More than two months passed after the night my husband announced his foreign appointment before we sailed for England.
I planned to study and to have long talks with him about the customs of fashionable and diplomatic Europe, but alas! I reckoned without the friends and pretended friends who claim the time of a man of Tom's importance. Besides, he and I had so many other things to discuss.
So the sailing time approached, and then he announced that we were to be presented at court! I was thrilled half with fear and half with joy.
I remembered from my reading of history that some of England's kings had not spoken English and that French had been the court language. I visited a bookstore and purchased what was recommended as an easy road to French, and spent all morning learning to say, “l'orange est un fruit.” I read the instructions for placing the tongue and puckering the lips and repeated les and las until I was dizzy. Then I looked through our bookcases for a life of Benjamin Franklin. I knew he had gone to court and “played with queens.”
But the great statesman-author-orator gave me no guide to correct form or English social customs. Instead I grew so interested in the history of his work in England and France and in his inspiring achievement in obtaining recognition and credit for the United States that dinner time arrived before I realized I had not discovered what language was spoken at court, nor what one talked about, nor if one talked at all.
Tom roared when I made my confession. With his boyish good humor he promised to answer all my questions on board ship.
So, without a care in those delicious days that followed, I wandered down Sixth Avenue to New York's then most correct shops, buying clothes and clothes and clothes. I bought practical and impractical gifts for the twins back in Wisconsin and for all the family and those good friends who had helped me through Madison.
The week before we sailed my husband said, out of a clear sky: “Be sure you have the right clothes, Mary. The English are a conservative lot.” Suddenly I was conscious again that I did not know the essential things the wife of a diplomat ought to know—what to wear and when, a million and one tremendous social trifles.
The moment our magnificent liner left the dock I heaved a sigh of relief. Tom would be mine for two whole weeks, and all the questions I had saved up would be answered. That evening he announced: “We don't dress for dinner the first night out.”
“Dress for dinner?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
And then very gently he gave me my first lesson. I had never seen anything bigger than a ferry-boat. How could I guess that even on an ocean liner we did not leave formality behind? The “party dresses”, so carefully selected, the long, rich velvet cape I had thought outrageously extravagant, and the satin slippers and the suede—I had packed them all carefully in the trunk and sent them to the hold of the ship. But, with the aid of a little cash, the steward finally produced my treasure trunk, and thereafter I dressed for dinner.
The two weeks I had expected my husband to give me held no quiet hours. There is no such thing, except when one is seasick, as being alone aboard a ship. Tom was popular, good at cards and deck games, always ready to play. And the fourth day out I was too ill to worry about the customs at the Court of St. James.
It was not until just before we reached England that I began to feel myself again. I stood on deck, thrilled with the tall ships and the steamers, the fishing smacks and the smaller craft in Southampton harbor.
“What will be the first thing you do in London?” somebody asked me.
“Go to Mayfair to find the home of Becky Sharp,” I answered. Becky Sharp was as much a part of English history to me as Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn or William the Conqueror. When my husband and I were alone he said: “I think they have picked out No. 21 Curzon Street as the house where Becky Sharp is supposed to have lived. But what a funny thing for you to want to see first!”
I remembered what old Lord Steyne had said to Becky: “You poor little earthen pipkin. You want to swim down the stream with great copper kettles. All women are alike. Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having.”
I was quite sure I did not want to drift down the stream with copper kettles. I only wanted to be with Tom, to see England with him, to enjoy Dr. Johnson's haunts, to go to the “Cheddar Cheese” and the Strand, to Waterloo Bridge, and down the road the Romans built before England was England.
I wanted to see the world without the world seeing me. In my heart was no desire to be a copper kettle. But I had been cast into the stream, and down it I must go, like a little fungus holding to the biggest copper kettle I knew.
I told my husband this. It was the first time he had been really irritated with me. “Why do you worry about these things?” he protested. “You have a good head and a good education. You are the loveliest woman in England. Be your own natural self and the English will love you.” But I remembered another occasion when he had told me to be my own natural sweet self.
“How about what happened to Becky?” I asked.
Tom went into a rage. “Why do you insist on comparing yourself with that little ———!” The word he used was an ugly one. I did not speak to him again until after we had passed the government inspectors.
I shall never forget my first day in London, the old, quiet city where everybody seemed so comfortable and easy-going. There was no show, no pretense. The people in the shops and on the street bore the earmarks of thrift. I understood where New England got its spirit.
The first morning at the Alexandra Hotel, Tom fell naturally into the European habit of having coffee and fruit and a roll brought to his bed. I wanted to go down to the dining room. My husband said it was not done and I would be lonesome. The days of ranch life had taught me to get up with the chickens. But it was not done in London. The second morning the early sun was too much for me. I dressed, left the hotel, and walked for several hours before a perfect servant brought shining plates and marmalade, fruit and coffee to my big husky football player's bedside. I have lived many years in Europe, but I have never grown used to having breakfast brought to my room.
That second rainy morning Tom left me alone with the promise of being back for luncheon. I picked up a London morning paper and glanced at the personal column. I have read it every day since when I could get hold of the London Times. All of human nature and the ups and downs of man are there, from secondhand lace to the mortgaged jewels of broken-down nobility, from sporting games and tickets for sale to relatives wanted, and those mysterious, suggestive, unsigned messages from home or to home. I read the news of the war. We in America did not know there was a war. But Greece and Crete were at each other's throats, and Turkey was standing waiting to crowd the little ancient nation into Armenia or off the map. There was the Indian famine—We did not talk about it at home, but it had first place in the London paper. And the Queen's birthday,—it was to be celebrated by feeding the poor of East London and paying the debts of the hospitals. There was something so humane, so kindly, so civilized about it all! “I love England,” I said, and that first impression balanced the scale many a time later when I did not love her.
The third or fourth day brought an invitation to dine at a famous house on Grosvenor Square—with a duke!
I pestered my husband with questions. What should I wear? What should I talk about? He just laughed.
The paper had reported a “levee ordered by the queen”, describing the gowns and jewels worn by the ladies.
I had little jewelry—a diamond ring, which Tom gave me before we were married, a bracelet, two brooches, and a string of gold beads, which were fashionable in America. I put them all on with my best bib and tucker. When we were dressed, Tom gave me one look and said, “Why do you wear all that junk?” I took off one of the brooches and the string of gold beads.
When our carriage drew up to the house on Grosvenor Square, liveried servants stood at each side of the door, liveried servants guided us inside. There was a gold carpet, paintings of ladies and gentlemen in gorgeous attire, and murals and tapestries in the marble halls. But I quickly forgot all of this grandeur listening to the names of guests being called off as they entered the drawing-room: Mr. Gladstone and Mrs. Gladstone, Lord Rosebery and the Marquis of Salisbury, Mrs. Humphry Ward, looking fatter and older than I had expected, officers, colonels, viscounts, and ladies, and then Tom and Mary—but they were not called off that way. I wanted to meet Mr. Gladstone, and hoped I might even be near him at dinner; but I sat between a colonel and a young captain of the Scots Greys.
Mr. Gladstone was on the other side of the table. It was a huge table, more than five feet wide and very long. My husband was somewhere out of sight at the other end. Mr. Gladstone mentioned the fund being raised for the victims of the Paris Opera Comique fire. It is good form to be silent in the presence of death, especially when death is colossal, and the English never fail to follow good form. There was a sudden lull at our end of the table.
It was I who broke that silence. I was touched by the generosity of England, and said so. Since my arrival I had daily noted that England was giving to India, sending relief to Greece and Armenia, raising a fund for the fire sufferers, and celebrating the Queen's Jubilee by feeding the poor. I addressed my look and my admiring words to Mr. Gladstone.
Either my sincerity or the embarrassment he knew would follow my disregard of “the thing that is done” moved Mr. Gladstone's sympathy. He smiled across the table at me and answered, “I am so glad you see these good points of England.” It was about the most gracious thing that was ever done to me in my life. In England it is bad form to speak across the table. One speaks to one's neighbor on the right or to one's neighbor on the left; but the line across the table is foreign soil and must not be shouted across.
That night my husband said: “I forgot to tell you. They never talk across the table in England.” I chided him, and with some cause. I had soon discovered that in England, as in America, it was not enough to be “my own natural self.” But I came to love Mr. Gladstone. Long after that I told him the story of Mrs. Grant, who, when an awkward young man had broken one of her priceless Sevres after-dinner coffee cups, dropped hers on the floor to meet him on the same level. “Any woman who, to put any one at ease, will break a priceless Sevres cup is heroic,” I said. His answer, though flippant, was pleasant: “Any man who would not smile across the table at a lovely woman is a fool.”
Mr. Gladstone always wore a flower in his button-hole, a big, loose collar that never fitted, a floppy black necktie, and trousers that needed a valet's attention. He was the greatest combination of propriety and utter disregard of conventions I had ever seen.
The event next in importance to a presentation at court was a tea at which the tea planter Sir Thomas Lipton was one of the guests. He was not Sir Thomas then, but was very much in the limelight, having contributed twenty-five thousand pounds to the fund collected by the Princess of Wales to feed the poor of London in commemoration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
The Earl of Lathom, then the Lord Chamberlain, who looked like Santa Claus and smiled like Andrew Carnegie, was among the guests; so were Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. Since the night he had talked to me across the table I always felt that Mr. Gladstone was my best friend in England. He had a sense of humor, so I said: “Is there anything pointed in asking the tea king to a tea?” That amused Gladstone. He could not forgive Lipton parting his hair in the middle.
That night I repeated my joke to Tom. Instead of smiling, he said: “That's not the way to get on in England. It 's too Becky Sharpish.”
And then came the day of the queen's salon. Victoria did not often have audiences, the Prince of Wales or some other member of the royal family usually holding levees and receiving presentations in her name.
Tom had warned me that there were certain clothes to be worn at a presentation. I asked one of my American friends at the embassy, who directed me to a hairdresser—the most important thing, it seemed, being one's head. She told me also to wear full evening dress, with long white gloves, and to remove the glove of the right hand.
The hairdresser asked about my jewels. Remembering what Tom had said about “junk”, I said I would wear no jewels. She was horrified, I would have to wear some, she insisted, if only a necklace of pearls. She tactfully suggested that if my jewels had not arrived I could rent them from Mr. Somebody on the Strand. It was frequently done, she said, by foreigners.
My friend at the embassy was politely surprised that Tom's wife would think of renting real or imitation jewels. In the end I insisted upon going without jewels. I had the required plumes in my hair, and the veil that was correct form at court, and my lovely evening gown and pearl-embroidered slippers, which were to me like Cinderella's at the ball.
Before I left the hotel I asked Tom to look at me critically. I was still young—very young, very much in love, and unacquainted with the ways of the world, and so heaven came down into my heart when Tom took me into his arms and, kissing me, said: “There was never such a lovely queen.”
It was about three o'clock when we reached the Pimlico entrance. Guards were on duty, and men who looked like princes or very important personages in costume, white stockings, black pumps, buckles, breeches, and gay coats, stood at the door. Inside the hall a gold carpet stretched to the marble stairs. It was a wonderful place, and I wanted to stop and look. I was conscious of being a “rubber-neck.” I might never see another palace again.
We were guided up wonderful stairs and led into a sumptuous room, where, with the other guests, we waited for the arrival of the queen and the royal family. No one does anything or says anything at a salon. A “drawing-room” is a sacred rite in England. It is recorded on the first page of the news, taking precedence over wars, decisions of supreme courts, famines, and international controversies. Her Majesty receives. To the Englishman, to be presented at court is to be set up in England as class, to be worshiped by those who have not been in the presence of the queen, and to pay a little more to the butcher and milliner.
I should have loved that “drawing-room” if I could have avoided the presentation. It was an impressive picture—the queen with a face like a royal coin, a fine, generous forehead and beautiful nose, her intelligent and kindly eyes, her ample figure, her dignity come from long, long years of rule. Back of her the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, who in later years I found myself always comparing to little Mr. Carnegie, the Viscount Curzon with his royal look, and in the foreground Sir S. Ponsonby-Fane, in white silk stockings, pumps and buckles, with sword and gold lace, and high-collared swallow-tailed coat. I admired the queen's black moire dress, her headdress of priceless lace, her diamonds, her high-necked dress held together with more diamonds, and her black gloves, in striking contrast to our own. I was enjoying the picture.
Then my name was called.
I had been thinking such kindly things of England—Mr. Balfour fighting for general education; Mr. Gladstone struggling to make England push Turkey back and save Greece; all England raising money for the fire sufferers of Paris and the Indian famine. What a humanitarian race they were! I felt as pro-England as any of the satellites in that room, and almost as much awed. But back of it all was a natural United States be-natural-as-you-were-born impulse. Neither Back Bay Boston nor Tom's Philadelphia friends had been able to repress it. When my name was called and I stepped up, I made the little bow I had practised for hours the day before and that morning; and then, as I looked into the eyes of the queen, I held out my hand! It was the instinctive action of a free-born American.
I have realized in the years since what a real queen she was. Smiling, she extended her hand—but not to be touched. It was a little wave, a little imitation of my own impulsive outstretching to a friend; then her eyes went to the next person, and I was on my way, having been presented at court and done what “is not done” in England.
Tom's mission in England was important. He had friends, and there were distinguished people in England who regarded him and his family of sufficient value to “take us aboard.” They were most gracious and kindly. But Tom's eyes were not smiling.
That night my husband said some very frank things to me. His position, and even the credit of our country to some extent, depended upon our conduct. He did not say he was ashamed of me, and in my heart I do not think he was; but he regretted that I had not been trained in the little things upon which England put so much weight. He suggested my employing a social secretary.
“What I need, Tom,” I said, “is a teacher. You have told me these customs are not important. They are important. I need some one to teach them to me, and I propose to get a teacher.”
In the personal columns of the Times I had read this advertisement:
'A lady of aristocratic birth and social training
desires to be of service to a good-paying guest.'
I swallowed my pride and answered it. I was not her paying guest, but I employed this Scotch lady of aristocratic birth and social experience.
On the first day at luncheon, which we ate privately in my apartment, she said: “In England a knife is held as you hold a pen, the handle coming up above the thumb and between the thumb and first finger.” My sense of humor permitted me to ask, after trying it once, “What do you do when the meat is tough?” The Scotch aristocrat never smiled. “It is n't,” she answered.
I was humiliated and a little soul-sick before that luncheon ended. I had been told to break each bite of my bread; a lady never bites a piece of bread. I had been told to use a knife to separate my fish, when I had learned, oh, so carefully, in America to eat fish with a fork and a piece of bread. I might have laughed about it all had not so much been at stake, even Tom's respect.
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