The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
meet the private car at Los Angeles and go to the camps. "Lola" and her husband are coming, too, and anyone else we like; and the Vicomte immediately proposed himself, as he said he is deeply interested in mining and wants to invest some money. I think we shall have a superb time, don't you, Mamma? And I am longing to be off, but we have still some more social things to do, and go to one dance.
It is so late in the year all the balls are finished and lots of people have already gone to Europe. They are having this one on purpose for us, because Octavia said she wanted to see some young men and girls, and how they amuse themselves. The girls have a perfectly emancipated and glorious time, and are petted and spoilt to a degree. They don't come much to the ladies' lunches, but they have girls' lunches of their own, and their own motor cars and horses, or whatever else they want, and do not have to ask their mothers' leave about anything.
Among the married women there are two distinct sets here in the inner cream, the one which Valerie leads, and which has everything like England, and does not go in for any of those wonderful entertainments where elephants do the waiting with their trunks, or you sit in golden swings over a lake while swans swim with the food on trays on their backs--I am exaggerating, of course, but you know what I mean. Valerie says all that is in shocking taste, which of course it is. She never has anything eccentric, only splendid presents at her cotillons, and all the diplomats from Washington come over, and the whole tone of her house is exactly as it is at home, except that many of them are brighter and more amusing than we are.
Then the other set is the "go one better set,"--that is the best way I can describe it. If one has a party one week, another must have a finer one the week after, and so on, until thousands and thousands of dollars are spent on flowers, for instance, for one afternoon; and in it nothing is like England. I believe it must be purely American, or perhaps one ought to say New York.
These two sets meet at Newport, but they won't speak to any others. I wish we were going to stay long enough to go there.
When all the dinner party had gone, Octavia and I and one of the other women who are staying in the house, went up with Valerie into her sitting room, and coseyed round the fire; but when Tom and the Vicomte knocked at the door, and wanted to come in, too, and cosey with us, Valerie looked the wee-est trifle shocked, and rather nervously put them off; and she said to me afterwards that the room opened right into her bedroom, and Daniel would have been awfully cross if they had come in! It is in tiny trifles like this that even Valerie is a fraction provincial. I suppose she had a Puritan ancestor. Puritans, as one knows, always have those odd minds that see something bad in everything.
This morning some of them went to church, but I was not in time. I was so tired I overslept myself and then stayed hours in my bath. The bath-rooms here are superb. Certainly the American plumbers are the best in the world. I can't imagine what the American women do when they marry foreign noblemen and go home with them to their old castles where they would be expected to wash in a dish.
When I got down I found Gaston pacing the library like a maniac. _"Enfin, enfin,"_ he cried, as he kissed my hand.
"_Enfin_ what?" I said, and he told me he had been waiting here for me the whole morning, and they would soon be home from church and he would not get another chance to see me alone. So I just played with him a little, Mamma!--and it was too delightful being as provoking as possible and yet perfectly sage. Harry could not have really objected to a word I said, but all the same it drove Gaston crazy. I have never had a chance before, you know, because all these years, what with having babies and the fuss and time that takes, and Harry never leaving me for a moment, and glaring at every other man who came near, I did not know how enjoyable a little fencing could be. And when the rest did come back I only talked to Daniel Latour on purpose to tease Gaston, and I really amused myself.
Lots more people came to luncheon, and though it is in the wilds of the country, what we would call, they were all in lovely afternoon dresses, as if it were town and the height of the season. But we were so merry at lunch. A general conversation is far more bright and entertaining than at home.
After lunch we walked in the woods, and I can never tell you of the beauty of it, with the scent of Spring in the air, and the quaint wild flowers. It is their last Sunday down here; they go off to Europe next week.
Shoals more visitors for tea, among them a little bride who had already got her husband to heel. She talked all the time of what _she_ was going to do and he did not speak a word. But it is only in that sort of way they are very emancipated, it seems, for while they are actually married they are as good as gold, as far as looking at anyone else is concerned. It is when they come to Europe they have flirtations like us. But as I said before, there would not be any zest, because you can get a divorce and marry the man so easily it makes it always _une affaire de jeune fille_.
Now I must dress for dinner, so good-bye, dear Mamma.
Kisses to my angels.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.
PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK
PLAZA HOTEL. NEW YORK, _Tuesday._
DEAREST MAMMA,--I have a theatre and dance to tell you of in this letter. To begin with, the theatres themselves are far better built than ours; everyone can see, and there is no pit, and the boxes are in graduated heights so that you have not to crane your neck,--but the decorations in every one we have yet been to are unspeakable. This one last night had grouped around the proscenium what looked exactly like a turkey's insides (I hope you aren't shocked, Mamma!). I once saw the marmiton taken out at Arrachon, when I was a little girl and got into the kitchen,--just those awful colours, and strange long, twisted, curled-up tuby-looking things. They are massed on the boxes, too, and were, I suppose, German "Art Nouveau."
I always think Art Nouveau must have been originated by a would-be artist who got drunk on absinthe after eating too much pt de foie gras in a btard-Louis XV. room, then slept, then woke, and in a fit of D.T. conceived it. He saw impossible flowers and almost rats running up the furniture, and every leg and line out of balance and twisted; and fancy, if one could avoid it, putting it in a theatre! The play itself was very well acted, but, as is nearly always the case here, unless it is a lovely blood-and-shooting, far West play, the heroine is drawn to be a selfish puny character, full of egotism and thinking of her own feelings. The men were perfectly splendid actors, but they distracted my eye so with their padded shoulders it quite worried me. The hero was a small person, and when he appeared in tennis flannels his shoulders were sloping, and in proportion to his little body; but when the coat got on again they were at least eight inches wider, and, as he lifted his arms to clasp his lady, one saw where the padding ended; it was absolutely ridiculous and made me laugh in a serious place.
When one looks down at the audience, the women not being in evening dress gives the coup d'oeil a less festive note, but I think people in theatres look perfectly awful anywhere, don't you, Mamma? One wonders where they come from.
This was a play about "Graft," which as far as I can understand means,--supposing you wanted to be elected a member of the Government, you could agree with some large contractor, who had influence over countless votes, to get the order for him to put up a public building which millions had been voted for; and instead of making it of solid marble, to face it and fill it up with rubbish, and you and he would pocket the difference. I think that would be "graft," and there seems to a lot of it about, judging from the play and the papers; and we were told some of the splendid buildings in San Francisco showed all these tricks when they fell down in the earthquake. I should hate to live in an earthquake country, shouldn't you, Mamma? It could interrupt one in such awkward or agreeable moments,--and one would feel one ought to be ready and looking as attractive as possible all the time. It would be so wearing.
I think English people are stodgy and behind-hand about things. Why don't they come here and take a few hints before they build any more theatres? You can't think how infinitely better these are to see in.
The difference in the comic operas to ours is, they have no refinement or colours