Anonymous: Augustus and Lady Maude

Julie! The name rang in my mind. My heart bounded as if I already clasped her in my arms. As we walked back into the buzz of talk, the recital room warm and filling with the devotees of Brahms, I tried to check my feelings. A gentleman does not entertain such grand passions for a shopgirl. It can lead only to disagreeable consequences. Is that not the truth, my darling cousin? My new love would either spurn me with the laughter of a street Arab or else her mean little eyes would measure the depth of my purse and calculate what could be emptied from it. Am I not right, my dearest Maude? I am.

You know it. And yet I did not care. Oh, I might make a fool of myself and be bitterly miserable when the bizarre romance was ended. I did not care. Our greatest anxiety is for the loss of a chance which will never come again. As the clear, crisp piano notes sounded the twirls and twiddles of the motif which begins the Handel Variations, I dreaded the loss of the unknown nymph as greatly as if it were to be the death of the person who had been dearest to me until an hour before. I watched her sit down again, Maude, and I wondered as anyone might what a girl of such common stock was doing at a recital of this kind. I believe she was there only to assist her companion or employer. It was an elderly and palsied woman who sat by her side.

Now do not scold me, my dearest, for I know you will think me a fool. Help me, in the name of that friendship and love between us since our cradles rocked side by side in the same rhythm! I must know her! I must find her! I must have her! You are too wise to believe that a man of noble birth can only be content with women of his own class. He needs from time to time the stronger, more common appetite which drives him to a sturdy blonde like the vulgar shopgirl, Maggie, or else to a plump maiden like Miss Nicoll with her halo of curls. My case is much the worse, for my desire leaves no choice.

It must be Julie. I write because you know the girls of this resort so well and have made them objects of your affectionate and amorous study! If anyone can tell me who she be and where she comes from, it must be you. As the grand, swinging chords of the final variation concluded the recital and the applause burst upon one's eardrums, I knew that I must write to you this very minute. I send the letter express. I would bring it myself, did I not fear to lose all sight of my slim, sullen Julie! Your loving cousin, Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude II. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June My own Augustus, What a goose you are! A goose, of course, to lose your heart to such a little minx as Julie and a greater one not to know the prize specimen upon whom you have picked. One really does not know whether to laugh you out of your romantic stupidity or to grieve that you have grown to such age and not learnt to control your temper more firmly.

Though I am but a month your elder, I feel as if the wisdom of centuries belonged to me when I hear you talk as you do. The blonde with the prim little bun and the sulky little face-a hard and mean little face, I have always thought it-who is she? When you told me she was called Julie and that her services were required merely to companion an old and infirm woman-who is the dowager Lady Stacker, by the way-I knew at once. Oh, my poor Augustus, you have set your choice upon a common shopgirl indeed! She who sits upon the stool behind the counter in a bookseller's shop which is little better than that of a marchand des joumaux. I shall be surprised if you do not go and ask her to measure you out an ounce of pipe tobacco. Not find her again? How could you fail? You may stand at the shop window hour after hour, if you choose, and gaze your fill upon Julie. Believe me, I know the plain black dress and the little red shoes with their high heels to give extra inches to her height. Would you like to see her more fully revealed for your adoration? Go there one day when Julie is attired less formally, in blouse and the tight denim fit of working-drawers, as she lifts and carries boxes of new books among the shelves. See the slender legs and slim young hips tightly outlined as if the lewd little bitch were naked! Consider the softer but still pert cheeks of Julie's bottom! Look closely at the sulky little teaser, my dear Gussie. Then tell me if Julie is the type of goddess for whom Petrarch swore an eternal and Platonic love! If you doubt me still, enter and buy a book of any kind. Hand her the money and listen to her voice as she counts it into the till or thanks you-if she has the grace for thanks. Tell me then if the little slut's common whining tone is the true accent of Laura de Sade!

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! That is what you would say, would you not, to these words of mine? But you are not the Moor of Venice, man cher ami, nor shall I be Iago to betray you. Least of all is a painted young minx like Julie to be taken for Desdemona. She is one of Mr. Bowler's working-girls. Though he may not yet have got his hand into Julie's knickers, she will prove no vestal virgin. Let us have done, my dear, with the willful amours you pretend to with such creatures. Jacqueline Grant, the toast of every soldier, was to be your great love, was she not? And, next day, the saddler's window-dresser was to be the next lady of the manor! It will not do, Gussie! By all means enjoy such heroines for what they are but put aside these foolish romantick notions. I know too well what pleasures may be indulged with such specimens of my own sex. In the arbours of Lesbos I have tasted them often. But shopgirls and trollops are not to be the objects of such feelings as you cherish for Julie. And there let it end. Really, my dear! I was about to write to you of the delights of Lago di Garda when your letter came. I am so put out that my account must wait until after lunch. Till then, I am Your own loving Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude III. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June p.m. My dear Augustus, Having disposed of the disagreeable matter of that little “tart" Julie this morning-the letter went by the Desenzano steamer just before lunch-I now settle down to write of pleasanter things. I shall have some fun here with the golden-skinned cat-eyed Miss Jones whom Mr. Bowler has brought to guard his fashion salon, and with the Scandinavian nymph Marit, on whom the said Jones is told to “keep an eye.” More of Marit and Miss Jones in a moment-the naked truth, dear Gussie. But first a word about this most drowsy summer lake. “Airs, languid airs, abound.” You should have come with us, you know. We have no neurasthenia here. I write this while sitting in the shade of the pergola, which is quite overgrown with purple wisteria. It forms a walk along the edge of the gardens furthest from the terrace of the Villa Lola. Small wonder if half the royalty and nobility of Europe seems to fill Gardone this season. From where I sit, one has an Olympian view ten miles across smooth water to the lemon groves above little Malcesine. To the south, through a pale mist of heat, one sees the flat Lombardy plain, running east to Verona and Venice. And there is the promontory of Sirmione with its clustered cypress trees, the “olive-silvery Sirmio,” where sweet Catullus loved and sang. Look north, and you see the lake narrow between sharp peaks of Alpine hills near the little frontier port of Riva. In this warm weather the pine trees shed their needles, so that one walks down the zig zag path to the little town through a private garden sweet with the heavy resinous perfume of these conifers. You will guess, at once, that this private domain belongs to the illustrious poet, our neighbour, a man of exotic tastes in his dealings with the young ladies who attend him! He makes us free of it, allowing us a delicious walk down to the shore of the placid lake. What a place this is to take one's pleasures, my dear Augustus! How voluptuous here are the pale limbs which tremble with desire on richest velvet! How white a young girl's shoulders or flanks when laid bare under this brilliant sun! In secret groves, the beauty of mature womanhood shudders under the lascivious caress of her pitiless lovers. Girlhood at fifteen cries with alarm as the first surge of passion overwhelms her Mormorvan con voci roche e lente la fontane invisible tra i pini His immortal lines anticipate the pleasures to be enjoyed, where the perfume of roses fills the air of closed gardens.