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Europe, in its close union with the territorial system. That connection seemed fatally threatened by the creation of the £10 Suffrage. More hopeful observers believed that the Chandos Clause, enfranchizing the tenantfarmers, would preserve the balance between the two rival forces; Greville, his fellow-turfites and clubmen, did not. The new ruling-power they saw was what the political slang of those days called the shopocracy. Sir Robert Peel, to whose final ascendancy in the State the Toryism of Greville's time had resigned itself, had already raised suspicions of his readiness to favor, in future legislation, the new power called into existence by the emancipating Act of 1832. All that had recently passed seemed to confirm the earlier apprehension, to which, in the manner now described, the pessimists had given utterance.

How far, at a later day than the prophet cared to forecast, has the prophecy approached to fulfilment? Among the numerical results of the Grey Reform Act was an increase of the English County Members from 82 to 143, and of English Borough Members from 324 to 403.1 At first the change of the Parliamentary personnel was less visible than from these figures might have been supposed. Even into the Victorian Age the classes, to which had belonged the unreformed M.P.'s were those that supplied the choice of the ten-pounders. The West Indian interest was, to some extent, represented at Westminster before, as well as after, 1832. No great change, indeed, could have been observed in the social material of which the popular House consisted, till the period of railway speculation-of fortunes made one day to be lost the next; of those developments, the name of the York

1 See the official estimate in the Buckingham Papers relating to William IV and Queen Victoria, vol. ii., p. 26.

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King Hudson," is now the memorial; his still-standing house at Albert Gate is to-day occupied by the French Ambassador. At Mrs. Hudson's evening parties Greville and his friends might have seen further signs of the social revolution, in the presence not only of the Waterloo Conqueror, but of Royal Dukes among the guests. As a fact, therefore, the social mixture that began to assert itself during the seasons, about the close of the first half of the nineteenth century, may be looked back to as an innocuous presage of the blend supposed by some to be the unique characteristic of the present day. When he began the closing parts of his journal, Greville no doubt thought his earlier prediction verified, and the gang system fairly established in place of what was once Society.

What Greville really meant by his saying already quoted, and what may be accepted as undoubtedly true, is that, even in his time, Society was becoming, year by year, less exclusively political, and that other interests than those of State affairs promised to constitute the principle of its divisions. That Countess of Jersey, who as Zenobia, figures in Disraeli's novel, appeared to Greville the last survivor of the Hostesses of the old régime. Her daughter, Lady Clementina Villiers, formed part of the success of the famous Berkeley Square entertainments; when that daughter died the parties themselves naturally ceased. Since then, within living remembrance, there have been few great "houses" specially affected to a single party in the State, with mistresses making it their first business, by their social attentions, to supply the cement consolidating all parts and individuals of the connection into a compact whole. Death has lately removed certain ladies, some of whom had rendered great service to their party, or whose

associations suggest the changes that have taken place and that are yet going forward in the socio-political system.

Few situations could seem more discouraging than that confronting the late Lady Salisbury when her house, after Lord Beaconsfield's death, became the social rallying centre of the Conservative Party. The well-known corner mansion in St. James's Square had, under successive Stanley dynasties, been periodically opened to the average Conservative M.P. and his wife. No Countess of Derby had made any show of rivalling the work of Lady Palmerston at Cambridge House, or-much later-that of Lady Waldegrave at Strawberry Hill. The invitations were purely ceremonial, the functions themselves were, in the old word, merely crushes; the invitations were directed in the handwriting of private secretaries or clerks; they were said to be generally sent out with the whips. As a hostess Lady Salisbury at once redeemed her receptions from these reproaches; her parties in Arlington Street, or at Hatfield, were not only pretty or effective as spectacular effects; their atmosphere was changed with a thoughtful kindliness for the guests of all degrees, that distinctly recalled the pervading genius of the Palmerstonian precedents. So far back as Mr. Gladstone's days, Premiers had begun to ask to their State dinners, at the opening of the Session or on Royal birthdays, foremost representatives of science, letters and art. The spirit of this innovation was always visible at the Salisbury gatherings, whose social interest, long before they ceased, had become more bright and varied than anything seen since the Strawberry Hill Saturdays to Mondays. It was really a considerable achievement.

The Christian name alone occurs in the text, but the context places the identity beyond doubt. So, too, in Lothair (see the earlier edi

When the rivalry between the followers of the younger Pitt and Charles Fox was at its height, a Lady Salisbury, rivalling on the Tory side the Mrs. Crewe or the famous Duchess of Devonshire of those days, had, in her drawing-rooms, been the social organizer of political triumphs at the polling-booths. Since that time the Whigs long enjoyed nearly a monopoly of social ascendancy and successful entertainment.

About the time of Lady Salisbury's lamented death, passed away another who had filled a notable place among the hostesses of her day. The equestrienne who managed so perfectly her white Arabian thoroughbred in Rotten Row enjoyed a fame which was European between the Great Exhibition period and that which, following the Crimean War, brought so many famous foreigners on visits to England; it was the drawing-room of Mrs. Stuart Wortley, wherein opens the scene of Disraeli's "Endymion," introducing, whether designedly or by accident, in his own Christian name, Sidney' Herbert, who was afterwards Lord Pembroke. When the Morning Chronicle, the parent of the Saturday Review, had been their organ in the London Press, Mrs. Wortley's drawing-room was the chief meeting-place of the Peelites in London Society; long after the Peelite connection had become a tradition, the Carlton Gardens Salon retained a political interest and importance all its own. After the death of the late Lady Stanley of Alderley, Mrs. Wortley could be compared to none of her contemporaries in the effortless art, which for years attracted to her house statesmen whose names were part of English History, as well as politicians just beginning to be favorably regarded in Parliament by their chiefs.

tions), the Monsignor Catesby bad appeared as Capel.

This was not, technically, a political house. It was the product of a time when the whole genius of Society was statesmanship.

Within the last two or three years new political drawing-rooms have been opened, some of them but too prematurely to be closed. To persons who can recall the social London of the sixties, the retrospect can disclose no figures more imposing in its social groupings than those of the then Lord Lansdowne and the then Lord Stanhope. As hosts for their respective parties, each of these kept together the Liberal and Conservative society of the day. Both, of course, were a great deal more than political entertainers. Lord Lansdowne and Lord Stanhope were each of them literary patrons and forces felt throughout the whole intellectual world as well. Since Lord Stanhope's time Conservatism waited till that of the present Home Secretary for а fresh addition to its social resources. Lady Ridley's drawing-room was the scene of original and enduring party services, which happily connected, by a link of personal acquaintance, the older section of the Conservative rank and file with the new recruits. Neglect of their rising promise is the common reproach against all political partiestheir leaders and their hostesses. Twenty or thirty years ago there may have been a good deal more in the charge than has since then become the case. That it has lost its point must be attributed largely to the results of Lady Ridley's social kindliness, tact and care.

Whether, in our days, hostesses, on either side, still retain much of the political influence associated with an earlier dispensation may, indeed, be doubted. Cards for "At Homes" and drums, as such things used to be called, were welcomed by the preHousehold Suffrage M.P., because these enabled him to gratify the social

curiosity or ambition of his womenkind, and permitted them to read their names in the Morning Post next day as among the fashionable company at Lady Paramount's overnight. Such unsophisticated joys have long been outgrown. The wife and daughters of the Member for Dullborough, from the society papers and our London correspondent's ingenious réchauffé in the local Mercury, have heard more about the stateswomen on their side than, before 1868, they could have dreamed was to be known. The chances also are that the fine ladies of the Paramount household have become, through other agencies, familiar enough to the Dullborough matron and maidens. Business, or philanthropy, quite as effectually as fancy fairs or bazaars of a few years since, are pretty sure, long since, to have introduced these different persons to each other. The new sociopolitical organizations of the period, from Primrose Leagues to District Boards and Soup or Blanket Committees have produced a social fusion that has placed the Dullborough dames on terms of intimacy with the wives and daughters of party leaders scarcely less close than with those of the parish rector. It is scarcely too much to say that save for an occasional visit to the theatre, following a dinner at some restaurant, which is the vogue of the moment, a fête at the Botanical, or an illumination at South Kensington, the people's representatives have ceased to bring their families to London. The expense of a town house has almost entirely disappeared from the M.P.'s sessional outlay; he himself has a room in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, or in the still more modest precinct of Buckingham Gate. Feminine pressure may constrain him to sanction a trip to London by those who bear his name. They are then deposited for a night or two in some corner of the Suffolk Street pied à terre, at some lodging of

a less masculine order, or beneath the roof of a friend's or relative's domicile in town. It is also to be remembered that, by the men, whose personal tastes have exercised an abiding influence on the hospitable arrangements ef the London season, political reunions in private drawing-rooms. were not regarded with much favor. The Society into which went Mr. Gladstone was academic, theological, literary, but, for choice, as little political as possible. Mr. Disraeli's idea of Society was something that diverted him. The latest of his writings contain the most instructive contrast ever drawn between the dull place, which the early Victorian London was, and the very amusing city which in later years it had become.

The facts now reviewed may explain why, during the London season of 1900, so many political houses have been closed. One after another, the existing representatives of whole dynasties of traditional hostesses cause it to be known that they have ceased to give political parties. In the sense that it is no longer organized upon a political basis, Society, therefore, has ceased to exist; its place is already taken by gangs. The present Bishop of London, writing of fourteenth or fifteenthcentury life, has remarked that then Europe, as one knows it now, had not come into being; from the Black Sea to the Atlantic there was one order of Society; of nearly the same composition in all countries, which lived for pleasure or excitement, for war or for sport; there was another class of a very different kind, which struggled to exist. Between the Danube and the Thames may now be found something like a reproduction of the older experience. As an agency for uniting into one social interest the comfortable classes of all Europe, not less than of England, the Turf has long since taken precedence of politics or diplomacy.

The best-known, deservedly the most popular, not less than the most successful of latter-day hostesses, the universally-lamented Madame de Falbe, based her social arrangements on а frank recognition of this development. Nobody ever understood better the polite spirit of her age. At her own home, to the great good of her poorer neighbors, she seemed almost to have taken as the motto for her daily life the opening words of Mr. Disraeli's Manchester speech, which, a generation since, everyone was quoting: "Sanitas Sanitatum, omnia Sanitas." The two opposite tendencies of practical beneficence, and social enjoyment met together in the parties now spoken of; for the very smartest set of smart Society, thanks to such influences as those of the late Duchess of Teck and of our whole Royal Family, while on one side it is bounded by the ladies' lawn or the racecourse, on the other stretches into the province of philanthropic reform. Smart Society, to use the phrase to-day on so many lips, may, perhaps, be said to consist of good-looking and well-dressed young women, and their friends; beauty, whether in music, art, decoration, or dress and general appearance, is one of the notes by which these coteries may be recognized, so, too, are a systematic restlessness and absence of all conventionalism. Neither the thing itself, nor the expression, would have been so much heard of, but for the fashionable ascendancy of late acquired by the Transatlantic element in polite life.

When Thackeray wrote "Pendennis" -for many years indeed, after that-a certain province known as Bohemia, with well-defined limits and a distinct population of its own, had a place in the social map of London. The tastes and attributes, of which this region may have been the earliest home, leaven to-day more appreciably than

has ever before been the case the whole social mass; the district itself no longer boasts a geographical and independent existence of its own. Bohemia, once a place, is now an ubiquitously penetrating influence or fashion. A like fate has long been overtaking the political province of social life on the Thames. An active interest in the issues, aims and conflicts of statesmanship to-day to an extent never known before, is diffused through all classes and all neighborhoods; an exclusively political Society is therefore nearly a thing of the past. Hence the disappearance of the political host or hostess. In that sense only is Greville's generalization verified by events. As a fact, the whole body politic, high or low, seems, in the manner now described, to be a gainer by the substitution of non-political for the political divisions which once separated the social sections. The disintegrating movement has long been operative in the party system at Westminster. That movement is less revolutionary, and more of a reversion to our earlier constitutional use than is sometimes remembered. One need not, therefore, be surprised if while in Parliament a party system is held in solution, its social organization in Belgravia or in Mayfair be in a state of suspended animation also. As a whole, English Society never contained more elements of varied and vigorous vitality than it possesses at the present day. In due time the gangs will give place to new and perhaps better amalgamations than the old.

The organization of the polite world for social purposes on other than political bases is, as we have seen, instructively not less than entertainingly illustrated in the last instalment by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff of his notes from a diary. The earlier volumes abounded in life-like sketches of social reunions and of social leaders, largely

of the political sort. The new book, dealing with a later period, shows the reader the social forces dominating the new epoch. Their interest consequently, though social throughout in everything outside public affairs, is literary or scientific rather than political. During the years now covered by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff there existed in Hertford Street, Mayfair, an host and hostess of that new order reflected in Sir Mountstuart's pages. Of this pair Sir William Priestley has, to the loss of science in Parliament and to the regret of his personal friends, just passed away. Those who knew his London house during the years now looked back upon will always connect its cultured and graceful hospitality with the infusion into London society of some among those ideas and interests which have reorganized, upon the non-political foundation described by the sometime Governor of Madras, the social system which, to Greville, had neither meaning nor attraction, save in reference to politics.

The transition from the older régime to that now existing has involved certain organic changes, worthy indeed of some notice, though by no means so serious as they have been occasionally represented. The antagonism between the old acres and the new wealth now scarcely survives even on the stage. In real life those whose social ascent is supposed to have been by a golden ladder during several generations have been thoroughly imbued with all the tastes, fancies, prejudices, fortes and foibles, social or political, of aristocracy. The fusion, since 1863, when the Prince of Wales was established at Marlborough House, effected between the two traditionally hostile elements has long been so complete as to leave small trace of an independent existence on the part of either.

On the other hand, the growing costliness of fashionable London tends to

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