LORD AND LADY ARTHUR RUSSELL AND THE "SALON" IN ENGLAND
The recent death of Lady Arthur Russell diminished by one the number
of accomplished women of this generation who were distinguished in
the last generation also. And it closed one of the few drawing-rooms
in London which have been _salon_ as well as drawing-room. I suppose
Lady Arthur herself might have said as she looked about her and
looked back, "_Tout passe_." The French phrase would have come
naturally to her tongue, for she was French: daughter of that Vicomte
de Peyronnet who was Minister to Charles X. Yet one was not often,
at any rate not too often, reminded of her French origin. So long
ago as 1865 Mlle. de Peyronnet married Lord Arthur Russell, brother
of the ninth Duke of Bedford and of the more famous Lord Odo Russell,
afterward the first Lord Ampthill, long British Ambassador at Berlin,
where he managed to be on good terms both with Prince Bismarck and
the present Emperor; a feat of diplomacy almost unique.
It is eighteen years since Lord Arthur died. {380} He was
indisputably of the last or an earlier generation, having little in
common with the present. People thought of Lord and Lady Arthur as
one; of itself enough to identify them with earlier times than those
when husband and wife are as likely to be met separately as together.
If there was a distinction it was at the breakfast hour, at
breakfasts in other houses. There was no rule which excluded ladies
from these breakfasts, but there was a custom which held good in the
majority of cases. The host's wife, if he had one, might or might
not appear. But the group of men who were in the habit of
breakfasting at each other's houses included Lord Arthur Russell, Sir
Mountstuart Grant-Duff, Lord Reay, Mr. Charles Roundell, Mr. Albert
Rutson, sometimes Mr. Herbert Spencer, and many more. You will
recognize Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff's name as that of the most
voluminous diarist of his time, and when you have read his six or
seven volumes the map of his life is spread out before you; an
honoured and useful life, a career of real distinction. Lord Arthur
had not Sir Mountstuart's ambitions; he was content with his home and
his kin and his books.
His brother, the Duke, had a habit of referring to himself as
Hastings Russell. An alteration at Woburn Abbey was proposed to him.
"It will not be made in the lifetime of Hastings Russell," his
answer. He had a sense of humour, which Lloyd-George must think a
rare thing in a duke. I drove once from Mentmore to Woburn {381}
Abbey with Lady Rosebery and her little girl, Lady Sibyl, then eight
or nine years old, with a gift of humorous perception rare at any age
in her sex. The child had a balanced mind and a mature view of
things which might have belonged to eighteen as well as eight. The
old place interested her and she asked the Duke to show her the
whole. He was delighted and took us through room after room, each
stately and each a museum. Presently we came to a rather bare,
scantily furnished, unhandsome room, and Lady Sibyl asked:
"But what is this?"
"This, my dear, is where I earn my living writing cheques for six
hours a day."
All three brothers, the Duke, Lord Odo, and Lord Arthur, had a quiet
humour in common. Lord Odo had, besides humour, wit. It was he,
while Ambassador in Berlin and during a visit of the Shah, when that
great potentate practised a less strict abstinence at dinner than his
religion demanded, who said to a neighbour: "After all, it's nothing
wonderful. You must remember the proverb, '_La nuit tous les chat
sont ris_. And Berlin used to echo with his caustic, good-natured
speeches. Nor did Berlin, nor perhaps London, ever forget Prince
Bismarck's saying:
"I never knew an Englishman who spoke French well whom I would trust
except Lord Odo."
After which I dare not name two or three others whose French was not
less perfect than that which Prince Bismarck praised. The Prince was
a good judge, as well he might be. French had {382} become to him
almost a second mother tongue; as, indeed, it must be to a European
diplomatist.
To the list of men who were to be met in those days at breakfasts the
name of Mr. George Brodrick ought to be added. He was a scholar, a
writer, a journalist, and one of those men who never could understand
why the world would not come round to his way of thinking and to him.
He had real abilities, which survived a university education. He was
born into a respectable place in the world, of good family, with good
opportunities, but was never a man of the world. To be of the world
in the true sense of the phrase a man must, I take it, have a fairly
accurate notion of his relation to the world. That Brodrick had not.
His ambitions were political, and most of all parliamentary; but they
remained ambitions. He could not understand how to commend himself
to a constituency; nor would he ever have conformed to the inexorable
standards of the House of Commons. He expected the House and its
standards to conform to him.
Struggling with a fine courage for the unattainable, Mr. Brodrick
meantime occupied himself with journalism, and was for many years a
leader-writer on _The Times_. The story which points his intense
self-concentration as well as any other connects itself with that
period. He was a guest in a house in Scotland, and while there
continued composition of those more or less Addisonian and rather
academic essays which, when printed on the leader page of _The
Thunderer_, became {383} leaders, and very good leaders of their
kind. He saw fit to write them in the drawing-room and in the
morning when men are commonly supposed to be elsewhere. There were
ladies and they talked. Presently Mr. Brodrick rose, marched over to
his hostess and said to her: "Lady X., I really must ask you to ask
these ladies not to carry on their conversation in this room. I am
engaged upon a most important article and my thoughts are distracted
by talk which has no importance at all."
His appearance and dress were those of a man who gave no thought to
either. He was rather tall, angular, uncouth, a stoop in the
shoulders, and his figure consisted of K's. He had the projecting
teeth which French caricaturists used to give to English "meesses,"
in whom it is extremely rare. Some person of genius untempered with
mercy called him "Curius Dentatus"; and the nickname lasted as long
as Brodrick lasted. With his teeth, and his knees and elbows sawing
the air, and his umbrella, and his horse all ribs, he was the delight
of the Row. Everybody liked him but everybody laughed at him. In
the end he renounced journalism and renounced politics and became
Warden of Merton. It was thought he would not be a good Head of a
College nor get on with his students, but he falsified all
predictions, governed wisely and well, won the affection of the boys
under him, and died lamented. I suppose the explanation is that he
had at bottom a genuine sincerity of nature.
{384}
But I am wandering far and I return to Lady Arthur and her house and
her guests.
The form of _salon_ which Lady Arthur Russell preferred was a _salon_
preceded by a dinner. It was never a large dinner. Except in a few
houses, the banquets of forty or fifty people or more so dear to the
New York hostess are not given in London, nor is mere bigness
reckoned an element of social success. In the biggest capital of the
world, where society far exceeds in numbers the society of any other
capital, people are content with moderation. A dinner of forty
people is a lottery in which each guest has two chances and no more.
His luck and his hopes of being amused or interested depend wholly on
his right- and left-hand neighbours.
Lady Arthur, being by birth a Frenchwoman, had French ideas on this
and other subjects. She did not choose her guests alphabetically,
nor by rank, nor for the sake of a passing notoriety. Lions you
might meet at her house but they were not expected to roar; nor did
they. Neither at dinner nor after dinner were more people asked than
could be managed. Large parties are, of course, given in London but
they do not constitute a _salon_. It is of the essence of a _salon_
that people shall not be left wholly to themselves, as in a large
party they must be, but shall be looked after. Affinities do not
always find themselves. They have to be brought together. Others
have to be kept apart. No authority is needed. Intuitions, a quick
eye for situations, and a gentle skill in {385} distribution are the
gifts which go to the making of a good hostess. These Lady Arthur
had. By mere smartness she set little store. I suppose the house in
Audley Square which Lord Arthur Russell built never passed for a
particularly smart house. Of houses which are called and which are
"smart" there are scores in London. Of _salons_ there are very few.
Herself the daughter of a French viscount, and with her husband
brother to a duke, Lady Arthur had no particular need to concern
herself about mere smartness. That is a reputation not altogether
difficult to acquire. The King's smile may confer it. Not, perhaps,
the late Queen's of whom one more than usually brilliant butterfly
remarked:
"But the Queen, you know, never was in society."
Which perhaps, in the sense intended, was true.
If there were one note more marked than another in these Audley
Square assemblies it was a note of culture. Ease and good breeding
and distinction may all be taken for granted. It is of the things
which may not be taken for granted that I speak; and culture
certainly may not. There are many houses in London in which it is
neither expected nor desired. In New York, as we all know, it is
discouraged. It would be discouraged anywhere if it were obtrusive
or pedantic. Neither in a _salon_ nor anywhere else is it to
supersede good manners, but to blend with them. To make a _salon_
possible there must be varied interests, play of mind, flexibility,
adaptability, and an unlimited supply of {386} tact. Perhaps the
last includes all social gifts except those of the intellect. It
covers a multitude of deficiencies. Nay, there was Miss Ada Reeve, a
clever actress who last year was discussing on the stage questions of
costume (elsewhere than on the stage), and announced:
"If a woman has tact and diamonds she needs nothing else."
Most of the generalities which you have been reading are really
particulars and are descriptive of Lady Arthur Russell's receptions,
of which I have spoken as a _salon_. I don't know that Lady Arthur
herself ever used the word, nor does it matter. The thing, not the
name, is what matters. There was culture, of a very unusual kind, on
both sides of the house. There was, on Lady Arthur's side, her
French blood. A _salon_ in Paris is no rare thing, and the reason
why it is not rare is because the society of Paris is French. In the
Faubourg St. Germain, if nowhere else, the social traditions of the
old monarchy in its most brilliant days still survive.
One of the noticeable things about this house in Audley Square was
the presence of distinguished foreigners, and another was that they
seemed no longer to consider themselves foreigners. They were at
home. Nor was this true only of men and women of rank who might be
of kin to the Peyronnets, and at any rate were of their world, but of
artists and men of letters. I will take M. Renan as an example. He
had come to London to deliver the Hibbert lectures and a lecture on
Marcus Aurelius {387} before the Royal Institution in Albemarle
Street, of which the ever lamented Tyndall was then at the head. I
had met Renan twice at other houses. He seemed a little _dépaysé_.
In Audley Square this exotic and troubled air had disappeared. He
had no English--at any rate, he spoke none--and his conversation, or
the conversation of the English with him, was therefore limited. But
when he talked, and often when he did not, he was surrounded by a
crowd of listeners or, as the case might be, of lookers-on. Hence it
was that he was so often kept, or left, standing, and his physical
frame was of such a kind that long standing was irksome to him, and
even painful. I noticed one night that he seemed ill at ease, and
said to him I hoped he was not suffering.
"Yes," he said, "that is exactly it; I am _souffrant_, and if I have
to stand much longer I don't know what will happen."
"But why don't you sit down?"
"Oh, do you think I might?"
So I took him to a comfortable sofa and, once seated, an ineffable
sweet peace stole over his features.
A more tragic incident happened in Count von Arnim's case, the end of
whose career was all tragedy. At this time he was still German
Ambassador in Paris, but Prince Bismarck had become distrustful of
him and the end was not far off. The public, however, knew nothing;
least of all the English public, whose acquaintance with occurrences
on the Continent is apt to be remote. For {388} aught that was known
in London, Count von Arnim was still the trusted representative of
Germany. He bore a great name, he held a great position. The
personal impression was a little disappointing. He did not look like
the man to stand up to Prince Bismarck, who was a giant in stature as
well as in character; nor was he. Slight, rather short, lacking in
distinction, meagre in face, with no hint of power in the shape of
his head or in his rather furtive expression, or in his carriage, he
seemed, on the whole, insignificant. The eyes had no fire in them;
he looked older than his years, and unequal to his renown.
It was the custom in those distant days to serve tea in the
drawing-room after dinner. Count von Arnim was asked if he would
take tea, left the lady by whom he was sitting, crossed the floor to
the tea-table, took his cup of tea from Lady Arthur's hand, and
started on his return. The floor was of polished oak, with here and
there a rug; just the sort of floor to which he must have been used
to all his life. But he slipped, his feet flew from under him, and
down came the Ambassador on his back. It was an awful moment. Men
went to his rescue, he was helped up, evidently much shaken, and
slowly found his way back to the sofa and to the lady who had been
his companion. There were almost tears in his eyes. When, a little
later, the news of his disgrace became known, a man said: "Well, if
he could not keep his feet in a drawing-room, what chance had he
against Prince Bismarck."
{389}