E. F. Benson

“ It is idle to pretend that his wife felt any sense of desolation, for she was impervious to everything except dignity. But she decided to call herself Constance Lady Whittlemere rather than adopt the ugly name of dowager. There was a magnificent funeral, and she was left very well off.
Le roi est mort; vive le roi: Captain Lord Whittlemere took the reins of government into his feudal grasp, and his mother, with four rows of pearls for her wo carriages and a pair of carriage-horses, and a jointure of six thousand pounds a year, entered into the most characteristic phase of her existence. ”

“ Such rudiments of humanity as she might possibly have once been possessed of shriveled like a barren nut-kernel, and when at the end of these thirty-four years her husband died, she was already too proper, too shell-bound, to be human any longer. ”

“ It was the custom for the congregation to wait in their pews till they had left the church, exactly as if it was in honor of Lord and Lady Whittlemere that they had assembled here. This impression was borne out by the fact that as the family walked down the aisle the congregation rose to their feet. Only the footman who was on duty that day preceded their exit, and he held the door of the landau open until Lady Whittlemere and three daughters had got in. ”

“ If she sat down to think, she could not hit upon any point in which she has not invariably behaved like a Christian and a lady, particularly a lady. Yet she is not exactly pharisaical; she never enumerates even in her own mind her manifold excellencies, simply because they are so much a matter of course with her. ”

“ She has no regrets and no longings, because she has always lived perfectly correctly, and does not want anything. She is totally without friends or enemies, and she is never surprised or enthusiastic or vexed. About six times a year, on the day preceding one of her dinners. Miss Lyall does not read aloud after tea, but puts the names of her guests on pieces of cardboard, and makes a map of the table, while the evening before she leaves London for Hastings or Scotland she stops playing Patience at ten in order to get a good long night before her journey. ”

“ As befitted her station, it was very large and gloomy and dignified, and had five best spare bedrooms, which were just five more than she needed, since she never asked anybody to stay with her except her children's governess, poor Miss Lyall, for whom a dressing-room was far more suitable: Miss Lyall would certainly be more used to a small room than a large one. She came originally to help Lady Whittlemere to keep her promise as set forth in the "Morning Post" to answer the letters of condolence that had poured in upon her in her bereavement ”

“ She takes no interest in politics, music, drama, or pictures, but goes to the private view of the academy as May comes round because the thing recommends it. And when she comes to die, the lifelong consciousness of the thing will enable her to meet the King of Terrors with fortitude and composure. He will not frighten her at all. ”

“ The three daughters, amply dowered, married into stiff mahogany families at an early age, and the sons continued to prop up the conservative interests of the nation by becoming severally a soldier, a clergyman, a member of Parliament, a diplomatist, and they took into all these liberal walks of life the traditions and proprieties of genuine Whittlemeres. ”

“ She subscribes to no charities, for she is aware that her husband left her this ample jointure for herself, and she spends such part of it as she does not save on herself, on her food, and her house and her horses and the fifteen people whose business it is to make her quite comfortable. ”

“ One of the footmen or the butler of course opened the front door as she went in and out, and the hall boy, with a quantity of buttons, would stand up as she passed him with fixed set face, and then presumably sit down again. ”