1858: Duchess of Mallard
Private papers
The air grows oppressive with good taste. I have spent the entire morning redecorating one of the lesser drawing rooms in “sacred mauve,” which is apparently the fashionable hue of revelation this season. The upholsterer, a sly Methodist, claimed it encouraged humility. Yet every time the light strikes the silk, it produces not piety but self‑worship. Perhaps that is humility refined.
I am told religion should be simple, but simplicity has never worn well on me. I require ornament for conviction. God, I suspect, does too—or why else would He favour so many impossible systems? Cherubims, devas, transmigrating souls… all of them superbly organised committees of adoration. This morning, while taking chocolate, I decided to believe in all of them only because they contradict one another with such perfect symmetry. It is the politest form of divine confusion.
Pausing before my mirror (the Venetian, the one that thickens complexion into moral plausibility), I mused that reincarnation is perhaps the sole democratic gesture afforded to the elite. Imagine: one may return as anyone—and yet, in my case, surely with better bones. Still, I have begun to fear the vulgarity of perfection. Spirits must tire of being flawless. Even angels, if one reads Bishop Grindle’s Anatomy of Celestial Tedium (1844 edition, bound in lavender calf), occasionally break formation to admire their own wings. I underline the chapter on “melancholy seraphs.”
After luncheon, a missionary called, trembling with pamphlets. He spoke of Hindu idols confiscated for preservation in some museum west of Bristol. I said, very sweetly, “Is not theft the sincerest form of curiosity?” He failed to see the wit. To study a goddess requires possession; faith is, after all, a tactile science. In that sense, imperial policy merely imitates metaphysics. We absorb; thus we enlighten. I do not think he appreciated the compliment.
I have lately become preoccupied with the concept of sin as posture. Major vices, when viewed through the correct fabric, resemble exercises in deportment. Pride holds the spine. Envy sharpens the eye. Lust, though disorderly, at least keeps one interested in miracles of anatomy. The poet D’Alembert (whose odes I keep bound with my account books) remarks that “all wickedness is a kind of architecture.” Possibly he meant domestic.
It amuses me that ghosts—those patient auditors of our moral rehearsals—never complain of misinterpretation. They hover, tasteful and uninvited, behind the conscience, applauding error with impartial affection. I have taken to greeting ours in the corridor after the third bell. “Good evening, continuity,” I say, and incline my head as one might to a cultured stranger. A sin, once enough admired, becomes another form of loyalty—does it not?
At dusk I walked the terrace, fan in hand, watching the ducks rearrange themselves like minor divinities who had lost their commission. A curious serenity followed: that knowledge of existing both above and beneath solemnity. I suspect true holiness must wear a little rouge. God, if He watches, surely prefers those who decorate their credulity well.
The difficulty with omniscience, once one undertakes it, lies chiefly in décor. This afternoon I rose convinced that Nature’s God must envy my drawing rooms. To correct this imbalance, I resolved upon a chapel of my own invention—devotional, of course, but tastefully heretical. If God must enjoy a touch of Oriental mystery, then I shall oblige Him.
The plan came to me while observing the mirror in my boudoir. Its gilded frame, asymmetrical as revelation, suggested there might be spiritual advantage in contradiction. Why build one creed when one could upholster divinity with several? I summoned Mr. Blandy, the architect who designed the stables, and informed him I desired “a building that believes in everything at once.” He blinked, measured my intentions with his slide‑rule mind, and asked for a blueprint. “No,” I said. “Blueprints presuppose humility.”
Thus far the design proceeds magnificently. I have ordered a dome—Byzantine in outline, Persian in mood. Beneath it, I picture pews facing each other at obtuse angles so that nobody may ever agree. The altar is to revolve, for fairness, showing each congregation the same degree of uncertainty. Mrs. Blandy, who oversees household accounts, already objects on moral grounds. She fears the instability may encourage spontaneous ecstasies. I reassured her: controlled revelation, like champagne, should effervesce but never spill.
The eastern wall shall glow with stained glass depicting a ladder of angels ascending through mandalas, each step labelled in Greek, Sanskrit, or convenient nonsense. In the west, a fireplace designed after a Buddhist stupa—because enlightenment, to my taste, must always be heated. The floor mosaic will intertwine peacock feathers and Christian crosses, an idea I call “cosmic union in parquetry.”
A mechanical prayer wheel has been commissioned from Geneva clockmakers; it will recite psalms and sutras indiscriminately. There will also be a baptismal font carved from onyx, containing scented water blended with frankincense, rose‑milk, and what the chemist insists will only “spiritually tarnish” silver. “Then perfect,” I said, “the metal will repent for its own reflection.”
I dedicate a corner—a narrow one, tastefully curtained—to sin. It will contain mirrors from floor to ceiling, a small chaise, and A Compendium of Temptations (anonymous, Paris, 1836). One must instruct the conscience in civility. I imagine polite ladies kneeling there, confessing to pride through the medium of posing.
A dear friend, the Reverend St. John Palgrave, insists that my project verges upon pantheistic farce. “You make worship an aesthetic experiment,” he said. To which I replied that the alternative—faith without elegance—approaches blasphemy. He left looking offended and sanctified, which I count as conversion.
This evening, I devoted a quiet interval to reading the apocryphal Gospel of Evangeline Fitz‑Stuart (anonymous but too witty not to be female), wherein the Saviour accepts gifts from pagan astrologers not as bribes but as “samples of taste.” She writes, “Sin is merely salvation rehearsing in finer fabrics.” A theory after my own heart.
Ghosts have been unusually sympathetic since I began construction. One appeared near the servants’ corridor this afternoon, veiled in plaster‑dust, as though volunteering aesthetic advice. It leaned toward the blueprints, letting a draught scatter the page just enough to improve it. Some call such incidents accidents; I prefer to believe the dead enjoy good ornament.
Late night now. The workmen have departed; the house mutters politely under new vibrations. I think I shall christen the chapel The Emporium of Infinite Delicacy. When finished, it shall prove that God’s true majesty consists in His capacity to indulge my coherence. Faith, properly arranged, must coordinate with upholstery.
Tomorrow I will instruct Mr. Blandy to install discreet chandeliers shaped like halos—each candle representing, in rotation, a minor deity. To worship beneath them will be like standing in the receipt of cosmological applause.
And if, in some future century, historians accuse me of confusion, I shall answer from my marble niche: I was never confused, only comprehensive.
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