Personal Pleasures (2 page)

For that matter, only Abroad can provide a great deal else. Meals, for example, in the streets. Trams that blow horns; indeed, traffic horns in general play a sweeter, liltier music than ever they play in Britain. How their gay tune, on two notes, like a cuckoo's song reversed, lifts the heart! Mountains of a height, a jaggedness, a grandeur, that surpasses those of Caledonia, Westmorland and Wales. Terraces climbing up their lower slopes, set with olives, chestnuts, figs, and vines. Large white oxen drawing loads of marble. Mules drawing sand. Nets being hauled in from the
sea heavy with bianchetti, and perhaps a tunny or two. Processions round the town, led by nasally chanting acolytes and magnificently dressed wax saints, and followed by the citizens. Rose petals scattered and flung from every window on to the Corpus Christi procession: Little St. John, the Baptist, his hair just released from a week's curling-papers, leading his unruly lamb in the procession on his day. Brown and beautiful Basques dancing the fandango in the squares after a pelota match on Sunday evening. Redwood forests, giant cactuses in a pale Arizona desert, palms and orange trees and futbal in the plaza, the great blue sweep of Mexican mountains, the brown adobe of Mexican villages, the yucca standing high like blossoming swords, the wild roads not mended since the last revolution, the tiny burros carrying Mexicans, the estancias, haciendas, chile con carne, tortillas, the comida con vino incluso, the mandolins twanging in the plaza while you sit on the pavement and eat. The hot dog stalls, the camping cabins, San Francisco on her hills above the Golden Gate, Santa Barbara in white adobe, set with lit fir-trees on a warm Christmas night, San Diego, Tia Juana, and the Old Spanish Trail. The Florida seas and their leaning palmettos, the Keys and their twisted mangroves, Cuba across the straits. A small Provençal estaminet on the foothills, a mountain road twisting above it. Sunshine and warmth, sunshine and warmth, and the scent of lemons on the air. And, naturally, foreigners. I do not prefer foreigners to the English, except that they speak another language.
Otherwise they are, I find, essentially much the same, though the Italians and Spanish are handsomer and browner, and the Americans more cordial. But they all belong to Abroad, that great, that delightful English picnic. So, like Walt Whitman, I make a salute to all foreigners. As he so exuberantly exclaimed, “You Sardinian, you Bavarian, Swabian, Saxon, Wallachian, Bulgarian! You Roman, Neapolitan, you Greek! You little Matador in the arena at Seville! You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus! You thoughtful Armenian! You Japanese! All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! You benighted roamer of Amazonia! You Patagonian, you Feejeeman! … I do not say one word against you! Salut au monde!”

He was right. It is all Abroad, all that vast camping-ground, pleasure garden or paradise in which we may wander at large; or might until recently, when passports, bureaucracy and suspicion are attempting to hamper and limit our tranquil and happy errors over our errant celestial ball. Les passeports s'il vous plait! Par ici pour la douane! Apra la sua valigia! Sin duda quejaré al consul ingles. I guess we'll have to put you on Ellis Island, if that's all the dollars you have.

Yes; we are hampered, invigilated, kept in on every side, very likely flung into gaol, directly we step into our pleasure-ground. But, when governments and their watch-dogs have done their worst, it is still Abroad.

How enchanting your relations are! Mine, too, look much the same. I suppose people do; I mean, so much depends on the clothes, does it not? I like your aunts; how they ripple from the waist down, bending in the middle like swans; their hair piled high in chignons; see, how much of it they have—or was some, perhaps, attached, or rolled over cushions? Your Aunt Amy, did you say? What long ear-rings! She is very elegant,
mondaine
, refined, yet
capable
, do you not think,
de tout?
Or was she not? Married a curate, do you say? One wonders what life in the curate-house was like, after your Aunt Amy entered it. Nine children? So that was what it was like. Yes, I see, here they all are. The little boys in sailor suits or jerseys, holding bats; the little girls in sashes, their hair cut across their foreheads. Du Maurier children. Oh, yes, I see, that is Phyllis, and there are Olive and Ruth. I should know them anywhere; by the way, I hear Ruth's grandchildren are at that fashionable school in Dorset, and can already change wheels, top batteries, and milk cows. They are going to learn to read next year, you say? At ten and twelve? Isn't that a little soon? One is so afraid of over-exciting their brains. Still, if they
want
to learn, anything is better than repressing them. …

A clergyman: of course, Aunt Amy's husband. A Tractarian, was he? Well, he was a little late for that; but I see what you mean, he was whatever High Church clergymen were in the eighties. Wrote tracts about the Eastward Position? I think he was so right. And, of course, they all face that way now, so that shows.

Who is that old military man? He looks like a splendid walrus, with his long whiskers. Your paternal grandfather? Of course; the General. Didn't he fight in the Crimea? Charged with the Light Brigade? How exciting! And how fortunate that he was one of those who rode back. He looks the kind of military man who might have been very much annoyed with whoever it was who had blundered. I should not care to face your grandfather if I had blundered. The lady in the crinoline is your grandmother, of course. She looks full of spirit; I dare say she needed it all. A crinoline gives such dignity, such deportment. No one could look
dowdy
in a crinoline. How her chatelaine hangs over it, full of the store-room keys. What a bore, to have to unlock the store-room whenever anyone wanted stores. I suppose stores are used by the cook daily, and always at the most inconvenient moment.

Look at those lovely girls, all in crinolines, ready to swim along like balloons in a breeze. Your great aunts? They are very sweet. No doubt they had a delightful time, waltzing, shooting with bows and arrows, riding,
skating with gentlemen (for there was real ice in those days, was there not?) See, there is one of them on a horse, in a long habit, her hair in a net under a dear little feathered hat. Great-aunt Helen? Famous all over the county for her riding and jumping? Broke her back at a water-jump, and lay crippled for forty years. … Oh, dear, let us turn the page.

Here we have bustles. Your mother? Now, that is
really
the swan period. What a bend! The Grecian bend, was it not? The Greeks were first with everything, of course; but I do not recall this bend in any of their statues. Perhaps they could not hold it long enough to be sculptured. Of course, it is not
altogether
genuine; the bustle helped. But how adorable! How sorry your mother must have been when she had to go into those horrible clothes of the nineties, puff-sleeved jackets (by the way, I see they are in again; strange how even the worst things always come round) and stiff collars and sailor hats—yes, there she is in them.

And your Aunt Elizabeth, in a college group wearing large cricket pads—Newnham, is it? What year? 1890. Well, of course Newnham had been going for about twenty years then. … It was quite the thing to go to college, I suppose; now it seems to be less thought of, to be considered no use for getting jobs. I dare say your Aunt Elizabeth didn't have to think about jobs. Became a doctor, did she? I never knew Mrs. Robinson had been a doctor; why did she give it up? She left six forceps in? But that's nothing, surely. … Oh, all in the same wound; yes, I suppose that
would
be
rather many. …
And
three swabs? Well, I dare say her mind was on cricket. It may happen to anyone, they say. Most people who have ever had an operation are simply full of forceps and swabs, I believe; they think it is rheumatism or neuritis. … It is wonderful, I often think, what additions, as well as subtractions, the human frame can stand. I suppose really we are put together
quite
at random, and a few objects more or less make very little difference; though I must say, when you see a picture of our insides, you wonder where extra forceps and swabs would go. But of course, they take the place of whatever the surgeon has just taken away, I forgot that. … Well, perhaps your Aunt Elizabeth was right; she goes in for chickens now, doesn't she?

You as a child; how pretty. How people change; still, I would know you anywhere. Quite in the nude. That has the advantage that you can't be dated by your clothes. Your school lacrosse team … and your first dance dress. Empire style. Clothes were pretty that year; nice high waists and simple lines.

But let us turn back to the Victorians. They fascinate me. There is a
je ne sais quoi
about them, a subtlety; they might have strange experiences, commit strange deeds, and say nothing. They are proud, reserved, self-contained. Your Aunt Geraldine looks like a mermaid, your Uncle Frank, behind his moustaches, seems to brood on strange lands. Had to leave the country suddenly? That would account for it, I suppose. Poor Uncle Frank. Did he have to be long away?
It was hushed up? That always takes a little time, of course. And then Uncle Frank came home, and married a Miss Jones. Had to leave the country
again?
What bad luck he had! Now-a-days, they seem to manage better, without so much travelling. Was he long abroad the second time? Always? Dear me. Yes, I see, this is his
hacienda
in the Argentine, with himself and Miss Jones, grown nice and plump, in the porch. … Oh, not Miss Jones? She stayed in England, with the children? Then this would be some other lady, more of the Argentine type. … I expect your uncle Frank was wise to settle there, among cattle; as your Aunt Elizabeth was wise to settle among chickens. Animals are a great resource. And so much nicer to rear them than to go and shoot them.

Photographs of ancestors are really much more interesting than the paintings of them they had before, because the camera cannot lie, so we know that they really did look like that. Now-a-days they touch them up more; the camera has learnt to lie. Besides, do we look as interesting? I am sure we do not. I could look at our ancestors for ever. Thank you so much for showing me yours. It has been a charming evening. You must come and see mine.

A charming evening. But as I drive home, the small cold wind of mortality hums round me with sighing breath. The way to dusty death seems to stretch before me, lit by those fading yellow oblongs wherefrom someone's ancestors gaze, pale pasteboard prisoners, to be wondered about, recalled, lightly summed and dismissed
by us as we turn a page. So too shall we gaze out some autumn evening, prisoned and defenceless, to stir in posterity a passing idle speculation, a moment's memory. That? Oh, that is great-aunt Rose. … She wrote. Oh, nothing you would have heard of; I don't think she was ever much read, even at the time; she just wrote. Novels, essays, verse—I forget what else; she just wrote away, as those Georgians did. Rather dull, I think. What besides? Well, I think she just went about; nothing special. There
was
some story … but it's all so long ago, I've forgotten. She ended poor, having outlived whatever market she had, poor old thing. Yes, she went on writing, but no one read her … she died poor, killed, I think, in an aeroplane smash; she learnt to pilot too old; she should have stuck to motoring. But she would learn to fly, and finally smashed a friend's plane and herself … silly, really. She had grown very tiresome before the end, they say. But look, here is someone more interesting. …

It will be posterity's charming evening then, and theirs to pity, if they will, their pasteboard prisoners, as I now pity Aunt Geraldine with her mermaid's face and form, Uncle Frank who had to leave home so suddenly and so frequently, Great-Aunt Helen, of the rogue's face and little feather, who fell at the water-jump sixty years ago, Grandpapa General, who rode back with the Light Brigade, Grandmama, who had to be so often locking and unlocking her stores, Aunt Elizabeth with her forceps and her chickens, Aunt Amy rippling so elegantly from the waist down and
marrying the curate who wrote tracts about the Eastward Position.…

Poor figures I feel we shall most of us cut beside them, when the Albums shall imprison us too.

I love it, I love it, and who shall dare

To chide me for loving that old arm-chair?

So, A century ago, defiantly enquired Miss Eliza Cook. Already, obviously, the sour and scornful denigrators of this article of furniture were busy with their cheap sneers, which one can only surmise to be based on envy. If Miss Cook's question were answered, one would find that the sneerers at the arm-chair (and they are many, in these days) were men who do not possess such chairs. They may be smart, modern men, whose chairs have arms of steel. They may be poor men; who cannot, perhaps, afford arm-chairs; who, having purchased one, possibly, on the Pay-Way system (“we never mention money here, Mr. Everyman”), found it reft from them at the last owing to their too close adherence to this policy of reticent silence. They find themselves arm-chairless; they have to sit up straight on armless chairs, an embittering posture, or on the floor (an undignified one), or betake themselves to their clubs, where they find all the arm-chairs in chronic use by others, and are further embittered. So they sit down at one of the club writing-tables, on some hard, straight-backed seat, and, with a venomous
eye roving round the room, proceed to write letters to newspapers about arm-chair critics, arm-chair pacifists, militarists, generals, reformers, statesmen, politicians, concert-goers, and the like. What they actually object to so strongly is arm-chair newspaper-sitters, who sit a clutch of journals as a hen sits eggs, without, for the most part, ever hatching out one of them, but if some callow chick of an idea should come cheeping out of the sitter's head and find its chirping way to public print, he is denounced by the arm-chairless as an armchair critic. Possibly such denunciations also come from civil servants and those who have to sit at office tables to do their stuff. These can ill bear that criticisms and suggestions about life and the world should be emitted by the comfortable, slugging it at ease in their arm-chairs, lolling and lounging, twiring through their long spy-glasses at the scene which they with such bland and indolent effrontery criticize. No wonder that we who thus loll and twire rouse the wrath of those who must twire without lolling, those who have to do the work, and are peppered with the lazy fire from our arm-chair pea-shooters.