goods. Then what? Because Isobel’s father had been generous when she married did not mean that Minnie O’Brien’s fortune was certain. All the coal money had gone. Isobel was convinced he had lost it all gambling and horse racing, but the vast majority had been swallowed up by the estate, what with an outrageous tax at five pence in the pound, the price of land catastrophically descending, the impossibility of raising rent from tenants without ruining, starving them – forget profit from grain or livestock, so much was now imported from abroad. Gambling was a drop in the ocean; a necessary, useful relaxation.

  There must be a way out. It was unfair to put pressure on young Arthur to marry where he didn’t want to. Isobel could be ruthless. He would have a word with her.

  The young whippersnapper Winston Churchill had said ‘borrow the better to spend’: probably that was the way forward. He would call at Courtney and Baum’s and spread oil on the waters: he had perhaps been rather peremptory with Baum – but who would not be, dragged from their bed so early in the morning? He hoped Isobel had sent an invitation to Mrs Baum. It was a regrettable reality that social acceptance could be used as a tactic to win friends and subvert enemies. Also, to calm those to whom one owed money. The bill for the first round of the copper central heating pipes was in – whole-house heating was not really an extravagance. One had a reputation to keep up. Freddie, Countess d’Asti had had her house in Eaton Place centrally heated: even the attics for the servants. Isobel would fidget until she had the same.

  ‘Why so silent, Dilberne?’ someone asked, startling him. ‘Sorry to hear about your mine.’

  Robert smiled. ‘Couldn’t get a word in edgeways,’ he’d been thinking to himself; he was going over the conversation last month with the thick-skinned young Churchill. How he’d had the nerve to plonk himself down a table of the great and the good, and started entertaining perhaps not everyone, but those he cared about, with his war stories from India and Cuba: wherever there was blood and gore, there he seemed to have popped by. Now he moved on to the Battle of Omdurman in ninety-eight. A force of eight thousand of Kitchener’s cavalry had been responsible for defeating a rabble of fifty thousand natives. Magnificent, as Churchill described it. Kitchener lost only forty-odd men, with less than four hundred other casualties, leaving ten thousand enemy dead and thirteen thousand wounded. It showed what well-trained cavalry could still do in a place like Africa, even when grossly outnumbered. All fine and good, Robert considered, except that now the cavalry horses in Ladysmith had been decimated by fever.

  He was relieved when his bookmaker Fred had him called out of the House. Fred had some other tips for him for the St Anthony’s Cup, the steeplechase at Newbury. Was his Lordship interested? Fred also mentioned that his Lordship’s bill was running a little high, and perhaps he could see his way to meeting it in the near future, and his Lordship said of course, of course. The future was beginning to look clear, and altogether rosier. The day had turned from unlucky to lucky. He could feel it in his water.

  The Fitting of the Dresses

  12 noon Tuesday, 7th November 1899

  It was two day after Arthur’s visit to Flora, and the morning of his Lordship’s sudden visit to Mr Baum, that her Ladyship and the O’Briens went touring the smartest dressmakers and milliners of London, spending money the former did not have, and the latter had in plenty.

  ‘I’m sure we have just as good in Chicago, and far more becoming styles,’ Tessa observed in Madame Pearl’s, thus causing her daughter some embarrassment. Tessa had a bad habit of comparing her own city to London, always to the latter’s disadvantage. ‘Our trams don’t rattle so, I’ll swear,’ she’d say. ‘Our streets are cleaner, our horses are bigger, our buildings higher, and everything is so much newer and smarter.’ It was
a habit born of insecurity, Minnie could see, the kind of brashness that gave the Americans abroad such a bad reputation. Minnie had tried to warn Ma not to do it, and she did try and try, but kept forgetting. On this occasion she even apologized, saying, ‘Oopsadaisy, sorry! It’s just your hats are so big one could take off at the nearest puff of wind.’

  ‘I dare say you have good reason to fear wind,’ observed the Countess of Dilberne kindly. ‘You come from the “Windy City”, I believe.’ She liked to show off her knowledge of transatlantic life.

  The new Paris fashions were already in, and dominated the coming spring’s styles: wide-brimmed and piled up with crushed velvet roses in glowing true-life colours. They were charming, and Minnie, generally bored by hats, was persuaded to try one on. Tucked away amongst the velvet extravaganza was a glittering cluster, of jewelled cabochons in malachite and turquoise. It was not Minnie’s usual style: she preferred simplicity in the way she dressed, but when Tessa said ‘My, Minnie, your young man would go for that, any man would,’ Minnie actually blushed and said she’d have it. It cost twenty-five pounds, simply because of the jewels, and it was coyly half hidden amongst folds of lush fabric. That was just a single hat, and Tessa bought a couple of crimson grosgrain turbans for herself and Minnie in case the wind caught up.

  Isobel caught the blush and was glad. Arthur had been remarkably reticent about his walk in the park with Minnie, almost off-hand, but had acknowledged ‘She was all right,’ he supposed, ‘for an American’, and he might take her riding in Hyde Park when he had time, as soon as he had fixed the Jehu so it was fit for a long drive. He forbade further questioning, and fixed his jaw in a way very reminiscent of his father, so she desisted. She was not displeased, but wished he would get on with it. Someone else might come along and snap the girl up.

  Her Ladyship assured Tessa and Minnie that they simply must have new ball gowns – leg o’ mutton sleeves were going out of fashion, bustles were simply not worn any more, the interest having moved up to above the waist, and tiny waists were vital if the curved silhouette was to be achieved. There would be balls between now and Christmas to dress for. Fredericka’s Christmas party was famous for its showiness, though its guest list was not necessarily as exclusive as Isobel thought right. Writers and musicians were asked along: too many did not have a title and journalists from the society columns were in attendance. Freddie even held a kind of artistic salon every three months, for which she could obtain an invitation if Tessa cared to go along. Dress was remarkably free and easy: Tessa should perhaps have some tea gowns made up; she’d had her dressmaker create a very fetching one indeed for herself in a fine white lawn and pale pink lace, though she wouldn’t herself wear such a thing outside her own home.

  It was at Freddie’s Christmas party three years ago that Robert had first met Mr Baum. That had not endeared the event to Isobel, on the contrary. Indeed, she had failed to add Mrs Baum to her guest list for her next ‘At Home’, as Robert had lately insisted, having got a glimpse of the address. Golders Green? Whoever had heard of the place? Some patch of ground outside central London proper, where once green fields had been, now muddy squalor as the property developers got hold of it? It did not augur well for an acquaintance! She supposed the new century was coming along and one couldn’t cling too much to the old ways, but Mrs Baum was going rather far, and too fast.

  She was not looking forward to her own charity dinner in the presence of the Prince of Wales, only just over a month away. It would put the whole household into turmoil. Royal guests always created tension. Guests tried to impress or went too far the other way, and were aggressively nonchalant. It was at Robert’s insistence that she had invited the Prince and Princess, reciprocating a previous invitation to dine at Marlborough House which they had taken up. To her dismay the Prince had accepted, though the Princess declined on the grounds that she was representing Her Majesty at the opening of a shipyard on the Tyne that very day. As an excuse it could scarcely be argued with, and at least gave Isobel more freedom when it came to the guest list, which was yet to be made final. She need exercise less tact, less care not to offend or provide a source of gossip.

  What she would need to provide was a sprinkling of pretty girls around the table. They were easy enough to find in the Season but in November they were in shorter supply; so far Isobel had only been able to rally plain and dumpy ones.

  Should she invite the O’Briens? The Prince would be delighted with Minnie, as he was with any pretty, cheerful, cultured girl, but he would find the mother loud and coarse – the kind of person one might expect to meet at the d’Astis’, but hardly at the Dilberne’s. Isobel resolved, nonetheless, to invite both mother and daughter. She liked Tessa. She was tired of obeying the proprieties. Doing the right thing, running the estate, living up to the Dilberne name, setting an example, giving royal dinner parties and balls, had done her no good in the end. She had been reared frugally, but at least without financial anxiety. These days, she could not help noticing, the bills that Mr Neville brought in on their silver tray for his Lordship to open, tended to stay unopened. Robert was like Arthur, with his general over-trust in providence, his Micawberish confidence that ‘something would turn up’. As men got older their initial propensities and prejudices hardened: experience did not bring new insights, but merely reinforced the conclusions they had come to, sometimes misguidedly, when young.

  Or could it be the case that it was the Prince’s influence leading Robert astray? Relying on horses to win races or cards to be lucky, as the Prince did, in the words of her father Silas, buttered no parsnips. Where would it all end? Bankruptcy? It could happen, did happen. The humiliation would be unbearable.

  But in the meanwhile she needed a new dinner gown for the seventeenth. She had almost nothing to wear that had not been seen at least once: Christmas and its festivities had not yet arrived, the spring fashions were in. She supposed she should economize, but what was the point? She would never outspend Robert. Or perhaps it would be prudent just to buy a new fan and be satisfied by that? God knew they were large and spectacular enough this season to dwarf any gown.

  The three women went by appointment to a Court dressmaker in Bond Street, where sherry and petits fours were proffered as they chose fabrics and patterns, and made purchases.

  ‘Moderation is the fatal thing: nothing succeeds like lavishness,’ said the Countess of Dilberne, as Tessa ordered three dresses at eighty-five pounds each. Even she felt slightly awed at the meat baron’s wife’s lavish tastes. Isobel looked at some fans but found them unexciting in spite of their size, and ordered a dress with a decidedly Gibson Girl silhouette for the royal dinner. She was tired of looking established and staid.

  ‘Never had your education, your Ladyship,’ said Tessa O’Brien. She had been swigging rather than sipping the sherry. ‘So take me as I am, just a bloody bogtrotter, left school at eleven, but not doing half bad for a girl who started half-naked in a burlesque show. Mind you, there was rather less of me then, but Billy doesn’t seem to mind a bit, he likes me as I am.’

  ‘“Nothing succeeds like excess”,’ said Minnie, rather quickly, for her Ladyship was looking quite startled. ‘It’s a quote from Oscar Wilde, Mama. A very smart but not very savoury Irishman, a writer who’d been in prison. We don’t quote from him much in Chicago, as people do here.’

  ‘I’m sorry for the poor man,’ said her Ladyship. ‘His plays did make me laugh, and we should not hold an artist’s life against his work.’ Which quite surprised and impressed Minnie.

  The ball gowns once seen to, laced stays to keep the waist in then had to be bought from a shop devoted only to lingerie. Minnie thought the frankness of the window display rather remarkable, the length of bare leg displayed, though she said nothing out loud. Well, why not? A body was merely a body: she could not see it as a source of sin, though Puritans as well as Catholics saw it as such. For her part, Tessa, happily buying what was described as a lattice ribbon corset said she hadn’t seen anything
so indecent since her days in burlesque. Then there was the Italian, Fortuny, to visit for tea gowns; Minnie said she’d rather go for one of the new fluted and ruffled blouses with a plain skirt. As she had a naturally small waist she would try and do without the swan-bill corsets that the style normally required, and be able to move more comfortably and freely in her day-to-day life.

  ‘She’s quite the Gibson Girl is Minnie,’ said Tessa. ‘Quite the new woman, she thinks herself an equal of any man. Will your Arthur put up with it?’

  ‘Really, Mother,’ said Minnie, ‘I think that after a single walk in the park, it is rather soon for me to understand what Arthur puts or does not put up with, or indeed to care.’

  ‘I think my son will have a little trouble moving into the new century,’ said her Ladyship, cautiously. ‘His sister Rosina is a new woman and quite a powerful personality. But I fear Arthur prefers young women to be tractable rather than argumentative.’

  Tessa said she had always found Minnie perfectly biddable, and chose a floating, flowing tea gown of finest printed silk with a tiny little pattern of gold and pink, held together at neck and wrist with strings of tiny shells.

  ‘Very fancy, but when do I wear it?’ Tessa moaned. ‘What is a tea gown when it’s at home? Is it for the bedroom? Holy Mary, it seems made for a man to get into, rather than for a decent woman to put on. All these pesky buttons and bows. And Minnie will never have the patience for them.’

  ‘I must lend you Grace then,’ said her Ladyship, ‘to “unpesky” your dressing. Grace is my most excellent lady’s maid. I will have her take a servant’s room in Brown’s, and attend to both your needs while you become accustomed to our ways. You can trust her to know what to wear and when to wear it. She will see to your hair, cope with the hotel staff, remind you of your appointments and make sure you get there on time. I shall manage very well without her for a day or two.’