An American Girl in London

One thing that surprised me during that fortnight of preparation was the remarkable degree of interest shown in our undertaking by all our friends. I should have thought it an old story in London, but it seemed just as absorbing a topic to the ladies who came to see Lady Torquilin on her 'day,' and who had lived all their lives in England, as it was to me. They were politely curious upon every detail; they took another cup of tea, and said it was really an ordeal; they seemed to take a sympathetic pleasure in being, as it were, in the swirl of the tide that was carrying us forward to the Royal presence. If the ladies had been presented themselves they gave us graphic and varying accounts of the occasion, to which we listened with charmed interest; if not, they brought forth stories, if anything more thrilling, of what had happened to other people they knew or had heard of – the lady whose diamond necklace broke as she bent; the lady who forgot to take the silver paper out of her train at home, and left it in the arms of the Gentlemen of the Court as she sailed forward; the lady who was attacked by violent hysteria just as she passed the Duke of Edinburgh. Miss Corke's advice – though we relied upon nobody else – was supplemented fifty times; and one lady left us at half-past six in the afternoon, almost in tears, because she had failed to persuade me to take a few lessons, at a guinea a lesson, from a French lady who made a specialty of debutante presentations. I think I should have taken them, the occasion found me with so little self-reliance, if it had not been for Lady Torquilin. But Lady Torquilin said No, certainly not, it was a silly waste of money, and she could show me everything that was necessary for all practical purposes as well as Madame Anybody. So several mornings we had little rehearsals, Lady Torquilin and I, after breakfast, in my room, by which I profited much. We did it very simply, with a towel and whatever flowers were left over from dinner the night before. I would pin the towel to my dress behind and hold the flowers, and advance from the other end of the room to Lady Torquilin, who represented Her Majesty, and gave me her hand to kiss. I found the curtsey difficult at first, especially the getting up part of it, and Lady Torquilin was obliged to give me a great deal of practice.

'Remember one thing about the Queen's hand absolutely, child,' said she. 'You're not, under any circumstances whatever, to help yourself up by it!' And then I would be the Queen, and Lady Torquilin, just to get into the way of it again, would pin on the towel and carry the roses, and curtsey to me.

XXVIII

I KNOW I shall enjoy writing this chapter, I enjoyed its prospective contents so much. To be perfectly candid, I liked going to Court better than any other thing I did in England, not excepting Madame Tussaud's. or the Beefeaters at the Tower, or even 'Our Flat' at the Strand. It did a great deal to reconcile me, practically, with monarchical institutions, although, chiefly on poppa's account, I should like it to be understood that my democratic theories are still quite unshaken in every respect.

It seems to me, looking back upon it, that we began to go very early in the morning. I remember a vision of long white boxes piled up at the end of the room through the grey of dawn, and a very short nap afterwards, before the maid came knocking with Lady Torquilin's inquiries as to how I had slept, and did I remember that the hairdresser was coming at nine sharp? It was a gentle knock, but it seemed to bristle with portent as I heard it, and brought with it the swift realisation that this was Friday at last – the Friday on which I should see Queen Victoria. And yet, of course, to be quite candid, that was only half the excitement the knock brought; the other half was that Queen Victoria should see me, for an instant and as an individual. There was a very gratifying flutter in that.

The hairdresser was prompt. She came just as Charlotte was going out with the tray, Lady Torquilin having decreed that we should take our morning meal in retirement. She was a kind, pleasant, loquacious hairdresser.

'I'm glad to see you've been able to take a good breakfast, miss,' she said, as she puffed and curled me. 'That's 'alf the battle!' She was sorry that she had to come to us so early, 'but not until two o'clock, miss, do I expect to be for one moment off my feet, what with Ontry ladys who don't wish to be done till they're just getting into their carriages – though for that I don't blame them, miss, and nobody could. I'm afraid you'll find these lappits very wearing on the nerves before the day is out. But I'll just pin them up so, miss – and of course you must do as best pleases you, but my advice would be, don't let them down for anybody, miss, till you start.' But I was not sorry the hairdresser came so early. It would have been much more wearing on the nerves to have waited for her.

Perhaps you will find it difficult to understand the interest with which I watched my own development into a lady dressed for Court. Even the most familiar details of costume seemed to acquire a new meaning and importance, while those of special relevance had the charm that might arise from the mingling of a very august occasion with a fancy-dress ball. When I was quite ready, it seemed to me that I was a different person, very pretty, very tall, with a tendency to look backward over my shoulder, wearing, as well as a beautiful sweeping gown, a lofty and complete set of monarchical prejudices, which I thought becoming in masquerade. I was too much fascinated with my outward self. I could have wished, for an instant, that the Declaration of Independence was hanging about somewhere framed.

Then the advent of the big square wooden box from the florist's, and the gracious wonder of white roses and grasses inside, with little buds dropping and caught in its trailing ribbons – there is a great deal of the essence of a Royal function in a Drawing-Room bouquet. And then Lady Torquilin, with a new graciousness and dignity, quite a long way off if I had not been conscious of sharing her state for the time. Lady Torquilin's appearance gave me more ideas about my own than the pier-glass did. 'Dear me!' I thought, with a certain rapture, 'do I really look anything like that?'

We went down in the lift one at a time, with Charlotte as train-bearer, and the other maids furtively admiring from the end of the hall. Almost everybody in Cadogan Mansions seemed to be going out at about the same time, and a small crowd had gathered on each side of the strip of carpet that led from the door to the carriage. It was Lady Mafferton's carriage, lent for the occasion, and the footman and coachman were as impressive as powder and buff and brass buttons would make them. In addition, they wore remarkable floral designs about the size and shape of a cabbage-leaf upon their breasts immediately under their chins. That was another thing that could not have been done with dignity in America.

The weather looked threatening as we drove off, precisely at twelve o'clock, and presently it began to rain with great industry and determination. The drops came streaming down outside the carriage windows; fewer people as we passed leaned out of hansoms to look at us. Inside the Mafferton carriage we were absurdly secure from the weather; we surveyed our trains, piled up on the opposite seat, with complacency; we took no thought even for the curl of our feathers. We counted, as we drove past them to take our place, and there were forty carriages in line ahead of us. Then we stopped behind the last, in the middle of a wide road, heavily bordered under the trees with damp people and dripping umbrellas – there for the spectacle. All kinds of people and all kinds of umbrellas, I noticed with interest – ladies and gentlemen, and little seamstresses, and loafers and ragamuffins, and apple-women, and a large proportion of your respectable lower middle-class. We sat in state amongst them in the rain, being observed, and liking it. I heard my roses approved, and the nape of my neck, and Lady Torquilin's diamonds. I also heard it made very unpleasant for an elderly young lady in the carriage in front of ours, whose appearance was not approved by a pair of candid newsboys. The policemen kept the people off, however; they could only approach outside a certain limit, and there they stood, or walked up and down, huddled together in the rain, and complaining of the clouded carriage windows. I think there came to me then, sitting in the carriage in the warmth and pride and fragrance and luxuriance of it all, one supreme moment of experience, when I bent my head over my roses and looked out into the rain – one throb of exulting pleasure that seemed to hold the whole meaning of the thing I was doing, and to make its covetable nature plain. I find my thoughts centre, looking back, upon that one moment.

It was three o'clock before we moved again. In the hours that came between we had nothing to do but smell our flowers, discuss the people who drove past to take places farther down the line, congratulate ourselves upon being forty-first, and eat tiny sandwiches done up in tissue paper, with serious regard for the crumbs; yet the time did not seem at all long. Mr. Oddie Pratte, who was to escort us through the palace and home again, made an incident, dashing up in a hansom on his way to the club to dress, but that was all. And once Lady Torquilin had the footman down to tell him and his brother-functionary under the big umbrella to put on their rubber coats. 'Thank you, my lady!' said the footman, and went back to the box; but neither of them took advantage of the permission. They were going to Court too, and knew what was seemly. And the steamy crowd stayed on till the last.

XXIX

PRESENTLY, when we were not in the least expecting it, there came a little sudden jolt that made us look at each other precipitately. Lady Torquilin was quite as nervous as I at this point. 'What has become of Oddie?' she exclaimed, and descried a red coat in a cab rolling up beside us with intense relief. As we passed through the Palace gates the cab disappeared, and chaos came again.

'Naughty boy!' said Lady Torquilin, in bitterness of spirit. 'Why, in the name of fortune, couldn't he have come with us in the carriage? Men have no nerves, my dear, none whatever; and they can't understand our having them!' But at that moment we alighted, in a maze of directions, upon the wide, red-carpeted steps, and whisked as rapidly as possible through great corridors with knots of gentlemen in uniform in them to the cloak-room. 'Hurry, child!' whispered Lady Torquilin, handing our wraps to the white-capped maid. 'Don't let these people get ahead of us, and keep close to me!' – and I observed the same spasmodic haste in everybody else. With our trains over our arms we fled after the others, as rapidly as decorum would permit, through spacious halls and rooms that lapse into a red confusion in my recollection, leaving one of my presentation cards somewhere on the way, and reaching the limit of permitted progress at last with a strong sense of security and comfort. We found it in a large pillared room full of regularly-curving lines of chairs, occupied by the ladies of the forty carriages that were before us. Every head wore its three white feathers and its tulle extension, and the aggregation of plumes and lappets and gentle movements made one in the rear think of a flock of tame pigeons nodding and pecking – it was very 'quaint,' as Lady Torquilin said when I pointed it out. The dresses of these ladies immediately became a source of the liveliest interest to us, as ours were apparently to those who sat near us. In fact, I had never seen such undisguised curiosity of a polite kind before. But then I do not know that I had ever been in the same room with so many jewels, and brocades, and rare orchids, and drooping feathers, and patrician features before, so perhaps this is not surprising. A few gentlemen were standing about the room, holding fans and bouquets, leaning over the backs of the ladies' chairs, and looking rather distraught, in very becoming costumes of black velvet and silk stockings and shoe-buckles, and officers in uniform were scattered through the room, looking as if they felt rather more important than the men in black; as I dare say they did, representing that most glorious and impressive British institution, the Army, while the others were only private gentlemen, their own property, and not connected with her Majesty in any personal way whatever.

'Here you are,' said somebody close behind us. 'How d'ye do, Auntie? How d'ye do, Miss Wick? 'Pon my word, I'm awfully sorry I missed you before; but you're all right, aren't you? The brute of a policeman at the gates wouldn't pass a hansom.' It was Mr. Oddie Pratte, of course, looking particularly handsome in his red-and-plaid uniform, holding his helmet in front of him in the way that people acquire in the Army, and pleased, as usual, with the world at large.

'Then may I ask how you came here, sir?' said Lady Torquilin, making a pretence of severity.

'Private entree!' responded Mr. Pratte, with an assumption of grandeur. 'Fellow drove me up as a matter of course – no apologies! They suspected I was somebody, I guess, coming that way, and I gave the man his exact fare, to deepen the impression. Walked in. Nobody said anything! It's what you call a game o' bluff, Auntie dear!'

'A piece of downright impertinence!' said Lady Torquilin? pleasantly. 'It was your red coat, boy. Now, what do you think of our gowns?'

Mr. Pratte told us what he thought of them with great amiability and candour. I had seen quite enough of him since the day at Aldershot to permit and enjoy his opinion, which even its frequent use of 'chic' and 'rico' did not make in any way irreverent. This young gentleman was a connoisseur in gowns; he understood them very well, and we were both pleased that he liked ours. As we criticised and chaffed and chatted a door opened at the farther end of the room, and all the ladies rose precipitately and swept forward.

It was like a great, shimmering wave, radiant in colour, breaking in a hundred places into the foam of those dimpling feathers and streaming lappets, and it rushed with unanimity to the open door, stopping there, chafing, on this side of a silk rope and a Gentleman of the Court. We hurried on with the wave – Lady Torquilin and Mr. Oddie Pratte and I – and presently we were inextricably massed about half-way from its despairing outer edge, in an encounter of elbows which was only a little less than furious. Everybody gathered her train over her left arm – it made one think of the ladies of Nepaul, who wear theirs in front, it is said – and clung with one hand to her prodigious bouquet, protecting her pendent head-dress with the other. 'For pity's sake, child, take care of your lappets,' exclaimed Lady Torquilin. 'Look at that!' I looked at 'that'; it was a ragged fragment of tulle about a quarter of a yard long, dependent from the graceful head of a young lady immediately in front of us. She did not know of her misfortune, poor thing, but she had a vague and undetermined sense of woe, and she turned to us with speaking eyes. 'I've lost mamma,' she said, unhappily.

'Where is mamma? I must go to mamma.' And she was not such a very young lady either. But Lady Torquilin, in her kindness of heart, said, 'So you shall, my dear, so you shall!' and Mr. Pratte took his aunt's bouquet and mine, and held them, one in each hand, above the heads of the mob of fine-ladyhood, rather enjoying the situation, I think, so that we could crowd together and allow the young lady who wanted her mamma to go and find her. Mr. Oddie Pratte took excellent care of the bouquets, holding them aloft in that manner, and looked so gallantly handsome doing it that other gentlemen immediately followed his example, and turned themselves into flowery candelabra, with great effect upon the brilliancy of the scene.

A sudden movement among the ladies nearest the silken barrier – a sudden concentration of energy that came with the knowledge that there was progress to be made, progress to Royalty! A quick, heaving rush through and beyond into another apartment full of emptiness and marble pillars, and we were once more at a standstill, having conquered a few places – brought to, a masterly inactivity by another silken cord and another Gentleman of the Court, polite but firm. In the room beyond we could see certain figures moving about at their ease, with no crush and no struggle – the ladies and gentlemen of the Private Entrée. With what lofty superiority we invested them! They seemed, for the time, to belong to some other planet, where Royal beings grew and smiled at every street-corner, and to be, on the other side of that silken barrier, an immeasurable distance off. It was a distinct shock to hear an elderly lady beside us, done up mainly in amethysts, recognise a cousin among them. It seemed to be self-evident that she had no right to have a cousin there.

'I'll see you through the barrier,' said Mr. Oddie Pratte, 'and then I'll have to leave you. I'll bolt round the other way, and be waiting for you at the off-door, Auntie. I'd come through, only Her Maj. does hate it so. Not at all nice of her, I call it, but she can't bear the most charming of us about on these occasions. We're not good enough.' A large-boned lady in front – red velvet and cream – with a diminutive major in attendance, turned to him at this, and said with unction, 'I am sure, Edwin, that is not the case. I have it on excellent authority that the Queen is pleased when gentlemen come through. Remember, Edwin, I will not face it alone.'

'I think you will do very well, my dear!' Edwin responded. 'Brace up! 'Pon my word, I don't think I ought to go. I'll join you at – '

'If you desert me, Edwin, I shall die!' said the bony lady, in a strong undertone; and at that moment the crowd broke again. Oddie slipped away, and we went on exultantly two places, for the major had basely and swiftly followed Mr. Pratte, and his timid spouse, in a last clutching expostulation, had fallen hopelessly to the rear.

About twenty of us, this time, were let in at once. The last of the preceding twenty were slowly and singly pacing after one another's trains round two sides of this third big room towards a door at the farther corner. There was a most impressive silence. As we got into file I felt that the supreme moment was at hand, and it was not a comfortable feeling. Lady Torquilin, in front of me, put a question to a gentleman in a uniform she ought to have been afraid of – only that nothing ever terrified Lady Torquilin, which made it less comfortable still. 'Oh, Lord Mafferton,' said she – I hadn't recognised him in my nervousness and his gold lace – 'How many curtseys are there to make?'

'Nine, dear lady,' replied this peer, with evident enjoyment. 'It's the most brilliant Drawing-Room of the season. Every Royalty who could possibly attend is here. Nine, at the least!'

Lady Torquilin's reply utterly terrified me. It was confidential, and delivered in an undertone, but it was full of severe meaning. 'I'm full of rheumatism,' said she, 'and I shan't do it.'

The question as to what Lady Torquilin would do, if not what was required of her, rose vividly before me, and kept me company at every step of that interminable round. 'Am I all right?' she whispered over her shoulder from the other end of that trailing length of pansy-coloured velvet. 'Perfectly,' I said. But there was nobody to tell me that I was all right – I might have been a thing of shreds and patches. Somebody's roses had dropped; I was walking on pink petals. What a pity! And I had forgotten to take off my glove; would it ever come unbuttoned? How deliberately we were nearing that door at the farther end! And how could I possibly have supposed that my heart would beat like this! It was all very well to allow one's self a little excitement in preparation; but when it came to the actual event I reminded myself that I had not had the slightest intention of being nervous. I called all my democratic principles to my assistance – none of them would come. 'Remember, Mamie Wick,' said I to myself, 'you don't believe in queens.' But at that moment I saw three Gentlemen of the Household bending over, and stretching out Lady Torquilin's train into an illimitable expanse. I looked beyond, and there, in the midst of all her dazzling Court, stood Queen Victoria. And Lady Torquilin was bending over her hand! And in another moment it would be – it was my turn!

I felt the touches on my own train, I heard somebody call a name I had a vague familiarity with – 'Miss Mamie Wick.' I was launched at last towards that little black figure of Royalty with the Blue Ribbon crossing her breast and the Koh-i-nor sparkling there! Didn't you believe in queens, Miss Mamie Wick, at that moment? I'm very much afraid you did.

And all that I remember after was going down very unsteadily before her, and just daring the lightest touch of my lips upon the gracious little hand she laid on mine. And then not getting nearly time enough to make all of those nine curtseys to the beautiful sparkling people that stood at the Queen's left hand, before two more Gentlemen of the Court gathered up my draperies from behind my feet and threw them mercifully over my arm for me. And one awful moment when I couldn't quite tell whether I had backed out of all the Royal presences or not, made up my mind that I had, then unmade it, and in agony of spirit turned and backed again!

It was over at last. I had kissed the hand of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and – there's no use in trying to believe anything to the contrary – I was proud of it. Lady Torquilin and I regarded each other in the next room with pale and breathless congratulation, and then turned with one accord to Oddie Pratte.

'On the whole,' said that young gentleman, blandly, 'you did me credit!'

XXX

I AM writing this last chapter in the top berth of a saloon cabin on board the Cunard s.s. 'Etruria.' which left Liverpool June 25, and is now three days out. From which it will be seen that I am going home.

Nothing has happened there, you will be glad to hear, perhaps. Poppa and Momma, and all the dear ones of Mrs. Portheris's Christmas card, are quite in their usual state of health. The elections are not on at present, so there is no family depression in connection with poppa's political future. I am not running away from the English climate either, which had begun, shortly before I left, to be rather agreeable. I have been obliged to leave England on account of a Misunderstanding.

In order that you should quite see that nobody was particularly to blame, I am afraid I shall have to be very explicit, which is in a way disagreeable. But Lady Torquilin said the day I came away that it would have been better if I had been explicit sooner, and I shall certainly never postpone the duty again. So that, although I should much prefer to let my English experiences close happily and gloriously with going to Court, I feel compelled to add here, in the contracted space at my disposal, the true story of how I went to dine with Mr. Charles Mafferton's father and mother and brother and sisters in Hertford Street, Mayfair.

It occurred almost as soon as the family returned from the South of France, where they had been all spring, you remember, from considerations affecting the health of the eldest Miss Mafferton – with whom I had kept up, from time to time, a very pleasant correspondence. One day, about three weeks after the Drawing-Room, when Lady Torquilin and I could scarcely ever rely upon an afternoon at home, we came in to find all the Mafferton cards again in. There was a note, too, in which Mrs. Mafferton begged Lady Torquilin to waive ceremony and bring me to dine with them the following evening. 'You can guess,' said Mrs. Mafferton, 'how anxious we must be to see her.' There was a postscript to the invitation, which said that although Charlie, as we probably knew, was unfortunately out of town for a day or two, Mrs Mafferton hoped he would be back in the course of the evening.

'Well, my dear,' said Lady Torquilin, 'it's easily seen that I can't go, with those Watkins people coming here. But you shall – I'll let you off the Watkinses. It isn't really fair to the Maffertons to keep them waiting any longer. I'll write at once and say so. Of course,' Lady Torquilin went on, 'under ordinary circumstances I shouldn't think of letting you go out to dinner alone, but in this case – there is sure to be only the family, you know – I don't think it matters.'