Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 7

With regard to Public Entertainments in the more technical sense, the period of which I am writing was highly favoured. We had Irving and Miss Terry at the height of their powers, with all the gorgeous yet accurate "staging" which Irving had originated. We had Lady Bancroft with that wonderful undertone of pathos in even her brightest comedy, and her accomplished husband, whose peculiar art blended so harmoniously with her own. We had John Hare, the "perfect gentleman" of Stage-land, and the Kendals with their quiet excellence in Drawing-room Drama; and the riotous glory of Mrs. John Wood, whose performances, with Arthur Cecil, at the Court Theatre, will always remain the most mirth-provoking memories of my life. Midway between the Theatre and the Opera, there was the long and lovely series of Gilbert and Sullivan, who surely must have afforded a larger amount of absolutely innocent delight to a larger number of people than any two artists who ever collaborated in the public service.

As to the Opera itself, I must quote a curious pa.s.sage from Lord Beaconsfield, who figures so often in these pages, because none ever understood London so perfectly as he.

"What will strike you most at the Opera is that you will not see a single person you ever saw before in your life. It is strange; and it shows what a ma.s.s of wealth and taste and refinement there is in this wonderful metropolis of ours, quite irrespective of the circles in which we move, and which we once thought, entirely engrossed them."

Those words describe, roughly, the seasons of 1867-1870; and they still hold good, to a considerable extent, of my earlier years in London. The Opera was then the resort of people who really loved music. It had ceased to be, what it had been in the 'thirties and 'forties, a merely fas.h.i.+onable resort; and its social resurrection had scarcely begun.

Personally, I have always been fonder of real life than of its dramatic counterfeit; and a form of Public Entertainment which greatly attracted me was that provided by the Law Courts. To follow the intricacies of a really interesting trial; to observe the demeanour and aspect of the witnesses; to listen to the impa.s.sioned flummery of the leading counsel; to note its effect on the Twelve Men in the Box; and then to see the Chinese Puzzle of conflicting evidence arranged in its d.a.m.ning exactness by a skilful judge, is to me an intellectual enjoyment which can hardly be equalled. I have never stayed in court after the jury had retired in a capital case, for I hold it impious to stare at the mortal agony of a fellow-creature; but the trial of Johann Most for inciting to tyrannicide; of Gallagher and his gang of dynamiters for Treason-Felony; and of Dr. Lampson for poisoning his brother-in-law, can never be forgotten. Not so thrilling, but quite as interesting, were the "Jockey Trial," in 1888, the "Baccarat Case," in 1891, and the "Trial at Bar,"

of the Raiders in 1896. But they belong to a later date than the period covered by this chapter.

My fondness for the Law Courts might suggest that I was inclined to be a lawyer. Not so. Only two professions ever attracted me in the slightest degree,--Holy Orders and Parliament. But when the dividing-line of 1874 cut my life in two, it occurred to my Father that, aided by name and connexions, I might pa.s.s a few years at the Parliamentary Bar, pleasantly and not unprofitably, until an opportunity of entering Parliament occurred. Partly with that end in view, and partly because it seemed disgraceful to have no definite occupation, I became, in 1875, a student of the Inner Temple. I duly ate my dinners; or, rather, as the Temple dined at the unappetizing hour of six, went through a form of eating them; and in so doing was constantly reminded of the experiences of my favourite "Pen." The ways of Law-students had altered wonderfully little in the lapse of forty years.

"The ancient and liberal Inn of the Inner Temple provides in its Hall, and for a most moderate price, an excellent and wholesome dinner of soup, meat, tarts, and port wine or sherry, for the Barristers and Students who attend that place of refection. The parties are arranged in messes of four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef or leg of mutton, its sufficient apple-pie, and its bottle of wine. 'This is boiled beef day, I believe, Sir,' said Lowton to Pen. 'Upon my word, Sir, I'm not aware,' said Pen. 'I'm a stranger; this is my first term; on which Lowton began to point out to him the notabilities in the Hall.

'Do you see those four fellows seated opposite to us? They are regular swells--tip-top fellows, I can tell you--Mr. Trail, the Bishop of Ealing's son, Honourable Fred Ringwood, Lord Cinqbars' brother, you know; and Bob Suckling, who's always with him. I say, I'd like to mess with those chaps.' 'And why?' asked Pen. 'Why! they don't come down here to dine, you know, they only make believe to dine. _They_ dine here, Lord bless you! They go to some of the swell clubs, or else to some grand dinner-party. You see their names in the _Morning Post_ at all the fine parties in London. They dine! They won't dine these two hours, I dare say.' 'But why should you like to mess with them, if they don't eat any dinner?' Pen asked, still puzzled. 'There's plenty, isn't there?' 'How green you are,' said Lowton. 'Excuse me, but you are green!

They don't drink any wine, don't you see, and a fellow gets the bottle to himself, if he likes it, when he messes with those three chaps.

That's why Corkoran got in with them.'"

Such were dinners at the Temple in Thackeray's time, and such they were in mine. My legal studies were superintended by my friend Mr. J. S. Fox, now K.C., and Recorder of Sheffield. Should this book ever fall under his learned eye, I should be interested to know if he has ever completed the erudite work which in those distant days he contemplated undertaking,

"Tell a Lie and Stick to it:"

A Treatise on the Law of Estoppel.

But this is a digression.

Before I leave London as it was when first I dwelt in it, I ought to recall some of the eminent persons who adorned it. Lord Beaconsfield was at the zenith of his power and popularity. Mr. Gladstone, though the crowning triumph of 1880 was not far off, was so unpopular in Society that I was asked to meet him at a dinner as a favour to the hostess, who found it difficult to collect a party when he was dining. Lord Salisbury had just emerged from a seven years' retirement, and was beginning to play for the Premiers.h.i.+p. Mr. Chamberlain was spoken of with a kind of awe, as a desperate demagogue longing to head a revolution; and Lord Randolph Churchill was hardly known outside the Turf Club.

Law was presided over, as I have already said, by the brilliant c.o.c.kburn, and the mellifluous Coleridge was palpably preparing to succeed him. People whispered wonders about Charles Bowen; and Henry James and Charles Russell had established their positions. In the hierarchy of Medicine there were several leaders. Jenner ruled his patients by terror; Gull by tact, and Andrew Clark by religious mysticism. To me, complaining of dyspepsia, he prescribed a diet with the Pauline formula: "I seek to impose a yoke upon you, that you may be truly free." In the chief seat of the Church sat Archbishop Tait, the most dignified prelate whom I have ever met in our communion, and a really impressive spokesman of the Church in the House of Lords. The Northern Primate, Dr. Thomson, was styled "The Archbishop of Society"; and the Deanery at Westminster sheltered the fine flower of grace and culture in the fragile person of Dean Stanley. G. H. Wilkinson, afterwards Bishop of Truro and of St. Andrews, had lately been appointed to St. Peter's, Eaton Square, and had burst like a gunboat into a Dead Sea of lethargy and formalism.

Of course, the list does not pretend to be exhaustive. It only aims at commemorating a few of the figures, in different walks of life, which commanded my attention when I began to know--otherwise than as a schoolboy can know it--what London is, means, and contains. Five and thirty years have sped their course. My Home in the country has ceased to exist; and I find myself numbered among that goodly company who, in succeeding ages, have loved London and found it their natural dwelling-place. I fancy that Lord St. Aldwyn is too much of a sportsman to applaud the sentiment of his ancestor who flourished in the reign of Charles II., but it is exactly mine.

"London is the only place of England to winter in, whereof many true men might be put for examples. If the air of the streets be fulsome, then fields be at hand. If you be weary of the City, you may go to the Court. If you surfeit of the Court, you may ride into the country; and so shoot, as it were, at rounds with a roving arrow. You can wish for no kind of meat, but here is a market; for no kind of pastime, but here is a companion. If you be solitary, here be friends to sit with you. If you be sick, and one doctor will not serve your turn, you may have twain.

When you are weary of your lodging, you may walk into St. Paul's ... in the Middle Aisle you may hear what the Protestants say, and in the others what the Papists whisper; and, when you have heard both, believe but one, for but one of both says true you may be a.s.sured."

We clear the chasm of a century, and hear Dr. Johnson singing the same tune as Squire Hicks.

"The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I'll venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circ.u.mference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom."

"London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place."

"The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amus.e.m.e.nts."

But even Johnson, who is always quoted as the typical lover of London, was not more enthusiastic in its praise than Gibbon. To him "London was never dull, there at least he could keep the monster _Ennui_ at a respectful distance." For him its heat was always tempered; even its solitude was "delicious." In "the soft retirement of my _bocage de_ Bentinck Street" the dog-days pa.s.s unheeded. "Charming hot weather! I am just going to dine alone. Afterwards I shall walk till dark in _my_ gardens at Kensington, and shall then return to a frugal supper and early bed in Bentinck Street. I lead the life of a philosopher, without any regard to the world or to fas.h.i.+on."

So much for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; we now return to the nineteenth and are listening to Sydney Smith. "I look forward anxiously to the return of the bad weather, coal fires, and good society in a crowded city." "The country is bad enough in summer, but in winter it is a fit residence only for beings doomed to such misery for misdeeds in another state of existence." "You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London are mistakes, more or less grievous--but mistakes." "I shall not be sorry to be in town. I am rather tired of simple pleasures, bad reasoning, and worse cookery."

Let Lord Beaconsfield have the last word, as is his due; for truly did he know and love his London.

"It was a mild winter evening, a little fog still hanging about, but vanquished by the cheerful lamps, and the voice of the m.u.f.fin-bell was heard at intervals; a genial sound that calls up visions of trim and happy hearths. If we could only so contrive our lives as to go into the country for the first note of the nightingale, and return to town for the first note of the m.u.f.fin-bell, existence, it is humbly presumed, might be more enjoyable."

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Lord Beaconsfield, _Tancred_.

[22] Written in May, 1910.

[23] A nickname invented by the famous Eton tutor, "Billy Johnson," for a florid journalist.

[24] Lord Beaconsfield, _Lothair_.

[25] See M. Arnold's Letters, May 15, 1880.

[26] The Right Hon. J. W. Lowther.

[27] Sir George Trevelyan, _The Ladies in Parliament_.

VIII

HOSPITALITY

"I never eat and I never drink," said the Cardinal. "I am sorry to say I cannot. I like dinner-society very much. You see the world, and you hear things which you do not hear otherwise."

LORD BEACONSFIELD, _Lothair_.

The Cardinal was much to be pitied. He had a real genius for society, and thoroughly enjoyed such forms of it as his health and profession permitted. Though he could not dine with Mr. Putney Giles, he went to Mrs. Putney Giles's evening party, where he made an important acquaintance. He looked in at Lady St. Jerome's after dinner; and his visits to Vauxe and to Muriel Towers were fraught with memorable results.

Mrs. Putney Giles, though a staunch Protestant, was delighted to receive a Cardinal, and not less so that he should meet in her drawing-room the inexpressibly magnificent Lothair. That is all in the course of nature; but what has always puzzled me is the ease with which a youth of no particular pretensions, arriving in London from Oxford or Cambridge or from a country home, swims into society, and finds himself welcomed by people whose names he barely knows. I suppose that in this, as in more important matters, the helpers of the social fledgling are good-natured women. The fledgling probably starts by being related to one or two, and acquainted with three or four more; and each of them says to a friend who entertains--"My cousin, Freddy Du Cane, is a very nice fellow, and waltzes capitally. Do send him a card for your dance"--or "Tommy Tucker is a neighbour of ours in the country. If ever you want an odd man to fill up a place at dinner, I think you will find him useful." Then there was in those days, and perhaps there is still, a mysterious race of men--Hierophants of Society--who had great powers of helping or hindering the social beginner. They were bachelors, not very young; who had seen active service as dancers and diners for ten or twenty seasons; and who kept lists of eligible youths which they were perpetually renewing at White's or the Marlborough. To one of these the intending hostess would turn, saying, "Dear Mr. Golightly, _do_ give me your list;" and, if Freddy Du Cane had contrived to ingratiate himself with Mr. Golightly, invitations to b.a.l.l.s and dances, of every size and sort, would soon begin to flutter down on him like snow-flakes. It mattered nothing that he had never seen his host or hostess, nor they him. Corney Grain expressed the situation in his own inimitable verse:

"Old Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball-- And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all.

Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed, And the guest said 'Good-night' to the butler instead."

But light come, light go. Ball-going is elysian when one is very young and cheerful and active, but it is a pleasure which, for nine men out of ten, soon palls. Dinner-society, as Cardinal Grandison knew, is a more serious affair, and admission to it is not so lightly attained.

When Sydney Smith returned from a visit to Paris, he wrote, in the fulness of his heart:

"I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily forget a _matelote_ at the 'Rochers de Cancale,' or an almond tart at Montreuil, or a _poulet a la Tartare_ at Grignon's. These are impressions which no changes in future life can obliterate."

I am tempted to pursue the line of thought thus invitingly opened, but I forbear; for it really has no special connexion with the retrospective vein. I am now describing the years 1876-1880, and dinners then were pretty much what they are now. The new age of dining had begun. Those frightful hecatombs of sheep and oxen which Francatelli decreed had made way for more ethereal fare. The age-long tyranny of "The Joint" was already undermined. I have indeed been one of a party of forty in the dog-days, where a belated haunch of venison cried aloud for decent burial; but such outrages were even then becoming rare. The champagne of which a poet had beautifully said:

"How sad and bad and mad it was, And Oh! how it was sweet!"