Proudie," she had said, "we do all have
sensual propensities."
"It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide
for all that at home," Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which
opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself
to coincide. But a conversazione would give play to no sensual
propensity, nor occasion that intolerable expense which the
gratification of sensual propensities too often produces. Mrs.
Proudie felt that the word was not all that she could have desired.
It was a little faded by old use and present oblivion, and seemed to
address itself to that portion of the London world that is considered
blue, rather than fashionable. But, nevertheless, there was a
spirituality about it which suited her, and one may also say an
economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps not be beyond
the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly burnished
gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first hand, and
why not Mrs. Proudie?
Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they
would, or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more
could be got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many
as the furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially
with the two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back
closet--the small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the
clergymen's wives from Barsetshire--and to let the others stand
about upright, or "group themselves," as she described it.
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