‘Yes it has. All art is founded upon economics.’
Hubert groaned.
‘But it is,’ persisted Gerald. ‘Every opinion you express betrays your social status. Your tastes are all acquired tastes; and acquired tastes are the mark of the man of leisure.’
‘Well, there’s something in that,’ agreed Hubert.
‘And what’s an acquired taste but a piece of conspicuous waste? Waste of time. Proof that the acquirer has time to waste. Proof that he needn’t work. Why do Chinese grandees let their finger-nails grow? Why do they crush their wives’ feet? Same reason.’
Hubert remained contemptuously silent, but Lois contributed a remark. She thought it was time she spoke, so she hazarded:
‘Taste isn’t always confined to the leisured classes, surely. What about … er … Robert Burns, for instance?’
‘Do you think his taste was always very good?’ asked Gerald.
‘Well, then … genius …’ she amended.
‘Not at all the same thing,’ Hubert told her.
She saw that it was not, but was uncertain whether genius or taste were the nicer quality to possess. Gerald continued to dogmatize about the leisured classes:
‘Taste is merely a laborious form of auto-suggestion, upon which only an idle man can embark. But, like a public school education, it gives you a certain cachet by reason of its very uselessness. Look at it like this. The leisured class was originally released from the necessity of earning its own bread in order that it might preserve the State in safety. As things become more civilized this work gets handed over to paid officials and then the mere possession of leisure comes to be the mark of the aristocrat. People invent all these ways of showing they are leisured … sport and culture and so on. Complete bureaucracy and the golden age of art generally arrive together. A really useful aristocracy doesn’t have time for culture. It’s too busy doing its job; governing the herd and fighting the foe, and all that sort of thing. Its pleasures are simple and it shares them with the masses. The Norman knight, even the hunting squire in the eighteenth century, was not so far removed in culture from the hind at the plough as Clewer is from one of his farm labourers.’
John put his head out of the window behind them and said: ‘I don’t agree.’
He had been sitting in the smoking-room with Sir Thomas, but, catching the drift of Gerald’s remarks, he now came and balanced on the low window-sill, explaining:
‘I’m not an aristocrat who has left off being really useful. I spent most of today in a stuffy court-house fining people for riding their bicycles on the pavement, don’t you know. And what do I get for it? Somebody has to do it. But why should I?’
‘Now, Clewer! Do you really think that bullying people two days a week can be called a life work?’
‘That’s not all,’ said John modestly. ‘Agatha’s mother says I’m going into Parliament some day. Of course,’ he added with British haste, ‘I don’t pretend to artistic tastes and so on. But I know what I like, and I don’t deny that having decent things about the place,’ he glanced over his perfect lawns and then at his wife, … ‘pictures and things, you know … it does make a difference to me. And my point is that these chaps owe it to us for all we do for them.’
Agatha laughed, as she always did when her husband referred to the proletariat as ‘these chaps.’ But she grew grave when she heard Gerald say:
‘Well, I admit that you are more useful than Ervine here, and consequently you make fewer claims to culture. It only bears out what I say. That’s why the women of the leisured class go in for art more, on the whole, than the men do.’
‘Oh, the women,’ she murmured. ‘We are perfect monuments of conspicuous waste, I suppose.’
‘Of course you are. The ideal of beauty set up before the women of a leisured class is almost always incompatible with usefulness. They must look incapable of hard work; their dress must hamper them; their health is often injured; their duties as mothers are set aside. They are to be decorative luxuries, unfitted for any uses save one, and they must look it. Simply because that’s a standard of appearance which can’t be attained by the working classes. Women like …’
His eye wandered round the company and he looked a little disconcerted for a moment. Then he boldly continued:
‘Such women … women of the odalisque type, are symbols of an assured, unearned income. A piece of blatant waste, like a scratch handicap….’
He broke off and met the glance of his cousin. She sat there, looking so like and yet so unlike his lost love that he was silenced. He could scarcely believe that this was not she but the husk of her, the beautiful tomb, the unhappy, corruptible flesh which had once clothed an ardent spirit. He had to remind himself that the soul was gone, dead and buried beneath the gorgeousness of Lyndon.
She had listened to his strictures upon her and her kind without modifying her languorous pose. With a gentle mockery she looked him over and then gave him that quick, soft smile which was her last weapon. Her husband marked it and grinned.
‘I know that in theory beauty and utility should go together,’ she said mildly. ‘But practically I have never found that they do. Do you really find most idle women plain, Gerald?’
Very few men could have continued to say that they did, but he was obdurate. He considered the question, staring at his boots, and then said:
‘I see a good many in a professional way. They are not beautiful. They are generally appalling.’
‘But,’ she took him up with more energy, ‘you don’t see anything to admire in these wretched, squalid women one sees in slums and places, surely? You don’t call them beautiful?’
‘An overworked woman is a shocking sight,’ he agreed. ‘Though not as bad as one who does no work at all. Our society is made up of extremes. We have lost all standards of how a woman should look.’
‘A beautiful woman,’ observed Hubert, ‘is a work of art in herself. But then we have learnt that Blair has no use for works of art.’
‘I never said that,’ exclaimed Gerald. ‘Works of art are all right. So are artists. But I don’t include them in the leisured class. The man of leisure is an amateur. When he leaves off being that, he leaves off being a man of leisure. His art isn’t an exploit, it’s a profession.’
‘Quite,’ said Hubert. ‘I agree. But the cultured amateur forms the cream of the artist’s public.’
‘I doubt it. He’s a drone, and inclined to demand work which only drones can appreciate. Work which is an acquired taste …’
The sight of James Clewer wandering round the corner of the house reminded them that at Lyndon they were not all drones. They had an artist with them. Agatha called to him and he joined them with an expression of vague dissatisfaction.
‘What were you looking for, James?’
‘Oh … for Dolly….’
‘Dolly? What Dolly?’
‘Dolly Kell.’
‘Kell! Kell, the housemaid? What did you want?’
‘Some bits of rag to clean my brushes.’
‘I’ll tell her to bring some up to you. Listen! Do our standards of taste make any difference to the pictures you paint?’
‘What?’
James looked terribly startled.
‘We are discussing taste. You know I saying one picture is second-rate and another decorative, and so on. You must have heard it done. Do you see any point in it?’
‘I know what you mean. In Paris they used to talk a lot about those things. The ones who drew worst talked most. I didn’t listen.’
‘Then it makes no difference to you what we think of art?’
‘No! Why should it?’
‘We are the cream of your public.’
James looked horrified. He cast a scared glance round the group and withdrew hastily. John, who was afraid they would begin discussing art again, looked at his watch and mentioned that the first gong had gone some time ago. They dispersed, leaving the issue undecided. Twenty minutes later John opened the door between
his room and Agatha’s, and finding that her maid had gone, he left it ajar so that he could talk to her while he finished dressing.
‘Not a bad sort, Ervine,’ he called through. ‘I quite like him, in spite of his parlour tricks. Hope he and Lois make a match of it.’
‘They seem to be very well suited,’ replied Agatha. ‘Do you know at all what Lady Clewer thinks of it? It struck me that she is taking pains to keep them apart.’
‘Oh, that’s nothing. It doesn’t mean disapproval. She thinks it puts a girl’s price up to keep her well chaperoned. I think I agree.’
‘You would.’
‘And in any case, I happen to know that Mamma was getting rather worried about Lois and James. Thought they saw too much of each other. Rather late in the day, what?’
‘It’s perfect nonsense.’
‘’Course it is. James is more presentable than he was, and that’s all you can say for him. Lois wouldn’t look at him and I can’t say I see much sign of his looking at Lois. But Mamma’s anxious. It’s natural in a mother to get worried, I suppose. They all do.’
Agatha said nothing. She had never, consciously, been a mother. Her child, though born alive, had not survived long enough to engage her attention. By the time she had recovered from the anaesthetic sufficiently to ask for it her brief maternity was already over.
John continued, after a pause:
‘No, what really does annoy me about James is the impossible way he goes chasing round after that housemaid. You never saw that scene the other day. She was polishing the floor in the library when we all went up to find some book or other. The poor girl was trying to melt away quietly, as she certainly should have done; but not a bit of it! James rushes up to her, greets her effusively as his dear Dolly, and inquires after her aunt’s bronchitis. ’Pon my word, I thought he meant to kiss her!’
‘Well, but isn’t she a very old friend of his? I’m sure Lady Clewer told me that her aunt was housekeeper here and ran the place when your mother died.’
‘Old Mrs Kell, do you mean?’
‘Yes. She’s Kell’s aunt by marriage, and she’s practically brought her up. I believe the child had a mother, but couldn’t live at home because of a very unsatisfactory stepfather who ultimately went off his head or something. I know Lady Clewer told me some very tragic story when first I engaged the girl. She seems to have stayed here a good deal with her aunt, when she was little. You must have been away at school, so you don’t remember. But, being much of an age with James, she used to play with him. So he really has some reason for asking after her aunt’s bronchitis.’
‘It’s not that I object to, it’s his manner of doing it. She didn’t like it at all, poor girl. She’s well trained enough, and she hadn’t an idea what to make of him. She was very stiff and “Thank you, sir, I’m sure” with him. And then he gapes at her as if she’d slapped his face and asks if anything is the matter. And it isn’t as if these scenes only took place in the bosom of the family. Blair and Bragge were there, and what they made of it I don’t know. I don’t take to Blair, by the way, Agatha. Talks too much, doesn’t he? I was expecting you to shut him up. You don’t generally tolerate people who preach.’
‘He doesn’t generally talk as much as that. I egged him on today.’
‘I didn’t think much of his views either. Practically Socialism, don’t you know. Bad taste to force it on people.’
‘His general turn of mind is affected a good deal by living in France so much, I think.’
‘What? The way he talks about women do you mean?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she said with some irritation. ‘I’m sure I don’t know where he got his views from, and I don’t agree with them. I mean that his manner, the way he discusses things, puts us out. It mayn’t be French particularly; he may have picked it up in America. Only he takes exactly the same tone about everything, even when he’s serious. English people put on a special manner to show when they are serious; they either become solemn or excessively flippant. And anyhow they don’t like discussing really important things. They seem to think that there is something belittling in conversation. They don’t regard it as continentals do.’
‘Awful beasts, the French,’ asserted John cheerfully. ‘They made me sick. Agatha! If you can’t fix these studs, I shall have to ring for Peters.’
She strolled in, cool and elegant, and arranged his difficulties for him. As she did so he heard her murmur.
‘Passionate … discursive … and unsentimental….’
‘What’s that?’
With an arm behind her shoulders he detained her.
‘I was trying to sum up in my own mind the characteristics of the best of the French nation. But they are rather fox, goose, and cabbage qualities to the Anglo-Saxon mind. Really, John, take care, or you’ll have powder coming off on your sleeve.’
‘You can put on some more in a minute when I’ve finished. Tell me, is that chap … Blair … what is it … passionate, discursive …’
‘And unsentimental. He might be. I don’t know him as well as I used.’
John reflected upon the first of these qualifications and said:
‘Well, now, I should have called him rather a St Thingummy. You know, the fellow who threw the inkpot at the lady. What are you laughing at? He is. I saw a beautiful woman smile at him this afternoon and he didn’t so much as blink.’
‘He didn’t see,’ she said quickly.
‘Oh, didn’t he? I’m inclined to think that he did. But I expect he thinks it’s an insult to argue with a woman as if she was one. He’s that sort.’
‘What! You think it was on purpose?’
‘Of course it was. The man’s not an absolute fool.’
‘He thought it would be rather degrading to lower the conversation to the level of gallantry.’
‘He’s that sort, I tell you. A cold-blooded fish.’
‘But it would have been, wouldn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Rather degrading?’
‘I don’t know.’ He released her as the gong rang. ‘The whole discussion bored me personally. Does my sleeve really need brushing?’
3.
Upon the following morning, John and Sir Thomas departed with some ceremony for the Cheltenham races. The car which was to take them was a large one, but when they had packed themselves into it, with their greatcoats, and their road maps and their glasses, they filled it completely. The other guests, gathered on the steps, called injunctions as to the money they wished these emissaries to make for them. John replied briefly that he would put nothing on for anybody but himself; Sir Thomas, however, agreed with leering alacrity to make a little for Cynthia.
As the chauffeur was climbing into his place, the lady of the house appeared among the group upon the steps and informed the world that it was going to be a wet day. It had been bright too early, said she. Everyone was surprised to see her, for she seldom rose before lunch-time and her statement that it had been bright too early was greeted with some mockery upon this account.
The car hummed up the avenue and several large raindrops spotted the whiteness of the steps in answer to her prophecy. A sudden wind blew all the leaves silver against a leaden sky, and the party fled into the hall for shelter. Agatha then explained the reason of her early appearance. She was due to lunch with her mother on the other side of Oxfordshire and would be starting immediately. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll get away until terribly late,’ she said. ‘My mother will have a hundred things to talk about. I’m rather afraid,’ turning to Hubert, ‘that I may be a little late for your lecture. It’s at six, isn’t it? But you’ll forgive me? I’ll get away as soon as ever I can. I’ll come home through the village and run straight in to the Institute. Then I can hear as much as possible.’
Hubert, who had been looking very miserable since breakfast, assured her with perfect sincerity that he would not mind in the least if she missed his lecture altogether. Looking round cautiously to see that the dowager was not in
hearing, he said:
‘I’m afraid I’m no democrat. I have no desire to lift the masses.’
‘A genuine democrat hasn’t,’ rejoined Gerald instantly. ‘He thinks they are all right as they are.’
With an imploring look, Hubert drew Agatha aside:
‘Can you tell me,’ he asked nervously, ‘if there are any books on Dante in this house?’
‘Oh, there must be, Let’s go and look in the library.’
She took him upstairs. The library was a long, beautiful room with six windows looking out over the park. It was seldom used by the household. Miss Barrington worked there occasionally, and Kell, the third housemaid, expended much labour upon the polished floor.
The chill severity of the place abashed Hubert. Its classic simplicity made him feel slightly uncomfortable. Its long array of solid, calf-bound books seemed to cheapen his ‘two-pence coloured’ culture and put him out of humour with the showy little lecture which he was composing. It was as if the presiding spirits of the place, the scholars and the polished stylists of the eighteenth century, were frowning on him from the lofty cases where their busts ruled the solitude. He moved his eye quickly from Voltaire to Johnson, and from Johnson to Swift, and turned to examine the view from one of the windows. Even Agatha shivered a little at the frigid atmosphere of the place with its composite smell of erudite vellum and furniture polish.
‘I’ll have a fire lighted,’ she said. ‘It’s quite cold. Then you can write your lecture up here in peace and quietness. But first we will find Miss Barrington and ask her about books on Dante.’
She rang the bell.
‘This is an admirable room, isn’t it?’ said Hubert.
‘Yes, but I’m a little afraid of it. The sight of so much learning makes me feel that my own knowledge is very meretricious. Don’t you agree that it ought to be rather void of furniture, like this? When I first came here it was quite full of chesterfields; Lady Clewer is very fond of them and in a room of this size she was really able to have as many as she wanted. But I insisted on moving them out. Oh, Kell! Will you light the fire, please? And will you ask Miss Barrington if she will be so good as to come here for a moment?’
Ladies of Lyndon Page 8