MR. DEBENHAM’S mind was an odd mixture of amazement at his interview with the great man and of astonishment at the company in which he found himself.
The chair was unoccupied, the chairman being Pal Ho Pi, a Chinaman who, in the fourteenth century before Christ, had invented the art of enamelling on copper. But a purple and green silk dressing-gown was hung over the back of the vacant chair, and to this Mr. Macpherson, as perpetual vice-chairman of the club, addressed his remarks.; He styled the garment: Great Grand Chairman.
The room itself was rather low. It was T-shaped, allowing for a high table and two lower ones. The waiters were dirtier than the guests; the soup was smoked, but the hors d’œuvres were quite possible, and Mr. Debenham, seated next Mr. Whail, who was himself next the vacant chair, ate so much of the filets d’hareng that for the rest of the evening he felt positively unwell, this colouring his views of the remaining guests.
He had never been at such a disgusting exhibition; he had never heard such voluble talk in his life. He had never taken much stock of artistic people — you did not meet them at Cambridge, or at the tables of provision merchants, or in the House of Commons much, and he had always avoided them. And it seemed to him positively indecent that people should really enjoy themselves as these seemed to be doing.
There were men who looked like weasels and others like the tops of bass brooms; there were women who looked like eels with green dresses falling off their shoulders and others who resembled over-ripe pears. There were other individuals who appeared unreasonably smart. It could not even be said that he did not know anybody there. There were two men — the one grey and rather bald, the other, fat, blonde, gold-spectacled, and wearing an immense white waistcoat because he was going on somewhere.
These two he had certainly met — they might, of course, be gentlemen’s servants, he didn’t know. And then, with a dismayed feeling, he made out Mrs. Bleischroeder, the wife of the senior member for Ealing. She was there with her husband’s secretary, a dark, thin young man, only known as Harry.
This dissatisfied Mr. Debenham exceedingly. Mrs. Bleischroeder was the most determined climber of Mr. Debenham’s acquaintance. She had worried him so much in his official capacity; he seemed to know her so well as to be absolutely convinced. If she was sitting amongst these absurd and disagreeable people it was because these absurd and disagreeable people were worth cultivating.
This was appalling! This was very wearisome to Mr. Debenham. He knew he was not a very clever fellow, he knew he had a great deal to learn, and he knew he had to do his duty. As a junior whip it was his duty to make the party popular wherever it could be made popular by personal attentions and politeness. That was his job. He had to cultivate everybody who was worth cultivation, but he had never contemplated the necessity of being polite to the intellectuals.
He detested the intellectuals because they sneered so. At Cambridge you sneered, too. It was the tone of the place — a lofty aloofness. But there were, even at that, certain things — the moral, nobler aspects, the manly gentlemanliness, the non-emotional English novelists, like Surtees — that you spared. But these people! He had always thought that they ought not to be allowed to exist, at any rate outside Oxford, where they sometimes had crazes for chaps like Swinburne.
He thought these people were even worse than Jews; he did not personally object to Jews, though there were certainly getting to be a deuced lot of them. But they could be trusted to turn on a good cigar and to go into whichever lobby they belonged to without any trouble whatever.
Hitherto Mr. Debenham had had to consider and to conciliate the society that hung round the first class offices — the Foreign Office, and the rest. This was because those chaps mostly belonged in private to the opposition and grew sulky if you did not pet them. He had had to pet working men, too; to pat their wives on the back and see that they got good places in the ladies’ galleries. Tradesmen of importance in one constituency or another he had to consider, and he had had, of course, to lick the very boots of journalists. In that way, from time to time, he had got mentioned in the Lobby Notes of the various periodicals supporting the Government as the “efficient,” the “helpful,” or even the “highly popular and genial,” fourth Junior Whip. He did not want those tributes for his private comfort, but he had to earn them just for the sake of the party. The first two styles meant about three whiskies; the last implied at least champagne. That was a bore, but there it was.
But it seemed to him at that moment that, when it came to kowtowing to these people, it was almost as far as he could go. Yet Mrs. Bleischroeder was there.
He became possessed with a sudden desire to know who all these people were. And, putting on his especial, junior whip’s professional smile, Mr. Debenham asked his next door neighbour, without looking at him:
“Who are all these people?”
And then he started. His next door neighbour was a little yellow man, with narrow, expressionless eyes, in a black suit; his black, thick hair and moustaches seemed to be kept stiffly in their places with boot polish.
This gentleman said:
“I do not know. I am, like honourable self, an honoured guest of the evening without merit.”
Mr. Debenham considered, from this exhibition of suspicion, that the Siamese must be in the Diplomatic service of his country. Yet it was odd that the F. O. had not asked him to take charge of the Siamese as well as the Yankee. But the Oriental continued gravely: “lam myself a humble artist of execrable technique, not like yourself a mighty genius, probably, of the pen, which is more mighty than the sword.” He continued that he came to this country in order to draw execrable pictures of all Society, from the high brow to the lowest on Bank Holiday. If, politely, Mr. Debenham would lend him his honourable ears, he would attempt to recount the catalogue of the other honourables.
It seemed to Mr. Debenham that nearly everybody present was a translator. There was Miss Dugong, a very mild and quiet old lady, who translated from the Persian; there was Mr. Hopple, who interpreted French lithographs for the honourable British public. Mr. Debenham did not know what the Siamese gentleman meant by this, and it did not seem to matter much. Mr. Hopple had very long, greenish hair and practically no teeth. The Hon. Roden Cam, who looked clean enough, translated Chinese enigmas. Miss Marchant, a handsome, dark girl, wore a white turban over her black hair, and a dress of scarlet and green Paisley shawls. She had spent six months among the Vlachs and, after dinner, she was going to sit cross-legged upon the table and intone some of the love songs of that people. Next her sat Mr. Lidgate, the only person who understood Walloon. He was going to make some very spirited translations, though as yet he had not begun. The fat, blonde man, whose face Mr. Debenham had known, was Keddle, the publisher. He was being almost torn open — as to his upper garments — by Miss Honor Sima Charpoy, on the one side, and, on the other, by Miss Childy. Miss Childy wrote books about the Poor Law and its incidence, and was known to have spoken to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a quarter of an hour. Miss Charpoy’s poems, according to the Siamese, ought certainly to be in their fifty-fourth edition. They were written against female suffrage, but no one had been found to publish them. Beyond Miss Charpoy the faces grew rather dim on account of the distance and the blur of the lights, but Mr. Debenham was assured that every person there was someone of immense celebrity and importance. He thought impatiently that this was only the Oriental’s politeness, but he had to remind himself that in these days of the four-hundred-pounder in the House of Commons almost anybody might become almost anything. And at that moment the Siamese said:
“Jolly influential crowd! So am I credibly informed by Hon. Mrs. Bleischroeder. Hon. Mrs. Bleischroeder proclaims that this crowd not only presents decorative appearance in gilded saloons, and impeggably impresses constituents, what you call voters, of Hon. husband’s suburb, but will talk about you day and night if you agreeably fill their bellies with continental comestibles and leave their volumes lying on marble tables.”
Mr. Debenham fell into gloomy reflections over a green, white and pink ice that was melting into a frilled paper bearing two black finger-marks. That, he said to himself, was what Mrs. Bleischroeder was up to. That was, perhaps, what the new tendencies came to, with the four-hundred-pounders and all. The husband of Mrs. Bleischroeder undoubtedly had a reputation for knowledge of finance such as was possessed by no other private member. Yet there were at least a dozen men who were quite as good as he, but never got listened to. That had always struck Mr. Debenham as odd.
Mr. Bleischroeder was quite unreasonably unpresentable, even for the House of Commons. He wore his hat grotesquely, but not at all jauntily, on the back of his head; his waistcoat was always decorated with the remains of his last meal, and to be addressed by him at all close quarters was like being confronted by a small fountain. Moreover, his German accent was so extraordinarily strong that once that rude man, Mr. de Soissons, had interrupted one of Mr. Bleischroeder’s speeches to ask the Speaker whether the hon. member was in order in addressing the House in an unknown oriental dialect.
Yet Mr. Debenham knew very well that, when he made up his lists of members who were to be allowed to catch the Speaker’s eye on any debate whatsoever, he might ruthlessly cross out the names of the largest ship-owner, or the largest banker, or the director of the largest railway in the empire, but that a great deal more care had to be exercised over the case of the senior member for Ealing. A sort of awe seemed to attach to his name. Anybody who happened to be about would say:
“Oh, you mustn’t chop him out! He’s one of the intellectual strong men of the day.”
At Mr. Debenham’s elbow the voice of the Siamese was going on, slowly, clearly, with foreign intonations like the voice of fate.
“That is,” he was saying, “so Hon. Mrs. Bleischroeder was asseverating, the straight tip! This she told me as a man making desirous a splendacious career in this portion of the Western hemisphere.”
And suddenly there came into his head a picture of that lady as he had often seen her on the Terrace, carting about little parties of odd-looking people.
The grubby intellectuals! He detested them, for they were, in a sense, tyrants. They came along and told you that a certain book which was dull, repulsive, or dirty was the living masterpiece of the world. You didn’t have to read the beastly thing, but at the same time you just had to shut your mouth about any kind of book. They made you timid. And as it was with books, so it was with pictures, with musical comedy, with politics, with the Poor Law — when she had fed them well, Mrs. Bleischroeder had simply trotted gangs of them down to the Terrace of the House of Commons. And they had just clawed on to the buttonholes of any member that came along, and howled to him that Mr. Bleischroeder was the greatest financial intellect of the age. And the poor members were blackmailed and tyrannised into believing this, so that not only was Mr. Bleischroeder bound to be in the Speaker’s list; he had to be listened to with respect by the tyrannised members. Of course he had some ability.
“It’s a beautiful plant!” Mr. Debenham found himself saying aloud.
The Siamese gentleman, thinking that he referred to a sad looking aspidestra decorated with paper roses, which stood on the cloth in front of the chairman’s vacant chair, remarked:
“Yes, indeed, it is remarkable at what a standard the arts have arrived in this honourable country.”
“Now you really think that?” Mr. Debenham asked. “That’s your view as an independent observer?” The Siamese began a panegyric of English rock gardens, mentioning the name of several firms of seedsmen, and of one or two gardens in the county of Surrey. And, since Mr. Debenham could not in the least understand why he had taken this sudden start, he was really rather relieved when Mr. Cluny Macpherson rapped on the table. He stood up and announced that he was about to deliver his vice-presidential address on the question: “Is life worth living unwashed?”
There were digressions in Mr. Macpherson’s speech that, in Mr. Debenham’s opinion, would have done credit to any minister who was trying to talk out a subject; there was a gay spirit, a childlike imbecility. There were occasional passages of indelicacy. That, of course, is the salt of life, but you cannot, as a rule, get it into a speech for fear of offending susceptibilities. Mr. Macpherson, however, without doubt, knew his audience.
“There was a chap called Michelangelo,” Mr. Macpherson began his peroration. “I daresay some of you know his name.” At this there was some laughter, and Mr. Debenham could not help feeling his disgust rising. Mr. Macpherson’s speech had excited in his inexperienced mind a feeling almost of nausea — it was the irresponsible tone acting on the Cambridge moral sense that was never very long dormant in the mind of the junior whip.
“This fellow Michelangelo,” Cluny was continuing, “at least, I think it was Michelangelo — because, of course, it may have been Cino da Pistoia or Pico della Mirandola — but I think it was Michelangelo, because I remember reading it in a book bound in buckram in two volumes. Yes, it was Symonds’ life of Michelangelo. Well, this chap lived to be 97, or 102, or something, and he never had his boots off during the last fifteen years of his life. They were soled and heeled on him. And he left in his will his direction to his nephew never to wash himself, but to rub himself — nunca se lavare ma se stroppare. And he was a jolly old boy, and his praises are sung in all lands where soap is known, and that’s all I’ve got to say about whether life is worth living unwashed.”
He called then upon his friend, the Hon. Hiram S. Whail, who, Cluny said, was a tremendous fellow in his own land. He had invented the machine for washing banknotes and putting them into circulation again.
Mr. Whail was an American of the old style, with rugged features and a huge white beard. He took oratory very seriously, and he took this subject with a deep earnestness. He waved his arms like a windmill and overwhelmed that club with a panegyric of the sons of Old Glory — and of the daughters, too. There was great applause when he spoke of these ladies as being as pure as their native streams, cold as their native rocks, and chaste as the blue skies that spread over Maine. He pointed out that every house in Boston of any size had sixteen bathrooms, and an air of bewilderment overspread his hearers. They could not understand whether this was a joke, a fairy story, or an insult. He then thrust his hands into the tail pockets of his frock coat, drew out a copy of the journal called Tit-Bits, read three jokes which had no bearing on anything at all, told a story about a nigger clergyman stealing chickens, and then began to shout a violent peroration as to the virility, sanity and fearlessness of American manhood and American ideals.
This was normal American oratory, and it did a great deal to restore Mr. Debenham to a good temper. He had heard the exact twin of that speech many times at the American Ambassador’s, when he had attended Fourth of July banquets. It seemed to him to be normal, usual and proper to a Foreign Office atmosphere. It was eccentric, but that was Diplomatic America.
But Mr. Macpherson restored him to a furious state. That gentleman immediately approached him, pawed his shoulders and whispered in his ears. Debenham realised that the poet was begging him to make a speech. Cluny indicated two foreign ladies, whom Mr. Debenham took for inferior street-walkers, and assured him that the Princess Odintsov and the Countess Paramatti were really yearning to have a taste of his famous Parliamentary manner. He just had to do it, but he was so really insane with rage — at the thought that these people were what was the matter with the country, at the thought that it was they who had the power to push fellows like Bleischroeder — that he determined to insult them all so grossly that they could not miss noticing it.
Mr. Debenham had just one talent, that of mimicry, and he made them a speech that was the exact counterpart of one that might have been made by Lord Hugo Sheffield, who was the buffoon provided by the Tory Benches for the relief of the House. He said that there was a great deal of tosh — Haw! — about the Englishman’s tub — Haw, haw! — As a matter of fact — Haw, haw, haw! — he did not suppose there were 20,000 persons — people of their own class of life — Haw, haw, haw, haw! — (And he could feel that the odious people round him had a sensible thrill of satisfaction at the suggestion that he included them in his class of life) — who took a bath more than once a week. There might be another 100,000 who took one once a month, and an additional 100,000 who did it more or less accidentally once a year. Say a quarter of a million out of a population of forty-eight millions. In the town of A — Mr. Debenham said that he had once had occasion to make researches. He wanted some plumbing done, so he heard the details from the plumber. In the whole of that city, containing 30,000 inhabitants, there were only fourteen baths, and the public ones, which had been opened six years before, had been converted into a Corn Exchange because nobody visited them.
Nevertheless, Mr. Debenham began his peroration, we were the great, proud and noble empire that the members of the Enamel Club knew themselves to be — an empire where freedom from prejudice and noble intellect flourished — as he felt sure when he gazed upon them — in such a way as it had never done probably since the fabulous Augustan Age. And were they to be told that the victories of peace had been gained in the British bath tub? Perish the thought! Just as the victories of Wellington were gained in the playing grounds of Eton, so the moral, intellectual and artistic ascendency of these Islands — and his eminent friend, Mr. Kakimono Hiroshige had just, sitting at his side, assured him that the arts were flourishing in this country in a rare and refreshing state — the victories of British intellect were gained, he was certain, in the festive halls, not of the bath, but of the Enamel Club!
There was true applause when Mr. Debenham sat down, and many of the members ran from their seats to shake him by the hands. This disgusted Mr. Debenham to just the breaking point. But Mr. Macpherson was standing up and exclaiming at the top of his shrill voice:
“Sit down, all of you. Especially you, Augusta. I’ve got an enormous announcement to make to you. Wealth is going to be poured into all your pockets. I’ve got hold of a new millionaire. If you don’t sit down, Augusta, I certainly shan’t even pretend I’m going to marry you. Sit down all of you. Now listen!”
A dead silence had fallen on the room, and even Mr. Debenham was conscious, through his annoyance, of the wish that he had got hold of the millionaire — to fill the vacated seat at East Byefleet in North Kent. The cotton merchant, that was all they had to fill the gap, was too egregious a fool and always snuffled. At any rate there was one comfort, and that was that the other side had no candidate either.
“There’s a chap called Rothweil,” Mr. Macpherson went on. “At least his name is Rothweil, but he calls himself Fleight, which is a silly sort of thing to do — only, perhaps, he wanted to live incognito!” Well, they all knew the name Rothweil’s Soap. That was what made it particularly appropriate that it should be on that particular evening that he made the announcement. The point was that here was a perfectly virgin fortune. The chap hadn’t gambled and hadn’t drunk, and hardly smoked at all. It was a perfectly virgin fortune for all those chaps, and Mr. Macpherson had this man in his pocket. Wasn’t it glorious? Wasn’t it fun?
Wouldn’t they all of them have to be nice to Mr. Macpherson now? And they were not to believe Augusta Macphail when she said that it was she that had him, because it was not! The man who was going to be Rothweil’s bear-leader was old sanguinary Blood.
At the mention of this name Mr. Debenham became more alert; he sat up in his chair. He had met Mr. Blood several times — at his father’s and in country houses. He had even approached Mr. Blood, but with little success, to try to get him to do something for the party. They would have been only too glad if Mr. Blood would have stood for Corbury — or rather for Byefleet itself — for Corbury, although it was not actually in the division, was within three miles of the chief polling town. Mr. Macpherson repeated:
“The man who’s going to be his bear-leader is old Blood, and if he’s sweet on anybody it’s Wilhelmina, not Augusta. And a good job, too, because I’m sure we all prefer Wilhelmina.”
Mr. Debenham got out of his chair and sat himself down again on the chairman’s dressing gown.
“I say,” he whispered to Mr. Macpherson, “is your friend going in for politics?”
“That’s just what he is going in for!” Mr. Macpherson exclaimed. “He’s starting a new magazine, a new daily paper, and God knows what, just in order to get himself political influence. I tell you there will be millions of money going.” Mr. Debenham rose straight from his chair and went out of the place. He was a member of the club in which Mr. Blood very frequently spent his evenings.