Stephen McKenna

“ Some one had industriously spread this story that Mrs. Sawyer was a mere adventuress, and everybody was anxiously disclaiming all acquaintance with her. I have suggested that for months it was impossible to enter South Audley Street without running into Mr. “Reggie” Gorleigh; with my own ears I heard him say: “Mrs. Sawyer? Oh, that South American woman! I think I know who you mean.”
For sheer audacity. . .
“I don’t know what else you would expect,” said Major Blanstock one day. “People in London will take anything from anybody—and go on taking it so long as they think there’s money about. ”

“ You have seen men in the street, unloading bricks from a cart and tossing them, three or four at a time, from one to another? Should Connie ever sustain a reverse, she will always have a second string to her bow. . . Major Blanstock tossed this Mrs. Sawyer to Connie, Connie tossed her to me. . . I was expected, I presume, to toss her on to some one else, but I happen to have been brought up in a different school; before I undertake the responsibility of introducing a complete stranger, I like to know something about her. ”

“ In London the corps diplomatique is more diplomatique than corps. Just a swarm of warring atoms, some of them very charming, all of them invaluable if a man fails you at the last moment—a word by telephone to the Chancery: “Two men; I must have them; golf and bridge; the 4.20 from Waterloo; not to bring a servant.” . . . And so on and so forth. Indispensable for entertaining on Connie Maitland’s lines. They are so nice and tractable ”

“ I am not ashamed to confess that I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a man who is a man; but the kind I am describing seem to ask nothing more of life than invitations and more invitations—and this strange modern privilege of being “Bunny” and “Chris” and “Theo” to women who are old enough to have outgrown such nonsense. If you entertain—I do not, as you are aware—, I believe it is essential to have some such list as I have indicated; and I am told that the men repay you by running errands and being useful in a thousand ways. ”

“ I sometimes feel that in London one uproots one lie only to make room for another. A few days’ “propaganda”, as Will would say, convinced people that “the mystery woman”, as some one christened her, had no homicidal husband lurking with a revolver behind the nearest bush. ”

“ It does not affect me much, because I am never able to contribute more than a trifle; one cannot undertake her new charities indiscriminately without doing an injustice to the old. Others are more happily placed, and my only quarrel with Connie is that I must either drop her or else consent to embrace all her new friends. This Mrs. Sawyer, for instance. . .
I forget whether you were in London at the time. ”

“ Stay! There was one blot: her hospitality left one no opportunity of making an adequate return. Where there is a marked difference of means, I am the last to suggest that one should proceed on the principle of “a cutlet for a cutlet and a quail for a quail”, but it is uncomfortable to feel that everything is coming from one side. ”

“ LADY ANN SPENWORTH HOLDS THE Corps Diplomatique to its duty
LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion) : I feel—don’t you?—that, if the embassies can give no enlightenment, they might just as well not be there. Paris is different, of course; nowadays it is hardly more than a suburb of London; with that vast cosmopolitan army always coming and going, one is hardly expected to be one’s brother’s keeper. And Washington is unlike any other capital; one goes there en poste—or not at all. ”

“ Not more than two or three and twenty, though these South American women reach their prime very early—and pass it; jet-black hair and eyes, dead-white face, scarlet lips, really beautiful teeth; altogether a very striking young woman, with just enough of a foreign accent to give an added charm—for those who like that sort of thing. ”