CHAPTER XL

LORD AND LADY ARTHUR RUSSELL AND THE "SALON" IN ENGLAND

The recent death of Lady Arthur Russell diminished by one the number of accomplished women of this generation who were distinguished in the last generation also. And it closed one of the few drawing-rooms in London which have been _salon_ as well as drawing-room. I suppose Lady Arthur herself might have said as she looked about her and looked back, "_Tout passe_." The French phrase would have come naturally to her tongue, for she was French: daughter of that Vicomte de Peyronnet who was Minister to Charles X. Yet one was not often, at any rate not too often, reminded of her French origin. So long ago as 1865 Mlle. de Peyronnet married Lord Arthur Russell, brother of the ninth Duke of Bedford and of the more famous Lord Odo Russell, afterward the first Lord Ampthill, long British Ambassador at Berlin, where he managed to be on good terms both with Prince Bismarck and the present Emperor; a feat of diplomacy almost unique.

It is eighteen years since Lord Arthur died. {380} He was indisputably of the last or an earlier generation, having little in common with the present. People thought of Lord and Lady Arthur as one; of itself enough to identify them with earlier times than those when husband and wife are as likely to be met separately as together. If there was a distinction it was at the breakfast hour, at breakfasts in other houses. There was no rule which excluded ladies from these breakfasts, but there was a custom which held good in the majority of cases. The host's wife, if he had one, might or might not appear. But the group of men who were in the habit of breakfasting at each other's houses included Lord Arthur Russell, Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff, Lord Reay, Mr. Charles Roundell, Mr. Albert Rutson, sometimes Mr. Herbert Spencer, and many more. You will recognize Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff's name as that of the most voluminous diarist of his time, and when you have read his six or seven volumes the map of his life is spread out before you; an honoured and useful life, a career of real distinction. Lord Arthur had not Sir Mountstuart's ambitions; he was content with his home and his kin and his books.

His brother, the Duke, had a habit of referring to himself as Hastings Russell. An alteration at Woburn Abbey was proposed to him. "It will not be made in the lifetime of Hastings Russell," his answer. He had a sense of humour, which Lloyd-George must think a rare thing in a duke. I drove once from Mentmore to Woburn {381} Abbey with Lady Rosebery and her little girl, Lady Sibyl, then eight or nine years old, with a gift of humorous perception rare at any age in her sex. The child had a balanced mind and a mature view of things which might have belonged to eighteen as well as eight. The old place interested her and she asked the Duke to show her the whole. He was delighted and took us through room after room, each stately and each a museum. Presently we came to a rather bare, scantily furnished, unhandsome room, and Lady Sibyl asked:

"But what is this?"

"This, my dear, is where I earn my living writing cheques for six hours a day."

All three brothers, the Duke, Lord Odo, and Lord Arthur, had a quiet humour in common. Lord Odo had, besides humour, wit. It was he, while Ambassador in Berlin and during a visit of the Shah, when that great potentate practised a less strict abstinence at dinner than his religion demanded, who said to a neighbour: "After all, it's nothing wonderful. You must remember the proverb, '_La nuit tous les chat sont ris_. And Berlin used to echo with his caustic, good-natured speeches. Nor did Berlin, nor perhaps London, ever forget Prince Bismarck's saying:

"I never knew an Englishman who spoke French well whom I would trust except Lord Odo."

After which I dare not name two or three others whose French was not less perfect than that which Prince Bismarck praised. The Prince was a good judge, as well he might be. French had {382} become to him almost a second mother tongue; as, indeed, it must be to a European diplomatist.

To the list of men who were to be met in those days at breakfasts the name of Mr. George Brodrick ought to be added. He was a scholar, a writer, a journalist, and one of those men who never could understand why the world would not come round to his way of thinking and to him. He had real abilities, which survived a university education. He was born into a respectable place in the world, of good family, with good opportunities, but was never a man of the world. To be of the world in the true sense of the phrase a man must, I take it, have a fairly accurate notion of his relation to the world. That Brodrick had not. His ambitions were political, and most of all parliamentary; but they remained ambitions. He could not understand how to commend himself to a constituency; nor would he ever have conformed to the inexorable standards of the House of Commons. He expected the House and its standards to conform to him.

Struggling with a fine courage for the unattainable, Mr. Brodrick meantime occupied himself with journalism, and was for many years a leader-writer on _The Times_. The story which points his intense self-concentration as well as any other connects itself with that period. He was a guest in a house in Scotland, and while there continued composition of those more or less Addisonian and rather academic essays which, when printed on the leader page of _The Thunderer_, became {383} leaders, and very good leaders of their kind. He saw fit to write them in the drawing-room and in the morning when men are commonly supposed to be elsewhere. There were ladies and they talked. Presently Mr. Brodrick rose, marched over to his hostess and said to her: "Lady X., I really must ask you to ask these ladies not to carry on their conversation in this room. I am engaged upon a most important article and my thoughts are distracted by talk which has no importance at all."

His appearance and dress were those of a man who gave no thought to either. He was rather tall, angular, uncouth, a stoop in the shoulders, and his figure consisted of K's. He had the projecting teeth which French caricaturists used to give to English "meesses," in whom it is extremely rare. Some person of genius untempered with mercy called him "Curius Dentatus"; and the nickname lasted as long as Brodrick lasted. With his teeth, and his knees and elbows sawing the air, and his umbrella, and his horse all ribs, he was the delight of the Row. Everybody liked him but everybody laughed at him. In the end he renounced journalism and renounced politics and became Warden of Merton. It was thought he would not be a good Head of a College nor get on with his students, but he falsified all predictions, governed wisely and well, won the affection of the boys under him, and died lamented. I suppose the explanation is that he had at bottom a genuine sincerity of nature.

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But I am wandering far and I return to Lady Arthur and her house and her guests.

The form of _salon_ which Lady Arthur Russell preferred was a _salon_ preceded by a dinner. It was never a large dinner. Except in a few houses, the banquets of forty or fifty people or more so dear to the New York hostess are not given in London, nor is mere bigness reckoned an element of social success. In the biggest capital of the world, where society far exceeds in numbers the society of any other capital, people are content with moderation. A dinner of forty people is a lottery in which each guest has two chances and no more. His luck and his hopes of being amused or interested depend wholly on his right- and left-hand neighbours.

Lady Arthur, being by birth a Frenchwoman, had French ideas on this and other subjects. She did not choose her guests alphabetically, nor by rank, nor for the sake of a passing notoriety. Lions you might meet at her house but they were not expected to roar; nor did they. Neither at dinner nor after dinner were more people asked than could be managed. Large parties are, of course, given in London but they do not constitute a _salon_. It is of the essence of a _salon_ that people shall not be left wholly to themselves, as in a large party they must be, but shall be looked after. Affinities do not always find themselves. They have to be brought together. Others have to be kept apart. No authority is needed. Intuitions, a quick eye for situations, and a gentle skill in {385} distribution are the gifts which go to the making of a good hostess. These Lady Arthur had. By mere smartness she set little store. I suppose the house in Audley Square which Lord Arthur Russell built never passed for a particularly smart house. Of houses which are called and which are "smart" there are scores in London. Of _salons_ there are very few. Herself the daughter of a French viscount, and with her husband brother to a duke, Lady Arthur had no particular need to concern herself about mere smartness. That is a reputation not altogether difficult to acquire. The King's smile may confer it. Not, perhaps, the late Queen's of whom one more than usually brilliant butterfly remarked:

"But the Queen, you know, never was in society."

Which perhaps, in the sense intended, was true.

If there were one note more marked than another in these Audley Square assemblies it was a note of culture. Ease and good breeding and distinction may all be taken for granted. It is of the things which may not be taken for granted that I speak; and culture certainly may not. There are many houses in London in which it is neither expected nor desired. In New York, as we all know, it is discouraged. It would be discouraged anywhere if it were obtrusive or pedantic. Neither in a _salon_ nor anywhere else is it to supersede good manners, but to blend with them. To make a _salon_ possible there must be varied interests, play of mind, flexibility, adaptability, and an unlimited supply of {386} tact. Perhaps the last includes all social gifts except those of the intellect. It covers a multitude of deficiencies. Nay, there was Miss Ada Reeve, a clever actress who last year was discussing on the stage questions of costume (elsewhere than on the stage), and announced:

"If a woman has tact and diamonds she needs nothing else."

Most of the generalities which you have been reading are really particulars and are descriptive of Lady Arthur Russell's receptions, of which I have spoken as a _salon_. I don't know that Lady Arthur herself ever used the word, nor does it matter. The thing, not the name, is what matters. There was culture, of a very unusual kind, on both sides of the house. There was, on Lady Arthur's side, her French blood. A _salon_ in Paris is no rare thing, and the reason why it is not rare is because the society of Paris is French. In the Faubourg St. Germain, if nowhere else, the social traditions of the old monarchy in its most brilliant days still survive.

One of the noticeable things about this house in Audley Square was the presence of distinguished foreigners, and another was that they seemed no longer to consider themselves foreigners. They were at home. Nor was this true only of men and women of rank who might be of kin to the Peyronnets, and at any rate were of their world, but of artists and men of letters. I will take M. Renan as an example. He had come to London to deliver the Hibbert lectures and a lecture on Marcus Aurelius {387} before the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, of which the ever lamented Tyndall was then at the head. I had met Renan twice at other houses. He seemed a little _dépaysé_. In Audley Square this exotic and troubled air had disappeared. He had no English--at any rate, he spoke none--and his conversation, or the conversation of the English with him, was therefore limited. But when he talked, and often when he did not, he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners or, as the case might be, of lookers-on. Hence it was that he was so often kept, or left, standing, and his physical frame was of such a kind that long standing was irksome to him, and even painful. I noticed one night that he seemed ill at ease, and said to him I hoped he was not suffering.

"Yes," he said, "that is exactly it; I am _souffrant_, and if I have to stand much longer I don't know what will happen."

"But why don't you sit down?"

"Oh, do you think I might?"

So I took him to a comfortable sofa and, once seated, an ineffable sweet peace stole over his features.

A more tragic incident happened in Count von Arnim's case, the end of whose career was all tragedy. At this time he was still German Ambassador in Paris, but Prince Bismarck had become distrustful of him and the end was not far off. The public, however, knew nothing; least of all the English public, whose acquaintance with occurrences on the Continent is apt to be remote. For {388} aught that was known in London, Count von Arnim was still the trusted representative of Germany. He bore a great name, he held a great position. The personal impression was a little disappointing. He did not look like the man to stand up to Prince Bismarck, who was a giant in stature as well as in character; nor was he. Slight, rather short, lacking in distinction, meagre in face, with no hint of power in the shape of his head or in his rather furtive expression, or in his carriage, he seemed, on the whole, insignificant. The eyes had no fire in them; he looked older than his years, and unequal to his renown.

It was the custom in those distant days to serve tea in the drawing-room after dinner. Count von Arnim was asked if he would take tea, left the lady by whom he was sitting, crossed the floor to the tea-table, took his cup of tea from Lady Arthur's hand, and started on his return. The floor was of polished oak, with here and there a rug; just the sort of floor to which he must have been used to all his life. But he slipped, his feet flew from under him, and down came the Ambassador on his back. It was an awful moment. Men went to his rescue, he was helped up, evidently much shaken, and slowly found his way back to the sofa and to the lady who had been his companion. There were almost tears in his eyes. When, a little later, the news of his disgrace became known, a man said: "Well, if he could not keep his feet in a drawing-room, what chance had he against Prince Bismarck."

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