EPISTLE IX

EATON SQUARE, Tuesday, February 15th.

My Dear Patricia,—

How extremely dead are the pretty customs of St Valentine's Day! Time was when the bright, lively girl who for two or three seasons had been, as it were, a rag on every bush, used to look forward to the 14th of February to "get the office" to become the whole garment to some deserving young bachelor who had been reared with care. For such, St Valentine was a sort of last chance for late chickens, as the incubator persons say; but youths do not seem to take seriously to matrimony now, and if by chance one proposes to a girl in a conservatory or on the stairs, he calls round in the morning to apologise. And valentines—the earliest of which, dear, a red brick engraved with "Only one girl in the world for me," in cuneiform characters, which was handed by King David, the first royal co-respondent, through the transom in Uriah's roof, you still may see in the British Museum—are quite things of the past. Lovesick swains do not give, but expect to receive, valentines in these days; and only yesterday Lady Mabel Smoothleigh was telling me how her latest "boy" had importuned her to "send me something you have kissed." But Mabel acted rather meanly, I think, in sending him her great athletic husband, a person of biceps rather than a beau, and one who while paying Mabel little attention himself is most handy at rushing up and sticking his knee in the pit of a weakling's stomach, if he catches a weakling even looking at Mabel on the rare occasions when he takes her out. I have quite frequently noticed that these burly, impetuous bridegrooms who, before marriage, exact the most definite promises that ducksie will never, never leave their sides—not even to go to the bathroom by herself—are the first to tire of propinquity and to yearn to get back to the mud of the football field on Saturday to see the Kensal Green Hotspurs lay out the Brompton Cemetery Uniteds. The unfortunate "best boy" is dreadfully damaged, I fear, and principally through his not putting himself, as the old-fashioned Methodists used to say, "in a suitable attitude to receive the blessing," but really these light-weight Josephs should make fuller inquiries.

Yesterday, let me tell you, I came perilously near falling into a new and insensate hobby: to-day I am happily again as free and unfettered as the yellow heathen who, getting no answer to his latest prayer, pitches his Joss out into the back yard and dances a wild fandango on its breast. Yesterday I hung for awhile over the yawning chasm in which are immured "the Fancy": to-day I resume my former belief that the toy dog, with its asthma and its silk coat, and its velvet pad and its chronic snuffles, amounts to a public calamity. Write down in wine upon a rose-leaf scroll, as old Omar says, that I have had a very close shave of Caniolatry, but have got out.

I had strolled round to Grosvenor Place to carry a message from Féo to the widowed Lady Steyning, whose only daughter is so vitiated by having always been given her own way that she positively breeds Blenheim spaniels in the cream-and-gold drawing room which her anguished mother had specially modelled on that of the Viscountess Hayashi, in "the Gardens," lower down. But Io Venusta Falconrouge Mayleigh—a rather ancient and honourable name to be giving a pug-nosed tyke a carbolic bath with—simply exists for her dogs; she reads and writes and talks and dreams of nothing else—indeed she told me in confidence she veritably believed that the fascinating animal who tempted Eve was a fabled but unattainable ideal "cross" between the Schipperke and the Redwillow Airedale. Such a contention would surely have entangled even Solomon himself—though, to be sure, the scriptural embodiment of wisdom who admitted that "the way of a man with a maid" had him beaten out of his boots would not take much losing nowadays. I felt dreadfully sorry for poor Lady Steyning, however, when the last little animal to receive its ablutions precipitated the complete outfit—basin, unguents, brushes, everything—partly over her lovely new oyster-blue moire and liberally upon the equally beautiful green Wilton pile carpet, for her nerves are not strong and she suffers from a rheumatic affection of the eyes which constant weeping only aggravates.

But maternal tears have no effect upon Io; she has long accustomed herself to criticise her hysterical mother with considerable precision and an utter absence of sympathy; so, with a brusque but not unkindly "There, there, chop out the twaddle and turn off the tears and Vi and I may come back from the Dog Show in time to take lunch with you," she dragged me downstairs, bundled me into a hansom, and almost before I had realised it we were bowling along the newly-made roads inside Buckingham Gate and traversing a perfect forest of labourers, all swinging their picks and shovels and other armorial bearings of the fine old Brassey family.

"I confess that her eyes give her some trouble," remarked IO, as she drew her suede gloves on in the cab, "but she's a jolly sight too fond of calling her soul her own. The amount of 'footle,' as Mr Crosland calls it, that my brother Bill and I put up with from her exceeds human belief. I invariably talk back at her, but Bill, male-like, is more compassionate: he usually says nothing, taps the butler for a tenner—-that's the best of paying servants regularly: you can always touch them for a bit if you run short—and then comes back in three days to see how the land lies. He'd have gone to Australia years ago, but for transportation being abolished and an idiotic system called 'passage-money' substituted. Aha! here's Piccadilly Circus; what do you say to a sherry and curacoa at the Cri.; north of this point all alcohol is outside the pale of Christian toleration?"

She has quite lost the girlishness that took Girton by storm, dear, and the charmingly confident way in which she entered the wine bar, and, sitting down at a small table and summoning a waiter, cried "Small elevens for two shareholders, and get a gait on you; we're keeping a 'fresh' horse waiting," would have compelled your admiration. Nor was she one whit less at home at the Dog Show itself. In her long tweed coat, cut loose enough in the back to give play to her gathered short skirt, and the high, tan, laced boots which only the neat-footed can wear with absolute confidence, she strutted up and down the sawdust aisles, disinterestedly accepting a saddle-soap or hound-glove catalogue here and criticising a "nicked" or "trimmed" ear there, or declaring to some sister enthusiast that fish-biscuit manufacturers were every bit as mendacious as restaurateurs—stick to them for a month or two, and you are well done; after that you must hunt up somebody new who has got a name to make. I felt such an unqualified novice in dog matters that I could have screamed out of sheer exasperation; although I feel sure that I seemed quite deeply "in it" to Io by the hearty way she laughed when I told her how "we"—(it was an old, old story of Mr Contango's which I fortunately remembered)—won the Waterloo Cup with a dog who was trained exclusively on '48 brandy, and to whose tail a firework was adroitly attached at the psychological instant of the starting-gate going up.

We returned to Grosvenor Place to find Lady Steyning still tearful and distinctly not making the most of the placid middle age which should be her welcome portion. "I do wish you had been here an hour ago, Io, instead of dallying with your everlasting dogs," she bleated, "Sir David Fenner, from Harley Street, has been and he associates my iritis with the gouty diathesis—arthritic iritis, I think he called it. And I grieve to tell you—" (here the inevitable weeping started)—"he made no secret of the pro-bab-b-b-bility—" (here she broke down piteously)—"of my becoming stone b-b-blind before very long!"

For a moment Io was manifestly embarrassed. She did not weep, but strolling mechanically to the piano, upon the music rack of which stood an autographed first copy of Get Your Hair Cut, she struck a few treble chords to regain her composure. Then, turning, she went and laid her right hand kindly on her mother's shoulder.

"Never mind, old sportie," she said, "you have always hated my 'everlasting' dogs; now, perhaps, you will discover the utility of them. With 'Spotty,' or 'Dearie,' or 'Flossie' on the end of a bit of string, and a stick to tap the pavements with, you can still toddle round Belgravia for many years to come!"

Suiting the action to the suggestion, Io closed her eyes and, shuffling across the room, cried in an assumed and whining voice, "Buy a box o' lights, sir, pity the poor blind, the poor blind!" For some reason or other, Lady Steyning burst into tears and rushed from the room: probably, as Io hazarded, "That blessed brother of mine has been bothering her again: he's constantly upsetting her."

I think that if I were Io I should take a firmer hand with a brother than she does. For a younger child he enjoys too many privileges—and naturally abuses them. Lady Steyning (whom he greatly shocked one night at the Opera by shouting out to Edouard de Reszke, during his greatest scene in Faust, "Dy'e mind singing a bit slower, old man; my French is a bit rusty and I'm blowed if I can follow you!") thinks, for instance, that by encouraging him to go to all the best theatres and recitals, his better nature may eventually be appealed to and his baser propensities subdued. To this end she has given him carte blanche to ring up on the telephone her box-office agents in Bond Street, and to have put down to her account whatever seats he needs. He may be slowly assimilating music—and Io says she will back him to make more noise at a music-hall bar than Handel and Mozart and Rossini rolled together—but it is scarcely in accordance with old-fashioned views of propriety that a firm of high-standing in the musical world should have to render such a bill as the following to—

The Right Honourable the Countess pf Steyning.

In account with —— and ——

157A Old Bond Street, W.

To

Feb. 10th. 1 Stage Box. Red Barn Varieties, Kilburn (Grand "Corder" Night) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £2 2 0

" 11th. 10 Resvd. Fauteuils. Peckham Parthenon (Testimonial to "Pills," head waiter) . . . . . 3 15 0

" 12th. 4 Dress Circles. Tabnab's Tottenham Empire (First night of "Toffy's Trotter, or Tannhauser in Ten Minutes") . . . . . . . . . . . 0 8 0

Feb. 13th. 2 Sofa Stalls. Poplar Pavilion (Wrestling Matinee, Acton Jim versus Gunnersbury Joe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 15 0

" 14th. Grande Loge. Bow Tivoli (Compy. Benft., Widow and Childn. of Fireman Gaspipe) . . 3 3 0

" 15th. 2 Standing Rooms. Club Row Parthenon, Brick Lane, E. ("Pearly" King's Select Dog Fight) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0 0 ———— £14 3 0

And it is made all the more mortifying by the unctuous leer of the shopman in Bond Street, who, when poor Lady Steyning (not having perused the account) calls in to change a book or get a new piece of music, remarks:

"Might we ask yer leddyship to favour us with yer leddyship's orders for theatre tickets a little earlier, if possible? We very nearly missed the four dress circ's for 'Toffy's Trotter' last Wen's'dy through Tabnab's Empire not bein' on the telephone."

Pray what do you think that preposterous girl, Euphemia Hulcot, has just done? Being still under the impression that the "rich military blood of Uncle Joseph" flows in her veins, she has procured an appointment as a field-nurse in this Russo-Japanese unpleasantness, positively! In truth, Uncle Joseph's military record was so conspicuously unbloody that, like Dod Grile's hero, his friends sought for him the Humane Society's leather medal for saving life; nor did he lose his leg at Inkerman, but in the Marylebone Road while spending the evening at the house of a man who was not at home himself, though his wife was. Uncle's involuntary host came home quite unexpectedly, however, and, thinking the place seemed too crowded, picked up the blunderbuss with which his ancestor fought (on both sides, by the way) at Naseby, and put about twelve ounces of buckshot, some old garden nails, and various other marine stores into Uncle Joseph's left leg just as Uncle Joseph was doing Follow-the-man-from-Cook's out of the window—"a Joseph never was a stayer!" as Mrs Potiphar remarked when she cast the coat-tail into the rag-bag. Six of the smartest surgeons in all England received Euphemia's kinsman at St Mary's Hospital, and, an hour later, when he recovered consciousness, they told him not to worry over his lost limb, but to consider it as a contribution to his mashing record.

To her fugitive knowledge of surgery, gathered from the four corners of Hahnemann Undone, or How I Spiked Homeopathy's Battery, she has added a course of campaign training, chiefly consisting of sleeping on a seaweed palliasse out in the bicycle shed, and now she is literally bursting to ring the bell on the Red Cross League. Nothing but the Rembrandtesque hue of her tresses secured her the official permit to join the fighting line. Said the extremely exalted Jap person who gave it, "Every time I look at that ginger nut of yours, puss, I think of a little bit of stuff that I left behind in Nagasaki, and for her sweet sake alone I will slip you the trysting place of the 10th Osaka Mounted Assassins. Hand this to their Colonel"—here he presented her with a Chinatown washing bill—"and he will give you the put-and-call of the field coffee-stall, such as it is. Fare you well!"

Please the pigs and she's not pinched, Euphemia will leave Western barbarians and the Albert Docks on Wednesday next, wearing a loose shirtette of wax-red pongee girded to the ear-lobe with whalebone, and confined at the waist by a gold and matrix buckle. A plain gold necklet with topaz collets and a lucky pig charm, Harris tweed knickerbockers held in place by orange silk galluses, and pegamoid putties with hand-painted chrysanthemums, will complete the toilette. She will carry a somewhat darker blouse for evening wear, and cricket shoes, in the full expectation of having to stand in some slippery places before she gets back; also a silver whist-register and marking pencil, a "Little Wonder" printing-press for marking her linen, combination purse and card-case, glove-fastener, and a small wrist-bag containing loose change for 'bus fares, etc. Thus equipped she will travel with every confidence, and is not a bit afraid of falling in with Cossacks since she is quite an adept at climbing a telegraph pole. As her aged Uncle Joseph says, she will be more in touch with life than he was at eighteen, when he swarmed up the lightning rod at the Girls' High School and then found the window fastened.

On Tuesday evening, Féo having promptly gone out to play Bridge, on being told by our housekeeper that the cellar needed re-coaling—and as it is only when she revokes that she wins, her winning is never in doubt—I put into practice the theory of that one of the saints who said that, if people only knew it, there were bushels of fun to be got out of being good, by "observing" Lent at the delightful Shrove Tuesday Ball at Covent Garden; and the only living being that knows how I returned at daybreak on Ash Wednesday is the obliging market porter who drove my car home, my chauffeur having been laid out during a misunderstanding with the coachman of the brougham immediately in his rear concerning the smell of his escaping petrol. Our chauffeur, I have heard Mr Contango say, entertains the idea that he can "go a bit with his fly-dusters," in which case the man from the brougham must have been a veritable specialist, for our white-mackintoshed servitor went out like an egg-shell caught in a whirlwind. Even when the police recovered all that was left of him, there was no place to lay it out, so many dancing couples from the country having turned up quite unexpectedly, that the limited accommodation of the Bijou Temperance Hotel was dreadfully over-taxed—indeed, the last Earl and Countess to arrive, yawning like craters, had, I am told, to put up with the boot cupboard on the lower landing.

This particular Ball was promoted, I imagine, in a purely devotional spirit, Messrs Rendle and Forsyth believing, with some accuracy, that men fast more willingly and spontaneously after an all-night tag; though it differs, I am also informed, from the dramatic annuals of other days in that the gentlemen who come chiefly to fight are never allowed to get in the way of the dancers. Save that, in the grand-circle, Lord Staffa of Iona (who is said to be so deeply interested in the dramatic career of Miss Elfie Delorme, of Daly's, and who was giving supper to a small party) dealt out a black eye to the Viscount Tynwald, one of his guests, for facetiously passing the Chateau Lafitte to a lady who had only asked for the vinegar; and that, in the corridor, two gentlemen from the Stock Exchange had a lightning mix-up on one remarking on being introduced to the other's lady, that formalities were a bit superfluous seeing that he had been fairly rancid on the bird himself some seven years ago; one might have been in almost any Belgravian drawing-room.

Oh yes! there was one other gentleman who drew a Jonah ticket. For the moment I forget his name, but it was in all the papers some few months ago, when he staggered humanity by marrying his mother's maid instead of strangling her; and on Tuesday night he suddenly recognised her, though dominoed and masked, by the exceptional colour of her silk hose when she fell down during the Lancers. Of course, she was under the escort of her husband's oldest and dearest college chum (just as, in lower circles and the popular ballad, it is always that fun-loving economist "the lodger"); and, in order to plaster the walls of their private box on the second tier with the brains of the guilty pair, the wretched youth borrowed a hatchet from a fireman and ascended the stairs. He hammered on the box door; but, even as it flew open, his courage failed him, and murmuring, "No, no, I still love her too much to kill her," would have retired, axe and all, but for the numerous cohort of disappointed dancers that had followed for the express purpose of seeing that he did not do so. No sooner therefore did the guilty woman, grasping the situation, ask the crowd what it meant by this intrusion, since the cavalier at her side was the kindest friend she knew, and a real good old thing while he lasted, than an athletic young stranger who had been handling iron bridges on the Upper Nile, stepped out and gave hubby one on the submaxillary gland and two on the bugle before he could exclaim, "Ooch!" and they took him away, I am told, on a hooded stretcher.

As to the dresses, dear, many of them were ravishing enough to have restored a madman to his senses! One of the most daring was, perhaps, "Appendicitis," worn by a shapely blonde girl attired in a mere ham-frill of aseptic nun's-veiling, caught up at the side by a scalpel and a bistoury, crossed; completeness being secured by a large grape-seed carried between the fair wearer's languourous red lips. She was awarded by acclamation a huge kettle, and was told to take it home and treasure it as it would be her last whisper in that show. Many men turned round to look a second time at "Skip the Gutter," an ordinary champagne muslin walking-dress, the skirt of which was carried knee high to display cochineal silk socks and opera sandals. I wish I had been able to ascertain the name of the builder of this striking creation, but before I could get through the crowd, the fair wearer had disappeared—slipped out to see if the weather seemed likely to clear up, the policeman at the door said. A beautiful St John's Wood widow, who since her gallant young husband's death at the front, has gone every night to some function or other, being too nervous to sleep alone and having not a friend on earth except the man who happens to be with her, looked perfectly distracting in whipped cream crêpe de chine, with pink Banksia roses and raspberry underpinning—an exceedingly rococo combination.

Much more I might have had to tell you had I not been most effectually held up on the staircase by the Earl of Thirstington, who had temporarily renounced everything but whisky-and-seltzer, and who, not penetrating my disguise, would certainly have hugged me where I stood had I not addressed him sternly by his family title and threatened him with all sorts of dire penalties if he did not permit me instantly to pass. Steadied somewhat by the sound of his own name, he implored me to unmask, but finding me inflexible, he assured me that since mating unhappily in order to please his people, about two years ago, he had continually prayed that Death might overtake him, in which earnest petition his inapposite spouse had frequently joined. He had now happened to hear by the merest accident that divorces were practically free in a place called Oklahoma, and if I would only accompany him to some lonely island where we could live Crusoe fashion until he got his decree and Southern Pacific's went above 63 again, he would be a white man and make me his Countess! Only think of it, Patricia! And it was only in October last that we all went down to his private chapel at Drouth Park to the unveiling of the stained glass window which he erected to the memory of his wife who, in the previous August, died of grief at realising that he did not kiss her as ardently as formerly!

It was a very realistic bit of acting that I put in then, Kid! Giving him my left glove, and permitting him to kiss the tips of my fingers only, I told him he might inscribe his tablets with the name of "Elsie" and ring up 55793, Holborn, some time when he had a lighter load on. Fitly humbled by this admonition, he replied that in about ten hours he should ask me to join him at lunch at the Imperial, and if from any cause I could not or would not turn up, I should be performing a distinct service to his family by calling at Vine Street, and requesting the police to have the fountain basins in Trafalgar Square dragged.

But, like Cinderella, I must do a timely duck; besides, February is all too short for long letters.

Thine, VIOLA.