The Champagne Standard Part 7

It is not an age for conversation; our small-talk is soon exhausted, and for a woman to talk at length, labels her as a rock to be avoided. How can we have _salons_, we who cannot converse? We are the products of the daily papers, and our conversation is like their familiar small-talk column. So we have to have artificial aids to entertaining.

We are recited to, sung to, played to, and there being nothing so "cussed" as human nature, no sooner are we played to and recited to than our "cussedness" will out, and we are seized with a wild longing to talk, and talk we do at the top of our voices. Universal resentment is expressed towards the blameless arts that temporarily check our interchange of what it would be flattery to call ideas, but, in my own experience, when some stray man and I have stood together speechless, no sooner did the piano break into our appalling silence than ideas seemed to inundate us. The dumb man spoke as if by magic, and I, who hitherto had nothing to say, couldn't talk fast enough.

The divine arts are too good to be wasted in a twentieth century drawing-room! Such conversation as there is, is amply accompanied by the pianola and the gramophone. These two awful inventions are to music what the chromo is to painting. They make music as vulgar as machine-made lace.

My first experience of the pianola was at the Universal Provider's. It was Christmas time, and I was so tired and hara.s.sed that I stood quite still in the surging crowd, oblivious of the sharp elbows of my shopping sisters, oblivious of dust and microbes, only conscious that I was dizzy with fatigue. Suddenly through the crowd I heard the familiar strains of the great romantic polonaise of Chopin--the one introduced by the exquisite _Andante Spianato_. It is a mediaeval romance without words, of chivalry, tournaments, gallant cavaliers, and beautiful women; all this I heard in the piano department of the Universal Provider.

I couldn't understand it! What great artist could so far forget himself as to play this divine work for a pa.s.sing, heedless, irritable crowd. I pushed my way past my sisters, and possibly used my elbows. As I came nearer I grew confused by something exasperatingly perfect in the sound.

The humanity of a single false note was wanting. I reached the crowd about the piano--well, everybody has seen a pianola! An imitation artist (he had long fair hair) steered the music and pumped in the expression at the proper place, while the indefatigable instrument ejected miles of punctured paper.

Never did anything so get on my nerves! I nearly wept. It is, perhaps, needless to say that the pianola and other instruments of its kind are of American origin, and, like all American inventions, they are labour-saving. You can be a Paderewski while you wait, but, thank Heaven! no ingenious American has yet invented a mechanical Joachim!

The first modest invention, the grandparent of the pianola, was exhibited in Boston (America) years and years ago, and was a modest little box, with only a small appet.i.te for punctured paper. One of the judges of the musical instruments at the exhibition showed me this curious music-box, to which, because of its ingenuity, they had decided to give a prize. Now the instrument has waxed greater and greater, and no one is safe from it, no, not if you go to the farthest desert or highest mountain. It graces afternoon teas, while the guests refresh themselves in stunned silence, or shriek at the top of their voices in vain rivalry, until they melt into the street, where the turmoil of cabs, carts, vans, and motors is soothing and peaceful by comparison.

For a stranger to penetrate into typical English social circles is often a blighting experience. If the hostess is a woman of the world, she comes to your a.s.sistance; but if she is the woman of an island, you find yourself stranded, unintroduced, and surrounded by more or less handsome and statuesque creatures, who would possibly be delighted to talk to you if you were introduced--or possibly not.

Oh, the debatable question of introduction! One sometimes thinks that in England people go into society just to avoid each other; at least so it would appear from the ardent way in which they decline to be introduced.

Conventional smart English society does not introduce, and that sets the fashion.

Society knows too many people, and refuses to know more; and its young men, having at their command only two feet apiece, also refuse to be introduced, for they cannot extend the field of their activities. The young man's toil consists largely in duty dances, for the only way he can pay a worried mother for a dinner-party is by dancing with her daughter, who still hangs fire. So his path is not always strewn with roses. Still his is easier than the "gal's," for he can decline to be introduced to her, and he does this often with the little caprices and insolence of a society belle.

"Do let me introduce you to my cousin," said a generous young soul to her partner, "she is such a nice 'gal.'"

"Please don't; I should have to dance with her, and I am full up,"

replied the youth, and so it is. Not that all girls are so generous, far from it. It is the exception when they overstep the bounds and introduce an attractive girl to a young man. The result is that society is made up of cliques, wheels within wheels, and the cliques keep rigidly to themselves, and the loveliest young creatures outside languish against the wall, and no one takes pity on them.

Many are the complicated stratagems to introduce the young girl into the "smart set" of English society, and if the commander-in-chief ("mother") is not blessed with the best steel-covered nerves, she had better not undertake it. The commander-in-chief, of course a rich and great lady, borrows a list of unknown young men from other hostesses and invites them to her ball. Presumably grateful youths pay for this entertainment by dancing with the "gal," but not always.

After all, smart society is alike all over the world; like hotel cooking, it has no nationality. So America is ceasing to introduce, but this repression is not universal yet. All do not yet languish under self-inflicted boredom. A perfect American hostess makes her guests known to each other if they are strangers, and though fashion may protest, this is after all the only way to make a crowd of mutually unknown people comfortable and not awkward. People, except those of great ease of manner, will not speak to each other unless introduced, and to talk to some one without the faint guide-post of a name is not very interesting. You may be talking to a very dull stranger, and turn away bored, when, had you but known that he was a great and shining light, how interested you would have been, and how deftly you would have turned the conversation into the one channel the great one always loves--himself.

Possibly Americans overdo the introducing; they are rather apt to overdo everything; it is the fault of a high-strung, nervous temperament; but of two evils let me rather be torn away from an interesting conversation every few minutes by a vivacious hostess, than be stranded in a corner looking blankly at my fellow man, for all the world as if I had strayed into a 'bus in a party gown. Blessed will the day be when the American invasion will temper English society with its own possibly rather effusive geniality.

The fundamental difference between the two nationalities is that Americans love strangers, and the English hate them. The Englishman looks with suspicion on any one he doesn't know, root and branch; the American loves him until he hears of something to his disadvantage, or until he gets tired of him--which happens.

The Englishman's aversion to strangers does not include the American, curiously enough. He does not call him a foreigner, and he likes him. He likes him partly because he really can't help it, and partly out of policy, and he looks charitably at his curious and original ways just as a big dog watches the gambols of a frolicsome puppy. He always remembers that that puppy is his puppy, and that some day he will grow into a big dog of his own breed, and--well, he respects the breed.

Not that the American man is in England as popular as the American woman; he is not. The charming American woman is the product of generations of hard-working fathers and husbands who have toiled for her, and toil for her, and the result is that in cultivation and attraction she has left her creator rather behind. When you add to this his strenuous habits of business life, in which "devil take the hindmost" is the motto, and a very confident belief in his own ability, and his country's unmistakable destiny to "whip the universe," it produces a rather aggressive personality. So he is not as popular as his charming women, because, also, he represents a prophecy which is not unlike a menace. Yet the big dog watches the gambols of the little dog with tolerant good-nature.

Another factor in favour of the American woman is that she can be charming on two continents--the Englishwoman still confines her efforts to one--and she can be charming in the language of the two greatest nations in the world. Is this not a magnificent opportunity for her social genius? Descended, usually, from all sorts of races, America makes her what she is, and then boastfully sends the perfected article across the water to the old countries to ally herself with the best or the worst of their aristocracy. That it is rarely the case of King Cophetua and the beggar-maid one admits; but, after all, everything has its price in this world, and coronets come dear, except, of course, to that one privileged cla.s.s--the ladies of the variety theatres.

In speaking of the American man's aggressiveness, one does not wish to imply that the Englishman is not aggressive; far from it. There is no one so aggressive as an Englishman, but the difference is that the American is boastfully aggressive, and the Englishman quietly so, as one so sure of himself and his belongings that boasting is superfluous; which makes him all the more aggravating. The summit and climax of this aggravation is that the Englishman does not know that he is aggressive, and even resents it in his beloved Americans, and never suspects that his own want of popularity may be due to that same cause.

Years ago it was the Englishman who was the spoilt darling of nations; now he is making way for the American. But his early prestige was immense--it is still great, but it is a tempered greatness.

In those days when he went to America to harvest dollars (he rarely went for any other reason), he was received with a rapturous humility which was pathetic. We grovelled before him, we suffered his peculiar manners, which had they been our own we should sometimes have labelled as bad, as the eccentricities of a superior being. We were flattered when our resemblance to him was pointed out, and to increase it we created that particularly obnoxious type, the Anglicised American; for, like all imitations, it is the caricature of the most unpleasant features of a resemblance.

In those days we took him to our hearts, to our homes, and to our clubs, and when sometimes we came to London to enjoy his return civilities, we had to be satisfied with very modest crumbs of entertainment indeed. But perhaps the Englishman said, in the subtle French tongue, "_Je paye de ma personne_." That explains it.

We spoiled the errant Englishman most abominably; our idol got bad manners and a swelled head, and it always took him some time on his return to a nation that, after all, consists of Englishmen, to find his level again. The wife of a very distinguished man complained to me of the demoralised condition in which her husband--who had gone to America to lecture--had been sent back to her. "It will take me years to unspoil him," she cried. "It's all the fault of your women, who flatter them to death! And that is the reason," she added, with some bitterness, "that Englishmen think they are so charming and clever."

Now that the Englishman has ceased to be so rare a bird in America, we receive him with less tumultuous rejoicing, and yet we still spoil him if he is distinguished or has a t.i.tle. As for money, it is no object to us as credentials--we leave that to the English. A t.i.tle? Oh, yes, we love a t.i.tle! Why shouldn't we? Does not the Englishman, according to Thackeray, love a lord? With all it represents of tradition, romance, and history, is it a more ign.o.ble pa.s.sion for the sn.o.b than the worship of dollars, or more fatal to republican principles?

The American money-kings are as surely creating a cla.s.s apart as ever did the English possessors of t.i.tles, and there is no greater n.o.bility in a duke, by the grace of a gamble on the stock exchange, than a duke by the grace of tradition or history. Both may be represented by very poor creatures, but the duke of history has, at all events, the traditions of his ancestry to excuse the interest he still excites.

Occasionally one hears of an aspiring American, who, captivated by the poetry of sound, buys himself a t.i.tle, and ornaments his republican breast with decorations--the fitting reward of dollars and cents; but such a one has lost, if not his country, at least his sense of humour.

Still, it is not our republican money-dukes who will make or mar our nation; its stability rests on something n.o.bler. Nor will it turn a great republic finally into a kingdom that we like t.i.tles as a child an unaccustomed toy. Is it not dinned into our ears that we are rich, and that the best is not too good for us? Is not the best in the world for us?

"The finest jewels are kept for the American market," a famous jeweller once told me. Are not the very best imitations of the old masters sold to us? We are willing to pay, and money in this world can buy everything except just one trifle--contentment. Apart from contentment, money buys everything. It is a credential for virtue and a good name. A millionaire must be good, or Divine Providence would not so have prospered him, and for this all-sufficient reason London takes him to its innocent and gushing heart. Of course sometimes the millionaire is not a real millionaire, but no one knows until he is found out; but the next best thing to being a real, honourable millionaire, is to have unlimited credit. Blessed is the man who has credit, for some day he may promote a company that will enable him to pay his bills.

Yes, America is being rewarded for all the entertainments she has lavished on bygone Englishmen. She cannot these days complain of a lack of English hospitality. Columbia has a "real good time," and she drops the almighty dollar as she goes on her triumphant way, to the rapture of the English shopkeeper.

She worships English history, English t.i.tles, and English cathedrals.

She gushes over all things great and good, and often she props up a rickety aristocrat with the splendid strength of her great gold dollars, and not the stiffest British matron dares sniff at her. She will introduce and she will entertain, and she will be entertaining. She is often beautiful, and generally clever,--even if frothily clever.

Of all the American invasion she is the most subtly dangerous. You may keep off the American men with your fleets, and all the terrors of your newest million pounders, but how defend yourself from the American girl, who borrows a bow and arrow from a naughty little boy lightly dressed in two wings and a blush, and shoots right into your--heart!

_Temporary Power_

It was in the "tuppeny tube" that the idea first came to me. I was filing out of the long car as expeditiously as I could, considering that I had to disentangle my feet from the heels of my fellow man, when a stern being in the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons of authority gave me an unnecessary push, remarking briefly, "Hurry up!" Before I could wither him with a glance, the red light at the back of the train was winking jocosely at me, so there was nothing left to do but to follow my fellow sufferers, swallow my resentment along with the bad air, and proceed to soar upward.

Having recovered my mental balance I began to laugh. The awful majesty of temporary power, from a protoplasm up!

It is indeed a curious fact that the world is not so much governed by its ruling cla.s.ses as by the lower ones, who exercise their temporary tyranny--in whatever capacity it be--with a colossal arrogance that leaves the arrogance of a higher sphere leagues behind. Who has not seen great ladies, majestic beings in their own drawing-rooms, wait patiently before a counter while the young "saleslady" finished an interesting conversation with a colleague in imitation diamonds.

Possibly in private life the young "saleslady" was not at all proud; but place her behind a counter, and it gives her a moral support that makes her rise superior to the aristocracy and crush the middle cla.s.ses.

Never shall I forget the pathetic sight of a distinguished general--one who fought and won a battle in the American Civil War, that decided the fortunes of the North--buying a pair of kid gloves from a superior young person in a glove store. He waited a long time very patiently while she exchanged a light badinage with an idle youth, splendid in the tallest kind of a collar.

"If you please," the general ventured, seeing the talk was not of business. The haughtiness with which she turned on him! "What do you want?"

She leaned on the counter with both hands in that most delightfully engaging and characteristic of shop att.i.tudes. No, there was no badinage for the poor general, and as he had no taste and no ideas, she sold him the most dreadful yellow gloves, with which he was burdened when we met at the door. He showed them to me rather piteously.

"They don't look right, somehow," he sighed. "Why don't you change them?" I urged. "Because," the great man whispered, whose courage was famous in the land, "because I'm afraid of her."

Oh, the terrible tyranny of the shopgirls, or, rather, as we live in a democratic age and one is as good as the other, the shop young ladies.

When one of them waits on me, or, to be quite exact, when I grovel to her, and she is very short and snappish and uninterested, I wonder what can be the kind of superior being to whom she, so to speak, bends the knee? Sometimes I think it must be the shopwalker, a great man, but human, except perhaps at Christmas time, but then I suspect he also may be afraid of her.

When she cries "sign" at the top of her penetrating voice, and I am ignominiously proved to have bought nothing, I realise that I am disgraced, and can hardly bear the united glances of the young lady's scornful eye, and the milder but still reproachful glance of the shopwalker. He catechises me firmly for reasons why I don't buy, and offers me instead everything under the sun that I don't want. If my soul ever presumes to rebel it is when the young lady, not having what I am in search of, kindly advises me as to what I really do want--but even the traditional worm has been known to turn.

There is a delicate difference between the English and the American young saleslady. The American, being the daughter of the free, and distinctly of the independent, and having the chance of being the future wife, mother or mother-in-law of presidents, does not demean herself to be on a sympathetic footing with the public. If the public wishes to buy, she is willing to sell, but is perfectly indifferent. Look wistfully into the American saleslady's perfectly cold eye, if you are a wobbly lady and want some one to make up your mind for you, and you are met by a wall of the bleakest ice; nor does she thaw when you have bought for a large amount. She calls "kish" in a shrill, unmoved voice, which summons a small boy or girl, who bears your money to the counting-house. Thereupon she looks indifferently over your head while you wait for the change, and you feel that in spite of everything you have failed to please her.

The result of this admirable att.i.tude of indifference is that America is the paradise of "shoppers," ladies who have no intention whatever of buying, but who do love to see new things. It lies really between you and your conscience how many bales of goods you have unpacked without the remotest idea of purchasing anything. If at the end you make a few disparaging remarks and retire from the scene, the saleslady replaces the goods, perfectly indifferent as to your having bought nothing.

The English shopgirl, on the other hand, makes it a personal affront if you do not buy; but there is excuse for her often enough, for in some shops, unfortunately, it is the cruel regulation that if she misses a certain number of sales she is discharged. Whether it pays to scare the saleslady into terrorising her customers to death is a question; personally, I avoid such shops; I cannot be lured twice into buying what I don't want because of the frown of the young lady. Nor does it even soothe my ruffled feelings when the shopwalker thanks me profusely as he countersigns the bill.