Memoirs of Life and Literature Part 5

For young men who are already equipped with influential friends or connections, a society which is relatively small and more or less cohesive is in some ways more easy of access than one which is more numerous, but in which, unless their means are ample enough to excite the compet.i.tive affection of mothers, they are more likely to be lost.

In this respect I may look on myself as fortunate, for my circle of acquaintances very rapidly widened as soon as, having done with Oxford, I began to stay in London for more than a week at a time, and secured a habitation, more or less permanent, of my own. While I was first looking about for one which I thought would be suitable, Wentworth returned the hospitality which I had previously shown him at Oxford by putting me up for a fortnight at his house on the Chelsea Embankment, and during this visit an incident took place which, if merely judged by the names of the few persons concerned in it, might be thought picturesquely memorable.

Students of Robert Browning may recollect a short poem of his which begins with the following lines:

And did you once see Sh.e.l.ley plain?

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you answer him again?

How strange it seems and true!

My own answer would be, I did not see Sh.e.l.ley plain, but I did the next thing to it. Sir Percy and Lady Sh.e.l.ley--the poet's son and daughter-in-law--were Wentworth's near neighbors, though he never had met either of them. Lady Sh.e.l.ley had been an old friend of my mother's, and I took him one day to tea with her. To the wife of Sh.e.l.ley's son I introduced Byron's grandson. What event could seem more thrilling to any one whose sentiments were attuned to the music of Browning's verses?

What really happened was this: Lady Sh.e.l.ley said to me some pleasant things about my mother; we all of us lamented the prevalence of the east wind, and then, having recommended her crumpets, she discussed with Wentworth the various large houses lately built in the neighborhood. At this juncture the drawing-room door opened and the son of the author of "Prometheus Unbound" entered. He was a fresh-looking country gentleman, whose pa.s.sion was private theatricals. Close to his own house he had built a little private theater, and the conversation turned thenceforward on the question of whether a license would be necessary if the public were admitted by payment to witness the performance of a farce in the interest of some deserving charity.

By the time I left Wentworth's roof I had arranged to share with two Catholic friends a suite of rooms at a private hotel in Dover Street.

Both belonged to well-known Catholic families, and had ready access to the world of Catholic gayety, especially in so far as this was represented by b.a.l.l.s. One of them, through his skill as a dancer and his buoyant vivacity in conversation, was in much wider request. By the agency of Augustus Savile and others--of "social fairies" (as Lord Beaconsfield called them), such as the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, whom I had known well at Torquay--cards for b.a.l.l.s and parties, in quickly increasing numbers, found their way to myself likewise; while in other directions doors were opened also which led to a world of a more serious aspect and character.

Of b.a.l.l.s I need say little except to observe that I went to a great many, and so far followed the advice of Lady E---- of T---- that I did not often find myself at a ball "in a two-roomed house." For this the princ.i.p.al reason was that, even from my childhood, I was wanting in any inclination to dance, and thus preferred many-roomed houses in which persons who were so disposed could sit out and converse, the very fact that a ball was in progress being hardly so much as perceptible. In this connection I may observe that, during my earlier days, the princ.i.p.al b.a.l.l.s were still to a certain extent those which were given in houses famous for their traditions and their magnitude, such as Devonshire House, Bridgwater House, Stafford House, and so forth; but already things were in this respect changing. Newly established families, or families in the act of establishing themselves, had begun to outdo the "great houses" in their lavish expenditure on this kind of entertainment. The center of social gravity was in this respect being shifted. As an ill.u.s.tration of this fact I remember some curt observations made by two ladies who were in the act of bringing out their daughters. Both belonged to families of historical and high distinction, but their means were not equal to their dignity. One of them said, "If I want to take out my daughter, I have generally to go to the house of someone who is not a gentleman." Another said: "I don't care for London any longer. It seems that the only people who are giving b.a.l.l.s to-day are people whose proper business would be to black my boots." Utterances of this kind, though of course greatly exaggerated, were straws which showed the direction in which the wind was blowing.

Let me turn from the world of b.a.l.l.s to a _milieu_ which is less frivolous, and take certain ladies as types of tendencies which then prevailed in it. It will be enough to mention four, whose houses represented society as, in some ways, at its best. I refer to Mrs.

William Lowther, Lady Marian Alford, Louisa, Lady Ashburton (whom I thus group together because their isolated and commanding dwellings stood practically in the same row), and Lady Somers. All these were women of the highest cultivation. They were devoted to art. Mrs. Lowther was herself an artist. Mrs. Lowther and Lady Ashburton, though thorough women of the world with regard to their mundane company, were remarkable for a grave philanthropy which they sacrificed much to practice. Indeed at some of their entertainments it was not easy to tell where society ended and high thinking began. This could not be said of Lady Somers or of Lady Marian. Though in artistic and intellectual taste they equaled the three others, the guests whom they collected about them were essentially chosen with a view to the social charm which wit, manners, or beauty enabled them, as if by magic, to communicate to the pa.s.sing moment. And here it may be observed conversely that in a world like that of London the art of society depends not on choice only, but also, and no less, on an equally careful rejection, and is for that reason beset by peculiar and varying difficulties. Of these difficulties Lady Marian herself once spoke to me. They had, she said, been lately brought home to her by certain of her friends who had been urging her to give a ball--a suggestion which, for the following reasons, she found herself unwilling to entertain. "It is impossible," she said, "to give a successful ball in London without being very ill-natured to a large number of people. Many of those who would think they had a right to be asked would--though on other occasions no doubt welcome enough--be as much out of place in a ballroom as a man would be in a boat race who could not handle an oar." But she was, so she added, going to make an attempt at reviving a kind of entertainment to which no such difficulties would attach themselves. During the months of the coming winter she proposed to send out cards to all her more intimate acquaintances; announcing that she would always be at home after dinner on a certain day each week, and begging them to give her their company whenever, and as often as, they pleased. A certain number of people--all of them agreeable and distinguished--responded to this appeal; but their number rarely exceeded fifteen or twenty, and Lady Marian was at length bound to admit that the compet.i.tive attractions developed by the enlargement of social life were such as to render a revival of the _salon_ impossible, even among acquaintances so carefully chosen as her own.

I may, however, advert to another lady who in a certain sense succeeded where Lady Marian failed; but she succeeded by basing her _salon_ on a noticeably different principle--namely, that of inclusion, whereas that of Lady Marian was selection. The pa.s.sport to her drawing-rooms was fame--even fame of the most momentary kinds--and as fame is the meed of very various activities, not all her own charm was sufficient on some occasions to prevent her company from being a clash of ill.u.s.trious rivals rather than a _reunion_ of friends.

Of a clash of this kind I was once myself a witness, though n.o.body at the moment divined that there was a clash at all. The scene was not in London, but at the lady's house in the country, where a few guests were staying with her for the inside of a week. Two of these guests were poets; we may call them Sir E. and Sir L. The visit coincided with the time of Tennyson's last illness, the reports of which became daily more alarming. The two poets evinced much becoming anxiety, though this did not interfere with the zeal with which one day at luncheon they consumed a memorable plum tart. Next morning neither of them appeared at breakfast; and when both of them remained in their bedrooms for the larger part of the day I came to the prosaic conclusion that the plum tart had been too much for them. Next morning came the news of Tennyson's death. The two bards remained in their cells till noon, after which they both reappeared like men who had got rid of a burden. The true secret of their retirement revealed itself the morning after, when each of two great newspapers, with which they were severally connected, was found to contain long columns of elegy on the irreparable loss which the country had just suffered--compositions implying a suggestion on the part of each of the elegists that a poet existed who was not unfit to repair it. That same day after luncheon the two compet.i.tors departed.

Our hostess and the other guests saw them off at the station, and as the train went on, the elegists were seen waving independent adieux, one from a first, the other from a third-cla.s.s carriage. The successor to the late Laureate was Mr. Alfred Austin.

I knew Alfred Austin well; and a few words with regard to him may not be inappropriate here. Though his poetry has not commanded any very wide attention, he had more of true poetry in him than many people imagine.

He had all the qualifications of a really great poet except a sustained faculty for writing really good poetry. He had a sound philosophic conception of what the scope and functions of great poetry are; and it would be possible to select from his works isolated pa.s.sages of high and complete beauty. But, if judged by his poetry as a whole, he seems to have been so indolent or so deficient in the faculty of self-criticism that for the most part he suffered himself to be content with language which resembled an untuned piano, his performances on which were often calculated to affront the attention of his audience rather than to arrest and capture it. He once or twice asked me to make his works the subject of a critical and comprehensive essay. With some diffidence I consented, and accomplished this delicate task by picking out a number of his best and most carefully finished pa.s.sages, which showed what he could do if he tried, and how far by pure carelessness he elsewhere fell short of the standard which he himself had set. For example, from his "Human Tragedy" I quoted the following lines, one of which refers to Rome as a place where "Papal statues arrogantly wave"; while in another, describing a headlong stream, he says with the utmost complacency that:

The cascade Bounded adown the cataract.

I pointed out that no conceivable feat was so absolutely impossible for a statue as that of "waving," and that, a cataract and a cascade being practically the same thing, it was impossible that the former could manage to bound down the latter. My practical moral, as addressed to the Laureate, was, "Be just to yourself, and the public will be just to you," and the compliment implied in one part of this criticism did much to mitigate the unwelcome tenor of the other.

Many interesting people I used to meet at the house of Mr. Froude the historian. Among these were two relatives of Mr. Froude's second wife--namely, Henry Cowper, one of the most charming conversationalists of his time, Lady Florence Herbert, and, through her, her well-known husband, Auberon. Auberon Herbert was a most singular character. He represented a movement of thought which has since then taken other directions, and would probably now be a.s.sociated with some form or other of socialism. In one sense he was certainly no socialist. On the contrary, he was an ardent champion of individual freedom, as opposed to the tyranny of the state. He even contended that all taxation should be voluntary, and actually started a journal, mainly written by himself, in support of this agreeable doctrine. He was, however, yet more pertinacious as an advocate of what is now called "the simple life." His wife shared, though she slightly perhaps tempered, his opinions; and when they first set up house together they insisted that all their household--the domestics included--should dine at the same table. After a week's experience, however, of this regime, the domestics all gave warning, and the establishment was reconstructed on a more conventional footing. This counter-revolution had been accomplished before I knew him, and my intimate acquaintance with him began at a great shooting party given at Highclere Castle by Lord Carnarvon, his brother. Neither I nor he were shooters, and while battues were in progress, and guns were sounding daily at no very great distance, he walked me about the park, declaring that modern castles which stood for nothing but the slaughter of half-tame birds were examples of a civilization completely gone astray. In order that I might see what, shorn of its earlier eccentricities, was his personal ideal of a reasonably ordered life, he asked me to stay with him for a week at his own home, Ashley Arnewood, in Hampshire, on the borders of New Forest. In due time I went. His dwelling among the woodlands was of very simple construction. It was a small farmhouse bisected by a flagged pa.s.sage giving access to four rooms. On the right as one entered was a kitchen, on the left was an apartment which he dignified by the name of a museum, its sole contents being fragments of ancient British pottery which had been dug up in the neighborhood and were here carefully arranged on a large disused mangle.

Beyond, and opposite to one another, were a dining room so limited in size that one end of the table ab.u.t.ted on a whitewashed wall, and a sitting room, luxuriously warm, which was furnished with several deep and remarkably comfortable chairs. The carpets consisted of rough coconut matting, and draughts in the bedrooms were excluded by rough red blankets, which did duty as curtains. The evening repast was almost obtrusively a tea rather than a dinner, though, in deference to my own presumably unconverted appet.i.te, I, and I alone, was provided with some kind of meat. I could not help feeling at times that for my host and hostess alike this practice of "the simple life" represented a sacrifice to their principles rather than a complete enjoyment of them, for on several occasions before bedtime they both confessed to a sensation of acute hunger, and made an expedition to some mysterious region from which they returned with substantial parallelograms of bread.

Through the Antony Froudes I also made acquaintance with Lecky, whose nervous shyness in conversation was in curious contrast to his weighty style as a writer, and also with Dean Stanley and Whyte Melville the novelist. Between the two latter there might seem to be little connection, but I was asked to meet them at a little dinner of four, Whyte Melville being specially anxious to ask the Dean's advice. This was not, however, advice of any spiritual kind. Whyte Melville was thoroughly at home in the social world and the hunting field, and had made himself a great name as an accurate describer of both, but he was now ambitious of achieving renown in a new territory. He was planning a novel, _Sarchedon_, a story of the ancient East, and was anxious to learn from the Dean what historical authorities would best guide the Homer of Melton and Market Harborough in reconstructing the world of Bel and Baylon.

In speaking of novels I am led on to mention an auth.o.r.ess whose fame was concurrent with Whyte Melville's, and whose visions of modern society were not altogether unlike his own visions of Babylonia. This auth.o.r.ess was "Ouida." Ouida lived largely in a world of her own creation, peopled with foreign princesses, mysterious dukes--masters of untold millions, and of fabulous English guardsmen whose bedrooms in Knightsbridge Barracks were inlaid with silver and tortoise sh.e.l.l. And yet such was her genius that she invested this phantom world with a certain semblance of life, and very often with a certain poetry also. In some respects she was even more striking than her books. In her dress and in her manner of life she was an attempted exaggeration of her own female characters. For many years she occupied a large villa near Florence. During that time she visited London once. There it was that I met her. She depicted herself to herself as a personage of European influence, and imagined herself charged with a mission to secure the appointment of Lord Lytton as British Amba.s.sador in Paris. With this purpose in view she called one day on Lady Salisbury, who, never having seen her before, was much amazed by her entrance, and was still more amazed when Ouida, in confidential tones, said, "I have come to tell you that the one man for Paris is Robert." Lady Salisbury's answer was not very encouraging. It consisted of the question, "And pray, if you please, who is Robert?" In a general way, however, she received considerable attention, and might have received more if it had not been for her reckless ignorance of the complexities of the London world. In whatever company she might be in, her first anxiety was to ingratiate herself with the most important members of it, but she was constantly making mistakes as to who the most important members were. Thus, as one of her entertainers--"Violet Fane"--told me, Ouida was sitting after dinner between Mrs. ----, the mistress of one of the greatest houses in London, and a vulgar little Irish peeress who was only present on sufferance. Ouida treated the former with the coldest and most condescending inattention, and devoted every smile in her possession to an intimate worship of the latter.

When, however, she was in companies so carefully chosen that everybody present was worthy of her best attention, and so small that all were willing to give their best attention to _her_, she showed herself, so I was told, a most agreeable woman. Thus forewarned as to her ways, I found that such was the fact. I gave for her benefit a little luncheon party at the Bachelors' Club, the only guests whom I asked to meet her being Philip Stanhope and Countess Tolstoy (now Lord and Lady Weardale), Lord and Lady Blythswood, and Julia, Lady Jersey. Ouida arrived trimmed with the most exuberant furs, which, when they were removed, revealed a costume of primrose color--a costume so artfully cut that, the moment she sat down, all eyes were dazzled by the sparkling of her small protruded shoes. In a word, she quite looked the part, and, perceiving the impression she had made, was willing to be gracious to everybody. As we were going upstairs to the luncheon room, this effect was completed.

Lady Jersey laid a caressing hand on her shoulder and said: "You must go first. The entertainment is in honor of you." Ouida was here at her best. No one could have been more agreeable and less affected than she.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ouida]

Her latter years were overclouded by poverty. This was due to her almost mad extravagance--to her constant attempts, in short, to live up to the standards of her own heroines. Had she acted like a sensible woman, she might have realized a very fair fortune. She had many appreciative friends, who gave her considerable sums to relieve her at various times from the pressure of financial difficulties; but they realized in the end that to do this was like pouring water into a sieve. Somebody gave her 250 in London to enable her to pay her hotel bill; but before a week was over she had lavished more than a hundred in turning her sitting room at the Langham Hotel into a glade of the most expensive flowers. She died, in what was little better than a peasant's cottage, at Lucca. Among the ladies to whom she had been introduced in London was Winifred, Lady Howard of Glossop. A year or so later Ouida wrote me a letter from Florence, saying, "Your name has been just recalled to me by seeing in the _Morning Post_ that you were dining the other night with Lady Howard of Glossop, one of my oldest friends." This is an example of the way in which her imagination enabled her to live in a fabric of misplaced facts, for the person through whom she became acquainted with Lady Howard was none other than myself. The next letter I had from her was to say that she was dedicating one of her later books--a volume of essays--to me. The letter did not reach me till after many delays, and I often regret the fact that before I was able, or remembered, to answer it she was dead.

Another auth.o.r.ess well known to me, of whom I have made mention already, was the beautiful "Violet Fane," who, under that pseudonym, published many volumes of poetry. Her actual name was Mrs. Singleton. She afterward became Lady Currie. I first knew her before my London days began, and I dedicated _The New Republic_ to her. She was the center of a group of intimates, of whom those who survive must connect her with many of their happiest hours. No one could have combined in a way more winning than hers the discriminations of fashionable life with an inborn pa.s.sion for poetry. She was perfect in features, slight as a sylph in figure, and her large dark eyes alternately gleamed with laughter and were grave as though she were listening for a voice from some vague beyond. Many of her phrases, when she was speaking of social matters, were like rapiers with the tip of which, as though by accident, she would just touch the foibles of her nearest and dearest friends, the result being a delicate puncture rather than the infliction of a wound.

She first became known as a poetess by a small volume of lyrics called _From Dawn to Noon_, in which, if, as some say, poetry be self-revelation, her success, according to certain of her censors, was somewhat too complete. The same criticism was provoked by her second volume, _Denzil Place_, a novel in blank verse interwoven with songs.

Whatever her censors may have said about it, this, from first to last, was a work of real inspiration. Few who have read it will have forgotten the song beginning:

You gave to me on that dear night of parting So much, so little; and yet everything,

or will have failed to recognize the musical ear of one who has given us the liquid melody of two such lines as these:

The tremulous convolvulus whose closing blue eye misses The faint shadow on the dial that foretells the evening hour.

At all events, whatever her merits as a poetess, she was something like a living poem for a certain group of friends, of whom I happened to be one. This group comprised men such as Wilfrid Blunt, Lord Lytton, Philip Currie, Hamilton Aide, Frederick Locker, Clair Vyner, Sir Baldwin Leighton, and others, all of whom had in them a natural appreciation of poetry, while some of them were poets themselves. With a more or less intimate, though loosely formed, group like this my memory a.s.sociates many small gatherings, which generally took the form of dinners, either at "Violet Fane's" own house in Grosvenor Place, or at Hurlingham, or at the "Star and Garter," or at Vyner's house among its gardens and woods at Combe, where we would linger, forgetful of time, and feeling no inclination to join any larger company.

But of all the worlds which, within the world, were more or less self-cohesive and separate, that in which I felt myself most at home was the Catholic. At any entertainment given at a Catholic house the bulk of the guests--perhaps three-fourths of them--would be Catholics. These would be people so closely connected with one another by blood or by lifelong acquaintance as to const.i.tute one large family. Well-born, well-bred, and distinguished by charming and singularly simple manners, they were content to be what they were, and the Darwinian compet.i.tion for merely fashionable or intellectual brilliance, however prevalent elsewhere, was, with few exceptions, to them virtually unknown. Yet whenever anything in the way of formal pomp was necessary, they were fully equal to the occasion. The well-known dinners given by Mrs.

Washington Hibbert, at which four-and-twenty guests would be seated round a huge circular table, would fill Hill Street with swaying family coaches, on whose hammercloths crests and coronets maintained an eighteenth-century magnitude which the modern world was abandoning, while on certain ecclesiastical occasions Catholic society could exhibit a stateliness even more conspicuous.

On one of these latter occasions I was, as well as I can remember, the only non-Catholic in the company. This was a great luncheon party given by the then Lord Bute in honor of Cardinal Manning. Lord Bute, who was in many ways the most learned of the then recent converts to Catholicism, was, as is well known, the original of _Lothair_ in Lord Beaconsfield's famous novel. Lord Beaconsfield's portrait of him was disfigured, and indeed made ridiculous, by the gilding, or rather the tinsel, with which his essentially alien taste bedizened it; but, apart from such exaggerations, there were elements in it of unmistakable likeness, and the entertainment to which I am now referring was, apart from its peculiar sequel, like a page of _Lothair_ translating itself into actual life.

The Butes were at that time living at Chiswick House, which they rented from the Duke of Devonshire. The house is a good example of that grandiose cla.s.sicality which we a.s.sociate with the eighteenth century, and the saloon in which the guests were a.s.sembled provided them with an appropriate background. They were something like thirty in number, and comprised some of the greatest of the then great Catholic ladies. Lord Beaconsfield himself could not have chosen them better. Indeed his Lady St. Jerome was actually there in person. When I entered there was a good deal of talking, and yet at the same time there was something like a hush. I divined, and divined correctly, that the Cardinal had not yet arrived. The minutes went slowly on; the appointed hour was past. At length a sound was heard which seemed to emanate from an anteroom, and presently a figure was solemnly gliding forward--a figure slight, emaciated, and habited in a long black ca.s.sock. This was relieved at the throat by one peeping patch of purple, and above the throat was a face the delicate sternness of which was like semitransparent ivory. The company parted, making way for the great Churchman, and then a scene enacted itself which cannot be better described than in the words written many years previously by the author of _Lothair_ himself. "The ladies did their best to signalize what the Cardinal was and what he represented, by reverences which a posture-master might have envied and certainly could not have surpa.s.sed. They seemed to sink into the earth, and slowly and supernaturally to emerge."

When the banquet was over, and the guests were taking their departure, our host begged me to remain, so that he and I and the Cardinal might have a little conversation by ourselves. We were presently secreted in a small room or closet, and our little talk must have lasted till close upon six o'clock. I half thought for a moment that this might be a planned arrangement so that then and there I might be received into the Roman fold. Matters, however, took a very different course. Under the Cardinal's guidance the conversation almost immediately--how and why I cannot remember--turned to the subject of Spiritualism, and he soon was gravely informing us that, of all the signs of the times, none was more sinister than the multiplication of Spiritualist seances, which were, according to him, neither more nor less than revivals of black magic. He went on to a.s.sert, as a fact supported by ample evidence, that the devil at such meetings a.s.sumed a corporeal form--sometimes that of a man, sometimes that of a beautiful and seductive woman, the results being frequent births, in the prosaic world around us, of terrible hybrid creatures half diabolic in nature, though wholly human in form. On this delicate matter he descanted in such unvarnished language that the details of what he said cannot well be repeated here. Of the truth of his a.s.sertions he obviously entertained no doubt and such was his dry, almost harsh solemnity in making them that, as I listened, I could hardly believe my ears. Our host, though a model of strictly Catholic devoutness, was, so he told me with a smile when the Cardinal had taken his departure, affected very much as I was. The impression left on both of us was that, in the Cardinal's character, there must have been a vein of almost astounding credulity--a credulity which would account for the readiness with which, as a social reformer, he adopted on many occasions the wildest exaggerations of agitators.

I was subsequently invited to call on him at the Archbishop's house in Westminster. During the interview which ensued he revealed intellectual qualities very different from those which had elicited a furtive smile even from a Catholic such as his host at Chiswick. We spent most of the morning in discussing the ultimate difficulties, philosophical, historical, and scientific, which preclude the modern mind from an a.s.sent to the philosophy of Catholicism. He displayed on this occasion, a broadness and a balance, if not a profundity of thought, in which many theologians who call themselves liberals are wanting. He spoke even of militant atheists, such as Huxley and Tyndall, without any sarcastic anger or signs of moral reprobation. He spoke of their opinions, not as sins which demanded chastis.e.m.e.nt, but simply as intellectual errors which must be cured by intellectual refutation, rather than by moral anathemas, and the personal relations subsisting between him and them were relations--so I have always understood--of mutual amity and respect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDINAL MANNING]

Of another prominent Catholic, Wilfrid Ward, the same thing may be said.

As a Catholic apologist he was a model of candor and suavity. He was, moreover, a most agreeable man of the world, among his accomplishments being that of an admirable mimic. He was, however, best known as an exponent of Catholic liberalism; and, since I am here concerned only with recollections of social life, to dwell on him longer would carry me too far astray.

Out of this last observation there naturally arises another, which relates to anecdotes or short sketches of individuals as a method of social history. For certain reasons the scope of this method is limited.

In the first place, the persons whose doings or sayings are commemorated must be persons who, by their position or reputation, are more or less self-explanatory to the ear of the general reader. They will otherwise for the general reader have very little significance. They must also for the most part be dead, so that their susceptibilities may not be wounded by a too free allusion to their doings. Further, the anecdotes told of them must not be to their disadvantage in any way which would wound the susceptibilities of the living. These mortifying restrictions are, for all those who respect them, a deathblow to the most entertaining, perhaps the most instructive, part of what the memoir-writer has to tell. During the last ten years of his life the late Lord Wemyss amused himself by writing memoirs of his own distinguished activities, and on repeated occasions, when I stayed with him for a week in Scotland, he asked me to run my eye over a number of chapters with a view to seeing if any pa.s.sages which might give offense had been left in them. A certain number of such had been already struck out by himself, but I very soon found that a considerable number remained. "G.o.d bless my soul!" he exclaimed when I pointed them out to him. "You are perfectly right. Let me have a blue pencil instantly." Lady P----, a witty woman of the widest European experience, attempted a similar task. She, too, asked me to look at what she had written, deploring the fact that all the most amusing parts had pa.s.sed through the fire to the Moloch of an almost excessive caution. Here again I pointed out to the writer pa.s.sages which had escaped the sacrifice, and which the living would certainly, even if not justifiably, resent--which they would, indeed, resent in exact proportion to their accuracy.

An example of the results which may be achieved by a memoir-writer who neglects this caution is provided by Augustus Hare. Hare was a man possessed of many accomplishments. Like Hamilton Aide, he was a very remarkable artist. He was also a great teller of stories, and a master in the craft of improving whatever truth there might be in them. By birth and otherwise he was well and widely connected, and was a familiar figure in many of the best-known houses in England. He was an indefatigable writer of memoirs, and of all such writers he was incomparably the most intrepid. The possibility of offending others, even though they might be his hosts and hostesses, had no terrors for him. I was once staying at a country house in Suss.e.x when a new book by him appeared, and had just been sent down from Mudie's. I had twice seen its back on a table, and meant to have looked at it in my bedroom before dressing for dinner; but whenever I tried to secure it for my own perusal it had disappeared. I heard someone casually say, "Everybody in the house is reading it." I could not but wonder why. I managed to secure it at last, and set myself to find out the reason. It did not take long to find. Hare, a year before, had been staying in that very house--a house famous for the material perfection of its equipments.

"The servants here," so Hare wrote and printed, "are notoriously more pampered than those in any other house in England, and their insolence and arrogance is proportionate to the luxury in which they live." On another occasion he recorded a visit to Castle ----, the family name of the owners being C----. He summed up his grat.i.tude to his entertainers in the following pithy sentence, "Except dear Lady ----, I never could stand the C----s." Another of his entries was as follows. Having migrated from the Stanhopes' at Chevening to a neighboring old house in Kent, he wrote, "What a comfort it is, after staying with people who are too clever, to find oneself with people who are all refreshingly stupid!" If it were not for the danger of lapsing into indiscretions like these--indiscretions of which Hare seemed altogether unconscious--interesting anecdotes might be here indefinitely multiplied.

Even so, however, such anecdotes, no matter who recorded them, would be simply so many jottings which owed their continuity to the fact that, like the stones of a necklace, they happened to be strung on the thread of a single writer's experiences, and in no two cases would this thread be altogether the same. My own experiences of the social life of London, as I knew it in my earlier days, will perhaps best be described in more general terms. In such terms, then, let me speak of it as, foreshortened by time, it now presents itself to my memory.

For me, in my earlier years, the routine of a London day was practically much as follows. A morning of note-writing--of accepting or refusing invitations--was succeeded by a stroll with some companion among the company--the gay and animated company--which before the hour of luncheon at that time thronged the park. Then, more often than not, came a luncheon at two o'clock, to which many of the guests had been bidden a moment ago as the result of some chance meeting. A garden party, such as those which took place at Sion House or at Osterly, would occupy now and again the rest of an afternoon; but the princ.i.p.al business of every twenty-four hours began with a long dinner at a quarter past eight, or sometimes a quarter to nine. For any young man who took part in the social movement, dinner would be followed by two or by more "At Homes."

Then, when midnight was approaching, began the important b.a.l.l.s, of which any such young man would show himself at an equal number, and dance, eat quails, or sit with a suitable companion under palm trees, as the case might be; while vigilant chaperons, oppressed by the weight of their tiaras, would ask one another, "Who is the young man who is dancing with _my_ daughter?" Finally, if the night were fair, young men, and sometimes ladies, if their houses were close at hand, would stroll homeward through the otherwise deserted streets, while the East, gray already, was being slowly tinged with saffron.

If the life of those who play a part in a London season is to be judged by what they do with themselves during a London season itself, it might be reasonably asked (as it _is_ asked by morose social critics) how any sensible people can find such a life tolerable. To this question there are several answers. One is that no society of a polished and brilliant kind is possible unless special talents and graces, wide experience, knowledge, and the power that depends on knowledge, enter into its composition and support it in a peculiar manner which does not prevail elsewhere. This fact, however, will be but partly intelligible unless we remember that it is based on, and implies, another--namely, that the society which is identified with the life of a London season represents for those who figure in it, not life as a whole, but merely one phase of a life of which the larger part is of very different kinds, and which elsewhere exhibits very different aspects.

This observation specially applies to the days when London society was in the main an annual a.s.semblage of old-established landed families, whose princ.i.p.al homes were in the country, and whose consequence was derived from their rural, not from their urban, a.s.sociations. Their houses in the country were constantly filled with visitors. Society, in a certain sense of the word, surrounded them even there. But it was a society differing in its habits, and even in its const.i.tution, from that which formed itself in London, and of the total lives of most of the persons, composing it, London life represented not more than a quarter.

For me, my own annual life as a Londoner rarely exceeded three months out of twelve. Except for these three months, my habits, as they formed themselves after my father's death, were for a long time these: Of the nine other months I spent about two in Devonshire, where by this time, through inheritance, a new home was open to me--Lauriston Hall, overlooking Torbay, whose waters were visible from the windows through a screen of bal.u.s.trades and rhododendrons. I generally wintered abroad--for the most part on the Riviera--and the rest of my time was occupied in country visits at home, from the South of England and Ireland to the borders of Sutherland and Caithness.

During the months of the London season my immediate preoccupations, superficially at all events, were, no doubt, those of an idler; but even during such periods, as I presently shall have occasion to mention, serious thoughts beset me almost without cessation. Even experiences of human nature which were flashed on me at b.a.l.l.s and dinners, through that species of mental polygamy of which society essentially consists, helped me to mature projects which I executed under conditions of greater calm elsewhere. In the following chapter I shall speak of country houses, describing the atmosphere and aspect of some of those which were best known to me, and which I found most favorable to the prosecution of such serious work as I have accomplished in the way of philosophy, of fiction, and of direct or of indirect politics.

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIETY IN COUNTRY HOUSES