a Cardinal, and not less so that he should meet in her drawing-room the
inexpressibly magnificent Lothair. That is all in the course of nature;
but what has always puzzled me is the ease with which a youth of no
particular pretensions, arriving in London from Oxford or Cambridge or
from a country home, swims into society, and finds himself welcomed by
people whose names he barely knows. I suppose that in this, as in more
important matters, the helpers of the social fledgling are good-natured
women. The fledgling probably starts by being related to one or two, and
acquainted with three or four more; and each of them says to a friend
who entertains--"My cousin, Freddy Du Cane, is a very nice fellow, and
waltzes capitally. Do send him a card for your dance"--or "Tommy Tucker
is a neighbour of ours in the country. If ever you want an odd man to
fill up a place at dinner, I think you will find him useful." Then there
was in those days, and perhaps there is still, a mysterious race of
men--Hierophants of Society--who had great powers of helping or
hindering the social beginner. They were bachelors, not very young; who
had seen active service as dancers and diners for ten or twenty seasons;
and who kept lists of eligible youths which they were perpetually
renewing at White's or the Marlborough. To one of these the intending
hostess would turn, saying, "Dear Mr. Golightly, _do_ give me your
list;" and, if Freddy Du Cane had contrived to ingratiate himself with
Mr. Golightly, invitations to balls and dances, of every size and sort,
would soon begin to flutter down on him like snow-flakes. It mattered
nothing that he had never seen his host or hostess, nor they him. Corney
Grain expressed the situation in his own inimitable verse:
"Old Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball--
And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all.
Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed,
And the guest said 'Good-night' to the butler instead."
But light come, light go. Ball-going is elysian when one is very young
and cheerful and active, but it is a pleasure which, for nine men out of
ten, soon palls. Dinner-society, as Cardinal Grandison knew, is a more
serious affair, and admission to it is not so lightly attained.
When Sydney Smith returned from a visit to Paris, he wrote, in the
fulness of his heart:
"I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily forget a
_matelote_ at the 'Rochers de Cancale,' or an almond tart at Montreuil,
or a _poulet à la Tartare_ at Grignon's. These are impressions which no
changes in future life can obliterate."
I am tempted to pursue the line of thought thus invitingly opened, but I
forbear; for it really has no special connexion with the retrospective
vein. I am now describing the years 1876-1880, and dinners then were
pretty much what they are now. The new age of dining had begun. Those
frightful hecatombs of sheep and oxen which Francatelli decreed had made
way for more ethereal fare. The age-long tyranny of "The Joint" was
already undermined. I have indeed been one of a party of forty in the
dog-days, where a belated haunch of venison cried aloud for decent
burial; but such outrages were even then becoming rare. The champagne of
which a poet had beautifully said:
"How sad and bad and mad it was,
And Oh! how it was sweet!"
had been banished in favour of the barely alcoholic liquor which foams
in modern glasses. And, thanks to the influence of King Edward VII,
after-dinner drinking had been exorcised by cigarettes. The portentous
piles of clumsy silver which had overshadowed our fathers'
tables--effigies of Peace and Plenty, Racing Cups and Prizes for fat
cattle--had been banished to the plate-closets; bright china and
brighter flowers reigned in their stead. In short, a dinner thirty-five
years ago was very like a dinner to-day. It did not take me long to find
that (with Cardinal Grandison) "I liked dinner-society very much," and
that "you see the world there and hear things which you do not hear
otherwise."
I have already described the methods by which ball-society was, and
perhaps is, recruited. An incident which befell me in my second season
threw a similar light on the more obscure question of dinner-society.
One day I received a large card which intimated that Mr. and Mrs.
Goldmore requested the honour of my company at dinner. I was a little
surprised, because though I had been to balls at the Goldmores' house
and had made my bow at the top of the stairs, I did not really know
them. They had newly arrived in London, with a great fortune made in
clay pipes and dolls' eyes, and were making their way by entertaining
lavishly. However, it was very kind of them to ask me to dinner, and I
readily accepted. The appointed evening came, and I arrived rather late.
In an immense drawing-room there were some thirty guests assembled, and,
as I looked round, I could not see a single face which I had ever seen
before. Worse than that, it was obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore did
not know me. They heard my name announced, received me quite politely,
and then retired into a window, where their darkling undertones,
enquiring glances, and heads negatively shaken, made it only too clear
that they were asking one another who on earth the last arrival was.
However, their embarrassment and mine was soon relieved by the
announcement of dinner. As there were more male guests than women, there
was no need to give me a partner; so we all swept downstairs in a
promiscuous flood, and soon were making the vital choice between
_bisque_ and _consommé_. Eating my dinner, I revolved my plans, and
decided to make a clean breast of it. So, when we went up into the
drawing-room, I made straight for my hostess. "I feel sure," I said,
"that you and Mr. Goldmore did not expect me to-night." "Oh," was the
gracious reply, "I hope there was nothing in our manner which made you
feel that you were unwelcome." "Nothing," I replied, "could have been
kinder than your manner, but one has a certain social instinct which
tells one when one has made a mistake. And yet what the mistake was I
cannot guess. I am sure it is the right house and the right evening--Do
please explain." "Well," said Mrs. Goldmore, "as you have found out so
much, I think I had better tell you all. _We were not expecting you._ We
have not even now the pleasure of knowing who you are. We were
expecting Dr. Russell, the _Times_ Correspondent, and all these ladies
and gentlemen have been asked to meet him." So it was not my mistake
after all, and I promptly rallied my forces. "The card certainly had my
first name, initials, and address all right, so there was nothing to
make me suspect a mistake. Besides, I should have thought that everyone
who knew the _Times_ Russell knew that his first name was William--he is
always called 'Billy Russell.'" "Well"--and now the truth coyly
emerged--"the fact is that we _don't_ know him. We heard that he was a
pleasant man and fond of dining out, and so we looked him up in the
_Court Guide_, and sent the invitation. I suppose we hit on your address
by mistake for his." I suppose so too; and that this is the method by
which newcomers build up a "Dinner-Society" in London.
One particular form of dinner deserves a special word of commemoration,
because it has gone, never to return. This was the "Fish Dinner" at
Greenwich or Blackwall, or even so far afield as Gravesend. It was to a
certain extent a picnic; without the formality of dressing, and made
pleasant by opportunities of fun and fresh air, in the park or on the
river, before we addressed ourselves to the serious business of the
evening; but that was serious indeed. The "Menu" of a dinner at the Ship
Hotel at Greenwich lies before me as I write. It contains turtle soup,
eleven kinds of fish, two _entrées_, a haunch of venison, poultry, ham,
grouse, leverets, five sweet dishes, and two kinds of ice. Well, those
were great days--we shall not look upon their like again. Let a poet[28]
who knew what he was writing about have the last word on Dinner.
"We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without Cooks.
"He may live without lore--what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope--what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love--what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?"
There is an exquisite truth in this lyrical cry, but it stops short of
the fulness of the subject. It must be remembered that "dining" is not
the only form of eating. Mr. Gladstone, who thought modern luxury rather
disgusting, used to complain that nowadays life in a country house meant
three dinners a day, and, if you reckoned sandwiches and poached eggs at
five o'clock tea, nearly four. Indeed, the only difference that I can
perceive between a modern luncheon and a modern dinner is that at the
former meal you don't have soup or a printed _Menu_. There have always
been some houses where the luncheons were much more famous than the
dinners. Dinner, after all, is something of a ceremony; it requires
forethought, care, and organization. Luncheon is more of a scramble,
and, in the case of a numerous and scattered family, it is the
pleasantest of reunions.
My uncle Lord John Russell (1792-1878) published in 1820 a book of
_Essays and Sketches_, in which he speaks of "women sitting down to a
substantial luncheon at three or four," and observes that men would be
wise if they followed the example. All contemporary evidence points to
luncheon as a female meal, at which men attended, if at all,
clandestinely. If a man habitually sat down to luncheon, and ate it
through, he was regarded as indifferent to the claims of dinner, and,
moreover, was contemned as an idler. No one who had anything to do could
find time for a square meal in the middle of the day. But, as years went
on, the feeling changed. Prince Albert was notoriously fond of luncheon,
and Queen Victoria humoured him. They dined very late, and the luncheon
at the Palace became a very real and fully recognized meal. The example,
communicated from the highest quarters, was soon followed in Society;
and, when I first knew London, luncheon was as firmly established as
dinner. As a rule, it was not an affair of fixed invitation; but a
hostess would say, "You will always find us at luncheon, somewhere about
two"--and one took her at her word.
The luncheon by invitation was a more formal, and rather terrible,
affair. I well remember a house where at two o'clock in June we had to
sit down with curtains drawn, lights ablaze, and rose-coloured shades to
the candles, because the hostess thought, rightly as regarded herself,
less so as regarded her guests, that no one's complexion could stand the
searching trial of midsummer sunshine.
"Sunday Luncheon" was always a thing apart. For some reason, not
altogether clear, perhaps because devotion long sustained makes a strong
demand on the nervous system, men who turned up their noses at luncheon
on weekdays devoured roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sundays, and
went forth, like giants refreshed, for a round of afternoon calls. The
Sunday Luncheon was a recognized centre of social life. Where there was
even a moderate degree of intimacy a guest might drop in and be sure of
mayonnaise, chicken, and welcome. I can recall an occasion of this kind
when I saw social Presence of Mind exemplified, as I thought and think,
on an heroic scale. Luncheon was over. It had not been a particularly
bounteous meal; the guests had been many; the chicken had been eaten to
the drumstick and the cutlets to the bone. Nothing remained but a huge
Trifle, of chromatic and threatening aspect, on which no one had
ventured to embark. Coffee was just coming, when the servant entered
with an anxious expression, and murmured to the hostess that Monsieur de
Petitpois--a newly-arrived attaché--had come, and seemed to expect
luncheon. The hostess grasped the situation in an instant, and issued
her commands with a promptitude and a directness which the Duke of
Wellington could not have surpassed. "Clear everything away, but leave
the Trifle. Then show M. de Petitpois in." Enter De Petitpois.
"Delighted to see you. Quite right. Always at home at Sunday luncheon.
Pray come and sit here and have some Trifle. It is our national Sunday
dish." Poor young De Petitpois, actuated by the same principle which
made the Prodigal desire the husks, filled himself with spongecake,
jam, and whipped cream; and went away looking rather pale. If he kept a
journal, he no doubt noted the English Sunday as one of our most curious
institutions, and "Le Trifle" as its crowning horror.
Supper is a word of very different significances. There is the Ball
Supper, which I have described in a previous chapter. There is the
Supper after the Missionary Meeting in the country, when "The Deputation
from the Parent Society" is entertained with cold beef, boiled eggs, and
cocoa. There is the diurnal Supper, fruitful parent of our national
crudities, eaten by the social class that dines at one; and this Supper
(as was disclosed at a recent inquest) may consist of steak, tomatoes,
and tea.
And yet, again, there is the Theatrical Supper, which, eaten in
congenial company after _Patience_ or _The Whip_, is our nearest
approach to the "Nights and Suppers of the Gods." This kind of supper
has a niche of its own in my retrospects. It was my privilege when first
I came to London to know Lady Burdett-Coutts, famous all over the world
as a philanthropist, and also, in every tone and gesture, a survival
from the days when great station and great manner went together. Lady
Burdett-Coutts was an enthusiastic devotee of the drama; and, when her
Evening Parties were breaking up, she would gently glide round the great
rooms in Stratton Street, and say to a departing guest:
"I hope you need not go just yet. I am expecting Mr. Irving to supper
after the play, and I am asking a few friends to meet him."
As far as I know, I am the only survivor of those delightful feasts.
Dinner and luncheon and supper must, I suppose, be reckoned among the
permanent facts of life; but there is, or was, one meal of which I have
witnessed the unwept disappearance. It had its roots in our historic
past. It clung to its place in our social economy. It lived long and
died hard. It was the Breakfast-Party. When I first lived in London, it
was, like some types of human character, vigorous but unpopular. No one
could really like going out to breakfast; but the people who gave
Breakfast-Parties were worthy and often agreeable people; and there were
few who had the hardihood to say them Nay.
The most famous breakfast-parties of the time were given by Mr.
Gladstone, on every Thursday morning in the Session; when, while we ate
broiled salmon and drank coffee, our host discoursed to an admiring
circle about the colour-sense in Homer, or the polity of the ancient
Hittites. Around the table were gathered Lions and Lionesses of various
breeds and sizes, who, if I remember aright, did not get quite as much
opportunity for roaring as they would have liked; for, when Mr.
Gladstone had started on a congenial theme, it was difficult to get in a
word edgeways. One of these breakfast-parties at 10, Downing Street,
stands out in memory more clearly than the rest, for it very nearly had
a part in that "Making of History" which was then so much in vogue. The
date was April 23, 1885. The party comprised Lady Ripon, Lord Granville,
Dean Church, and Miss Mary Anderson, then in the height of her fame and
beauty. We were stolidly munching and listening, when suddenly we heard
a crash as if heaven and earth had come together; and presently we
learned that there had been an explosion of dynamite at the Admiralty,
about a hundred yards from where we were sitting. The proximity of
nitro-glycerine seemed to operate as a check on conversation, and, as we
rose from the table, I heard Miss Anderson say to Miss Gladstone, "Your
pa seemed quite scared."
Other breakfast-givers of the time were Lord Houghton, Lord Arthur
Russell, Mr. Shaw-Lefevre (afterwards Lord Eversley), and Sir John
Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury); and there were even people so
desperately wedded to this terrible tradition that they formed
themselves into Clubs with no other object than to breakfast, and bound
themselves by solemn pledges to meet one morning in every week, and eat
and argue themselves into dyspepsia. Sydney Smith wrote thus to a
friend: "I have a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten
punctually--muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction. Will
you come?" That inviting picture, though it was drawn before I was born,
exactly describes the breakfast-parties which I remember. One met all
sorts of people, but very few Mary Andersons. Breakfasters were
generally old,--politicians, diplomatists, authors, journalists, men of
science, political economists, and everyone else who was most improving.
No doubt it was a priceless privilege to meet them; yet, as I heard them
prate and prose, I could not help recalling a favourite passage from
Mrs. Sherwood's quaint tale of _Henry Milner_:--
"Mr. Dolben, as usual, gave utterance at breakfast to several of those
pure and wise and refined principles, which sometimes distil as drops of
honey from the lips of pious and intellectual old persons." It was
breakfast that set Mr. Dolben off. We are not told that he distilled his
honey at dinner or supper; so his case must be added to the long list of
deleterious results produced by breakfasting in public.
Conversation must, I think, have been at rather a low ebb when I first
encountered it in London. Men breakfasted in public, as we have just
seen, in order to indulge in it; and I remember a terrible Club where it
raged on two nights of every week, in a large, dark, and draughty room,
while men sat round an indifferent fire, drinking barley-water, and
talking for talking's sake--the most melancholy of occupations. But at
these dismal orgies one never heard anything worth remembering. The
"pious and intellectual old persons" whom Mrs. Sherwood admired had
withdrawn from the scene, if indeed they had ever figured on it. Those
who remained were neither pious nor intellectual, but compact of spite
and greediness, with here and there worse faults. But some brighter
spirits were coming on. To call them by the names which they then bore,
Mr. George Trevelyan and Mr. John Morley were thought very promising,
for social fame in London takes a long time to establish itself. Sir
William Harcourt was capital company in the heavier style; and Lord
Rosebery in the lighter. But Mr. Herbert Paul was known only to the
_Daily News_, and Mr. Augustine Birrell's ray serene had not emerged
from the dim, unfathomed caves of the Chancery Bar.
So far, I have been writing about Conversation with a capital "C,"--an
elaborate and studied art which in old days such men as Sharpe and
Jekyll and Luttrell illustrated, and, in times more modern, Brookfield
and Cockburn and Lowe and Hayward. For the ordinary chit-chat of social
intercourse--chaff and repartee, gossip and fun and frolic--I believe
that London was just as good in 1876 as it had been fifty years before.
We were young and happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with one
another. "It was roses, roses all the way." Our talk was unpremeditated
and unstudied, quick as lightning, springing out of the interest or the
situation of the moment, uttered in an instant and as soon forgotten.
Everyone who has ever made the attempt must realize that to gather up
the fragments of such talk as this is as impossible as to collect
shooting stars or to reconstruct a rainbow.
But, though I cannot say what we talked about in those distant days, I
believe I can indicate with certainty two topics which were never
mentioned. One is Health, and the other is Money. I presume that people
had pretty much the same complaints as now, but no one talked about
them. We had been told of a lady who died in agony because she insisted
on telling the doctor that the pain was in her chest, whereas it really
was in the unmentionable organ of digestion. That martyr to propriety
has no imitator in the present day. Everyone has a disease and a doctor,
and young people of both sexes are ready on the slightest acquaintance
to describe symptoms and compare experiences. "Ice!" exclaimed a pretty
girl at dessert. "Good gracious, no. So bad for indy!" And her
companion, who had not travelled with the times, learned with interest
that "indy" was the pet name for indigestion.
Then, again, as to money. In the "Sacred Circle of the Great
Grandmotherhood," I never heard the slightest reference to income. Not
that the Whigs despised money. They were at least as fond of it as other
people, and, even when it took the shape of slum-rents, its odour was
not displeasing; but it was not a subject for conversation. People did
not chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if they made their own
money in trades or professions, they did not regale us with statistics
of profit and loss. To-day everyone seems to be, if I may use the
favourite colloquialism, "on the make"; and the devotion with which
people worship money pervades their whole conversation, and colours
their whole view of life. "Scions of Aristocracy," to use the good old
phrase of Pennialinus, will produce samples of tea or floor-cloth from
their pockets, and sue quite winningly for custom. A speculative bottle
of extraordinarily cheap peach-brandy will arrive with the compliments
of Lord Tom Noddy, who has just gone into the wine-trade; and Lord
Magnus Charters will tell you that, if you are going to rearrange your
electric light, his firm has got some really artistic fittings which he
can let you have on specially easy terms.
So far I have spoken of Hospitality as if it consisted wholly in eating
and drinking. Not so. In those days Evening Parties, or Receptions, or
Drums, or Tails, for so they were indifferently called, took place on
four or five nights of every week. "Tails" as the name implies, were
little parties tacked on to the end of big dinners, where a few people
looked in, rather cross at not having been invited to dine, or else in a
desperate hurry to get on to a larger party or a ball. The larger
parties were given generally on Saturday evenings; and then, amid a
crushing crowd and a din which recalled the Parrot-House at the Zoo, one
might rub shoulders with all the famous men and women of the time. When
Mr. St. Barbe in _Endymion_ attended a gathering of this kind, he said
to his companion, "I daresay that Ambassador has been blundering all his
life, and yet there is something in that Star and Ribbon. I do not know
how you feel, but I could almost go down on my knees to him.
'Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven,'
Byron wrote; a silly line, he should have written--
'Ye stars which are the poetry of dress.'"
Political "Drums" had a flavour which was all their own. If they were
given in any of the Great Houses of London, where the stateliness and
beauty of the old world still survived, such guests as Lord
Beaconsfield's creations, Mr. Horrocks, M.P., and Trodgitts, the
unsuccessful candidate, would look a little subdued. But in the ordinary
house, with a back and front drawing-room and a buffet in the
dining-room, those good men were quite at home, and the air was thick
with political shop--whether we should loose Pedlington or save
Shuffleborough with a struggle--whether A would get office and how
disgusted B would be if he did.
Here and there a more thrilling note was sounded. At a Liberal party in
the spring of 1881 an ex-Whip of the Liberal party said to a Liberal
lady, as he was giving her a cup of tea: "Have you heard how ill old
Dizzy is?" "Oh, yes!" replied the lady, with a rapturous wink, "I
know--dying!" Such are the amenities of political strife.
A much more agreeable form of hospitality was the Garden-Party. When I
came to live in London, the old-fashioned phrase--a "Breakfast"--so
familiar in memoirs and novels, had almost passed out of use. On the
22nd of June, 1868, Queen Victoria signalized her partial return to
social life by commanding her lieges to a "Breakfast" in the gardens of
Buckingham Palace; and the newspapers made merry over the notion of
Breakfast which began at four and ended at seven. The old title
gradually died out, and by 1876 people had begun to talk about
"Garden-Parties."