Part 20

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 Mr. Luke in "The New Republic," who, after talking about "liberal air," "sedged brooks," and "meadow grass," admitted that it would be a horrid 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.

So now, when 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. One can live on a larger or a smaller scale according to one's taste or one's purse; cramp oneself in a doll's house in Mayfair, or expand one's wings in a Kensingtonian mansion; or even contract oneself into a flat, or hide one's diminished head in the upper storey of a shop. One can entertain or not entertain, spend much or spend little, live on one's friends or be lived on by them, exactly as one finds most convenient: and unquestionably social freedom is a great element in human happiness.

For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own, and yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home; and, as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London.

"Home! Sweet Home!" Yes. (I am quoting now from my friend, Henry Scott Holland.) That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For forty years we have never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their languages by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our honest British Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn with all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old Home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never die out of their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with father and mother in the healthy gladness of their childhood. Ah!

"Home! Sweet Home! There's no place like Home."

That is what we all repeat, and all believe, and cheer to the echo. And, behind all our British complacency about it, nobody would deny the vital truth that there is in this belief of ours. 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 fountains 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.

XLVII

HOSPITALITY

In my last chapter I was deploring the modern tendency of society to desert the country and cultivate London. And the reason why I deplore it is that all the educating influences of the Home are so infinitely weaker in the town than in the country. In a London home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots through the back windows of the nursery will not elevate even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by Cubitt or a palace of terracotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the previous owners are not known to you even by name. "The Square" or "the Gardens" are sorry substitutes for the Park and the Pleasure-grounds, the Common and the Downs. Crossing-sweepers are a deserving folk, but you cannot cultivate those intimate relations with them which bind you to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old women in the almshouses, or the octogenarian waggoner who has driven your father's team ever since he was ten years old. St. Peter's, Eaton Square, or All Saints, Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what Lord Beaconsfield called "brisk and modish"; but they can never have the romantic charm of the country church where you were confirmed side by side with the keeper's son, or proposed to the vicar's daughter when you were wreathing holly round the lectern.

Then, again, as regards social relations with friends and neighbours. "An emulous ostentation has destroyed hospitality." This I believe is absolutely true, and it is one of the worst changes which I have seen. I have already spoken of hospitality as practised in the country. Now I will say a word about hospitality in London.

Of course rich people always gave banquets from time to time, and these were occasions when, in Lord Beaconsfield's drolly vulgar phrase, "the dinner was stately, as befits the high nobility." They were ceremonious observances, conducted on the constitutional principle of "cutlet for cutlet," and must always have been regarded by all concerned in them, whether as hosts or guests, in the light of duty rather than of pleasure. Twenty people woke that morning with the impression that something was to be gone through before bedtime, which they would be glad enough to escape. Each of the twenty went to bed that night more or less weary and ruffled, but sustained by the sense that a social duty had been performed. Banquets, however, at the worst were only periodical events. Real hospitality was constant and informal.

"Come and dine to-night. Eight o'clock. Pot luck. Don't dress."

"My dear, I am going to bring back two or three men from the House. Don't put off dinner in case we are kept by a division."

"I am afraid I must be going back. I am only paired till eleven. Good-night, and so many thanks."

"Good-night; you will always find some dinner here on Government nights. Do look in again!"

These are the cheerful echoes of parliamentary homes in the older and better days of unostentatious entertaining, and those "pot luck" dinners often played an important part in political manoeuvre. Sir George Trevelyan, whose early manhood was passed in the thick of parliamentary society, tells us, in a footnote to "The Ladies in Parliament," that in the season of 1866 there was much gossip over the fact of Lord Russell having entertained Mr. Bright at dinner, and that people were constantly--

"Discussing whether Bright can scan and understand the lines About the Wooden Horse of Troy; and when and where he dines. Though gentlemen should blush to talk as if they cared a button Because one night in Chesham Place he ate his slice of mutton."

Quite apart from parliamentary strategy, impromptu entertaining in what was called "a friendly way" had its special uses in the social system. There is a delicious passage in "Lothair" describing that hero's initiation into an easier and more graceful society than that in which he had been reared: "He had been a guest at the occasional banquets of his uncle, but these were festivals of the Picts and Scots; rude plenty and coarse splendour, with noise instead of conversation, and a tumult of obstructive dependants, who impeded by their want of skill the very convenience which they were purposed to facilitate." An amazing sentence indeed, but like all Lord Beaconsfield's writings, picturesquely descriptive, and happily contrasted with the succeeding scene: "A table covered with flowers, bright with fanciful crystal, and porcelain that had belonged to Sovereigns who had given a name to its colour or its form. As for those present, all seemed grace and gentleness, from the radiant daughters of the house to the noiseless attendants who anticipated all his wants, and sometimes seemed to suggest his wishes."

The mention of "Lothair" reminds people of my date that thirty years ago we knew a house justly famed for the excellent marriages which the daughters made. There banquets were unknown, and even dinners by invitation very rare. The father used to collect young men from Lord's, or the Lobby, or the Club, or wherever he had been spending the afternoon. Servants were soon dismissed--"It is such a bore to have them staring at one"--and the daughters of the house waited on the guests. Here obviously were matrimonial openings not to be despised; and, even in families where there were no ulterior objects to be served, these free-and-easy entertainings went on from February to July. Short invitations, pleasant company, and genuine friendliness were the characteristics of these gatherings. Very often the dinner was carved on the table. One could ask for a second slice or another wing without feeling greedy, and the claret and amontillado were within the reach of every guest. This, I consider, was genuine hospitality, for it was natural, easy, and unostentatious.

But now, according to all accounts, the spirit of entertaining is utterly changed. A dinner is not so much an opportunity of pleasing your friends as of airing your own magnificence; and ostentation, despicable in itself, is doubly odious because it is emulous. If A has a good cook, B must have a better. If C gave you ortolans stuffed with truffles, D must have truffles stuffed with ortolans. If the E's table is piled with strawberries in April, the F's must retaliate with orchids at a guinea a blossom. G is a little inclined to swagger about his wife's pearl necklace, and H is bound in honour to decorate Mrs. H with a _rivière_ which belonged to the crown jewels of France.

And, as with the food and the decorations, so also with the company. Here, again, Emulous Ostentation carries all before it. Mr. Goldbug is a Yahoo, but he made his millions in South Africa and spends them in Park Lane. Lord Heath is the most abandoned bore in Christendom, but he is an authority at Newmarket. Lady Bellair has had a notoriously chequered career, but she plays bridge in exalted circles. As Lord Crewe sings of a similar enchantress--

"From reflections we shrink; And of comment are chary; But her face is _so_ pink, And it don't seem to vary."

However, she is unquestionably smart; and Goldbug is a useful man to know; and we are not going to be outdone by the Cashingtons, who got Heath to dine with them twice last year. So we invite our guests, not because we like them or admire them, for that in these cases is impossible; not--heaven knows--because they are beautiful or famous or witty; but because they are the right people to have in one's house, and we will have the right people or perish in the attempt.

XLVIII

OSTENTATION

It is many a long year since I saw the inside of a ballroom, but by all accounts very much the same change has come over the spirit of ball-giving as of dinner-giving. Here again the "Emulous Ostentation" which I have described is the enemy. When I first grew up, there were infinitely more balls than now. From Easter till August there were at least two every night, and a hostess counted herself lucky if she had only one rival to contend with. Between 11 P.M. and 2 A.M. Grosvenor Place was blocked by the opposing streams of carriages going from Mayfair to Belgravia, and from Belgravia to Mayfair. There were three or four really great Houses--"Houses" with a capital H--such as Grosvenor House, Stafford House, Dudley House, and Montagu House--where a ball could scarcely help being an event--or, as Pennialinus would say, "a function." But, putting these on one side, the great mass of hostesses contrived to give excellent balls, where every one went and every one enjoyed themselves, with very little fuss and no ostentation. The drawing-room of an ordinary house in Belgravia or Grosvenor Square made a perfectly sufficient ballroom. A good floor, a good band, and plenty of light, were the only essentials of success. Decoration was represented by such quaint devices as pink muslin on the banisters, or green festoons dependent from the chandelier. A good supper was an additional merit; and, if the host produced his best champagne, he was held in just esteem by dancing men. But yet I well remember a cold supper at a ball which the present King and Queen attended, in 1881, and no one grumbled, though perhaps the young bloods thought it a little old-fashioned. The essence of a good ball was not expense or display or overwhelming preparation, but the certainty that you would meet your friends. Boys and girls danced, and married women looked on, or only stole a waltz when their juniors were at supper. In those days a ball was really a merry-making.

Nowadays I gather from the _Morning Post_ that balls are comparatively rare events, but what they lack in frequency they make up in ostentation. As to the sums which the Heits and the Heims, the Le Beers and the De Porters, lavish on one night's entertainment I hear statistical accounts which not only outrage economy but stagger credibility. Here again the rushing flood of ill-gotten gold has overflowed its banks, and polluted the "crystal river of unreproved enjoyment."

There is yet another form of entertainment which Emulous Ostentation has destroyed. A few years ago there still were women in London who could hold a "salon." Of these gatherings the principal attraction was the hostess, and, in a secondary degree, the agreeableness of the people whom she could gather round her. Of fuss and finery, decoration and display, there was absolutely nothing. A typical instance of what I mean will perhaps recur to the memory of some who read this chapter. Picture to yourself two not very large and rather dingy rooms. The furniture is dark and old-fashioned--mahogany and rosewood, with here and there a good cabinet or a French armchair. No prettiness of lace and china; no flowers; and not very much light. Books everywhere, some good engravings, a comfortable sofa, and a tray of tea and coffee. That was all. It is difficult to conceive a less ostentatious or a more economical mode of entertaining; yet the lady who presided over that "salon" had been for fifty years one of the most celebrated women in Europe; had been embraced by Napoleon; had flirted with the Allied Sovereigns; had been described by Byron; had discussed scholarship with Grote, and statecraft with Metternich; had sate to Lawrence, and caballed with Antonelli. Even in old age and decrepitude she opened her rooms to her friends every evening in the year, and never, even in the depths of September, found her court deserted. Certainly it was a social triumph, and one has only to compare it with the scene in the stockbroker's saloon--the blaze of electric light, the jungle of flowers, the furniture from Sinclair's, the pictures from Christie's--and to contrast the assembled guests. Instead of celebrities, notorieties--woman at once under-dressed and over-dressed; men with cent. per cent. written deep in every line of their expressive countenances; and, at the centre of the throng, a hostess in a diamond crown, who conducts her correspondence by telegraph, because her spelling is a little shaky and mistakes in telegrams are charitably attributed to the clerks.

One of the worst properties of Emulous Ostentation is that it naturally affects its victims with an insatiable thirst for money. If Mrs. Tymmyns in Onslow Gardens is to have as good a dinner, and as smart a victoria, and as large a tiara, as her friend Mrs. Goldbug in Park Lane, it is obvious that Mr. Tymmyns must find the money somehow. Who wills the end wills the means; and, if social exigencies demand a larger outlay, the Tymmynses cannot afford to be too scrupulous about their method of providing for it. I suppose it is this consideration which makes us just now a nation of gamblers, whereas our more respectable but less adventurous fathers were well content to be a nation of shopkeepers.

Of course, in all ages there has been a gambling clique in society; but in old days it kept itself, as the saying is, to itself. Of necessity it always was on the look-out for neophytes to initiate and to pillage, but the non-gambling majority of society regarded the gambling minority with horror; and a man who palpably meant to make money out of a visit to a country house would probably have been requested to withdraw. "Order a fly for Mr. L. at eleven o'clock," said old Lord Crewe to the butler when a guest had committed a social atrocity under his roof. "Thank you, Lord Crewe," said Mr. L., "but not for me. I am not going to-day." "Oh yes, you are," responded the host, and secreted himself in his private apartments till the offender had been duly extruded. Similar justice would, I think, have been dealt out to a gambler who rooked the young and the inexperienced. Not so to-day; the pigeon, however unfledged and tender, is the appointed prey of the rook, and the venerable bird who does the plucking is entirely undeterred by any considerations of pity, shame, or fear. "Is he any good?" is a question which circulates round the Board of Green Cloth whenever a new face fresh from Oxford or Sandhurst is noted in the social throng. "Oh yes, he's all right; I know his people," may be the cheerful response; or else, in a very different note, "No, he hasn't got a feather to fly with." Fortunate is the youth on whom this disparaging verdict is pronounced, for in that case he may escape the benevolent attentions of the

"Many-wintered crow That leads the gambling rookery home."

But even impecuniosity does not always protect the inexperienced. A lady who had lived for some years in the country returned to London not long ago, and, enumerating the social changes which she had observed, she said, "People seem to marry on £500 a year and yet have diamond tiaras." It was, perhaps, a too hasty generalization, but an instance in point immediately recurred to my recollection. A young couple had married with no other means of subsistence than smartness, good looks, and pleasant manners. After a prolonged tour round the country houses of their innumerable friends, they settled down at Woolwich. "Why Woolwich?" was the natural enquiry; and the reason, when at length it came to light, was highly characteristic of the age. It appeared that these kind young people used to give nice little evening parties, invite the "Gentlemen Cadets" from Woolwich Academy, and make them play cards for money. The device of setting up housekeeping on the pocket-money of babes and sucklings is thoroughly symptomatic of our decadence. Emulous Ostentation makes every one want more money than he has, and at the same time drugs all scruples of conscience as to the method of obtaining it.

XLIX

PRINCIPLE AND PREJUDICE

Mr. J. A. Froude once told me that he did not in the least mind the accusation which was brought against him (certainly not without reason) of being prejudiced. "A good stiff prejudice," he said, "is a very useful thing. It is like a rusty weathercock. It will yield to a strong and long-continued blast of conviction, but it does not veer round and round in compliance with every shifting current of opinion."

What Mr. Froude expressed other people felt, though perhaps they would not have cared to avow it so honestly.

One of the most notable changes which I have seen is the decay of prejudice. In old days people felt strongly and spoke strongly, and acted as they spoke. In every controversy they were absolutely certain that they were right and that the other side was wrong, and they did not mince their words when they expressed their opinions.

The first Lord Leicester of the present creation (1775-1844) told my father (1807-1894) that, when he was a boy, his grandfather had taken him on his knee and said, "Now, my dear Tom, whatever else you do in life, mind you never trust a Tory;" and Lord Leicester added, "I never have, and, by George, I never will." On the other hand, when Dr. Longley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, did homage on his appointment to the see of Ripon, King William IV. said, "Bishop of Ripon, I charge you, as you shall answer before Almighty God, that you never by word or deed give encouragement to those d---- d Whigs, who would upset the Church of England."

John Keble, the gentle saint of the Tractarian movement, when he saw the Whigs preparing to attack the property of the Church, proclaimed that the time had come when "scoundrels should be called scoundrels." And the Tractarians had no monopoly of vigorous invective, for, when their famous "Tract XC." incurred the censure of an Evangelical dean, he urbanely remarked that "he would be sorry to trust the author of that tract with his purse."

Macaulay, on the morning after a vital division, in which the Whigs had saved their places by seventy-nine votes, wrote triumphantly to his sister--

"So hang the dirty Tories, and let them starve and pine, And hurrah! for the majority of glorious seventy-nine."

The same cordial partisan wrote of a political opponent that he was "a bad, a very bad, man; a disgrace to politics and to literature;" and, of an acquaintance who had offended him socially, "his powers gone; his spite immortal--a dead nettle."

The great and good Lord Shaftesbury, repudiating the theology of "Ecce Homo," pronounced it "the most pestilential book ever vomited from the jaws of Hell;" and, dividing his political favours with admirable impartiality, he denounced "the brazen faces, low insults, and accursed effrontery" of the Radicals; declared that Mr. Gladstone's "public life had long been an effort to retain his principles and yet not lose his position;" and dismissed Lord Beaconsfield as "a leper, without principle, without feeling, without regard to anything, human or divine, beyond his personal ambition." In the same spirit of hearty prejudice, Bishop Wilberforce deplored the political exigencies which had driven his friend Gladstone into "the foul arms of the Whigs." In the opposite camp was ranged a lady, well remembered in the inner circles of Whiggery, who never would enter a four-wheeled cab until she had elicited from the driver that he _was not_ a Puseyite and _was_ a Whig.

"Mamma," asked a little girl of Whig parentage, who from her cradle had heard nothing but denunciation of her father's political opponents, "are Tories born wicked, or do they grow wicked afterwards?" And her mother judiciously replied, "My dear, they are born wicked and grow worse."