April 17
The Hon. ⸻, son and heir of Lord ⸻, today invited me to lunch with him in ⸻ Square. He’s a handsome youth of twenty-five, with fair hair and blue eyes … and O! such an aristocrat. Good Lord.
But to continue: the receipt of so unexpected an invitation from so glorious a young gentleman at first gave me palpitation of the heart. I was so surprised that I scarcely had enough presence of mind to listen to the rest of his remarks and later, it was only with the greatest difficulty that I could recall the place where we arranged to meet. His remarks, too, are not easy to follow, as he talks in a stenographic, Alfred-Jingle-like manner, jerking out disjected members of sentences, and leaving you to make the best of them or else to Hell with you—by the Lord, I speak English, don’t I? If I said, “I beg your pardon,” he jerked again, and left me often equally unenlightened.
On arriving at his home, the first thing he did was to shout down the stairs to the basement: “Elsie, Elsie,” while I gazed with awe at a parcel on the hall table addressed to “Lord ⸻.” Before lunch we sat in his little room and talked about ⸻, but I was still quite unable to regain my self-composure. I couldn’t for the life of me forget that here was I lunching with Lord ⸻’s son, on equal terms, with mutual interests, that his sisters perhaps would come in directly or even the noble Lord himself. I felt like a scared hare. How should I address a peer of the realm? I kept trying to remember and every now and then for some unaccountable reason my mind travelled into ⸺shire and I saw Auntie C⸺ serving out tea and sugar over the counter of the baker’s shop in the little village. I luxuriated in the contrast, though I am not at all inclined to be a snob.
He next offered me a cigarette, which I took and lit. It was a Turkish cigarette with one end plugged up with cotton wool—to absorb the nicotine—a, thing I’ve never seen before. I was so flurried at the time that I did not notice this and lit the wrong end. With perfect ease and self-possession, the Honourable One pointed out my error to me and told me to throw the cigarette away and have another.
By this time I had completely lost my nerve. My pride, chagrin, excessive self-consciousness were entangling all my movements in the meshes of a net. Failing to tumble to the situation, I inquired, “Why the wrong end? Is there a right and a wrong end?” Lord ⸻’s son and heir pointed out the cotton wool end, now blackened by my match.
“That didn’t burn very well, did it?”
I was bound to confess that it did not, and threw the smoke away under the impression that these wonderful cigarettes with right and wrong ends must be some special brand sold only to aristocrats, and at a great price, and possessing some secret virtue. Once again, handsome Mr. ⸻ drew out his silver cigarette-case, selected a second cigarette for me, and held it towards me between his long delicate fingers, at the same time pointing out the plug at one end and making a few staccato remarks which I could not catch.
I was still too scared to be in full possession of my faculties, and he apparently was too tired to be explicit to a member of the bourgeoisie, stumbling about his drawing-room. The cotton wool plug only suggested to me some sort of a plot on the part of a dissolute scion of a noble house to lure me into one of his bad habits, such as smoking opium or taking veronal. I again prepared to light the cigarette at the wrong end.
“Try the other end,” repeated the young man, smiling blandly. I blushed, and immediately recovered my balance, and even related my knowledge of pipes fitted to carry similar plugs. …
During lunch (at which we sat alone) after sundry visits to the top of the stairs to shout down to the kitchen, he announced that he thought it wasn’t last night’s affair after all which was annoying the Cook (he got home late without a latchkey)—it was because he called her “Cook” instead of Mrs. Austin. He smiled serenely and decided to indulge Mrs. A., his indulgent attitude betraying an objectionable satisfaction with the security of his own unassailable social status. There was a trace of gratification at the little compliment secreted in the Cook’s annoyance. She wanted Mr. Charles to call her Mrs. Austin, forsooth. Very well! and he smiled down on the little weakness de haute en bas.
I enjoyed this little experience. Turning it over in my mind (as the housemaid says when she decides to stay on) I have come to the conclusion that the social parvenu is not such a vulgar fellow after all. He may be a bore—particularly if he sits with his finger tips apposed over a spherical paunch, festooned with a gold chain, and keeps on relating in extenso how once he gummed labels on blacking bottles. Often enough he is a smug fellow, yet, truth to tell, we all feel a little interested in him. He is a traveller from an antique land, and we sometimes like to listen to his tales of adventure and all he has come through. He has traversed large territories of human experience, he has met strange folk and lodged in strange caravanserai. Similarly with the man who has come down in the world—the fool, the drunkard, the embezzler—he may bore us with his maudlin sympathy with himself yet his stories hold us. It must be a fine experience within the limits of a single life to traverse the whole keyboard of our social status, whether up or down. I should like to be a peer who grinds a barrel organ or (better still) a onetime organ-grinder who now lives in Park Lane. It must be very dull to remain stationary—once a peer always a peer.