Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
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."
By whichever names they were called, they were, and are, delightful
festivals. Sometimes they carried one as far as Hatfield, my
unapproached favourite among all the "Stately homes of England"; but
generally they were nearer London--at Syon, with the Thames floating
gravely past its lawns--Osterley, where the decorative skill of the
Brothers Adam is superimposed on Sir Thomas Gresham's Elizabethan
brickwork--Holland House, rife with memories of Fox and
Macaulay--Lowther Lodge, with its patch of unspoiled country in the
heart of Western London. Closely akin to these Garden-Parties were other
forms of outdoor entertainment--tea at Hurlingham or Ranelagh; and
river-parties where ardent youth might contrive to capsize the adored
one, and propose as he rescued her, dripping, from the Thames.
It is only within the last few years that we have begun to talk of
"Week-Ends" and "week-Ending." These terrible phrases have come down to
us from the North of England; but before they arrived the thing which
they signify was here. "Saturday-to-Monday Parties" they were called.
They were not so frequent as now, because Saturday was a favourite
night for entertaining in London, and it was generally bespoken for
dinners and drums. But, as the summer advanced and hot rooms became
unendurable, people who lived only forty or fifty miles out of London
began to ask if one would run down to them on Friday or Saturday, and
stay over Sunday. Of these hospitalities I was a sparing and infrequent
cultivator, for they always meant two sleepless nights; and, as someone
truly observed, just as you had begun to wear off the corners of your
soap, it was time to return to London. But there were people, more
happily constituted, who could thoroughly enjoy and profit by the weekly
dose of fresh air and quiet. It was seldom that Mrs. Gladstone failed to
drag Mr. Gladstone to some country house "from Saturday to Monday."
As I re-read what I have written in this chapter, I seem to have lived
from 1876 to 1880 in the constant enjoyment of one kind or another of
Hospitality. It is true; and for the kindness of the friends who then
did so much to make my life agreeable, I am as grateful as I was when I
received it. My social life in London seems to me, as I look back, "a