The Letters of her Mother to Elizabeth Part 9

Tom Carterville came and sat down next to me, and made me nearly choke with the funny things he said about the Parkers, and he believes his mother will drop them. There is such a garrulous old lady stopping at Astley, Mrs. Dot; Tom took her in to supper. She came across the room and joined us. She began to talk about the n.o.bility, and told us she considered she belonged to it, for though she was an American, she could trace her ancestry back to the Scottish Chiefs, and she asked Tom what he thought it would cost to have Burke put her in the peerage among the collateral branches. Then she told us she was descended also from Admiral Coligny. Poor dear Coligny, she called him, and she certainly would have been a Roman Catholic, if it hadn't been for Coligny. Tom asked her quite innocently if she had left Coligny in America, and when he intended to come over. "When he comes to Astley, Mrs. Dot," he said, "be sure you let me know, I'll give him a run with the West Somerset Harriers."

"He's _dead_! Mr. Carterville," she fairly shrieked.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said. "I thought from the way you spoke that he was in New York or Chicago, making money like all nice Americans."

"Oh, is it possible, Mr. Carterville," she went on, "that you have never heard of Coligny, poor dear Coligny, who was killed in the St.

Bartholomew Ma.s.sacre!"

"With all due respect to your relation," Tom said, "I never heard of the sad catastrophe; I don't read any but the sporting papers. I suppose the what-do-you-call-it ma.s.sacre was in one of your little wars on the frontier. I hope they didn't get his scalp, Mrs. Dot."

Miss Parker, who was sitting quite near and heard every word, turned round and said, "Don't you see they are making fun of you, Aunt?" Mrs.

Dot turned very red and simpered, and Tom and I felt as if we were looking for the North Pole.

I do call it unkind for people to make you feel uncomfortable in their houses. These Parkers are not at all like the Wertzelmanns and the other Americans I met at Lucerne. And I am sure if Lady Beatrice does call on them, that Lady Archibald Fairoaks and the Marchioness of Runymede, who are the nicest kind of Americans, wouldn't. Good-night, darling, I shall expect to hear from you to-morrow.--Your dearest Mamma.

{_Novel-reading Servants_}

_P. S._--When I got back from Astley to-night, I had the greatest difficulty to get into the house. No one answered the bell, and finally Perkins, who has a key to the kitchen, let me in that way. I went into the dining-room and rang and called; still no one came. I then went upstairs and found Therese, the two maids, the cook, and the new page, sitting round a blazing wood fire in my bed-room, and cook was reading "The Master Christian" to them aloud!

I cried from pure vexation, for one can't send all one's servants away at the same time. I am sure I can't see why the lower cla.s.ses should have novelists, but they have everything just like us now-a-days. And when I was in town last month, at Claridge's, the d.u.c.h.ess of Rougemont told me she didn't know what the world was coming to, for her maid belonged to a Corelli Society, and she had actually sat next her own footman at a Paderewski Recital the last time the pianist was in London.

LETTER XXIII

MONK'S FOLLY, 2nd November

DARLING ELIZABETH:

{_Theatricals_}

The Blaines had some theatricals yesterday in St. Leo's school-house, to raise money to give Father Ribbit a host. In spite of the weather being horrid I went. They acted "My Lord in Livery," and a manager came down from a West End theatre to stage it. They only cleared two guineas when all expenses were paid, which of course won't buy a host, though Mrs.

Blaine suggested they might find a second-hand one cheap in an old curiosity shop. I thought the acting was atrocious, but they were all mightily pleased with themselves, and are now thinking of playing "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," and renting the Taunton theatre. But that is always the way with amateurs.

{_Church and Theatricals_}

Lady Beatrice is getting up tableaux at Braxome in opposition, and Mr.

Frame came to-day to ask me to help. Tom brought me a nice note from his mother, imploring me to say Yes, and I have consented, and there is to be a lunch at Braxome to-morrow to decide on what we shall do. Lady Beatrice says she feels it her duty to use all her influence with the Bishop to have Father Ribbit tried by the Ecclesiastical Court. There is every sign of a church war, for Mrs. Blaine declares she will write to her uncle, who is in the Cabinet, to back up Father Ribbit. And it's nothing but church and theatricals; as you know down here in the country it is always church and something else. I shall do all I can to fan the fire, and Tom has promised to help me, for we are so terribly dull, anything will serve to wake us up a bit.

{_The De Mantons_}

I have called on the Vane-Corduroys, who have leased Shotover Park from the De Mantons. Poor Lady de Manton cried when she left it, and is living in a boarding-house on the Parade at Weston-super-mare; old Lord de Manton has gone up to London, where he thinks he can get a Chairmans.h.i.+p of a City Company for the sake of his name. The Honourable Agatha has gone out to South Africa on a hospital s.h.i.+p, and her brother, the Honourable de Montgomery de Manton, whom, you remember, we met once on the Promenade at Cannes, and I wouldn't let you bow to him because he was walking with such an impossible woman, has joined the Imperial Yeomanry as a trooper. The family seems quite broken up; it is rather a pity, as they had been at Shotover since the Conquest. Mrs. Blaine says it is all due to Kaffirs; that Lord de Manton would set up as a stockbroker, and you know what a mess he got the lunatic asylum accounts into the year he was treasurer. But, as Mrs. Blaine says, he will probably be back at Shotover within a year, for he is just the sort of man they like to get on directorates in London, and that is such a paying profession now-a-days. He told Lady Beatrice that if worse became worst with him he knew the Colonial Office would give him an island to govern. He didn't seem very depressed when he left, but Lady de Manton was completely _bouleversee_. Tom told me that she had written to his mother to say that Weston-super-mare was intolerable; they gave her Brussels sprouts and boiled beef six days running; she wanted Lady Beatrice to help her get the post of stewardess on one of the new West Indian line steamers to Jamaica; she makes a point of the fact that she was never sick when crossing the Channel. She seems willing to do anything till poor Lord de Manton "arrives."

{_The Vane-Corduroys_}

How I digress! I started to tell you of the Vane-Corduroys, and I shunted off to the De Mantons; you will think me as garrulous as an old maid.

I don't know how the Vane-Corduroys got their money, but I think it was out of "Sparklets," though Tom says he is sure he has seen "Corduroy's Lung Tonic" on the signboards at the Underground stations. Lady Beatrice, who takes up every new person out of sheer curiosity, called, and of course everybody else had to. But Lady Beatrice, who always has a reason for everything she does, said that she did it for Lady de Manton's sake, who had told her that if the Vane-Corduroys were properly _range_, it would help Lord de Manton in the City. Mr. Vane-Corduroy is the very type of a company-promoter; you know what I mean--they are always paunchy, and wear frock-coats, and top-hats, and have a President-of-a-Republic air. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy has dyed hair, the colour of tawny port, and she dresses like the ready-made models at Peter Robinson's. She looks exactly like a doll, and all the time I was talking to her, I felt that if I pinched her waist, she would say "Made in England." I am sure you wind her up with a key. They have completely changed the drawing-room at Shotover--you remember what a splendid air there was about it, with the old, worm-eaten Flemish tapestry, and the oak panelling--well, they have had the upholsterers down from Maple's, and it is now spick-and-span Louis Quinze; there are foot-stools in front of all the chairs, and the De Manton ancestors have all got new gilt frames. They have two children, a boy and a girl. The girl is about twelve, and has a French governess, a strange-looking woman, something like Louise Michel, with a moustache. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy told me she had the highest references, and that she had come to them from a Russian Grand-Duke's family. The boy is at Eton.

I asked them how they thought they would like Somersets.h.i.+re. Mrs.

Vane-Corduroy said she missed town--there was no Church Parade, no Prince's, no Bond Street, and no dear little Dog Cemetery, like the one in the Park. She thought the latter was such a peaceful spot, and she felt quite happy to think that Fido would rest there till the Resurrection, under his little Carrara marble cross. It was evidently a very depressing subject, and Mr. Vane-Corduroy hastened to change it by saying that his wife found the country a bit lonely just at first, but people had been very kind in calling on them, and that he was sure they would like it immensely, as he intended to fill the house with people from town, and that they should always spend the season at their house in Grosvenor Square, and part of the winter at Nice; and when they were not visiting, they would either be yachting, or at their shooting-box in the highlands. In fact, he gave me to understand that they would probably never be more than a couple of months in the year at Shotover.

They have taken seats at Father Ribbit's, and they have subscribed most liberally to all the local charities. I must say I think it rather an imposition, for they hadn't been in the county a week, before they were inundated with appeals for money; but, as Lady Beatrice says, that if such people will mix in our set, they must pay for it, and besides, their names and the sums they give are published in the Taunton papers, so that it is not as if they were not getting any return for their money.

{_A Eulogy_}

I suppose it does pay in the end, for the Rector of St. William's preached a regular eulogy on Mr. Parker last Sunday, who is restoring the whole church, for he found some old dilapidated tablets in it with "Parker" on them, and he is sure they are his ancestors. He had a letter of thanks from the Bishop about it, and the _Times_ devoted a column to it; said it was such things that drew America and England together, and that Mr. Parker's love of architecture was only equalled by his knowledge of it, and that St. William's restored would be an everlasting monument, in Early English Gothic, to his memory. And I don't believe Mr. Parker knows a gargoyle from a reredos.

I must stop now, darling, for Mrs. Chevington has just called, and I must go down and see her. I shall expect to hear from you to-morrow.--Your dearest Mamma.

LETTER XXIV

MONK'S FOLLY, 4th November

DARLING ELIZABETH:

{_A Frightful Thing_}

Such a frightful thing happened yesterday. The Vane-Corduroys came to return my call in their motor-car, and it blew up at the front door. One of the wheels fell into the conservatory, and the groom was picked up insensible on the lawn. He had to be brought into the house, where he has been ever since, and is likely to be for some days, for Dr. Smart says if he is moved in his present state he will die. Fortunately for the Vane-Corduroys they had just entered the house, or they might have been killed. You never heard such a noise; it sounded like a cannonade, and Perkins says it will cost me at least one hundred pounds to repair the damage. The Vane-Corduroys apologised profusely, and looked as if they wished they had been blown up along with the groom to hide their confusion. Perkins and the gardener have been picking up bits of motor-car all over the grounds to-day. I had to send the Vane-Corduroys back to Shotover in the victoria.

{_Rehearsal of Tableaux_}

We had a rehearsal of the tableaux at Braxome in the evening. Lady Beatrice looked absurd as Britannia; she posed herself after the tail of a penny; Mr. Parker as Uncle Sam, and Mr. Vane-Corduroy as John Bull, shaking hands, were quite good, but Mr. Frame, who was working the red, white, and blue light, set fire to himself, and might have been burned to death, but for his presence of mind. He put himself out by wrapping himself in Lady Beatrice's Gobelin tapestry, which she had specially made in Paris last year. You should have seen Lady Beatrice's face, and she called him "Frame," as she always does when she is angry with him, and she told him he might have waited till they brought some water to throw over him. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy, as Lady Macbeth going to murder Duncan, would have been effective, if she hadn't laughed in the middle of it. Everybody said that Tom and I in "The Black Brunswicker's Farewell" were the best, but Tom squeezed me so, I could hardly breathe, and when the curtain dropped he said we must do it over again for an encore.

We think the tableaux will be a great success, for all the tickets on sale at Mr. Dill's, the chemist, have been sold, and he wrote to ask Lady Beatrice if he could have some more printed. Mrs. Parker told Lady Beatrice it was awfully good of her to give her drawing-room over to the "peasantry," as she calls the Taunton people.

{_An Excellent Chef_}

To-day the Vane-Corduroys had a lunch-party. They have an excellent _chef_. Mr. Vane-Corduroy said he was five years with the d.u.c.h.ess of Rougemont, and only left because the d.u.c.h.ess refused to pay for the tuning of his piano. I think the Vane-Corduroys are afraid of him.

Therese tells me that he has a room fitted up as a studio at Shotover, and that he exhibits every year at the Salon, and only cooks from the love of it. He has his meals in his own apartments. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy showed me several photographs of Fido, and one of his grave in the Dog Cemetery; he was run over by a 'bus in the Bayswater road; and Mrs.

Vane-Corduroy shed tears when she told me of it, and she said she went into mourning for him for three months, and a Royal Academician is at present at work on his portrait from one of the photographs. She intends to have it hung in the Academy next year, and when I suggested that sometimes the best pictures of the best artists were rejected, she said that Mr. Vane-Corduroy had seen about it already, for he had put the Duke of Rougemont on to something good in the City, and the Duke had promised that he would see the picture was hung, and not skied either.

{_Two Visitors_}

Two women are visiting at Shotover, friends of Mrs. Vane-Corduroy. They look as if they were made at Marshall & Snelgrove; they wore pearl necklaces over their tailor-made walking suits, and long gold chains with uncut sapphires, and their fingers are covered in rings. I forget what Mrs. Vane-Corduroy called them, but she said they were old friends of hers, and such clever girls. It seems they were left rather poorly off, and to gain a living began by giving dancing lessons to some people in Maida Vale. They succeeded so well that they now have an "Academy" in Mayfair, and go about the country as well, giving private instruction; their brother had a gymnasium in Brighton, but got the war fever at Ladysmith time, and went out to the front in Paget's Horse, and the sisters are now running the gymnasium--a School for Physical Culture, Mrs. Vane-Corduroy called it. She says that is why they know so many people we do, Elizabeth, for they spoke of Lord Valmond, and Mr.

Wertz, and the Smiths, and the Duke of Clandevil, as if they were on quite intimate terms with them. I have no doubt it is very creditable of them to earn their living, but it seems strange to meet them in Society.

Really everything is changing now-a-days. I am thinking of telling Lady Beatrice and suggesting to her that they should do Indian clubs or cannon b.a.l.l.s after the tableaux, and it would be quite easy to get out a man from Taunton to put up a trapeze in the drawing-room at Braxome.--With love from your dearest Mamma.