I am not so sure how far we ought to be grateful for it, but assuredly
the fact is so, that nothing has so much tended to show the world with
what little wisdom it is governed than the Telegraph. It is not merely
that cabinets are no longer the sole possessors of early intelligence,
though this alone was once a very great privilege; and there is no
over-estimating the power conferred by the exclusive possession of
a piece of important news--a battle won or lost, the outbreak of a
revolution, the overthrow of a throne--even for a few hours before it
became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great
disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that
used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing
Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of
Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard
lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies
to all style, and especially to all the evasive cajoleries of those
dissolving views of events diplomacy loves to revel in. What becomes of
the graceful drapery in which statesmen used to clothe the great facts
of the world, when a simple despatch, “fifteen words, exclusive of
the address,” tells the whole story? and when we have read that “the
insurgents are triumphant everywhere, the king left the capital at four
o’clock, a provisional government was proclaimed this morning,” and
suchlike, what do we care for the sonorous periods in which official
priestcraft chants the downfall of a dynasty?
The great stronghold of statecraft was, however, Speculation--I mean
that half-prophetic view of events which we always conceded to those
who looked over the world from a higher window than ourselves. What
has become of this now? Who so bold as to predict what, while he is yet
speaking, may be contradicted? who is there hardy enough to forecast
what the events of the last half-hour may have falsified, and five
minutes more will serve to publish to the whole world?
It may be amusing to read the comments of the speech or the leading
article, but the “despatch” is the substance: and however clever the
variations, the original melody remains unaltered. Let any one imagine
to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of
all its incidents--how insupportable would the slow procession of events
become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort
of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded
those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat
below the “gangway.” There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic
devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which many
men are their own priests, their lawyers, and their doctors, and where,
certes, each man is his own prophet.
These reflections have been much impressed upon me by a ramble I
took yesterday in company with one of the most agreeable of all our
diplomatists--one of those men who seem to weld into their happy natures
all the qualities which make good companionship, and blend with the
polished manners of a courtier the dash of an Eton boy and the deep
reflectiveness of a man of the world--a man to whom nothing comes wrong,
and whom you would be puzzled to say whether he was more in his element
at a cabinet council, or one of a shooting-party in the Highlands.
“I say, O’Dowd,” cried he, after a pause of some time in our
conversation, “has it never struck you that those tall poles and wires
are destined to be the end of both your trade and mine, and that within
a very few years neither of our occupations will have a representative
left? Take my word for it,” said he, more solemnly, “in less than
ten years from the present date a penny-a-liner will be as rare as
a posthorse, and a post-shay not more a curiosity than a
minister-plenipotentiary.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I am certain of it. People nowadays won’t travel eight miles an hour,
or be satisfied to hear of events ten days after they’ve happened. Life
is too short for all this now, and, as we can’t lengthen our days, we
must shorten our incidents. We are all more or less like that gentleman
Mathews used to tell us of at Boulogne, who said to the waiter, ‘Let me
have some-thing expensive; I am only here for an hour.’ Have you ever
thought seriously on the matter?”
“Never,” said I.
“You ought, then,” said he. “I tell you again, we are all in the same
category with flint locks and wooden ships--we belong to the past. Don’t
you know it? Don’t you feel it?”
“I don’t like to feel it,” said I, peevishly.
“Nonsense!” cried he, laughing. “Self-deception does nothing in the
matter, say what one will. A modern diplomatist is only a ‘smooth-Bore.’
What ‘our own correspondent’ represents, I leave to your own modesty.”
“It will be a bad day for us when the world comes to that knowledge,”
said I, gloomily.
“Of course it will, but there’s no help for it. Old novels go to the
trunkmakers; second-hand uniforms make the splendour of dignity-balls in
the colonies: who is to say that there may not be a limbo for us also?
At all events, I have a scheme for our transition state--a plan I have
long revolved in my mind--and there’s certainly something in it.
“First of all realise it, as the Yankees say, that neither a government
nor a public will want either of us. When the wires have told that
the Grand-Duke Strong-grog-enofif was assassinated last night, or that
Prince Damisseisen has divorced his wife and married a milliner,
Downing Street and Printing-house Square will agree that all the moral
reflections the events inspire can be written just as well in Piccadilly
as from a palace on the Neva, or a den on the Danube. Gladstone will be
the better pleased, and take another farthing off ‘divi-divi,’ or some
other commodity in general use and of universal appreciation. Don’t you
agree to that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” drawled he out, in mimicry of my tone: “are you so
conceited about your paltry craft that you fancy the world cares for the
manner of it, or that there is really any excellence in the cookery?
Not a bit of it, man. We are bores both of us; and what’s worse--far
worse--we are bygones. Can’t you see that when a man buys a canister
of prepared beef-tea, he never asks any one to pour on the boiling
water--he brews his broth for himself? This is what people do with
the telegrams. They don’t want you or me to come in with the kettle:
besides, all tastes are not alike; one man may like his Bombardment of
Charleston weaker; another might prefer his Polish Massacre more highly
flavoured. This is purely a personal matter. How can you suit the
capricious likings of the million, and of the million--for that’s the
worst of it--the million that don’t want you? What a practical rebuke,
besides, to prosy talkers and the whole long-winded race, the sharp,
short tap of the telegraph! Who would listen to a narrative of Federal
finance when he has read ‘Gold at 204--Chase rigged the market’? Who
asks for strategical reasons in presence of ‘Almighty whipping--lost
eighty thousand--Fourth Michigan skedaddled ‘?
“How graphic will description become--how laconic all comment! You will
no more listen to one of the old circumlocutionary conversers than you
would travel by the waggon, or make a voyage in a collier.
“How, I would ask, could the business of life go on in an age active as
ours if all coinage was in copper, and vast transactions in money should
be all conducted in the base metal? Imagine the great Kings of Finance
counting over the debts of whole nations in penny-pieces, and you have
at once a picture of what, until a few years ago, was our intellectual
condition. How nobly Demosthenic our table-talk will be!--how grandly
abrupt and forensic!
“There is nothing, however, over which I rejoice more than in the
utter extinction of the anecdote-mongers--the insufferable monsters
who related Joe Millers as personal experiences, or gave you their own
versions of something in the morning papers. Thank heaven they are done
for!
“Last of all, the unhappy man who used to be sneered at for his silence
in company, will now be on a par with his fellows. The most bashful will
be able to blurt out, ‘Poles massacred,’ ‘Famine in Ireland,’ ‘Feast at
the Mansion House,’ ‘Collision at Croydon,’ ‘Bank discount eleven.’
“Who will dare to propagate scandal, when all amplification is denied
him? How much adulteration will the liquor bear which is measured by
drop? Nor will the least of our benefits be the long, reflective
pauses--those brilliant ‘flashes of silence’ which will supersede the
noise, turmoil, and confusion of what we used to call conversation. No,
no, Corneli mi. The game is up. ‘Our own Correspondent’ is a piece that
has run its course, and there’s nothing to do but take a farewell
benefit and quit the boards.”
“If I could fall back on my pension like you, I’d perhaps take the
matter easier,” said I, gruffly.
“Well, I think you ought to be pensioned. If I was a Minister, I’d
propose it. My notion is this: The proper subjects for pension are those
who, if not provided for by the State, are likely to starve. They are,
consequently, the class of persons who have devoted their lives to
an unmarketable commodity--such as poonah-painting, Berlin-wool work,
despatch-writing, and suchlike. I’d include ‘penny-a-lining’--don’t be
offended because you get twopence, perhaps. I’d pension the whole of
them--pretty much as I’d buy off the organ-man, and request him to move
on.”
“As, however,” said I, “we are not fortunate enough to figure in the
Estimates, may I ask what is the grand scheme you propose for our
employment?”
“I’m coming to it. I’d have reached it ere this, if you had not required
such a positive demonstration of your utter uselessness. You have
delayed me by what Guizot used to call ‘an obstructive indisposition to
believe.’”
“Go on; I yield--that is, under protest.” “Protest as much as you like.
In diplomacy a protest means, ‘I hope you won’t; but if you will, I
can’t help it,’ _Vide_ the correspondence about the annexation of Nice
and Savoy. Now to my project. It is to start a monster hotel--one of
those gigantic establishments for which the Americans are famous--in
some much-frequented part of Europe, and to engage as part of the
household all the ‘own time’ celebrities of diplomacy and letters. Every
one knows--most of us have, indeed, felt--the desire experienced to see,
meet, and converse with the noticeable men of the world--the people who,
so to say, leave their mark on the age they live in--the cognate
signs of human algebra. Only fancy, then, with what ecstasy would the
traveller read the prospectus of an establishment wherein, as in a
pantheon, all the gods were gathered around him. What would not the
Yankee give for a seat at a table where the great Eltchi ladled out the
soup, and the bland-voiced author of ‘The Woman in White’ lisped out,
‘Sherry, sir?’ Only imagine being handed one’s fish by the envoy
that got us into the Crimean war, or taking a potato served by the
accomplished writer of ‘Orley Farm’! Picture a succession of celebrities
in motion around the table, and conceive, if you can, the vainglorious
sentiment of the man that could say, ‘Lyons, a little more fat;’
or, ‘Carlyle, madeira;’ and imagine the luxury of that cup of tea so
gracefully handed you by ‘Lost and Saved,’ and the culminating pride of
taking your flat candlestick from the fingers of ‘Eleanor’s Victory.’
“Who would not cross the great globe to live in such an atmosphere of
genius and grandeur? for if there be, as there may, souls dead to
the charms of literary greatness, who in this advanced age of ours is
indifferent to the claims of high rank and station and title? Fancy
sending a K.C.B. to call a cab, or ordering a special envoy to fetch the
bootjack! I dare not pursue the theme. I cannot trust myself to dwell
on a subject so imbued with suggestiveness--all the varying and wondrous
combinations such a galaxy of splendour and power would inevitably
produce. What wit, what smartness, what epigram would abound! What
a hailstorm of pleasantries, and what stories of wise aphorisms
and profound reflections! How I see with my mind’s eye the literary
traveller trying to overhear the Attic drolleries of the waiters as they
wash up their glasses, or endeavouring to decoy Boots into a stroll with
a cigar, well knowing his charming article on Dickens.
“The class-writers would of course have their specialties.
‘Soapy-Sponge’ would figure in the stable-yard, and ‘Proverbial
Philosophy’ watch the trains as a touter. Fabulous prices might be
obtained for a room in such an establishment, and every place at the
_table-d’hôte_ should be five guineas at least. For, after all,
what would be an invitation to Compiègne to a sojourn here? Material
advantages might possibly incline to the side of the Imperial board; but
would any one presume to say that the company in the one was equal to
the ‘service’ at the other? Who would barter the glorious reality of
the first for the mean and shallow mockery of the last? Last of all, how
widespread and powerful would be the influence of such an establishment
over the manners of our time! Would Cockneyism, think you, omit its
H’s in presence of that bland individual who offers him cheese? Would
presumption dare to criticise in view of that ‘Quarterly’ man who is
pouring out the bitter beer? What a check on the expansive balderdash of
the ‘gent’ at his dessert to know and feel that ‘Adam Bede’ was behind
him!
“Would Brown venture on that anecdote of Jones if the napkin-in-hand
listener should be an ex-envoy renowned for his story-telling? Who
would break down in his history, enunciate a false quantity, misquote a
speech, or mistake the speaker, in such hearing? Some one might object
to the position and to the functions I assign to persons of a certain
distinction, and say that it was unworthy of an ex-ambassador to act
as a hall-porter, or a celebrated prose-writer to clean the knives. I
confess I do not think so. I shrewdly suspect a great deal of what we
are pleased to call philosophy is only a well-regulated self-esteem,
and that the man who feels himself immeasurably above another in mind,
capacity, and attainments, and yet sees that other vastly superior
in station and condition, has within his heart a pride all the more
exalting that it is stimulated by the sense of a great injustice, and
the profound consciousness that it is to himself, to his own nature, he
must look to redress the balance that fortune would set against him.
“In the brilliant conversation of the servants’ hall, then, would these
many gifted men take their revenge; and what stores of good stories,
what endless drolleries, what views of life, and what traits of
character, would they derive from the daily opportunities! It has
constantly been remarked by foreigners that there is no trait of
our national manners less graceful in itself than the way in which
inferiors, especially menials, are addressed in England. It is alleged,
perhaps with some truth, that we mark every difference of class more
decisively than other nations; and certainly in our treatment of
servants there is none of that same confidential tone so amusing in a
French vaudeville. The scheme I now suggest will be the effective remedy
for this.
“Will Jones, think you, presume to be imperative if it be Alfred
Tennyson who has brought up his hot water? Will Brown be critical about
the polish, if it be Owen Meredith has taken him his boots? Will even
Snooks cry out, ‘Holloa, you fellow!’ to a passing waiter, if the
individual so addressed might chance to be an Oriental Secretary or a
Saturday Reviewer?
“And would the most infatuated of Bagmen venture on what O’Connell used
to call a ‘chuck-under-the-chin manner,’ were the chamber-maid to be
Margaret Maitland?
“Such, in brief, is my plan, O’Dowd; nor is the least of its advantages
that it gets rid of the Pension List, and that beggarly £1200 a-year by
which wealthy England assumes to aid the destitute sons and daughters
of letters. As for myself, I have fixed on my station. I mean to be
swimming-master, and the prospectus shall announce that His Excellency
the late Minister at the Court of-----ducks ladies every morning from
eight till nine. Think over the project, and drop me a hint as to the
sort of place would suit you.”