Mrs. Dalloway
plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream
freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding
basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery seemed to
be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire
blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to
be laid. All she felt was, one Prime Minister more or less made not a
scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker.
The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy; the ladies were
going up, one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always
sending back some message to the kitchen, “My love to Mrs. Walker,”
that was it one night. Next morning they would go over the dishes--the
soup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs. Walker knew, as usual underdone,
for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny;
so it happened, the salmon was always underdone. But some lady with
fair hair and silver ornaments had said, Lucy said, about the entrée,
was it really made at home? But it was the salmon that bothered Mrs.
Walker, as she spun the plates round and round, and pulled in dampers
and pulled out dampers; and there came a burst of laughter from the
dining-room; a voice speaking; then another burst of laughter--the
gentlemen enjoying themselves when the ladies had gone. The tokay,
said Lucy running in. Mr. Dalloway had sent for the tokay, from the
Emperor’s cellars, the Imperial Tokay.
It was borne through the kitchen. Over her shoulder Lucy reported how
Miss Elizabeth looked quite lovely; she couldn’t take her eyes off her;
in her pink dress, wearing the necklace Mr. Dalloway had given her.
Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth’s fox-terrier, which, since
it bit, had to be shut up and might, Elizabeth thought, want something.
Jenny must remember the dog. But Jenny was not going upstairs with all
those people about. There was a motor at the door already! There was a
ring at the bell--and the gentlemen still in the dining-room, drinking
tokay!
There, they were going upstairs; that was the first to come, and now
they would come faster and faster, so that Mrs. Parkinson (hired for
parties) would leave the hall door ajar, and the hall would be full
of gentlemen waiting (they stood waiting, sleeking down their hair)
while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room along the passage;
where Mrs. Barnet helped them, old Ellen Barnet, who had been with the
family for forty years, and came every summer to help the ladies, and
remembered mothers when they were girls, and though very unassuming did
shake hands; said “milady” very respectfully, yet had a humorous way
with her, looking at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping
Lady Lovejoy, who had some trouble with her underbodice. And they
could not help feeling, Lady Lovejoy and Miss Alice, that some little
privilege in the matter of brush and comb, was awarded them having
known Mrs. Barnet--“thirty years, milady,” Mrs. Barnet supplied her.
Young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy, when they stayed
at Bourton in the old days. And Miss Alice didn’t need rouge, said Mrs.
Barnet, looking at her fondly. There Mrs. Barnet would sit, in the
cloakroom, patting down the furs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls,
tidying the dressing-table, and knowing perfectly well, in spite of the
furs and the embroideries, which were nice ladies, which were not. The
dear old body, said Lady Lovejoy, mounting the stairs, Clarissa’s old
nurse.
And then Lady Lovejoy stiffened. “Lady and Miss Lovejoy,” she said to
Mr. Wilkins (hired for parties). He had an admirable manner, as he bent
and straightened himself, bent and straightened himself and announced
with perfect impartiality “Lady and Miss Lovejoy ... Sir John and Lady
Needham ... Miss Weld ... Mr. Walsh.” His manner was admirable; his
family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible
that a being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have
blundered into the nuisance of children.
“How delightful to see you!” said Clarissa. She said it to every one.
How delightful to see you! She was at her worst--effusive, insincere.
It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home and
read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall;
he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.
Oh dear, it was going to be a failure; a complete failure, Clarissa
felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologising
for his wife who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace garden party.
She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye, criticising her, there,
in that corner. Why, after all, did she do these things? Why seek
pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anyhow! Burn
her to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one’s torch and hurl
it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson! It
was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming
and standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was
idiotic. But why did he come, then, merely to criticise? Why always
take, never give? Why not risk one’s one little point of view? There
he was wandering off, and she must speak to him. But she would not
get the chance. Life was that--humiliation, renunciation. What Lord
Lexham was saying was that his wife would not wear her furs at the
garden party because “my dear, you ladies are all alike”--Lady Lexham
being seventy-five at least! It was delicious, how they petted each
other, that old couple. She did like old Lord Lexham. She did think it
mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it
was all going wrong, all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, any
horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch
at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves
upright.
Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and
it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right
out, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.) Was it draughty,
Ellie Henderson wondered? She was subject to chills. But it did not
matter that she should come down sneezing to-morrow; it was the girls
with their naked shoulders she thought of, being trained to think of
others by an old father, an invalid, late vicar of Bourton, but he
was dead now; and her chills never went to her chest, never. It was
the girls she thought of, the young girls with their bare shoulders,
she herself having always been a wisp of a creature, with her thin
hair and meagre profile; though now, past fifty, there was beginning
to shine through some mild beam, something purified into distinction
by years of self-abnegation but obscured again, perpetually, by her
distressing gentility, her panic fear, which arose from three hundred
pounds’ income, and her weaponless state (she could not earn a penny)
and it made her timid, and more and more disqualified year by year to
meet well-dressed people who did this sort of thing every night of
the season, merely telling their maids “I’ll wear so and so,” whereas
Ellie Henderson ran out nervously and bought cheap pink flowers, half
a dozen, and then threw a shawl over her old black dress. For her
invitation to Clarissa’s party had come at the last moment. She was not
quite happy about it. She had a sort of feeling that Clarissa had not
meant to ask her this year.
Why should she? There was no reason really, except that they had always
known each other. Indeed, they were cousins. But naturally they had
rather drifted apart, Clarissa being so sought after. It was an event
to her, going to a party. It was quite a treat just to see the lovely
clothes. Wasn’t that Elizabeth, grown up, with her hair done in the
fashionable way, in the pink dress? Yet she could not be more than
seventeen. She was very, very handsome. But girls when they first
came out didn’t seem to wear white as they used. (She must remember
everything to tell Edith.) Girls wore straight frocks, perfectly tight,
with skirts well above the ankles. It was not becoming, she thought.
So, with her weak eyesight, Ellie Henderson craned rather forward,
and it wasn’t so much she who minded not having any one to talk to
(she hardly knew anybody there), for she felt that they were all such
interesting people to watch; politicians presumably; Richard Dalloway’s
friends; but it was Richard himself who felt that he could not let the
poor creature go on standing there all the evening by herself.
“Well, Ellie, and how’s the world treating _you_?” he said in his
genial way, and Ellie Henderson, getting nervous and flushing and
feeling that it was extraordinarily nice of him to come and talk to
her, said that many people really felt the heat more than the cold.
“Yes, they do,” said Richard Dalloway. “Yes.”
But what more did one say?
“Hullo, Richard,” said somebody, taking him by the elbow, and, good
Lord, there was old Peter, old Peter Walsh. He was delighted to see
him--ever so pleased to see him! He hadn’t changed a bit. And off they
went together walking right across the room, giving each other little
pats, as if they hadn’t met for a long time, Ellie Henderson thought,
watching them go, certain she knew that man’s face. A tall man, middle
aged, rather fine eyes, dark, wearing spectacles, with a look of John
Burrows. Edith would be sure to know.
The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradise blew out again. And
Clarissa saw--she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. So
it wasn’t a failure after all! it was going to be all right now--her
party. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go. She
must stand there for the present. People seemed to come in a rush.
Colonel and Mrs. Garrod ... Mr. Hugh Whitbread ... Mr. Bowley ... Mrs.
Hilbery ... Lady Mary Maddox ... Mr. Quin ... intoned Wilkin. She had
six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the
rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back
the curtain.
And yet for her own part, it was too much of an effort. She was not
enjoying it. It was too much like being--just anybody, standing there;
anybody could do it; yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn’t
help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a
stage, this post that she felt herself to have become, for oddly enough
she had quite forgotten what she looked like, but felt herself a stake
driven in at the top of her stairs. Every time she gave a party she
had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one
was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought,
partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways,
partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn’t say
anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper.
But not for her; not yet anyhow.
“How delightful to see you!” she said. Dear old Sir Harry! He would
know every one.
And what was so odd about it was the sense one had as they came up the
stairs one after another, Mrs. Mount and Celia, Herbert Ainsty, Mrs.
Dakers--oh and Lady Bruton!
“How awfully good of you to come!” she said, and she meant it--it was
odd how standing there one felt them going on, going on, some quite
old, some....
_What_ name? Lady Rosseter? But who on earth was Lady Rosseter?
“Clarissa!” That voice! It was Sally Seton! Sally Seton! after all
these years! She loomed through a mist. For she hadn’t looked like
_that_, Sally Seton, when Clarissa grasped the hot water can, to think
of her under this roof, under this roof! Not like that!
All on top of each other, embarrassed, laughing, words tumbled
out--passing through London; heard from Clara Haydon; what a chance of