Once I asked her about dancing. I had grown jealous watching her: she was picked out by the best dancers at every party and the sensuous grace of her movements attracted universal admiration. Not that she exaggerated the sensuous abandonment; on the contrary, it was only indicated now and then.
As a dancer she reminded me irresistibly of Kate Vaughan, whom I always thought incomparable, the most graceful dancer I ever saw on any stage.
Laura moved with the same easy exquisite rhythm, a poem in motion. But she denied always that the dance excited her sensually. "It's the music I love," she would say, "the rhythm, the swaying harmony of the steps. It's as near intoxication as sense-indulgence."
"But again and again his leg was between yours," I insisted. "You must have felt the thrill." She shrugged her shoulders and would not reply. Again I began. "You know that even your little breasts are very sensitive; as soon as my lips touch them the nipples stand out firm and glowing red and your sex is still quicker to respond. You must feel the man's figure against your most sensitive part. I believe that now and again you take care his figure should touch you: that adds the inimitable thrill now and then to your grace of movement."
At first she seemed to hesitate, then she said thoughtfully, "That seems to me the great difference between the man and the woman in the way of love.
From what you say, it is clear that touching a woman's legs or feeling her breast would excite you, even if you didn't care for her, perhaps even if you disliked her; but such a contact doesn't excite a woman in the least, unless she loves the man. And if she loves him as soon as he comes towards her, she's thrilled; when he puts his arms round her, she's shaken with emotion! With us women it's all a question of love; with you men, sensuality takes the place of love and often leads you to cheat yourselves and us."
"That may indeed be the truth," I replied. "In any case, it's the deepest insight I've heard on the matter and I'm infinitely obliged to you for it. Love then intensifies your sensations, whereas it is often the keenness of our sensations that intensifies our love."
"You men, then," she summed up, "have surely the lower and more material nature."
And in my heart I had to admit that she was right.
Whenever we had been long together, her attraction for me was so overpowering that it always excited suspicion in me. I don't know why; I state the fact: I was never sure of her love.
Verses of the old German folksong often came into my mind:
Sie hat zwei Auglein, die sind braun
Heut du Dich!
Sie warden dich uberzwerch anschaun
Heut du Dich! Heut du Dich!
Vertrau ihr nicht, sie narret Dich.
Sie hat ein licht goldfarbenes
Haar Heut du Dich!
Und was sie red't das ich nicht wahr,
Heut du Dich! Heut du Dich!
Vertrau ihr nicht, sie narret Dich! (Her beauty's full of contrasts, hazel eyes and golden hair and lovely body:
Don't trust her! She's fooling you!)
357
CHAPTER XIII
It is difficult to talk of English customs in the last quarter of the nineteenth century without comparing them with the morals and modes of life of their ancestors in the last quarter of the eighteenth. In his history of the Early Life of Fox, Sir George Trevelyan paints an astonishing picture of the immoralities of the earlier aristocratic regime. Not only were the leaders of society and parliamentary governors corrupt in a pecuniary sense; not only did they drink to such excess that they were old at forty-five and permanently invalid with gout before middle-age: they gambled like madmen and some sought deliberately to turn their young sons into finished rakes.
I cannot help thinking that it was the hurricane of the French revolution that cleared the air and brought men back to an observance of such laws of morals as are also rules of health. The reform is often attributed to the influence of Queen Victoria, but from 1875 on I never could find the slightest indication or trace of her influence for good. The most striking improvement in aristocratic morality in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was brought about by the loose living Edward, Prince of Wales. Before he and his "Smart Set" came to power in London, it was still usual at dinner parties to allow the ladies to leave the table and go to the drawing-room to gossip while the men drew together and consumed a bottle or two of claret each. It was no longer the custom to get drunk, but to get half-seas over was still fairly usual; and if the ladies disappeared at nine or nine-thirty, it was customary for the men to sit drinking till ten-thirty or eleven. One result was that even men in their thirties knew a good deal about the qualities of fine wine.
It used to be said, and with some truth, that it was English, or rather London, taste that established the prices of the finer vintages of Bordeaux. There can be no doubt at all that it was English taste that taught men and women everywhere to prefer natural Champagne (brut or nature) to the sweetened and brandied varieties preferred all over the continent, and especially in France. French gourmets knew that the firm of Veuve Clicquot had almost a monopoly of Buzet, the finest natural white wine with which to make champagne, but they submitted to having this product sweetened and brandied till it could only be drunk in small quantities, towards the end of dinner with the sweets.
In the seventies the Prince of Wales came to be the acknowledged leader of the "Smart Set." Fortunately for England, he preferred the continental habit of coffee after dinner, black coffee enjoyed with the cigarette. No one who smokes can taste the bouquet of fine claret, and so the cigarette and coffee banished the habit of drinking heavily after dinner.
The Prince too preferred champagne to claret and so the taste in champagne grew keener; and soon the natural wine superseded the doctored French varieties. In the course of a single decade it became the habit in London to join the ladies after having drunk a glass or two of pure champagne during the dinner and a cup of coffee afterwards while smoking a cigarette.
Sobriety became the custom and now a man who drinks to excess would soon find it impossible to discover a house where he would be tolerated. The cigarette, introduced by the Prince of Wales, made London society sober.
In an aristocratic society good customs as well as bad sink down in everwidening circles like water poured on sand. Gentlemen in England no longer drink to excess and now it is difficult to find a man anywhere who could tell you the year of a great claret or port, whereas in the mid-Victorian era, nine men about town out of ten could have made a fair guess at any known vintage.
The hospitality of the English gentry is deservedly famous; there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, nothing to be compared to it. Of course I make allowances for the fact that young men are especially wanted at dinners because married people are more difficult to pair off. Besides, the custom of primogeniture that gives everything to the eldest son and drives the younger boys to India or the colonies puts the young men in London at a premium. The fact remains that after my first month as editor of the Evening News, I did not dine in my own house half a dozen times in the year, and I had to reject more invitations than I could accept. Nothing was expected of the young man in return: provided he was properly introduced and had decent manners and was now and then amusing or able to tell a good story, he was a persona grata everywhere. The kindness was genuine and general and deserves description.
Almost at the beginning of my work in London and when I only knew a few people of position such as Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Jeune, I received an invitation to dinner almost a month ahead from a General Dickson who, I soon found out, was well-known in London as a prominent member of the Four-in-Hand Club. In the House of Commons I happened to mention him to Agg Gardner then as now, I believe, the Member for Cheltenham, and he exclaimed, "Dickson! I should think I did know him. One of the best, a rare old boy; gives a very good dinner and usually invites only one lady to half a dozen men. Says that a pretty woman is needed to keep the talk up to a high standard. Of course, you'll go."