“But my husband is like thousands of men.”
“You mean by that, that he is without any facial expression?” and Dick shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, dear Lady Woolhead, you have hit on the fundamental question of our age. Indeed, how can you recognise him, when you do not know, nor ever have known, him? And I have no doubt that he is in the same plight about yourself.” And Lord Somerville would remark,—
“How amusing life must be to you, my dear Danford; gifted with such satirical wit, you need never pass a dull moment.” That was all very true, but had you asked the Tivoli comedian what he really thought of his employ in Lord Somerville’s household, he would have told you, though with bated breath, that it was not an easy mission to keep a Mayfair cynic amused, for at the vaguest approach of dulness, his lordship threatened to give up the game of life, and go over the way to see there what sort of a farce was on the bills.
“I say, Dick, how would Adam have looked in a hansom, flourishing a branch of oak tree to stop the cabby?”
“And what does your lordship think of Eve’s attitude in a four-wheeler, ducking her fair head in and out of the window to indicate the way to the driver?”
“Danford, this won’t do. The naked form is not at its advantage seated upright in a brougham, nor is it decorative when doubled up on the back seat of a victoria.”
They were both struck by the unæsthetic appearance of the present vehicles, as they arrived one afternoon at Mrs Webster’s house in Carlton Terrace.
“We shall have to discover some suitable conveyance for the Apollos and Venuses of new London.”
Standing on the steps of the house they passed in review all fashionable London stepping out of landaus, victorias, broughams, hansoms; certainly the kaleidoscopic vision was not a success.
Mrs Webster was giving her first large At Home of the season. She was noted for her gorgeous parties, her gorgeous suppers and gorgeous fortune; but still more celebrated for her picture gallery and her kindness to artists. In her gallery was supposed to be lying two millions sterling worth of Old Masters, but her benevolence to artists did not cost her a farthing, it was a Platonic help she bestowed on them, and her charity had never been known to exceed an introduction to the Duchess of Southdown. She received all sorts and conditions of men and women; all London met at her “crushes,”—Duchesses elbowed cowboys, Royal Highnesses sat close to political Radicals, and Bishops handed an ice to some notorious Mimi-la-Galette of the Paris Music Halls. They all danced to the tune of clinking gold. In fact, Mrs Webster’s house, like so many others, was a stockpot out of which she ladled a social broth of high flavour. There were many stockpots in London, from the strong _consommé_ of exclusive brewing to the thin, tasteless Bovril of homely concoction. That of Mrs Webster’s was a pottage of heterogeneous quality; it had a Continental aroma of garlic, a back-taste of the usual British spice, and it left on one’s lips a lingering savour of _parvenu_ relish. The Upper Ten went to her dinners, though they screamed at her uncanny appearance, jeered at the authenticity of her Raphaels and Da Vincis, and quoted to each other anecdotes about her that had put even Mrs Malaprop in the shade. But these are the unsolvable problems of a Society divided into two sections; the one that wishes to know everything about the people they visit; the other who does not want to know anything about them.