differences between extravagances and necessities, they were all aware that the Eckfords didn’t have to make such distinctions.
This must have made it all the harder for Ernie to ask Andrew Eckford for help. When Andrew wrote out checks to Lilla, Ernie must certainly have been grateful. But admitting to a successful businessman like Andrew Eckford that he couldn’t cope financially would have knocked a huge dent in his soldierly pride. The straightforward option—especially now that Lilla had her family in England—was to stick to his plan to go to India alone.
Money wasn’t the only gulf between the two families. Lilla was already well acquainted with the sharp contrast between the Eckfords’ love of luxury and the Howells’ almost spartan lifestyle. For Alice, this would have come as a shock. She may have intended the display in the house in Bedford to bring the two families closer together, but instead, it seemed to accentuate their differences.
The Eckfords’ house in Bedford was everything that the house in Kensington Gardens Square was not. Number 5 Kensington Gardens Square was an externally elegant, white-stucco terraced house containing a smattering of functional furniture. Number 14 Lansdowne Road, Bedford, was, wrote Ernie’s sister Laura after she had driven over from Cambridge to see the Eckfords, “not much to look at on the outside, but most comfortable inside.” To some extent, Laura was impressed. “[The house is] beautifully furnished. The drawing room is a perfect museum of Chinese and Japanese china, embroidery, carved work, etc.”
But this attention to visual detail heralded—as Laura might have expected—a lack of the intellectual interests that the Howells cared so much about. The Eckfords’ conversation, she nonetheless wrote, was “not particularly cultivated.” Alice Eckford in particular she found “suburban” and “full of a fussy sort of kindness which is rather distracting.” “She simply fazes me out,” continued Laura. “She has discovered the secret of perpetual motion and has in addition an unending flow of small talk. I think there is nothing as tiring as having to talk for a whole day, especially the make up kind of talk one has to keep up with a person with whom one has not really much in common.”
Poor Alice. She was trying so hard to make life easier for Lilla by being friendly and showing that her family was too rich to be ignored. Really, she would have done better if she had suggested that the Eckfords were impoverished artists with grand connections. If she had toned down the decoration, focused on her love of singing, and chatted less, maybe the Howells would have warmed to her.
Lilla’s baby was due at the end of August. By the beginning of July, she would already have felt the size of a house and been torn between a longing to be rid of the huge weight she was carrying and a growing fear of the pain that lay ahead in what was euphemistically referred to by the Howells as her “event.” The question arose as to where she should give birth and stay for her confinement afterward. The convention then was that, after giving birth, a woman should “lie in”—either stay in bed or take it very easy indeed—for six weeks.
Deeply relieved that some of her family was with her in England— even if it made her twin’s absence all the more marked—Lilla assumed that she would go to her mother in Bedford for the birth and started organizing herself to do so. But when the Howells caught wind of this, they were aghast. Lilla was now a Howell, they pointed out, as the baby she was having would be, too. She should therefore be with her husband’s family for her “troubles.” Perhaps Ernie’s family did not quite trust Lilla’s “suburban” mother to do things in the proper way or held some suspicion that she might have picked up unorthodox childbearing practices in China. In any case, they professed amazement that Lilla could have been foolish
This must have made it all the harder for Ernie to ask Andrew Eckford for help. When Andrew wrote out checks to Lilla, Ernie must certainly have been grateful. But admitting to a successful businessman like Andrew Eckford that he couldn’t cope financially would have knocked a huge dent in his soldierly pride. The straightforward option—especially now that Lilla had her family in England—was to stick to his plan to go to India alone.
Money wasn’t the only gulf between the two families. Lilla was already well acquainted with the sharp contrast between the Eckfords’ love of luxury and the Howells’ almost spartan lifestyle. For Alice, this would have come as a shock. She may have intended the display in the house in Bedford to bring the two families closer together, but instead, it seemed to accentuate their differences.
The Eckfords’ house in Bedford was everything that the house in Kensington Gardens Square was not. Number 5 Kensington Gardens Square was an externally elegant, white-stucco terraced house containing a smattering of functional furniture. Number 14 Lansdowne Road, Bedford, was, wrote Ernie’s sister Laura after she had driven over from Cambridge to see the Eckfords, “not much to look at on the outside, but most comfortable inside.” To some extent, Laura was impressed. “[The house is] beautifully furnished. The drawing room is a perfect museum of Chinese and Japanese china, embroidery, carved work, etc.”
But this attention to visual detail heralded—as Laura might have expected—a lack of the intellectual interests that the Howells cared so much about. The Eckfords’ conversation, she nonetheless wrote, was “not particularly cultivated.” Alice Eckford in particular she found “suburban” and “full of a fussy sort of kindness which is rather distracting.” “She simply fazes me out,” continued Laura. “She has discovered the secret of perpetual motion and has in addition an unending flow of small talk. I think there is nothing as tiring as having to talk for a whole day, especially the make up kind of talk one has to keep up with a person with whom one has not really much in common.”
Poor Alice. She was trying so hard to make life easier for Lilla by being friendly and showing that her family was too rich to be ignored. Really, she would have done better if she had suggested that the Eckfords were impoverished artists with grand connections. If she had toned down the decoration, focused on her love of singing, and chatted less, maybe the Howells would have warmed to her.
Lilla’s baby was due at the end of August. By the beginning of July, she would already have felt the size of a house and been torn between a longing to be rid of the huge weight she was carrying and a growing fear of the pain that lay ahead in what was euphemistically referred to by the Howells as her “event.” The question arose as to where she should give birth and stay for her confinement afterward. The convention then was that, after giving birth, a woman should “lie in”—either stay in bed or take it very easy indeed—for six weeks.
Deeply relieved that some of her family was with her in England— even if it made her twin’s absence all the more marked—Lilla assumed that she would go to her mother in Bedford for the birth and started organizing herself to do so. But when the Howells caught wind of this, they were aghast. Lilla was now a Howell, they pointed out, as the baby she was having would be, too. She should therefore be with her husband’s family for her “troubles.” Perhaps Ernie’s family did not quite trust Lilla’s “suburban” mother to do things in the proper way or held some suspicion that she might have picked up unorthodox childbearing practices in China. In any case, they professed amazement that Lilla could have been foolish
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