| | | | | In every coterie we find certain stray damsels unattached; young | ladies of personable appearance and showy accomplishments who go about | the world alone, and whose parents, never seen, are living in some | obscure lodgings where they pinch and screw to furnish their | daughter's bravery. Some one or two great ladies of the set patronize | these girls, take them about a good deal, and ask them to all their | drums and at-homes. They are useful in their degree; very | good-natured; always ready to fetch and carry in a confidential kind | of way; to sing and play when they are asked ~~ and they sing and play | with almost professional skill; full of the small talk of the day, and | not likely to bore their companions with untimely discussions on | dangerous subjects, nor to startle them with enthusiasm about | anything. They serve to fill a vacant place when wanted; and they look | nice and keep up the ball so far as their own sphere extends. They are | safe, too; and, though lively and amusing, are never known to retail | gossip nor talk scandal in public. | Who are they? No-one exactly knows. | They are Miss A. and Miss B., and | they have collaterals of respectable name and standing; cousins in | Government offices; dead uncles of good military rank; perhaps a | father, dead or alive, with a quite unexceptionable position; but you | never see them with their natural belongings, and | no-one thinks of | visiting them at their own homes. They are sure to have a mother in | bad health, who never goes out and never sees | anyone ; and if you | should by chance come across her, you find a shabby, painful, peevish | woman who seems at odds with life altogether, and who is as unlike her | showy daughter as a russet wren is unlike a humming-bird. The | drawing-room epiphyte introduces mamma, when necessary, with a | creditable effort at indifference, not to say content, with her | conditions; but if you can read signs, you know what she is feeling | about that suit of rusty black, and how little she enjoys the | rencounter. | Sometimes she has a brother, of whom she never speaks unless obliged, | and of whose occupation and whereabouts, when asked, she gives only | the vaguest account. He has an office in the City; or he has gone | abroad; or he is in the navy and she forgets the name of his ship; | but, whatever he is, you can get no clue more distinct than this. If | you should chance to see him, you get a greater surprise than you had | when you met the mother; and you wonder, with a deeper wonder, how | such a sister should have sprung from the same stock as that which | produced such a brother. Sometimes however, the brother is as | presentable as the sister; in which case he probably follows much the | same course as herself, and hangs on to the skirts of those of the | Upper Ten who recognize him ~~ preferring to idle away his life and | energy as a well-dressed epiphyte of greatness rather than live the | life of a man in a lower social sphere. But, as a rule, stray damsels | have neither brothers nor sisters visible to the world, and only a | widowed mother in the background, whose health is bad and who does not | go out. | The ulterior object of the ladies who patronize these pretty epiphytes | is to get them married; partly from personal kindness, partly from the | pleasure all women have in bringing about a marriage that does not | interfere with themselves. But they seldom accomplish this object. Who | is to marry the epiphyte? The men of the society into which she has | been brought from the outside have their own ambitions to realize. | They want money, or land, or a good family connexion, to make the | sacrifice an equal bargain and to gild the yoke of matrimony with | becoming splendour. And the drawing room epiphyte has nothing to offer | as her contribution but a fine pair of eyes, a good-natured manner, | and a pretty taste for music. To marry well among the society in which | she finds herself is therefore almost impossible. And her tastes have | been so far formed as to render a marriage into lower circumstances | almost as impossible on the other side. | Besides, what could she do as the wife of a clergyman, say on three | hundred a year, with a poor parish to look after and an increasing | tribe of babies to feed and clothe? Her clear high notes, her splendid | register, her brilliant touch, will not help her then; and the taste | with which she makes up half-worn silk gowns, and transforms what was | a rag into an ornament, will not do much towards finding the necessary | boots and loaves which keep her sisters awake at night wondering how | they are to be got. She has been taught nothing of the art of home | life, if she has learnt much of that of the drawing-room. She cannot | cook, nor make a little go a long way by the cunning of good | management and a well-masked economy; she cannot do serviceable | needlework, though she may be great in fancy work, and quite a genius | in millinery; and the habit of having plenty of servants about her has | destroyed the habit of turning her hand to anything like energetic | self-help. Epiphyte as she is, penniless stray damsel more than half | maintained by the kindness of her grand friends, she has to keep up | the sham of appearances before those friends' domestics. And as | ladyhood in England is chiefly measured by a woman's uselessness, and | to do anything in the way of rational work would be a spot on her | ermine, the poor epiphyte of the drawing-room, with mamma in rusty | black in those shabby lodgings of theirs, learns in self-defence to | practise all the foolish helplessness of her superiors; and, to retain | the respect of the servants, loses her own. | What is she then but one of those misplaced beings who are neither of | one sphere nor of another? She is not of the grandes dames | on her own account, yet she lives in their houses | as one among them. She is | not a woman who can make the best of things; who, notable and | industrious, and by her clever contrivances of saving and substitution | is able to order a home comfortably on next to nothing; and yet she | has no solid claim to anything but the undercut of the middle classes, | and no right to expect more than the most ordinary marriage. She is | nothing. Ashamed and unable to work, she has to accept gratuities | which are not wages. Waiting on Providence and floated by her friends, | she wanders though society ever on the look-out for chances. Each new | acquaintance is a fresh hope, and every house that opens to her | contains the potentiality of final success. To be met everywhere is | the ultimate point of her ambition with respect to means; the end kept | steadily, if fruitlessly, in view, is that satisfying settlement which | shall take her out of the category of a hanger-on and give her a | locus standi of her own. But it does not come. | Year by year we meet the drawing-room epiphyte in the old haunts ~~ at | Brighton; at Ryde; at half-a-dozen good houses in London; on a visit | to the friends who make much of her one day and snub her | the next ~~ but | she does not

'go off.'

She is pretty, she is agreeable, | she is well | dressed, she is accomplished; but she does not find the husband for | whom all this is offered as the equivalent. Year by year she grows | fatter or thinner as her constitution expands into obesity or shrivels | into leanness; the lines about her fine eyes deepen; the powder is a | little thicker on her cheeks; and there are more than shrewd | suspicions of a touch of rouge or of antimony, with a judicious | application of patent hair-restorer to lift up the faded tints. | Fighting desperately with that old enemy Time, she disputes line by | line the tribute he claims; and succeeds so far as to continue a good | make-up for a year or two after other women of her own age have given | in and consented to look their years. But the drawing-room epiphyte is | nothing if she is not young ~~ which is synonymous with power to | interest and amuse. Her friends, the great ladies who hold | drawing-rooms and gather society in shoals, want points of colour in | their rooms as well as serviceable foils. The apple-pie that was all | made of quinces was a failure, wanting the homely | couche from which | the savour of the more fragrant fruit might be thrown up. On the other | hand there are social meetings which are like apple-pies without any | quince at all; and then the epiphyte is invaluable, and her music | worth as much in its degree as if she were a prima donna, each of | whose notes ranked as gold. So that when she ceases to be young, when | she loses her high notes and has gout in her fingers, she fails in her | only raison d'ętre , and her occupation is gone. | Hence her hard | struggles with the old enemy, and her half-heroic, half-tragic | determination not to give in while a shred of force remains. | On the day when she collapses into an old woman she is lost. She has | nothing for it then but to withdraw from the brilliant drawing-rooms | she has so long haunted into dingy lodgings in a back street, and live | as her mother lived before her. Forgotten by the world which she has | spent her life in waiting on, she has leisure to reflect on the | relative values of things, and to lament, as she probably will, that | she gave living grain for gilded husks; that she exchanged the | realities of love and home, which might have been hers had she been | contented to accept them on a lower social scale, for the barren | pleasures of the day and the delusive hope of marrying well in a | sphere where she had no solid foothold. She had her choice, like | others; but she chose to throw for high stakes at heavy odds, and in | so doing let slip what she originally held. The bird in the hand might | have been of a homely kind enough; still, it was always the bird; | while the two golden pheasants in the bush flew away unsalted, and | left her only their shadows to run after. | On the whole then, we incline to the belief that the drawing-room | epiphyte is a mistake, and that those stray damsels who wander about | society unattended by any natural protector and always more or less in | the character of adventuresses, would do better to keep to the sphere | determined by parental circumstances than to let themselves be taken | into one which does not belong to them and which they cannot hold. | And furthermore it seems to us that, irrespective of its present | instability and future fruitlessness, the position of a drawing-room | epiphyte is one which no woman of sense would accept, and to which no | woman of spirit would submit.