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                            BY E. F. BENSON


                         THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR
                             THE TORTOISE
                                MICHAEL
                            THE OAKLEYITES
                             DAVID BLAIZE
                                ARUNDEL

                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
                               NEW YORK

                  [Illustration: The Compleat Snobs]

                             THE FREAKS OF
                                MAYFAIR

                            BY E. F. BENSON
                       AUTHOR OF “THE TORTOISE,”
                        “MICHAEL,” “DODO,” etc.

                            ILLUSTRATED BY
                             GEORGE PLANK

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                               NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                               DEDICATED
                                  TO
                              FRANK EYES
                                  AND
                              KINDLY EARS




THE LIST OF CONTENTS


I. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS                                          _page_ 13

II. AUNT GEORGIE                                                      31

III. QUACK-QUACK                                                      49

IV. THE POISON OF ASPS                                                71

V. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE                                        85

VI. THE ETERNALLY UNCOMPROMISED                                      107

VII. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS                                             125

VIII. CLIMBERS:

        I. THE HORIZONTAL                                            143

IX. CLIMBERS:

      II. THE PERPENDICULAR                                          161

X. THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR                                              183

XI. ‘SING FOR YOUR DINNER’                                           199

XII. THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME                                       217




THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_reproduced from drawings by_

GEORGE PLANK


1. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS                                      _Frontispiece_

2. AUNT GEORGIE                                                _page_ 36

3. QUACK-QUACK                                                        52

4. POISON OF ASPS                                                     70

5. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE                                        98

6. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS                                               132

7. CLIMBERS: I. THE HORIZONTAL                                       148

8. CLIMBERS: II. THE PERPENDICULAR                                   164





CHAPTER ONE

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS


There is no more joyous couple in all Mayfair than Sir Louis Marigold,
Bart., M.P., and Lady Mary Marigold, and whether they are at Marigold
Park, Bucks, or at Homburg, or in their spacious residence in Berkeley
Square, their lives form one unbroken round of pomp and successful
achievement. She was the daughter of an obscure Irish Earl, and when she
married her husband was still hard at work building up the business of
Marigold & Sons. Those were strenuous days, and the profession of
money-getting made it necessary for him to indulge his snobbishness only
as a hobby. But she, like the good wife she has always been to him, took
care of his hobby, as of a stamp-collection, and constantly enriched it
with specimens of her own acquisition, being a snob of purest ray serene
herself. She is the undoubted descendant of Arrahmedear, king of
Donegal, in which salubrious county her brother, the present Earl, is
steadily drinking himself to death in the intervals of farming his
fifty-acre estate. When he has succeeded in completely poisoning himself
with whisky, she will become Countess of Ballamuck herself, since the
title descends, in default of male heirs, in the female line, and there
will be what I hope it is not irreverent to call high old times in
Berkeley Square and Marigold Park.

When first they married her husband always playfully called her ‘The
Princess’ (being the lineal descendant of that remarkable monarch King
Arrahmedear), and what began in play soon sobered into a habit. But when
she is a real contemporary peeress, it is probable that he will drop the
appellation derived from legendary kings, and call her Countess. There
will be no hint of badinage about that: Countess she will be, and the
papers will be full of little paragraphs about the movements of Sir
Louis Marigold, Bart., M.P., and the Countess of Ballamuck.... There is
just the faintest suggestion of Ouida-ism and impropriety which gives
such announcements a peculiar relish.

Now there is no snob so profound as the well-born snob, especially in
the female line. She (in this case Lady Mary Marigold) knows about it
from the inside, and is aware of all it means to be the daughter of
earls, not to mention kings. Her husband therefore, having been born of
an obscure commercial family, was not originally so gifted as his wife,
but by industry and study he has now practically caught her up, and
they run together in an amicable rose-coloured dead-heat. Like all the
finer endowments, as that of poetry, pure snobbishness is born not
acquired, and lowly as was his birth, the fairy-godmother who visited
his infant cradle brought this golden gift with her, and with the same
instinct for what is worth having that has always distinguished him, he
did not squander or dissipate her bounty, but hoarded and polished and
perfected it. When he was quite a little boy he used to dream about
marquises, and, if a feverish cold added a touch of daring to his
slumbers, about kings and queens; now with the reward that waits upon
childhood’s aspirations, it has all come true. Already his son (the
first-born of the future countess) has married the Lady Something
Something, daughter of a marquis, and there are great hopes about a
widowed Bishop for his daughter.

It might seem that this episcopal anchorage was but a poor fulfilment of
the prayers of her papa, but any who think that can form no adequate
impression of the completeness of Sir Louis’s snobbishness. For the real
snob is he who worships success and distinction whether that success is
hall-marked with coronets, wealth, or gaiters. To achieve success in
the eyes of the world is to him the greatest of human accomplishments,
and to be acquainted, or better still, connected with those who have
done so, and best of all to be identified with them, constitutes the joy
of life. Sir Louis has a profound admiration for his wife, his son, his
son’s wife, but he perhaps reserves his levels of highest complacency
for himself, and with all his busy loving glances at the dazzling
objects round him, he never really diverts his gaze from his own career.
It is for his own success in life that he reserves his most sincere
respect.

While his wife and he are thus in every sense perfect snobs, as far as
perfection can be attained in this tentative world, they, like all other
professors in great branches of knowledge, specialize in one particular
department, and theirs is Birth. It is, of course, a great joy to Lady
Mary Marigold to see the wife of a Cabinet Minister, of an African
explorer, of an ambassador pass out of her dining-room at the conclusion
of dinner, while she stands by the door and, shaking an admonitory
finger at her husband till her bracelets rattle, says, ‘Now, Sir
Baronet, don’t be too long’; it is a joy also to him to move to the
other end of the table between the ambassador and the Cabinet Minister
and say, ‘My lady won’t grudge your Excellency time to drink another
glass of port and have a small cigar’; but most of all they love the
hour when these manœuvres are enacted with members of the aristocracy,
or, as has happened several times in this last year or two (for they are
really among the tree-tops), with those for whom, to the exclusion of
themselves and other guests, finger-bowls are provided. On these
occasions, that is when Royalty is present, a sort of seizure is liable
to come upon them, and for a minute or two one or other sinks back in
his chair in a dazed condition consequent upon so much happiness. A
foretaste of the bliss of Nirvana is theirs, and Sir Louis’s eyes have
been known to fill with happy, happy tears on seeing a Prince show my
lady how to eat a cherry backwards, stalk first.

In the early days of their marriage, when, as Mr. Marigold, he came back
tired with his day’s work to his modest dwelling in Oakley Street, Birth
was his hobby, and instead of relaxing his tired brain over the perusal
of trashy novels or the playing of fruitless games of patience, like so
many who have no sense of the value of time, he and she would sit
tranquilly, one on each side of the fireplace, with a reading-lamp
conveniently placed between them, and dive into the sunlit waters of the
Peerage. One happy Christmas Day they found that the present of each to
the other was a copy of this beautiful book, and after this delicious
coincidence, they kept the pleasant custom up, and always presented each
other with Peerages at Christmas, so that now they have both of them a
complete set for the last twenty-three years. Their son, Oswald Owen
Vivian Lancelot, was true to parental tradition and tendency, and
rapturous was the day when, at the age of fourteen, after hours of
careful work, he gave his mother on her birthday the gift he had been
secretly preparing for her, namely the roll of his own ancestry, neatly
illuminated. It was somewhat lop-sided, for very few Marigolds had been
discoverable, but away, away back went the other line of the descent
through Earls and coronets innumerable till it reached the original and
unique King Arrahmedear of Donegal, above whose glorious name he had
illuminated a royal crown. It was entirely Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot’s
own idea, and when he became engaged to the daughter of a marquis, his
mother felt that she had known it would happen for years.

Owing probably to the large number of Jews and journalists and brewers
and pawnbrokers who have been ennobled during the long Liberal tenure of
office, this particular brand of snobbishness has rather fallen into
neglect, and many of the brightest snobs of Mayfair consider the cult of
the mere peerage a somewhat Victorian pursuit. But the more earnest
practitioners, like Lady Mary and Sir Louis Marigold, remain unaffected
by such shallowness. They argue that the conferring of a peerage is
still a symbol of success, and, loyalist to the core, consider that
those who are good enough for the King are good enough for them.
Besides, they have found by experience that they actually do feel
greater raptures in the presence of Royalty than in that of subjects of
the realm, and among subjects of the realm they like dukes better than
marquises, marquises than earls, earls than viscounts. It is not implied
that the pleasurableness of their internal sensations would indicate to
them the rank of a total stranger whose name they were ignorant of, but
knowing his name and his rank, they find that their delight in converse
with him increases according to his precedence. Many pleasures are
wholly matters of the imagination, and this may be one, but the
hallucination is in this case, as in that of other nervous disorders,
quite complete. And when a year or two ago Lady Mary was dangerously ill
with appendicitis, her husband sensibly assuaged the deep and genuine
anxiety he felt for her, by going through, day after day, the cards of
the eminent people who had called to make enquiries. A prince (a very
eminent one) was so condescending as to call twice, once on a Monday and
once on the following Thursday. To this day Sir Louis cannot but believe
that the better news the doctor gave him about my lady on that happy
afternoon, was somehow connected with the magic of the repeated visit.

It has been mentioned that Sir Louis is in the habit of calling his wife
‘Princess’; it has also been hinted that she alludes to him as ‘Sir
Baronet.’ There is a touch of badinage, of playfulness in both these
titles, but below the playfulness is a substratum of seriousness. For
she is descended from kings so ancient that nobody knows anything about
them, and he is a real Baronet, and since his title in ordinary use is
that of a mere knight, she and others of their intimates are accustomed
to call him Sir Baronet, in order to mark the difference between him and
such people as provincial mayors or eminent actors and musicians. It
must be supposed, too, that he is far from discouraging this, since he
has printed on his cards, ‘Sir Louis Marigold, Bart., M.P.,’ in full. It
may be unusual, but then there are, unfortunately, not many Baronets who
take a proper pride in the honours with which their Sovereign has
decorated them or their ancestors. Marquises and earls put the degree of
their nobility on their cards instead of just calling themselves ‘Lord,’
and surely a Baronet cannot go wrong in following so august an example.
But there is another custom of his to which perhaps exception may be
taken, for it is his habit when entertaining a luncheon-party at which
mere commoners are present (this is not a frequent occurrence) to step
jauntily along in his proper precedence to the dining-room, leaving the
less exalted persons to follow. He does it in a careless, unconscious
manner, and this manner is by no means put on: he walks in front of
lowlier commoners instinctively: he does not think about it: his legs
just take him. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that instinct is
not so strong with him as to go in before any lady, even if she were his
own washerwoman, for the obligations of chivalry outweigh with him even
those of nobility. It has always been so with the true aristocrat, and
it is so with him. Perhaps if a Suffragette were present he might go on
ahead, for he considers that all women who hold any views but his on
that subject have unsexed themselves. In his more indulgent moments he
alludes to them as ‘deluded wretches.’

His politics are of course Tory. A Tory Prime Minister honoured himself
by recommending the King to honour Sir Louis, and much time and a good
deal of money spent in the Tory cause make it quite likely that a
further honour will some time he conferred upon him when (and if) his
party ever gets back into power. It is significant, anyhow, that he has
made several visits lately to the Heralds’ College, where the shape of
Viscounts’ coronets seemed to interest him a good deal, for since the
motto of his business life, which has proved so successful, was ‘Prepare
well in advance,’ it is likely that it will apply in such matters as
these as well, and it may safely be assumed that on that happy day his
spoons and forks will be found to be already engraved with the honour
conferred on him. To be sure, should this happen before Lady Mary’s
brother finally succumbs to the insidious bottle, she will find herself
a step lower than her previous rank had been, by becoming a Viscountess
instead of remaining an Earl’s daughter. But, on the other hand, this
will be but a temporary eclipse, for it cannot be so very long before
she comes from under her cloud again on the demise of the dipsomaniac,
and shines forth as an independent Countess. The whole affair, moreover,
has been talked out so constantly by them that they are sure to have
come to a wise decision based on the true principles of snobbishness.

Snobbishness is no superficial thing with them, or indeed with anybody;
it springs from fountains as deep as those of character or religion. Now
that between them they have got the Peerage practically by heart, its
study, though they often read over favourite passages together, no
longer takes them much time or conscious thought, it merely permeates
them like Christianity or the moral qualities. It tinges all they do,
and they do a great many very kind and considerate and generous things.
Sir Baronet is the most liberal giver; no appeal made for a deserving
and charitable object ever came to him in vain, but deep in his heart
all the time that he is signing his munificent cheque, the thankful
cries of the poor folk he has succoured sound in his ears, as they
murmur, ‘Thank you, Sir Baronet!’ ‘Bless you, Sir Baronet!’ Lady Mary
is equally open-handed, especially when children and dumb animals are
concerned, and she declares she can almost hear the thumping of the
dogs’ tails as they strive to say, ‘Thank you, my lady!’ ‘Bless your
ladyship’s kind heart.’

Occasionally, out of mere exuberance, Sir Baronet sounds an insincere
note. He wrote once to Oswald bidding him bring his wife to dinner in
these terms: ‘Bring my lady along to dinner on Tuesday week, my boy. No
party, just ourselves, and I think the Princess told me the French
Ambassador and the Duchess of Middlesex were to take their cutlets with
us.’... But all the time his pen was so trembling with gratification
that for the moment Oswald thought his father must have a fit of
shivering, till the truer explanation dawned on him, and he realized
that the usually neat and careful handwriting was blurred with joy. But
perhaps this little insincerity is but the mark of the most complete
snob of all, who affects to make light of the attainments towards which
his holiest and highest aspirations have been ever directed. Anyhow, one
would be sorry to think that Sir Baronet was sincere over this, for it
would imply that he was getting used to Ambassadors and Dukes, that he
was becoming blasé with a surfeit of aristocracy. That would be too
tragic a fate for so thoroughly amiable an ass.

There is nothing more stimulating in this drab world than to look at
those who intensely enjoy the prosperity which surrounds them, and to