I first saw him one morning of last summer, in the Green Park. Though
short, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to be
obese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is so sure a sign
of the Blood Royal. In a suit of white linen he looked serenely cool,
despite the heat. Perhaps I should have thought him, had I not been
versed in the Almanach de Gotha, a trifle older than he is. He did not
raise his hat in answer to my salute, but smiled most graciously and
made as though he would extend his hand to me, mistaking me, I doubt
not, for one of his friends. Forthwith, a member of his suite said
something to him in an undertone, whereat he smiled again and took no
further notice of me.
I do not wonder the people idolise him. His almost blameless life has
been passed among them, nothing in it hidden from their knowledge. When
they look upon his dear presentment in the photographer's window--the
shrewd, kindly eyes under the high forehead, the sparse locks so
carefully distributed--words of loyalty only and of admiration rise to
their lips. For of all princes in modern days he seems to fulfil most
perfectly the obligation of princely rank. Nêpios he might have been
called in the heroic age, when princes were judged according to their
mastery of the sword or of the bow, or have seemed, to those mediaeval
eyes that loved to see a scholar's pate under the crown, an ignoramus.
We are less exigent now. We do but ask of our princes that they should
live among us, be often manifest to our eyes, set a perpetual example of
a right life. We bid them be the ornaments of our State. Too often
they do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may be, a half-hearted
devotion to soldiering, or pursue pleasure merely--tales of their
frivolity raising now and again the anger of a public swift to envy them
their temptations. But against this admirable Prince no such charges can
be made. Never (as yet, at least) has he cared to 'play at soldiers.'
By no means has he shocked the Puritans. Though it is no secret that he
prefers the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal has ever tinged
his name. Of how many English princes could this be said, in days when
Figaro, quill in hand, inclines his ear to every key-hole?
Upon the one action that were well obliterated from his record I need
not long insist. It seems that the wife of an aged ex-Premier came to
have an audience and pay her respects. Hardly had she spoken when the
Prince, in a fit of unreasoning displeasure, struck her a violent blow
with his clenched fist. Had His Royal Highness not always stood so far
aloof from political contention, it had been easier to find a motive for
this unmannerly blow. The incident is deplorable, but it belongs,
after all, to an earlier period of his life; and, were it not that no
appreciation must rest upon the suppression of any scandal, I should not
have referred to it. For the rest, I find no stain, soever faint, upon
his life. The simplicity of his tastes is the more admirable for that he
is known to care not at all for what may be reported in the newspapers.
He has never touched a card, never entered a play-house. In no stud of
racers has he indulged, preferring to the finest blood-horse ever bred a
certain white and woolly lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This he
is never tired of fondling. It is with him, like the roebuck of Henri
Quatre, wherever he goes.
Suave and simple his life is! Narrow in range, it may be, but with every
royal appurtenance of delight, for to him Love's happy favours are given
and the tribute of glad homage, always, here and there and every other
where. Round the flower-garden at Sandringham runs an old wall of red
brick, streaked with ivy and topped infrequently with balls of stone.
By its iron gates, that open to a vista of flowers, stand two kind
policemen, guarding the Prince's procedure along that bright vista.
As his perambulator rolls out of the gate of St. James's Palace, he
stretches out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An obsequious
retinue follows him over the lawns of the White Lodge, cooing and
laughing, blowing kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his life
has been all gaiety! The afflictions that befall royal personages always
touch very poignantly the heart of the people, and it is not too much to
say that all England watched by the cradle-side of Prince Edward in that
dolorous hour, when first the little battlements rose about the rose-red
roof of his mouth. I am glad to think that not one querulous word did
His Royal Highness, in his great agony, utter. They only say that his
loud, incessant cries bore testimony to the perfect lungs for which the
House of Hanover is most justly famed. Irreiterate be the horror of that
epoch!
As yet, when we know not even what his first words will be, it is too
early to predict what verdict posterity will pass upon him. Already he
has won the hearts of the people; but, in the years which, it is to be
hoped, still await him, he may accomplish more. Attendons! He stands
alone among European princes--but, as yet, only with the aid of a chair.
London, 1895.
1880
Say, shall these things be forgotten
In the Row that men call Rotten,
Beauty Clare?--Hamilton Aïdé.
'History,' it has been said, 'does not repeat itself. The historians
repeat one another.' Now, there are still some periods with which no
historian has grappled, and, strangely enough, the period that most
greatly fascinates me is one of them. The labour I set myself is
therefore rather Herculean. But it is also, for me, so far a labour of
love that I can quite forget or even revel in its great difficulty. I
would love to have lived in those bygone days, when first society was
inducted into the mysteries of art and, not losing yet its old and
elegant tenue, babbled of blue china and white lilies, of the painter
Rossetti and the poet Swinburne. It would be a splendid thing to have
seen the tableaux at Cromwell House or to have made my way through the
Fancy Fair and bartered all for a cigarette from a shepherdess; to have
walked in the Park, straining my eyes for a glimpse of the Jersey
Lily; danced the livelong afternoon to the strains of the Manola Valse;
clapped holes in my gloves for Connie Gilchrist.
It is a pity that the historians have held back so long. For this
period is now so remote from us that much in it is nearly impossible to
understand, more than a little must be left in the mists of antiquity
that involve it. The memoirs of the day are, indeed, many, but not
exactly illuminative. From such writers as Frith, Montague Williams or
the Bancrofts, you may gain but little peculiar knowledge. That quaint
old chronicler, Lucy, dilates amusingly enough upon the frown of Sir
Richard (afterwards Lord) Cross or the tea-rose in the Prime Minister's
button-hole. But what can he tell us of the negotiations that led
Gladstone back to public life or of the secret councils of the Fourth
Party, whereby Sir Stafford was gradually eclipsed? Good memoirs must
ever be the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas!) has been killed by the
Press. In the tavern or the barber's-shop, all secrets passed into every
ear. From newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations are there
made manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, the
things we knew, and need not have known, before. In my research, I have
had only such poor guides as Punch, or the London Charivari and The
Queen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has been
productive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggested
to me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the
Embankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry,
some current coins and other trifles of the time, was dropped into the
foundation. I am sure much might be done with a spade, here and there,
in the neighbourhood of old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracy
of vestries! Be not I, but they, blamed for any error, obscurity or
omission in my brief excursus.
The period of 1880 and of the two successive years should ever be
memorable, for it marks a great change in the constitution of English
society. It would seem that, under the quiet régime of the Tory Cabinet,
the upper ten thousand (as they were quaintly called in those days,) had
taken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had inclined to
be restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged seclusion
of Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb work of
introspection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the Highlands, had
begun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other festivities, both
at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were notably fewer. The vogue
of the Opera was passing. Even in the top of the season, Rotten Row, I
read, was not impenetrably crowded. But in 1880 came the tragic fall of
Disraeli and the triumph of the Whigs. How great a change came then
upon Westminster must be known to any one who has studied the annals of
Gladstone's incomparable Parliament. Gladstone himself, with a monstrous
majority behind him, revelling in the old splendour of speech that not
seventy summers nor six years' sulking had made less; Parnell, deadly,
mysterious, with his crew of wordy peasants that were to set all Saxon
things at naught--the activity of these two men alone would have made
this Parliament supremely stimulating throughout the land. What of young
Randolph Churchill, who, despite his halting speech, foppish mien and
rather coarse fibre of mind, was yet the greatest Parliamentarian of his
day? What of Justin Huntly McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark,
most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging the sacred lamp of
burlesque, irradiated with fearful clarity the wrath and sorrow of
Ireland? What of Blocker Warton? What of the eloquent atheist, Charles
Bradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding past the furious Tories to
the very Mace, hustled down the stone steps with the broadcloth torn in
ribands from his back? Surely such scenes will never more be witnessed
at St. Stephen's. Imagine the existence of God being made a party
question! No wonder that at a time of such turbulence fine society also
should have shown the primordia of a great change. It was felt that
the aristocracy could not live by good-breeding alone. The old delights
seemed vapid, waxen. Something vivid was desired. And so the sphere of
fashion converged with the sphere of art, and revolution was the result.
Be it remembered that long before this time there had been in the heart
of Chelsea a kind of cult for Beauty. Certain artists had settled
there, deliberately refusing to work in the ordinary official way, and
'wrought,' as they were wont to asseverate, 'for the pleasure and sake
of all that is fair.' Little commerce had they with the brazen world.
Nothing but the light of the sun would they share with men. Quietly and
unbeknown, callous of all but their craft, they wrought their poems
or their pictures, gave them one to another, and wrought on. Meredith,
Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Holman Hunt were in this band of shy
artificers. In fact, Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr.
Oscar Wilde who managed her début. To study the period is to admit that
to him was due no small part of the social vogue that Beauty began to
enjoy. Fired by his fervid words, men and women hurled their mahogany
into the streets and ransacked the curio-shops for the furniture of
Annish days. Dados arose upon every wall, sunflowers and the feathers
of peacocks curved in every corner, tea grew quite cold while the guests
were praising the Willow Pattern of its cup. A few fashionable women
even dressed themselves in sinuous draperies and unheard-of greens. Into
whatsoever ballroom you went, you would surely find, among the women in
tiaras and the fops and the distinguished foreigners, half a score of
comely ragamuffins in velveteen, murmuring sonnets, posturing, waving
their hands. Beauty was sought in the most unlikely places. Young
painters found her mobled in the fogs, and bank-clerks, versed in the
writings of Mr. Hamerton, were heard to declare, as they sped home from
the City, that the Underground Railway was beautiful from London Bridge
to Westminster, but not from Sloane Square to Notting Hill Gate.
Aestheticism (for so they named the movement,) did indeed permeate, in
a manner, all classes. But it was to the haut monde that its primary
appeal was made. The sacred emblems of Chelsea were sold in the
fashionable toy-shops, its reverently chanted creeds became the patter
of the boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few,
was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of delightful folk as at its
Private Views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, doffing his
hat with a courtly sweep to more than one Duchess. There, too, was
Theo Marzials, poet and eccentric, and Charles Colnaghi, the hero of a
hundred tea-fights, and young Brookfield, the comedian, and many another
good fellow. My Lord of Dudley, the virtuoso, came there, leaning
for support upon the arm of his fair young wife. Disraeli, with his
lustreless eyes and face like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also,
and whispered behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert
spread the latest mot of 'the Master,' who, with monocle, cane and
tilted hat, flashed through the gay mob anon.
Autrement, there was Coombe Wood, in whose shade the Lady Archibald
Campbell suffered more than one of Shakespeare's plays to be enacted.
Hither, from the garish, indelicate theatre that held her languishing,
Thalia was bidden, if haply, under the open sky, she might resume her
old charm. All Fashion came to marvel and so did all the Aesthetes, in
the heart of one of whose leaders, Godwin, that superb architect, the
idea was first conceived. Real Pastoral Plays! Lest the invited guests
should get any noxious scent of the footlights across the grass, only
amateurs were accorded parts. They roved through a real wood, these
jerkined amateurs, with the poet's music upon their lips. Never under
such dark and griddled elms had the outlaws feasted upon their venison.
Never had any Rosalind traced with such shy wonder the writing of her
lover upon the bark, nor any Orlando won such laughter for his not
really sportive dalliance. Fairer than the mummers, it may be, were the
ladies who sat and watched them from the lawn. All of them wore jerseys
and tied-back skirts. Zulu hats shaded their eyes from the sun. Bangles
shimmered upon their wrists. And the gentlemen wore light frock-coats
and light top-hats with black bands. And the aesthetes were in
velveteen, carrying lilies.
Not that Art and Fashion shunned the theatre. They began in 1880 to
affect it as never before. The one invaded Irving's premières at the
Lyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The French
plays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not to
have seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homely
mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (how
strangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms.
In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. Even more
significant than the reception of players was a certain effort, made at
this time, to raise the average of aristocratic loveliness--an effort
that, but a few years before, would have been surely scouted as
quite undignified and outrageous. What the term 'Professional Beauty'
signified, how any lady gained a right to it, we do not and may never
know. It is certain, however, that there were many ladies of tone, upon
whom it was bestowed. They received special attention from the Prince of
Wales, and hostesses would move heaven and earth to have them in their
rooms. Their photographs were on sale in the window of every shop.
Crowds assembled every morning to see them start from Rotten Row.
Preëminent among Professional Beauties were Lady Lonsdale (afterwards
Lady de Grey), Mrs. Wheeler, who always 'appeared in black,' and Mrs.
Corowallis West, who was Amy Robsart in the tableaux at Cromwell House,
when Mrs. Langtry, cette Cléopatre de son siècle appeared also, stepping
across an artificial brook, in the pink kirtle of Effie Deans. We may
doubt whether the movement, represented by these ladies, was quite in
accord with the dignity and elegance that always should mark the best
society. Any effort to make Beauty compulsory robs Beauty of its chief
charm. But, at the same time, I do believe that this movement, so far as
it was informed by a real wish to raise a practical standard of feminine
charm for all classes, does not deserve the strictures that have been
passed upon it by posterity. One of its immediate sequels was the
incursion of American ladies into London. Then it was that these pretty
creatures, 'clad in Worth's most elegant confections,' drawled their way
through our greater portals. Fanned, as they were, by the feathers of
the Prince of Wales, they had a great success, and they were so strange
that their voices and their dresses were mimicked partout. The English
beauties were rather angry, especially with the Prince, whom alone they
blamed for the vogue of their rivals. History credits His Royal Highness
with many notable achievements. Not the least of these is that he
discovered the inhabitants of America.
It will be seen that in this renaissance the keenest students of the
exquisite were women. Nevertheless, men were not idle, neither. Since
the day of Mr. Brummell and King George, the noble art of self-adornment
had fallen partially desuete. Great fops like Bulwer and le jeune
Cupidon had come upon the town, but never had they formed a school.
Dress, therefore, had become simpler, wardrobes smaller, fashions apt to
linger. In 1880 arose the sect that was soon to win for itself the title
of 'The Mashers.' What this title exactly signified I suppose no two
etymologists will ever agree. But we can learn clearly enough, from the
fashion-plates of the day, what the Mashers were in outward semblance;
from the lampoons, their mode of life. Unlike the dandies of
the Georgian era, they pretended to no classic taste and, wholly
contemptuous of the Aesthetes, recognised no art save the art of dress.
Much might be written about the Mashers. The restaurant--destined to be,
in after years, so salient a delight of London--was not known to them,
but they were often admirable upon the steps of clubs. The Lyceum held
them never, but nightly they gathered at the Gaiety Theatre. Nightly
the stalls were agog with small, sleek heads surmounting collars of
interminable height. Nightly, in the foyer, were lisped the praises of
Kate Vaughan, her graceful dancing, or of Nellie Farren, her matchless
fooling. Never a night passed but the dreary stage-door was cinct with a
circlet of fools bearing bright bouquets, of flaxen-headed fools who
had feet like black needles, and graceful fools incumbent upon canes.
A strange cult! I once knew a lady whose father was actually present at
the first night of 'The Forty Thieves,' and fell enamoured of one of the
coryphées. By such links is one age joined to another.
There is always something rather absurd about the past. For us, who have
fared on, the silhouette of Error is sharp upon the past horizon. As
we look back upon any period, its fashions seem grotesque, its ideals
shallow, for we know how soon those ideals and those fashions were to
perish, and how rightly; nor can we feel a little of the fervour they
did inspire. It is easy to laugh at these Mashers, with their fantastic
raiment and languid lives, or at the strife of the Professional
Beauties. It is easy to laugh at all that ensued when first the mummers
and the stainers of canvas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? For
me the most romantic moment of a pantomime is always when the winged and
wired fairies begin to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and pantaloon
tumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very faintly in that indecisive
twilight. The social condition of 1880 fascinates me in the same way.
Its contrasts fascinate me.
Perhaps, in my study of the period, I may have fallen so deeply beneath
its spell that I have tended, now and again, to overrate its real
import. I lay no claim to the true historical spirit. I fancy it was a
chalk drawing of a girl in a mob-cap, signed 'Frank Miles, 1880,'
that first impelled me to research. To give an accurate and exhaustive
account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
But I hope that, by dealing, even so briefly as I have dealt, with its
more strictly sentimental aspects, I may have lightened the task of the
scientific historian. And I look to Professor Gardiner and to the Bishop
of Oxford.
'Cromwell House.' The residence of Lady Freake, a famous hostess of the
day and founder of a brilliant salon, 'where even Royalty was sure of a
welcome. The writer of a recent monograph declares that, 'many a modern
hostess would do well to emulate Lady Freake, not only in her taste for
the Beautiful in Art but also for the Intellectual in Conversation.'
'Fancy Fair.' For a full account of this function, see pp. 102-124 of
the 'Annals of the Albert Hall.'
'Jersey Lily.' A fanciful title bestowed, at this time, upon the
beautiful Mrs. Langtry, who was a native of Jersey Island.
'Manola Valse.' Supposed to have been introduced by Albert Edward,
Prince of Wales, who, having heard it in Vienna, was pleased, for
a while, by its novelty, but soon reverted to the more sprightly
deux-temps.
'Private Views.' This passage, which I found in a contemporary
chronicle, is so quaint and so instinct with the spirit of its time that
I am fain to quote it:
'There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes walking
about--ultra-aesthetics, artistic-aesthetics, aesthetics that made
up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some important
point--put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and flowing
garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were
fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot might have turned
out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups,
sometimes dazzling you by the array of colours that you never thought
to see in full daylight.... Canary-coloured garments flitted cheerily
by garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pushes and angles
was seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. A
vast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hung
by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood.'
The 'Master.' By this title his disciples used to address James
Whistler, the author-artist. Without echoing the obloquy that was
lavished at first nor the praise that was lavished later upon his
pictures, we must admit that he was, as least, a great master of English
prose and a controversialist of no mean power.
'Masher.' One authority derives the title, rather ingeniously, from 'Ma
Chère,' the mode of address used by the gilded youth to the barmaids of
the period--whence the corruption, 'Masher.' Another traces it to
the chorus of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in the
music-halls: 'I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of the
day.' This, in my opinion, is the safer suggestion, and may be adopted.
London, 1894.