Anthony Powell: At Lady Molly's

Lovell was obviously disappointed that nothing more sensational about Erridge was to be revealed.

‘Feingold had some story about “a lord” who was doing “social research”,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be Erridge. I don’t expect the dumps he stopped at were any more uncomfortable than he has made Thrubworth by now. The whole place has been under dust-sheets since he succeeded, hasn’t it? Do you know Erridge, Nick? He must be about a contemporary of yours.’

‘He is a year or two older. I used to know him by sight. His brother, George Tolland, was nearer my age, though I didn’t know him either. But he isn’t “Erridge” any longer, is he?’

‘No, no, he is “Warminster” now, of course,’ said Molly Jeavons, impatiently. ‘But Alfred’s family always call their eldest son by the second title. I don’t even know what Erry’s Christian name is. Perhaps he hasn’t got one.’

‘Nonsense, of course he has,’ said Tolland, quite angrily. ‘His name is Alfred, like my own. You know that perfectly well, Molly. Besides, to call him “Erridge” is perfectly usual, isn’t it? In fact, off-hand, I can’t think of a single family that does differently.’

‘We always used to think it rather pompous,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘I can’t imagine myself ever addressing Jumbo as “Kilkeel” when he was alive. It would sound like a racehorse.’

‘Well, “Jumbo” sounds like an elephant to me,’ said Tolland.

This retort must have struck him as one of unusual subtlety, since he looked round at Lovell and myself in an appeal for applause; or at least for sympathy.

‘That’s just it,’ said Molly Jeavons, now speaking almost at the top of her voice. ‘My poor brother did look like an elephant. Nobody denied that, not even himself. But he did not look like a race-horse. Not one I would have put my money on, anyway.’

‘Bijou put her shirt on him,’ said Lovell.

‘Rubbish, she didn’t,’ said Molly Jeavons, beginning to laugh. ‘He put his shirt on her, you idiot — and lost it, too.’

I remembered, then, that Tolland had spoken of ‘my nephew, Warminster’, at the Le Bas dinner where we had met; at the same time mentioning that this young man had succeeded his father some years before. Tolland had added that his nephew was ‘a funny boy’. Erridge (as it seems simplest — like his parents — to continue to call him, anyway for the time being) remained in my mind as a gloomy, cadaverous schoolboy, trudging along the road close to the wall, his hands in his pockets and a pile of books slipping from under his arm. Angular, sallow and spotty, he was usually frowning angrily to himself, weighed down with anxiety, as if all the troubles of the world rested on his shoulders. The only time I could recall seeing him in later life was, years before, at a dance given by the Huntercombes. On that occasion, Erridge had looked so hot, cross and untidy that only the fact that he was wearing a tail-coat and white tie — neither in their first freshness — prevented him from resembling, even then, a harassed young tramp. His appearance that night had certainly borne out this recent account of him. The ball at the Huntercombes’ remained always with peculiar clarity in my mind as the night Barbara Goring had poured sugar over Widmerpool’s head.

‘Does Erridge often do this sort of thing?’ I asked. ‘Go off on “social research”, I mean?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘He has the oddest ideas. All your family have, haven’t they, Alfred? The whole blessed lot of them.’

Tolland made a nervous movement with his head, as if attempting to deny the principle of the accusation while at the same time regretfully having to admit, anyway in part, some of its immediate justice.

‘Warminster was not like that,’ he said. ‘I’m not like that. Not in the least. Nor are Frederica and George. And I trust the younger ones will turn out different from Erridge. They all seemed all right when they were children. Ran about and made a lot of noise. Just can’t tell, I suppose. Just — can’t — tell.’

If he expected this exhibition of philosophic resignation in some manner to appease Molly Jeavons, he was mistaken.

‘Certainly Frederica is not strange,’ she said, laughing uproariously at the idea. ‘Frederica is ordinary enough for anyone. Got to be in her job. Frederica is as ordinary as you like.’

This agreement with his conclusion — the complete, the absolute ordinariness of his niece, Frederica — seemed to bring some temporary alleviation to Tolland’s feelings. He nodded several times with satisfaction. I had some vague idea as to Frederica’s identity. She had married one of the Budds, brother or cousin of a ‘beauty’ called Margaret Budd, and her husband had been killed in a hunting accident only a few years later. People had talked about his death in the days when I used to dine with the Walpole-Wilsons. I remembered Anne Stepney talking about the accident.

As I was by then committed to this conversation about a lot of people regarding whom I knew little or nothing, I decided to take an active part by seeking further information. I asked what Frederica Budd’s job might be that required such extreme correctness of behaviour.

‘She is Lady-in-Waiting,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘Or she may be an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber. Something like that. Anyway, she has to behave herself jolly well. I’m surprised you haven’t met her, if you are an old friend of Mrs. Conyers. She and Frederica are great cronies.’

At that period, as I have said, I knew little of the Tollands, although increasingly during the past few years I had been hearing scraps of information about one or other of them, as happens when a large family, close to each other in age, begin in quick succession to appear in the world. Lovell had given some account of them at dinner. Molly Jeavons’s sister, Katherine, a childless widow, had married the late Lord Warminster as his second wife. ‘As a result,’ Lovell had said, ‘she possesses a dozen step-children.’ It turned out, in fact, that Erridge had only nine brothers and sisters. Even that number seemed preposterously large to an only child like myself. There is something overpowering, even a trifle sinister about very large families, the individual members of which often possess in excess the characteristics commonly attributed to ‘only’ children: misanthropy: neurasthenia: an inability to adapt themselves: all the traits held to be the result of a lonely upbringing. The corporate life of large families can be lived with severity, even barbarity, of a kind unknown in smaller related communities: these savageries and distillations of egoism often rendered even less tolerable if sentimentalised outside the family circle. The Tollands, from what Lovell reported of them, sounded no exception to this prejudiced judgment.

‘Of course it was hard for them losing their mother — being left orphans, in fact,’ said Tolland. ‘Though of course Katherine has always done her best — been splendid, really.’

By introducing the name of the second Lady Warminster into the conversation, he may have hoped to carry the war into the enemy’s country. By then his face was more flushed than ever. His hostess was determined to let him off nothing. I had the impression that she was teasing him, not precisely for my especial benefit, but, at the same time, that my presence as a newcomer to the house afforded a particularly favourable opportunity for the application of torments of this sort. I found later that she was indeed what is called ‘a tease’, perhaps the only outward indication that her inner life was not altogether happy; since there is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing. Later, too, I understood how much that night Alfred Tolland must have been torn between a pride that made him hesitate to discuss his relations in front of a stranger, and a taste for talking about his family, too rarely satisfied in his lonely life. It was a treat to visit someone who understood the niceties of family gossip, even if Molly Jeavons required her pound of flesh by ragging him. His face, completely masculine in cast, had at the same time that air of being quite untouched by sexual passion: a look noticeable sometimes among men of his generation. Lovell explained to me later that Tolland had always had a taste for good works and had been much used by the late Lord Sleaford in connexion with his charities. He was a fine example of my friend Barnby’s observation that ‘melancholy is the curse of the upper classes’.