Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  “You don’t think…” she said hesitantly. “I mean, the trouble is, it doesn’t suggest any alternative.”

  “But that’s what’s so good. You understand without being told that the whole point of this kind of writing is simply to attack…destroy…tear down…ridicule…lampoon…flay. Look at the letters of ‘Junius’—the grandest and most biting political attacks in the English language. Yet you’d scour them in vain for any alternative political philosophy. No, Abbie. You must ever dip your pen in acid. The Abbot must never elect himself pope!”

  He glanced back through her piece, this time allowing himself to chuckle. “Yes, I’ll try Blackwood’s, or The Saturday Review. All the same, Abbie, I wish the Abbot could interest himself in something other than art. I can see him bestriding a much wider stage.”

  ***

  Next day her first article, the satire on the Academy dinner, appeared in Punch—a rare, signed piece in a journal most of whose pieces were anonymous. That night all the talk at her mother’s salon, among the artists anyway, was of this stinging attack on artistic orthodoxy. Speculation as to the Abbot’s identity ran wild.

  The consensus seemed to favour Rossetti, who, as chance would have it, put in one of his infrequent appearances that night. He denied it, naturally, but Abigail could see he was pleased to be thought a candidate. Later in the evening she engaged him in conversation, which was not difficult since she had the long neck and disdainfully curved lips he adored. She soon managed to steer their talk around to “the Pre-Raphaelite vision.”

  And he (as she knew he would) was provoked into asking her just what she imagined that vision to be.

  Whereupon she, as if she were plucking the words out of the air, said, “It is of a world peopled entirely by a mildly philosophical bourgeoisie drifting through Arcadia in aniline-dyed druid costumes. Surely daunting enough!”

  Rossetti roared with laughter, but behind his merriment she could see his eyes at work in revaluation of her. She did not mind. The secret of the Abbot’s identity was certain to come out sooner or later; when it did, Rossetti would remember this evening and would resent it if she had given him no clue.

  “Oh, Lady Abigail,” he said. “For you to be so beautiful is unfair enough on the rest of us poor mortals. But to be so witty as well!”

  Nora, overhearing the remark, took it for a rebuke and later added one of her own. The secret of running a successful salon, she said, was never to compete with, much less to outshine, its members.

  Abigail found herself resenting this advice. With each new achievement, and especially with the success of the Punch piece, she felt herself to be less and less an auxiliary hostess to her mother and more and more a salon member in her own right.

  Chapter 17

  The publication of The Land of That’ll-do put all problems of journalism to one side, if only temporarily. Abigail had chosen the pseudonym “Abe Stevenson,” arguing that when the facts inevitably came out, the name would be deemed less a violation than an accommodation of the truth. From the first week of June, and all summer long, Abe Stevenson was rarely out of the public print, as the dailies, the weeklies, fortnightlies, monthlies, and, finally, the quarterlies had their successive says.

  Acclaim was not quite universal; but even those who disliked the book damned it in terms that made it sound interesting. Dickens, writing in Household Words (Dickens, who had seen the woman in “George Eliot” within the first ten pages of Adam Bede), pooh-poohed the notion that “Abe Stevenson” too was a woman. The tale was too witty and intellectually inventive for that, he said. Nevertheless he found it too dry for children, too coy for grownups.

  T.W. Sturgess in The Week called it a tale without a single redeeming feature—and spent two pages on the demonstration, as if even he were uncertain of his own conclusion. An anonymous lady in Hearth & Home (Abigail was sure it was a lady—and one who, moreover, had divined “Abe’s” real gender) found it nauseating and amoral.

  But these and a few others were solitary voices against a general roar of approval. The Times, with unconscious irony, began: “M. l’Abbé may rail against the present state of artistic orthodoxy in England, but even that stern Cato will surely approve the heterodox spirit that now pervades our literature.” The Examiner was the first to suggest that “Abe Stevenson” was a woman—“one of the new breed now knocking at the doors of the university examination halls—not your simpering, vaporous misses so beloved of the three-decker novelists.” The Spectator classed it along with Æsop and some of the Arabian Nights—a tale ostensibly for children, yet one to divert and delight their parents, too.

  This flood of enthusiastic reviews confirmed Nora’s worst fears. She had read the proofs of the story with very mixed feelings. Her pride as a mother had been stirred at the inventive brilliance her daughter showed. For long chapters she could forget that these were the words of that frightened, ecstatic, emotional girl she had nursed through so many of the crises of growing up; the writing was so assured, so mature. Yet she could not bring herself to believe that Abigail, the person as opposed to the writer, had also made that transition. She feared all the harm the successful writer might do to the immature woman.

  She watched her with Laon, who was now a fairly regular visitor to Hamilton Place, both to the salons and en famille. She saw the two of them together, Abigail so plainly and hopelessly in love with him, and a terrible foreboding would seize her. Few parents are given tangible signs of their children’s coming independence; Nora saw it in every line of The Land of That’ll-do—and what is independence, she thought, but the chance to ruin your own life?

  She managed to convey her alarm to John, who, though usually far more sanguine than she, soon came to share her fears. Both of them, influenced by Boy’s story about Laon at Cambridge, were convinced that any kind of liaison with the man (even the now-inevitable commercial relationship) would be for the worst.

  “You must just forbid her to see him,” John said. “Except in your presence.”

  Nora did not really need to answer that. “If we wanted children who’d respond to that sort of treatment,” she said, “we ought to have started when they were three or less. I should have met them once a day, you once a week. We should never have let them share our table, or our conversation. We all know one another too well.”

  He seemed to be only half listening. “We can’t have an open battle with Abigail,” he said. “We’ve already lost any battle of that sort. We lost it the moment Young John joined the colours, the moment I agreed to get Caspar back from America, the moment I gave in to Winifred over her school.”

  “You don’t listen. I told you the battle was lost long before all that.”

  “Can we buy Laon off?” he asked. “You must know him quite well by now.”

  She sighed out her bafflement. “I’ve thought of it, of course. But he’s not an easy man to assess. If we’re wrong about him, and we try to buy him off, it would be disastrous for us.”

  “We could always say we were testing him.”

  “Yes. We could always say it.”

  “Well, dammit, Nora—what is the answer?”

  Despite the fact that she shared his anxiety, she could not help smiling.

  “I see no cause for amusement,” he told her.

  “I was thinking of the time you abducted Winifred and…”

  “A father cannot abduct his own daughter.”

  “…and put her in that prison…”

  John made an exasperated grunt.

  “…and I tried to get her out. And I found a mother had no rights. No rights at all. No power.”

  “Do we have to drag up all this ancient…”

  “Well, I hope it is ancient, John. I bring it up now merely to remind you of the futility of force. Even with Winifred, where you had legal right and actual power—I mean, you could have made her penniless—even there it failed. But
Abigail is both legally of age and, thanks to this book of hers, independent.”

  John nodded, accepting the logic of her argument. “It’s even worse,” he said glumly. “If we play a heavy hand, we’ll only drive her straight to him. We must, at all costs, prevent them from marrying.”

  “All costs, John?”

  “I would say so.”

  “For instance, you’d prefer her to become his mistress rather than his wife?”

  He looked at her. His jaw fell slack. “My God!” he said at last. “It must certainly not come to that.”

  “Quite,” Nora said. “So you see how clever we shall have to be, John.”

  ***

  The trouble was that Nora no longer felt competent to read Abigail as a person. For example, she was sure her daughter would make a great drama out of reading her reviews—either taking them hysterically to heart or disdainfully refusing to read them at all (and then devouring them secretly in her room). In fact, Abigail read them with an Olympian detachment, as if “Abe Stevenson” were no more than a distant relative. Of course, Nora was not then aware that Abigail was also the Abbot and so was able to divide her interest between the personal and the professional.

  Only when Winifred came sweeping down from Highgate with armfuls of papers could they provoke in Abigail any of the excitement the rest of the family felt at her success—even Nora, despite her long-sighted reservations. Laon came too, and any paper or journal that Winifred missed he had. Only then did Abigail realize how rarely she saw Winnie and Pepe together these days; she wondered if it was an accident, or if Winnie had taken to avoiding Pepe whenever she, Abigail, was around.

  They took turns to read the reviews aloud, laughing scornfully at any adverse comment—as if amazed that any intelligent person could so parade his ignorance or want of taste in public—reading twice or three times all the bits that made Abigail’s ears burn red.

  John, who now and then dropped in for tea even when Nora was not at home, happened to be there that afternoon: he contributed the best news of all.

  “I thought you’d like to know,” he said, “that your book was mentioned in the House this afternoon. Lord Culffe asked Lord Derby if he was conscious of being the prime minister of the United Kingdom because up until now he had behaved more like prime minister of The Land of That’ll-do!”

  “But that’s marvellous!” Laon said. “That’s worth a hundred good reviews. When your book passes into everyone’s consciousness—even those who have never read it—when every idler is automatically called ‘Lackadoo,’ when every venial mayor is nicknamed ‘Corney Grain,’ when exasperated parents shout the taunt of ‘Grace Grasshope’ after every flighty young miss…”

  Abigail’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, Pepe! To give new words to the language! D’you think that’s possible?”

  “It’s already happening,” Laon said, extending his hand in John’s direction.

  “How are the sales, Mr. Laon?” Nora asked.

  Like a man with secrets to give away, Laon put his hand to an inside pocket, withdrew an envelope, and passed it, without a word, to Abigail. She opened it at once.

  “A thousand guineas!” she said, holding up the cheque. She passed it to her mother, as if it would not become genuine until Nora decreed it so.

  Nora scanned it with thin-lipped, almost disappointed approval and passed it on to John.

  “Lady Abigail sold me the rights,” Laon explained, “for a hundred pounds. This”—he pointed at the cheque, which John was then handing back to Nora—“makes the distribution of profits more equitable.”

  Nora delayed the cheque a moment on its journey back to Abigail. “You mean,” she asked, “you have no legal obligation to pay this?”

  “I have a moral obligation,” he said.

  He smiled then. Abigail thought his smile so devastating it must surely vanquish her horribly suspicious mother. “I know, Countess,” he said, “how much you disapprove of the lack of formal contract between Lady Abigail and me, but I truly believe that contracts force people to cheat each other—or, at least, to think of cheating each other.”

  “Contracts are also for people who die, or become insane, or go bankrupt, or suffer any one of a thousand shocks and reverses,” Nora said.

  “Oh, if I die, I have already returned her the rights in my will. If I am adjudged insane or bankrupt, there is a power of attorney ready signed in her favour.” He paused and then added, “I am no longer an improvident fool, Countess!” He grinned hugely to show that his words could not possibly be intended as a rebuke of her mean-spirited fears.

  And Nora, for her part, swallowed her chagrin and smiled back, knowing that he had rebuked her and that the rebuke had gone home. Her only justifiable answer—that contracts were also for people who fell out of love—could not be made, not merely because the very idea of love between Laon and Abigail had yet to come out in public but also because any mention of the subject would give him a chance he was much too clever to overlook.

  His eyes were so full of challenge she was sure he read those thoughts. For a moment they sat thus, smiling at each other between the rounds of an undeclared battle; and for that moment she found herself taking quite a liking to him—indeed, almost trusting him.

  But it was only for that moment.

  ***

  Abigail saw Pepe to the door. “Let’s celebrate this,” she said. He looked surprised, not certain of her meaning.

  “Tonight,” she said. “Let’s go out to dinner. Let me take you out to dinner.”

  “Certainly not. Anyway, your mother won’t permit it again. Not that she exactly permitted it last…”

  “What d’you mean again? What are you talking about?”

  “She made it quite clear to me—her disapproval of our dinner at the Albion. And she’s right. It was thoughtless. Reckless. Just because we know it was innocent, we are the worst judges of the case.”

  “Oh, I can hear her voice there, all right.” Abigail’s expression hardened. “Just you be waiting for me. I shall call at seven and we’ll go to…No! That’ll be a surprise.”

  He grew worried. “Don’t fall out with your mother over me, darling. Please.”

  She looked hastily around and pecked him a quick kiss, for reassurance. “Don’t give yourself airs,” she said. “If I fall out with her, it’ll be over me. Not you.”

  He left, not the least reassured.

  Abigail waited until her mother was alone and then said, “I shall be out to dinner tonight, by the way.”

  “Oh? Whose invitation?”

  “My own. I am taking Pepe out to celebrate our first thou.”

  Nora fell into the trap; she could not resist making the trivial financial point before the far more important social one: “Your first thousand, you mean! You may be sure Mr. Laon has made a great deal more than that.”

  An idea surfaced briefly in Abigail’s mind, something to suggest to Pepe. It vanished, less than half glimpsed, as her mother made the point she ought to have made at the very first: “It’s out of the question, anyway. One rash act, like your dinner at the Albion, may be overlooked in time. But two? Never! You must put it out of your mind.”

  Nora, annoyed at having to make this point belatedly, and therefore more vehemently than was wise in any dealing with Abigail, prepared for a scorching row. Nevertheless she was determined to remain immovable on this prohibition.

  Abigail stood up and began to pace the room, calmly, sedately, like a monk at contemplation. She spoke quietly, at times barely audibly, as if thinking aloud and only slightly aware of her mother’s presence: “Everything I have done until now has been…experimental. I mean part of me has stood aside and watched me.”

  “Abigail!” Nora laughed. “Anything less probable is hard to imagine. You? You who throw yourself into everything with such fury? Experimental?”

  Abigai
l treated the objection as if a voice within herself had made it. She replied not to Nora but to the windows, the clock, the air about her. “Until recently I would have agreed,” she said. “But now I have done something that does not feel experimental. Oh, I wish there were a better word; ‘experimental’ is so cold. You know when you try on different bonnets? That ‘I wonder’ feeling you have when you first put them on? That’s what I mean by experimental. And you know how there are some bonnets that as soon as you put them on you just know. That’s the right one. You don’t pause to ask. You just know. Well, that’s the sort of certainty I’m…”

  “You mean your writing, darling? But you’ve been doing that for years.”

  “Not that writing. Not the book. That’s not what I’m talking about.” And she went on to tell her mother about the Abbot and some other pieces she had written—pieces that were in what Pepe had called the “merely good” class, like her piece on the Enfranchisement of Propertied Women.

  She went to her room and brought them all down for Nora to read. And Nora, glad that what had looked set for a fierce argument had instead taken this mild and serious turn, read them with a doubled pleasure. “They are good,” she said. “More than good.”

  “Thank you,” Abigail said. “But in a way that is irrelevant to what I’m saying. The difference between literature and journalism is very simple. If a book is good, no one can really say why. They can only make guesses at the reason. That’s what criticism is—an interesting guess at why a book is good or bad. The real reason is the book itself, of course. But if a piece of journalism is good, anyone can say why: It’s good because an editor paid money for it and printed it.”

  Nora smiled at this cynicism. “If you said that at a dinner table, I wouldn’t let it pass,” she warned. “However, for argument’s sake, I will. You were saying that the excellence or otherwise of these pieces is irrelevant. Now why?”

  “Because of that feeling I’m talking about. When I wrote these, nothing in me was saying ‘I wonder.’ It was not experimental. In a way it’s absurd, isn’t it? Here I am with…what? Four or five pieces to my credit. It’s nothing! Yet I’m asserting…I’m saying I’m absolutely convinced that’s what I’m going to do in life.”