The Edwardians

by Vita Sackville-West

  “Or for mother? Or for Lady Templecombe? But tell me more about Sebastian the Squire. He interests me.”

  “He interests me too. He is a real person. A real understanding exists between him and Wickenden and Bassett. They speak the same language, even though Wickenden drops his aitches and Sebastian doesn’t. They respect each other. And I’ll say this in Sebastian’s favour: that the day when Wickenden ceases to respect Sebastian will come sooner than the day when Sebastian ceases to respect Wickenden.”

  “You’re wrong there, Viola. They are interdependent. The Wickenden that Sebastian ceases to respect will no longer be the same Wickenden.”

  “What you mean is, that Wickenden will be the first to break away from feudality, while Sebastian still remains bogged in it.”

  “You go ahead faster than I do. I don’t admit the fallacy of feudality. I look on it as a rock, on which we built not a palace and a hovel, but a manor house and a cottage side by side. Chevron is big, but essentially it is only a bigger manor house. That happened centuries ago, but it still holds good. Chevron and Wickenden’s cottage have their roots in the same foundation. The same earthquake that destroys Chevron will destroy Wickenden’s cottage.”

  “Only it won’t be an earthquake—not in England, England isn’t seismic—it will be a gradual crumbling.”

  “Perhaps. But the effect will be the same. They will both go down together.”

  “But something else will be built in their place,” said Viola; “something less glaringly discrepant.”

  “Yes—two tenement buildings, alike in every particular,” said Sebastian bitterly.

  “My poor Sebastian, you hate the idea, but you must resign yourself to it. You try to look on it dispassionately, I know, but you are a hundred years out of date. A hundred years only—we needn’t go back to the Wars of the Roses. You are still living in the days when England was an agricultural and not an industrial country; when the population was smaller, and the tenant was really dependent upon his landlord, the employee upon his employer; when their relations were much more personal; when Wickenden’s son didn’t dream of finding a job anywhere but in the Chevron workshops; when Wickenden’s job, like Sebastian’s, was hereditary.”

  “Today he goes into the motor trade.”

  “And Sebastian resents it.”

  “But so does Wickenden. You forget that.”

  “Wickenden, my dear, will die off. Wickenden and Sebastian both belong to the old order. There are too many young Wickendens now,—they can’t all find employment in the Chevron shops. Naturally, Sebastian will cling on longer than the young Wickendens will. Sebastian is all right; he has a pleasant life; lots of money; he spends half his time in London; the other half he spends agreeably patronising his dependents, riding round his estate on a nice day, dispensing bounty, saying, ‘Yes, I will mend your roof’ . . .”

  “And who do you propose as the mender of Wickenden’s roof, if I no longer do it?”

  “Wickenden himself. A Wickenden that need not be beholden to you or anybody else, except to an unseen employer—perhaps the State—who pays him a proper wage in exact proportion to the work he has done. No patronage, no subservience, no obligation.”

  “But damn it, Viola, I pay Wickenden a proper wage. And I swear Wickenden has no sense of patronage or obligation towards me. Ask him. He wouldn’t know what you meant.”

  “No, but his son would.”

  “That young Frank. That boy has no manners, no feeling for Chevron. . . .”

  “Why should he have any? Chevron is your house, not his. You may respect Wickenden for identifying his interests with yours; I respect young Frank for insisting upon having interests of his own. It’s a different point of view, Sebastian. We shall never agree.”

  “I thought you loved Chevron as much as I do, Viola.”

  “I do love Chevron. Something smashed inside me the day I realised that I mustn’t cling on to Chevron. Little rootlets still push out, and I have to keep on tearing them up. It hurts me, but I do tear them up. I regard our love for Chevron as a weakness. “

  “All love is a weakness, if it comes to that, in so far as it destroys some part of our independence. I don’t see why the love of a place should be regarded as more of a weakness than the love of a person.”

  “I think I know why, in this particular case. Your love for Chevron isn’t pure. It includes the whole system on which Chevron is run. It includes Wickenden, and the carpenter’s bench, and the painters’ shop, and the forge, and the woodcutters; and it includes your relationship to them.”

  “I don’t see that that matters,” muttered Sebastian sulkily. “No, I’ll tell you what I really think,” he added, rousing himself. “I will agree with you that Chevron, and myself, and Wickenden, and the whole apparatus are nothing but a waxwork show, if you like. Present-day conditions have made us all rather meaningless. But I still think that that is a pity. I think we had evolved a good system on the whole, which made for a good understanding between class and class. Nothing will ever persuade me that the relations between the squire and the craftsman, or the squire and the labourer, or the squire and the farmer, don’t contain the elements of decency and honesty and mutual respect. I wish only that civilisation could have developed along these lines. We have got away now from the day when we underpaid our labourers and cut off their ears and slit their noses for stealing a bit of wood, and we might have looked forward to an era when we could all have lived decently together, under a system peculiarly well suited to English people. But, as you say, there are now too many people. There is too much industrialism. My idyllic England vanishes. People like myself and Wickenden have got our backs to the wall. Naturally we don’t like it.”

  Viola laughed. “Darling Sebastian, how well I foresee your old age—shut up inside the walls of Chevron, saying that the country has gone to the dogs, a good Tory to the last. What a pity you didn’t live in eighteen-fifty.”

  “Well, you’ve disposed of Sebastian the Squire. Now tell me about Sebastian the Smart Young Man.”

  “I don’t like him. I do like Sebastian the Squire, even though I disagree with him. But the Smart Young Man—no. He sins against himself, you see; he is a sham. He is very charming and good-looking, and he has perfect manners and dresses irreproachably. He does all the right things. He dances, he plays polo, he goes to race-meetings, he flirts—oh, how he flirts! He consorts with people he despises, but of course he never gives them an inkling of what he really thinks of them, He pretends to adopt their values, and does it very successfully.—Am I being a prig? Is it only because he is young and likes amusing himself?”

  “Luckily he has a sister who tells him some home truths,” said Sebastian, making a wry face.

  Lucy came in.

  “Sitting in the dark, children?”

  “We were having a very serious conversation,” said Sebastian, and he got up and kissed his mother, much to her surprise, for he was not usually demonstrative.

  Chapter VI

  Teresa

  Chevron was even more beautiful in winter than in summer; so Sebastian thought. (But then, whatever the season, Sebastian always decided that it suited Chevron better than any other season.) He had now been there for two days alone with his mother and Viola, and, as usual, had forgotten all about London and was deep in his Chevron mood. He had a full day left, before the Christmas party arrived by the six o’clock train. He had looked forward to this party, having arranged in his own mind that matters should come to a head between himself and Teresa, but now it merely irritated him to think that by the evening the house would be full of people, even though Teresa should be of their number. He had long since discovered why he resented parties at Chevron, although in his sardonic way he could enjoy them elsewhere; it was because they forced him to mingle the two sides of himself, for Sebastian was honest enough to dislike mixing hi
s manners. He could come to terms with himself only if he kept his two selves sharply separate. Then he could manage to sustain himself by thinking that the oneself redeemed the other. In this way, since we first met him rebelliously sitting astride the roof, had he tidied himself into compartments; but still parties at Chevron had the same distressing effect, of confusing him by pitting reality against unreality—one mood against the other. The presence of Teresa would complicate matters. He was clear-sighted enough to know well that he would play up to Teresa; would consent to the rôle that she expected of him; would hate himself for doing it; and would exaggerate out of sheer exasperation. He wished by all his gods that he had not invited Teresa.

  Meanwhile, Teresa and the party were distant by twenty-five miles of space and eight hours of time, and Sebastian, with Sarah and Henry at his heels, was out in the park on a frosty morning. For the moment he could afford to be happy. Chevron was going about its business as usual, as though no discordant strangers were expected; the internal agitation of the house was not here apparent; Sebastian could forget that within doors his mother was interviewing the chef, Mrs. Wickenden sorting out the sheets, Wacey struggling with the dinner table, Vigeon descending into the cellar, the groom of the chambers going round the writing tables with ink, pencils, and paper, the still-room-maid making scones in the still-room. All that housekeeping business concerned Sebastian not at all. He roamed round the outer walls, meeting first a waggon charged with a fallen tree, and appreciated the rounded rumps, like Spanish chestnuts, of the straining horses; then he looked into the slaughterhouse, where Hodder the keeper was skinning a deer slung by all four feet from a rafter; then he met two gardeners pushing a handcart laden with beetroot and potatoes; then he looked into the pimping-shed, where old Tumour was chopping faggots. Old Tumour, a frill of white beard edging his face, looked up, grinned cheerfully, and touched his hat, then went on with his chopping.

  “Well, how are you keeping, Tumour? Nice weather, isn’t it?”

  “Nice enough, your Grace, but not seasonable, not seasonable.”

  “Well, it’s cold enough, Tumour; but I suppose you expect snow at Christmas?”

  “Ah, the climate isn’t what it was, your Grace; a Christmas without snow is onnatural.”

  “I daresay we’ll get it before we’re done, Turnour.”

  “Maybe, your Grace, but still the climate isn’t what it was. Anyhow we’re getting a touch of frost to set the sprouts. I had a nice lot of sprouts this year, your Grace, and it would have been a pity to lose them for lack of a touch of frost. “

  “So it would, Tumour, a great pity. And how’s the rheumatism?”

  “Not onreasonably bad, your Grace, considering. But I’m getting on, and it tells.”

  “Seventy-eight is it, Tumour?”

  “Ah, your Grace has his late Grace’s memory.

  Seventy-eight it is—seventy-nine come Easter.”

  “Well, Tumour, there’s a Christmas surprise for you and everybody on the estate—five shillings a week rise from the first of January.”

  “No, your Grace, you don’t say so?” said Turnour, desisting from his chopping to push back his hat and to stare; “not that it won’t be welcome to all, with prices going up as they do. Well, now!” said Tumour, still marvelling at this piece of fortune, “if I haven’t always said: a gentleman is a gentleman, but his Grace is a real gentleman. And here I get my words proven out of my mouth.”

  “It isn’t that, Tumour,” said Sebastian, compelled to honesty; “only I can afford it, where others can’t.”

  “Ah, your Grace makes light of it. But it isn’t all who would think of it, even them as can afford it. And your Grace pays a decent wage already, next to some. Thank you kindly, your Grace. My old woman will dance when she hears it; stiff joints or no.”

  Sebastian smiled and nodded and walked away, with no very great satisfaction at his heart. He felt that he had received more gratitude, and had acquired more merit, than was his due. Five shillings a week meant thirteen pounds a year, and—say that he employed a hundred men—that meant thirteen hundred pounds a year; very little more than his mother would spend on a single ball; a negligible sum in his yearly budget. He felt ashamed. His conversation with Viola had shamed him. Money apart, he felt that his relationship with old Turnour was false. What did he really care for old Turnour’s rheumatism? or for his age? or for the fact that he walked three miles at five o’clock every morning to his work, winter and summer, and three miles back every evening? Sebastian could stroll into the pimping-shed every now and then, and gossip with old Turnour in a friendly way for ten minutes, and he knew that old Turnour liked it, and retailed every word of the conversation to his old woman in the evening; but supposing that on a cold winter’s night Sebastian had found his fire unlit, and, on ringing the bell, had been told by Vigeon that old Turnour had omitted to cut any faggots that day—would not he, Sebastian, have damned with rage, and demanded what old Turnour thought he was there for, if not to cut faggots? And would have thought himself a lenient master in that he did not sack Turnour without further enquiry. He walked on, unhappily shaking his head. Viola had upset him. Tumour’s gratitude embarrassed him. He felt, rather, that it was he who should thank the old man for rising at five o’clock every morning and for walking three miles, that the bath should be hot by eight and the fires fed throughout the day.

  But the morning was too lovely, and Sebastian too young, for his depression to last for long. He took his way across the park, throwing sticks for Henry to retrieve—Sarah did not care for sticks—and every now and then he turned round to look at the house which lay beneath him, spread out like a mediaeval village with its square turrets and its grey walls, its hundred chimneys sending blue threads up into the air. It was his; and he remembered Teresa’s question, ‘Tell me what it feels like to be you.’ At that moment he knew exactly what it felt like to be himself.

  The turf was white with frost, and each separate blade of grass stuck up, as brittle as an icicle. The grass crunched beneath his feet, and looking back across the plain he could see the track of his footsteps, making a dark line across the rime. Sarah stepped delicately, and from time to time she lay down to lick the balls of ice which gathered between her pads; Henry, who was made of coarser stuff, careered madly round and round in circles, galloping like a little horse, bounding over the tussocks, his ears flying, his feathers streaming. Sebastian cheered him on. He wished he could tear about like Henry. They came to the edge of the plain; Sebastian broke into a run down the slope; now they were in the valley; still they ran, startling the deer that nosed about among some armfuls of hay thrown down for them. They bounded away, the spaniels after them; they bounded up the slope, over the dead bracken, bouncing as though they had springs in their feet, their white scuts flashing between the trees. Sebastian stood still to watch: he felt so happy that he thought his heart would burst. Henry and Sarah, returning, dragging themselves on their bellies up to him, were astonished when they were not beaten.

  By the morning of Christmas Eve, snow had fallen. Sebastian was amused by this, when he first looked out of his bedroom window and saw the white garden. He was amused, because Teresa would now see Chevron as she had expected to see it. “Quite an old-fashioned Christmas,” she would say. He was in such a good temper that he could anticipate Teresa’s careful platitudes with affection. He looked out at the familiar scene. Two gardeners were already sweeping the snow from the path. Swish, swish, went their black brooms, and the men moved after them, waddling from foot to foot, in a caricature of the scytheman’s beautiful rhythm. The snow was powdery, and flew readily under the twiggy swish of the broom, heaping itself on either side in a low wedge-shaped rampart, clean and glittering; the yellow gravel of the path came through, streaked with thin semicircles of snow between the brushings. Blackbirds walked over the lawn, printing the snow with their neat marks. Sebastian could not bear to remain
indoors on such a morning; he pulled on a pair of trousers and a sweater; called to Sarah and Henry, who were still at the stage of stretching and yawning in their respective baskets—Sarah especially was always a slow waker, and liked to jump on to Sebastian’s bed for five minutes’ sentimentality before she was officially awake—and going downstairs he tried to get out into the garden, but was checked everywhere by fastened shutters and locked doors, for the indoor servants were not allowed into this part of the house so early, and had neither undone the fastenings nor pulled up the blinds. Sebastian tugged impatiently, unreasonably irritated with his servants for the efficiency with which they performed their duties. He was as irritated as when he sometimes arrived at Chevron without warning during the London season and found all the furniture piled into the middle of the rooms under dust-sheets. Then he grumbled at Mrs. Wickenden for the thoroughness that he really respected. At last he got out, having triumphed over the library shutters; Henry rushed in advance into the snow, tossing it up with his nose; Sarah followed more circumspectly, snuffing, looking back at Sebastian to know what this unfamiliar white grass might portend; they both ran, little brown shapes, snuffing, hither and thither, and Sebastian came after, at first reluctant to break the thick white carpet, then kicking it up with pleasure, seeing the powdery snow fluff up before his toecaps as he kicked; and so he crossed the space to the path and the brushing gardeners, and taking a broom from one of the men he sent him off on other business.

  A red ball of sun was coming up behind the trees; there was now a long stretch of path swept clear; Sebastian swept with such vigour that he constantly found himself outdistancing his companion. The cold air and the exercise made him tingle; his spirits rose; he chaffed the other man on his slow, steady progress. “See if I don’t clear my share in half the time, Godden.” “All very well, your Grace; but your Grace hasn’t got to work for all the rest of the day. Slow and steady—that’s what keeps you going from breakfast to dinner.” Yet he knew that Godden was good-humoured and amused; amused, as any professional is amused, at the precipitate enthusiasm of the amateur. He looked up at the grey house; all the blinds were down, and he instantly despised his guests for being still asleep, in a rush of that superiority which afflicts all those who are astir earlier than other people. Then he remembered that his own windows alone, of all the bedrooms, looked onto the garden; and another rush of satisfaction took him, that he slept isolated in his fat tower, where no one could spy on him, and where for neighbours he had none but the portraits hanging on the walls of the unused staterooms, or a Pontius Pilate who could no longer judge, on the tapestry in the chapel. How often, going to his room at night and leaning out to breathe the air from his window, had he felt himself in silent communion with Chevron, a communion which others were denied!