Footnote to G.P.F.’s page.
G.P.F. will write you a very special Personal Chat if you send a stamped and addressed envelope and five-shilling postal order to “Personal Chat. Harmony. 5 Materfamilias Lane, E.C. 2.”
From Miss Carlisle Wayne to Miss Félicité de Suze:
Friars Pardon
Benham
Bucks.
Dear Fée,
I’ve had rather a queer letter from Aunt Cile, who wants me to come on the third. What have you been up to?
Love,
Lisle
From the Honourable Edward Manx to Miss Carlisle Wayne:
Harrow Flats
Sloane Square
London, S.W.I
Dearest Lisle,
Cousin Cécile says you are invited to Duke’s Gate for the week-end on Saturday the third. I shall come down to Benham in order to drive you back. Did you know she wants to marry me to Félicité? I’m really not at all keen and neither, luckily, is Fée. She’s fallen in a big way for an extremely dubious number who plays a piano-accordion in Cousin George’s band. I imagine there’s a full-dress row in the offing à cause, as Cousin Cécile would say, de the band and particularly de the dubious number whose name is Carlos something. They aren’t ’alf cups of tea are they? Why do you go away to foreign parts? I shall arrive at about 5 p.m. on the Saturday.
Love,
Ned
From the Monogram gossip column:
Rumour hath it that Lord Pastern and Bagott, who is a keen exponent of boogie-woogie, will soon be heard at a certain restaurant “not a hundred miles from Piccadilly.” Lord Pastern and Bagott, who, of course, married Madame de Suze, (née de Fouteaux) plays the tympani with enormous zest. His band includes such well-known exponents as Carlos Rivera and is conducted by none other than the inimitable Breezy Bellairs, both of the Metronome. By the way, I saw lovely Miss Félicité (Fée) de Suze, Lady Pastern and Bagott’s daughter by her first marriage, lunching the other day at the Tarmac à deux with the Hon. Edward Manx, who is, of course, her second cousin on the distaff side.
From Mr. Carlos Rivera to Miss Félicité de Suze:
102, Bedford Mansions
Austerly Square
London, S.W.I
Listen Glamorous,
You cannot do this thing to me. I am not an English Honourable This or Lord That to sit complacent while my woman makes a fool of me. No. With me it is all or nothing. I am a scion of an ancient house. I do not permit trespassers and I am tired, I am very tired indeed, of waiting. I wait no longer. You announce immediately our engagement or — finish! It is understood?
Adios
Carlos de Rivera
Telegram from Miss Félicité de Suze to Miss Carlisle Wayne:
DARLING FOR PITY’S SAKE COME EVERYTHING TOO TRICKY AND PECULIAR HONESTLY DO COME GENUINE CRI DE COEUR TONS OF LOVE DARLING FEE.
Telegram from Miss Carlisle Wayne to Lady Pastern and Bagott:
THANK YOU SO MUCH LOVE TO COME ARRIVING ABOUT SIX SATURDAY 3RD. CARLISLE.
CHAPTER II
THE PERSONS ASSEMBLE
At precisely eleven o’clock in the morning G.P.F. walked in at a side door of the Harmony offices in 5 Materfamilias Lane, E.G.2. He went at once to his own room. Private G.P.F. was written in white letters on the door. He unwound the scarf with which he was careful to protect his nose and mouth from the fog, and hung it, together with his felt hat and overcoat, on a peg behind his desk. He then assumed a green eye-shade, and shot a bolt in his door. By so doing he caused a notice, Engaged, to appear on the outside.
His gas fire was burning brightly and the tin saucer of water set before it to humidify the air sent up a little drift of steam. The window was blanketed outside by fog. It was as if a yellow curtain had been hung on the wrong side of the glass. The footsteps of passers-by sounded close and dead and one could hear the muffled coughs and shut-in voices of people in a narrow street on a foggy morning. G.P.F. rubbed his hands together, hummed a lively air, seated himself at his desk and switched on his green-shaded lamp. “Cosy,” he thought. The light glinted on his dark glasses, which he took off and replaced with reading spectacles.
“One, two. Button your boot,” sang G.P.F. in a shrill falsetto and pulled a wire basket of unopened letters towards him. “Three, four, knock on the gate,” he sang facetiously and slit open the top letter. A postal order for five shillings fell out on the desk.
Dear G.P.F. [he read],
I feel I simply must write and thank you for your lush Private Chat letter — which I may as well confess has rocked me to my foundations. You couldn’t be more right to call yourself Guide, Philosopher and Friend, honestly you couldn’t. I’ve thought so much about what you’ve told me and I can’t help wondering what you’re like. To look at and listen to, I mean. I think your voice must be rather deep [“Oh Crumbs!” G.P.F. murmured] and I’m sure you are tall. I wish—
He skipped restlessly through the next two pages and arrived at the peroration:
I’ve tried madly to follow your advice but my young man really is! I can’t help thinking that it would be immensely energizing to talk to you. I mean really talk. But I suppose that’s hopelessly out of bounds, so I’m having another five bob’s worth of Private Chat.
G.P.F. followed the large flamboyant script and dropped the pages, one by one, into a second wire basket. Here, at last, was the end.
I suppose he would be madly jealous if he knew I had written to you like this but I just felt I had to. Your grateful
“Toots”
G.P.F. reached for his pad of copy, gazed for a moment in a benign absent manner at the fog-lined window and then fell to. He wrote with great fluency, sighing and muttering under his breath.
“Of course I am happy,” he began, “to think that I have helped.” The phrases ran out from his pencil “… you must still be patient… sure you will understand… anonymity… just think of G.P.F. as a friendly ghost… write again if you will… more than usually interested… best of luck and my blessing…” When it was finished he pinned the postal note to the top sheet and dropped the whole in a further basket which bore the legend “Personal Chat.”
The next letter was written in a firm hand on good notepaper. G.P.F. contemplated it with his head on one side, whistling between his teeth.
The writer [it said] is fifty years old and has recently consented to rejoin her husband who is fifty-five. He is eccentric to the verge of lunacy but, it is understood, not actually certifiable. A domestic crisis has arisen in which he refuses to take the one course compatible with his responsibilities as a stepfather. In a word, my daughter contemplates a marriage that from every point of view but that of unbridled infatuation is disastrous. If further details are required I am prepared to supply them, but the enclosed cuttings from newspapers covering a period of sixteen years will, I believe, speak for themselves. I do not wish this communication to be published, but enclose a five-shilling postal order which I understand will cover a letter of personal advice.
I am etc.,
Cécile de Fouteaux Pastern and Bagott