Balloons

Balloons

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco This
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Title: Balloons
Author: Elizabeth Bibesco
Release Date: February 23, 2005 [EBook #15156]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BALLOONS ***

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Proofreading Team.

BALLOONS
BY
ELIZABETH BIBESCO

Author of "I Have Only Myself to Blame," etc.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1922
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS
PAGE I HAVEN 9 To Clarence Day, Jr.
II TWO PARIS EPISODES 21 To Anthony Asquith I: THE STORY OF
A COAT II: BALLOONS
III COURTSHIP 27
IV "DO YOU REMEMBER...?" 29 To Leslie Hartley
V THE MARTYR 37 To H.G. Wells
VI A MOTOR 53 To Alice Longworth
VII THE MASTERPIECE 60 To Harold Child
VIII TEA TIME 67 To Sylvester Gates
IX THE END 78
X MISUNDERSTOOD 83 To John Maynard Keynes
XI COUNTERPOINT 92 To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta
XII VILLEGIATURA 102 To Marcel Proust
XIII AULD LANG SYNE 132 To Harold Nicolson

XIV TWO TAXI DRIVES 147 To Paul Morand I: SUNSHINE II:
LAMPS
XV A TOUCH OF SPRING 155 To W.Y. Turner
XVI FIDO AND PONTO 161

BALLOONS

I
HAVEN
[To CLARENCE DAY, JR.]
"You should only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age.
It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you
no longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry."
Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
winter, "Avoid wet feet and germs." In spite of both, we are still
subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.
But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on
the grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky
grace of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the
operation!
It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all is
difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.
Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl
with bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All

the young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories
or bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, "Well, I never!"
Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime
pinnacle of thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of
untidiness, of unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three
ingredients compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True,
her cheeks lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting
transparent whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin.
Cold food, ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their
charms and Miss Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.
She discovered that men were her only interest--probably she had
always known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage,
was glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
belonged to that strange, tropical species--the other sex.
Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
"what men liked in a woman." It was, it appeared, necessary to be
bright--relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
necessary to have "something to say for yourself" which in Miss
Wilcox's hands, meant a series of pert tu quoques of the "you're
another" variety. Her two other axioms, "Don't let them see that you
care for them" and "feed the beasts," were alas! never put to the test as
no man had ever considered the possibility of being loved by Miss
Wilcox and the feeding stage had, in consequence, never been reached.
Nevertheless, in defence of her theses, Miss Wilcox was rough-toughed
in public, while in private, she studied recipes and articles on cooking.
As hope gradually began to give way to experience, Miss Wilcox came
to the conclusion that she frightened men off. They regarded her, she
imagined, as cold and indifferent and unapproachable. "I don't cheapen
myself," she would say, forgetting her conservatory days. In her heart
of hearts, she