Family History

by Vita Sackville-West

  This alarmed Evelyn again; she was being dragged out of her depth; she felt that Dan was preternaturally analytical. She longed again for Miles to be there to help her; Miles, who could have answered eloquently, convincingly, and comprehensively. She had not expected to be dragged into quite such deep waters, motoring through the dark lanes of Surrey. It was different when she received Dan’s letters, and could take her time over the answers.

  “I think, perhaps, Dan, that I’ve brought you into contact with the wrong sort of people. There are other people, you know,—like Mr. Vane-Merrick,—who are just as much interested in general ideas as you are yourself. You mustn’t think that the world is limited by Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Evan, who are just schoolboys grown up. A great many Englishmen are just schoolboys grown up. You may find people very different when you get to Oxford and can choose your own friends.”

  She was trying very hard to help him, although it went rather against the grain. There were moments when she really longed for him to be an ordinary boy,—a nice, ordinary boy. Yet she wondered whether she ought not to have cultivated some friends able to satisfy his needs. She could not keep him away from his relations, she could not take him away from school,—and indeed both suggestions would have horrified her,—but she might at least have given him some acquaintances outside the limits of his family and the circle of her own personal, futile friends. Miles had said that her friends were futile, and he had added that to remain contented with them was to acknowledge herself frightened of life. Frightened! the very thing she urged Dan not to be.

  His next words came as an additional reproach.

  “God, Mummy, what should I do without you? You always say the right thing. About encouraging me to believe that life at school is just life at school and so on. And thatt’s all nonsense about bringing me into contact with the wrong sort of people. You can’t help Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Evan, and Robin and Ruth. (She would be the worst of the lot, but of course she’s a woman.) Haven’t you made me know Miles Vane-Merrick? But for you, I would never have known him. Do you know, Mummy, I feel I can hardly live till I see him again? I feel there are thousands and thousands of things I want to talk to him about, so many that I couldn’t say them all in a thousand years?—But of course,” he added despondently, “I can’t, because he would only be bored of me.”

  “He didn’t seem bored with you, Dan, did he, when we went to see Earth? I don’t believe he addressed one word to me! He talked only to you, all through the evening.”

  “He was marvellous,” said Dan,—‘marvellous’ was a word that had caught his fancy. “I never understood about Russia till he explained it. Mummy, I do think Russia is one of the most important things, don’t you? The Five Years’ Plan and all thatt. Of course one would hate it in England. One couldn’t plough up all the hedges in England, could one? Mr. Vane-Merrick said he would hate it if they did.”

  “Mr. Vane-Merrick,” said Evelyn, laughing suddenly, “belongs to the territorial aristocracy.”

  Dan did not understand; he, in his turn, was out of his depth.

  “He likes England,” he said defiantly.

  “Yes, of course he does.—Look, there’s Newlands.”

  “Newlands isn’t England,” said Dan, looking with distaste at his ancestral home.

  “Oh yes, it is!” said Evelyn, suddenly becoming prim; “a very big part of England, anyway.”

  Newlands could not be mistaken by anybody for anything but what it was,—the Surrey seat of a successful business man. Acquired with gold, with gold it was maintained. Square, red, ornate, and comfortable, it dominated the two hundred acres of Surrey that appertained to it, whether fields, paddocks, or terraced gardens. The view from its windows was in its way pleasant; unspoilt by town or bungalow; but smug in the extreme. The smugness was perhaps due to the excessive neatness and discipline of the immediate Newlands property: not a paddock without its white posts, not a drive without its iron railings, not a road ungravelled, not an orchard planted in anything but regular lines. Everything within sight was the work of man,—rich man,—nothing the work of untidy Nature. A prosperous bourgeoisie was paramount. The hedges were clipped to perfection, the lawns always appeared to have been mown thatt very morning, the edges of the turf were drawn as by a line, the creepers on the house were trained so that not a strand wandered unruly in the breeze. Especially did the domestic purlieus of the house express this care for order, convenience, and propriety. A glimpse of the stables alone was enough to suggest the harness-room with its burnished leather, its shining bits, its serpentine reins looped over wooden pegs, its yellow horse-rugs, piped with scarlet, emblazoned with the initials W. J.; the rows of stalls, with their pipe-clayed halters and edgings of plaited straw, cobbles, and initialled buckets ranged beside the corn-bins. A glimpse of the garage suggested the concrete floors, the boarded-over pits, the taps in convenient places, the spoke-brushes, the chamois leathers. A glimpse of the servants’ quarters suggested the pantry with its adjacent strong-room, the kitchen with its adjacent scullery, the lobby with its telephone box, the brushing-room with its broad deal tables and pots of blacking, dubbin, and Meltonian cream. A paradise for servants, who are well known to be snobs in such matters.

  It was dark, after the short winter daylight, when Evelyn and Dan arrived. The lights of the car soared up the drive, illuminating the generous gravel sweep. The windows of the house glowed with a yellow welcome. Paterson, the butler, met them at the door, supported by two of his myrmidons in livery. Paterson liked Mrs. Tommy; she gave a good deal of extra trouble in the house, wanting telegrams and telephone messages sent at all hours or parcels fetched at the station. Moreover, she was apt to be late for meals, an indulgence permitted to nobody else; but he sized her up as a ‘lady,’ and added that the staff was large enough in all conscience to cope with her demands. Besides, she had a way of saying, “I’m afraid I’m giving you a lot of bother, Paterson,” from time to time, just when Paterson was feeling that he would rather have twenty people staying in the house than Mrs. Tommy alone; and the way she said it made up for all the bother. He liked Mr. Dan, too, who in course of time would, be master of Newlands, even though Mr. Dan had a shy and stand-offish way with him, and was likely to forget to ask Paterson how he did, on arrival. On the whole, Paterson, who had not much reverence for the Jarrolds as a clan, satisfactory in some respects though they might be as employers, preferred Mrs. Tommy and Mr. Dan to the rest of them. They conformed more nearly to the type he had been accustomed to serve.

  The outer doors were quickly shut, to exclude the icy air of the December night, and safe within a warm hall Paterson relieved them of their coats. Tea, he informed them, was going on in the library. And to the library he conducted them, after first delivering to Evelyn a packet of letters and parcels which were awaiting her, and one solitary letter with a halfpenny stamp to Dan. He led them through the hall and the morning-room to the library, where he opened the door and announced ceremoniously, “Mrs. Thomas Jarrold; Mr. Daniel Jarrold,” and left them to the mercies of their relations.

  The entire Jarrold family was assembled round the tea-table and rose in delight to welcome Evelyn. Dan stood aside, feeling a little out of it, thankful that he had pockets into which to put his hands. (Anticipating, however, that his grandfather would presently say, “Ha! the Eton slouch, m-m,--can’t you hold yourself up, my boy?” he took his hands out of his pockets and tried to dispose of them rather awkwardly elsewhere.) They all seemed very much pleased to see his mother, and a place was created for her beside his grandmother at the tea-table. His grandfather fussed over her like an old bee over a rose, offering her scones, sandwiches, tea-cake, cracking a joke finally about being sure that she would prefer a cocktail. Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Evan, from their usual lackadaisical manner, became quite animated; they passed their hands over their hair, and shot their cuffs, fiddling also with the set of their ties. Dan meanwhile continued
to stand aside, glad that his mother’s arrival should arouse so much attention, but not very sure how much he ought to thrust himself forward. Finally his grandmother patted a chair and made him sit beside her, on the other side.

  It relieved him to find himself seated; he felt less large, less clumsy, less conspicuous.

  The room was warm, ample, and brilliantly lit,—too brilliantly. It declared that the Jarrolds had no need to economise in electric light. A huge log fire blazed in the chimney, but thatt was largely for show; the true warmth of the room came from central heating. Enormous chintz-covered arm-chairs and sofas advertised the English sense of comfort, supplemented by the scones, the tea-cakes, and the steaming silver urn. Book-cases,—since the room was known as the library,—rose against the walls, behind the lattice of wire doors whose key hung on Mr. Jarrold’s watch-chain, the master-key which also unlocked the cases of the Museum in Park Lane. The library consisted entirely of collected editions of standard authors, from Spenser down to Hardy, most of them uncut and few of them read. The exceptions among the cut and read were Dickens and—surprisingly—Swinburne, with whom Mr. Jarrold considered that English prose and English poetry respectively had come to an end. The moderns, which explained the presence of Hardy and Conrad, were represented by expensive editions ordered haphazard on the advice of a friend by Mr. Jarrold whenever it occurred to him that he ought to bring his library up to date. It was a pleasant room, the library at Newlands, for anyone who did not wish to read books.

  Round the tea-table were seated William Jarrold; Louisa, his wife; Geoffrey, his eldest surviving son, with Hester, his wife, Robin, their son, and Ruth, their daughter; Evan, his second surviving son; and Catherine, his spinster daughter. Minnie, the objectionable child, was doubtless upstairs with Cocoa, the old nurse who had brought all the Jarrold children up, and whose real name everybody had long since forgotten.

  A serene, typical, and harmonious family party, you would have thought, held together by William Jarrold’s stubby hand. Yet there were discordant elements and potential quarrels, as Evelyn was well aware. At any moment an explosion might occur between Evan and his father. At any moment, another explosion between Dan and his grandfather. And in Ruth’s unhappy eyes she read all the complication of the unspoken situation between Ruth and herself; Ruth, and herself; and Miles Vane-Merrick.

  Dan was the first to rage. He raged in her room while she was dressing for dinner. She had reproached him with being so sulky and reticent at tea.

  “The truth is, Mummy, I can’t stand them. I like Grandpapa and Granny all right enough, but I can’t stand the others. I feel stifled here. Why do they never talk about anything worth hearing? Why do they sneer at all the things I like? Why does Uncle Geoffrey pull my hair and say, ‘Going to be a poet, Dan?’ just because I didn’t have time to get it cut? Why do they think it funny to like poetry and pictures and music, and make jokes about them, when they’re so damned solemn themselves about Weir golf or England’s chances against Australia? Grandpapa’s different somehow; it’s true that he doesn’t care a hoot for the things I like either, but you do feel that he’s made something of his life, even though it is only business. You do feel that he’s been mixed up always with important things .and that he could tell you a lot about running the world if only he took the trouble. One doesn’t mind his being a Philistine, exactly. But all the guts seem to have gone into him and left none over for his children.”

  “They’re trying to conform to their conception of the ideal Englishman,” said Evelyn.

  “Are you laughing at me, Mummy? You might be quoting Mr. Vane-Merrick. I say, what would they think of him? I’d like to see him here amongst them!”

  Evelyn knew precisely what they thought of him: A traitor to his class. (“Can’t make the chap out,” Geoffrey had said.) But she did not tell Dan.

  “Cheer up, Dan; you’ll be with him in little more than a week.”

  “Thank God for thatt. Mummy,—this is something I’ve never dared to ask you,—was my father like the uncles? Or was he like Mr. Vane-Merrick?”

  “Your father was very like Uncle Geoffrey,” said Evelyn after a pause. The question had given her a slight shock.

  “But he had more character, surely, Mummy? (You know how they’re always going on at us about character, at school.) I don’t know so much about Uncle Geoffrey, but Uncle Evan strikes me as having no character at all. He’s got all the right manner, but nothing behind it. Lots of people are like thatt. Was my father? I want to know,— I must know.”

  “Well, yes, Dan, since you want to know, he was. He was very charming and very popular and a very good all-round sportsman, but you couldn’t describe him as a very strong man or as a very intelligent one. He didn’t care about clever people, he mistrusted them. I suppose you would say he sneered at them. I know you will mind my saying this, Dan, but you know I always tell you the truth.”

  “Yes, Mummy. There’s another thing about your ideal Englishman: he simply hates the truth. I’ve discovered thatt at school. If you say what you really think, or try to get at the truth, the real truth, people get uncomfortable as though you’d said something shocking.”

  Evelyn smiled at Dan’s naïf discoveries; she was glad to be able to smile again, after the suddenly strenuous moment she had passed through. But what a problem he was! this young prophet crying in the wilderness. She wondered whether, for his own happiness, she ought to encourage him or not?

  “You stick to your principles, Dan; never mind about other people. And now run away, or I shall be late for dinner.”

  At moments her love for him was greater than she could bear.

  She was dreadfully bored at Newlands; not only bored but irritated. The irritation was new, and had come upon her since she had known Miles. The total absence of ideas among the younger Jarrolds, their perpetual heavy banter which passed for wit, the limitation of their interests, their intolerance, their narrow-mindedness, all appeared insufferable to her now in contrast with Miles’ alertness and gaiety. She almost preferred the drunken Evan, whose weakness made him into something more nearly resembling a human being, to the wooden and self-righteous Geoffrey or Geoffrey’s virtuously British wife. Mrs. Geoffrey could talk of nothing but her servants.

  “Would you believe it, my dear, we can never have anyone to dinner on a Tuesday because the cook insists on going out. Do you think she would change her day to oblige us? not she! And the others are just the same. When I spoke about it to Baxendale the other day, do you know what she had the impudence to reply? ‘Well, madam, everybody wants their little bit of pleasure.’ Little bit of pleasure, indeed! And I’m told that the immorality among girls of thatt class is terrible. Look at the stories one hears about the parks, and have you ever walked down the front at Brighton in the evening?”

  “Perhaps the poor things have nowhere else to go,” said Evelyn.

  “Really, Evelyn! you surprise me. It’s quite clear that you never go to cinemas. Why, if you look round in the dark . . .”

  “Then why look round?” said Evelyn as her sister-in-law paused suggestively.

  “Ha! ha! you are funny sometimes, Evelyn. Geoffrey, did you hear thatt? Thatt’s really funny, I think. Isn’t Evelyn clever, Geoffrey?”

  “I always did say Evelyn was a bit of a highbrow,” said Geoffrey from out of his arm-chair.

  Mrs. Geoffrey screamed with delight.

  “Yes, thatt’s it: a bit of a highbrow. Advanced ideas, and all thatt. To think we should ever have had a highbrow in our family. And now Dan . . .”

  A little more chaff, and then:

  “Seriously, Evelyn, we’re all a bit worried about Dan. I hope you don’t mind my saying so. But you know he wouldn’t go out with the guns yesterday, he said he wanted to paint. Well, you know, thatt’s not natural in a boy of his age, is it, Geoffrey? Do back me up.”

  “Would you think it
more natural if he ran after the girls in the village?”

  “Ha! ha!” said Geoffrey. “She’s got you there, Hester.”

  “Evelyn dear, I do hope you won’t say such things in front of Ruth.”

  “I sympathise with Dan, Hester, I’m afraid. I hate going out with the guns myself. I sometimes think that a man might be the worst cad on earth; if he were a good shot it would be forgiven him. And now I really must go and talk to Cocoa; I’ve scarcely seen her since I’ve been here and I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  When Evelyn had left the room, Hester said, “I can’t think what has come over Evelyn, Geoffrey. I believe somebody must have been getting hold of her. The things she says! Really I was quite shocked. What would poor Tommy have thought? I think you ought to talk to Dan, Geoffrey, and try to take poor Tommy’s place a little.” “The boy’s a rotter,” said Geoffrey gloomily.

  “I’m afraid he is. Ruth says he has the oddest ideas.”

  “No decent boy ought to find it so difficult to get on at school. There must be something wrong with him. Boys always know.”

  “He ought to go into the Army.”

  “Yes, thatt would knock some of the nonsense out of him.”

  “I wonder what Papa thinks of him, Geoffrey?”

  “I believe Papa rather likes him.”

  “Your father is so unaccountable, dear. What makes you think he likes him?”

  “Well, I was ragging Dan yesterday about preferring his messy old paints to a day’s shooting, when Papa came along and clapped Dan on the back and said, ‘Stick to your guns, my boy.’”

  “Was thatt a joke?”