Mrs Albert Grundy—Observations in Philistia

Harold Frederic

Mrs Albert Grundy—Observations in Philistia

Presenting in Outline the Comfortable and Well-Regulated Paradox over which She Presides, and showing its Mental Elevation

I suppose about the name there is no doubt. For sixty years we have followed that gifted gadabout and gossip, Heine, and called it Philistia. And yet, when one thinks of it, there may have been a mistake after all. Artemus Ward used to say that he had been able, with effort, to comprehend how it was possible to measure the distance between the stars, and even the dimensions and candle-power, so to speak, of those heavenly bodies; what beat him was how astronomers had ever found out their names. So I find myself wondering whether Philistia really is the right name for the land where She must be obeyed.

If so, it is only a little more the region of mysterious paradox and tricksy metamorphosis. We think of it always and from all time as given over to Her rule. We feel in our bones that there was a troglodyte Mrs Grundy; we imagine to ourselves a British matron contemporary with the cave bear and the woolly elephant But her very antiquity only makes it more puzzling.

There is an old gentleman who always tries to prove to me that the French are really Germans, that the Germans are all Slavs, and that the Russians are strictly Tartars: that is to say, that in keeping-count of the early races as they swarmed Westward we somehow skipped one, and have been wrong ever since. There must be some such explanation of how the domain which She sways came to be called Philistia.

I say this, because the old Philistia was tremendously masculine. It was the Jews who struck the feminine note. They used to swagger no end when they won a victory, and utilise it to the utmost limit of merciless savagery; but when it came their turn to be thrashed they filled the very heavens with complaining clamour. We got no hint that the Philistines ever failed to take their medicine like men.

Consider those splendid later Philistines, the Norsemen. In all their martial literature there is no suggestion of a whine. They loved fighting for its own sake; next to braining their foes, they admired being themselves hewn into sections. They never blamed their gods when they had the worst of it. They never insisted that they were always right and their enemies invariably wrong. They cared nothing about all that. They demanded only fun. It was their victims, the Frankish and Irish monks, who shed women’s tears and besought Providence to play favourites.

And here is the paradox. The children of these Berserker loins are become the minions of Mrs Grundy. By some magic she has enshrined Respectability in their temples. In one division of her empire she makes Mr Helmer drink tea; in another she sets everybody reading the Buchholz Family; in her chosen island home her husband on the sunniest Sundays carries an umbrella instead of a walking-stick. Fancy the wild delirium of delight with which the old Philistines would have raided her homestead, chopping down her Robert Elsmeres, impaling her Horsleys, and making the skies lurid with the flames of her semi-detached villa! Yet we call her place Philistia!

I know the villa very well. It is quite near to the South Kensington Museum. The title “Fernbank” is painted on the gate-posts. How well-ordered and comfortable does life beyond those posts remain! Here are no headaches in the morning. Here white-capped domestics move with neat alertness along the avenues of gentle routine, looking neither to the policeman on the right nor fiery-jacketed Thomas Atkins on the left. Here my friend Mr Albert Grundy invariably comes home by the Underground to dinner. Here his three daughters – girls of a type with a diminishing upper lip, with sharper chins and greater length of limb than of old – lead deeply washed existences, playing at tennis, smiling in flushed silence at visitors, feeding contentedly upon Mudie’s stores, the while their mamma spreads the matrimonial net about the piano or makes tours of inspection among her outlying mantraps on the lawn. Here simpers the innocuous curate; here Uncle Dudley, who has seen life in Australia and the Far West, watches the bulbs and prunes the roses, and, I should think, yawns often to himself; here Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s card diffuses refinement from the summit of the card-basket in the hall.

To this happy home there came but last week – or was it the week before – a parcel of books. There were four complete novels in twelve volumes – fruits of that thoughtful arrangement by which the fair reader in Philistia is given three distinct opportunities to decide whether she will read the story through or not. Mrs Albert is a busy woman, burdened with manifold responsibilities to Church and State, to organised charities, to popularised music, to art-work guilds and the Amalgamated Association of Clear Starchers, not to mention a weather-eye kept at all times upon all unmarried males: but she still finds time to open all these packets of new books herself. On this occasion she gave to her eldest, Ermyntrude, the first volume of a novel by Mrs – . It doesn’t matter what fell to the share of the younger Amy and Floribel. For herself she reserved the three volumes of the latest work of Mr – .

She tells me now that words simply can not express her thankfulness for having done so. It seems the selection was not entirely accidental. She was attracted, she admits, by the charmingly dainty binding of the volumes, but she was also moved by an instinct, half maternal prescience, half literary recollection. She thought she remembered having seen the name of this man-writer before. Where? It came to her like a flash, she says. Only a while ago he had a hook called A Bunch of Patrician Ladies or something of that sort, which she almost made up her mind not to let the girls read at all, but at last, with some misgivings, permitted them to skim hastily, because though the morals were rocky – perhaps that wasn’t her word – the society was very good. But this new book of his had not even that saving feature. Respectable people were only incidentally mentioned in it. Really it was quite too low. The chief figure was a farm-girl who for the most part skimmed milk or cut swedes in a field, and at other times behaved in a manner positively unmentionable. Mrs Albert told me she had locked the volumes up, after only partially perusing them. I might be sure her daughters never laid eyes on them. They had gone back to the library, with a note expressing surprise that such immoral books should be sent into any Christian family. What made the matter worse, she went on, was that Ermyntrude read in some paper, at a friend’s house, that this man, whoever he may be, was the greatest of English novelists, and that this particular book of his was a tragic work of the noblest and loftiest order, which dignified the language. She was sure she didn’t know what England was coming to, when reporters were allowed to put things like that in the papers. Fortunately she only took in The Daily Tarradiddle, which one could always rely upon for sound views, and which gave this unspeakable book precisely the contemptuous little notice it deserved.

It was a relief, however – and here the good matron visibly brightened up – to think that really wholesome and improving novels were still produced. There was that novel by Mrs – . Had I read it? Oh,

I must lose no time! Perhaps it was not altogether so enchanting as that first immortal work of hers, which had almost, one might say, founded a new religion. True, one of the girls in it worked altar-cloths for a church, and occasionally the other characters broke out into religious conversation; but there were no clergymen to speak of, and the charm of the other’s ecclesiastical mysticism was lacking. “To be frank, the first and last volumes were just a bit slow. But oh! the lovely second volume! A young Englishman and his sister go to Paris. They stumble right at the start into the most delightful, picturesque, artistic set. Think of it: Henri Régnault is personally introduced, and delivers himself of extended remarks – ”

“I met an old friend of Regnault’s at the Club the other day,” I interposed, “who complained bitterly of that. He said it was insufferable impudence to bring him in at all, and still worse to make him talk such blather as is put into his mouth.”

Mrs Albert sniffed at this Club friend and went on. That Paris part of the book seemed to her to just palpitate with life. It was Paris to the very letter – gay, intellectual, sparkling, and oh! so free! The young Englishman at once set up a romantic establishment in the heart of Fontainebleau Forest with a French painter-girl. His sister was almost as promptly debauched by an elderly French sculptor. But you never lost sight of the fact that the author was teaching a valuable moral lesson by all this. Indeed, that whole part of the book was called “Storm and Stress.” And all the while you saw, too, how innately superior the national character of the young Englishman was to that of the French people about him. One knew that in good time he would have a moral awakening, and return to England, marry, settle down, and make money in his business. Side by side with this you saw the entire hopelessness of any spiritual regeneration in the French painter-girl or any of her artistic set. And this was shown with such delicate art – it was so perfect a picture of the moral contrast between the two nations – that the girls saw it at once.

“Then the girls,” I put in – “that is to say, you didn’t lock this book up?”

Mrs Albert lifted her eyebrows at me.

“How do you mean?” she asked. “Do you know who the author is? The idea! Why, the papers print whole columns about anything she writes. Every day you may see paragraphs about the mere prospect of books she hasn’t even begun yet. I suppose such blatant publicity must be very distressing to her, but the public simply insist upon it. The Daily Tarradiddle devoted an entire leader to this particular book. I assure you, all my friends are talking of nothing else – many of them people, too, whom you would not suspect of any literary tastes whatever, and who never read novels as a rule. But they don’t regard this as a novel. They think of it – I quote Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s exact words – as an exposition of those Christian principles which make our England what it is.”

Setting forth the Untoward Circumstances under which the Right Tale was Unfolded in the Wrong Company

Much has been written about that variety of “cab-wit” which occurs to a man on his way home from dinner: the brilliant sallies he might have made, the smart retorts which would so bravely have reversed the balance of laughter had they only come in time. We are less frank about the other sort. No one dwells in type upon the manner in which we marshal our old jokes and arrange our epigrams as we drive along to the house of feasting.

No doubt the practice of getting up table-talk is going out. The three-bottle men took it to the grave with them, along with the snuff-box, and the toupee, and the feather-bed, and other amenities of the Regency. There never was but one diner-out in the London of my knowledge who was at pains to prepare his conversations, each for its special occasion and audience, and he, poor man, broke down under the strain and disappeared from view. The others are too lazy, too indifferent, too cocksure of themselves, to go to all this bother. The old courtly sense of responsibility to the host is perished from among them. But none the less, the least dutiful and diligent of all their number does ask himself questions as the whirling rubber tyres bear him onward, and the cab-mirror shows him the face of a man to whom people ought to listen.

The question I asked myself, as I drove past the flaring shop windows of Old Brompton Road the other evening, was whether the Grundys would probably like my story of Nate Salsbury and the Citizen of South Bend, Indiana. A good deal depended upon the decision. It was a story which had greatly solidified my position in other hospitable quarters; it could be brought in apropos of almost anything, or for that matter of quite nothing at all; it had never been printed, so far as I know, in any of those American comic papers which supply alike the dining-rooms of Mayfair and the editorial offices of Fleet Street with such humour as they come into possession of; and I enjoyed telling it. On the other hand, the Grundys were old friends of mine, who would never suspect that they had missed anything if I preserved silence on the subject of South Bend, and who would go on asking me to dinner whether I told new tales or not; moreover, their attitude towards fresh jokes was always a precarious quantity, and I had an uneasy feeling that if I told my story to them and it failed to come off, so to speak, I should never have the same confidence in it again.

When I had entered the drawing-room of Fernbank, shaken hands with Mrs Albert Grundy and Ermyntrude, and stolen a little glance about the circle as I walked over to the fireplace, it had become clear that the story was not to be told. Beside the half-dozen of the family, including the curate, there was a tall young man with a very high collar, shoulders that sloped down like a Rhine-wine bottle, and a stern expression of countenance. Uncle Dudley whispered to me, as we held our hands over the asbestos, that he was a literary party, and the son of old Sir Watkyn Hump, who was a director in one of Albert’s companies. The other guests were a stout and motherly lady in a cap and a purplish smile, and a darkling young woman with a black velvet riband around her thin neck, and a look of wearied indifference upon her face. This effect of utter boredom did not visibly diminish upon my being presented to Miss Wallaby.

I have an extremely well-turned little brace of sentences with which to convey the intelligence to a young lady that the honour of taking her down to dinner has fallen upon me – sentences which combine professions of admiring pleasure with just a grateful dash of respectful playfulness; they brought no new light into Miss Wallaby’s somewhat scornful pince-nez. Decidedly I would not tell my South Bend story that night!

But all the same I did. What led up to it I hardly know. It was at the ptarmigan stage, I remember – or was it a capercailzie? – and young Mr Hump had commented upon the great joy of living in England, where one could enjoy delicious game all the year round, instead of in a country like America, where the inhabitants notoriously had nothing but fried salt pork to eat for many months at a time. Perhaps it was not worth while, but I ventured the correcting remark that there was no season of the year when one couldn’t have eighteen edible varieties of wild birds in America for every one that England has ever heard of. Mr Hump preened his chin about on the summit of his collar and smiled with superior incredulity. The others looked grave. Mrs Grundy whispered to me warningly, over her left shoulder, that Mr Hump had made America his special subject, and wrote most vigorous and comminatory articles about it almost every week. I was painfully conscious that Miss Wallaby’s cold right shoulder had been still further withdrawn from me.

Well, it was at this grotesquely inauspicious moment that I told my story. It is easy enough now to see that it was sheer folly, madness if you like, to do so. I was only too bitterly conscious of that when I reviewed the events of the evening in my homeward cab. It was apropos of nothing under the wide sky. But at the moment, I suppose, I hoped that it would relieve the situation. In one sense it did.

Baldly summarised, this is the tale. Years ago the admirable Nate Salsbury was on a “one-night-stand” tour with his bright little company of comedians through the least urban districts of Indiana, and came upon South Bend, which is an important centre of the wagon-making industry, but is not precisely a focussing point of dramatic traditions and culture.

In the vestibule of the small theatre that evening there paced up and down a tall, middle-aged, weasel-backed citizen, his hands plunged deep in his pockets, doubt and irresolution written all over his face. As others paid their money and passed in he would watch them with obvious longing; then he would go and study once more the attractive coloured bill of the Company, with its bevy of pretty girls in skirts just short enough to disclose most enticing little ankles; then once more he would resume his perplexed walk to and fro. At last he made up his mind, and approached Salsbury with diffidence. “Mister,” he said, “air you the boss of this show?” “What can I do for you?” asked Nate. “Well – no offence meant – but – can I – that is to say – will it be all right to bring a lady to your show?” “That, sir, depends!” responded the manager firmly. “Well,” the citizen went on, “what I was gittin’ at is this – can I be perfectly safe in bringin’ my wife here?”

“Sir,” said Salsbury with dignity, and an eye trained to abstain from twinkling, “it is no portion of my business to inquire whether she is your wife or not, but if she comes in here she’s got to behave herself!”

A solitary note of laughter fell upon the air when I had told this story, and on the instant Uncle Dudley, perceiving that he had made a mistake, dropped his napkin, and came up from fishing for it on the floor red-faced and dumb. All else was deadly silence.

“I – I suppose they really weren’t married at all?” said the curate, after a chilling pause.

“Marriage, I regret to say, means next to nothing in most parts of America,” remarked Mr Hump, judicially. “The most sacred ties are there habitually made the subject of ribald jests. I have been assured by a person who spent nearly three weeks in the United States some years since that it is an extremely rare experience to meet an adult American who has not been divorced at least once. This fact made a vivid impression on my mind at the time, and I – ahem! – have written frequently upon it since.”

“I suppose the trouble arises from their all living in hotels – having no home life whatever,” said Mrs Albert, with a kindly air of coming to my rescue.

“Who on earth told you that?” I began, but was cut short.

“I confess,” broke in Miss Wallaby, with frosty distinctness of tone and enunciation, “that the assumption upon which the incident just related is based – the assumption that the la – woman referred to would probably misconduct herself in a place of public resort – seems to me startlingly characteristic of the country of which it is narrated. It has been truly said that the most valuable test of a country’s actual, as distinct from its assumed, worth, is the respect it pays to its women. Both at Cheltenham and at Newnham the idea is steadily inculcated – I might say insisted upon as of paramount importance – that the nation’s real civilisation rests upon the measure, not alone of chivalrous deference, but of esteem and confidence which my sex, by its devotion to duty, and its intellectual sympathy with broad aims and lofty purposes, is able to inspire and command.”

“But I assure you,” I protested feebly, “the story I told was a joke.”

“There are some subjects,” interposed Lady Willoughby Wallaby, the fixed smile lighting up with an angry, winter-sunset glow her inflamed countenance – “there are some subjects on which it is best not to joke.” As she spoke she wagged a mitted thumb at her hostess, and on the instant the ladies rose. Mr Hump hastened round to hold the door open as they filed out, their heads high in air, their skirts rustling indignantly over the threshold. Then he followed them, closing the door with decision behind him.

“Gad, Albert,” said Uncle Dudley, reaching over for the port, “I don’t wonder that the pick of our young fellows go in for marrying American girls.”

“Pass it along!” remarked the father of Mrs Albert’s three daughters, in a voice of confirmed dejection.

Annotating Sundry Points of Contact found to exist between the Lady and Contemporary Art

Scene. —Just inside the door of a studio.

Time. —Last Sunday in March, 5 p.m.

1st Citizeness. O, thank you so much!

2nd do. So good of you to come!

1st do. I so dote upon art!

2nd do. So kind of you to say so!

1st do. Thank you so much for asking us!

2nd do. Delighted, I’m sure! Thank you for coming!

1st Citizeness. Not at all! Thank you for – for thanking me for – Well —good-bye. (Exit – with family group.)

Husband of 2nd Citizeness (with gloom). And who might those thankful bounders be?

2nd Citizeness (wearily). O, don’t ask me! I don’t know! From Addison Road way, I should think.

1st Citizeness (outside). Well! If that thing gets into the Academy!

Family Group. Did you notice the ridiculous way her hair was done? Did you ever taste such tea in your life? How yellow Mrs. General Wragg is getting to look in the daylight. Yes – there’s our four-wheeler. (Exeunt omnes.)

The above is not intended for presentation upon any stage – not even that of the Independent Theatre. It has been cast into the dramatic mould merely for convenience’ sake. It embodies what I chiefly remember about Picture Sunday.

It has come to be my annual duty – a peculiarly hardy, not to say temerarious, annual – to convoy Mrs Albert Grundy and her party about sections of Chelsea and Brompton on the earlier of the two Show Sabbaths. I drifted into this function through having once shared an attic with a young painter, whose colleagues used to come to borrow florins of him whenever one of his pictures disappeared from any shop window, and so incidentally formed my acquaintance. My claim nowadays upon their recollection is really very slight. I just know them well enough to manage the last Sunday in March: even that might be awkward if they were not such good-natured fellows.

But it would be difficult to persuade Mrs Albert of this. That good lady is wont, when the playfully benignant mood is upon her, to describe me as her connecting link with Bohemia. She probably would be puzzled to explain her meaning; I certainly should. But if she were provided with affidavits setting forth the whole truth – viz., that my entire income is derived from an inherited part-interest in an artificial-ice machine; that there are two clergymen on the committee of my only club; that I am free from debt; and that I play duets on the piano with my sister – still would she cling to the belief that I am a young man with an extremely gay, rakish side, who could make thrilling revelations of Bohemia if I would. Of course, I am never questioned on the subject; but I can see that it is a point upon which the faith of Fernbank is firmly grounded. Often Mrs Albert’s conversation cuts figure-eights on very thin ice when we are alone, as if just to show me that she knows. More than once I have discovered Ermyntrude looking furtively at me, as the wistful shepherd-boy on the plains of Dura might have gazed at the distant haze overhanging bold, unspeakable Babylon. I rarely visit the house but Uncle Dudley winks at me. However, nothing is ever asked me about the dreadful things with which they suppose me to be upon intimate terms.

It seemed for a long time, on Sunday, as if an easy escape had been arranged for me by Providence. At two o’clock, the hour appointed for our crusade, a heavy fog overhung everything. Looking out from the drawing-room windows, only the very nearest of the neatly trimmed firs on the lawn were to be distinguished. The street beyond was utter blackness.

At three o’clock the ladies took off their bonnets. It was really too bad. Uncle Dudley, strolling in from his nap in the library, suggested that with a lantern we might visit some of the nearer studios: “not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.” Mrs Albert turned a look of tearful vexation upon him, before which he fled.

“There’s this consolation,” she remarked presently, holding me with an unwavering eye: “if we are to be defrauded out of our expedition to-day, that will furnish all the more reason why you should take us next Sunday —the Sunday. You have often talked of having us see the Academicians at home – but we’ve never been.”