Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf [non fiction books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Virginia Woolf
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Book online «Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf [non fiction books to read .txt] 📗». Author Virginia Woolf
uprooting the stability of the afternoon—dressmakers, that is to say,
and confectioners’ shops. Six yards of silk will cover one body; but if
you have to devise six hundred shapes for it, and twice as many
colours?—in the middle of which there is the urgent question of the
pudding with tufts of green cream and battlements of almond paste. It
has not arrived.
The flamingo hours fluttered softly through the sky. But regularly they
dipped their wings in pitch black; Notting Hill, for instance, or the
purlieus of Clerkenwell. No wonder that Italian remained a hidden art,
and the piano always played the same sonata. In order to buy one pair of
elastic stockings for Mrs. Page, widow, aged sixty-three, in receipt of
five shillings out-door relief, and help from her only son employed in
Messrs. Mackie’s dye-works, suffering in winter with his chest, letters
must be written, columns filled up in the same round, simple hand that
wrote in Mr. Letts’s diary how the weather was fine, the children
demons, and Jacob Flanders unworldly. Clara Durrant procured the
stockings, played the sonata, filled the vases, fetched the pudding,
left the cards, and when the great invention of paper flowers to swim in
finger-bowls was discovered, was one of those who most marvelled at
their brief lives.
Nor were there wanting poets to celebrate the theme. Edwin Mallett, for
example, wrote his verses ending:
And read their doom in Chloe’s eyes,
which caused Clara to blush at the first reading, and to laugh at the
second, saying that it was just like him to call her Chloe when her name
was Clara. Ridiculous young man! But when, between ten and eleven on a
rainy morning, Edwin Mallett laid his life at her feet she ran out of
the room and hid herself in her bedroom, and Timothy below could not get
on with his work all that morning on account of her sobs.
“Which is the result of enjoying yourself,” said Mrs. Durrant severely,
surveying the dance programme all scored with the same initials, or
rather they were different ones this time—R.B. instead of E.M.; Richard
Bonamy it was now, the young man with the Wellington nose.
“But I could never marry a man with a nose like that,” said Clara.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Durrant.
“But I am too severe,” she thought to herself. For Clara, losing all
vivacity, tore up her dance programme and threw it in the fender.
Such were the very serious consequences of the invention of paper
flowers to swim in bowls.
“Please,” said Julia Eliot, taking up her position by the curtain almost
opposite the door, “don’t introduce me. I like to look on. The amusing
thing,” she went on, addressing Mr. Salvin, who, owing to his lameness,
was accommodated with a chair, “the amusing thing about a party is to
watch the people—coming and going, coming and going.”
“Last time we met,” said Mr. Salvin, “was at the Farquhars. Poor lady!
She has much to put up with.”
“Doesn’t she look charming?” exclaimed Miss Eliot, as Clara Durrant
passed them.
“And which of them …?” asked Mr. Salvin, dropping his voice and
speaking in quizzical tones.
“There are so many …” Miss Eliot replied. Three young men stood at the
doorway looking about for their hostess.
“You don’t remember Elizabeth as I do,” said Mr. Salvin, “dancing
Highland reels at Banchorie. Clara lacks her mother’s spirit. Clara is a
little pale.”
“What different people one sees here!” said Miss Eliot.
“Happily we are not governed by the evening papers,” said Mr. Salvin.
“I never read them,” said Miss Eliot. “I know nothing about politics,”
she added.
“The piano is in tune,” said Clara, passing them, “but we may have to
ask some one to move it for us.”
“Are they going to dance?” asked Mr. Salvin.
“Nobody shall disturb you,” said Mrs. Durrant peremptorily as she
passed.
“Julia Eliot. It IS Julia Eliot!” said old Lady Hibbert, holding out
both her hands. “And Mr. Salvin. What is going to happen to us, Mr.
Salvin? With all my experience of English politics—My dear, I was
thinking of your father last night—one of my oldest friends, Mr.
Salvin. Never tell me that girls often are incapable of love! I had all
Shakespeare by heart before I was in my teens, Mr. Salvin!”
“You don’t say so,” said Mr. Salvin.
“But I do,” said Lady Hibbert.
“Oh, Mr. Salvin, I’m so sorry. …”
“I will remove myself if you’ll kindly lend me a hand,” said Mr. Salvin.
“You shall sit by my mother,” said Clara. “Everybody seems to come in
here. … Mr. Calthorp, let me introduce you to Miss Edwards.”
“Are you going away for Christmas?” said Mr. Calthorp.
“If my brother gets his leave,” said Miss Edwards.
“What regiment is he in?” said Mr. Calthorp.
“The Twentieth Hussars,” said Miss Edwards.
“Perhaps he knows my brother?” said Mr. Calthorp.
“I am afraid I did not catch your name,” said Miss Edwards.
“Calthorp,” said Mr. Calthorp.
“But what proof was there that the marriage service was actually
performed?” said Mr. Crosby.
“There is no reason to doubt that Charles James Fox …” Mr. Burley
began; but here Mrs. Stretton told him that she knew his sister well;
had stayed with her not six weeks ago; and thought the house charming,
but bleak in winter.
“Going about as girls do nowadays—” said Mrs. Forster.
Mr. Bowley looked round him, and catching sight of Rose Shaw moved
towards her, threw out his hands, and exclaimed: “Well!”
“Nothing!” she replied. “Nothing at all—though I left them alone the
entire afternoon on purpose.”
“Dear me, dear me,” said Mr. Bowley. “I will ask Jimmy to breakfast.”
“But who could resist her?” cried Rose Shaw. “Dearest Clara—I know we
mustn’t try to stop you…”
“You and Mr. Bowley are talking dreadful gossip, I know,” said Clara.
“Life is wicked—life is detestable!” cried Rose Shaw.
“There’s not much to be said for this sort of thing, is there?” said
Timothy Durrant to Jacob.
“Women like it.”
“Like what?” said Charlotte Wilding, coming up to them.
“Where have you come from?” said Timothy. “Dining somewhere, I suppose.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Charlotte.
“People must go downstairs,” said Clara, passing. “Take Charlotte,
Timothy. How d’you do, Mr. Flanders.”
“How d’you do, Mr. Flanders,” said Julia Eliot, holding out her hand.
“What’s been happening to you?”
“Who is Silvia? what is she?
That all our swains commend her?”
sang Elsbeth Siddons.
Every one stood where they were, or sat down if a chair was empty.
“Ah,” sighed Clara, who stood beside Jacob, half-way through.
“Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let us garlands bring,”
sang Elsbeth Siddons.
“Ah!” Clara exclaimed out loud, and clapped her gloved hands; and Jacob
clapped his bare ones; and then she moved forward and directed people to
come in from the doorway.
“You are living in London?” asked Miss Julia Eliot.
“Yes,” said Jacob.
“In rooms?”
‘Yes.”
“There is Mr. Clutterbuck. You always see Mr. Clutterbuck here. He is
not very happy at home, I am afraid. They say that Mrs. Clutterbuck …”
she dropped her voice. “That’s why he stays with the Durrants. Were you
there when they acted Mr. Wortley’s play? Oh, no, of course not—at the
last moment, did you hear—you had to go to join your mother, I
remember, at Harrogate—At the last moment, as I was saying, just as
everything was ready, the clothes finished and everything—Now Elsbeth
is going to sing again. Clara is playing her accompaniment or turning
over for Mr. Carter, I think. No, Mr. Carter is playing by himself—This
is BACH,” she whispered, as Mr. Carter played the first bars.
“Are you fond of music?” said Mr. Durrant.
“Yes. I like hearing it,” said Jacob. “I know nothing about it.”
“Very few people do that,” said Mrs. Durrant. “I daresay you were never
taught. Why is that, Sir Jasper?—Sir Jasper Bigham—Mr. Flanders. Why
is nobody taught anything that they ought to know, Sir Jasper?” She left
them standing against the wall.
Neither of the gentlemen said anything for three minutes, though Jacob
shifted perhaps five inches to the left, and then as many to the right.
Then Jacob grunted, and suddenly crossed the room.
“Will you come and have something to eat?” he said to Clara Durrant.
“Yes, an ice. Quickly. Now,” she said.
Downstairs they went.
But half-way down they met Mr. and Mrs. Gresham, Herbert Turner, Sylvia
Rashleigh, and a friend, whom they had dared to bring, from America,
“knowing that Mrs. Durrant—wishing to show Mr. Pilcher.—Mr. Pilcher
from New York—This is Miss Durrant.”
“Whom I have heard so much of,” said Mr. Pilcher, bowing low.
So Clara left him.
About half-past nine Jacob left the house, his door slamming, other
doors slamming, buying his paper, mounting his omnibus, or, weather
permitting, walking his road as other people do. Head bent down, a desk,
a telephone, books bound in green leather, electric light…. “Fresh
coals, sir?” … “Your tea, sir.”… Talk about football, the Hotspurs,
the Harlequins; six-thirty Star brought in by the office boy; the rooks
of Gray’s Inn passing overhead; branches in the fog thin and brittle;
and through the roar of traffic now and again a voice shouting:
“Verdict—verdict—winner—winner,” while letters accumulate in a
basket, Jacob signs them, and each evening finds him, as he takes his
coat down, with some muscle of the brain new stretched.
Then, sometimes a game of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long
way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching,
head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the
steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying high, Nelson on his
column surveying the horizon, and the world our ship.
Meanwhile, poor Betty Flanders’s letter, having caught the second post,
lay on the hall table—poor Betty Flanders writing her son’s name, Jacob
Alan Flanders, Esq., as mothers do, and the ink pale, profuse,
suggesting how mothers down at Scarborough scribble over the fire with
their feet on the fender, when tea’s cleared away, and can never, never
say, whatever it may be—probably this—Don’t go with bad women, do be a
good boy; wear your thick shirts; and come back, come back, come back to
me.
But she said nothing of the kind. “Do you remember old Miss Wargrave,
who used to be so kind when you had the whooping-cough?” she wrote;
“she’s dead at last, poor thing. They would like it if you wrote. Ellen
came over and we spent a nice day shopping. Old Mouse gets very stiff,
and we have to walk him up the smallest hill. Rebecca, at last, after I
don’t know how long, went into Mr. Adamson’s. Three teeth, he says, must
come out. Such mild weather for the time of year, the little buds
actually on the pear trees. And Mrs. Jarvis tells me—“Mrs. Flanders
liked Mrs. Jarvis, always said of her that she was too good for such a
quiet place, and, though she never listened to her discontent and told
her at the end of it (looking up, sucking her thread, or taking off her
spectacles) that a little peat wrapped round the iris roots keeps them
from the frost, and Parrot’s great white sale is Tuesday next, “do
remember,”—Mrs.
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