1896: From the Private Notebooks of Lady Kat Mallard
(Preface to the First Edition)
No one quite remembers who my father was, and as for my mother—well, one doesn’t discuss saints when they are still in circulation. Half the ton calls her a duchess, though several crowned heads have been known to blush and stammer when I pass, as if a rumour had taken flesh and chosen an inconvenient parasol. In my youth, I was assured that such mysteries cling to my lineage like tulle to tinsel—that I would always be half legitimate, wholly ornamental, and only occasionally useful, like an unused calling card with too much gilt at the edge.
Still, I have never found parentage persuasive. It is merely the world’s first jest at one’s expense. My true vocation—since I am denied employment, which is theft refined—is in the finer arts of ridicule. I have made of myself a temple of mockery consecrated to no god save amusement. If some sparkling fragments fall from my lips and lodge as little wounds in society’s satin, is it my fault that their fabric tears so easily?
I am, naturally, three persons in print. The Chronicler of Disgrace writes the pamphlets that make bishops tremble at breakfast. One of last year’s trifles concerned a certain Earl’s experiment with Bulgarian mesmerism, which his wife mistook for a declaration of love; I was told copies sold faster than hymnals that Sunday. The Correspondent, softer of tone, keeps her salon of letters with philosophers who mistake fatigue for wisdom and ennui for moral elevation. (Mr. Jasper Vale—whose Treatise on Moral Posture is now used to prop his own portrait in every decent club—once confessed to me, between sighs, that virtue bored him more than brocade.) And lastly, The Observer in the World, elusive as perfume after midnight, who wanders through drawing rooms and docks alike, writing only of what others deem indelicate to notice.
Society forgives nearly anything if it does not know whom to blame. I, therefore, am forgiven daily.
A few months ago, the scandal of Miss Hortense Peabody’s Improper Chair—a piece of furniture rumoured to induce “continental tendencies” in anyone who reclined in it—kept London yawning with delight. I wrote it up as “A Study in Upholstered Morality,” and all who read it agreed that the prose was disgraceful, the satire tasteless, and the author undetectable. I could hardly have received greater applause.
I have also taken up composition—not of music, which requires patience—but of tone. There are moods, you see, which must be scored in colour: my life in acid chartreuse, dulled at the edges; my laughter in minor sevenths that sting just before they dissolve. Once, I overheard a poet say I sounded ‘as if an angel had been trained by a tutor in farce.’ Charming. What he meant, of course, was that I refused to take him seriously.
Society insists on sincerity the way paupers insist on bread—it cannot afford anything better. I have watched men build reputations from nothing but the proper tilt of a monogrammed card, and women dissolve theirs over a misplaced comma in a love letter. Vanity keeps the world in motion; irony oils the hinges.
As for truth—it is a little overrated, don’t you think? I prefer my narratives dressed for dinner.
Mr. Blandy, latest darling of the Rationalist Club, has written that “a woman’s intellect, like smoke, rises only to vanish.” He is mistaken. Smoke lingers; it stains the curtains, the air, the white throats of men who sit too close.
I have lingered too, but I do not vanish. I record. I embroider. I correct.
You may think this is confession. It is not. Confession suggests remorse, and I’ve never yet met a sin I didn’t wear well. Consider me instead your hostess: I open the door to a ballroom of entangled motives, gossip perfumed with decay, and laughter so elegant it forgets its cause. By the end, you may decide to dislike me. Perfect—you will have understood my world.
The times declare themselves modern; how touching, how quaint. Everywhere I look, men of letters are discovering the obvious, calling it progress, and sending out press notices attesting to their humility. The women, meanwhile, learn to speak about themselves in words borrowed from their tormentors and wonder why the fit chafes. My satire is not cruelty, only accuracy in a mirror too unforgivingly bright.
I shall appear to you through several disguises, as is only polite. One grows tired of one’s own mask unless it changes expression. If you think you glimpse me—at the theatre, perhaps, laughing at the wrong moment in the wrong company—do not imagine you can unmask me. I am everywhere half-known, and therefore, thoroughly safe.
The rest of this volume contains my trifles and embarrassments, devoted to the curious spectacle of a nation in dress rehearsal for virtue. Should you find yourself wounded by some phrase or reflection, remember—there are no villains here, only mirrors.
Now, shall we begin?
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