PASSING OF AN AGE
The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last day of January,1901,with such privacy that not even Emily was told until it was accomplished.
The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less result than anywhere else under heaven.Her beauty in the best Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had collected a perfect bit of china,or a jewel of a picture;he looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park Lane,in Green Street,and at Timothy's.
If some one had asked him in those days,"In confidence--are you in love with this girl?"he would have replied:"In love?What is love?If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those old days when I first met her and she would not have me;when Isighed and starved after her and couldn't rest a minute until she yielded--no!If you mean do I admire her youth and prettiness,do my senses ache a little when I see her moving about--yes!Do Ithink she will keep me straight,make me a creditable wife and a good mother for my children?--again,yes!""What more do I need?and what more do three-quarters of the women who are married get from the men who marry them?"And if the enquirer had pursued his query,"And do you think it was fair to have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless you have really touched her heart?"he would have answered:"The French see these things differently from us.They look at marriage from the point of view of establishments and children;and,from my own experience,I am not at all sure that theirs is not the sensible view.I shall not expect this time more than I can get,or she can give.Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have trouble with her;but I shall be getting old,I shall have children by then.Ishall shut my eyes.I have had my great passion;hers is perhaps to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.I offer her a great deal,and I don't expect much in return,except children,or at least a son.But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"And if,insatiate,the enquirer had gone on,"You do not look,then,for spiritual union in this marriage?"Soames would have lifted his sideway smile,and rejoined:"That's as it may be.If Iget satisfaction for my senses,perpetuation of myself;good taste and good humour in the house;it is all I can expect at my age.Iam not likely to be going out of my way towards any far-fetched sentimentalism."Whereon,the enquirer must in good taste have ceased enquiry.
The Queen was dead,and the air of the greatest city upon earth grey with unshed tears.Fur-coated and top-hatted,with Annette beside him in dark furs,Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of the funeral procession,to the rails in Hyde Park.Little moved though he ever was by public matters,this event,supremely symbolical,this summing-up of a long rich period,impressed his fancy.In '37,when she came to the throne,'Superior Dosset'was still building houses to make London hideous;and James,a stripling of twenty-six,just laying the foundations of his practice in the Law.Coaches still ran;men wore stocks,shaved their upper lips,ate oysters out of barrels;'tigers'swung behind cabriolets;women said,'La!'and owned no property;there were manners in the land,and pigsties for the poor;unhappy devils were hanged for little crimes,and Dickens had but just begun to write.
Well-nigh two generations had slipped by--of steamboats,railways,telegraphs,bicycles,electric light,telephones,and now these motorcars--of such accumulated wealth,that eight per cent.had become three,and Forsytes were numbered by the thousand!Morals had changed,manners had changed,men had become monkeys twice-removed,God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to deceive himself:Sixty-four years that favoured property,and had made the upper middle class;buttressed,chiselled,polished it,till it was almost indistinguishable in manners,morals,speech,appearance,habit,and soul from the nobility.An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if a man had money,he was free in law and fact,and if he had not money he was free in law and not in fact.An era which had canonised hypocrisy,so that to seem to be respectable was to be.A great Age,whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save the nature of man and the nature of the Universe.
And to witness the passing of this Age,London--its pet and fancy--was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park,hub of Victorianism,happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.Under the grey heavens,whose drizzle just kept off,the dark concourse gathered to see the show.The 'good old'Queen,full of years and virtue,had emerged from her seclusion for the last time to make a London holiday.From Houndsditch,Acton,Ealing,Hampstead,Islington,and Bethnal Green;from Hackney,Hornsey,Leytonstone,Battersea,and Fulham;and from those green pastures where Forsytes flourish--Mayfair and Kensington,St.James'and Belgravia,Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park,the people swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky pomp and pageantry.Never again would a Queen reign so long,or people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money.
A pity the war dragged on,and that the Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her coffin!All else would be there to follow and commemorate--soldiers,sailors,foreign princes,half-masted bunting,tolling bells,and above all the surging,great,dark-coated crowd,with perhaps a simple sadness here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.After all,more than a Queen was going to her rest,a woman who had braved sorrow,lived well and wisely according to her lights.
