VIGNETTES OF LONDON LIFE
Byron's Grandson and Shelley's Son--The World of Balls--The
"Great Houses," and Their New Rivals--The Latter Criticized by
Some Ladies of the Old Noblesse--Types of More Serious
Society--Lady Marian Alford and Others--_Salons_ Exclusive and
Inclusive--A Clash of Two Rival Poets--The Poet Laureate
--Auberon Herbert and the Simple Life--Dean Stanley--Whyte
Melville--"Ouida"--"Violet Fane"--Catholic Society--Lord
Bute--Banquet to Cardinal Manning--Difficulties of the
Memoir-writer--Lord Wemyss and Lady P---- --Indiscretions of
Augustus Hare--Routine of a London Day--The Author's Life Out
of London
The few portraits and anecdotes which I have just sketched or recorded
are sufficient, let me say once more, to illustrate two general facts.
They indicate the way in which society owes much of its finer polish to
it. They emphasize the fact that, when I first knew it myself, it was
very much smaller than it has since then become, and, though divided
into sections even then, was very much more cohesive. Let me pass from
this latter fact to some of my own experiences as connected with it.
For young men who are already equipped with influential friends or
connections, a society which is relatively small and more or less
cohesive is in some ways more easy of access than one which is more
numerous, but in which, unless their means are ample enough to excite
the competitive affection of mothers, they are more likely to be lost.
In this respect I may look on myself as fortunate, for my circle of
acquaintances very rapidly widened as soon as, having done with Oxford,
I began to stay in London for more than a week at a time, and secured a
habitation, more or less permanent, of my own. While I was first looking
about for one which I thought would be suitable, Wentworth returned the
hospitality which I had previously shown him at Oxford by putting me up
for a fortnight at his house on the Chelsea Embankment, and during this
visit an incident took place which, if merely judged by the names of the
few persons concerned in it, might be thought picturesquely memorable.
Students of Robert Browning may recollect a short poem of his which
begins with the following lines:
And did you once see Shelley plain?
And did he stop and speak to you?
And did you answer him again?
How strange it seems and true!
My own answer would be, I did not see Shelley plain, but I did the next
thing to it. Sir Percy and Lady Shelley--the poet's son and
daughter-in-law--were Wentworth's near neighbors, though he never had
met either of them. Lady Shelley had been an old friend of my mother's,
and I took him one day to tea with her. To the wife of Shelley's son I
introduced Byron's grandson. What event could seem more thrilling to
any one whose sentiments were attuned to the music of Browning's verses?
What really happened was this: Lady Shelley said to me some pleasant
things about my mother; we all of us lamented the prevalence of the east
wind, and then, having recommended her crumpets, she discussed with
Wentworth the various large houses lately built in the neighborhood. At
this juncture the drawing-room door opened and the son of the author of
"Prometheus Unbound" entered. He was a fresh-looking country gentleman,
whose passion was private theatricals. Close to his own house he had
built a little private theater, and the conversation turned
thenceforward on the question of whether a license would be necessary if
the public were admitted by payment to witness the performance of a
farce in the interest of some deserving charity.
By the time I left Wentworth's roof I had arranged to share with two
Catholic friends a suite of rooms at a private hotel in Dover Street.
Both belonged to well-known Catholic families, and had ready access to
the world of Catholic gayety, especially in so far as this was
represented by balls. One of them, through his skill as a dancer and his
buoyant vivacity in conversation, was in much wider request. By the
agency of Augustus Savile and others--of "social fairies" (as Lord
Beaconsfield called them), such as the Duchess of Sutherland, whom I had
known well at Torquay--cards for balls and parties, in quickly
increasing numbers, found their way to myself likewise; while in other
directions doors were opened also which led to a world of a more serious
aspect and character.
Of balls I need say little except to observe that I went to a great
many, and so far followed the advice of Lady E---- of T---- that I did
not often find myself at a ball "in a two-roomed house." For this the
principal reason was that, even from my childhood, I was wanting in any
inclination to dance, and thus preferred many-roomed houses in which
persons who were so disposed could sit out and converse, the very fact
that a ball was in progress being hardly so much as perceptible. In this
connection I may observe that, during my earlier days, the principal
balls were still to a certain extent those which were given in houses
famous for their traditions and their magnitude, such as Devonshire
House, Bridgwater House, Stafford House, and so forth; but already
things were in this respect changing. Newly established families, or
families in the act of establishing themselves, had begun to outdo the
"great houses" in their lavish expenditure on this kind of
entertainment. The center of social gravity was in this respect being
shifted. As an illustration of this fact I remember some curt
observations made by two ladies who were in the act of bringing out
their daughters. Both belonged to families of historical and high
distinction, but their means were not equal to their dignity. One of
them said, "If I want to take out my daughter, I have generally to go
to the house of someone who is not a gentleman." Another said: "I don't
care for London any longer. It seems that the only people who are giving
balls to-day are people whose proper business would be to black my
boots." Utterances of this kind, though of course greatly exaggerated,
were straws which showed the direction in which the wind was blowing.
Let me turn from the world of balls to a _milieu_ which is less
frivolous, and take certain ladies as types of tendencies which then
prevailed in it. It will be enough to mention four, whose houses
represented society as, in some ways, at its best. I refer to Mrs.
William Lowther, Lady Marian Alford, Louisa, Lady Ashburton (whom I thus
group together because their isolated and commanding dwellings stood
practically in the same row), and Lady Somers. All these were women of
the highest cultivation. They were devoted to art. Mrs. Lowther was
herself an artist. Mrs. Lowther and Lady Ashburton, though thorough
women of the world with regard to their mundane company, were remarkable
for a grave philanthropy which they sacrificed much to practice. Indeed
at some of their entertainments it was not easy to tell where society
ended and high thinking began. This could not be said of Lady Somers or
of Lady Marian. Though in artistic and intellectual taste they equaled
the three others, the guests whom they collected about them were
essentially chosen with a view to the social charm which wit, manners,
or beauty enabled them, as if by magic, to communicate to the passing
moment. And here it may be observed conversely that in a world like that
of London the art of society depends not on choice only, but also, and
no less, on an equally careful rejection, and is for that reason beset
by peculiar and varying difficulties. Of these difficulties Lady Marian
herself once spoke to me. They had, she said, been lately brought home
to her by certain of her friends who had been urging her to give a
ball--a suggestion which, for the following reasons, she found herself
unwilling to entertain. "It is impossible," she said, "to give a
successful ball in London without being very ill-natured to a large
number of people. Many of those who would think they had a right to be
asked would--though on other occasions no doubt welcome enough--be as
much out of place in a ballroom as a man would be in a boat race who
could not handle an oar." But she was, so she added, going to make an
attempt at reviving a kind of entertainment to which no such
difficulties would attach themselves. During the months of the coming
winter she proposed to send out cards to all her more intimate
acquaintances; announcing that she would always be at home after dinner
on a certain day each week, and begging them to give her their company
whenever, and as often as, they pleased. A certain number of people--all
of them agreeable and distinguished--responded to this appeal; but
their number rarely exceeded fifteen or twenty, and Lady Marian was at
length bound to admit that the competitive attractions developed by the
enlargement of social life were such as to render a revival of the
_salon_ impossible, even among acquaintances so carefully chosen as her
own.
I may, however, advert to another lady who in a certain sense succeeded
where Lady Marian failed; but she succeeded by basing her _salon_ on a
noticeably different principle--namely, that of inclusion, whereas that
of Lady Marian was selection. The passport to her drawing-rooms was
fame--even fame of the most momentary kinds--and as fame is the meed of
very various activities, not all her own charm was sufficient on some
occasions to prevent her company from being a clash of illustrious
rivals rather than a _reunion_ of friends.
Of a clash of this kind I was once myself a witness, though nobody at
the moment divined that there was a clash at all. The scene was not in
London, but at the lady's house in the country, where a few guests were
staying with her for the inside of a week. Two of these guests were
poets; we may call them Sir E. and Sir L. The visit coincided with the
time of Tennyson's last illness, the reports of which became daily more
alarming. The two poets evinced much becoming anxiety, though this did
not interfere with the zeal with which one day at luncheon they consumed
a memorable plum tart. Next morning neither of them appeared at
breakfast; and when both of them remained in their bedrooms for the
larger part of the day I came to the prosaic conclusion that the plum
tart had been too much for them. Next morning came the news of
Tennyson's death. The two bards remained in their cells till noon, after
which they both reappeared like men who had got rid of a burden. The
true secret of their retirement revealed itself the morning after, when
each of two great newspapers, with which they were severally connected,
was found to contain long columns of elegy on the irreparable loss which
the country had just suffered--compositions implying a suggestion on the
part of each of the elegists that a poet existed who was not unfit to
repair it. That same day after luncheon the two competitors departed.
Our hostess and the other guests saw them off at the station, and as the
train went on, the elegists were seen waving independent adieux, one
from a first, the other from a third-class carriage. The successor to
the late Laureate was Mr. Alfred Austin.
I knew Alfred Austin well; and a few words with regard to him may not be
inappropriate here. Though his poetry has not commanded any very wide
attention, he had more of true poetry in him than many people imagine.
He had all the qualifications of a really great poet except a sustained
faculty for writing really good poetry. He had a sound philosophic
conception of what the scope and functions of great poetry are; and it
would be possible to select from his works isolated passages of high and
complete beauty. But, if judged by his poetry as a whole, he seems to
have been so indolent or so deficient in the faculty of self-criticism
that for the most part he suffered himself to be content with language
which resembled an untuned piano, his performances on which were often
calculated to affront the attention of his audience rather than to
arrest and capture it. He once or twice asked me to make his works the
subject of a critical and comprehensive essay. With some diffidence I
consented, and accomplished this delicate task by picking out a number
of his best and most carefully finished passages, which showed what he
could do if he tried, and how far by pure carelessness he elsewhere fell
short of the standard which he himself had set. For example, from his
"Human Tragedy" I quoted the following lines, one of which refers to
Rome as a place where "Papal statues arrogantly wave"; while in another,
describing a headlong stream, he says with the utmost complacency that:
The cascade
Bounded adown the cataract.
I pointed out that no conceivable feat was so absolutely impossible for
a statue as that of "waving," and that, a cataract and a cascade being
practically the same thing, it was impossible that the former could
manage to bound down the latter. My practical moral, as addressed to
the Laureate, was, "Be just to yourself, and the public will be just to
you," and the compliment implied in one part of this criticism did much
to mitigate the unwelcome tenor of the other.
Many interesting people I used to meet at the house of Mr. Froude the
historian. Among these were two relatives of Mr. Froude's second
wife--namely, Henry Cowper, one of the most charming conversationalists
of his time, Lady Florence Herbert, and, through her, her well-known
husband, Auberon. Auberon Herbert was a most singular character. He
represented a movement of thought which has since then taken other
directions, and would probably now be associated with some form or other
of socialism. In one sense he was certainly no socialist. On the
contrary, he was an ardent champion of individual freedom, as opposed to
the tyranny of the state. He even contended that all taxation should be
voluntary, and actually started a journal, mainly written by himself, in
support of this agreeable doctrine. He was, however, yet more
pertinacious as an advocate of what is now called "the simple life." His
wife shared, though she slightly perhaps tempered, his opinions; and
when they first set up house together they insisted that all their
household--the domestics included--should dine at the same table. After
a week's experience, however, of this regime, the domestics all gave
warning, and the establishment was reconstructed on a more conventional
footing. This counter-revolution had been accomplished before I knew
him, and my intimate acquaintance with him began at a great shooting
party given at Highclere Castle by Lord Carnarvon, his brother. Neither
I nor he were shooters, and while battues were in progress, and guns
were sounding daily at no very great distance, he walked me about the
park, declaring that modern castles which stood for nothing but the
slaughter of half-tame birds were examples of a civilization completely
gone astray. In order that I might see what, shorn of its earlier
eccentricities, was his personal ideal of a reasonably ordered life, he
asked me to stay with him for a week at his own home, Ashley Arnewood,
in Hampshire, on the borders of New Forest. In due time I went. His
dwelling among the woodlands was of very simple construction. It was a
small farmhouse bisected by a flagged passage giving access to four
rooms. On the right as one entered was a kitchen, on the left was an
apartment which he dignified by the name of a museum, its sole contents
being fragments of ancient British pottery which had been dug up in the
neighborhood and were here carefully arranged on a large disused mangle.
Beyond, and opposite to one another, were a dining room so limited in
size that one end of the table abutted on a whitewashed wall, and a
sitting room, luxuriously warm, which was furnished with several deep
and remarkably comfortable chairs. The carpets consisted of rough
coconut matting, and draughts in the bedrooms were excluded by rough
red blankets, which did duty as curtains. The evening repast was almost
obtrusively a tea rather than a dinner, though, in deference to my own
presumably unconverted appetite, I, and I alone, was provided with some
kind of meat. I could not help feeling at times that for my host and
hostess alike this practice of "the simple life" represented a sacrifice
to their principles rather than a complete enjoyment of them, for on
several occasions before bedtime they both confessed to a sensation of
acute hunger, and made an expedition to some mysterious region from
which they returned with substantial parallelograms of bread.
Through the Antony Froudes I also made acquaintance with Lecky, whose
nervous shyness in conversation was in curious contrast to his weighty
style as a writer, and also with Dean Stanley and Whyte Melville the
novelist. Between the two latter there might seem to be little
connection, but I was asked to meet them at a little dinner of four,
Whyte Melville being specially anxious to ask the Dean's advice. This
was not, however, advice of any spiritual kind. Whyte Melville was
thoroughly at home in the social world and the hunting field, and had
made himself a great name as an accurate describer of both, but he was
now ambitious of achieving renown in a new territory. He was planning a
novel, _Sarchedon_, a story of the ancient East, and was anxious to
learn from the Dean what historical authorities would best guide the
Homer of Melton and Market Harborough in reconstructing the world of Bel
and Baylon.
In speaking of novels I am led on to mention an authoress whose fame was
concurrent with Whyte Melville's, and whose visions of modern society
were not altogether unlike his own visions of Babylonia. This authoress
was "Ouida." Ouida lived largely in a world of her own creation, peopled
with foreign princesses, mysterious dukes--masters of untold millions,
and of fabulous English guardsmen whose bedrooms in Knightsbridge
Barracks were inlaid with silver and tortoise shell. And yet such was
her genius that she invested this phantom world with a certain semblance
of life, and very often with a certain poetry also. In some respects she
was even more striking than her books. In her dress and in her manner of
life she was an attempted exaggeration of her own female characters. For
many years she occupied a large villa near Florence. During that time
she visited London once. There it was that I met her. She depicted
herself to herself as a personage of European influence, and imagined
herself charged with a mission to secure the appointment of Lord Lytton
as British Ambassador in Paris. With this purpose in view she called one
day on Lady Salisbury, who, never having seen her before, was much
amazed by her entrance, and was still more amazed when Ouida, in
confidential tones, said, "I have come to tell you that the one man for
Paris is Robert." Lady Salisbury's answer was not very encouraging. It
consisted of the question, "And pray, if you please, who is Robert?" In
a general way, however, she received considerable attention, and might
have received more if it had not been for her reckless ignorance of the
complexities of the London world. In whatever company she might be in,
her first anxiety was to ingratiate herself with the most important
members of it, but she was constantly making mistakes as to who the most
important members were. Thus, as one of her entertainers--"Violet
Fane"--told me, Ouida was sitting after dinner between Mrs. ----, the
mistress of one of the greatest houses in London, and a vulgar little
Irish peeress who was only present on sufferance. Ouida treated the
former with the coldest and most condescending inattention, and devoted
every smile in her possession to an intimate worship of the latter.
When, however, she was in companies so carefully chosen that everybody
present was worthy of her best attention, and so small that all were
willing to give their best attention to _her_, she showed herself, so I
was told, a most agreeable woman. Thus forewarned as to her ways, I
found that such was the fact. I gave for her benefit a little luncheon
party at the Bachelors' Club, the only guests whom I asked to meet her
being Philip Stanhope and Countess Tolstoy (now Lord and Lady Weardale),
Lord and Lady Blythswood, and Julia, Lady Jersey. Ouida arrived trimmed
with the most exuberant furs, which, when they were removed, revealed
a costume of primrose color--a costume so artfully cut that, the moment
she sat down, all eyes were dazzled by the sparkling of her small
protruded shoes. In a word, she quite looked the part, and, perceiving
the impression she had made, was willing to be gracious to everybody. As
we were going upstairs to the luncheon room, this effect was completed.
Lady Jersey laid a caressing hand on her shoulder and said: "You must go
first. The entertainment is in honor of you." Ouida was here at her
best. No one could have been more agreeable and less affected than she.
[Illustration: Ouida]
Her latter years were overclouded by poverty. This was due to her almost
mad extravagance--to her constant attempts, in short, to live up to the
standards of her own heroines. Had she acted like a sensible woman, she
might have realized a very fair fortune. She had many appreciative
friends, who gave her considerable sums to relieve her at various times
from the pressure of financial difficulties; but they realized in the
end that to do this was like pouring water into a sieve. Somebody gave
her L250 in London to enable her to pay her hotel bill; but before a
week was over she had lavished more than a hundred in turning her
sitting room at the Langham Hotel into a glade of the most expensive
flowers. She died, in what was little better than a peasant's cottage,
at Lucca. Among the ladies to whom she had been introduced in London
was Winifred, Lady Howard of Glossop. A year or so later Ouida wrote me
a letter from Florence, saying, "Your name has been just recalled to me
by seeing in the _Morning Post_ that you were dining the other night
with Lady Howard of Glossop, one of my oldest friends." This is an
example of the way in which her imagination enabled her to live in a
fabric of misplaced facts, for the person through whom she became
acquainted with Lady Howard was none other than myself. The next letter
I had from her was to say that she was dedicating one of her later
books--a volume of essays--to me. The letter did not reach me till after
many delays, and I often regret the fact that before I was able, or
remembered, to answer it she was dead.
Another authoress well known to me, of whom I have made mention already,
was the beautiful "Violet Fane," who, under that pseudonym, published
many volumes of poetry. Her actual name was Mrs. Singleton. She
afterward became Lady Currie. I first knew her before my London days
began, and I dedicated _The New Republic_ to her. She was the center of
a group of intimates, of whom those who survive must connect her with
many of their happiest hours. No one could have combined in a way more
winning than hers the discriminations of fashionable life with an inborn
passion for poetry. She was perfect in features, slight as a sylph in
figure, and her large dark eyes alternately gleamed with laughter and
were grave as though she were listening for a voice from some vague
beyond. Many of her phrases, when she was speaking of social matters,
were like rapiers with the tip of which, as though by accident, she
would just touch the foibles of her nearest and dearest friends, the
result being a delicate puncture rather than the infliction of a wound.
She first became known as a poetess by a small volume of lyrics called
_From Dawn to Noon_, in which, if, as some say, poetry be
self-revelation, her success, according to certain of her censors, was
somewhat too complete. The same criticism was provoked by her second
volume, _Denzil Place_, a novel in blank verse interwoven with songs.
Whatever her censors may have said about it, this, from first to last,
was a work of real inspiration. Few who have read it will have forgotten
the song beginning:
You gave to me on that dear night of parting
So much, so little; and yet everything,
or will have failed to recognize the musical ear of one who has given us
the liquid melody of two such lines as these:
The tremulous convolvulus whose closing blue eye misses
The faint shadow on the dial that foretells the evening hour.
At all events, whatever her merits as a poetess, she was something like
a living poem for a certain group of friends, of whom I happened to be
one. This group comprised men such as Wilfrid Blunt, Lord Lytton,
Philip Currie, Hamilton Aide, Frederick Locker, Clair Vyner, Sir Baldwin
Leighton, and others, all of whom had in them a natural appreciation of
poetry, while some of them were poets themselves. With a more or less
intimate, though loosely formed, group like this my memory associates
many small gatherings, which generally took the form of dinners, either
at "Violet Fane's" own house in Grosvenor Place, or at Hurlingham, or at
the "Star and Garter," or at Vyner's house among its gardens and woods
at Combe, where we would linger, forgetful of time, and feeling no
inclination to join any larger company.
But of all the worlds which, within the world, were more or less
self-cohesive and separate, that in which I felt myself most at home was
the Catholic. At any entertainment given at a Catholic house the bulk of
the guests--perhaps three-fourths of them--would be Catholics. These
would be people so closely connected with one another by blood or by
lifelong acquaintance as to constitute one large family. Well-born,
well-bred, and distinguished by charming and singularly simple manners,
they were content to be what they were, and the Darwinian competition
for merely fashionable or intellectual brilliance, however prevalent
elsewhere, was, with few exceptions, to them virtually unknown. Yet
whenever anything in the way of formal pomp was necessary, they were
fully equal to the occasion. The well-known dinners given by Mrs.
Washington Hibbert, at which four-and-twenty guests would be seated
round a huge circular table, would fill Hill Street with swaying family
coaches, on whose hammercloths crests and coronets maintained an
eighteenth-century magnitude which the modern world was abandoning,
while on certain ecclesiastical occasions Catholic society could exhibit
a stateliness even more conspicuous.
On one of these latter occasions I was, as well as I can remember, the
only non-Catholic in the company. This was a great luncheon party given
by the then Lord Bute in honor of Cardinal Manning. Lord Bute, who was
in many ways the most learned of the then recent converts to
Catholicism, was, as is well known, the original of _Lothair_ in Lord
Beaconsfield's famous novel. Lord Beaconsfield's portrait of him was
disfigured, and indeed made ridiculous, by the gilding, or rather the
tinsel, with which his essentially alien taste bedizened it; but, apart
from such exaggerations, there were elements in it of unmistakable
likeness, and the entertainment to which I am now referring was, apart
from its peculiar sequel, like a page of _Lothair_ translating itself
into actual life.
The Butes were at that time living at Chiswick House, which they rented
from the Duke of Devonshire. The house is a good example of that
grandiose classicality which we associate with the eighteenth century,
and the saloon in which the guests were assembled provided them with an
appropriate background. They were something like thirty in number, and
comprised some of the greatest of the then great Catholic ladies. Lord
Beaconsfield himself could not have chosen them better. Indeed his Lady
St. Jerome was actually there in person. When I entered there was a good
deal of talking, and yet at the same time there was something like a
hush. I divined, and divined correctly, that the Cardinal had not yet
arrived. The minutes went slowly on; the appointed hour was past. At
length a sound was heard which seemed to emanate from an anteroom, and
presently a figure was solemnly gliding forward--a figure slight,
emaciated, and habited in a long black cassock. This was relieved at the
throat by one peeping patch of purple, and above the throat was a face
the delicate sternness of which was like semitransparent ivory. The
company parted, making way for the great Churchman, and then a scene
enacted itself which cannot be better described than in the words
written many years previously by the author of _Lothair_ himself. "The
ladies did their best to signalize what the Cardinal was and what he
represented, by reverences which a posture-master might have envied and
certainly could not have surpassed. They seemed to sink into the earth,
and slowly and supernaturally to emerge."
When the banquet was over, and the guests were taking their departure,
our host begged me to remain, so that he and I and the Cardinal might
have a little conversation by ourselves. We were presently secreted in
a small room or closet, and our little talk must have lasted till close
upon six o'clock. I half thought for a moment that this might be a
planned arrangement so that then and there I might be received into the
Roman fold. Matters, however, took a very different course. Under the
Cardinal's guidance the conversation almost immediately--how and why I
cannot remember--turned to the subject of Spiritualism, and he soon was
gravely informing us that, of all the signs of the times, none was more
sinister than the multiplication of Spiritualist seances, which were,
according to him, neither more nor less than revivals of black magic. He
went on to assert, as a fact supported by ample evidence, that the devil
at such meetings assumed a corporeal form--sometimes that of a man,
sometimes that of a beautiful and seductive woman, the results being
frequent births, in the prosaic world around us, of terrible hybrid
creatures half diabolic in nature, though wholly human in form. On this
delicate matter he descanted in such unvarnished language that the
details of what he said cannot well be repeated here. Of the truth of
his assertions he obviously entertained no doubt and such was his dry,
almost harsh solemnity in making them that, as I listened, I could
hardly believe my ears. Our host, though a model of strictly Catholic
devoutness, was, so he told me with a smile when the Cardinal had taken
his departure, affected very much as I was. The impression left on both
of us was that, in the Cardinal's character, there must have been a
vein of almost astounding credulity--a credulity which would account for
the readiness with which, as a social reformer, he adopted on many
occasions the wildest exaggerations of agitators.
I was subsequently invited to call on him at the Archbishop's house in
Westminster. During the interview which ensued he revealed intellectual
qualities very different from those which had elicited a furtive smile
even from a Catholic such as his host at Chiswick. We spent most of the
morning in discussing the ultimate difficulties, philosophical,
historical, and scientific, which preclude the modern mind from an
assent to the philosophy of Catholicism. He displayed on this occasion,
a broadness and a balance, if not a profundity of thought, in which many
theologians who call themselves liberals are wanting. He spoke even of
militant atheists, such as Huxley and Tyndall, without any sarcastic
anger or signs of moral reprobation. He spoke of their opinions, not as
sins which demanded chastisement, but simply as intellectual errors
which must be cured by intellectual refutation, rather than by moral
anathemas, and the personal relations subsisting between him and them
were relations--so I have always understood--of mutual amity and
respect.
[Illustration: CARDINAL MANNING]
Of another prominent Catholic, Wilfrid Ward, the same thing may be said.
As a Catholic apologist he was a model of candor and suavity. He was,
moreover, a most agreeable man of the world, among his accomplishments
being that of an admirable mimic. He was, however, best known as an
exponent of Catholic liberalism; and, since I am here concerned only
with recollections of social life, to dwell on him longer would carry me
too far astray.
Out of this last observation there naturally arises another, which
relates to anecdotes or short sketches of individuals as a method of
social history. For certain reasons the scope of this method is limited.
In the first place, the persons whose doings or sayings are commemorated
must be persons who, by their position or reputation, are more or less
self-explanatory to the ear of the general reader. They will otherwise
for the general reader have very little significance. They must also for
the most part be dead, so that their susceptibilities may not be wounded
by a too free allusion to their doings. Further, the anecdotes told of
them must not be to their disadvantage in any way which would wound the
susceptibilities of the living. These mortifying restrictions are, for
all those who respect them, a deathblow to the most entertaining,
perhaps the most instructive, part of what the memoir-writer has to
tell. During the last ten years of his life the late Lord Wemyss amused
himself by writing memoirs of his own distinguished activities, and on
repeated occasions, when I stayed with him for a week in Scotland, he
asked me to run my eye over a number of chapters with a view to seeing
if any passages which might give offense had been left in them. A
certain number of such had been already struck out by himself, but I
very soon found that a considerable number remained. "God bless my
soul!" he exclaimed when I pointed them out to him. "You are perfectly
right. Let me have a blue pencil instantly." Lady P----, a witty woman
of the widest European experience, attempted a similar task. She, too,
asked me to look at what she had written, deploring the fact that all
the most amusing parts had passed through the fire to the Moloch of an
almost excessive caution. Here again I pointed out to the writer
passages which had escaped the sacrifice, and which the living would
certainly, even if not justifiably, resent--which they would, indeed,
resent in exact proportion to their accuracy.
An example of the results which may be achieved by a memoir-writer who
neglects this caution is provided by Augustus Hare. Hare was a man
possessed of many accomplishments. Like Hamilton Aide, he was a very
remarkable artist. He was also a great teller of stories, and a master
in the craft of improving whatever truth there might be in them. By
birth and otherwise he was well and widely connected, and was a familiar
figure in many of the best-known houses in England. He was an
indefatigable writer of memoirs, and of all such writers he was
incomparably the most intrepid. The possibility of offending others,
even though they might be his hosts and hostesses, had no terrors for
him. I was once staying at a country house in Sussex when a new book by
him appeared, and had just been sent down from Mudie's. I had twice seen
its back on a table, and meant to have looked at it in my bedroom before
dressing for dinner; but whenever I tried to secure it for my own
perusal it had disappeared. I heard someone casually say, "Everybody in
the house is reading it." I could not but wonder why. I managed to
secure it at last, and set myself to find out the reason. It did not
take long to find. Hare, a year before, had been staying in that very
house--a house famous for the material perfection of its equipments.
"The servants here," so Hare wrote and printed, "are notoriously more
pampered than those in any other house in England, and their insolence
and arrogance is proportionate to the luxury in which they live." On
another occasion he recorded a visit to Castle ----, the family name of
the owners being C----. He summed up his gratitude to his entertainers
in the following pithy sentence, "Except dear Lady ----, I never could
stand the C----s." Another of his entries was as follows. Having
migrated from the Stanhopes' at Chevening to a neighboring old house in
Kent, he wrote, "What a comfort it is, after staying with people who are
too clever, to find oneself with people who are all refreshingly
stupid!" If it were not for the danger of lapsing into indiscretions
like these--indiscretions of which Hare seemed altogether
unconscious--interesting anecdotes might be here indefinitely
multiplied.
Even so, however, such anecdotes, no matter who recorded them, would be
simply so many jottings which owed their continuity to the fact that,
like the stones of a necklace, they happened to be strung on the thread
of a single writer's experiences, and in no two cases would this thread
be altogether the same. My own experiences of the social life of London,
as I knew it in my earlier days, will perhaps best be described in more
general terms. In such terms, then, let me speak of it as, foreshortened
by time, it now presents itself to my memory.
For me, in my earlier years, the routine of a London day was practically
much as follows. A morning of note-writing--of accepting or refusing
invitations--was succeeded by a stroll with some companion among the
company--the gay and animated company--which before the hour of luncheon
at that time thronged the park. Then, more often than not, came a
luncheon at two o'clock, to which many of the guests had been bidden a
moment ago as the result of some chance meeting. A garden party, such as
those which took place at Sion House or at Osterly, would occupy now and
again the rest of an afternoon; but the principal business of every
twenty-four hours began with a long dinner at a quarter past eight, or
sometimes a quarter to nine. For any young man who took part in the
social movement, dinner would be followed by two or by more "At Homes."
Then, when midnight was approaching, began the important balls, of
which any such young man would show himself at an equal number, and
dance, eat quails, or sit with a suitable companion under palm trees, as
the case might be; while vigilant chaperons, oppressed by the weight of
their tiaras, would ask one another, "Who is the young man who is
dancing with _my_ daughter?" Finally, if the night were fair, young men,
and sometimes ladies, if their houses were close at hand, would stroll
homeward through the otherwise deserted streets, while the East, gray
already, was being slowly tinged with saffron.
If the life of those who play a part in a London season is to be judged
by what they do with themselves during a London season itself, it might
be reasonably asked (as it _is_ asked by morose social critics) how any
sensible people can find such a life tolerable. To this question there
are several answers. One is that no society of a polished and brilliant
kind is possible unless special talents and graces, wide experience,
knowledge, and the power that depends on knowledge, enter into its
composition and support it in a peculiar manner which does not prevail
elsewhere. This fact, however, will be but partly intelligible unless we
remember that it is based on, and implies, another--namely, that the
society which is identified with the life of a London season represents
for those who figure in it, not life as a whole, but merely one phase of
a life of which the larger part is of very different kinds, and which
elsewhere exhibits very different aspects.
This observation specially applies to the days when London society was
in the main an annual assemblage of old-established landed families,
whose principal homes were in the country, and whose consequence was
derived from their rural, not from their urban, associations. Their
houses in the country were constantly filled with visitors. Society, in
a certain sense of the word, surrounded them even there. But it was a
society differing in its habits, and even in its constitution, from that
which formed itself in London, and of the total lives of most of the
persons, composing it, London life represented not more than a quarter.
For me, my own annual life as a Londoner rarely exceeded three months
out of twelve. Except for these three months, my habits, as they formed
themselves after my father's death, were for a long time these: Of the
nine other months I spent about two in Devonshire, where by this time,
through inheritance, a new home was open to me--Lauriston Hall,
overlooking Torbay, whose waters were visible from the windows through a
screen of balustrades and rhododendrons. I generally wintered
abroad--for the most part on the Riviera--and the rest of my time was
occupied in country visits at home, from the South of England and
Ireland to the borders of Sutherland and Caithness.
During the months of the London season my immediate preoccupations,
superficially at all events, were, no doubt, those of an idler; but even
during such periods, as I presently shall have occasion to mention,
serious thoughts beset me almost without cessation. Even experiences of
human nature which were flashed on me at balls and dinners, through that
species of mental polygamy of which society essentially consists, helped
me to mature projects which I executed under conditions of greater calm
elsewhere. In the following chapter I shall speak of country houses,
describing the atmosphere and aspect of some of those which were best
known to me, and which I found most favorable to the prosecution of such
serious work as I have accomplished in the way of philosophy, of
fiction, and of direct or of indirect politics.