Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
Pinkerton the governess, and whether Mr. Wheeler was still coachman, and
who lived now at the Entrance Lodge. Whether the sons got commissions,
or took ranches, or became curates in slums, or contested remote
constituencies, some grinning face was sure to emerge from the crowd
with "You know me, sir? Bill Juffs, as used to go birds-nesting with
you"; or, "You remember my old dad, my lord? He used to shoe your black
pony." When the eldest son came of age, his condescension in taking this
step was hailed with genuine enthusiasm. When he came into his kingdom,
there might be some grumbling if he went in for small economies, or
altered old practices, or was a "hard man" on the Bench or at the Board
of Guardians; but, if he went on in the good-natured old ways, the
traditional loyalty was unabated. Lord Shaftesbury wrote thus about the
birth of his eldest son's eldest son:--"My little village is all agog
with the birth of a son and heir in the very midst of them, the first,
it is believed, since 1600, when the first Lord Shaftesbury was born.
The christening yesterday was an ovation. Every cottage had flags and
flowers. We had three triumphal arches; and all the people were
exulting. 'He is one of us.' 'He is a fellow-villager.' 'We have now got
a lord of our own.' This is really gratifying. I did not think that
there remained so much of the old respect and affection between peasant
and proprietor, landlord and tenant."
In the present day, if 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.
But in old days, when people wished 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 everyone knows that country
houses are shamefully under-assessed. Carriages did not require
re-painting every season, and no new clothes were wanted. As the ladies
in _Cranford_ said--"What can it matter what we wear here, where
everyone 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, venturing on the privilege of
an old friendship, asked how much it cost him. "Cost me?" screamed the
hero. "Good Gad, it costs me nothing! I don't buy it. 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 requirements 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 a snack from the servants' joint or the children's rice
pudding; and five o'clock tea had only lately been invented. To
remember, as I just can, the Foundress[20] 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 V-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.
Grace was said before and after dinner. There was a famous 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 at 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." Out of the abundance of the mouth the
heart speaketh, and everyone 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.
"Do you know you've been talking at the top of your voice all the time
grace was going on?"
"Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host mumbles so, I never can
make out what he's saying."
"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.
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. The 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.
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 the gentleman who stood for Matthew
Arnold in _The New Republic_, and who, after talking about "liberal
air," "sedged brooks," and "meadow grass," admitted that it would be a
dreadful 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. All this is treason to a high ideal.
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 fountain 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. Thank God, such a home was mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Henry Scott Holland.
[20] Anna Maria, Duchess of Bedford, died in 1857.
VII
LONDON
"O'er royal London, in luxuriant May,
While lamps yet twinkled, dawning crept the day.
Home from the hell the pale-eyed gamester steals;
Home from the ball flash jaded Beauty's wheels;
From fields suburban rolls the early cart;
As rests the Revel, so awakes the Mart."
_The New Timon_.
When I was penning, in the last chapter, my perfectly sincere praises of
the country, an incongruous reminiscence suddenly froze the genial
current of my soul. Something, I know not what, reminded me of the
occasion when Mrs. Bardell and her friends made their memorable
expedition to the "Spaniards Tea-Gardens" at Hampstead. "How sweet the
country is, to be sure!" sighed Mrs. Rogers; "I almost wish I lived in
it always." To this Mr. Raddle, full of sympathy, rejoined: "For lone
people as have got nobody to care for them, or as have been hurt in
their mind, or that sort of thing, the country is all very well. The
country for a wounded spirit, they say." But the general verdict of the
company was that Mrs. Rogers was "a great deal too lively and
sought-after, to be content with the country"; and, on second thoughts,
the lady herself acquiesced. I feel that my natural temperament had
something in common with that of Mrs. Rogers. "My spirit" (and my body
too) had been "wounded" by Oxford, and the country acted as both a
poultice and a tonic. But my social instinct was always strong, and
could not be permanently content with "a lodge in the vast wilderness"
of Woburn Park, or dwell for ever in the "boundless contiguity of shade"
which obliterates the line between Beds and Bucks.
I was very careful to observe the doctor's prescription of total
idleness, but I found it was quite as easily obeyed in London as in the
country. For three or four months then, of every year, I forsook the