quiet meditations seems to live a good deal in the past, and people in
whom the chronological sense is missing are apt to think me a great
deal older than I am. Thus when I have recalled among my earliest
recollections the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre (in 1856),
I have been thought to be babbling of Drury Lane, which was burnt down
in 1812; and so, when I say that in early life I travelled a great deal
upon the Road, I shall probably be accused of having been born before
railways were invented. What is true enough is that a prejudice against
railways lingered long after they were in general use; some people
thought them dangerous, some undignified, and I believe that there
were some who even thought them wicked because they are not mentioned
in the Bible. "I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla's trip from
Birmingham?" says Lady Marney in "Sybil." "Have you not, indeed?
She came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men
sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more intelligent men.
She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change seats with her, and
he was most politely willing to comply with her wishes, only it was
necessary that his companion should move at the same time, for they
were chained together--two gentlemen sent to town for picking pockets
at Shrewsbury races." "A Countess and a felon!" said Lord Mowbray.
"So much for public conveyances." To these social perils were added
terrors of tunnels, terrors of viaducts, terrors of fires which would
burn you to an ash in your locked carriage, terrors of robbers who were
supposed to travel first-class for the express purpose of chloroforming
well-dressed passengers and then stealing their watches. Haunted by
these and similar fears, some old-fashioned people travelled by road
till well into the 'sixties. From my home in the South Midlands we took
a whole day in getting to London, forty miles off; two to Leamington,
three to Winchester; and those who still travelled in this leisurely
mode were the last patrons of the Inn.
It was generally a broad-browed, solid, comfortable-looking house in
the most central part of a country town. Not seldom the sign was taken
from the armorial bearings of the local magnate. There were a Landlord
and a Landlady, who came out bowing when the carriage drove up, and
conducted the travellers to their rooms, while the "Imperials" were
taken down from the roof of the carriage. (Could one buy an "Imperial"
nowadays if one wanted it? The most recent reference to it which I
can recall occurs in the first chapter of "Tom Brown's School Days.")
Very often the rooms of the Inn were distinguished not by numbers,
but by names or tokens derived from the situation, or the furniture,
or from some famous traveller who had slept in them--the Bow Room,
the Peacock Room, or the Wellington Room. The Landlord had generally
been a butler, but sometimes a coachman. Anyhow, he and his wife had
"lived in the best families" and "knew how things ought to be done."
The furniture was solid, dark, and handsome--mahogany predominating,
here and there relieved with rosewood. There was old silver on the
table, and the walls were covered with sporting or coaching prints,
views of neighbouring castles, and portraits of the Nobility whom
the Landlord had served. The bedrooms were dark and stuffy beyond
belief, with bedsteads like classic temples and deep feather-beds into
which you sank as into a quicksand. The food was like the furniture,
heavy and handsome. There was "gunpowder tea"--green if you asked for
it,--luscious cream, and really new-laid eggs. The best bottle of
claret which I ever encountered emerged, quite accidentally, from the
cellar of a village Inn close to the confluence of the Greta and the
Tees, in a district hallowed by the associations of Rokeby and Mr.
Squeers. When, next morning, you had paid your bill--not, as a rule, a
light one--the Landlord and Lady escorted you to the door, and politely
expressed a hope that you would honour them on your return journey.
Then "Hey, for the lilt of the London road!" and the Montfort Arms, or
the Roebuck, or the Marquis of Granby, is only a pleasant memory of an
unreturning day.
What in the country was called an Inn was called in London a "Family
Hotel." It was commonly found in Dover Street, or Albemarle Street, or
Bolton Street, or some such byway of Piccadilly; and in its aspect,
character, and general arrangement it was exactly like the country Inn,
only of necessity darker, dingier, and more airless. Respectability,
mahogany, and horse-hair held it in their iron grip. Here county
families, coming up from the Drawing Room, or the Academy, or the
Exhibition, or the Derby, spent cheerful weeks in summer. Here in the
autumn they halted on their return from Doncaster or Aix. Here the boys
slept on their way back to Eton or Cambridge; hither the subaltern
returned, like a homing pigeon, from India or the Cape.
But the Family Hotel, like the Country Inn, has seen its day. When
the _Times_ was inciting the inhabitants of Rome to modernize their
city, Matthew Arnold, writing in Miss Story's album, made airy fun of
the suggestion. He represented "the _Times_, that bright Apollo,"
proclaiming salvation to the "armless Cupid" imprisoned in the
Vatican:--
"'And what,' cries Cupid, 'will save us?'
Says Apollo: '_Modernize Rome!_
What inns! Your streets too, how narrow!
Too much of palace and dome!'
"'O learn of London, whose paupers
Are not pushed out by the swells!
Wide streets, with fine double trottoirs;
And then--the London hotels!'"
Between the "Inns" of my youth and these "Hotels" of to-day the
difference is so great that they can scarcely be recognized as
belonging to the same family. Under the old dispensation all was solid
comfort, ponderous respectability, and the staid courtesy of the
antique world; under the new it is all glare and glitter, show and
sham; the morals of the Tuileries and the manners of Greenwich Fair.
The building is something between a palace and a barrack, with a hall
of marble, a staircase of alabaster, a winter garden full of birds and
fountains, and a band which deafens you while you eat your refined but
exiguous dinner. Among these sumptuosities the visitor is no longer
a person but a number. As a number he is received by the gigantic
"Suisse" who, resplendent in green and gold, watches the approach to
the palace; as a number he is registered by a dictatorial "Secretary,"
enshrined in a Bureau; as a number he is shot up, like a parcel, to
his airy lodgings on the seventh floor; as a number he orders his
meals; as a number he pays his bill. The whole business is a microcosm
of State Socialism: Bureaucracy is supreme, and the Individual is
lost in the Machine. But, though the courtesies and the humanities
and even the decencies of the old order have vanished so completely,
the exactions remain much the same as they were. There is, indeed, no
courtly landlord to bow, like a plumper Sir Charles Grandison, over
the silver salver on which you have laid your gold; but there are
gilt-edged porters, and moustached lift-men, and a regiment of buttony
boys who float round the departing guest with well-timed assiduity; and
the Suisse at the door, as he eyes our modest luggage with contemptuous
glare, looks quite prepared, if need be, to extort his guerdon by
physical force.
The British Inn, whatever were its shortcomings in practice, has been
glorified in some of the best verse and best prose in the English
language. It will, methinks, be a long time before even the most
impressionable genius of the "Bodley Head" pens a panegyric of the
London Hotel.
XXVII
TRAVEL
The October Season, of which I lately spoke, is practically over.
"The misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind" are yielding
place to cloud and storm. In a week's time London will have assumed
its winter habit, and already people are settling down to their winter
way of living. The last foreigner has fled. The Country Cousins have
finished their shopping and have returned to the pursuit of the
Pheasant and the Fox. The true Londoners--the people who come back to
town for the "first note of the Muffin-bell and retreat to the country
for the first note of the Nightingale"--have resumed the placidity of
their normal life. Dinner-parties have hardly begun, but there are
plenty of little luncheons; the curtains are drawn about four, and
there are three good hours for Bridge before one need think of going
to dress for dinner. And now, just when London is beginning to wear
once again its most attractive aspect, at once sociable and calm, some
perverse people, disturbers of the public peace, must needs throw
everything into confusion by going abroad.
Their motives are many and various. With some it is health: "I feel
that I _must_ have a little sunshine, I have been so rheumatic all this
autumn," or "My doctor tells me that, with my tendency to bronchitis,
the fogs are really dangerous." With some it is sheer restlessness:
"Well, you see, we were here _all_ the summer, except just Whitsuntide
and Ascot and Goodwood; so we have had about enough of London. And our
home in Loamshire is so fearfully lonely in winter that it quite gets
on my nerves. So I think a little run will do us all good; and we shall
be back by the New Year, or February at latest." With some, again,
economy is the motive power; "What with two sons to allowance, and two
still at school; and one girl to be married at Easter, and one just
coming out, as well as a most expensive governess for the young ones, I
assure you it is quite difficult to make two ends meet. We have got an
excellent offer for Eaton Place from November to May, and some friends
on the Riviera have repeatedly asked us to pay them a long visit; and,
when that's done, one can live _en pension_ at Montreux for next to
nothing." Others are lured abroad by the love of gambling, though this
is not avowed: "I do so love Monte Carlo--not the gambling, but the
air, and, even if one does lose a franc or two at the tables, I always
say that we should lose much more at home, with Christmas presents,
and Workhouse Treats, and all those tiresome things one has to do."
It is not a joke--for I never joke about religion--it is a literal
fact that in my youth the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that "Many
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" was interpreted
as pointing to an enlargement of the human mind through increased
facilities of travel. I do not guarantee the exegesis, but I note the
fact. A hundred years ago, if parents wished to enlarge their son's
understanding by sending him on the "Grand Tour" of Europe, they set
aside twelve months for the fulfilment of their purpose. Young Hopeful
set out in a travelling-carriage with a tutor (or Bear-Leader), a
Doctor, and a Valet. The Bear-Leader's was a recognized and lucrative
profession. In a diary for 1788, which lies before me as I write,
I read: "Mr. Coxe, the traveller, has been particularly lucky as a
Pupil-Leader about Europe. After Lord Herbert, he had Mr. Whitbred at
£800 per ann., and now has Mr. Portman, with £1000 per ann." Patrick
Brydone, scholar, antiquary, and _virtuoso_, whose daughter married the
second Earl of Minto, was "Pupil-Leader" (or Bear-Leader) to William
Beckford. Sydney Smith was dug out of his curacy on Salisbury Plain in
order to act as Bear-Leader to the grandfather of the present Lord St.
Aldwyn. Charles Richard Sumner, who, as last of the Prince-Bishops
of Winchester, drew £40,000 a year for forty years, began life as
Bear-Leader to Lord Mount-Charles, eldest son of that Lady Conyngham
whom George IV. admired; and he owed his first preferment in the Church
to the amiable complaisance with which he rescued his young charge from
a matrimonial entanglement. That was early in the nineteenth century;
but forty years later the Bear-Leader was still an indispensable
adjunct to the Grand Tour of Illustrious Youth. The late Duke of
Argyll has told us how he made his travels sandwiched inside his
father's chariot between his preceptor and his physician. When the
Marquis of Montacute made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land he was even
more liberally attended; for, in addition to his Bear-Leader, Colonel
Grouse, he took his father's doctor, Mr Groby, to avert or cure the
fevers, and his father's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, to guide his
researches into the theology of Syria. Perhaps Lord Montacute existed
only in Lord Beaconsfield's rich imagination; but Thackeray, who never
invented but always described what he saw, drew a delightful portrait
of "the Rev. Baring Leader," who, "having a great natural turn and
liking towards the aristocracy," consented to escort Viscount Talboys
when that beer-loving young nobleman made his celebrated journey down
the Rhine.
But, though a special divinity always hedged, as it still hedges,
the travels of an Eldest Son, the more modest journeyings of his
parents were not accomplished without considerable form and fuss.
Lord and Lady Proudflesh or Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore travelled all over
Europe in their own carriage. It was planted bodily on the deck of the
steamer, so that its privileged occupants could endure the torments
of the crossing in dignified seclusion; and, when once the solid
shore of the Continent was safely reached, it was drawn by an endless
succession of post-horses, ridden by postillions, with the valet and
maid (like those who pertained to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock)
"affectionate in the rumble." The inside of the carriage was a miracle
of ingenuity. Space was economized with the most careful art, and all
the appliances of travel--looking-glasses and luncheon-baskets, lamps
and maps, newspapers and books--were bestowed in their peculiar and
appropriate corners. I possess a "dining equipage" which made the
tour of Europe not once but often in the service of a Diplomatist.
It is shaped something like a large egg, and covered with shagreen.
It contains a tumbler, a sandwich-box, and a silver-handled knife,
fork, and spoon; the handle of each of these tools unscrews, and in
their hollow interiors the Diplomatist carried his salt, sugar, and
pepper. On the roof of the carriage was the more substantial luggage. A
travelling-bath, though not unknown, was rather an exceptional luxury,
and, according to our modern notions, it was painfully small. A silver
tub which sufficed for the ablutions of the great Duke of Marlborough
through the campaigns which changed the face of Europe now serves as a
rose-bowl at the banquets of Spencer House.
The trunks, which were strapped to the roof of the travelling-carriage,
were of a peculiar form--very shallow, and so shaped as to fit into one
another and occupy every inch of space. These were called Imperials,
and just now I referred to Tom Hughes's undeserved strictures on them.
The passage fits neatly into our present subject: "I love vagabonds,
only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies' maids, imperials
and travelling-carriages, are an abomination unto me--I cannot away
with them." To me, on the contrary, the very word "Imperial" (when
divested of political associations) is pleasant. It appeals to the
historic sense. It carries us back to Napoleon's campaigns, and to
that wonderful house on wheels--his travelling-carriage--now enshrined
at Madame Tussaud's. It even titillates the gastronomic instinct by
recalling that masterly method of cooking a fowl which bears the name
of Marengo. The great Napoleon had no notion of fighting his battles
on an empty stomach, so, wherever he was, a portable kitchen, in
the shape of a travelling-carriage, was close at hand. The cook and
his _marmitons_ travelled inside, with the appliances for making a
charcoal fire at a moment's notice, while the Imperials on the roof
contained the due supply of chickens, eggs, bread, and Bordeaux. In
the preparation of a meal under such conditions time was money--nay,
rather, it was Empire. The highest honours were bestowed on the most
expeditious method, and the method called after Marengo took exactly
twenty minutes.
Here is testimony much more recent. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in the
volume of "Reminiscences" which she has lately given to the world,
thus describes her youthful journeys between her London and her
Norfolk homes: "It took us two long days to get to Wolterton, and
the cost must have been considerable. We went in the family coach
with four post-horses, whilst two 'fourgons' conveyed the luggage."
But travelling abroad was a still more majestic ceremonial: "We were
a large party--six of ourselves, as well as two maids, a footman,
and French cook; nor must I forget a wonderful courier, covered with
gold and braid. He preceded our cavalcade and announced the imminent
arrival of a great English Milord and his suite. We had two fourgons
to hold the _batterie de cuisine_ and our six beds, which had to be
unpacked and made up every night. We had, besides the family coach and
a barouche, six saddle horses, and two attendant grooms."
Travel in those brave days of old was a dignified, a leisurely, and
a comfortable process. How different is Travel in these degenerate
times! For the young man rejoicing in his strength it means, as Tom
Hughes said forty years ago, "getting over a couple of thousand miles
for three-pound-ten; going round Ireland, with a return ticket, in
a fortnight; dropping your copy of Tennyson on the top of a Swiss
mountain, or pulling down the Danube in an Oxford racing-boat." For
those who have reached maturer years it may mean a couple of nights
in Paris, just to see the first performance of a new play and to
test the merits of the latest restaurant, or it may mean a week in
New York to study the bearings of the Presidential election and to
gather fresh views of the Silver Question. Dr. Lunn kindly invites the
more seriously minded to a Conference at Grindelwald, where we can
combine the delights of Alpine scenery and undenominational religion;
and "the son of a well-known member of the House of Lords" offers to
conduct us personally through "A Lion and Rhinoceros Hunting Party in
Somaliland," or "A Scientific Expedition to Central Africa, to visit
the supposed cradle of the human race and the site of the Garden of
Eden." Nothing of Travelling-carriages and Imperials here! No "maid and
valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all
the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense
of independence and responsibility. The modern traveller is shot
like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He
certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under
wonderfully uncomfortable conditions.
XXVIII
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
A pictorial critic, commending the water-colour painting of Mr. Arthur
Rich, says that, after examining his firm and serious work, "it is
impossible to think that there is anything trivial in the art of
Aquarelle--that it is, as has been said, 'a thing Aunts do.'"
_A thing Aunts do._ I linger on the words, for they suggest deep
thoughts. Many and mysterious are the tricks of language--not least
so the subtle law by which certain relationships inevitably suggest
peculiar traits. Thus the Grandmother stands to all time as the type
of benevolent feebleness; the Stepmother was branded by classical
antiquity as Unjust; and Thackeray's Mrs. Gashleigh and Mrs. Chuff are
the typical Mothers-in-Law. The Father is commonly the "Heavy Father"
of fiction and the drama. The Mother is always quoted with affection,
as in "Mother-wit," our Mother-country, and our Mother-tongue. "A
Brother," ever since the days of Solomon, "is born for adversity,"
and a Brother-officer implies a loyal friend. A Sister is the type of
Innocence, with just a faint tinge or _nuance_ of pitying contempt,
as when the Vainglorious Briton speaks of the "Sister Country" across
St. George's Channel, or the hubristic Oxonian sniggers at the "Sister
University" of Cambridge. Eldest and Younger Sons again, as I have
before now had occasion to point out, convey two quite different sets
of ideas, and this discrepancy has not escaped the notice of the social
Poet, who observes that--
"Acres and kine and tenements and sheep
Enrich the Eldest, while the Younger Sons
Monopolize the talents and the duns."
"My Uncle," in colloquial phrase, signifies the merchant who transacts
his business under the sign of the Three Golden Balls; and to these
expressive relationships must be added Auntship. "A thing Aunts do,"
says the pictorial critic; and the contumelious phrase is not of
yesterday, for in 1829 a secularly-minded friend complained that young
Mr. William Gladstone, then an Undergraduate at Christ Church, had
"mixed himself up so much with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who
are really, for the most part, only fit to live with maiden aunts and
keep tame rabbits." To paint in water-colour and to keep tame rabbits
are pursuits which to the superficial gaze have little in common,
though both are, or were, characteristic of Aunts, and both are, in
some sense, accomplishments, demanding natural taste, acquired skill,
patience, care, a delicate touch, and a watchful eye. Perhaps these
were the particular accomplishments in which the traditional Aunt
"specialized," though she had never heard that bad word; but, if she
chose to diffuse her energies more widely, the world was all before her
where to choose; and, by a singular reversal of the law of progress,
there were more "accomplishments" to solicit her attention a hundred
years ago than there are to-day.
When the most fascinating of all heroines, Di Vernon, anticipated
posterity by devoting her attention to politics, field sports,
and classical literature, she enumerated, among the more feminine
accomplishments which she had discarded, "sewing a tucker, working
cross-stitch, and making a pudding"; and she instanced, among the
symbols of orthodox femininity "a shepherdess wrought in worsted, a
broken-backed spinet, a lute with three strings, rock-work, shell-work,
and needle-work." We clear the century with a flying leap, and
find ourselves in the company of a model matron, with surroundings
substantially unchanged: "Mrs. Bayham-Badger was surrounded in the
drawing-room by various objects indicative of her painting a little,
playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the
harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little,
writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. If I add to the
little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do
not mean that there was any harm in it." Miss Volumnia Dedlock's
accomplishments, though belonging to the same period, were slightly
different: "Displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting
ornaments out of coloured paper, and also singing to the guitar in the
Spanish tongue and propounding French conundrums in country houses,
she passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty
in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date, and
being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the
Spanish language, she retired to Bath." Perhaps she had been educated
by Miss Monflathers, "who was at the head of the head Boarding and Day
Establishment in the town," and whose gloss on the didactic ditty of
the Busy Bee so confounded the emissary from the Waxworks.
"In books, or work, or healthful play
is quite right as far as genteel children are concerned, and in
their case 'work' means painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or
embroidery." Do even Aunts paint on velvet, or cut ornaments out of
coloured paper, in this "so-called Twentieth Century"? I know no
more pathetic passage in the Literature of Art than that in which
Mrs. Gaskell enumerated Miss Matty's qualifications for the work of
teaching:--