father (1807-1894) that, when he was a boy, his grandfather had taken
him on his knee and said, "Now, my dear Tom, whatever else you do
in life, mind you never trust a Tory;" and Lord Leicester added, "I
never have, and, by George, I never will." On the other hand, when
Dr. Longley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, did homage on his
appointment to the see of Ripon, King William IV. said, "Bishop of
Ripon, I charge you, as you shall answer before Almighty God, that you
never by word or deed give encouragement to those d---- d Whigs, who
would upset the Church of England."
John Keble, the gentle saint of the Tractarian movement, when he saw
the Whigs preparing to attack the property of the Church, proclaimed
that the time had come when "scoundrels should be called scoundrels."
And the Tractarians had no monopoly of vigorous invective, for, when
their famous "Tract XC." incurred the censure of an Evangelical dean,
he urbanely remarked that "he would be sorry to trust the author of
that tract with his purse."
Macaulay, on the morning after a vital division, in which the Whigs had
saved their places by seventy-nine votes, wrote triumphantly to his
sister--
"So hang the dirty Tories, and let them starve and pine,
And hurrah! for the majority of glorious seventy-nine."
The same cordial partisan wrote of a political opponent that he was "a
bad, a very bad, man; a disgrace to politics and to literature;" and,
of an acquaintance who had offended him socially, "his powers gone;
his spite immortal--a dead nettle."
The great and good Lord Shaftesbury, repudiating the theology of "Ecce
Homo," pronounced it "the most pestilential book ever vomited from
the jaws of Hell;" and, dividing his political favours with admirable
impartiality, he denounced "the brazen faces, low insults, and accursed
effrontery" of the Radicals; declared that Mr. Gladstone's "public
life had long been an effort to retain his principles and yet not lose
his position;" and dismissed Lord Beaconsfield as "a leper, without
principle, without feeling, without regard to anything, human or
divine, beyond his personal ambition." In the same spirit of hearty
prejudice, Bishop Wilberforce deplored the political exigencies which
had driven his friend Gladstone into "the foul arms of the Whigs."
In the opposite camp was ranged a lady, well remembered in the inner
circles of Whiggery, who never would enter a four-wheeled cab until she
had elicited from the driver that he _was not_ a Puseyite and _was_ a
Whig.
"Mamma," asked a little girl of Whig parentage, who from her cradle had
heard nothing but denunciation of her father's political opponents,
"are Tories born wicked, or do they grow wicked afterwards?" And her
mother judiciously replied, "My dear, they are born wicked and grow
worse."
But alas! they are "gone down to Hades, even many stalwart sons of
heroes,"--with King William at their head, and Lord Shaftesbury and
Lord Leicester, and Keble and Macaulay and Froude in his wake--men who
knew what they believed, and, knowing it, were not ashamed to avow it,
and saw little to praise or like in the adherents of a contrary opinion.
They are gone, and we are left--an unprejudiced, but an invertebrate
and a flaccid, generation. No one seems to believe anything very
firmly. No one has the slightest notion of putting himself to any
inconvenience for his belief. No one dreams of disliking or distrusting
a political or religious opponent, or of treating difference of opinion
as a line of social cleavage.
In old days, King Leopold of Belgium told Bishop Wilberforce that
"the only position for a Church was to say, 'Believe this or you are
damned.'" To-day nothing in religion is regarded as unquestionably
true. When the late Archbishop Benson first became acquainted with
society in London, he asked, in shocked amazement, "What do these
people believe?"--and no very satisfactory answer was forthcoming. If
society has any religious beliefs (and this is more than questionable),
it holds them with the loosest grasp, and is on the easiest terms of
intercourse with every other belief and unbelief. The most fashionable
teachers of religion have one eye nervously fixed on the ever-shifting
currents of negation, talk plausibly about putting the Faith in its
proper relation with modern thought, and toil panting in the wake of
science; only to find each fresh theory exploded just at the moment
when they have managed to apprehend it.
We used to be taught in our nurseries that, when "Old Daddy Longlegs
wouldn't say his prayers," it was our duty to "Take him by the left
leg and throw him downstairs;" and the student of folklore will be
pleased to observe in this ditty the immemorial inclination of mankind
to punish people who will not square their religion with ours. The
spirit of religious persecution dies hard, but the decay of prejudice
has sapped its strength. It does not thrive in the atmosphere of modern
indifferentism, and admirable ladies who believe that Ritualists ride
donkeys on Palm Sunday and sacrifice lambs on Good Friday find it
difficult to revive the cry of "No Popery" with any practical effect.
The decay of prejudice in the sphere of politics is even more
remarkable than in that of religion. In old days, political agreement
was a strong and a constraining bond. When people saw a clear right and
wrong in politics, they governed their private as well as their public
life accordingly. People who held the same political beliefs lived and
died together. In society and hospitality, in work and recreation, in
journalism and literature--even in such seemingly indifferent matters
as art and the drama--they were closely and permanently associated.
Eton was supposed to cherish a romantic affection for the Stuarts,
and therefore to be a fit training place for sucking Tories; Harrow
had always been Hanoverian, and therefore attracted little Whigs to
its Hill. Oxford, with its Caroline theology and Jacobite tradition,
was the Tory university; Cambridge was the nursing-mother of Whigs,
until Edinburgh, under the influence of Jeffrey and Brougham, tore her
babes from her breast. In society you must choose between the Duchess
of Devonshire and the Duchess of Gordon, or, in a later generation,
between Lady Holland and Lady Jersey. In clubland the width of St.
James's Street marked a dividing line of abysmal depth; and to this day
"Grillon's" remains the memorial of an attempt, then unique, to bring
politicians of opposite sides together in social intercourse. On the
one side stood Scott--where Burke had stood before him--the Guardian
Angel of Monarchy and Aristocracy: on the other were Shelley and Byron,
and (till they turned their coats) the emancipated singers of Freedom
and Humanity. The two political parties had even their favourite
actors, and the Tories swore by Kemble while the Whigs roared for Kean.
Then, as now, the Tories were a wealthy, powerful, and highly-organized
confederacy. The Whigs were notoriously a family party. From John, Lord
Gower, who died in 1754, and was the great-great-great-grandfather of
the present Duke of Sutherland, descend all the Gowers, Levesons,
Howards, Cavendishes, Grosvenors, Harcourts, and Russells who walk on
the face of the earth. It is a goodly company. Well might Thackeray
exclaim, "I'm not a Whig; but oh, how I should like to be one!"
Lord Beaconsfield described in "Coningsby" how the Radical
manufacturer, sending his boy to Eton, charged him to form no
intimacies with his father's hereditary foes. This may have been a
flight of fancy; but certainly, when a lad was going to Oxford or
Cambridge, his parents and family friends would warn him against
entering into friendships with the other side. The University Clubs
which he joined and the votes which he gave at the Union were watched
with anxious care. He was early initiated into the political society
to which his father belonged. Extraneous intimacies were regarded
with the most suspicious anxiety. Mothers did all they knew to make
their darlings acquainted with daughters of families whose political
faith was pure, and I have myself learned, by not remote tradition,
the indignant horror which pervaded a great Whig family when the
heir-presumptive to its honours married the daughter of a Tory Lord
Chamberlain. "That girl will ruin the politics of the family and undo
the work of two hundred years" was the prophecy; and I have seen it
fulfilled.
L
CULTURE
One of the social changes which most impresses me is the decay of
intellectual cultivation. This may sound paradoxical in an age which
habitually talks so much about Education and Culture; but I am
persuaded that it is true. Dilettantism is universal, and a smattering
of erudition, infinitely more offensive than honest and manly
ignorance, has usurped the place which was formerly occupied by genuine
and liberal learning. My own view of the subject is probably tinged by
the fact that I was born a Whig and brought up in a Whiggish society;
for the Whigs were rather specially the allies of learning, and made it
a point of honour to know, though never to parade, the best that has
been thought and written. Very likely they had no monopoly of culture,
and the Tories were just as well-informed. But a man "belongs to his
belongings," and one can only describe what one has seen; and here the
contrast between Past and Present is palpable enough. I am not now
thinking of professed scholars and students, such as Lord Stanhope and
Sir Charles Bunbury, or of professed blue-stockings, such as Barbarina
Lady Dacre and Georgiana Lady Chatterton; but of ordinary men and women
of good family and good position, who had received the usual education
of their class and had profited by it.
Mr. Gladstone used to say that, in his schooldays at Eton, it was
possible to learn much or to learn nothing, but it was not possible to
learn superficially. And one saw the same in afterlife. What people
professed to know they knew. The affectation of culture was despised;
and ignorance, where it existed, was honestly confessed. For example,
every one knew Italian, but no one pretended to know German. I remember
men who had never been to a University but had passed straight from
a Public School to a Cavalry Regiment or the House of Commons, and
who yet could quote Horace as easily as the present generation quotes
Kipling. These people inherited the traditions of Mrs. Montagu,
who "vindicated the genius of Shakespeare against the calumnies of
Voltaire," and they knew the greatest poet of all time with an absolute
ease and familiarity. They did not trouble themselves about various
readings and corrupt texts and difficult passages. They had nothing in
common with that true father of all Shakespearean criticism, Mr. Curdle
in "Nicholas Nickleby," who had written a treatise on the question
whether Juliet's nurse's husband was really "a merry man" or whether
it was merely his widow's affectionate partiality that induced her so
to report him. But they knew the whole mass of the plays with a wide
and generous intimacy; their speech was saturated with the immortal
diction, and Hamlet's speculations were their nearest approach to
metaphysics.
Broadly speaking, all educated people knew the English poets down to
the end of the eighteenth century. Byron and Moore were enjoyed with
a sort of furtive and fearful pleasure; and Wordsworth was tolerated.
Every one knew Scott's novels by heart, and had his or her favourite
heroine and hero.
Then, again, all educated people knew history in a broad and
comprehensive way. They did not concern themselves about ethnological
theories, influences of race and climate and geography, streams of
tendency, and the operation of unseen laws; but they knew all about the
great people and the great events of time. They were conversant with
all that was concrete and ascertainable; and they took sides as eagerly
and as definitely in the strifes of Yorkist and Lancastrian, Protestant
and Papist, Roundhead and Cavalier, as in the controversies over the
Reform Bill or the Repeal of the Corn Laws.
Then, again, all educated people knew the laws of architecture and of
painting; and, though it must be confessed that in these respects their
views were not very original, still they were founded on first-hand
knowledge of famous models, and, though conventional, were never
ignorant.
But it will be said that all this represents no very overwhelming mass
of culture, and that, if these were all the accomplishments which the
last generation had to boast of, their successors have no reason to
dread comparison.
Well, I expressly said that I was not describing learned or even
exceptionally well-read people, but merely the general level of
educated society; and that level is, I am persuaded, infinitely lower
than it was in former generations. Of course there are instances to the
contrary which perplex and disturb the public judgment, and give rise
to the delusion that this is a learned age. Thus we have in society and
politics such scholars as Lord Milner and Mr. Asquith and Mr. Herbert
Paul; but then there have always been some scholars in public life, so
there is nothing remarkable in the persistence of the type; whereas,
on the other hand, the system of smattering and top-dressing which
pervades Universities and Public Schools produces an ever-increasing
crop of gentlemen who, like Mr. Riley in "The Mill on the Floss," have
brought away with them from Oxford or Cambridge a general sense of
knowing Latin, though their comprehension of any particular Latin is
not ready.
It is, I believe, generally admitted that we speak French less fluently
and less idiomatically than our fathers. The "barbarous neglect" of
Italian, which used to rouse Mr. Gladstone's indignation, is now
complete; and an even superstitious respect for the German language is
accompanied by a curious ignorance of German literature. I remember an
excellent picture in _Punch_ which depicted that ideal representative
of skin-deep culture--the Rev. Robert Elsmere--on his knees before
the sceptical squire, saying, "Pray, pray, don't mention the name of
another German writer, or I shall have to resign my living."
Then, again, as regards women; of whom, quite as much as of men, I was
thinking when I described the culture of bygone society. Here and there
we see startling instances of erudition which throw a reflected and
undeserved glory upon the undistinguished average. Thus we have seen a
lady Senior Wrangler and a lady Senior Classic, and I myself have the
honour of knowing a sweet girl-graduate with golden hair, who got two
Firsts at Oxford.
The face of the earth is covered with Girls' High Schools, and Women's
Colleges standing where they ought not. I am told, but do not know,
that girl-undergraduates are permitted to witness physiological
experiments in the torture-dens of science; and a complete emancipation
in the matter of reading has introduced women to regions of thought and
feeling which in old days were the peculiar domain of men. The results
are not far to seek.
One lady boldly takes the field with an assault on Christianity, and
her apparatus of belated criticism and second-hand learning sets all
society agape. Another fills a novel with morbid pathology, slays
the villain by heart-disease, or makes the heroine interesting with
phthisis; and people, forgetting Mr. Casaubon and Clifford Gray,
exclaim, "How marvellous! This is, indeed, original research." A third,
a fourth, and a fifth devote themselves to the task of readjusting
the relation of the sexes, and fill their passionate volumes with
seduction and lubricity. And here, again, just because our mothers did
not traffic in these wares, the undiscerning public thinks that it has
discovered a new vein of real though unsavoury learning, and ladies
say, "It is not exactly a pleasant book, but one cannot help admiring
the power."
Now I submit that these abnormalities are no substitute for decent
and reasonable culture. Pedantry is not learning; and a vast deal of
specialism, "mugged-up," as boys say, at the British Museum and the
London Library, may co-exist with a profound ignorance of all that is
really worth knowing. It sounds very intellectual to theorize about the
authorship of the Fourth Gospel, and to scoff at St. John's "senile
iterations and contorted metaphysics"; but, when a clergyman read
St. Paul's eulogy on Charity instead of the address at the end of a
wedding, one of his hearers said, "How very appropriate that was! Where
did you get it from?"
We can all patter about the traces of Bacon's influence in "The Merry
Wives of Windsor," and ransack our family histories for the original
of "Mr. W. H." But, when "Cymbeline" was put on the stage, society
was startled to find that the title-rôle was not a woman's. A year or
two ago some excellent scenes from Jane Austen's novels were given
in a Belgravian drawing-room, and a lady of the highest notoriety,
enthusiastically praising the performance, enquired who was the author
of the dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood, and whether he had
written anything else.
I have known in these later years a judge who had never seen the view
from Richmond Hill; a publicist who had never heard of Lord Althorp;
and an authoress who did not know the name of Izaak Walton. But
probably the most typical illustration of modern culture was the reply
of a lady who had been enthusing over the Wagnerian Cycle, and, when
I asked her to tell me quite honestly, as between old friends, if she
really enjoyed it, replied, "Oh yes! I think one likes Wagner--_doesn't
one_?"
LI
RELIGION
There once was an Evangelical lady who had a Latitudinarian daughter
and a Ritualistic son. On Sunday morning, when they were forsaking the
family pew and setting out for their respective places of objectionable
worship, these graceless young people used to join hands and exclaim,
"Look at us, dear mamma! Do we not exemplify what you are so fond of
saying, 'Infidelity and superstition, those kindred evils, go hand in
hand'?"
The combination thus flippantly stated is a conspicuous sign of the
present times. The decay of religion and the increase of superstition
are among the most noteworthy of the social changes which I have seen.
When I speak of the decay of religion, of course I must be understood
to refer only to external observances. As to interior convictions, I
have neither the will nor the power to investigate them. I deal only
with the habits of religious practice, and in this respect the contrast
between Then and Now is marked indeed.
In the first place, grace was then said before and after dinner. I do
not know that the ceremony was very edifying, but it was traditional
and respectable. Bishop Wilberforce, in his diary, tells of a greedy
clergyman who, when asked to say grace at a dinner-party, used to
vary the form according to the character of the wine-glasses which he
saw before him on the table. If they were champagne-glasses, he used
to begin the benediction with "Bountiful Jehovah"; but, if they were
only claret-glasses, he said, "We are not worthy of the least of Thy
mercies."
Charles Kingsley, who generally drew his social portraits from actual
life, described the impressive eloquence of the Rev. Mr. O'Blareaway,
who inaugurated an exceptionally good dinner by praying "that the daily
bread of our less-favoured brethren might be mercifully vouchsafed to
them."
There was a well-remembered squire in Hertfordshire whose love of his
dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic traditions. He always
had his glass of sherry poured out before he sat down to dinner, so
that he might get it without a moment's delay. One night, in his
generous eagerness, he upset the glass just as he dropped into his
seat at the end of grace, and the formula ran on to an unexpected
conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to receive the Lord make us
truly thankful--D---- n!"
But, if the incongruities which attended grace before dinner were
disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace
after dinner always happened at the moment of loudest and most general
conversation. For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as if
their lives depended on it--"one feeding like forty." After a good deal
of sherry, the champagne had made its tardy appearance, had performed
its welcome rounds, and had in turn been succeeded by port and
home-brewed beer. Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh,
and every one was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps the venue
was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of such
voices as these: "Were you out with the squire to-day?" "Any sport?"
"Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I hope?"
"Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is a
vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A
man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!"
"What's the matter?" "_For what we have received_," &c.
Or perhaps we are dining in London in the height of the season.
Fox-hunting is not the theme, but the conversation is loud, animated,
and discursive. A lyrical echo from the summer of 1866 is borne back
upon my memory--
_Agreeable Rattle._
This news from abroad is alarming;
You've seen the _Pall Mall_ of to-day!
Oh! Ilma di Murska was charming
To-night in the _Flauto_, they say.
Not a ghost of a chance for the Tories,
In spite of Adullam and Lowe;
By the bye, have you heard the queer stories
Of Overend, Gurney and Co.?
_Lively Young Lady._ Do you know you've been talking at the top of your
voice all the time grace was going on?
_Agreeable Rattle._ Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host mumbles
so, I never can make out what he's saying.
_Lively Young Lady._ I can't imagine why people don't have grace after
dessert. I know I'm much more thankful for strawberry ice than for
saddle of mutton.
And so on and so forth. On the whole, I am not sure that the abolition
of grace is a sign of moral degeneracy, but I note it as a social
change which I have seen.
Another such change is the disuse of Family Players. In the days of
my youth, morning prayers at least formed part of the ritual of every
well-ordered household. The scene recurs vividly to the mental eye--the
dining-room arranged for breakfast, and the master of the house in
top-boots and breeches with the family Bible in close proximity to the
urn on the table. Mamma very often breakfasted upstairs; but the sons
and daughters of the house, perhaps with their toilettes not quite
complete, came in with a rush just as the proceedings began, and a
long row of maid-servants, headed by the housekeeper and supported by
the footmen, were ranged with military precision against the opposite
wall. In families of a more pronouncedly religious tone, evening
prayers were frequently superadded; and at ten o'clock the assembled
guests were aroused from "Squails" or "Consequences" by the entrance
of the butler with "Thornton's Family Prayers" on a silver salver. In
one very Evangelical house which I knew in my youth, printed prayers
were superseded by extempore devotions, and, as the experiment seemed
successful, the servants were invited to make their contributions in
their own words. As long as only the butler and the housekeeper voiced
the aspirations of their fellows, all was well; but, in an evil moment,
a recalcitrant kitchenmaid uttered an unlooked-for petition for her
master and mistress--"And we pray for Sir Thomas and her Ladyship. Oh!
may they have now hearts given them." And the bare suggestion that
there was room for such an improvement caused a prompt return to the
lively oracles of Henry Thornton.
I note the disappearance of the domestic liturgy; and here again, as in
the matter of grace, I submit that, unless the rite can be decently,
reasonably, and reverently performed, it is more honoured in the breach
than in the observance.