thus: “’Twas merry in the hall, when the beards wagged all, We shall
never see the like again, again!--We shall never see the like again!”
Whether there was anything particularly hilarious in the wagging of
beards we may not feel able to determine, but there is unquestionably
a vague sense of something festive and social conveyed in the quaint
lines. We feel, without knowing why, that it was, it _must_ have
been, “merry in the hall,” at the distant period alluded to,--while
at the present time we are daily and hourly made painfully aware
that whether it be in hall, drawing-room or extensive “reception
gallery,” the merriment formerly so well sung and spoken of exists
no longer. The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls--no!--I mean the
Beards that once wagged in the Hall, wag no more. Honest laughter has
given place to the nanny-goat sniggering bleat now common to polite
society, and understood to be the elegantly trained and “cultured”
expression of mirth. The warm hand-shake has, in a very great measure,
degenerated into the timorous offer of two or three clammy fingers
extended dubiously, as with a fear of microbes. And Hospitality,
large-hearted, smiling, gracious Hospitality, is dead and wrapped in
its grave-clothes, waiting in stiff corpse-like state for its final
burial. Public dinners, public functions of all kinds,--in England at
any rate,--are merely so many funeral feasts in memory of the great
defunct virtue. Its spirit has fled,--and there is no calling it
back again. The art of entertaining is lost,--together with the art
of conversation. And when our so-called “friends” are “at home,” we
are often more anxious to find reasons for declining rather than for
accepting their invitations, simply because we know that there is no
real “at home” in it, but merely an “out-of-home” arrangement, in which
a mixed crowd of people are asked to stand and swelter in an uneasy
crush on staircases and in drawing-rooms, pretending to listen to music
which they can scarcely hear, and scrambling for tea which is generally
too badly made to drink. Indeed, it may be doubted whether, of all
the various ludicrous social observances in which our progressive
day takes part, there is anything quite so sublimely idiotic as a
smart “At Home” in London during the height of the season. Nothing
certainly presents men and women in such a singularly unintelligent
aspect. Their faces all wear more or less the same expression of forced
amiability,--the same civil grin distorts their poor mouths--the same
wondering and weary stare afflicts their tired straining eyeballs--and
the same automatic arm-movement and hand-jerk works every unit, as
each approaches the hostess in the conventional manner enjoined by the
usages of that “cultured” hypocrisy which covers a multitude of lies.
Sheep, herding in a field and cropping the herbage in the comfortable
unconsciousness that they are eating merely to be eaten, are often
stated to be the silliest of animals,--but whether they are sillier
than the human beings who consent to be squashed together in stuffy
rooms where they can scarcely move, under the sham impression that they
are “at home” with a friend, is a matter open to question. Of course
to some minds it may be, and no doubt is, extremely edifying to learn
by the society papers that Mrs. So-and-So, or Lord and Lady Thingummy
will “entertain a great deal this season.” People who have no idea
what this kind of “entertaining” means, may have glittering visions
thereof. They may picture to themselves scenes of brilliancy where “a
thousand hearts beat happily, and when, Music arose with its voluptuous
swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went
merry as a marriage-bell!” Only these things do not happen. Anything
but love is “looked” from soft eyes and hard eyes equally;--derision,
contempt, indifference, dejection, malice, and (so far as champagne,
ices and general messy feeding are concerned) greed, light up these
“windows of the soul” from time to time during the progress of such
festivities; but love, never! The women are far too busy finding
standing-room wherein to show themselves and their newest frocks off
to advantage, to waste any moment in mere sentiment, and it is a
Christianly beautiful sight to see how the dear things who wear the
dressmaker’s latest “creations” elbow and push and hustle and tread on
the toes of their sisters who are less highly favoured than themselves
in the matter of mere clothes. As for the men,--if they have, by
dint of hard exertion, managed to get in at the “crush,” and near
enough to the hostess to bow and touch her hand, their sole attention
henceforward becomes concentrated on the business of getting out again
as rapidly as possible. For let it be said to the praise, honour and
glory of the sterner sex, that taken in the rough majority, they detest
the fashionable “At Home,” with vigorous and honest intensity,--and
unless they are of that degenerate class who like to be seen hanging
round some notoriously press-puffed “professional beauty,” or some
equally notoriously known leader of the Smart Set, they are seldom
seen at such gatherings. They feel themselves to be incongruous and
out of place,--and so they are. “At Homes” are curious sort of social
poultry-yards, where the hens have it all their own way, and do most
distinctly crow.
But if “At Homes” are bad enough, the smart, the very smart
dinner-party is perhaps a little worse in its entire lack of the true
hospitality which, united to grace and tact and ready conversation,
should make every guest feel that his or her presence is valuable
and welcome. A small private dinner, at which the company are some
six or eight persons at most, is sometimes (though not by any means
always) quite a pleasant affair, but a “big” dinner in the “big” sense
of the word, is generally the most painful and dismal of functions,
except to those for whom silent gorging and after repletion are the
essence of all mental and physical joy. I remember--and of a truth
it would be impossible to forget--one of these dinners which took
place one season in a very “swagger” house--the house of a member of
that old British nobility whose ancestors and titles always excite a
gentle flow of saliva in the mouths of snobs. The tables--there were
two,--were, to use the formal phrase, “laid for forty covers”--that
is to say that each table accommodated twenty guests. The loveliest
flowers, the most priceless silver, the daintiest glass, adorned
the festive boards,--everything that taste could suggest or wealth
supply, had its share in the general effect of design and colour,--the
host was at the head of one table,--the hostess at the other--and
between-whiles a fine string band discoursed the sweetest music. But
with it all there was no real hospitality. We might as well have been
seated at some extra-luxurious table-d’hôte in one of the “Kur” houses
of Austria or Germany, paying so much per day for our entertainment.
Any touch of warm and kindly feeling was altogether lacking; and to
make matters worse, a heavy demon brooded over the brave outward show
of the feast,--a demon with sodden grey wings that refused to rise
and soar,--the demon of a hopeless, irremediable Stupidity! Out and
alas!--here was the core of the mischief! For sad as it is to lack
Heart in the entertaining of our friends, it doubles the calamity to
lack Brain as well! Our host was stupid;--dull to a degree unimaginable
by those who do not know what some lordly British aristocrats can be at
their own tables,--our hostess, a beautiful woman, was equally stupid,
being entirely engrossed in herself and her own bodily charms, to the
utter oblivion of the ease and well-being of her guests. What a meal
it was! How interminably it dragged its slow length along! What small
hydraulic bursts of meaningless talk spurted out between the entrées
and the game!--talk to be either checked by waiters proffering more
food, or drowned in the musical growling of the band! I believe one
man hazarded a joke,--but it was not heard,--and I know that a witty
old Irish peer told an anecdote which was promptly “quashed” by a dish
of asparagus being thrust before him, just as he was, in the richest
brogue, arriving at the “point.” But as nobody listened to him, it
did not matter. Nobody does listen to anybody or anything nowadays at
social functions. Everybody talks with insane, babbling eagerness,
apparently indifferent as to whether they are heard or not. Any amount
of people ask questions and never think of waiting for the answers.
Should any matters, small or great, require explanation, scarce a
soul has the patience or courtesy to attend to such explanation or to
follow it with any lucidity or comprehension. It is all hurry-skurry,
helter-skelter, and bad, shockingly bad, manners.
I am given to understand that Americans, and Americans alone, retain
and cherish the old-fashioned grace of Hospitality, which is so rapidly
becoming extinct in Great Britain. I would fain believe this, but of
myself I do not know. I have had no experience of social America,
save such as has been freely and cordially taught me by Americans
in London. Some of these have indeed proved that they possess the
art of entertaining friends with real friendly delight in the grace
and charm and mutual help of social intercourse,--others again, by
an inordinate display of wealth, and a feverish yearning for the
Paragraph-Man (or Woman), have plainly shown that Hospitality is,
with them, a far less concern than Notoriety. However this may be,
no sane person will allow that it is “hospitality” to ask a number of
friends into your house and there keep them all standing because you
have managed that there shall be no room to sit down, while strong,
half-cold tea and stale confectionery are hastily dispensed among them.
It is not “hospitality” to ask people to dinner, and never speak a
word to them all the evening, because you, if a man, are engaged upon
your own little “business affair,” or, if a woman, are anxious not
to lose hold of your special male flatterer. If friends are invited,
they should surely be welcomed in the manner friendly, and made to
feel at home by the personal attention of both host and hostess. It
is not “hospitality” to turn them loose in bewildered droves through
grounds or gardens, to listen to a band which they have no doubt heard
many times before,--or to pack them all into a stuffy room to be
“entertained” by a professional musician whom they could hear to much
more comfortable and independent advantage by paying for stalls at the
legitimate concert hall. What do we really mean by Hospitality? Surely
we mean friendship, kindness, personal interest, and warm-hearted
openness of look and conduct,--and all of these are deplorably missing
from the “smart” functions of up-to-date society in London, whatever
the state of things may be concerning this antique virtue in New York
and Boston. It would appear that the chief ingredients of Hospitality
are manners,--for as Emerson says: “Manners are the _happy way_ of
doing things.” This “happy way” is becoming very rare. Society,
particularly the “Upper Ten” society,--is becoming, quite noticeably,
very rude. Some of the so-called “smartest” women are notoriously
very vulgar. Honesty, simplicity, sympathy, and delicacy of feeling
are, or seem to be, as much out of date as the dainty poems of Robert
Herrick, and the love-sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney. Time goes on, say
the iconoclasts--and we must go with it--we must, if our hurrying
civilization requires it, pass friends by with a cool nod, mock at
the vices of the young, and sneer at the failings of the old;--we
are all too busy to be courteous,--too much in a hurry grabbing gold
to be kind, and much too occupied with ourselves to be thoughtful of
others. So let us bury Hospitality decently once and for all, and
talk no more about it! It was a grand old Virtue!--let us inter it
with honour,--and cease to hold our funeral feasts and entertainments
in its name. For, being dead, ’tis dead and done with,--and amid all
our twentieth-century shams, let us at least drop, for shame, our
base imitations of the great-souled splendid Grace that was meant to
link our lives more sweetly together, to engender love, and to make
home more home-like. For nowadays, few of us are simple and truthful
enough in our lines of conduct even to understand Hospitality in
its real meaning. “Between simple and noble persons,”--says a great
philosopher--“there is always a quick intelligence; they recognize
at sight; and meet on a better ground than the talents and skills
they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness.”
Sincerity and uprightness are the very fibre and life-blood of true
Hospitality. But the chief canon of modern society is hypocrisy, to
begin with. Insincerity and lack of principle naturally follow, with
their usual accompaniment, moral cowardice,--and so men and women sneak
and crawl, and flatter base persons for what they can get, and reject
all chances of faithful friendship for mere ephemeral show. Under such
conditions as these, what can good old Hospitality do but draw its
last breath with a gentle sigh of expiring sorrow for the mistaken
world which prefers a lie to a truth, and still to this day crucifies
all its loving would-be redeemers on miserable Calvarys of desolation!
No happiness does it gain thereby, but only increased bitterness and
weariness,--and the fact that all our social customs have greatly
changed since the old time when households were wisely ruled and very
simply ordered, is no advantage to the general social community. We
may, if we choose,--(and we very often do so choose,) fly from one
desire to another and thence to satiety, and back again from satiety to
desire, but we shall never, in such pursuit, find the peace engendered
by simplicity of life, or the love and lasting joy inspired by that
honourable confidence in one another’s best and noblest attributes,
which should frankly and openly set the seal on friendship, and make
Hospitality a glad duty as well as a delight. “Old-fashioned” as it may
be, no new fashion can ever replace it.
THE VULGARITY OF WEALTH
There are certain periods in the lives of nations when the balance of
things in general would seem to be faultily adjusted; when one side
of the scale almost breaks and falls to the ground through excess of
weight, and the other tips crazily upward, well-nigh to overturning,
through an equally undue excess of lightness. The inequality can be
traced with mathematical precision as occurring at regular intervals
throughout the world’s history. It is as though the clock of human
affairs had been set correctly for a certain limited time only, and
was then foredoomed to fall out of gear in such a manner as to need
cleansing and winding up afresh. A good many people, including some of
the wisest of our few wise men, have openly expressed the opinion that
we, of the proudest and greatest Empire at present under the sun, have
almost reached that particularly fatal figure on the Eternal Dial,
When all the wheels run down,
and when the scales of Justice are becoming so dangerously worn
out and uneven, as to suggest an incapacity for holding social and
political weights and measures much longer. One of the symptoms of this
overstrained condition of our latter-day civilization is precisely
the same danger-signal which has in all ages accompanied national
disaster--a pernicious influence, like that of the planet “Algol,”
which, when in the ascendant, is said to betoken mischief and ruin
to all who see it rise on the horizon. Our evil Star, the evil star
of all Empires, has long ago soared above the eastern edge; fully
declared, it floods our heaven with such lurid brilliancy that we
can scarce perceive any other luminary. And its name is Mammon. The
present era in which we are permitted by Divine law to run through
our brief existence and make our mark or miss it, as we choose, is
principally distinguished by an insane worship of Wealth. Wealth in
excess--wealth in chunks--wealth in great awkward, unbecoming dabs,
is plastered, as it were, by the merest hap-hazard toss of fortune’s
dice, on the backs of uncultured and illiterate persons, who, bowed
down like asses beneath the golden burden, are asininely ignorant
of its highest uses. The making of millions would seem to be like a
malignant fever, which must run its course, ending in either the death
or the mental and physical wreck of the patient. He who has much money
seems always to find it insufficient, and straightway proceeds to make
more; while he who has not only much, but superabundance of the dross,
scatters it in every direction broadcast, wherever it can best serve
as an aid to his own self-advertisement, vanity and ostentation. Once
upon a time wealth could not purchase an entrance into society; now
it is the only pass-key. Men of high repute for learning, bravery,
and distinctive merit, are “shunted” as it were off the line to make
way for the motor-car traffic of plutocrats, who, by dint of “push,”
effrontery, and brazen impudence, manage to shout their income figures
persistently in the ears of those whose high privilege it is to
“give the lead” in social affairs. And to the shame of such exalted
individuals be it said, that they listen, with ears stretched wide,
to the yell of the huckster in stocks and shares; and setting aside
every thought for the future of Great Britain and the highest honour
of her sons and daughters, they sell their good word, their influence,
and their favour easily, for so much cash down. Men and women who have
the privilege of personally knowing, and frequently associating with
the Royal Family, are known to accept payment for bringing such and
such otherwise obscure persons under the immediate notice of the King;
and it is a most unfortunate and regrettable fact that throughout the
realm the word goes that no such obscure persons ever dine with their
Sovereign without having paid the “middle man” for the privilege. It
would be an easy matter for the present writer to name at least a
dozen well-known society women, assuming to be “loyal,” who make a
very good thing out of their “loyalty” by accepting huge payments in
exchange for their recommendation or introduction to Royal personages,
and who add considerably to their incomes by such means, bringing
the names of the King and Queen down to their own sordid level of
bargain and sale, with a reckless disregard of the damaging results
of such contemptible conduct. These are some of the very ladies who
are most frequently favoured by notice at Court, and who occupy the
position of being in the “swagger set.” Whereas, the men and women
who are faithful, who hold the honour of their King dearer than their
own lives, who refuse to truckle to the spirit of money-worship, and
who presume to denounce the sickening hypocrisy of modern society
life and its shameless prostitution of high ideals, are “hounded” by
those portions of the Press which are governed by Jew syndicates, and
slandered by every dirty cad that makes his cheap living by putting his
hand secretly in his neighbour’s pocket. Never, in all the ages of the
world, have truth-tellers been welcome; from Socrates to Christ the
same persecution has followed every human being who has had enough of
God in him or her to denounce shams; and the Christian religion itself
is founded on the crucifixion of Honesty by the priests of Hypocrisy.
It is a lesson that can hardly be too deeply dwelt upon at the present
notable time of day, which seems, for many students of national
affairs, the crucial point of a coming complete change in British
history.
On every side, look where we may, we see an almost brutal dominance
of wealth. We see the Yankee Trade-octopus, stretching out greedy
tentacles in every direction, striving to grasp British shipping,
British industries, and British interests everywhere, in that devouring
and deadly grip, which, if permitted to hold, would mean mischief and
loss of prestige to our country, though, no doubt, it might create
rejoicing in America. For America is by no means so fond of us as
certain interested parties would have us suppose. She would dearly like
to “patronise” us, but she does not love us, though at present she
hides her hand. In a case of struggle, she would not support the “old
country” for mere sentimental love of it. She would naturally serve
only her own best interests. As a nation of bombast and swagger, she
is a kind of “raree-show” in the world’s progress; but her strength
is chiefly centred in dollars, and her influence on the social world
teaches that “dollars are the only wear.” English society has been
sadly vulgarized by this American taint. Nevertheless, it is, as it
has always been, a fatal mistake for any nation to rely on the extent
of its cash power alone. Without the real spirit which makes for
greatness--without truth, without honour, without sincere patriotism
and regard for the real well-being and honest government of the
majority--any national system, whether monarchical or republican, must
inevitably decay and perish from the face of the earth.
Unblemished honesty is the best policy for statesmen; but that such has
been their rule of conduct in these latter years may perhaps be open to
question. The late Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, whose broad-minded, impartial
views of life, commend themselves forcibly to every literary student,
writing of Cecil Rhodes, whose funeral service was celebrated with such
almost royal pomp in St. Paul’s Cathedral, gives us a sketch which
should make the most casual “man in the street” pause and reflect as to
whether those solemn public rites and tributary honours from both the
King and Queen were not somewhat out of place on such an occasion.
“What Mr. Rhodes did,” wrote Mr. Lecky, in his strong, trenchant
way, “has been very clearly established. When holding the highly
confidential position of Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being
at the same time a Privy Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a
conspiracy for the overthrow of the Government of a neighbouring
and friendly State. In order to carry out this design, he deceived
the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister he was. He deceived his
own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected under false pretences
a force which was intended to co-operate with an insurrection in
Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company, he made use
of that position without the knowledge of his colleagues to further
the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in smuggling great
quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were intended to be used
in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in the Press were
representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous indignation
against an oppressive Government, he, with another millionaire, was
secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that town in stimulating
and subsidizing the rising. He was also directly connected with the
shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the concoction of a letter
from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly representing English women
and children at Johannesburg as in danger of being shot down by the
Boers, and urging the British to come at once and save them. It was a
letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many weeks before the
raid, and before any disturbance had arisen; and kept in reserve to
be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of inducing the
young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of subsequently
justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also for the
purpose of being published in the English Press at the same time as
the first news of the raid in order to work upon English opinion, and
persuade the English people that the raid, though technically wrong was
morally justifiable.... No reasonable judge can question that in these
transactions he was more blamable than those who were actually punished
by the law for taking part in the raid, far more blamable than those
young officers who were, in truth, the most severely punished and who
had been induced to take part in it under false representation of the
wishes of the Government at home, and a grossly false representation
of the state of things at Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and
his undoubted complicity with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign
the post of Prime Minister, and his directorship of the Chartered
Company.... But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who
volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions
I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made ‘a gigantic mistake,’
a mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing
affecting his personal honour?”