Memoirs of Life and Literature Part 4

One of these is the aspect which thirty years ago was presented by Hyde Park during the season at certain hours of the day. Thirty years ago, for an hour or two before luncheon and dinner, its aspect was that of a garden party, for which, indeed, no invitations were necessary, but on which as a fact few persons intruded who would have been visibly out of place on the lawn of Marlborough House. To-day this ornamental a.s.semblage has altogether disappeared, and its place has been gradually taken by a miscellaneous crowd without so much as a trace even of spurious fas.h.i.+on left in it. Thirty years ago Piccadilly in June was a vision of open carriages brilliant with flowerlike parasols, high-stepping horses, and coachmen, many of whom still wore wigs. To-day these features have been submerged by a flow of unending omnibuses which crowds fight to enter or from which they struggle to eject themselves.

Fas.h.i.+onable hotels have succ.u.mbed to the same movement. Of such hotels thirty years ago the most notable were commonly described as "private"--a word which implied that no guests were received who were not known to the landlord either personally or through fit credentials.

Claridge's, until it was rebuilt, was an establishment of this description. An unknown and unaccredited stranger could, by the mere chance latchkey of wealth, no more obtain access to such hotels as these than he could make himself to-day a member of some exclusive club by placing the amount of the entrance fee in the hands of the hall porter.

But society, as it was in this relatively recent past, did not differ from that of to-day merely in the fact of having been absolutely less numerous and of less multifarious origin. It differed in the effects which a mere restriction of numbers, coupled with inherited wealth and a general similarity of antecedents, has on the quality of social intercourse itself. In societies which are small, and yet at the same time wealthy enough to secure for their members as a whole a monopoly of varied experience, and invest them with a corporate power which cannot be similarly concentrated in any other cohesive cla.s.s, these members are provided, like the believers in some esoteric religion, with subtle similarities of tastes, behavior, and judgment, together with daily opportunities of observing how far, and in what particulars, individuals belonging to their cla.s.s conform or do not conform to them. These are constant provocations to refinements of mutual criticism which give life and conversation a zest not attainable otherwise. Finally a society which is small enough to possess such common standards, and whose position is so well established as to pervade it with a sense that no standards are superior to its own, tends to make manners perfectly simple and natural which could otherwise be approached only by conscious effort or affectation.

The result of such conditions, in so far as they prevailed in London when London life became first familiar to myself, was that society, in the narrower sense of the word, was taken in a spirit more serious than that which it excites to-day. To say nothing of ambitious hostesses who vied with one another in the entertainment of guests whose very names had a ring of importance when printed in the _Morning Post_, society was, even for men of conspicuous talent--such, for example, as Lord Houghton, Augustus Savile, and Hayward--a matter as serious as politics, or any war not of the first importance. To men like Christopher Sykes and Kenneth Howard it was very much more engrossing. Thus, at a luncheon party which I remember, a lady who had just reached London from Scotland asked, by way of conversation, "What is going on to-night?" Lord Houghton, who was one of the guests, answered, with all the gravity of a judge summing up the evidence at a murder trial: "The only event of to-night is the ball at Grosvenor House. There's nothing else worth mentioning." "The ball of to-night," I heard him say on a similar occasion, "will be Lady Harriet ----'s. That is sure to be good, for Lady Harriet knows n.o.body, so she can't ask the wrong people, and her list of invitations is in the hands of Augustus Savile." One of the cleverest hostesses of that time, Lady G----, denounced to a friend the impertinence of a "society paper" which had ventured to describe one of her entertainments as "political"; and she had actually been to the trouble of writing to inform the editor that her parties were fas.h.i.+onable gatherings and not political menageries. The then Lord Orford, a man of the highest literary culture, who professed to despise society, and very rarely entered it, said that his own idea of real happiness was "to go nowhere, and yet to be asked everywhere."

The seriousness with which society was taken, and the fear of its judgments entertained even by many of its most conspicuous members, was ill.u.s.trated in a way now oddly belated by the celebrated "Lady A.," as she was called, who occasionally lent her house in Hertford Street for the month of August to her niece, Mrs. Marcus Hare. To this act of kindness she attached one strict condition--namely, that the blinds of the front windows should always be drawn down, lest anyone should suspect that she--Lady A. herself--was guilty of remaining in London when the fas.h.i.+onable season was over. A well-known social philosopher, Lady E---- of T----, gave me in my early days an ultraserious lecture on the principles by which a young man should be guided when beginning to form acquaintances in a world like that of London. Her advice was almost identical with that which, in Bulwer Lytton's novel, _Pelham_, is administered to the hero by his mother. "You should be specially careful," said Lady E---- to me, "as to people with whom you dine. Some are remarkable for their _chefs_, some for the importance of their company. There are all sorts of differences which a young man has to learn. There are some evening parties," she said, "at which it will be enough for him to be merely seen; and, with very few exceptions"--this was her concluding counsel--"you should never be seen at a ball in a two-roomed house--a house, for example, like the houses in Eaton Place."

Another sort of social philosopher, in his own way equally typical, was Hamilton Aide, who united to the life of society the cultivation of art, and was equally serious in his combined devotion to both. He was a musician, a poet, a singer of his own songs in a voice perfectly modulated. He was also as a painter in water colors one of the most distinguished amateurs of his time. His landscapes, indeed, and his sketches of old houses and gardens, Scotch castles, and the seclusions of Italian villas, were in themselves poems; and when he entertained the world--a world very carefully chosen--the attention of his guests was divided between his music and his great portfolios. His bachelor's quarters provided him with an appropriate background. His writing table was dominated by something resembling an altarpiece--namely, a large and ingenious rack, on which was arranged a battalion of invitations to b.a.l.l.s and dinner parties; and his blotting book was flanked by two delicate volumes, one being a _libro d'oro_ in the shape of a bulky visiting list, the other being a list of his engagements from day to day. He and his accomplishments were a finished work of art between them. But in a larger world his development would have been no more possible than the development of an orchid in the middle of a crowded street.

And the same is the case with regard to society generally. There are certain accomplishments which a small society tends to develop, and which a larger society does not. Among these the art of conversation is prominent, especially when it takes the form of wit, or becomes the vehicle of certain kinds of humor. I may further ill.u.s.trate this general observation by mentioning a few individuals, of whom three at least are still well known by name, not to society only, but also to the world at large. These are Constance, d.u.c.h.ess of Westminster; Caroline, d.u.c.h.ess of Montrose, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset, who, as Lady Seymour, was the heroine of the Eglinton Tournament. These ladies were all remarkable for the peculiar magic of their voices and for a peculiar sense of humor which their voices managed to indicate, and which gave its quality to their general views of life. They none of them laughed audibly, but the voice of each was a sort of laugh in solution, and this would produce a sense of laughter in others, even though in the words of the speaker herself there was no special felicity.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Montrose, by the mere tone in which she mentioned a name, would often convey a whole criticism of the person named; and though her topics and language were not infrequently of a kind which caused austere censors to reprehend, and even to avoid, her, yet if such censors found themselves by chance in her company, they would one and all be listening to her before five minutes was over.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset's voice had the same spell of ambushed laughter in it, but she was a far greater mistress of the actual arts of language, if "art" be a word appropriate to the exercise of natural genius. I was asked by her daughter, Lady Guendolen Ramsden, to help her in compiling a volume of family memoirs, which would, so we hoped, have comprised a number of the d.u.c.h.ess's letters; but most of these had to be discarded as not suitable for publication, because of the numerous sketches contained in them of various friends or connections, which were drawn with a wit and precision worthy of Miss Austen herself in her least merciful moments. One specimen, however, may be given without compunction. She was describing a visit paid by her to a well-known country house, and mentioned that among the company were a prominent statesman and his wife, the former of whom was dear to caricaturists on account of his superabundant figure. "Sir ---- and Lady ---- are here,"

she wrote. "She is expecting; but he shows it most."

Here are examples of conversational or descriptive art which, in a large and mixed society, would, even if possible, be hardly so much as perceptible. I may take as two other examples Sophy, Lady Roden, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. Unlike Lady Dorothy, whose chronicled sayings have made her a public character, Lady Roden was known only to a small circle of intimates. She was a daughter of Byron's celebrated friend Mr.

Hobhouse, subsequently Lord Broughton, and had received something of a really cla.s.sical education under the semipaternal auspices of Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k. Hence her conversation had a certain natural crispness which enabled her to indicate by touches, however light, any oddities of demeanor or conduct on the part of friends or acquaintances to persons whose standards were more or less like her own. There was a silly young woman who, after several years of matrimony, was ambitious of pus.h.i.+ng her conquests beyond the matrimonial limits; and with this object in view did her best to be visible driving about with a succession of guiltlessly apathetic admirers. "Poor Mrs. P----," said Lady Roden. "She takes far more trouble in attempting to ruin her reputation than most women do to preserve it; but all her attempts are vain."

Lady Dorothy's charm in conversation was due to an adventurous whimsicality, perfectly natural, which was absent from Lady Roden's. She saw everything through a medium of unexpected a.n.a.logies. She was one day asked in my hearing whether she had enjoyed herself at a Marlborough House garden party. "My dear," she said, "half of the people there I had never seen before in my life, and of those whom I _had_ seen, I thought that half had been safe in Kensal Green." On another occasion, having been at a fancy ball--b.a.l.l.s were a kind of entertainment which she very rarely frequented--and having been asked by a friend for an account of it, she replied: "By far away the most remarkable figure was ----. There she was--I don't know what she called herself--Diana in front, and George the Second behind."

But of the conversational art which flourishes in small societies only I could find the best examples, not among women, but among the men of what was then an expiring generation--men whose manners had been formed in a society smaller still. Alfred Montgomery was a wit of this cla.s.sical type, and may be taken as representing others, all of whom, when I knew them, were verging on old age. These men, though free from any trace of pedantry, were never guilty of slang, unless slang was used intentionally for the purpose of humorous emphasis. Their conversation, if taken down verbatim, would have afforded perfect specimens of polished yet easy English. A lady of great wealth (who has long since been dead, but who shall nevertheless be nameless) had been for a time under some sort of social cloud, many influential people having virtuously refused to notice her. Toward the end of her life, however, the most august of all possible influences had raised her to a position of such fas.h.i.+onable brilliance that a great ball given by her had been the chief event of a season. Lady Roden asked Alfred Montgomery some question as to who had, and who had not, been there. "When a woman like Mrs. ---- gives a ball of that kind, it is," he said, "an act of revenge quite as much as an act of hospitality. She takes far more pleasure in thinking of the people she has _not_ asked than in thinking of those she has."

Certain other examples of conversational art occur to me which I a.s.sociate with a form of entertainment now a thing of the past. Of London life as it had been long before I knew it, a notable feature, constantly referred to in memoirs, had been the breakfast party. It had before my time nearly, but had not quite, disappeared. It was so far kept alive by Lord Houghton, at all events, that a breakfast at his house in Bruton Street is one of my own early recollections. The repast began at ten and lasted for half the morning. There must have been about twenty guests. Two of them were "lions," whose hair was more remarkable than their speech. The rest were men of some sort of social eminence, who seemed to find the occasion not wholly congenial; and, in spite of the efforts of the host, conversation had a tendency to languish till a topic turned up which was then attracting public notice. This topic roused one of the guests--a seasoned man of the world--from a mood of apparent apathy into one of such humorous animation that soon the rest of the company were holding their breaths to listen to him. The topic in question was a volume of scandalous memoirs which had lately been published by Rosina, wife of the first Lord Lytton, for the purpose of attacking a husband from whom she had long been separated. The guest to whom I am now alluding caught the attention of everybody by confessing to an intimate acquaintance with the ways of this caustic lady, and proceeded to ill.u.s.trate them by a series of amusing anecdotes of which I recollect the following:

Bulwer Lytton, as he then was, was candidate for one of the divisions of Hertfords.h.i.+re, and speeches were being delivered from the hustings by supporters of local influence--among others by Lord Cowper. Lord Cowper was still speaking when something appeared at his elbow in the likeness of the candidate's wife. "Now, Billy Cowper," she said, "we've listened to you long enough. Sit down, and let _me_ speak. You propose, gentlemen, to send my husband to Parliament. I am here to tell you that Parliament is not the proper place for him. His proper place," she said, pointing to the ground, "is below; and when you have sent him there, he will learn something of what he at present knows nothing. That something is Justice."

On another occasion, speaking in more moderate tones, she observed to a circle of acquaintances: "My husband is a man who has been born out of his due time. He ought to have been born nineteen hundred years ago. Had he been born then, he would have been Judas Iscariot. He would have betrayed his Master; he would have taken the thirty pieces of silver; but then he would not have hanged himself--far from it. He would have sat down and written the Epistle to the Ephesians."

On another occasion she told the following story of him. He was, so she said, in London, and she, having been left in the country, had written to propose joining him. He had at once replied begging her not to do so, but to leave him a little longer in the enjoyment of philosophic solitude. "When I heard that"--so she confided to a friend--"I set off for London instantly; and there I found him with Philosophic Solitude, in white muslin, on his knee."

"Perhaps," added the narrator, "even less agreeable to the delinquent would have been, had he heard it, her description of his physical appearance. Alluding to the fact that his head was undoubtedly too large for his body, she said, 'My husband has the head of a goat, and he has the body of a gra.s.shopper.'"

But of all the men who, in the way of conversational wit or otherwise, figure in my memory as types of a now vanished generation, the most remarkable still remains to be noticed. This was the second Duke of Wellington. Even to those who knew him only by sight he was memorable, on account of his astonis.h.i.+ng likeness to the portraits or statues of his father. He had not, or he had not chosen to cultivate, the talents which mainly lead to distinction in public life, but by the small circle of those who were intimate with him during his later days he was known for a humor, a polished wit, and a shrewdness which made him, of all possible companions, one of the most delightful. I knew him intimately myself as far as my age permitted. I often stayed with him at Strathfieldsaye, not only when he had parties, but also when, as sometimes happened, we were together for a week alone. On these latter occasions I had all the mornings to myself, and every afternoon I took with him long walks, during which he poured forth his social or other philosophies, or else told me stories of his father so pointed and numerous that, had I written them down, I might then have compiled a life of him which would form a very interesting supplement to those which exist already. I never, in the course of these walks, experienced a dull moment.

The only great entertainment at which I ever encountered him was a dinner party of his own given at Apseley House. During one of such visits which I paid him at Strathfieldsaye he told me that very soon he would have to give a party in London in honor of the King of the Belgians. The party was to be a large dinner, and he asked me to be one of the company. The time arrived. The King of the Belgians for some reason failed to come, but everything had been arranged in an appropriate manner for his reception. As a spectacle the table was noteworthy. It was covered with gold plate--a historic monument to the great hero of Waterloo--which consisted of figures of soldiers, horses, palm trees, camels, artillery, and other military objects symbolical of his various campaigns; and gold plate at intervals all round the table was supplemented by triumphal wreaths. The duke told me afterward that all these decorations were due to his own forgetfulness. He had for years been accustomed to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo by a banquet to certain officers who had been present at it, and who still survived; but the number of these had already been so reduced that he had determined to discontinue the celebration. In fixing, however, a day for the dinner now in question, he had entirely forgotten that the date ultimately chosen was none other than the day of the great battle. His servants had concluded that, in honor of Belgian royalty, he was giving one more repet.i.tion of the Waterloo banquets of the past. Everything had been arranged accordingly; and I was thus present at a function which will never take place again.

But it was not at such functions that his real character displayed itself. This only came out in intercourse of a much more private kind, as would happen at Strathfieldsaye when he entertained parties of not more than ten people. When I was present on such occasions I was usually the youngest--by far the youngest--member of the company. Of the rest I may mention as examples Lady Dorothy Nevill, Alfred Montgomery, Sir Hastings Doyle, Lord Calthorpe, Sir St. George Foley, Lady Chesterfield, and Mr. Newtons, the courtly police magistrate, called by his friends "The Beak." And here--to repeat in substance the observation which I have made already--what always struck me was the far greater polish of manner that prevailed among these my elders than any which was cultivated among my own, the then rising, generation. In such an atmosphere the Duke's special gifts were at home. He never strained after effect. His words seemed to crystallize into wit or poignant humor before he had time to reflect on what he was going to say. But these qualities were perhaps seen at their best in tete-a-tete encounters or correspondence. At all events, it is from such occurrences that ill.u.s.trations of them can be most readily drawn.

He had often spoken to me of his dislike of anything in the nature of jobbery, and this was once brought out in a very characteristic way by a pa.s.sage at arms between himself and Lady St. Helier. Lady St. Helier had written to him to ask him if, as Lord Lieutenant of Middles.e.x, he would make one of her friends a magistrate. The duke promptly replied that her friend was an entire stranger to him, and that he never made appointments of that kind as a favor to some third party. There the matter rested for a week or two, at the end of which period she received the following note from him:

DEAR LADY ST. HELIER.

You have treated me extremely ill. I have made inquiries about your friend, and I find he is part-proprietor of--here he named a certain place of amus.e.m.e.nt--which I learn is frequently used as a place for a.s.signations of a very reprehensible kind.

Lady St. Helier's immediate reply was this:

MY DEAR DUKE.

I have nothing more to say. You are acquainted with such matters so much better than I am.

Not long afterward he met her on somebody's doorstep, and she, who was taking her departure, greeted him with some slight frigidity. He merely looked at her with a momentary twinkle in his eye, and said, "I think you had me there." Some days later she received yet another letter from him, which consisted of these words:

DEAR LADY ST. HELIER.

The deed is done. G.o.d forgive me.

A further encounter took place of something the same kind--the duke himself told me of this--from which he emerged the victor. He had, he said, received a letter from Lady Herbert of Lee, in which she begged him to contribute 100 toward the total required for the restoration of some Catholic church, and his answer had been as follows:

DEAR LADY HERBERT.

I shall be very happy to give you the sum you name, for a purpose so excellent as yours. At the same time I may say that I am myself about to restore the Protestant church at Strathfieldsaye, and I do not doubt that you will aid me by sending me a similar sum. Only, in that case, I think no money need pa.s.s between us.

In a kindred vein was his answer to another application, addressed to him, in formal terms, by a committee of the inhabitants of Tiverton.

When the first duke was merely known as a soldier, the Tivertonians had begun to erect, on a neighboring hill near Wellington, a monumental column in his honor; but subsequently, when he came to show himself to the British public, not as a great general, but as an obstinate and intolerable Tory, the Radical Tivertonians refused to carry on the work farther. The column was left unfinished, as it stands at the present day; and the second duke, many years later, was pet.i.tioned, for the credit of the neighborhood, to finish it at his own cost. His answer to the pet.i.tioners was, so he told me, this:

GENTLEMEN.

It I were to finish that monument it would be a monument to nothing. As it stands, it is a monument to your own ingrat.i.tude.

Strathfieldsaye may have been in old days the scene of many political incidents. The latest was one at which I myself was present. The heroine of it was Miss Meresia Nevill, Lady Dorothy's daughter, who afterward achieved renown as a luminary of the Primrose League. She was then in her novitiate only, and the duke one morning whispered to her that he would give her a lesson in oratory. I was asked to be present at it, but otherwise it was to be strictly secret. Accordingly after breakfast she, I, and the duke met by appointment in the library. The doors were locked, and Miss Nevill, who had brought some memoranda with her scribbled on a half-sheet of letter paper, was told by the duke to take her stand on the hearth rug and give him a specimen of her powers by declaiming what she proposed to say, he himself being seated on a sofa watching her. "Now," he said, "begin." Bashfully consulting her notes, and speaking with apologetic rapidity, Miss Nevill began to murmur, "My lords, ladies and gentlemen." "No!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the duke; "my dear young lady, no! Mouth it out like this: "My lords--ladies--_and_--gentlemen."

Don't say it as if you were saying your prayers." In this humorous but most admirable advice there was no great verbal brilliance; but his tendency to verbal brilliance showed, on one occasion at all events, how capable it was of translating itself into the highest form of literary art. A favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of his was making translations from Horace.

Among the pa.s.sages which had specially provoked this enterprise was one the Latin of which is so terse and pungent that it has often been p.r.o.nounced untranslatable. It is the pa.s.sage in which Horace describes true happiness as that of the man who, looking back from to-morrow, is able to say, "I was really alive all yesterday." Dryden's pithy version of it is to the effect that the sole true happiness is that of the man:

Who, secure at eve, can say, "To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day."

The duke's version was on a yet higher level than this, embodying in it a concentrated pungency and a _curiosa felicitas_ which were quite in the vein of Horace, but contain a thought not present in the original.

They were comprised in these few words:

Happy if only I enjoy My rival's envy for a day.

It is true this specimen of the duke's wit in literature does not bear directly on the question of wit in social conversation; and yet it may lead the mind to questions which are very closely akin to it. The felicity of the duke's translation has a very close resemblance to the _curiosa felicitas_ of Pope--for instance, in his "Characters of Women"

and his celebrated satire on Addison. Nearly all Pope's satires are addressed, if not to a small society, yet at all events to a small public, and outside that limited body they would have neither vogue nor meaning.

CHAPTER VII

VIGNETTES OF LONDON LIFE

Byron's Grandson and Sh.e.l.ley's Son--The World of b.a.l.l.s--The "Great Houses," and Their New Rivals--The Latter Criticized by Some Ladies of the Old n.o.blesse--Types of More Serious Society--Lady Marian Alford and Others--_Salons_ Exclusive and Inclusive--A Clash of Two Rival Poets--The Poet Laureate --Auberon Herbert and the Simple Life--Dean Stanley--Whyte Melville--"Ouida"--"Violet Fane"--Catholic Society--Lord Bute--Banquet to Cardinal Manning--Difficulties of the Memoir-writer--Lord Wemyss and Lady P---- --Indiscretions of Augustus Hare--Routine of a London Day--The Author's Life Out of London

The few portraits and anecdotes which I have just sketched or recorded are sufficient, let me say once more, to ill.u.s.trate two general facts.

They indicate the way in which society owes much of its finer polish to it. They emphasize the fact that, when I first knew it myself, it was very much smaller than it has since then become, and, though divided into sections even then, was very much more cohesive. Let me pa.s.s from this latter fact to some of my own experiences as connected with it.