Part 18
To a soul early saturated with literary horrors the experience of life is a curious translation of fancy into fact. Incidents which have hitherto appeared visionary and imaginative now take the character of substantial reality. We discover that horrors are not confined to books or to a picturesque past, but are going on all round us; and the discovery is fraught with an uneasy joy. When I recall the illusions of my infancy and the facts which displaced them, I feel that I fall miserably below the ideal of childhood presented in the famous "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality." My "daily travel further from the East" is marked by memories of dreadful deeds, and the "vision splendid" which attends me on my way is a vivid succession of peculiarly startling murders. In the dawn of consciousness these visions have "something of celestial light" about them--they are spiritual, impalpable, ideal. At length the youth perceives them die away, "and melt into the light of common day"--very common day indeed, the day of the Old Bailey and the _Police News_. By a curious chain of coincidences, I was early made acquainted with the history of that unfriendly Friend John Tawell, who murdered his sweetheart with prussic acid, and was the first criminal to be arrested by means of the electric telegraph. Heroic was the defence set up by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who tried to prove that an inordinate love of eating apples, pips and all, accounted for the amount of prussic acid found in the victim's body. Kelly lived to be Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, but the professional nickname of "Apple-pip Kelly" stuck to him to the end. I know the house where Tawell lived; I have sat under the apple-tree of which his victim ate; and I have stood, the centre of a roaring election crowd, on the exact spot outside the Court-house at Aylesbury where he expiated his crime.
Tawell belongs, if I may so say, to a pre-natal impression. But, as the 'sixties of the last century unroll their record, each page displays its peculiar Horror. In 1860 Constance Kent cut her little brother's throat, and buried him in the back-yard. Many a night have I lain quaking in my bed, haunted by visions of sisters armed with razors, and hurried graves in secret spots. Not much more cheering was the nocturnal vision of Thomas Hopley, schoolmaster, of Eastbourne, convicted in 1860 of flogging a half-witted pupil to death with a skipping-rope, and afterwards covering the lacerated hands with white kid gloves. I confess to a lasting distaste for private schools, founded on this reminiscence. "The Flowery Land" is a title so prettily fanciful, so suffused with the glamour of the East, that one would scarcely expect to connect it with piracy, murder, and a five-fold execution. Yet that is what it meant for youthful horror-mongers in 1864. In 1865 the plan which pleased my childish thought was that pursued by Dr. Pritchard of Glasgow, who, while he was slowly poisoning his wife and his mother-in-law, kept a diary of their sufferings and recorded their deliverance from the burden of the flesh with pious unction. Two years later a young ruffian, whose crime inspired Mr. James Rhoades to write a passionate poem, cut a child into segments, and recorded in his journal--"Saturday, August 24, 1867: Killed a young girl; it was fine and hot."
One might linger long in these paths of dalliance, but space forbids; and memory clears nine years at a bound. Most vivid, most fascinating, most human, if such an epithet be permitted in such a context, was the "Balham Mystery" of 1876. Still I can feel the cob bolting with me across Tooting Common; still I lave my stiffness in a hot bath, and tell the butler that it will do for a cold bath to-morrow; still I plunge my carving-knife into the loin of lamb, and fill up the chinks with that spinach and those eggs; still I quench my thirst with that Burgundy, of _which no drop remained in the decanter_; and still I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself dying in torture by antimonial poisoning.
But we have supped full on horrors. Good night, and pleasant dreams.
XLII
SOCIAL CHANGES
I have been invited to make some comments on recent changes in society, and I obey the call, though not without misgiving. "Society" in its modern extension is so wide a subject that probably no one can survey more than a limited portion of its area; and, if one generalizes too freely from one's own experience, one is likely to provoke the contradictions of critics who, surveying other portions, have been impressed by different, and perhaps contrary, phenomena. All such contradictions I discount in advance. After all, one can only describe what one has seen, and my equipment for the task entrusted to me consists of nothing more than a habit of observation and a retentive memory.
I was brought up in that "sacred circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" of which Mr. Beresford-Hope made such excellent fun in "Strictly Tied Up." As Mr. Squeers considered himself the "right shop for morals," so the Whigs considered themselves the right shop for manners. What they said and did every one ought to say and do, and from their judgment there was no appeal. A social education of this kind leaves traces which time is powerless to efface--"_Vieille école, bonne école, begad!_" as Major Pendennis said. In twenty-five years' contact with a more enlarged society, one has found a perpetual interest in watching the departure, gradual but nearly universal, from the social traditions of one's youth. The contrast between Now and Then is constantly reasserting itself; and, if I note some instances of it just as they occur to my mind, I shall be doing, at any rate in part, what has been required of me.
I will take the most insignificant instances first--instances of phrase and diction and pronunciation. I am just old enough to remember a greatgrandmother who said that she "lay" at a place when she meant that she had slept there, and spoke of "using the potticary" when we should speak of sending for the doctor. Some relations of a later generation said "ooman" for woman, and, when they were much obliged, said they were much "obleeged." "Brarcelet" for bracelet and "di'monds" for diamonds were common pronunciations. Tuesday was "Toosday," and first was "fust." Chariot was "charr'ot," and Harriet "Harr'yet," and I have even heard "Jeames" for James. "Goold" for gold and "yaller" for yellow were common enough. Stirrups were always called "sturrups," and squirrels "squrrels," and wrapped was pronounced "wropped," and tassels "tossels," and Gertrude "Jertrude." A lilac was always called a "laylock," and a cucumber a "cowcumber." The stress was laid on the second syllable of balcony, even as it is written in the "Diverting History of John Gilpin":--
"At Edmonton his loving wife From the balcony spied Her tender husband, wondering much To see how he did ride."
_N.B._--Cowper was a Whig.
Of course, these archaisms were already passing away when I began to notice them, but some of them survive until this hour, and only last winter, after an evening service in St. Paul's Cathedral, I was delighted to hear a lady, admiring the illuminated dome, exclaim, "How well the doom looks!"
Then, again, as regards the names of places. I cannot profess to have heard "Lunnon," but I have heard the headquarters of my family called "'Ooburn," and Rome "Roome," and Sèvres "Saver," and Falmouth "Farmouth," and Penrith "Peerith," and Cirencester "Ciciter."
Nowadays it is as much as one can do to get a cabman to take one to Berwick Street or Berkeley Square, unless one calls them Berwick or Burkley. Gower Street and Pall Mall are pronounced as they are spelt; and, if one wants a ticket for Derby, the booking-clerk obligingly corrects one's request to "Durby."
And, as with pronunciation, so also with phrase and diction--
"Change and decay in all around I see."
When I was young the word "lunch," whether substantive or verb, was regarded with a peculiar horror, and ranked with "'bus" in the lowest depths of vulgarity. To "take" in the sense of eat or drink was another abomination which lay too deep for words. "You take exercise or take physic; nothing else," said Brummel to the lady who asked him to take tea. "I beg your pardon, you also take a liberty," was the just rejoinder.
I well remember that, when the journals of an Illustrious Person were published and it appeared that a royal party had "taken luncheon" on a hill, it was stoutly contended in Whig circles that the servants had taken the luncheon to the hill where their masters ate it; and, when a close examination of the text proved this gloss to be impossible, it was decided that the original must have been written in German, and that it had been translated by some one who did not know the English idiom. To "ride," meaning to travel in a carriage, was, and I hope still is, regarded as the peculiar property of my friend Pennialinus;[12] and I remember the mild sensation caused in a Whig house when a neighbour who had driven over to luncheon declined to wash her hands on the ground that she had "ridden in gloves." The vehicle which was invented by a Lord Chancellor and called after his name was scrupulously pronounced so as to rhyme with groom, and any one indiscreet enough to say that he had ridden in "the Row" would probably have been asked if he had gone round by "the Zoo."
[12] A character invented by Mr. William Cory.
"Cherry pie and apple pie; all the rest are tarts," was an axiom carefully instilled into the young gastronomer; while "to pass" the mustard was bound in the same bundle of abominations as "I'll trouble you," "May I assist you?" "Not any, thank you," and "A very small piece."
Then, again, as to what may be called the Manners of Eating. A man who put his elbows on the table would have been considered a Yahoo, and he who should eat his asparagus with a knife and fork would have been classed with the traditional collier who boiled his pineapple. Fish-knives (like oxidized silver biscuit-boxes) were unknown and undreamt-of horrors. To eat one's fish with two forks was the _cachet_ of a certain circle, and the manner of manipulating the stones of a cherry pie was the _articulus stantis vel cadentis_. The little daughter of a great Whig house, whose eating habits had been contracted in the nursery, once asked her mother with wistful longing, "Mamma, when shall I be old enough to eat bread and cheese with a knife, and put the knife in my mouth?" and she was promptly informed that not if she lived to attain the age of Methuselah would she be able to acquire that "unchartered freedom." On the other hand, old gentlemen of the very highest breeding used after dinner to rinse their mouths in their finger-glasses, and thereby caused unspeakable qualms in unaccustomed guests. In that respect at any rate, if in no other, the most inveterate praiser of times past must admit that alteration has not been deterioration.
Another marked change in society is the diminution of stateliness. A really well-turned-out carriage, with a coachman in a wig and two powdered footmen behind, is as rare an object in the Mall as a hansom in Bermondsey or a tandem in Bethnal Green. Men go to the levée in cabs or on motor-cars, and send their wives to the Palace Ball in the products of the Coupé Company. The Dowager Duchess of Cleveland (1792-1883) once told me that Lord Salisbury had no carriage. On my expressing innocent surprise, she said, "I have been told that Lord Salisbury goes about London in a brougham;" and her tone could not have expressed a more lively horror if the vehicle had been a coster's barrow. People of a less remote date than the Duchess's had become inured to barouches for ladies and broughams for men, but a landau was contemned under the derogatory nickname of a "demi-fortune," and the spectacle of a great man scaling the dizzy heights of the 'bus or plunging into the depths of the Twopenny Tube would have given rise to lively comment.
A pillar of the Tory party, who died not twenty years ago, finding his newly-married wife poking the fire, took the poker from her hands and said with majestic pain, "My dear, will you kindly remember that you are now a countess?" A Liberal statesman, still living, when he went to Harrow for the first time, sailed up the Hill in the family coach, and tradition does not report that his schoolfellows kicked him with any special virulence.
I have known people who in travelling would take the whole of a first-class carriage sooner than risk the intrusion of an unknown fellow-passenger: their descendants would as likely as not reach their destination on motor-cars, having pulled up at some wayside inn for mutton chops and whisky-and-soda.
XLIII
SOCIAL GRACES
Though stateliness has palpably diminished, the beauty of life has as palpably increased. In old days people loved, or professed to love, fine pictures, and those who had them made much of them. But with that one exception no one made any attempt to surround himself with beautiful objects. People who happened to have fine furniture used it because they had it; unless, indeed, the desire to keep pace with the fashion induced them to part with Louis Seize or Chippendale and replace it by the austere productions of Tottenham Court Road. The idea of buying a chimneypiece or a cabinet or a bureau because it was beautiful never crossed the ordinary mind. The finest old English china was habitually used, and not seldom smashed, in the housekeeper's room. It was the age of horse-hair and mahogany, and crimson flock papers and green rep curtains. Whatever ornaments the house happened to possess were clustered together on a round table in the middle of the drawing-room. The style has been immortalized by the hand of a master: "There were no skilfully contrasted shades of grey or green, no dado, no distemper. The woodwork was grained and varnished after the manner of the Philistines, the walls papered in dark crimson, with heavy curtains of the same colour, and the sideboard, dinner-waggon, and row of stiff chairs were all carved in the same massive and expensive style of ugliness. The pictures were those familiar presentments of dirty rabbits, fat white horses, bloated goddesses, and misshapen boors by masters, who if younger than they assumed to be, must have been quite old enough to know better." A man who hung a blue-and-white plate on a wall, or put peacocks' feathers in a vase, would have been regarded as insane; and I well remember the outcry of indignation and scorn when a well-known collector of bric-a-brac had himself painted with a pet teapot in his hands.
In this respect the change is complete. The owners of fine picture-galleries no longer monopolize "art in the home." People who cannot afford old masters invoke the genius of Mr. Mortimer Menpes. If they have not inherited French furniture they buy it, or at least imitations of the real, which are quite as beautiful. A sage-green wash on the wall, and a white dado to the height of a man's shoulder, cover a multitude of paper-hanger's sins. The commonest china is pretty in form and colour. A couple of rugs from Liberty's replace the hideous and costly carpets which lasted their unfortunate possessors a lifetime; and, whereas in those distant days one never saw a flower on a dinner-table, now "it is roses, roses all the way," or, when it cannot be roses, it is daffodils and tulips and poppies and chrysanthemums.
All this is the work of the despised æsthetes; but this generation will probably see no meaning in the great drama of "Patience," and has no conception of the tyrannous ugliness from which Bunthorne and his friends delivered us. Their double achievement was to make ugliness culpable, and to prove that beauty need not be expensive.
The same change may be observed in everything connected with Dinner. No longer is the mind oppressed by those monstrous hecatombs under which, as Bret Harte said, "the table groaned and even the sideboard sighed." Frascatelli's monstrous bills of fare, with six "side dishes" and four sweets, survive only as monuments of what our fathers could do. Racing plate and "epergnes," with silver goddesses and sphinxes and rams' horns, if not discreetly exchanged for prettier substitutes, hide their diminished heads in pantries and safes. Instead of these horrors, we have bright flowers and shaded lights; and a very few, perhaps too few, dishes, which both look pretty and taste good. Here, again, expensive ugliness has been routed, and inexpensive beauty enthroned in its place.
The same law, I believe, holds good about dress. With the mysteries of woman's clothes I do not presume to meddle. I do not attempt to estimate the relative cost of the satins and ermine and scarves which Lawrence painted, and the "duck's-egg bolero" and "mauve hopsack" which I have lately seen advertized in the list of a winter sale. But about men's dress I feel more confident. The "rich cut Genoa velvet waistcoat," the solemn frock coat, the satin stock, and the trousers strapped under the wellingtons, were certainly hideous, and I shrewdly suspect that they were vastly more expensive than the blue serge suits, straw hats, brown boots, and sailor-knot ties in which the men of the present day contrive to look smart without being stiff.
When Mr. Gladstone in old age revisited Oxford and lectured on Homer to a great gathering of undergraduates, he was asked if he saw any difference between his hearers and the men of his own time. He responded briskly, "Yes, in their dress, an enormous difference. I am told that I had among my audience some of the most highly-connected and richest men in the university, and there wasn't one whom I couldn't have dressed from top to toe for £5."
I have spoken so far of material beauty, and here the change in society has been an inexpressible improvement; but, when I turn to beauty of another kind, I cannot speak with equal certainty. Have our manners improved? Beyond all question they have changed, but have they changed for the better?
It may seem incongruous to cite Dr. Pusey as an authority on anything more mundane than a hair-shirt, yet he was really a close observer of social phenomena, as his famous sermon on Dives and Lazarus, with its strictures on the modern Dives's dinner and Mrs. Dives's ball-gown, sufficiently testifies. He was born a Bouverie in 1800, when the Bouveries still were Whigs, and he testified in old age to "the beauty of the refined worldly manners of the old school," which, as he insisted, were really Christian in their regard for the feelings of others. "If in any case they became soulless as apart from Christianity, the beautiful form was there into which real life might re-enter."
We do not, I think, see much of the "beautiful form" nowadays. Men when talking to women lounge, and sprawl, and cross their legs, and keep one hand in a pocket while they shake hands with the other, and shove their partners about in the "Washington Post," and wallow in the Kitchen-Lancers. All this is as little beautiful as can be conceived. Grace and dignity have perished side by side. And yet, oddly enough, the people who are most thoroughly bereft of manners seem bent on displaying their deficiencies in the most conspicuous places. In the old days it would have been thought the very height of vulgarity to run after royalty. The Duke of Wellington said to Charles Greville, "When we meet the Royal Family in society they are our superiors, and we owe them all respect." That was just all. If a Royal Personage knew you sufficiently well to pay you a visit, it was an honour, and all suitable preparations were made. "My father walked backwards with a silver candlestick, and red baize awaited the royal feet." If you encountered a prince or princess in society, you made your bow and thought no more about it. An old-fashioned father, who had taken a schoolboy son to call on a great lady, said, "Your bow was too low. That is the sort of bow we keep for the Royal Family." There was neither drop-down-dead-ativeness, nor pushfulness, nor familiarity. Well-bred people knew how to behave themselves, and there was an end of the matter. But to force one's self on the notice of royalty, to intrigue for visits from Illustrious Personages, to go out of one's way to meet princes or princesses, to parade before the gaping world the amount of intimacy with which one had been honoured, would have been regarded as the very madness of vulgarity.
Another respect in which modern manners compare unfavourably with ancient is the growing love of titles. In old days people thought a great deal, perhaps too much, of Family. They had a strong sense of territorial position, and I have heard people say of others, "Oh, they are cousins of ours," as if that fact put them within a sacred and inviolable enclosure. But titles were contemned. If you were a peer, you sate in the House of Lords instead of the House of Commons; and that was all. No one dreamed of babbling about "peers" as a separate order of creation, still less of enumerating the peers to whom they were related.
A member of the Tory Government was once at pains to explain to an entirely unsympathetic audience that the only reason why he and Lord Curzon had not taken as good a degree as Mr. Asquith was that, being the eldest sons of peers, they were more freely invited into the County society of Oxfordshire. I can safely say that, in the sacred circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood, that theory of academical shortcoming would not have been advanced.
The idea of buying a baronetcy would have been thought simply droll, and knighthood was regarded as the guerdon of the successful grocer. I believe that in their inmost hearts the Whigs enjoyed the Garters which were so freely bestowed on them; but they compounded for that human weakness by unmeasured contempt for the Bath, and I doubt if they had ever heard of the Star of India. To state this case is sufficiently to illustrate a conspicuous change in the sentiment of society.
XLIV
PUBLICITY _V._ RETICENCE
The great people of old time followed (quite unconsciously) the philosopher who bade man "hide his life." Of course, the stage of politics was always a pillory, and he who ventured to stand on it made up his mind to encounter a vast variety of popular missiles. "In my situation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford," said the Duke of Wellington, "I have been much exposed to authors;" and men whom choice or circumstances forced into politics were exposed to worse annoyances than "authors." But the line was rigidly drawn between public and private life. What went on in the home was sacredly secreted from the public gaze. People lived among their relations and friends and political associates, and kept the gaping world at a distance. Now we worship Publicity as the chief enjoyment of human life. We send lists of our shooting-parties to "Society Journals." We welcome the Interviewer. We contribute personal paragraphs to _Classy Cuttings_. We admit the photographer to our bedrooms, and give our portraits to illustrated papers. We take our exercise when we have the best chance of being seen and noticed, and we never eat our dinner with such keen appetites as amid the half-world of a Piccadilly restaurant. In brief, "Expose thy life" is the motto of the new philosophy, and I maintain that in this respect, at any rate, the old was better.