for a filial placeman to obtain further pensions for his sons and
daughters, on the obvious plea that it was cruel to cast young men
and women, who had been reared in comfort on the mercies of a rough
world. Thus the golden chain of Royal bounty held at least three lives
together. The grandfather was First Lord of the Treasury or Chancellor
of the Exchequer or Paymaster-General, and into his personal profits it
would be invidious, even indecent, to enquire. He might make his eldest
son, while still a boy at Eton, Clerk of the Estreats, and his second,
before he took his degree at Cambridge, Usher of the Exchequer. Thus
Lord-Chancellor Erskine made his son Secretary of Presentations when
he was eighteen, and Charles Greville was appointed Secretary of
Jamaica (where he never set his foot) before he was twenty. And then
when, after fifty or sixty years of blameless enjoyment, the amiable
sinecurist was nearing his last quarter-day, a benevolent Treasury
intervened to save his maiden daughters or orphan nieces from pecuniary
embarrassment. It was of such "near and dear relations" of a public man
that Sydney Smith affirmed that their "eating, drinking, washing, and
clothing cost every man in the United Kingdom twopence or threepence
a year"; and, to the critics who deprecated this commercial way of
regarding the situation, he replied, with characteristic vigour: "I
have no idea that the Sophias and Carolines of any man breathing are to
eat national veal, to drink public tea, to wear Treasury ribands, and
then that we are to be told that it is coarse to animadvert upon this
pitiful and eleemosynary splendour. If this is right, why not mention
it? If it is wrong, why should not he who enjoys the ease of supporting
his sisters in this manner bear the shame of it?" In thus writing of
the Pension List as it stood in 1807, the admirable Sydney was at once
the successor of Burke and the forerunner of Lord Grey. In 1780 Burke
had addressed all the resources of his genius to the task of restoring
the independence of Parliament by economical reform. It was, as Mr.
Morley says, the number of sinecure places and unpublished pensions
which "furnished the Minister with an irresistible lever." Burke found
that "in sweeping away those factitious places and secret pensions he
would be robbing the Court of its chief implements of corruption and
protecting the representative against his chief motive in selling his
country." His power of oratory was reinforced by a minute knowledge
of all the shady and shabby abuses, all the manifold and complicated
corruptions, which had accumulated under the protection of the Royal
name. The reformer's triumph was signal and complete. Vast numbers of
sinecures were swept away, but some remained. The Pension List was
closely curtailed, but pensions were still conferred. No public servant
ever more richly earned a provision for his old age and decrepitude
than Burke himself; but when, broken by years and sorrows, he accepted
a pension from the Crown, a Whig Duke of fabulous wealth, just thirty
years old, had the temerity to charge him with a discreditable
departure from his former principles of economic reform. The Duke was a
booby: but his foolhardiness enriched English literature with "A Letter
to a Noble Lord on the Attacks made on Mr. Burke and his Pension." To
read that Letter, even after the lapse of 110 years, is to realize
that, in spite of all corruption and all abuse, pecuniary rewards for
political service need not be dishonourable or unreasonable.
But corruption and abuse there were, and in sufficient quantities
to justify all the bitter fun which "Peter Plymley" poured upon the
Cannings, the Jenkinsons, and the Percevals. The reform of the Pension
List became a cardinal object of reforming Radicals; and politicians
like Joseph Hume, publicists like Albany Fonblanque, pursued it with
incessant perseverance,
"Till Grey went forth in 'Thirty-two to storm Corruption's hold."
In 1834 the first Reformed Parliament overhauled the whole system and
brought some curious transactions into the light of day. Whereas up
to that time the Pension List amounted to £145,000 a year, it was now
reduced to £75,000; and its benefits were restricted to "servants of
the Crown and public, and to those who by their useful discoveries
in science or attainments in literature and the arts had merited the
gracious consideration of their Sovereign and the gratitude of their
country." Vested interests were, of course, respected; for had we
not even compensated the slaveholders? Two years ago one of these
beneficiaries survived in a serene old age, and, for all I know,
there may be others still spared to us, for, as Mr. G. A. Sala truly
remarked, it never is safe to say that any one is dead, for if you do
he is sure to write from the country and say he is only ninety-seven
and never was better.
A typical representative of the unreformed system was John Wilson
Croker (1780-1857), whose literary efforts Macaulay trounced, and whose
political utterances were thus described by Lord Beaconsfield:--
"There never was a fellow for giving a good hearty kick to the people
like Rigby. Himself sprung from the dregs of the populace, this was
disinterested. What could be more patriotic and magnanimous than his
jeremiads over the fall of the Montmorencis and the Crillions, or
the possible catastrophe of the Percys and the Seymours? The truth
of all this hullabaloo was that Rigby had a sly pension which, by
an inevitable association of ideas, he always connected with the
maintenance of an aristocracy. All his rigmarole dissertations on the
French Revolution were impelled by this secret influence; and, when he
moaned like a mandrake over Nottingham Castle in flames, the rogue had
an eye all the while to quarter-day."
It was an evil day for those who love to grow rich upon the public
money when Mr. Gladstone became the controller of the National Purse.
One of his first acts was to revise the system of political pensions,
which by an Act of 1869 was reconstituted as it stands to-day. There
are now three classes of persons entitled to pensions for services
rendered in political office; and the scale is arranged on that curious
principle which also regulates the "tips" to servants in a private
house--that the larger your wage is, the larger your gratuity shall
be. Thus a Minister who has drawn £5000 a year is entitled after four
years' service to a pension of £2000 a year; he who has drawn £3000
a year for six years is entitled to £1200 a year; while he who has
laboured for ten years for the modest remuneration of £1000 a year must
be content with a pittance of £800 a year. _Qui habet, dabitur ei_; but
with this restriction--that only four pensions of any one class can run
concurrently.
Politicians who had been brought up in the "spacious days" and generous
methods of the older dispensation were by no means enamoured of what
they used to call "Gladstone's cheeseparing economies." Sir William
Gregory used to relate how, when, as a child, he asked Lord Melbourne
for a fine red stick of official sealing-wax, that genial Minister
thrust it into his hand, together with a bundle of quill pens, saying,
"You can't begin too early. All these things belong to the public, and
your business in life must be to get out of the public all you can."
An eminent statesman, trained in these traditions, had drawn from very
early days a pension for an abolished office in Chancery. In due course
he became a Cabinet Minister, and, when he fell from that high estate,
he duly pocketed his £2000 a year. Later he came into a very large
income, but this he obligingly saved for his nephews and nieces, living
meanwhile on his twofold pension.
I will conclude with a pleasanter anecdote. Until half-way through the
last century it was customary to give a Speaker on retiring from the
House of Commons a pension of £2000 a year for two lives. It is related
that in 1857 Mr. Speaker Shaw-Lefevre, on his elevation to the peerage
as Lord Eversley, said that he could not endure the thought of imposing
a burden on posterity, and would therefore take £4000 a year for his
own life instead of £2000 a year for two. This public-spirited action
was highly commended, and, as he lived till 1888, virtue was, as it
ought always to be, its own reward.
IX
THE SEASON AS IT WAS
The subject is worthy to be celebrated both in verse and in prose.
Exactly sixty years ago Bulwer-Lytton, in his anonymous satire "The New
Timon," thus described the nocturnal aspect of the West End in that
choice period of the year which to us Londoners is pre-eminently "The
Season":--
"O'er Royal London, in luxuriant May,
While lamps yet twinkle, dawning creeps the day.
Home from the hell the pale-eyed gamester steals;
Home from the ball flash jaded Beauty's wheels;
From fields suburban rolls the early cart;
So rests the Revel--so awakes the Mart."
Twenty-four years later Lord Beaconsfield, in "Lothair," gave a vivid
sketch of the same scenes as beheld by daylight:--
"Town was beginning to blaze. Broughams whirled and bright barouches
glanced, troops of social cavalry cantered and caracolled in morning
rides, and the bells of prancing ponies, lashed by delicate hands,
gingled in the laughing air. There were stoppages in Bond Street--which
seems to cap the climax of civilization, after crowded clubs and
swarming parks."
It is curious that of the two descriptions the earlier needs much less
revision than the later. Lamps still "twinkle" (though, to be sure,
they are electric, whereas when Bulwer-Lytton wrote gas had barely
ousted oil from its last fastness in Grosvenor Square). "Hells,"
though more euphemistically named, still invite the domiciliary visits
of our much-aspersed police. "Beauty" dances even more vigorously
than in 1846, for Waltzes and Kitchen-Lancers and Washington Posts
have superseded the decorous quadrilles which our mothers loved. And
still the market-gardens of Acton and Ealing and Hounslow send their
"towering squadrons" of waggons laden heavens-high with the fruits and
vegetables for to-morrow's luncheon. In this merry month of May 1906
an observer, standing at Hyde Park Corner "when the night and morning
meet," sees London substantially as Bulwer-Lytton saw it.
But, when we turn to Lord Beaconsfield's description, the changes
wrought by six-and-thirty years are curiously marked. "Bright
barouches glanced." In the present day a Barouche, the handsomest and
gracefullest of all open carriages, is as rare as an Auk's Egg or an
original Folio of Shakespeare. Only two or three survive. One, richly
dight in royal crimson, bears the Queen, beautiful as Cleopatra in her
barge. In another, almost imperially purple, Lady Londonderry sits
enthroned; a third, palely blue as the forget-me-not, carries Lady
Carysfort; but soon the tale of barouches ends. Victorias and landaus
and "Clarences" and "Sociables" make the common throng of carriages,
and their serried ranks give way to the impetuous onrush of the noxious
Motor or the milder impact of the Electric Brougham.
"Troops of social cavalry" were, when Lord Beaconsfield wrote
"Lothair," the characteristic glories of Rotten Row; but horses and
horsemanship alike have waned. Men take their constitutional canter
in costumes anciently confined to rat-catching, and the general
aspect of Rotten Row suggests the idea of Mounted Infantry rather
than of "Cavalry." Alongside the ride forty years ago ladies drove
their pony-phaetons--a pretty practice and a pretty carriage; but
both have utterly disappeared, and the only bells that "gingle in the
laughing air" are the warning signals of the Petrol Fiend, as, bent
on destruction, he swoops down from Marble Arch to Piccadilly. Does a
captious critic gaze enquiringly on the unfamiliar verb to "gingle"?
It was thus that Lord Beaconsfield wrote it in "Lothair"; even as
in the same high romance he described a lady with a rich bunch of
"Stephanopolis" in her hand. It is not for the ephemeral scribbler to
correct the orthography of the immortal dead. As to "stoppages in Bond
Street," they were isolated and noteworthy incidents in 1870; in 1906,
thanks to the admission of omnibuses into the narrow thoroughfare, they
are occurrences as regular as the postman's knock or the policeman's
mailed tread.
We have seen the aspects in which the London Season presented itself
to two great men of yore. Let me now descend to a more personal level.
We will imagine ourselves transported back to the year 1880, and to
the month of May. A young gentleman--some five-and-twenty summers, as
Mr. G. P. R. James would have said, have passed over his fair head--is
standing near the steps of St. George's Hospital between the hours of
eleven and midnight. He is smartly dressed in evening clothes, with a
white waistcoat, a gardenia in his button-hole, and a silver-crutched
stick in his hand. He is smoking a cigarette and pondering the question
where he shall spend his evening, or, more strictly, the early hours of
next day. He is in a state of serene contentment with himself and the
world, for he has just eaten an excellent dinner, where plovers' eggs
and asparagus have reminded him that the Season has really begun. To
the pleasure-seeking Londoner these symptoms of returning summer mean
more, far more, than the dogrose in the hedgerow or the first note of
the nightingale in the copse. Since dinner he has just looked in at an
evening party, which bored him badly, and has "cut" two others where he
was not so likely to be missed. And now arises the vital question of
the Balls. I use the plural number, for there will certainly be two,
and probably three, to choose from. Here, at St. George's Hospital,
our youth is at the centre of the world's social concourse. A swift
and unbroken stream of carriages is pouring down from Grosvenor Square
and Mayfair to Belgrave Square and Eaton Square and Chesham Place, and
it meets as it goes the ascending procession which begins in Belgravia
and ends in Portman Square. To-night there is a Royal Ball at Grosvenor
House, certainly the most stately event of the season; a little dance,
exquisitely gay and bright, in Piccadilly; and a gorgeous entertainment
in Prince's Gate, where the aspiring Distiller is struggling, with
enormous outlay, into social fame. All these have solicited the honour
of our young friend's presence, and now is the moment of decision. It
does not take long to repudiate Prince's Gate; there will be the best
band in London, and ortolans for supper, but there will be no one there
that one ever saw before, and it is too sickening to be called "My boy"
by that bow-windowed bounder, the master of the house. There remain
Grosvenor House and Piccadilly, and happily these can be combined in
a harmonious perfection. Grosvenor House shall come first, for the
arrival of the Prince and Princess is a pageant worth seeing--the most
gracious host and the most beautiful hostess in London ushering the
Royal guests, with courtly pomp, into the great gallery, walled with
the canvases of Rubens, which serves as the dancing-room. Then the fun
begins, and the bright hours fly swiftly, till one o'clock suggests
the tender thought of supper, which is served on gold plate and Sèvres
china in a garden-tent of Gobelins tapestry. And now it is time for a
move; and our youth, extricating himself from the undesired attentions
of the linkmen, pops into a hansom and speeds to Piccadilly, where he
finds delights of a different kind--no Royalty, no pomp, no ceremony;
but a warm welcome, and all his intimate friends, and the nicest girls
in London eager for a valse.
As day begins to peep, he drinks his crowning tumbler of champagne-cup,
and strolls home under the opalescent dawn, sniffing the fragrance
from pyramids of strawberries as they roll towards Covent Garden, and
exchanging a friendly "Good night" with the policeman on the beat, who
seems to think that "Good morning" would be a more suitable greeting.
So to bed, with the cheerful consciousness of a day's work well done,
and the even more exhilarating prospect of an unbroken succession
of such days, full of feasting and dancing and riding and polo and
lawn-tennis, till August stifles the Season with its dust and drives
the revellers to Homburg or the moors.
But I awake, and lo! it is a dream, though a dream well founded on
reality. For I have been describing the London Season as it was when
the world was young.
"When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young."
X
THE SEASON AS IT IS
That delicate critic, the late Mr. William Cory, observes in one of his
letters that Virgil's
"Sunt lacrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt"
has its modern equivalent in Wordsworth's
"Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great is passed away."
The full luxury of that grief is reserved for those who, a decade
hence, shall moralize on "the London Season," for the thing which now
we so describe will then have utterly perished, and its name will
only arouse a tender and regretful emotion. Even now we have seen its
glories fade, and soon it will have shared the fate of those Venetian
splendours which Wordsworth mourned. But in the meantime it still
exists, though in a vastly different form from that which it wore in
mid-Victorian years. Just now I was describing some of the changes
which have occurred since the distant days when Bulwer-Lytton and Lord
Beaconsfield described London in May; and, following humbly in their
wake, I endeavoured to depict it as it was when I had my part in it.
But change only yields place to change. Society, like the individuals
who compose it, passes onward in perpetual vicissitude. As Shelley
says, "Naught may endure but mutability." So the London Season of
1906 differs as notably from the Season of 1880 as the Season of 1880
from that of 1846. Let me catalogue some of the changes and try to
account for them. In the first place, the Season is much less exactly
circumscribed by dates. In days gone by, it began with the Opening of
Parliament, which was always about the 7th of February, and it lasted,
with its regular intermissions for Easter and Whitsuntide, till the
last week of July. Then Society transported itself in turn to Goodwood,
to Cowes, and to a German watering-place or a Scotch moor, according
to its physical condition, and it was darkly rumoured that, if people
found themselves compelled by domestic or financial reasons to remain
in London during August, they sought to escape detection by keeping
the windows fronting the street closely shuttered, and lived in their
back rooms in unbroken contemplation of the leads and the mews. If you
chanced to meet a man in Piccadilly in September, you might be sure
that he would be wearing country clothes and would assure you that he
was only "passing through" between Doncaster and Scotland. Nowadays
the Season has no particular limits. London is nearly as full in
December as it is in May. Dinners and plays and suppers at restaurants
are as frequent, and, barring the fogs, as bright, at Christmas as at
Midsummer. Even in September Clubland is not deserted; and there are
people bold enough to defy the world by returning from their summer
exodus as early as October. The reason for the change, as for many
others like it, is the reduction of territorial incomes. 1880 may be
taken as, roughly, the last of the good years for agriculture. The
incessant rains of 1879 had even then begun to tell their tale. Tenants
were asking for big reductions, and farms hitherto eagerly sought were
becoming unlettable. I know a landowner on a great scale who, a year or
two later, only pocketed 10 per cent. of his income from land, whereas
five years before he would have thought an abatement of 10 per cent.
disastrous. All this has told increasingly on social life, for people
found themselves unable to keep both a country house and a London house
going at the same time, and, being driven to choose between the two,
often decided to let the country house and its shooting and make London
their headquarters for the whole year. So, by degrees, autumn faded
imperceptibly into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer.
Each season in its turn found people dwelling peaceably in their urban
habitations, entertaining and being entertained; and so "_the_ Season"
lost its sharp edges. The meeting of Parliament brought no perceptible
change in the aspect of the town. "High Midsummer Pomps" were no longer
so "high" as in former years, but, _per contra_, there was much more
gaiety in the autumn and winter and early spring.
Another cause which has contributed to the effacement of the ancient
time-marks is that the Court tends to disregard them. Under the present
reign, Windsor Castle has become as much a social centre as Buckingham
Palace. There are banquets in St. George's Hall in December, as well
as garden-parties on the the Slopes in June; and so, under the action
of Royal influence, the social seasons melt into one another, like the
hues of the prism. Then, again, the practice of the "Weekend," imported
from Lancashire and sanctioned by Westminster, helps to denude the
town in summer; for the "end" tends naturally to prolong itself till
it overlaps the beginning, and Friday-to-Tuesday parties, treading on
the heels of Whitsuntide and to be followed in quick succession by
Ascot, make mish-mash of what was aforetime "an entire and perfect
chrysolite"--a complete and continuous whole.
In describing my hero of 1880 as he surveyed his evening's amusements
and chose the most rewarding, I took for granted that he had at least
three balls to choose from. Nowadays he is lucky if he has one. Here
again, and conspicuously, agricultural depression has made its mark.
In the years between 1870 and 1880, during an unbroken spell of good
trade and good harvests, rich people struggled with one another for a
vacant night on which to entertain their friends. For example, Lady
A. had just brought out a daughter, and wished to give a ball for her
benefit. Say that she set her affections on Monday the 28th of May.
Before she issued her cards she took counsel with all her friends,
for in those days ball-giving mothers were a sort of Limited Company,
and all knew one another. She found that Mrs. B. had mentally fixed
on Tuesday, 29th, and, if Mrs. C. had thought of Monday, she would be
so kind as to take Wednesday, 30th. So all was amicably agreed; there
would be no clashing, which would be such a pity and would spoil both
balls; and the cards were duly issued. Directly afterwards, as if moved
by some occult and fiendish impulse, the Duchess of D---- pounced on
Monday, 28th, for a Royal Ball at D---- House, or, worse still because
more perilously tempting, for a "very small dance," to which all the
nicest young men would go, and where they would stay till three. In the
face of such mortifications as these, the emulous hospitalities of the
aspiring Distiller were of no account; for the "nice men" would either
disregard them, or, having looked in for half-an-hour, would come on to
spend the night at the houses where they felt themselves at home.
The hero of 1880, if only he was well connected, well mannered, and
sufficiently well known, might fairly reckon on dining six nights out
of the seven at a host's expense. Indeed, if he was at all popular, he
could safely afford to decline the invitation which old Mr. Wellbore
issued six weeks in advance and reserve himself for a livelier meal
at shorter notice. Not so to-day. Our young friend, if he has a
constitutional objection to paying for his own dinner, must take what
he can get in the way of invitations, and not be too particular about
the cook or the company. Here the cause of change is not decrease
of wealth. As long as there is a balance at the bank, and even when
there is none, people will dine; and dinner-giving is the last form of
hospitality which Society will let die. But nowadays dinners are made
ancillary to Bridge. If our friend cannot afford to lose £50 in an
evening he will not be asked to dine at a house which reckons itself
as belonging to "the Mode"; or if, for old acquaintance' sake, he is
allowed to find a place at the dinner-table, he is compelled to sit all
the evening by the least attractive daughter of the house, or to listen
to some fogey, too fossilized for Bridge, discoursing on the iniquities
of Mr. Birrell's Bill. "Tobacco," said Lord Beaconsfield, "is the Tomb
of Love." If he were with us now, he would pronounce that Bridge is the
Extinguisher of Hospitality.
Yet once again I note a startling discrepancy between the Season
as it was and the Season as it is. Then a young man who wanted air
and exercise in the afternoon played tennis at Lord's, or skated
at Prince's, or took a gallop in Richmond Park, or, if he was very
adventurous and up-to-date, sped out to Hampton Court or Windsor on a
bone-shaking bicycle six feet high. All these recreations are possible
to him to-day; but all have yielded to motoring. Dressed in the most
unbecoming of all known costumes, his expressive eyes concealed by
goggles, and his graceful proportions swathed in oilskin, he urges
his mad career to Brighton or Stratford or Salisbury Plain. No doubt
he has the most fascinating companions in the world, for girls are
enthusiastic motorists; but I fancy that Edwin and Angelina presented
a more attractive appearance when, neatly dressed and beautifully
mounted, they rode in the cool of the evening along the shady side of
Rotten Row.