All the Dogs of My Life (9780349005171) by Von Arnim Elizabeth

Author:Von Arnim, Elizabeth [VON ARNIM, ELIZABETH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780349005171
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2014-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t till the beginning of March that the fine weather in the mountains broke, and the whole time it went on so did my guests. Not the same ones, but one guest, as I had already learned, leads to another; and back in their offices or their cathedrals—for ten days I had harboured a prebendary,—back, I say, in the places whence they had come, and conspicuous by their sunburn among the pale crowds of England, my late guests enthusiastically described what they had been doing, and the mouths of those who listened watered.

I know, from the results, that this was so. More acquaintances wrote touching letters, saying how much they longed for air that was pure, how much they envied me mine, and how wretched it was to be so utterly broke that they couldn’t manage St. Moritz that year. And since, as I have already indicated, I am not able to say No when taken suddenly, nor, I find, if appeals are made to my goodnature—it is so flattering to be supposed goodnatured!—I wrote back in each case and said, Do come. Besides, I did feel that to have that roomy châlet, and all its bathrooms, in such persistently crystalline weather only for me and Coco, while people in London were being swamped by rain or strangled by fogs, was in the nature of a disgrace.

Accordingly my house was never empty. On the contrary, since few went and many came, it ended by being full to overflowing, and, except that there were no bills at the end, very like an hotel. A popular resort, in fact. If I had been in Baedeker, I daresay I would have got three stars.

Three stars, though, or that which they represent, are expensive, and presently I found that I was growing poor. I had started off on my career as hostess—a career quite new to me, for in Pomerania we had no guests,—in a spirit of uncalculating light-heartedness. If I thought at all, I supposed, largely, that what is enough for one is enough for two, and that the more people you feed the less it costs. These suppositions were erroneous. They might be truths for an hotel-keeper, and certainly hotels do seem able to take one in for less in proportion, so to speak, as one is more, but they are not truths for such as myself. And discovering this I became, at intervals, pensive.

On Saturdays, when I paid the week’s bills, I was pensive to the point of not being able, in conversation with my guests at meals, to show any of what is best described as verve, and this, I knew, was to be lamented. A hostess, if she is to do her duty satisfactorily by her guests, should be in a constant condition of verve. When she is with them, at least, this should be her condition. Let her droop, if droop she must, in her bedroom, but in their presence let there unflaggingly be verve.

On Saturdays I had no verve.

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