The Champagne Standard - John Mrs. Lane

Скачать книгу

a new sense of security I again studied him, and I observed a subtle change. He was evidently a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of cat. I became conscious of a complex personality. Though to the careless observer he might appear to be only a chubby cat, full of purr, to me he was rapidly developing into something more; in fact, mind was, as usual, triumphing over matter, and presto! before I knew what he was about, he had changed into an idea.

      "To call you only a cat!" I cried in fervent gratitude. "Only a cat, indeed! You are much more than a cat—you are a miracle! You are a preface!" And so, indeed, he was.

      Like one inspired I thought of his first illustrious ancestor, on four legs, the one who had once so heroically looked at a king, with the result that not only did he gain a perpetual permission for his race, but he has passed into an immortal proverb. That was not his only glorious deed, however, for it was he who first encouraged the Modest. If it had not been for that historic cat, what would have become of them! When the Modest want to say something, no matter how modestly, and get frightfully snubbed, don't they always declare that "A cat may look at a king"? Really, that illustrious cat has never had his due! Besides heaps of other things, is he not the original type of the first true Republican? I would like to know what the world would have done if he hadn't looked at the king? Why, it was the first great Declaration of Independence.

      Besides, don't we owe to him, though hitherto unacknowledged, those underlying principles of that other glorious Declaration of Independence, the happy result of which seems to be that tea is so awfully dear in America?

      No, one doesn't hold with a cat's laughing at a king. No cat should laugh at a king, for that leads to anarchy and impoliteness and things going off. It is the cat who looks civilly at kings who has come to stay, along with republics and free thought. But possibly that is the one little drawback—thought is so dreadfully free! It used to be rather select to think, but now everybody thinks, and kings and other important things are not nearly as sacred as they used to be, and even the Modest get a chance. I suppose it is the spirit of the Age.

      I had got so far and had to nibble again at my pencil for further inspiration, when the door opened and my landlady appeared. She is a worthy woman, and she holds her head on one side like an elderly canary-bird.

      She spoke with a remnant of breath.

      "If you please, ma'am, we have lost our Alonzo the Brave."

      "You will probably," I replied with great presence of mind, considering that I had no idea what she was talking about, "find him with the fair Imogene."

      Here my landlady, with her eyes penetrating the corners, gave a cry of rapture, "There he is! Glory be!" And she pounced on the black and purring stranger, who rose and stretched his back to a mountainous height and his jaws to a pink cavern.

      "This is our Alonzo the Brave," and she pressed his rebellious head against the pins on her ample bosom.

      "Oh, indeed," I said politely; "and though he is your Alonzo the Brave, I hope you won't mind his being my preface, will you? And may I ask what does he like best in the world besides Imogene?"

      Alonzo the Brave had partly wriggled out of her ardent embrace, so that he now hung suspended by his elastic body, while his legs dangled at amazing length.

      "Me," and my landlady simpered.

      "I mean in the eating line," I explained.

      Catnip, said his biographer, was his favourite weakness.

      "Then get him a pennyworth of catnip and put it on my bill," I said benevolently. For I thought as she carried him off struggling, even a poor preface is cheap at a penny, and without Alonzo the Brave there would have been no preface, and without his heroic ancestor the Modest would never have had a chance!

      I do hope this explains the following pages. I have not, like Alonzo's ancestor, strictly confined my observations to kings. I have, indeed, ventured to look at all sorts of things, many of them very sublime, and solemn and important, and some less so; and, as the following pages will prove, I have availed myself freely of the privilege of the Modest.

      If the two greatest nations of the world have served me as "copy," it is because they are very near and dear, and the Modest, like more celebrated writers, have a way of using their nearest and dearest as "copy," especially their dearest.

      In conclusion, I trust I have adequately explained, by help of Alonzo the Brave, that it is the privilege of the Modest to make observations about everything—whether anyone will ever read them, why—that's another matter.

      A. E. L.

      Kemptown, January, 1906.

       Table of Contents

      The other evening at a charming dinner party in London, and in that intimate time which is just before the men return to the drawing room, I found myself tête-à-tête with my genial hostess. She leaned forward and said with a touch of anxiety in her pretty eyes, "Confess that I am heroic?"

      "Why?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

      "To give a dinner party without champagne."

      It was only then that I realised that we had had excellent claret and hock instead of that fatal wine which represents, as really nothing else does, the cheap pretence which is so humorously characteristic of Modern Society.

      "You see," she said with a deep sigh, "I have a conscience, and I try to reconcile a modest purse and the hospitality people expect from me, and that is being very heroic these days, and it does so disagree with me to be heroic! Besides, people don't appreciate your heroism, they only think you are mean!"

      I realised at once the truth and absurdity of what she said. It does require tremendous heroism to have the courage of a small income and to be hospitable within your means, for by force of bad example hospitality grows dearer year by year. The increasing extravagance of life is all owing to those millionaires, and imitation millionaires, whose example is a curse and a menace. They set the pace, and the whole world tears after. Because solely of their wealth, or supposed wealth, they are accepted everywhere, and it is they who have broken down the once impassable barriers between the English classes, with the result that the evil which before might have been confined to the highest, now that extravagant imitation is universal, permeates all ranks even to the lowest.

      The old aristocracy is giving place to the new millionaires, and it gladly bestows on them its friendship in exchange for the privilege of consorting with untold wealth and possible hints on how to make it. The dignity that hedges about royalty is indeed a thing of the past, since a bubble king of finance is said to have been too busy to vouchsafe an audience to an emperor.

      There is nothing in the modern world so absolutely real and convincing and universal as its pretence. It has set itself a standard of aims and of living which can best be described as the Champagne Standard.

      To live up to the champagne standard you have to put your best foot foremost, and that foot is usually a woman's. It is the women who are the arbiters of the essentially unimportant in life, the neglect of which is a crime. It is the women who have set the champagne standard. A man who lays a great stress on the importance of trivialities has either a worldly woman behind him, or he has a decided feminine streak in his character.

      Yes, it is the champagne standard; for nothing else so accurately describes the insincere, pretentious, and frothy striving after one's little private unattainables. It is aspiration turned sour. Aspirations, real and true, keep the world progressive, make of men great men and of women great women; but it is the minor aspirations after what we have not got, what the accident of circumstances prevents us from having, which make of life a weariness and a profound disappointment. Not the tragedies of life make us bitter, but the pin-pricks.

      In America, for instance, one does not need to be so very old to be aware of the amazing changes in the ways of living,

Скачать книгу