to economize, it was London that they deserted. They sold the "family
mansion" in Portland Place or Eaton Square; and, if they revisited the
glimpses of the social moon, they took a furnished house for six weeks
in the summer: the rest of the year they spent in the country. This
plan was a manifold saving. There was no rent to pay, and only very
small rates, for every one knows that country houses were shamefully
under-assessed. Carriages did not require repainting every season, and
no new clothes were wanted. "What can it matter what we wear here,
where every one knows who we are?" The products of the park, the home
farm, the hothouses, and the kitchen-garden kept the family supplied
with food. A brother magnate staying at Beaudesert with the famous
Lord Anglesey waxed enthusiastic over the mutton, and said, "Excuse
my asking you a plain question, but how much does this excellent
mutton cost you?" "Cost me?" screamed the hero. "Good Gad, it costs me
nothing! It's my own," and he was beyond measure astonished when his
statistical guest proved that "his own" cost him about a guinea per
pound. In another great house, conducted on strictly economical lines,
it was said that the very numerous family were reared exclusively on
rabbits and garden-stuff, and that their enfeebled constitutions and
dismal appearance in later life were due to this ascetic regimen.
People were always hospitable in the country, but rural entertaining
was not a very costly business. The "three square meals and a snack,"
which represent the minimum requirement of the present day, are a
huge development of the system which prevailed in my youth. Breakfast
had already grown from the tea and coffee, and rolls and eggs, which
Macaulay tells us were deemed sufficient at Holland House, to an affair
of covered dishes. Luncheon-parties were sometimes given--terrible
ceremonies which lasted from two to four; but the ordinary luncheon
of the family was really a snack from the servants' joint or
the children's rice-pudding; and five o'clock tea was actually
not invented. To remember, as I do, the foundress of that divine
refreshment seems like having known Stephenson or Jenner.
Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as
heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the
dog days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then,
on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle
into the saucer-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its
appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies
and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much
seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really
vinous.
In this kind of hospitality there was no great expense. People made
very little difference between their way of living when they were alone
and their way of living when they had company. A visitor who wished to
make himself agreeable sometimes brought down a basket of fish or a
barrel of oysters from London; and, if one had no deer of one's own,
the arrival of a haunch from a neighbour's or kinsman's park was the
signal for a gathering of local gastronomers.
And in matters other than meals life went on very much the same
whether you had friends staying with you or whether you were alone.
Your guests drove and rode, and walked and shot, according to their
tastes and the season of the year. They were carried off, more or less
willingly, to see the sights of the neighbourhood--ruined castles,
restored cathedrals, famous views. In summer there might be a picnic
or a croquet-party; in winter a lawn-meet or a ball. But all these
entertainments were of the most homely and inexpensive character. There
was very little outlay, no fuss, and no display. People, who were
compelled by stress of financial weather to put into their country
houses and remain there till the storm was over, contrived to economize
and yet be comfortable. They simply lived their ordinary lives until
things righted themselves, and very likely did not attempt London again
until they were bringing out another daughter, or had to make a home
for a son in the Guards.
But now an entirely different spirit prevails. People seem to have
lost the power of living quietly and happily in their country homes.
They all have imbibed the urban philosophy of George Warrington, who,
when Pen gushed about the country with its "long calm days, and long
calm evenings," brutally replied, "Devilish long, and a great deal too
calm. I've tried 'em." People of that type desert the country simply
because they are bored by it. They feel with Mr. Luke in "The New
Republic," who, after talking about "liberal air," "sedged brooks,"
and "meadow grass," admitted that it would be a horrid bore to have
no other society than the clergyman of the parish, and no other topics
of conversation than Justification by Faith and the measles. They do
not care for the country in itself; they have no eye for its beauty, no
sense of its atmosphere, no memory for its traditions. It is only made
endurable to them by sport and gambling and boisterous house-parties;
and, when from one cause or another these resources fail, they are
frankly bored and long for London. They are no longer content, as our
fathers were, to entertain their friends with hospitable simplicity.
So profoundly has all society been vulgarized by the worship of the
Golden Calf that, unless people can vie with alien millionaires in the
sumptuousness with which they "do you"--delightful phrase,--they prefer
not to entertain at all. An emulous ostentation has killed hospitality.
So now, when a season of financial pressure sets in, people shut up
their country houses, let their shooting, cut themselves off with a
sigh of relief from all the unexciting duties and simple pleasures
of the Home, and take refuge from boredom in the delights of London.
In London life has no duties. Little is expected of one, and nothing
required. One can live on a larger or a smaller scale according to
one's taste or one's purse; cramp oneself in a doll's house in Mayfair,
or expand one's wings in a Kensingtonian mansion; or even contract
oneself into a flat, or hide one's diminished head in the upper storey
of a shop. One can entertain or not entertain, spend much or spend
little, live on one's friends or be lived on by them, exactly as one
finds most convenient: and unquestionably social freedom is a great
element in human happiness.
For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own, and
yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty.
The State is built upon the Home; and, as a training-place for social
virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country
and a home in London.
"Home! Sweet Home!" Yes. (I am quoting now from my friend, Henry Scott
Holland.) That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every
English man and woman. For forty years we have never asked Madame
Adelina Patti to sing anything else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races
have not even a word in their languages by which to express it, poor
things! Home is the secret of our honest British Protestant virtues.
It is the only nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our
far-flung children turn with all their memories aflame. They may lapse
into rough ways, but they keep something sound at the core so long as
they are faithful to the old Home. There is still a tenderness in the
voice, and tears are in their eyes, as they speak together of the days
that can never die out of their lives, when they were at home in the
old familiar places, with father and mother in the healthy gladness of
their childhood. Ah!
"Home! Sweet Home!
There's no place like Home."
That is what we all repeat, and all believe, and cheer to the echo.
And, behind all our British complacency about it, nobody would deny
the vital truth that there is in this belief of ours. Whatever tends
to make the Home beautiful, attractive, romantic--to associate it
with the ideas of pure pleasure and high duty--to connect it not only
with all that was happiest but also with all that was best in early
years--whatever fulfils these purposes purifies the fountains of
national life. A home, to be perfectly a home, should "incorporate
tradition, and prolong the reign of the dead." It should animate those
who dwell in it to virtue and beneficence by reminding them of what
others did, who went before them in the same place and lived amid the
same surroundings.
XLVII
HOSPITALITY
In my last chapter I was deploring the modern tendency of society to
desert the country and cultivate London. And the reason why I deplore
it is that all the educating influences of the Home are so infinitely
weaker in the town than in the country. In a London home there is
nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the
chimney-pots through the back windows of the nursery will not elevate
even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no
Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by
Cubitt or a palace of terracotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be
no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry,
in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the
previous owners are not known to you even by name. "The Square" or "the
Gardens" are sorry substitutes for the Park and the Pleasure-grounds,
the Common and the Downs. Crossing-sweepers are a deserving folk, but
you cannot cultivate those intimate relations with them which bind you
to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old women in the almshouses,
or the octogenarian waggoner who has driven your father's team ever
since he was ten years old. St. Peter's, Eaton Square, or All Saints,
Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what
Lord Beaconsfield called "brisk and modish"; but they can never have
the romantic charm of the country church where you were confirmed side
by side with the keeper's son, or proposed to the vicar's daughter when
you were wreathing holly round the lectern.
Then, again, as regards social relations with friends and neighbours.
"An emulous ostentation has destroyed hospitality." This I believe is
absolutely true, and it is one of the worst changes which I have seen.
I have already spoken of hospitality as practised in the country. Now I
will say a word about hospitality in London.
Of course rich people always gave banquets from time to time, and these
were occasions when, in Lord Beaconsfield's drolly vulgar phrase, "the
dinner was stately, as befits the high nobility." They were ceremonious
observances, conducted on the constitutional principle of "cutlet
for cutlet," and must always have been regarded by all concerned in
them, whether as hosts or guests, in the light of duty rather than of
pleasure. Twenty people woke that morning with the impression that
something was to be gone through before bedtime, which they would be
glad enough to escape. Each of the twenty went to bed that night more
or less weary and ruffled, but sustained by the sense that a social
duty had been performed. Banquets, however, at the worst were only
periodical events. Real hospitality was constant and informal.
"Come and dine to-night. Eight o'clock. Pot luck. Don't dress."
"My dear, I am going to bring back two or three men from the House.
Don't put off dinner in case we are kept by a division."
"I am afraid I must be going back. I am only paired till eleven.
Good-night, and so many thanks."
"Good-night; you will always find some dinner here on Government
nights. Do look in again!"
These are the cheerful echoes of parliamentary homes in the older
and better days of unostentatious entertaining, and those "pot luck"
dinners often played an important part in political manoeuvre.
Sir George Trevelyan, whose early manhood was passed in the thick
of parliamentary society, tells us, in a footnote to "The Ladies in
Parliament," that in the season of 1866 there was much gossip over the
fact of Lord Russell having entertained Mr. Bright at dinner, and that
people were constantly--
"Discussing whether Bright can scan and understand the lines
About the Wooden Horse of Troy; and when and where he dines.
Though gentlemen should blush to talk as if they cared a button
Because one night in Chesham Place he ate his slice of mutton."
Quite apart from parliamentary strategy, impromptu entertaining in
what was called "a friendly way" had its special uses in the social
system. There is a delicious passage in "Lothair" describing that
hero's initiation into an easier and more graceful society than that
in which he had been reared: "He had been a guest at the occasional
banquets of his uncle, but these were festivals of the Picts and Scots;
rude plenty and coarse splendour, with noise instead of conversation,
and a tumult of obstructive dependants, who impeded by their want of
skill the very convenience which they were purposed to facilitate." An
amazing sentence indeed, but like all Lord Beaconsfield's writings,
picturesquely descriptive, and happily contrasted with the succeeding
scene: "A table covered with flowers, bright with fanciful crystal,
and porcelain that had belonged to Sovereigns who had given a name to
its colour or its form. As for those present, all seemed grace and
gentleness, from the radiant daughters of the house to the noiseless
attendants who anticipated all his wants, and sometimes seemed to
suggest his wishes."
The mention of "Lothair" reminds people of my date that thirty years
ago we knew a house justly famed for the excellent marriages which
the daughters made. There banquets were unknown, and even dinners
by invitation very rare. The father used to collect young men from
Lord's, or the Lobby, or the Club, or wherever he had been spending
the afternoon. Servants were soon dismissed--"It is such a bore to have
them staring at one"--and the daughters of the house waited on the
guests. Here obviously were matrimonial openings not to be despised;
and, even in families where there were no ulterior objects to be
served, these free-and-easy entertainings went on from February to
July. Short invitations, pleasant company, and genuine friendliness
were the characteristics of these gatherings. Very often the dinner was
carved on the table. One could ask for a second slice or another wing
without feeling greedy, and the claret and amontillado were within the
reach of every guest. This, I consider, was genuine hospitality, for it
was natural, easy, and unostentatious.
But now, according to all accounts, the spirit of entertaining is
utterly changed. A dinner is not so much an opportunity of pleasing
your friends as of airing your own magnificence; and ostentation,
despicable in itself, is doubly odious because it is emulous. If A
has a good cook, B must have a better. If C gave you ortolans stuffed
with truffles, D must have truffles stuffed with ortolans. If the E's
table is piled with strawberries in April, the F's must retaliate with
orchids at a guinea a blossom. G is a little inclined to swagger about
his wife's pearl necklace, and H is bound in honour to decorate Mrs. H
with a _rivière_ which belonged to the crown jewels of France.
And, as with the food and the decorations, so also with the company.
Here, again, Emulous Ostentation carries all before it. Mr. Goldbug is
a Yahoo, but he made his millions in South Africa and spends them in
Park Lane. Lord Heath is the most abandoned bore in Christendom, but
he is an authority at Newmarket. Lady Bellair has had a notoriously
chequered career, but she plays bridge in exalted circles. As Lord
Crewe sings of a similar enchantress--
"From reflections we shrink;
And of comment are chary;
But her face is _so_ pink,
And it don't seem to vary."
However, she is unquestionably smart; and Goldbug is a useful man to
know; and we are not going to be outdone by the Cashingtons, who got
Heath to dine with them twice last year. So we invite our guests,
not because we like them or admire them, for that in these cases is
impossible; not--heaven knows--because they are beautiful or famous or
witty; but because they are the right people to have in one's house,
and we will have the right people or perish in the attempt.
XLVIII
OSTENTATION
It is many a long year since I saw the inside of a ballroom, but by
all accounts very much the same change has come over the spirit of
ball-giving as of dinner-giving. Here again the "Emulous Ostentation"
which I have described is the enemy. When I first grew up, there were
infinitely more balls than now. From Easter till August there were
at least two every night, and a hostess counted herself lucky if
she had only one rival to contend with. Between 11 P.M. and 2 A.M.
Grosvenor Place was blocked by the opposing streams of carriages going
from Mayfair to Belgravia, and from Belgravia to Mayfair. There were
three or four really great Houses--"Houses" with a capital H--such as
Grosvenor House, Stafford House, Dudley House, and Montagu House--where
a ball could scarcely help being an event--or, as Pennialinus would
say, "a function." But, putting these on one side, the great mass of
hostesses contrived to give excellent balls, where every one went and
every one enjoyed themselves, with very little fuss and no ostentation.
The drawing-room of an ordinary house in Belgravia or Grosvenor Square
made a perfectly sufficient ballroom. A good floor, a good band, and
plenty of light, were the only essentials of success. Decoration was
represented by such quaint devices as pink muslin on the banisters,
or green festoons dependent from the chandelier. A good supper was
an additional merit; and, if the host produced his best champagne,
he was held in just esteem by dancing men. But yet I well remember a
cold supper at a ball which the present King and Queen attended, in
1881, and no one grumbled, though perhaps the young bloods thought it
a little old-fashioned. The essence of a good ball was not expense or
display or overwhelming preparation, but the certainty that you would
meet your friends. Boys and girls danced, and married women looked on,
or only stole a waltz when their juniors were at supper. In those days
a ball was really a merry-making.
Nowadays I gather from the _Morning Post_ that balls are comparatively
rare events, but what they lack in frequency they make up in
ostentation. As to the sums which the Heits and the Heims, the Le
Beers and the De Porters, lavish on one night's entertainment I hear
statistical accounts which not only outrage economy but stagger
credibility. Here again the rushing flood of ill-gotten gold has
overflowed its banks, and polluted the "crystal river of unreproved
enjoyment."
There is yet another form of entertainment which Emulous Ostentation
has destroyed. A few years ago there still were women in London who
could hold a "salon." Of these gatherings the principal attraction
was the hostess, and, in a secondary degree, the agreeableness of the
people whom she could gather round her. Of fuss and finery, decoration
and display, there was absolutely nothing. A typical instance of what
I mean will perhaps recur to the memory of some who read this chapter.
Picture to yourself two not very large and rather dingy rooms. The
furniture is dark and old-fashioned--mahogany and rosewood, with here
and there a good cabinet or a French armchair. No prettiness of lace
and china; no flowers; and not very much light. Books everywhere, some
good engravings, a comfortable sofa, and a tray of tea and coffee.
That was all. It is difficult to conceive a less ostentatious or a
more economical mode of entertaining; yet the lady who presided over
that "salon" had been for fifty years one of the most celebrated women
in Europe; had been embraced by Napoleon; had flirted with the Allied
Sovereigns; had been described by Byron; had discussed scholarship
with Grote, and statecraft with Metternich; had sate to Lawrence,
and caballed with Antonelli. Even in old age and decrepitude she
opened her rooms to her friends every evening in the year, and never,
even in the depths of September, found her court deserted. Certainly
it was a social triumph, and one has only to compare it with the
scene in the stockbroker's saloon--the blaze of electric light,
the jungle of flowers, the furniture from Sinclair's, the pictures
from Christie's--and to contrast the assembled guests. Instead of
celebrities, notorieties--woman at once under-dressed and over-dressed;
men with cent. per cent. written deep in every line of their expressive
countenances; and, at the centre of the throng, a hostess in a diamond
crown, who conducts her correspondence by telegraph, because her
spelling is a little shaky and mistakes in telegrams are charitably
attributed to the clerks.
One of the worst properties of Emulous Ostentation is that it naturally
affects its victims with an insatiable thirst for money. If Mrs.
Tymmyns in Onslow Gardens is to have as good a dinner, and as smart
a victoria, and as large a tiara, as her friend Mrs. Goldbug in Park
Lane, it is obvious that Mr. Tymmyns must find the money somehow. Who
wills the end wills the means; and, if social exigencies demand a
larger outlay, the Tymmynses cannot afford to be too scrupulous about
their method of providing for it. I suppose it is this consideration
which makes us just now a nation of gamblers, whereas our more
respectable but less adventurous fathers were well content to be a
nation of shopkeepers.
Of course, in all ages there has been a gambling clique in society;
but in old days it kept itself, as the saying is, to itself. Of
necessity it always was on the look-out for neophytes to initiate
and to pillage, but the non-gambling majority of society regarded
the gambling minority with horror; and a man who palpably meant to
make money out of a visit to a country house would probably have been
requested to withdraw. "Order a fly for Mr. L. at eleven o'clock,"
said old Lord Crewe to the butler when a guest had committed a social
atrocity under his roof. "Thank you, Lord Crewe," said Mr. L., "but not
for me. I am not going to-day." "Oh yes, you are," responded the host,
and secreted himself in his private apartments till the offender had
been duly extruded. Similar justice would, I think, have been dealt
out to a gambler who rooked the young and the inexperienced. Not so
to-day; the pigeon, however unfledged and tender, is the appointed
prey of the rook, and the venerable bird who does the plucking is
entirely undeterred by any considerations of pity, shame, or fear. "Is
he any good?" is a question which circulates round the Board of Green
Cloth whenever a new face fresh from Oxford or Sandhurst is noted in
the social throng. "Oh yes, he's all right; I know his people," may
be the cheerful response; or else, in a very different note, "No, he
hasn't got a feather to fly with." Fortunate is the youth on whom this
disparaging verdict is pronounced, for in that case he may escape the
benevolent attentions of the
"Many-wintered crow
That leads the gambling rookery home."
But even impecuniosity does not always protect the inexperienced. A
lady who had lived for some years in the country returned to London not
long ago, and, enumerating the social changes which she had observed,
she said, "People seem to marry on £500 a year and yet have diamond
tiaras." It was, perhaps, a too hasty generalization, but an instance
in point immediately recurred to my recollection. A young couple had
married with no other means of subsistence than smartness, good looks,
and pleasant manners. After a prolonged tour round the country houses
of their innumerable friends, they settled down at Woolwich. "Why
Woolwich?" was the natural enquiry; and the reason, when at length
it came to light, was highly characteristic of the age. It appeared
that these kind young people used to give nice little evening parties,
invite the "Gentlemen Cadets" from Woolwich Academy, and make them
play cards for money. The device of setting up housekeeping on the
pocket-money of babes and sucklings is thoroughly symptomatic of our
decadence. Emulous Ostentation makes every one want more money than he
has, and at the same time drugs all scruples of conscience as to the
method of obtaining it.
XLIX
PRINCIPLE AND PREJUDICE
Mr. J. A. Froude once told me that he did not in the least mind the
accusation which was brought against him (certainly not without reason)
of being prejudiced. "A good stiff prejudice," he said, "is a very
useful thing. It is like a rusty weathercock. It will yield to a strong
and long-continued blast of conviction, but it does not veer round and
round in compliance with every shifting current of opinion."
What Mr. Froude expressed other people felt, though perhaps they would
not have cared to avow it so honestly.
One of the most notable changes which I have seen is the decay of
prejudice. In old days people felt strongly and spoke strongly, and
acted as they spoke. In every controversy they were absolutely certain
that they were right and that the other side was wrong, and they did
not mince their words when they expressed their opinions.