The Edwardians

by Vita Sackville-West

  Then she dismissed her anxieties, for they were of a sort not normally within her province, and had been only artificially created by Mrs. Levison; Sylvia’s conceptions of people were of a cruder and shallower nature than that. Still, she had been made to think; an unusual occupation for her; she had been made to notice. Henceforth, when they had lovers’ quarrels, easily and deliciously though they might be mended, there was some element in those quarrels sharp enough to keep her on the alert, increasing his attraction for her and adding a personal peril to the uncertainty of those rash days. Dissatisfied and dangerous by temperament, as she now acknowledged him to be, even in his most devoted moments, she knew that she held him not on a rope but on a length of cotton, a knowledge which stimulated even as it terrified her. Ah, that is the way to live, she exclaimed, and she soared to a height of excitement where she felt that she must shout and sing; then, falling down into the depths, she remembered that any day might take Sebastian from her, as any year might rob the beauty from her face.

  Only one fly stuck embedded in her ointment, and that was the slight shade of disapproval with which she was regarded by the really exclusive hostesses. Of course she affected to sneer at these great ladies, saying that the calendars on their writing tables had never been changed since eighteen-eighty; but all the same she was piqued. The Duchess of D. and Lady L. could not altogether ignore Lady Roehampton—if only for poor George Roehampton’s sake—but they could limit their invitations to their larger parties, and could refrain from inviting her to those more intimate parties, where only twenty guests instead of a thousand were convened, and which were the little paradise of all those to whom the crown of worldly impeccability shone as the supreme jewel. Admission to them entailed certain definite qualifications. Birth—that goes without saying. Dignity—by dignity they meant virtue. Reserve—by reserve they meant a becoming abstention from publicity. Lady Roehampton fulfilled only the first of these requirements. As for virtue, it was true that she had kept strictly within the limits, and had never allowed herself to be compromised beyond a few rumours that had not as yet overleaped the palisade of a permissible intimacy; but, on the other hand, she was associated with a set that only loyalty to the Throne placed out of the reach of open criticism, so that the indignation of these dictators sought relief in criticism of a more personal nature: Sylvia Roehampton powders her face, they said; Sylvia Roehampton has been seen, undoubtedly rouged; Sylvia Roehampton was once seen driving in a hansom alone with Tommy Brand, that jaunty libertine; Sylvia Roehampton is not a person on whom our sanction can whole-heartedly be bestowed. Then as to reserve—Sylvia’s qualifications fell pitiably short. It was not, of course, the poor woman’s fault that she should be acclaimed as a professional beauty; not her fault that people should stand up to look at her when she entered a box at Covent Garden; but it was her fault that she should lend herself to such vulgar exhibitions as the impersonation of Queen Etheldreda in a pageant at Earl’s Court. Such a thing had never been heard of before, and, so far as Lady L. and the Duchess of D. were concerned, it sealed her doom. Lady L. and the Duchess of D. decided that she must be mad. They had always mistrusted her, and now had an unanswerable pretext for an avowed disapproval. Secretly, these austere tyrants seized with delight upon so estimable an excuse for censuring a member of the set they deprecated. It was easy enough for them to ignore people like Mrs. Levison, whom they dismissed as an adventuress, or Sir Adam, whom they dismissed as a Jew. It was difficult, even for them, to ostracise somebody like Lucy, intense as their disapprobation might be; it had been difficult enough for them to mark the slight difference in their cordiality towards Sylvia, with nothing but the tenuous film of Sylvia’s face-powder floating between them and a natural acceptance of her position as Lady Roehampton. Their acutest problem was personified by people like Lucy and Sylvia,—actual renegades from a stricter standard, though balancing themselves still by skilful acrobatics upon the social tightrope. Self-elected, self-imposed, Lady L. and the Duchess of D. assumed certain responsibilities towards society, even though the times were changing; and never forgot that they had certain canons of conduct to maintain. They were sincere enough to deplore that a figure labelled Lady Roehampton should transgress these canons. They were human enough to relish the opportunity that she afforded them.

  Sylvia herself realised the mistake that she had made by appearing as Queen Etheldreda. The public pageant was a very different affair from the stately fancy dress ball which had been given some time before by one of these great hostesses, and which still formed a topic of conversation; or dress-up parties in private houses. She had cut herself off for ever from the fragile hope she still nourished of figuring at the more exclusive parties at L. House in Park Lane or D. House in Piccadilly. She would still go to both in ‘crushes,’ but from the more rigorous gatherings she would be more rigorously than ever excluded. Queen Etheldreda—Queen of Beauty; her feminine vanity might be gratified; her social vanity was mortified; it had received its death-blow. She knew it, when she met the Duchess of D. dining with Lucy, and was given two fingers instead of three—she had never been given five—and was called Lady Roehampton instead of ‘Sylvia.’ “What a success you have had!” said the duchess, putting up her lorgnon as though to scrutinise the remains of Sylvia’s beauty; “the Daily Mail this morning was full of your praises. Quite a public character you have become.” Sylvia’s only wonder was that the duchess should condescend to mention the Daily Mail at all. Yet with one half of herself she did not regret the pageant. Mounted on a black charger belonging to Sebastian’s regiment, she had paraded as Queen of Beauty; she had dismounted from her charger only to ascend the steps under a dais, while around her were grouped the loveliest débutantes of the season as maids of honour—Viola was amongst them, very scornful, and poor Margaret perforce, as the Queen of Beauty’s daughter, though poor Margaret could not by any stretch of the imagination be called a beauty—and below them had stood the young men of fashion, dressed as heralds, with tabard and trumpet, looking for all the world like the knaves in a pack of cards. Sebastian had been one of them, coerced into the rôle by Sylvia. The suit became him amazingly. The straight lines of the tabard, and its brilliant red, black, and gold, accorded amazingly with his black hair and olive complexion. He had set his trumpet against his hip with a gesture that no other of the young men could equal. When the moment came for the heralds to blow a fanfare—a sham fanfare, for the actual sound was produced by the regimental trumpeters concealed behind the dais—he had put his trumpet to his lips as though to proclaim the beauty of his mistress to the whole of mediaeval London. That one moment, Sylvia felt, had been worth the censure of all the Dukes and Duchesses of D. since their creation in 1694.

  Still, in more sober moments, she was irritated when Sebastian was asked to small dinner-parties at D. House and she was not. Pride forbade that she should express the true origin of her irritation, so she took refuge in trumped-up grievances. The duchess wanted to catch him for a daughter, or a granddaughter, she exclaimed; he was a simpleton not to see through such transparent devices. Then her temper would get the better of her, and she would upbraid him frankly for going to parties where she was not invited. “They think you good enough, because you are an eligible young man,” she would say; “they don’t think me good enough, because I have compromised myself with you; I wonder at you, for suffering such a slight to be put upon me for your sake.” Sebastian, who by now was well-advised enough to disentangle truth from falsehood, only smiled, in the way that most infuriated Sylvia. “Very well, then, go!” she would say; “go, or you will be late. Go, and enjoy yourself in your respectable circles; I’m dining with Julia and Sir Adam, and I dare say we shall have a more amusing evening than you will. I don’t envy you—stuffy, proper, strait-laced that you are. That’s your natural world. . . .” And so they would part; but Sylvia, coming home that night, would unfasten her jewels angrily and would cast them down upon her dressing table, raging inwardly at
the tyranny exerted by those old women, and snapping at her sleepy maid, who was usually accustomed to find her mistress good-humoured and gay, if a trifle capricious. Old, crushing sepulchres! so Sylvia would think; old, crushing sepulchres, determined to enshrine everything as it had always been! But she raged in vain, and she knew it. Their smile or their frown sufficed to admit or to banish. They were the last survivors of the old régime, and they had never departed by an inch from their original standards. Their arrogance was as magnificent as it was maddening. They refused even to be introduced to people whom most people would have given their eyes to know. Their insolence was intolerable—but they could not be ignored. Fashionableness went for nothing, compared with their hearse-like state. Brilliant though a social career might be, in the long run it was always brought up short against the wall of their severity. Few of Sylvia’s personal friends could get past them; and Sylvia, in moments of honesty, admitted they made some of her friends look cheap; not only those of her friends who were Jews or Americans, but people like . . . and Sylvia shrank at the names that came into her head. It was an uncomfortable admission. Sylvia took comfort in the thought that soon they would die off, and that there was no one of quite their calibre to take their place—those old Incorruptibles, in their black lace and their diamonds, who could set their disapproval even upon the choice of the King.

  Lord Roehampton was considered no fit counterpart to his lovely wife. People tolerated him for her sake only, for he was in truth a dull, heavy man, with whom Lucy had every right to be bored as a neighbour at dinner; the only people whose company he really enjoyed were his trainer at Newmarket and the keeper on his Norfolk estate. In that company he could indulge himself in the only things—apart from his wife—he recognised as beautiful. He would, of course, have shied mistrustfully away from the word; still he got a private satisfaction out of watching his fillies cantering in the paddock, and his pheasants running on the outskirts of his woods. Standing there, with trainer or keeper, he would confine his remarks to the advantages that these animals or birds were likely to bring him. “A sporting chance for the Oaks,” he would say; or “We ought to equal last year’s bag. But what about those damned foxes?” Nevertheless, those who appreciate the Lords Roehampton of England will readily believe that his brief grunts and utterances to the trainer and the keeper represented but a tithe of the pleasure he actually absorbed on a day spent in the paddock or tramping across the acres. Incapable though he was of saying so, he liked the green meadow with its white posts, the sensitive foals; the marriage of wood and cornfield, the turnip leaves holding the rain. He got a dumb satisfaction out of these things, which it never occurred to him to confide to anybody.

  If his capacity for enjoyment was thus inarticulate and limited, his principles were equally simple and unexpressed. There were certain things which you did not do, and there was an end of it. You did not take the best place at your own shoot, you did not look over your neighbour’s hand at cards, you did not open his letters, or put up with his committing adultery with your wife. These were things which everybody knew, and which consequently might be taken for granted. Lord Roehampton held very definite views about his wife. He was proud of having married the most beautiful woman in London, and, regarding her taste for parties and society as the natural foible of a creature designed by nature for all men’s admiration, he took pleasure in indulging her in all the adjuncts of luxury necessary to her proper fulfilment. Jewels, dresses, furs—she could have whatever she wanted. Nobody should say that he did not appreciate his prize. He would even submit to spending the season in London, though his heart ached rather wistfully for Norfolk and the young corn on the particularly sunny days of May and June. Sylvia, however, rewarded his indulgence with great consideration, for she would often urge him to prolong his weekends at home while she herself returned to London, to sail out again superbly on the ocean of festivities that were to him a weariness and an embarrassment. Why, she had even insisted upon going alone to the Court ball, so that he might not be defrauded of an important sale of shorthorns down in Norfolk. There were few wives, he thought with real gratitude, who would do that. Yes, Sylvia was good to him, he thought—her dull old George—and standing upon the refuge waiting to cross Park Lane, he had seen her drive out of Stanhope Gate in her victoria with the smart, high-stepping cobs and James the tiger sitting very straight with folded arms upon the box, and his heart had swelled with emotion as he took off his hat. A nice turn-out, that, he had thought, watching the carriage bowl down Great Stanhope Street; and what a pretty thing it is, he thought, to see a lovely woman drive in London behind a well-matched pair. Lord Roehampton had no use for the motors that were beginning to invade the streets. He crossed into the Park and continued his walk, feeling that all the creases had been smoothed out of him. The Park was bright with tulips and the lilac bushes near Rotten Row were all in flower; people were strolling or sitting under the trees, watching the carriages go by; it seemed to Lord Roehampton that everything was specially animated and gay, that the women were like moving flowers in their light frocks, and that the men in their black coats were an admirable foil, their spats whiter than usual, and their top hats more than usually glossy. And this good-humour, he reflected, was all because he had seen Sylvia drive out of Stanhope Gate! He thought himself extremely lucky; how many men after twenty years of marriage could say as much? He was almost reconciled to being in London; he began to enjoy the sensation of all this life streaming round him; and, leaning over the railings, he watched an escort of Household Cavalry come trotting round the bend on their black horses, their accoutrements shining and jingling, their scarlet tunics brilliant above the immaculate pipe clay of their breeches. A young officer rode with them, his sword sloped across his shoulder; Lord Roehampton recognised Sebastian. Nice boy, that, he thought; nice boy; and he sighed, for he had no son.

  It was inconvenient for Sylvia that “Sebastian’s summer” should coincide with her daughter’s coming-out. She had wondered whether she could invent any excuse to delay this ceremony by a year, but failed to find one: Margaret was eighteen and everybody knew it, and with all her daring Lady Roehampton was too well trained to break through the convention that a girl on the completion of her eighteen years was ripe for the feast and battle of the world. She would as soon have attempted to alter the date of Christmas. So she sighed and resigned herself. Nevertheless she was determined that Margaret should inconvenience her as little as possible, while preserving every appearance of the conscientious mother; and with this end in view she decided to devote an afternoon to establishing good relations between Margaret and several of her aunts, who had daughters of their own and might be expected to include Margaret in their parties where her mother’s chaperonage would not be necessary. Fortunately, George approved of his sisters—who indeed were ladies of unimpeachable respectability—and would readily accept the idea that in their company, and in the company of her cousins, Margaret would meet people whose standards and morals were more suitable to her unsophisticated years than the outlook prevalent among her mother’s friends. Sylvia tested him to see whether, on this subject, he was as sound as she hoped and anticipated.

  “You see, George, dear, I am afraid I have been rather selfish. I ought to have realised that Margaret was growing up. I ought to have got into touch with people like the Wexfords—nice, old-fashioned, steady people who live in Cadogan Square, and give a ball once a year to try and work off another daughter—really one loses count; I believe it’s the ninth Wexford girl who comes out this year. Or is it only the eighth? And only the eldest one married, and to a parson at that. Anyhow, the Wexfords are just the sort of people who have their uses when one is bringing out a girl. Young men don’t mind who gives the party—they don’t mind, I mean, how stodgy their host and hostess are in themselves, so long as they get a party to go to, and can dance; and I must say I would rather that Margaret met her friends at the Wexfords, even if they are a bit dull, than always at Julia L
evison’s or Romola Cheyne’s. Romola is quite careful, as a matter of fact, about what she says in front of girls, but one never knows how much they hear and notice that isn’t intended for them. Besides, it’s the general atmosphere that counts. You know what I mean, George. Now your sisters are such dears, I am sure they will help by letting Margaret go with them when you and I are simply obliged to dine at places that wouldn’t amuse her. I must really go round leaving cards this afternoon, and I shall take her to tea with Clemmie when I have finished.”

  “My dear,” said George mildly, “you were saying the other day that you hadn’t seen Clemmie for five years.”

  “Nor I have—that’s just why I must take Margaret to tea with her today. Clemmie’s girl is just Margaret’s age. By the way, George, what is her name?”

  “Agatha,” said George, who often went to see his sisters when he had nothing better to do.

  “Agatha. Of course. The girl with freckles. I had better go unpowdered,” said Lady Roehampton with a peal of laughter, “or Clemmie will be shocked. And you really think, do you, George, that I ought to let Margaret go about with Clemmie rather than drag her always with us to people like Romola or Sir Adam? I expect you are right. One can’t be too careful about a young girl. I won’t tell Clemmie what you say, in so many words, or she might think I was apologising for our friends, but if she suggests rather adopting Margaret this season I won’t say no. Dear George. You are always so wise. What should I do without you. Ring the bell, and I’ll order the carriage.”