Habits of the House

by Fay Weldon

  ‘It’ll be closed, ma’am,’ protested Grace. Sadly, it was not.

  Tessa presented herself to the Curator, who had been about to go home, and who seemed shocked by the sudden presence of this large noisy woman from Chicago with a spectacular hat who insisted that she must be taken to see a painting by a friend of hers, Eyre Crowe.

  The curator knew Crowe as a quiet, rather reclusive man with whom he occasionally dined informally at his studio in Charlotte Street. They moved in the same artistic circles. In the Curator’s opinion Crowe was in, as it were, the First Eleven of painters, but his work was popular with the public, who much appreciated a large canvas when it told a story. Mr Crowe was unmarried, was looked after by a very homely housekeeper, and had certainly never made mention of any ‘friend’ of the kind who now presented herself. The Curator could see that, take away the florid colour, the stout waist, the plump cheeks and the over-elaborate hat, Mrs O’Brien would once have been a startlingly attractive woman of the fleshy kind. She wasn’t demanding to meet Eyre Crowe, merely to look at a painting of his. But why? It was possible she was an art lover, but it seemed unlikely.

  ‘The Academy is just closing for the day, madam,’ he said. ‘My assistant will be pleased to welcome you tomorrow. I, alas, will be in Brighton.’

  ‘You won’t get rid of me as easily as all that,’ she said, ‘not Tessa O’Brien from Chicago. I’ve surely come a long way for this. Thought I would, thought I wouldn’t, plumped in the end for hold-your-nose-and-jump. I was looking at these timepieces, and I thought life’s short and Billy O’Brien won’t mind. It’s only a blamed picture! The Dinner Hour, Wigan, please, mister, and I won’t keep you too long.’

  Tessa O’Brien? O’Brien? Where had he heard and marvelled at that name on official paper? Of course, one of the founders of the Art Institute of Chicago, that rather vulgar symptom of America’s compulsion to establish some kind of cultural background for itself: and full of fakes, he had heard. This was what was thrown up, the crude ostentation of the new as it faced the artistic emptiness of its past. The curator considered that he had perhaps misjudged the circumstance. This was not what he had at first feared. Stockyard O’Brien’s wife could indeed be more interested in the painting than the painter. Mr Crowe might yet be saved from the monstrous hat with the green and yellow bird of paradise curled around the crown, little pink beak poking out from amongst its poor dead feathers. The painting could suffer its attendance unaffected.

  Then the thirtyish person who accompanied Mrs O’Brien, and seemed an altogether different and more demure type, wearing a pretty plain black bonnet under which wet hair showed interjected, ‘Madam is from the United States of America, sir.’

  To which Mrs O’Brien said, ‘Lord save us, Grace! He knows that. This nice gentleman is delighted to take us where we want to go.’

  Which, indeed, he did. Mrs O’Brien, he could see, was not accustomed to impediment to her will. Though the younger woman, who turned out to be her servant and companion, chafed and fretted about the need to get back to the hotel and ‘get on’.

  They made their way up the great staircase with its broad flat steps, then to the top floor of what started out as Lord Burlington’s town palace, where some of the silk that had lined the walls for a couple of hundred years or so was now faded and even split in places, Mrs O’Brien remarked:

  ‘But why do you dear English like everything so darned old and faded? Everything about my Institute that can be is new. And every bit as big as yours, and I guess bigger. That silk needs replacing.’

  Grace winced. The curator said nothing, until they passed James Whistler’s portrait of Eyre Crowe, which the Curator found a rather murky piece of work, almost ghostly, as if poor Crowe’s very existence was in doubt. The curator preferred sharper lines and more convincing colours, and had spent many years fighting against hanging Mr Whistler’s work at all: there was a meretricious quality to the work he had disliked. Whistler remained un-English, intrinsically foreign: he had spent too much time in Paris, let alone other places abroad no one had ever heard of, picking up a louche amorality.

  It was against his better judgement that the Curator drew Mrs O’Brien’s attention to the painting as they passed, and the noisiness of her response exceeded his fears – it echoed through the vaulted ceilings and drew a caretaker who was waiting to switch off the lights to see what was going on.

  ‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ Mrs O’Brien cried. ‘I didn’t know about this one. And by Mr Whistler too. Eyre’s right up in the world! Grace, would you say there was a little of Minnie in those eyes? Just look at the eyebrows – look at the shape of them!’

  Then she clutched the younger woman’s arm and said, ‘Golly, what have I said! I didn’t say a word. You didn’t hear a thing, Grace,’ but she neither seemed unduly upset, nor came back to the subject. She was too determined to get to see The Dinner Hour, Wigan. Her little plump feet went faster and faster up the stairs, the imposing Whistler portrait of Crowe left behind. The curator sighed, forbearing to point out that the Eyre Crowe in the portrait was a different Eyre Crowe, the diplomat, not the painter. People saw what they wanted to see.

  But why The Dinner Hour, Wigan anyway? Was this not a very curious request? It was an unattractive subject, as various critics had remarked: a group of young women, Lancashire mill girls, gathered together eating in the street. But Eyre was always attracted by misfortune for a subject, a painter moved by moral as well as artistic principle, which was why the Academy, quite reasonably, housed so many of his works, in spite of the critics.

  Mrs O’Brien plonked herself down in front of the painting and stared.

  ‘A masterpiece,’ she said. ‘No doubt about it. Sure as eggs is eggs. It’s as my friend Eleanor said. She saw it when she was over last fall. And she’s right: that’s me.’ And she pointed to one of the tall figures in the foreground, a tall blonde girl with ample bosom, in a white cotton dress and her hair in a net, basket in hand, bending to the left with her girl companion, as though about to fall, but resting on a stone bench. There could be a certain lack of care in Crowe’s paintings: he was often better at brickwork than the human figure. It was quite possible, the Curator could see, that Crowe had done a portrait of the young Mrs O’Brien, working perhaps from a photograph.

  ‘He remembered me,’ she said, simply. ‘He didn’t forget.’ The curator suddenly liked her. He admired her tenacity, the immediacy of her folly. She was not to blame for her nationality, her breeding, or her lack of it. If it wasn’t for the energy of people like Stockyard Billy and his good wife, America would never find any culture. For all one knew, the flow of art across the Atlantic might eventually be in the other direction. It could certainly make up in size for what it lacked in sensibility.

  ‘All nicely cleaned up,’ observed Tessa. ‘In my experience working girls are a lot muckier than that. But then he always was a romantic, was Mr Crowe. I reckon we Yanks are a good deal better than you folk at keeping our feet on the ground.’

  Mrs O’Brien was certainly not stupid, he thought. He was quite coming round to her. He liked a woman who could take in a painting at a glance and not feel obliged to stand for ever and admire. Perhaps he would encounter her again. She was turning to go when she hesitated, and then asked if he could kindly give her an address for Eyre.

  It seemed to the Curator that colour drained from the maid’s face. Or perhaps it was just the caretaker, turning off lights other than the ones immediately near them, anxious to leave and get home to his tea, as who was not?

  ‘Dear lady, I could not formally divulge such information about an Academician without consulting him first,’ said the Curator, and beamed at her in a way that he hoped was disarming.

  He wondered whether he should tell Eyre of this sudden visitation or not, deciding on balance against it. The woman could dispense patronage, but Eyre guarded his privacy, and the woman was at best a lionizer. And he himself wanted no sudden disruption to the quiet dinners á deux at t
he Charlotte Street studio. She might never leave his friend alone.

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Tessa, ‘probably just as well,’ and she walked off without so much as a by-your-leave, head held high, footsteps echoing firmly and bleakly down the long high galleries, and then down the central staircase, pausing for a second again at the Whistler portrait, and then out of view. The maid followed meekly. She seemed defeated. He hoped for their sakes the rain had stopped.

  Some Things, Once Said…

  4 p.m. Sunday, 19th November 1899

  ‘She is a nice girl, much more amiable than Rosina, and I don’t mind the mother so very much,’ said Isobel. ‘I think dear Arthur is quite taken with little Minnie, and she with him. He came back from Rotten Row quite pink and glowing, not in the least sullen. It might almost become a love match.’ She and Robert were sipping sherry. They had taken themselves early to bed, though feeling well enough. For once there was no lady’s maid to observe them, which they saw as freedom, and no rags in her Ladyship’s hair to make her sleeping uncomfortable, Grace having been temporarily exiled to Brown’s to ‘do’ for Mrs O’Brien and her girl. Grace had made it clear that she had taken offence, as she did often enough, though seldom letting the exact cause of her displeasure be known. The lower classes were woefully prone to taking offence, as those with the obligations that went with a privileged background were not. Perhaps Rosina would raise the matter at one of her Socialist meetings, thinking she was doing society a favour. ‘Sulking staff as a weapon of class oppression.’

  ‘She’s a lively shopper and keeps us all laughing with her quaint ways,’ continued Isobel, of Mrs O’Brien. ‘She is certainly no lady, but why should one expect someone from Chicago who lets one know she started in “burlesque” know how to behave? What exactly does “burlesque” involve, Robert? She spoke of it with a certain pride.’

  Robert explained that it was a kind of vulgar theatre, when girls kicked their legs in the air, sang rather raucous songs, and married the best they could and Isobel observed that for a Dilberne wife to have such a mother was probably worse than to have a father who started life as coal miner, as hers had been.

  ‘Very much worse,’ said Robert. ‘Trade has quite lost its stigma.’ And he remarked that to have a cowboy in the bloodline at least gave Minnie O’Brien a certain transatlantic glamour.

  ‘Grace tells me Mr O’Brien was no cowboy, but started out slaving in a Chicago slaughter house, up to his elbows in blood and bone,’ said Isobel. According to Grace’s perception, she said, the land of the free and home of the brave was a myth, the continent was peopled by tinkers from the bogs fleeing from famine, prepared to blow you up with dynamite as soon as look at you. Grace for one was very much against an American wife at Dilberne Court, according to her principles.

  ‘We must bear in mind,’ said Isobel, ‘how important it is that servants respect their betters who employ them, if the anarchists are not to sweep away all order and its supporting tradition. It is our responsibility. Remember what happened at Greenwich.’

  ‘The bomb was intended for France,’ said Robert, uneasily. But no one could be sure of that. In 1894, an anarchist had blown himself up at the Greenwich Observatory for reasons no one could quite fathom, other than that he was part of an anarchist cell in London, and terrorist attacks in France and Russia had become almost common occurrences. That such a thing should happen in pacific London was almost beyond belief. France was another matter. The Paris Commune was less than thirty years ago.

  ‘The girl looks fine textured enough,’ said Robert. ‘The triumph of nurture over nature, I suppose. Good nutrition and a few elocution lessons can make all the difference.’

  ‘That is certainly one’s hope,’ said Isobel. ‘Just add some good Christian values and even Africa will soon catch up.’

  Robert frowned. It was the kind of casual remark she made from time to time which he wished she wouldn’t, and so did many of her friends, taking their lead from the Marlborough set, where power and Society sat round the same table, and affected a kind of callous frivolity. Women were at their best and most charming if they reserved their comments for what they knew about.

  Now, knowing that differing from Robert in her opinions often led to trouble, Isobel feared she had gone too far. Financial difficulties preyed on his mind and made him prone to outbursts of anger. To give voice to a political opinion which diverged from your husband’s was hardly conducive to domestic tranquility, especially when they involved sexual matters. She quickly brought the subject back to the family.

  ‘I really think we have the beginnings of a love match between Arthur and Minnie,’ Isobel said. ‘He says he wants to take her down to Dilberne Court and show her the estate. And I thought he only cared for machinery.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the Arthur I know,’ said his Lordship. ‘Perhaps he is trying to make Flora jealous.’

  ‘Flora?’ said Isobel, sitting upright in the bed as if to be better prepared for something worse to come. Robert always had someone or something up his sleeve. ‘So I am right?’

  ‘Oh, Arthur most certainly has a Flora. He is a young man and the sap rises. This particular Flora has aspirations to being a courtesan, but I fear she is little better than a common trollop. Though she dresses very agreeably. She was the one at Pagani’s the other night with a contemporary of Arthur’s. It quite put the poor boy out. He was hardly paying attention.’

  ‘I was not aware that anything was wrong,’ said Isobel.

  ‘A boy has to do something while he waits for marriage.’

  ‘Whatever it is, it can’t go on after the marriage,’ said Isobel. ‘I won’t have that. I hope Arthur realizes that. You must speak to him.’

  Robert felt fortified by this sudden and definite response from Isobel. What sane man wants his wife to be too much of a free thinker? Having Rosina in his household was penance enough. If his wife and his daughter did not get on too smoothly together, it sometimes troubled him that it might be because they were too alike. But really the generations were very different. Girls these days aspired to be little intellectuals: Isobel’s generation, especially in the North where the population was more dyed in the wool, still assumed that too much thinking was actually harmful for the female mind. Mental exhaustion could lead to brain fever. Bluestockings were pitied: they would never be content with their female lot in life. Isobel had been moulded to devote her intelligence to running a household, choosing clothes and selecting menus. Errant thoughts might break through, but at least she did not go to meetings and try to change the world, as Rosina did.

  ‘So like what Her Majesty is forever saying to the Prince,’ Robert remarked. ‘To his eternal irritation. “It can’t go on after marriage”. I haven’t noticed His Royal Highness taking much notice, and poor Alexandra simply looks the other way or makes friends with her rivals. Where the Queen herself fails, can we poor Dilbernes do better? Let us just get the boy married, so we may get on with the important things in life, and worry about the Floras of this world later.’

  He took the glass from his wife’s hand, and ruffled her hair a little.

  ‘It is rather pleasant when Grace is not about, don’t you think?’ he asked. ‘It makes a change to be unobserved. Sometimes I envy our tenants the sheer privacy of their lives.’

  ‘I certainly don’t,’ said Isobel. ‘If I try to do my own hair my arms start to ache at once. But you have changed the subject very effectively. I suppose we must let Arthur get on with his life in his own way, Floras and all.’

  ‘And I so seldom see you with your hair down. It is most attractive. Shall I eschew my dressing room for the night?’

  ‘Yes,’ said his wife, agreeably. So far as she was concerned sharing the marital bed was the point of the marriage. She had married for love, and the satisfaction of desire, and though she could see money had been a factor for him, and that love and desire had come later, at least it had quickly followed. Isobel felt the familiar surge of rosy pleasure
through her limbs, and felt grateful to her Maker.

  ‘One thing,’ said Robert, ‘about Mrs Baum.’

  ‘Mrs Baum? Oh.’ Isobel could see things were not going to be as simple as she had hoped. Something was to be required of her. ‘I was going to invite her, was I not, at your request? I didn’t exactly forget, Robert, but one rather resists this sort of thing. Since Melinda and Arthur are getting on so well, the reason to appease Mr and Mrs Baum seems to have rather gone. It is never such a good idea to mix business with one’s social life, you know, if it is not absolutely required.’

  ‘The urgency is still there, my dear,’ said her husband. ‘I would have informed you if it were not. Indeed, it is rather more necessary than before. The idea now is not so much escaping penury as acquiring wealth. It is an excellent aim. Our children may then make a free choice in their marriages. If Arthur decides Minnie O’Brien is not for him, we need not despair. If Rosina prefers never to marry, she need not.’

  ‘The price of this is asking Mrs Baum to a Charity Tea? Very well, if you insist. I dare say she is a perfectly pleasant woman. She is welcome to sip my sherry and donate to a good cause.’

  ‘No. More than that, my dear. She and Mr Baum must be invited to a dinner at which the Prince is present.’

  The rosy warmth drained rather from Lady Isobel’s limbs. She even shivered a little.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Just to think of the royal dinner is exhausting. The O’Briens are bad enough. But the Baums? Why? They will hardly be socially at ease. I feel for them, as much as for my guests. The Jews don’t eat shellfish. I will not be able to serve lobster, which is such a favourite with so many, or scalloped oysters, which is usually done at this time of year. And I believe pork too. So even roast suckling pig, which is the Prince’s favourite, is out of the question.’