The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
to the north courtyard, where it would not show so much, how nice that would be; but everything is so dreadfully stable and solid with us, and here everything is transitory and can come and go in a night. All the country we came through looks the wilds, uncultivated, almost as if bears could live in the woods. Farms have been there, but now the land is too valuable and is only sold for building purposes. But the effect of wild is intense and makes the contrast of the over-cultivated avenue borders greater. Once inside the gates, the winding avenue begins, covered like all the avenues we have seen with fine granite gravel. But even in the wildest wild it is lit with electric light, and here and there a neat villa. This is typical of America, the contrivances of the brain of man forced upon primitive nature.
The house is simply charming; outside a beautiful colonial style, so suitable to the splendid trees and general look of the land, and inside all panelled, and everything in the most perfect taste, and not too grand. But it surprises me that Valerie, who has been so much in England, should still have the same want of the personal note in her house. Everything is beyond criticism, so perfect and suitable, but not in a single room, even her own sitting room, is there that strong sense of her as I think we all have in our rooms at home. I am sure, Mamma, you would know even the great state drawing-rooms at Chevenix were Octavia's, and there is not a corner of Valmond or Hurstbridge or even the town house, that I do not decide upon the arranging of. But here I don't think they would be bothered; and they only stay in their houses for so short a period, rushing from New York to Newport and the country to Europe, so none of the places feel like home. That is the only possible thing which spoils this one,--otherwise it is perfection. But then you see they could start fair by building it themselves; they had not to inherit a huge castle from their forefathers, with difficult drains to combat and an insufficient water supply, to say nothing of the trail of the serpent of fearful early Victorian taste over even the best things of the eighteenth century. The _horrors_ that now live in the housemaids' bed rooms which I collected from the royal suite at Valmond!
It was a perfect joy to get here into peace, and we were allowed to rest quietly until dinner, and Valerie came and talked to me while I lay on the sofa. She said her husband was "crazy" about me, and she thought it would do him a great deal of good for me to play with him a little, and that she was crazy about Tom; so I said if she could find someone for Octavia it seemed a nice little chass croise and we ought all to be very happy together. Then she said she had someone coming down by a later train who ought to be just Octavia's affair, and who in the world do you think it is, Mamma? The Vicomte! Gaston de la Trmors!!!!
Think of what Harry will say when he hears! Isn't it too lovely? He will of course believe I made a rendezvous with him, considering the furious rage he was in when I got the Vicomte's letter. You remember, Mamma, he used to be in love with me at the Chteau de Croixmare, and always has been a red rag to a bull for Harry. When we met him by chance at Monte Carlo last year, the first time since my marriage, there was nearly a scene; and, as you know, his simple letter saying he would be in London, and might he see me, was the cause of Harry's and my quarrel. So now, when he finds poor Gaston is out here, he will be foaming with rage, and will of course come back from Africa at once, and probably beat me and shoot the Vicomte; so I had better have a little fun while I can. It has sent my spirits up to the skies; and I am so glad Agns brought my loveliest garments here. You need not worry about me, Mamma, as I am sure you are beginning to! I really will be as good as gold, but I must amuse myself a little in this my only chance. I took such care dressing for dinner, and wore no jewels, because everyone here has such wonderful ones. And when I was going down the stairs I felt quite excited.
Gaston has not altered much, and I think I told you last year when we saw him his hair is not coup en brosse now, so he is better looking, and he gets his clothes at an English tailor; and as Harry is not here to contrast him with, he really seemed very attractive and you couldn't for one instant feel he was your aunt or grandmother, or that you could go to Australia with him safely! And while all the nice American men--and Valerie only has the nicest--were saying bright pleasant things, he, who was behind my chair and apparently talking to Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield (she is here), managed to bend down and tell me he adored me, and had only come to America because he found I was not in London!
There was that lovely sense of having a secret, and although he sat on one side of Valerie, and Tom at the other, and I was miles away with the host--it was a huge dinner party--still his eyes said whatever eyes could say between bouquets of flowers. On my other hand was the father of one of the guests. Valerie had told us beforehand she considered him not of their world, but the daughter was charming and married to a youth who is one of their friends, so as he was staying with them she had to ask him too. Both Octavia and I wanted to have him next us because these characters are so much more interesting than just their world, who are the same as Englishmen, almost, with the sex taken out, and a more emphasised way of talking.
Octavia and I tossed up for him and I won and he was a gem,--a rugged powerful face and grey bushy hair and really well dressed. He had eyes that saw through one at once and beyond, and his hands were strong and well shaped, with the most exquisitely polished nails. He did not make horrid noises clearing his throat as lots of them do, and he was not the least deaf. Instantly we got on. He said if we were seeing America we were not to judge the nation by the men we should see in society in New York (each person we meet tells us this!); that we should go out West if we wanted to find the giant brains who make the country great.
"It's not that I mean to disparage Mrs. Latour's guests," he said, looking round the table; "they are what they are, good enough in their way, humming birds and mocking birds to flit among the flowers, and pretty poor at that when you compare them with Europeans; but they don't amount to anything for the nation. They couldn't evolve a scheme that would benefit a foot beyond their noses!" And when I asked him why he had allowed his daughter to marry one of them, he said with such a whimsical air, that women in America did what they "darned well pleased," and that he guessed that everyone had to "work out their own problem along that line."
"The Almighty played a trick on us," he said. "Putting the desire for one particular person into our heads, now and again in our lives leads to heaps of trouble, and don't benefit the race. If we'd no feelings we could select according to reason and evolve perfection in time."
Isn't that a splendid idea, Mamma? He went on to say he studied psychology a good deal, and he found to look at life from that standpoint was the most satisfactory way. He said it was no use mixing up sentiment and what you thought things ought to be with what things really were. "We've got to see the truth Ma'am, that's all," he said. Then he said, "these cotton wool ba-lambs" never saw the truth of anything from one year's end to another, and, "it ain't because it's too difficult, but because they have not got a red cent of brains to think for themselves!"
While he was saying all this he never took his eyes off me, and he spoke with quiet force. He went on and was too interesting expounding his theories along every line (I am getting American), and I looked up and caught Valerie's eye, and she collapsed with laughter; she thought it quite funny that I should find him thrilling. Presently I asked him what his views were about us in England, we of the leisure class, and he said he thought most of us were pretty sound because we did our duties and generally kept our heads.
"Now, I guess, Ma'am, your husband has quite a lot of business to do in a year?" and I said yes, that of course there was endless work in the management of a large estate, and politics, besides hunting and shooting, which was stern business with us! Then he told me with them the leisured class had no responsibilities, except to keep an eye on their brokers, and so they got into mischief.
"'Tisn't in the American blood to be idle," he said; "they can't keep straight if they are." After that I asked him what he thought about the English and American marriages among our nobility, and he got so vehement that he brought his hand down on the table and made such a clatter everyone looked.
It would take too long, Mamma, to repeat all his words, which were too quaint; but the sense of them, was that he would forbid them by law, because American girls to begin with had been brought up with the idea they were to be petted and bowed down to by all men, and no Englishman in his heart considered a woman his equal! And then to go on with, they did not