London season before you call her an old maid. She’ll find somebody she likes there soon enough, you can be quite sure.”
“I only wish I could think it, but I have a strong feeling she won’t, and that, what’s more, they won’t like her,” said Lady Montdore. “She has no come-hither in her eye. Oh, it is really too bad. She leaves the light on in her bathroom night after night too, I see it shining out.…”
Lady Montdore was very mean about such small things as electric light.
Chapter 9
A S HER MOTHER had predicted, summer came and went without any change in Polly’s circumstances. The London season duly opened with a ball at Montdore House which cost £2000 or so Lady Montdore told everybody, and was certainly very brilliant. Polly wore a white-satin dress with pink roses at the bosom and a pink lining to the sash (touches of pink, as the
Tatler
said) chosen in Paris for her by Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett and brought over in the bag by some South American diplomat, a friend of Lady Montdore’s, to save duty, a proceeding of which Lord Montdore knew nothing and which would have perfectly horrified him had he known. Enhanced by this dress, and by a little make-up, Polly’s beauty was greatly remarked upon, especially by those of a former generation, who were all saying that since Lady Helen Vincent, since Lily Langtry, since the Wyndham sisters (according to taste), nothing so perfect had been seen in London. Her own contemporaries, however, were not so greatly excited by her. They admitted her beauty but said that she was dull, too large. What they really admired were the little skinny goggling copies of Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett which abounded that season. The many dislikers of Lady Montdore said that she kept Polly too much in the background,and this was not fair because, although it is true to say that Lady Montdore automatically filled the foreground of any picture in which she figured, she was only too anxious to push Polly in front of her, like a hostage, and it was not her fault if she was forever slipping back again.
On the occasion of this ball many of the royalties in Lady Montdore’s bedroom had stepped from their silver frames and come to life, dustier and less glamorous, poor dears, when seen in all their dimensions; the huge reception rooms at Montdore House were scattered with them and the words Sir or Ma’am could be heard on every hand. The Ma’ams were really quite pathetic—you would almost say hungry-looking—so old, in such sad and crumpled clothes, while there were some blue-chinned Sirs of dreadfully foreign aspect. I particularly remember one of them because I was told that he was wanted by the police in France and not much wanted anywhere else, especially not, it seemed, in his native land where his cousin, the King, was daily expecting the crown to be blown off his head by a puff of east wind. This Prince smelt strongly, but not deliciously, of camellias and had a
fond de teint
of brilliant sunburn.
“I only ask him for the sake of dear old Princess Irene,” Lady Montdore would explain, if people raised their eyebrows at seeing him in such a very respectable house. “I never shall forget what an angel she was to Montdore and me when we were touring the Balkans (one doesn’t forget these things). I know people do say he’s a daisy, whatever that may be, but if you listen to what everybody says about everybody, you’ll end by never having anybody, and, besides, half these rumours are put about by anarchists, I’m positive.”
Lady Montdore loved anybody royal. It was a genuine emotion, quite disinterested, since she loved them as much in exile as in power, and the act of curtseying was the consummation of this love. Her curtseys, owing to the solid quality of her frame, did not recall the graceful movement of wheat before the wind. She scrambled down like a camel, rising again backside foremost, like a cow, astrange performance, painful, it might be supposed, to the
“I only wish I could think it, but I have a strong feeling she won’t, and that, what’s more, they won’t like her,” said Lady Montdore. “She has no come-hither in her eye. Oh, it is really too bad. She leaves the light on in her bathroom night after night too, I see it shining out.…”
Lady Montdore was very mean about such small things as electric light.
Chapter 9
A S HER MOTHER had predicted, summer came and went without any change in Polly’s circumstances. The London season duly opened with a ball at Montdore House which cost £2000 or so Lady Montdore told everybody, and was certainly very brilliant. Polly wore a white-satin dress with pink roses at the bosom and a pink lining to the sash (touches of pink, as the
Tatler
said) chosen in Paris for her by Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett and brought over in the bag by some South American diplomat, a friend of Lady Montdore’s, to save duty, a proceeding of which Lord Montdore knew nothing and which would have perfectly horrified him had he known. Enhanced by this dress, and by a little make-up, Polly’s beauty was greatly remarked upon, especially by those of a former generation, who were all saying that since Lady Helen Vincent, since Lily Langtry, since the Wyndham sisters (according to taste), nothing so perfect had been seen in London. Her own contemporaries, however, were not so greatly excited by her. They admitted her beauty but said that she was dull, too large. What they really admired were the little skinny goggling copies of Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett which abounded that season. The many dislikers of Lady Montdore said that she kept Polly too much in the background,and this was not fair because, although it is true to say that Lady Montdore automatically filled the foreground of any picture in which she figured, she was only too anxious to push Polly in front of her, like a hostage, and it was not her fault if she was forever slipping back again.
On the occasion of this ball many of the royalties in Lady Montdore’s bedroom had stepped from their silver frames and come to life, dustier and less glamorous, poor dears, when seen in all their dimensions; the huge reception rooms at Montdore House were scattered with them and the words Sir or Ma’am could be heard on every hand. The Ma’ams were really quite pathetic—you would almost say hungry-looking—so old, in such sad and crumpled clothes, while there were some blue-chinned Sirs of dreadfully foreign aspect. I particularly remember one of them because I was told that he was wanted by the police in France and not much wanted anywhere else, especially not, it seemed, in his native land where his cousin, the King, was daily expecting the crown to be blown off his head by a puff of east wind. This Prince smelt strongly, but not deliciously, of camellias and had a
fond de teint
of brilliant sunburn.
“I only ask him for the sake of dear old Princess Irene,” Lady Montdore would explain, if people raised their eyebrows at seeing him in such a very respectable house. “I never shall forget what an angel she was to Montdore and me when we were touring the Balkans (one doesn’t forget these things). I know people do say he’s a daisy, whatever that may be, but if you listen to what everybody says about everybody, you’ll end by never having anybody, and, besides, half these rumours are put about by anarchists, I’m positive.”
Lady Montdore loved anybody royal. It was a genuine emotion, quite disinterested, since she loved them as much in exile as in power, and the act of curtseying was the consummation of this love. Her curtseys, owing to the solid quality of her frame, did not recall the graceful movement of wheat before the wind. She scrambled down like a camel, rising again backside foremost, like a cow, astrange performance, painful, it might be supposed, to the
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