A Harp in Lowndes Square

by Rachel Ferguson

  We inevitably made a lot of friends in Kensington, discovered that Church Passage had a real village shop which sold masks, peg-tops and net bags of beads, together with sugarsticks and newspapers, and at night, by hanging out of our little bedroom windows, we could carry on conversations over the network of back-garden walls, continue arguments, or complete plans and quarrels begun that morning in the cloakroom with two or three of our school friends. When the picture postcard craze came on, the night rang with declarations.

  ‘Well, I love Lewis Waller.’ Or (more often)

  ‘Are you over Martin Harvey?’

  ‘I hate his wife, don’t you?’ (This, from a nightgowned woman of fourteen).

  ‘Is Hayden Coffin married?’

  I only wish I could have a tourist’s view of that dump reserved for wasted emotion. It must go twice round the earth! And not one parent in a hundred realizes the premature pangs endured by thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. It gets called Outgrowing Their Strength and anaemia and The Awkward Age, but is usually an actor or a schoolmistress, and the fact that these untested devotions are laughable and essentially insatiable doesn’t detract from their pathos, or from the tolls they take.

  To-day, girls mob but do not hero-worship; they will wait for hours to see the hat of Douglas Fairbanks emerging from the boat train, but they neither dream of nor idealize him. Mass production breeds its mass-emotions that one film failure will stampede, and there is no faith in them, and more’s the pity. I wouldn’t give a toot for any daughter of mine who couldn’t make a love-fool of herself as an adolescent.

  Having no garden to speak of – the Campden Hill house possessed a greasy square of meaningless ground bordered with catty laurels – we made do with Kensington Gardens, and the keepers little know that once we planted, hurriedly and crookedly, a patch of mustard-and-cress in the Flower Walk. We disputed as to the design, and decided that as it was Royal earth it would be polite to compliment the princess Louise, so we sowed an L and what we hoped would be recognizable as a crown. (The L, for some reason, never came up at all, and only half the crown.) But it was enough. We had our stake in the Gardens!

  But if our garden didn’t please us, it seemed to satisfy Penny, and he would sit for half-hours at a time chittering at the pigeons and scintillating his whiskers when the birds alderman’d about the garden and gobbled crumbs. And he married a lot. Mother said, with reference to Penny’s latest spouse, a ginger who lived three gardens away, ‘These everlasting receptions are a great strain. Shall Searcey do the ices?’ And when we complained of the pigeons’ greed and of the fact that they scared away the thrushes and blackbirds she said that they were very like humans, that their interests were so few that crumbgrabbing was their substitute for shady company-promoting.

  The garden was not the only thing which restricted us. We were very badly off, and for the first time in our lives had to struggle with hooks and buttons, hair-doing and even darning. Mother’s Liberty gowns were cut down for us, as she saw that the artistic racket was not only fashionable but effective as well for those who could carry it off. It was hit or miss, and it succeeded. Our birthday, Christmas and Easter presents, in those years, were new dresses, and she sold many a piece of silver and jewellery to the little antique shops in Notting Hill Gate that our frocks might be the prettiest at the party. She was insistent on this point, overriding our assurances that ‘the old green’ or ‘our oyster-whites’ would do; gently obstinate, curiously, secretly determined, she bought the new material.

  She once said, ‘It’s agony to wear ugly clothes …’ and stopped, very suddenly, and changed the subject.

  CHAPTER VII

  I

  IT took us a long time to ‘get the relations sorted’. Most of our cousins were older than ourselves and were headed by ‘the Seagrave kids’, who, in point of fact, were, at the time of our move, four endlessly lanky young women of up to nineteen years old, with the face that goes with brogue shoes and tweed hats, and about as much bosom as imported rabbits. Our family ran to girls.

  Of our Aunt Sophia Seagrave the most one can say is that she would be the last woman in London to abandon an At Home day and silver photograph frames on the grand piano.

  Many years ago, apparently, Aunt Sophia had decided in what lights to present her daughters to the world.

  Helen was ‘just like a boy’ and was made to have riding lessons in the Row, in a voluminous habit and a truncated top-hat, accompanied by a housemaid whose implicit task it was to scotch any flirtation between Helen and the riding master, for which Aunt Sophia was perpetually prepared.

  Beryl was ‘our outdoor one’, and was frequently sent packing into the home counties with the sewing-maid and a tin box of sandwiches.

  Flora was ‘Oh, she’s never in the house! We hardly see her, my dear! Country house visits …’, the planning and dovetailing of which, according to the Verdunes, gave Aunt Sophia a lot of thought and penmanship, as she sat at her creaking and inconvenient (but period) escritoire in the immense drawing-room in Emperor’s Gate.

  Theodora, the eldest, she had selected as family beauty who was immensely admired by men. ‘Always a new face in the drawing-room,’ Aunt Sophia would proclaim in a loud drone, and the phrase became a catchword between James and mother for years. And when Seagrave invention flagged, they gave book teas to which you came with a gardenia in your furs as La Dame Aux Camellias, or holding a tattered sock cobbled with red cotton for As A Man Sows, while the butler handed tepid China tea and looked horrified, and Uncle Maxwell hid in the morning-room (he was ‘Always a nose in the papers’).

  I asked mother what she thought our Seagrave label might be, and she smiled, derisive and a little bitterly, and said, ‘We are “Poor little Anne”. We don’t entertain and our turning doesn’t reassure coachmen.’

  Which was true, for there was a distinct tendency on the part of the aunts with daughters of their own to exclude us from their parties lest our dresses would not pass muster, and an even more distinct one when they gradually found out that our garments were the most original in the room.

  Of the other relations we preferred ‘Aunt Emmeline’s lot’; the Verdunes were more of an age with ourselves and had the Vallant looks – aquiline and rather saturnine – and the Vallant tongue. Also, their minds and bodies were not so violently protected from life as were the Seagraves’, although they, too, were well off. One felt that it would be possible to go to the devil with the Verdunes, which in those days meant sallying out alone to Earl’s Court Exhibition.

  We liked their schoolroom, with its Hassall poster of The Only Way, and making caramels on the landing was possible, with Aunt Emmeline entrenched two or three flights below. It was with ‘the Palace Greeners’, as we called the Verdunes, naming them after their address, that we were able to swop Seagrave stories, and from Barbara that we learned their own Seagrave labels.

  ‘I’m “That Naughty Puss”,’ Barbara explained, her elbows on the schoolroom table, ‘and Evelyn is “going to be good-looking but such a stoop, mah–ee dear”, and Dolly is “it’s such a pity that Emmeline doesn’t take a firmer hand”.’

  Dolly grinned, and roasted chestnuts. ‘That’s because I was seen kissing a Sandhurst cadet behind one of Sophia’s hired palms,’ she said. ‘You see, she wanted him for Theodora, and he wasn’t having any … well, I mean … who would?’, and she screwed her eyes and laughed, open-mouthed.

  ‘But I will say that Aunt S. does one well at dances … a jolly sight better than mamma.’ To this, Lalage and I had nothing to say. It jarred us; but we were there to learn. We raised politely questioning eyebrows. It was enough. The Verdunes meant to go on, in any case.

  ‘Mother’s very Vallantish in some ways. She freezes our men, so we have to make our own arrangements … but I prefer it to Sophia’s method, in the long run.’

  ‘But … she was a Vallant, too,’ fumbled Lalage.

  ‘Yes, curious, isn’t it? So’s your mother, if it comes to that, and she simply i
sn’t like the same family. I should think Aunt Anne is rather a dear, isn’t she?’

  Evelyn interrupted (we were grateful), ‘If it comes to that … we’re all Vallants,’ and didn’t seem to like the realization.

  So it came about that, of all the related possibles, it was with the children of mother’s eldest sister, Emmeline, that we were able to discuss the family. From them we even learnt of in-laws and cousins (all grown-up) who were destined to remain for ever little but names to us; of others which some exaggerated piece of schoolroomism later helped us to ‘place’.

  ‘There was great-uncle Ivor Stonor … grannyma’s brother. He lived in the country and had a regiment of daughters all called Hester and he dogwhipped their young men.’

  ‘But … did they go on having any?’ Lalage, already pitiful, put in.

  ‘No. They’re all unmarried, except one that isn’t alluded to, who popped off with a farmer. They’ve got faces like lavatory seats, oval and utterly blank.’

  ‘Uncle Ivor got religion before he took to dogwhips.’

  We sat there, learning and listening, a little shy before these glib London seniors, with their shining armour on imperviousness. And then Barbara, poking a nut off the brass bars, said, ‘He’s not grandmother’s brother for nothing’.

  II

  So it was with the Verdunes that we were able to speak of Lady Vallant.

  We learnt that, to the Seagraves, she was just a grandmother, impersonal, and neither to be feared nor sought. Placidity and sanity reigned here, it seemed.

  To the Verdune girls, she was a joke, pure and simple; here was criticism, spirited, slapdash and thick-skinned, a rowdy, reassuring attitude that had never so much as occurred to us.

  ‘I loathe grannyma’s lunches. One never gets enough to eat. It’s all huge silver dish covers and underneath four pennies on four sticks of firewood that she calls cutlets. But we stoke up beforehand, at home. It makes mother furious, but I’m not going to stand any of Vallybags nonsense.’

  ‘Of course the poor old brute’s rather pathetic. It must be pretty beastly to know that nobody likes you.’

  ‘And the way she hangs on to her youth. Mother say she never throws away any dress she was admired in. She’s got cupboards bung-full. Palmer hates it because she never gets any perks. Trust Susan for that.’

  Palmer sounded like a maid. I was determined at any rate, to keep this conversation alive. ‘She was a beauty,’ I remarked, half in question, half in assertion.

  ‘Oh lor yes, I believe so. “Always a new face in the drawing-room, mah–ee dear.” Mother’s often said so.’

  ‘All I can say is, there must have been more men in those days, or they were easier to please.’

  ‘Wonder how grandpa liked it?’

  ‘Oh, she ran him entirely, I gather.’

  ‘I only wonder she was willing to have all those children.’

  ‘They did, in those days.’

  ‘But – seven, Dolly!’

  I started because I couldn’t help it, glanced at Lalage and knew this was going to be left for me to cope with. I managed to say ‘Seven?’ and sound passably facetious. Dolly was ticking off on her fingers.

  ‘There were mother and Sophia and your mother’ (to me) ‘and Uncle Stuart, Uncle Julian, Uncle James (he was killed in the Boer War) and Myra.’

  My hands had begun to tremble and I had to put them under the red serge table-cloth. I ran my eyes along the mantelpiece to steady my mind, noting the procession of glass pigs, the invitation cards, the little trumpery silver clock pointing to five minutes past six, and the vases which supported glossy postcards of Martin Harvey, N. de Silva, Evelyn Millard, Edmund Payne in a Gaiety theatre group and Cosmo Furnival in some costume play. Then I heard myself saying ‘Let me see … Myra … it’s so difficult to get them all sorted.’

  Barbara said, ‘She died. Uncle Julian and Uncle Stuart live in the country, at Vallant, most of the year. You wouldn’t know them, they’re very shy birds. …’

  ‘… and Uncle Julian’s nearly blind. …’

  ‘Is he so old?’ Lalage asked that.

  ‘No. I gather it was a piece of Vallantism. Susan’s doing. She wouldn’t consult an occulist when he was at school and jeered at him for being a milksop when his eyes hurt him and he cried.’

  ‘Oh no!’ – it was Lalage again, her eyes nearly black in a white face. The Verdunes nodded. ‘Mother let that out only a year or two ago. Quite casually. Imagine it!’

  I hadn’t time for that, though the pang would hit me later. To fifteen, poker-faces do not come easily, and I hoped mine was being adequate as I said, ‘But Aunt Myra’ (somehow, I was very careful about the prefix) ‘what did she die of? I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Oh, I think there was something the matter with her spine, or she went into one of those declines people did …’

  Evelyn said, ‘Aunt Anne would tell you. Wasn’t she your mother’s favourite sister?’

  I answered, ‘Yes,’ and nudged Lalage (after all, she is the elder), and she capped me nobly with an off-hand ‘Of course’.

  That night, I wrote off to James:

  ‘There was a seventh. Her name was Myra, and she died. She was mother’s favourite sister … the Verdunes say so. Why do they know? Can one ask mother? Write the Myra part on a separate sheet so that I can show your usual letter to her.’

  I dodged out into Campden Grove to post the letter at the corner grocer’s. At breakfast, a day later, a letter from James was on my plate:

  ‘Is anything the matter? Last night, at prep, I suddenly came over all rum … it felt like pins and needles in one’s head, and being afraid of everything. Can’t describe it. The chap next me hacked me on the calf because old Brewster was on duty, and I pretended I wanted to know the time, and Ash said, “Five past six,” and got fifty lines.’

  The letter was dated; it was the night we had had tea in Palace Green.

  Part of his answer said:

  ‘Funny our letters crossed. About M. Can’t think how the Verdunes come to know anything we don’t. I suppose mother doesn’t want it talked of, or she would have. But why has Aunt Emmeline told them? They aren’t on terms with her, are they? I mean, not as we are. One’s a right to know, but I shouldn’t care to take on the job myself, with mother. It’s like her age; she must be one, but one doesn’t ask. And after all, as the V.s say, people did go off in declines. Dickens and Thackeray say so, and the Egerton Castles are full of “vapours”. …’

  In short, James, like myself, didn’t believe for an instant in the plausibility of the Verdune story; he was trying to bolster me up generally.

  III

  In what seemed to be an incredibly short time, James was a St. Paul’s boy, almost as tall, as tall, and taller than, mother. (I wonder why it is that it always seems an impertinence when children overtop parents?) He was horribly embarrassed when his voice broke and refused, like an expectant mother, to go to any parties, and in the year it happened, he and I seem to have lived in a perpetual state of dodging out of the drawing-room because visitors were there or imminent, and prowling the streets, or sitting in each other’s bedrooms.

  ‘It’s such a stinking advertisement of sex,’ James would hoarsely hoot.

  ‘It’s beastly,’ I agreed, ‘but now we are on the subject pretty foul things happen to us too, Jamesey.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I know about that.’

  ‘Then I hope you know it right. I couldn’t stand it if you had got hold of the wrong end of the stick about us females, or if you’d only got hold of bits of the stick from some sickening boy. So if there’s anything you want to know – ever – always ask me.’

  There was, and he did, and I told him and I’m glad. After all, aren’t sisters the best training for their mistresses and wives, just as brothers are, or might be, for our lover and husbands?

  Incidentally, I swept away, with a little embarrassment and incoherence and plenty of slang, some fairly grotesque and messy misconceptions under
which he’d been labouring, and he suddenly looked less harassed. ‘And, drink fair, Betsy,’ I ended, ‘I may want to know no end of oddments from you.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Not now. But don’t grow up and be a Young Man and forget, or welch on me.’

  ‘No. Promise.’

  CHAPTER VIII

  I

  JAMES was what, in a girl, would have been known as ‘an immediate success’ with the relations. Mother, viewing the cards which suddenly became embedded in the scrollwork of the mantelpiece, looked at this tall thing that was hers, and said, her hands on his shoulders:

  ‘Men are always in demand, my dear; there are so dashed few of ’em! Go and have the best time you can, but don’t forget that it’s partly the state of the market.’

  It was a risk, and she took it. Possibly she had memories of the fatuous stage in her brothers, and of the ultimate crashes that awaited masculine youth which had mistaken its comparative rarity for its own fascinations. Or it may have been that she guessed James to be an idealist, easily shattered. What she didn’t dare allow for was the fact that James and I, in the last resort, made our own discoveries, and always would.

  We soon found that the London ballroom wasn’t the same thing as our parties where every face was familiar, and dances had been, or could be, fixed days ahead, during the morning walks. We came to the business from what would pass as the country, and young at that, so I suppose our impressions were sharp.

  We made what I must grandiloquently describe as our London debut at the coming out dance of Beryl, the third Seagrave cousin. It was a betwixt and between affair owing to our conflicting ages, and even Uncle Maxwell was forced out into the open, and leant against the outside of doorways, and even took three alarmed steps on to the parquet floor until the music, striking up a waltz (‘Gold and Silver’) caused him to remember the occasion, and retreat.