cS, ONE CITY AND MANY MEN AFTER HirlP. MAJESTVS A . HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHES.S OF KENT ONE CITY AND MANY MEN BY RT. HON. SIR ALGERNON WEST, G.C.B, AUTHOR OF "SIR CHARLES WOOD'S ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA*' "RECOLLECTIONS, 1832-1886" "MEMOIR OF SIR HENRY KEPPEL, G.C.B.," ETC. WITH A FRONTISPIECE THIRD EDITION. : - (,.; W ?[ : LONDON : SMITH, ELDER, & CO. 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1908 [All rights reserved] Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSOM ^ Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh PREFACE A LADY once asked me whether the effect produced in society during the time of the Reform question was as great as that which existed at the time of the Home Rule Bill. I said I was afraid that, as I was only born on the day of the Reform Bill passing, I should not be considered as a qualified authority. I do, however, recollect a long long way back, and have seen many men and many changes, which are here reproduced as answers to questions some- times put to me by the younger generations. In thanking the various editors who have kindly allowed me to reprint these articles, I deeply regret the great loss of Sir James Knowles, who intro- duced most of them to the public in his famous Review. ALGERNON WEST. April 1908. 439830 CONTENTS PAGE I. ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY, 1837-1897 i II. SOME CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE DURING THE QUEEN'S REIGN . . . . * 12 III. QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS . . . . 47 IV. LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL AS AN OFFICIAL . . ..... ... . . 74 V. MR. GLADSTONE AS I KNEW HIM . . 103 VI. TEMPORA MUTANTUR . . . 119 VII. A WALK THROUGH DESERTED LONDON . 130 VIII. THE COSMOPOLITAN CLUB . . . . 155 IX. MAYFAIR AND THACKERAY . . . 175 X. No. 10 DOWNING STREET . . . . 193 XI. WHILE WAITING IN A FRIEND'S ROOM . 210 XII. SOME NOTES AS TO LONDON THEATRES, PAST AND PRESENT . . . . . 224 XIII. THE GREAT UNPAID . . . . . 242 vii ONE CITY AND MANY MEN ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY 1837-1897 LORD GRANVILLE once told me that at the opening of a Parliament he had invited the mover of the Address in the House of Lords to come and have luncheon with him, in order that they might together read over the Speech from the Throne, and that he might give him some hints on the various topics to be dealt with. " No, thank you," said the mover of the Address ; " I had rather trust to the inspira- tion of the moment." The day came. The mover, clad in Yeomanry uniform, rose in his place, but the inspiration of the moment had not arrived ; so he read the Address, and sat down without a word. No friend with the knowledge or kindness of Lord Granville has offered me any hints, and no inspira- tion of the moment has arrived, and yet I am ex- pected to write something new about the social changes that I have seen between 1837 and 1897. 2 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN The greatest historian of the century has de- scribed in picturesque and poetical language the social contrast between the seventeenth and nine- teenth centuries, and has condemned the folly of those who are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare, but far in advance and far in the rear is the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see a lake where an hour before they were toiling through the sand. We who are old should avoid this fault, and teach ourselves not to be always talking of the so-called good old times, and not to look upon change as necessarily implying deteriora- tion. Macaulay, apart from his genius and literary powers, had in drawing his comparison the great advantage of time and distance. This advantage is as yet denied to us. Mr. Chamberlain in his well, in his other days, once remarked, with reference to the pre-eminent greatness of Mr. Gladstone : " I sometimes think that great men are like great mountains, and that we do not appreciate their magnitude while we are still close to them. You have to go to a distance to see which peak it is that towers above its fellows." I venture to doubt whether even Macaulay at the ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY 3 present moment could faithfully pourtray or ade- quately describe the social changes which are im- perceptibly occurring every day before our eyes, and which have taken place in the last sixty years. Society, which, at the beginning of the Queen's reign, was strict, formal, and circumscribed, has followed the trend of other things, and taken a hint from commercial legislation. It has entered into an enormous syndicate, under the rules of strictly limited liability. Individualism is stamped out ; Collectivism has come in. The rush and rapidity of thought and action, supplemented by all the appliances of modern science, have largely increased. The tearing race for power, notoriety, and wealth has utterly obliterated with his earnest and un- ceasing restlessness the peaks and mountains of the social fabric, and reduced everything to a demo- cratised dead level. This, of course, cannot apply to art in an age where Watts, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Millais, and many other distinguished painters stand out in bold relief. Of music I am profoundly ignorant, and can only subscribe to Baron Dowse's opinion, who, when he was taken by an enthusiastic musician to hear Bach's Passion music, confessed that he would rather hear Offenbach than Bach often. Repose for man or woman, in country or in town, has been swallowed up in the whirling maelstrom of fashionable unrest. Visits in the country, which 4 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN used to serve as a relief from the stress and strain of the overworked Londoner, have become an addi- tional anxiety to hosts and guests alike. The guests arrive on Saturdays as shortly before the dinner- hour as possible, and at once ask for a " Bradshaw," to find what is the first train that will convey them back to London on Monday morning. In London the morning hours used to be held apart from visitors or intrusions of any kind. They were, let us hope, devoted to domestic affairs, to study, or even rest. The amusements of the day, even among the most fashionable votaries of a London season, were reserved for the evening or late afternoon. At the beginning of the reign long weary hours of midday banquets and luxurious dishes did not exist, and half-past six or seven o'clock were the chosen hours for driving or riding. Now the whirl commences with the day and ends the next morn- ing. Bicycling, skating on artificial ice, golf, and riding now occupy the early hours, and I am credibly informed by those who have opportunities that are denied to me, that women come down at break- fast-time in their hats so that not a moment may be lost in the pursuit of exercise or pleasure. When, under the Presidency of Mr. George Peel at the Oxford Union, Mr. Gladstone had delivered an Homeric address, he was asked by Mr. Speaker Peel, on his return to the House of Commons, whether he had noticed any change in the growth ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY 5 of to-day from those of his academical time. " An enormous change struck me," said the veteran Statesman ; " the young members of the Union, instead of, in my day, being dressed in careful and scrupulous neatness, were attired in shooting, lounging, or smoking suits. I could have dressed any one of them for 5." The keen observation of Mr. Gladstone detected the change of dress at Oxford which he might have noticed elsewhere. The stiff cravats and scarves, the tightened waists, the padded coats, the strapped trousers, the Welling- ton boots, have likewise disappeared from London society. At balls the solemn and even stately quadrilles have, I am informed, been superseded by kitchen lancers, and young ladies smoke, cycle, play tennis and golf, and go to plays that their mothers would have shrunk from with surprise, if not horror, and lounge in the Empire, in spite of Mrs. Chant, and, I hope, see no harm in it. Walking home a short time ago with an observant contemporary, and watching as we walked the strings of carriages conveying the gilded youth from the opera to parties or balls, in all their pride of dazzling jewels and bewitching beauty, we remarked that either the present generation must be ever so much better or ever so much worse than we were in our youth for we had been young once. Their temptations, their luxuries, their opportunities were so much greater ; but we agreed that it was the 6 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN constant familiarities with such things that made them the less dangerous. The French lady who, drinking a glass of fresh water, says, "If it was only forbidden, how delicious it would be," gives the key to many of the riddles that puzzle older people. But in all these changes " this good is in them whatsoe'er of ill." The splendid untiring physique of the young women of to-day is owing to their liberty and outdoor exercise, and the fashionable and effeminate idler is out of date in our fin de siecle. We all remember the story of the young lord saying to Mrs. Adams at Boston : " The chief difference I see in England and in the United States is that here there appears to be a total absence of the leisured classes." " I hardly know what you mean by that expression," she said. " Well, people, don't you know, like me who have got nothing to do, and travel about from place to place." "Oh," replied Mrs. Adams, " we have plenty of them, but we call them tramps here." People are more natural, and therefore less affected, than they were. The monologist has ceased to exist, and the conversation at the dinner- table is gayer and brighter, and the ball is tossed backwards and forwards with a lighter touch. I have been told that at a party of Lord Lansdowne's at Bowood, Macaulay went into the library after breakfast and talked to a listening and admiring ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY 7 circle of friends till dinner-time. Carlyle, another monologist, was invited to meet him on his return from India at Rogers' famous breakfast-table in St. James's Place. Lord Houghton tells us that Macaulay never allowed him or Carlyle to open their lips. Studied raconteurs like Abraham Hay- ward, notorious wits like Sydney Smith and Lord Alvanley, have disappeared. Even Ireland has lost her Father Healey and her Baron Dowse. There is no journalist like Delane, no arbiter elegantiarum like D'Orsay, no diarist like Charles Greville, no custus morum like Poodle Byng. Historians we have, but no Macaulay or Carlyle. Novelists in shoals, but no Thackeray or Dickens. Poets like Swinburne or Miss Rossetti, but no Tennyson or Browning. When I think and talk of these men, whom I have known, and who in their time have filled a great space in the world, and recognise that by the present generation they are scarcely remem- bered, I feel the force of the old philosopher's words : " See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side and the emptiness of applause." Thiers, who had in most eventful times occupied a prominent position in French politics, who had been a Minister and a President of the Republic, met an old schoolfellow, who asked him what he had been doing since they were at school together. " J'ai ete Ministre," he replied. " Protestant ? " said his friend. 8 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN Oratory is not as common in the House of Lords as it was when a lady across the dinner-table asked Lord Brougham who was the first orator in that assembly, and he replied, " I consider Stanley the second." Oratory in the House of Commons ceased to exist when Mr. Gladstone departed from the scene, and it has been superseded by practical good speaking. The salons of Grandes Dames have gone, and the dinners of a number between the graces and muses are gradually being replaced by more ostentatious banquets. There are more beautiful and cleverer women than ever, 'but there is no Almack's, no recognised leaders of fashion, and no house exists a proscription from which would argue anybody as out of society. Ladies go in omnibuses, and stock- brokers' wives compete with duchesses in the mag- nificence of their tiaras and their dress. Cooking has improved a hundredfold, but there is no prominent chef, like Soyer or Francatelli. There are many gourmands, but there is no gourmet like Edward Mills. Some one asked him if a certain dinner was not wonderful. " Good," he said, " but not wonderful. There were no points in it." " What do you mean ? " said his friend. " Well," he re- plied, " Thames perch are in season from the ist to the I2th of December. If there had been perch, that would have been a point." On another occa- sion, as a maraschino jelly was being handed round, ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY 9 he kindly said to his neighbour, " Take the nobs ; the liqueur always runs into the nobs." When at his moor in Scotland, it was always said that he had his grouse packed and sent to London and returned, as he thought the journey gave them a better flavour. One day in Lombard Street a paralytic customer was wheeled in. Turning to his partner, Lord Wolverton, he said, " George, if ever I get like that, rabbit me." Within a few weeks he himself was stricken by paralysis. Professor Jowett, the Master of Balliol, in his letters recently published, gives a splendid lesson of patience and even hope to old men in their de- clining years, and I think they remain younger in mind and body, and are more tolerant to modern thought and action than they were. The late Duke of Wellington, at the time his father's statue was being removed from the arch at Constitution Hill, said to a complaining friend, " I am old, I am blind, I am deaf, I have no children, and now they are going to melt down my father, and yet I am quite happy." What a far finer view of life than the story told of Mr. Baring Wall, who mourned to a friend that nothing ever gave him pleasure. " Why," said the friend, " don't you try giving away some of your riches ? " "I have tried that," said he, " but it gave me no pleasure whatever." Lord Granville once, at a dinner of the Royal Society of Physicians, asked whether, in all their io ONE CITY AND MANY MEN varied experience, they had ever known of a case in which cause followed effect. Of course they had had no such an experience. " Not even," said he, " when one of your distinguished society follows his patient to the grave ? " Mr. Gladstone, in his speech at the opening of the Dee Bridge, attributed much to the means of rapid inter-communication ; and if people move rapidly, ideas move even faster, and we are apt to take from the example of other countries all those customs which are in themselves pleasing or luxurious. It seems a paradox to say that the very conveniences of modern science add materially to the wear and tear of life. People can travel rapidly, but they are always travelling. They can communicate by post, by telegraph, by tele- phone ; and they are always and in all seasons writing, telegraphing, or telephoning to their friends. The persistent prosperity and ever-increasing growth of wealth in England throughout all classes, except, alas ! the very poor, have tended to equality. Mr. Goschen, if I recollect right, delivered an address before the Statistical Society on the distribution and equalisation of wealth. I wish he would give a lecture on the distribution and equalisation of everything. If I have unduly dwelt on the disappearance of prominence in society, it is not because I think equalisation means poverty ; on the contrary, as Mr. Goschen argued that the distribution of wealth ASPECTS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY n meant the prosperity of the country, so I would maintain that it is only among the blind that the one-eyed man can be king; and though no doubt the emancipation from the conventionalities of the earlier part of the reign has been taken advantage of by the pushing improprieties of ridiculous vul- garians as emphasised in Ouida's " Massarenes," yet I maintain that everything is progress, and that greater freedom has and will tend to greater self-control. Eton has been famous among public schools, because the greater liberty given to her boys has fitted them more than any others for the struggle and battle of life; so I trust and believe that at this close of a glorious reign, England and English society are, with ever-increasing liberty and freedom, progressing in that path of righteousness which exalteth a nation. II SOME CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE DURING THE QUEEN'S REIGN I DO not contemplate touching on the scientific progress, the literary achievements, or other higher matters of the Victorian epoch ; but the recollec- tions of one who saw the Coronation procession from Lord Carrington's house in Whitehall, which exists no more, and who, when six years old, ran a race with the great Duke of Wellington from Walmer Church to the Castle, may afford amuse- ment to those of a younger generation, who may be interested in noting the changes that have crept almost imperceptibly into our social life. On one occasion, when present with a contempor- ary at a pretty little play at the Princess's Theatre, called " Sweethearts," I remarked to my friend on the out-of-date costume of the hero, and wondered why he was so dressed. " Cast your mind back," he said, " only to 1850, or thereabouts, and you will find that that was the way you and I used to dress at that time." And it was true. A pair of dove- coloured trousers with two fluted stripes down the CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 13 sides, and buttoned under the foot with broad straps of the same material ; the boots, of course, were Wellingtons, which were sine qud non with a man of fashion in those days ; a coat so high in the collar that the back of the hat rested on it. Indeed, every hat had a crescent of cloth on the back of the brim to prevent the rubbing of the beaver, or imitation beaver, of which the hat was made, for silk hats were not then invented. The scarf, never folded less than twice round the neck, like a waterfall, bulged out from a double-breasted waistcoat, cut very low, and was ornamented with two pins joined with a gold chain. In the evening we wore a blue coat with tight sleeves and brass buttons, and a waistcoat of flowered or brocaded silk. Black trousers, fastened by straps under patent leather pumps, had just then achieved a final victory over light-coloured kerseymeres or nankin pantaloons. As lately as 1862 Lord Derby insisted upon his sons dining with him in panta- loons and black silk stockings. A folding chapeau bras, for opera hats had not been invented, was always carried under the arm ; for nobody but an apothecary or a solicitor would have dreamt of leaving his hat in the hall of the house where he was calling or dining. White gloves were always worn by men at a party, but those who dined, of course, took them off, and Dicky Doyle used to say that it endowed 14 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN them with a conscious superiority, which prevented the desired amalgamation between those who had dined and those who had come in in the evening to form a tail to a dinner. Men wore their hair much longer in those days than now, falling over their collars, and their whiskers drooped, or were bostrakised, according to the fancy of the wearer. But no man, unless an officer in H.M. cavalry, ever ventured in pre-Crimean days to wear a beard or moustache. The Duke of Newcastle was the first man of any note who wore a beard ; and Lady Morley used to say the advantage of it was that you could tell all the courses he had eaten at dinner in consequence. I will not attempt to deal with the ever-changing fashions of female attire, which in the Queen's reign have varied from the poke bonnet and the spoon bonnet, the white cotton stockings and the sandalled shoes, through the cage period to the pretty fashions of the present day. A vision arises before me of what we considered the seductive beauty of ring- lets, the side-combs and plaits, then the hair parted in the middle and plastered tightly over the fore- head and ears, then the hateful chignons, then the hair torn rudely from the forehead, then the fringes " by hot irons falsely curled or plaited very tight at night." In the early days of her Majesty's reign Peers drove down to the House of Lords in full dress, CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 15 with their orders and ribbons, and bishops wore episcopal wigs ; Bishop Blomfield, who died in 1857, being the last to do so. Lord Straff ord recollected seeing his uncle, the famous George Byng, M.P. for Middlesex, going down to the House of Commons dressed in tights and black silk stockings ; and Disraeli tells us how Lord George Bentinck on one occasion attended in boots and breeches, his red coat partially hidden under what was called a surtout. Hessian boots were common : the last man to wear them was Mr. Stephenson, a com- missioner of Excise, well known in London society, who wore them to the day of his death in 1858. It was not till 1867 that members came down, to the horror of Mr. Speaker Denison, in pot hats and shooting-coats. And now, in 1908, Cabinet Ministers ride to their parliamentary duties on bicycles in anything but full dress. In a charming sporting book published in 1837 I find all the sportsmen dressed in blue or brown frock-coats and high hats. As all the pictures of the Coronation show, the Life Guards wore bearskins on their heads, till these were superseded by the Roman helmet, with red horsehair tails over their necks. At a dinner-party once an argument arose as to whether the Blues did or did not wear pigtails at the Battle of Waterloo. One elderly gentleman said they did, and quoted himself as a good authority, because as an Eton boy he had seen that famous regiment 16 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN reviewed at Windsor by the King on their departure for Dover. Another of the guests said he ought to know, because he was a midshipman on board the transport which conveyed them across the Channel, and he was positive that they did not wear them. The argument grew so warm that the host wisely turned the conversation ; but, being interested in the question, he went the following day to an old friend of his who had served in the Blues at Waterloo, and told him of the dispute that had arisen the previous evening at his table. " Both your friends were right," he said. " We were re- viewed at Windsor by the King on our departure with our pigtails on, and at Dover we had them cut off before our embarkation." The Foot Guards wore swallow-tailed red coats with white facings, white pipe-clayed cross-belts, large white woollen epaulettes, and in summer white duck trousers. A black boy in scarlet pantaloons with a gold kicking- strap, playing the cymbals, accompanied the Guards' bands. They were, of course, armed with the old musket called " Brown Bess," and were cleanly shaved. Then the tunic was adopted as the infantry uniform. The Metro- politan Police, with their tall hats and swallow-tail coats, had been organised before the Queen's acces- sion, but it was for many years after the old watch- men, with their rattles and drab great-coats, existed in provincial towns, and made night hideous by screaming out the hour and the state of the weather. CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 17 Parish beadles, as depicted in " Oliver Twist," still flourished in their large cocked hats, their gold embroidered coats, and plush breeches. Orders, decorations, and medals were very few. The Peninsular medal was issued in the year 1849, and then only to officers, thirty-five years after the campaign had closed. When medals were first issued to private soldiers, this innovation was de- nounced in the House of Lords as a prostitution of public honours. Queen Victoria has in her reign enlarged or instituted no less than fourteen orders. Of course the old Orders of the Garter, the Thistle, and the St. Patrick have existed from early times. The former was beloved by Lord Melbourne, be- cause, he said, " There was no damned merit con- nected with it." The Order of the Bath has been changed from one grade to three, and the Statutes were extended, and Volunteers are now eligible for the honour. The Order of St. Michael and St. George, originally a Maltese Order, has been en- larged during the present reign. 1. The Victoria Cross, 2. The Star of India, 3. The Victoria and Albert, 4. The Empire of India, 5. The Albert Medal, 6. The Nurses' Medal, 7. The Distinguished Service Order, 8. The Jubilee Medal, 9. The Victorian Order, B i8 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN are all the creations of the late reign. Our King has since instituted the Order of Merit, and one of bravery for miners. Decorations and stars and medals have become very common, and the value set on them has naturally decreased. There are now twenty-seven medals. There is one for every campaign. Our Commander-in-Chief is a Knight of St. Patrick, a G.C.B., a G.C.M.G., has the Legion of Honour, the*Medjidieh, the Turkish medal, the Osmanlieh, the bronze Star of Egypt, and seven medals, and, according to the present fashion, wears them at official parties. On such occasions I do not remember the Duke of Wellington wearing any order but that of the Garter or the Golden Fleece. The late Lord Clanwilliam was one day struck by seeing a civilian decorated with a ribbon and star, and asked who he was. No one could tell him, until at last he ascertained the wearer was our ambassador at Paris. " Then," said Lord Clan- william, " if all a man gains in diplomacy is that nobody should know him on his return, I shall resign my diplomatic career " and he did. Before the Queen came to the throne macaronis and bucks had vanished, and dapper men had made way for dandies. " Dandies, to make a greater show, Wore coats stuffed out with pads and puffing. But is not this quite apropos? For what's a goose without its stuffing ? " CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 19 Grantley Berkeley till his death boasted of his pugilism, and in the fifties he delighted in wearing two or three different-coloured satin waistcoats and three or four gaudy silk neckcloths round his throat. And as late as 1842, Lord Malmesbury tells us, Mr. Everett wore a green coat at a dinner- party at Lord Stanley's. At this time Lord Canta- lupe, Count D'Orsay, Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, and Sir George Wombwell were essentially dandies and arbitrators of dress and fashion ; Charles Greville and Frederick Byng, who was always called the " Poodle," were the police and the terror of the young men and the fashionable clubs. Now the reign of the dandies has succumbed to the aggres- sive inroads of swells and mashers. But, ah ! those dear dandies of my boyhood, with their triple waistcoats, their tightened waists, their many-folded neckcloths, and their wristbands turned back over their coat sleeves all have departed ; the most beautiful, genial, and witty of them all, Alfred Montgomery, who was in the Queen's household at the time of her accession, was the last to pass away. How fresh seems to me the memory of his kindness, from the time when I first saw him as Secretary to Lord Wellesley at Kingston House, seated at breakfast at n o'clock in a brocaded dressing-gown and slippers of marvellous work and design, to the last days of his life ! How often he and Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence took me to the 20 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN play, and gave me oyster suppers after it ! How often he drove me through the Park in -his cabriolet with its high-stepping horse, the tiny tiger hang- ing on by his arms behind ! All are gone now, and it does not do to look back too earnestly on the past ; the sunlight on it is apt to make one's eyes water. In those days, and down until the fifties, the Italian Opera House, which at the Queen's accession was called "Her Majesty's," was in its glory. The pit, which occupied the floor of the house, gave access to the boxes, and was appro- priately called " The Fops' Alley." Here Rubini, Mario and Grisi, Lablache, and later on Cruvelli, Sontag, Alboni and Jenny Lind delighted audiences as fashionable as those which now again fill the grand tier of Co vent Garden ; and the ballet, with Cerito, Taglioni, Fanny Ellsler and Rosati, adorned an art which, alas ! has now degenerated into a taste for vulgar breakdowns and tarara-boom-de- ayes. The theatres were at this time few and the prices low ; impecunious young men of fashion in my early days used to take advantage of half-price and the dress circle, for stalls had not then de- stroyed the pit, to hear the Keans, the Keeleys, and Buckstone, while Rachel and Ristori satisfied the lovers of tragedy. Vauxhall, with its thousands of little oil-lamps, was at its zenith, to be succeeded by Cremorne, and then by various reputable and dull entertainments at South Kensington. At this CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 21 time there was no public place or club where a lady could dine, and I recollect a most respectable peer of the realm who, on expressing a wish to I dine in the coffee-room of the hotel in which he \ was staying with his wife, was told by his landlord j that he must get a third person to join their party ! I The glory of Crockford's had departed before I came to London in 1851, and a restaurant doomed to failure had taken its place. But St. James's was full of fashionable " Hells," the Cocoa Tree Club being the best known. It was here that one Sunday morning the witty Lord Alvanley saw two mutes standing at the door. " Is it true," he said to them, " that the devil is dead ? because, if so, I need not go to church this morning." For in those, and even later days, pageantry pursued even the dead mutes standing at the dead man's door for a week, hearses with black plumes of feathers, black cloaks and gloves, and long hat-streamers of silk or crape, according to the relation of the mourner to the deceased, and hatchments properly spelled, achievements hung over the door for a year. Mr. Banderet, the old proprietor of Brooks's Club, recollected when the packs of cards used there were reckoned by scores a night. Now cards are rarely called for, except sometimes on the occa- sion of a rubber at the meetings of the Fox Club which are held there. In the early forties, long 22 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN whist with ten points to a game was still played ; and now I am told that even short whist is being supplanted at the Portland and Turf Clubs by bridge whist, ecarte, and bezique. Early in the reign, people at large country house- parties used to go into breakfast arm-in-arm, and no lady ever walked with her husband except bras dessus bras dessous. Friends always walked arm- in-arm, and the country neighbour always made his entry into a party arm-in-arm with his wife and daughter. Now the fashion has disappeared, except at dinner, and there has sprung up an odious habit of indiscriminate handshaking morning and evening, in season and out of season, and another fashion, worthy of a table d'hote, of assigning to each guest the place where he is to sit at dinner. I wonder why the bolder spirits of the younger and impe- cunious generation have not risen in revolt against this interference with individual liberty of choice which used to be theirs. I Lady Granville once remarked that, in her younger days, nobody in polite society ever men- tioned their poverty or their digestion, and now they had become the principal topics of conversa- tion ; and if society was then vigilant in ignoring all allusion to money and commerce, we have now gone far in the contrary direction. Everybody quotes the prices of stocks and shares, and I have lived to see the day when a youthful scion of a CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 23 noble and distinguished house produced from his pocket at dinner a sample bundle of silks to show how cheaply they could be bought at his establishment. Wine circulars with peers' coronets pursue me weekly ; and I can buy my coal at 25s. a ton from waggons ornamented with a marquis's coronet. Almack's flourished, where it was said that fashion, not rank or money, gave the entree. Society was so small that Lady Palmerston used to write in her own hand all invitations to her parties, and Lord Anglesey used to have in his house in Burlington Gardens a slate, where any- body who wished to dine might write down his name ; and so circumscribed was the fashionable world that there was always in each season one lady who was recognised by society as par excellence the beauty of the year. The polka had just been introduced, about 1843, and Augustus Lumley and William Blackburn arranged the days of all the fashionable parties and balls in London, and pro- vided lists of all the eligible young men in that small and exclusive ring. Lady Blessington's salon at Gore House, where D'Orsay, the " Cupidon dechaine," as he was called by Byron, Disraeil, Bulwer, Charles Dickens, and Napoleon the Third all met, came to an abrupt close, in 1848, by her leaving the country. The famous salon of the Miss Berrys in Curzon Street, to which as a boy of *4 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN nineteen I had the honour of being invited, came to an end in 1851, and in the following year Miss Berry died. The salon she and her sister had established had been extraordinarily famous. It still seems strange to me that I should have known a lady whom Thackeray says had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who him- self had been patted on the head by George the First. This lady had knocked at Dr. Johnson's door ; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig Society of the reign of George the Third ; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the court of Queen Anne Lady Ash- burton, " a commanding woman, before whom we all knelt," entertained Carlyle, Hallam, and Thackeray at Bath House. Lady Jersey still held a salon for the Tories in Berkeley Square, and Lady Grey, the beautiful widow of Charles Earl Grey, entertained the Whigs in Eaton Square till 1857. Lady Granville in Bruton Street, Lady William Russell in South Audley Square, and Madame de Flahault in the house which was the Coventry Club, and is now the St. James's, held salons to the end of the eighties. I know that I should differ from all the memoirs I have read if I were to say that Lady Palmerston's parties owed their especial charm to the fact that they formed CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 25 the certain rendezvous of all the people who made her " world " more than to her position and her charms, or Lord Palmerston's ready bonhomie. It was told of him that he used to greet all those whom he did not know with a " How d'ye do ? " and " How is the old complaint ? " which fitted all sorts and conditions of men. Lady Moles worth in Eaton Place, and Lady Waldegrave in Carlton Gardens and Strawberry Hill, were introducing more cosmopolitan gatherings, with Abraham Hay- ward and Bernal Osborne as standing dishes the first a studied raconteur, the latter always requiring a butt for his wit and his sarcasm. Society was now becoming democratised, and the days of the grands seigneurs and the grandes dames were rapidly disappearing. Hayward died in his lodgings at St. James's at the same time as Panizzi, the famous librarian of the British Museum, was dying within the walls of that building where he had immortalised himself by creating the splendid reading-room we all know so well. Mr. Gladstone used to say that Hay ward's death-bed was happy and Panizzi's miserable, be- cause one lived where all his friends could drop in for a few minutes' daily talk, and the other required a pilgrimage which few were at the trouble to take. What a reflection on the friendship of the world ! Notorious wits like Sydney Smith, Jekyll, Luttrell, 26 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN Bernal Osborne have disappeared from the scene, the last survivor having been Dr. Quin, the advo- cate of homoeopathy. I met him one night at Lady Craven's, where he and I were constant guests ; I had a bad headache, and Lady Craven, much against my will, asked him what I should take. " Advice," he answered promptly. Great changes in dinners occurred during the forties. Formerly a large turbot with red festoons of 'lobster was an inevitable dish at a London dinner- party ; a saddle of mutton at the head of the table, which was carved by the host ; and a couple of chickens, with white sauce and tongue in the middle, was a necessity, and led to various conventional com- pliments as to whether the hostess or her neighbour should carve them. Sir David Dundas used to tell of a chicken being launched on his lap, and the lady with a sweet smile saying : " Would you kindly give me back that chicken ? " With six side-dishes and two bottles of champagne in silver coolers the table was complete. The champagne was only handed round after the second course, and was drunk in homoeopathic doses out of small tubes of glass, which contained little but froth. Lord Alvanley was the first who had courage to protest, saying, " You might as well expect us to drink our wine out of thermometers." After dinner the cloth was removed, and the wine and dessert put on a shining mahogany table. The Bishop of CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 27 Oxford at Cuddesdon used to drink the health of each candidate for holy orders ; but as he did not like drinking so much himself, he always kept by him a bottle of toast and water. On one occasion a bumptious young man, on being asked what wine he would have, replied, " A little of your Lord- ship's bottle, if you please," thinking to get some- thing of superior excellence. " Take my bottle to him," said the Bishop to his butler. But now the good old habit of the master of the house asking his guests to drink wine with him has passed away ; yet in the early days of the reign it was so much the fashion that when the change began, on a host asking a lady if she drank no wine, she replied, " Do you expect me to drink it with the butler ? " It was at Lady Sydney's hospitable table in Cleveland Square that I gained my first experience of what was then called diner d la russe, when the viands were carved off the table, and the fruit, and probably flowers, were on the cloth which was not removed after dinner tea always following coffee. In country houses luncheons consisted of cold meat or the children's dinner ; and the men who were going to shoot made themselves sandwiches from the cold meat which, with perhaps an egg, constituted the ordinary breakfast. Battues and hot luncheons were an innovation introduced by the Prince Consort. Breakfasts used to be given by Rogers the banker 28 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN and poet, who, in addition to the literary charm of his company, would delight his guests with the musical notes of an artificial nightingale, which sat in a cage outside his window. His poems of Italy were beautifully illustrated by Stothard, Turner, and Calcott a novelty in those days. Luttrell said that his poems " would have been dished but for their plates." Visitors to Holland House still may see on a seat in the garden that lovely tribute to his " Pleasures of Memory" : " Here Rogers sat, and here for ever dwell, With me those pleasures which he sang so well." He died at the age of ninety-three in 1858, having seen in his youth the heads of rebels on Temple Bar, and cartloads of young girls who had taken part in the Gordon riots, in dresses of various colours, on their way to be executed at Tyburn. Notwithstanding Disraeli's assertion that to break- fast out was a plebeian amusement, Mr. Gladstone continued his breakfasts on Thursdays till he left Harley Street in 1880. Smoking existed from the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, but only on sufferance, and many were the evenings in winter when the smoking brigade was sent across a sloppy yard to smoke in the harness-room ; or, when there were less bigoted hosts, we were allowed to remain in the servants' CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 29 hall. No gentleman ever smoked in the streets till after the Crimean peace ; and ladies never sullied their lips with tobacco, or even allowed men to smoke in their presence. It was not till the year of '45 that a smoking-room was first established in the Holy of Holies, of Dandydom, White's Club ; and it was 1881 before smoking was allowed below the attics in Brooks's. Thanks to the introduction by the Prince of Wales, who has since become King Edward VII., of smoking after dinner, wine drinking is now over. What it was in old days appears almost incredible. The late Lord Clanwilliam told me of one occasion when he had dined at a friend's villa near Putney. The dinner was extraordinarily late for those days at eight o'clock. When they at last rose from the table and went up to their rooms, Lord Clan- william flung open his window, and saw the hay- makers coming into the field. " I wonder," he thought, " what hour they begin work," and on consulting his watch he found it was 8.30. The haymakers were returning to work from their break- fasts ! Mr. Gladstone recollected that on one occa- sion when a host put to a bishop, who was dining with him, the ordinary formula, " Will your lord- ship have any more wine ? " the Bishop replied in a solemn voice, " Thank you, not till we have drunk what we have before us." When I first entered the Admiralty as a boy, 30 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN about every three weeks the chief clerk used to come into the room where I sat with a " jabot frill " and entirely dressed for the evening, and say, " Mr. Jesse, I shall not be here to-morrow, for I am going to dine out to-night." And this was not meant as a joke, but was considered quite a natural thing. At other times J. H. Jesse, who was my immediate chief, used to tell us stories too well known to repeat, of the wild freaks of Lord Water- ford and Charles and Frank Sheridan, which would now be impossible. Imagine such an occurrence as this : A mad party were on their way back from dinner " bear-fighting " in Pall Mall. One of the party threw Frank Sheridan's hat over the area rails. At that inauspicious moment a bishop issued from the classical portico of the Athenaeum, and in an instant his hat was transferred to Frank Sheridan's head, and the others, making common cause with the bishop, vainly pursued the thief down the street. The next morning Frank Sheridan calmly went down to his clerical duties at the Admiralty in the ecclesiastical hat ! I once asked Mr. Charles Villiers how he com- pared the morals of his early days with those of our time. He answered with a touch of cynicism that he supposed human nature was human nature at all times, but one difference was manifest. In his golden days every young man, even if he was busy, pretended to be idle ; now every young man, CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 31 if he was idle, pretended to be busy ; and that meant a good deal. The stricter Sabbatarianism of the early years of the reign existed side by side with a lamentable laxity, and perhaps the looser morals of those times were a reaction against the too Puritanic restraints of the dreary Sundays. I think of the weary services of my youth, when, with a properly pomatumed head, I was taken to the high pews, where I had to listen to the fatuous and lengthy sermons of a curate in a black gown and bands, and the refined music of Tate and Brady. What a debt we who live now owe to the move- ment which has emancipated us from that melan- choly view of our religious duties ; though there may be danger of going too far in the opposite extreme, of paying too little regard to the scruples of others, and letting our Sunday amusements rob some of needed rest. Cock-fighting, which was illegal, flourished at a farm near Harrow till the fifties. Prize-fights were still fashionable, and there was a great fight, which excited the sporting world, between Tom Sayers and an American, J. Heenan, called the " Benicia Boy," at Farnborough in 1860. A subscription for the English champion was started by Napier Sturt, to which the House of Commons, headed by Lord Palmers ton, contributed. Early in the reign oaths were an ordinary ingredient in polite conversation. The Queen's favourite Prime Minister was more than an ordinary sinner in this 32 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN way. Archdeacon Denison once complained to him that on going to his brother, Lord Beauvale, on the subject of some Ecclesiastical Bill, he had damned him, and damned the Bill, and damned everything. " But, damn it, what could he do ? " said Lord Melbourne. Count D'Orsay once called on the publishers, Messrs. Saunders & Otley, on Lady Blessington's behalf, and used very strong language. A beautiful gentleman in a white neck- cloth said he would rather sacrifice Lady Bless- ington's patronage than stand such personal abuse. " I was not personal," said D'Orsay. " If you are Saunders, then damn Otley ; if you are Otley, then damn Saunders." At regimental messes coarse acts and coarse language were common, and at private dinner- tables the departure of the ladies from the room was the signal for every sort of loose and indecent conversation. That is rarely the case now. Sir Frederic Rogers in 1842 tried hard in the columns of the Times to kill duels by ridicule, and they were forbidden in the army in 1844, but they still existed. I well recollect Lord Cardigan's trial in the House of Lords, where, in consequence of a legal technicality, he was acquitted of the murder of Captain Tucker in a duel. Ridicule, however, gave the coup de grdce to duels. In 1852 George Smythe, the representative of the Young England party, and Colonel Romilly were going to fight in CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 33 consequence of an electioneering quarrel. When they got to the Weybridge Station there was only one fly to be had, so both combatants, thirsting for each other's blood, and their seconds had to drive over in it to the chosen spot, George Smythe sitting on the box, and Colonel Romilly, with both the seconds, inside. At the fateful moment a pheasant rose out of a copse, as in Leech's famous caricature, and a pistol went off. The combatants exchanged shots, and the foes returned as they came. The incident was dealt with in a witty article in the Times, and so ridicule did more than morality to kill duelling. Solvuntur risu tabula. One of the most remarkable changes of manners has been that familiarities have taken the place of formalities. In my early days few elderly ladies addressed their husbands by their Christian names in public. I never heard my mother call my father by his Christian name. I recollect that Lady 's fame was imperilled because, after some great man's death, a letter from her to him was discovered beginning with his Christian name. I think I am right in saying that at Eton we never recognised the existence of such a thing. Even boys who " knew each other at home " never divulged them. Letters between friends often began " My dear Sir," and many boys in my time addressed their fathers always as " Sir." A friend of mine, Gerald Ponsonby, dining with Lady Jersey, heard her say 34 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN that she never recollected her father, Lord West- morland, though specially attached to his sister, Lady Lonsdale, call her anything but Lady Lons- dale ; and Henry Greville, who was present at the same dinner, said he remembered his mother, Lady Charlotte, and her brother, the Duke of Portland, meeting in the morning at Welbeck and saying, " How is your Ladyship this morning ? " and her replying with all solemnity, " I am quite well, I am obliged to your Grace." All shopkeepers are now " young gentlemen " and " young ladies." The Duchess of Somerset, on making inquiry about something she had purchased at Swan & Edgar's, was asked if she had been served by a young gentleman with fair hair. " No," she said meditatively, " I think it was by an elderly nobleman with a bald head." Photography was in its infancy early in the fifties, and had just begun to be common in the hideous daguerreotypes and talbo types of that time. The witty Lady Morley used to say in reply to any complaint of the dulness of the weather, " What can you expect when the sun is busy all day taking likenesses in Regent Street ? " Before 1860 there were games but no crazes. Tennis, cricket, and rowing existed, but created no enthusiasm. The boat races were watched by rowing men and the friends of the crews, and that was all. I well recollect the great public school CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 35 matches at Lord's, where the Winchester men, as they always called themselves, wore tall white hats. They were attended only by some schoolboys, their relations, and those who were really interested in cricket. In all athletic sports there has been a marked development. Men row better, run faster, leap higher, gain larger scores at cricket than the men of the days gone by. In 1860 women first entered the field as competitors with men in out- door games. Croquet could be played by men and women ; and in 1870 women, leaving les grdces and embroidery-frames, found they could compete with men in lawn tennis, as they do now in bicycling, golf, fishing, and hunting. The present generation of splendidly developed girls shows how useful these athletic exercises have become ; but we must all recognise that the age in which we live is an age of emancipation. The swaddling-clothes of child- hood have been cast aside, and the limbs are unfettered. This is the case in art, in music, which has come in the light of a new mode of expression for all the subtle and innermost experiences of modern thought, in dress, in furniture, and essentially in ideas and conversation. Conventionalities and commonplaces have been supplanted by daring and originality, and who shall venture to say that the change is for the worse ? Following this movement a certain number of 36 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN ambitious young women, whom envious people called the " Souls," some clever by education, some by intuition, some from a sublime audacity, ap- peared some years ago on the stage of London society. By the brilliancy of their conversation, by their attractiveness and their personal charm, and, may it be said, from a divine instinct which taught them how dear flattery is to the race of men ? they gradually drew into their society much that was distinguished, clever, and agreeable in social and political life. They soon succeeded in completely breaking down the barriers that had heretofore existed between men of opposite political parties, and included in their ranks everybody who, in their opinion, added anything to the gaiety of nations. Never having myself been admitted into the heart of this society, I have sometimes been allowed to feel its throbbings, and to be drawn into sufficient proximity to estimate the real effect its existence has produced in social life ; and when I have compared the sparkle, dash, and vitality of its conversation with the stereotyped convention- alities of the ordinary " Have you been to the Academy ? " sort of talk of my earlier days, I think that under whatever name they live on the lips of men we must take off our hats and make our bow to them with courtesy and admiration. No doubt women, by becoming the companions and competitors of men in all their amusements CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 37 and pursuits, have lost somewhat the old-fashioned respect and deference they received in earlier days. But " la femme est toujours la femme, et jamais ne sera qu'une femme tant que le monde entier durera." It cannot be denied that with the growth of education far greater latitude in conversation is now allowed in the presence of ladies ; but we live in a time of introspection and self-analysis un- known to former generations, and the realistic tendencies of our modern novels have been im- ported into our modern talk ; but we should bear in mind the wise words of Lord Bowen, who tells us that it is not the absence of costume, but the presence of innocence, which made the happiness of the Garden of Eden. I cannot venture to describe the modern young lady, but shall take refuge in what Lucas Malet says, " that, compared with even a superficial com- prehension of the intricacies of her thought and conduct, the mastery of the Chinese language would supply an airy pastime, the study of the higher mathematics a gentle sedative." Taking the morals of 1837 an d tne morals of to-day, and making allowance for Charles Villiers's dictum that " human nature is human nature," I believe that, notwithstanding the enforced absence of the restraining influence of a Court and its society, morals in the main have improved. I am 38 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN amazed by the marvellous strides in the manners and education of young children ; instead of the shy self-consciousness of my youth, we see every- where well-mannered, well-educated little folk, who can speak intelligently and answer when they are spoken to. When I think of the rough times of dear Eton, the sanded floor, the horrid food, the six o'clock school without greatcoats, the complete absence of any attempt at educating stupid boys like myself, I tremble at the pitch men and women have reached. Now there has come a very Capua of luxury, which indeed has not yet, but may later produce effeminacy the early cup of tea in bed, the heavy luncheons with their liqueurs and cigarettes, the profusion of flowers, the blaze of diamonds, the costly dinners and champagne, the soft and luxurious furniture, the warmth and the comfort in travelling ; but we may believe that men will not in consequence " lose the wrestling thews that throw the world " and every day we are reminded by some noble deeds of gallantry that this is not the case. People's tongues have had their changes of fashion too. There were many old-fashioned folk who in my young days still pronounced gold as " goold," china as " chaney," Rome as " Room," James as " Jeames," cucumber as " cowcumber," yellow as " yaller," lilac as " lalock," Grosvenor as " Grasvenor," and Lady Jersey as " Lady Jarsey." CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 39 My father told me that Byron when at Harrow was always called " Byron." Fully to describe the changes in London during her late Majesty's reign would be impossible. The new Houses of Parliament were just begun to be built when the Queen came to the throne ; the Thames Embankment had not been begun. Nearly all the fashionable part of London has been re- built. The Marble Arch was removed to where it now stands in 1851, to make way for the new facade of Buckingham Palace ; the bridge over the ornamental water was not built until 1857. In 1886 the Duke of Wellington's statue was taken down, and the position of the archway at the top of Constitution Hill was altered. Before this the drive used to be reserved for those having the entree, and was only thrown open to the public then. Green Park was in my childhood surrounded by a high brick wall, inside of which was a house belonging to Lady William Gordon. A bit of water was by it. The mound on which a great sycamore now flourishes was Lady W. Gordon's ice-house, and the stags which were at the entrance were removed to Albert Gate, where they now remain. At the north-east corner was a large reservoir, which existed till 1856 ; and I can see now in my mind's eye the marks of women's pattens in the muddy tracks which did duty for paths in those days. It is only thirty years ago since one of the gatekeepers 40 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN at the top of Portland Place used to tell of the days when he was a keeper, preserving game in the fields and coverts which are now the beautifully laid out grounds of Regent's Park. I do not recol- lect a turnpike at Hyde Park Corner, but it was 1865 before the tolls were abolished in Kensington and Bayswater, and tolls were exacted at the metro- politan bridges up to 1879. TattersalPs stood till 1865 at the top of Grosvenor Place, all of which has been rebuilt. Belgravia was in process of building when the Queen came to the throne Belgravia where, as Lady Morley said, " all the women were brave and all the men modest," alluding to the new habit, which sprang up in the fifties, of women being allowed to walk alone in that district. Formerly no lady ever went out un- accompanied by a servant ; young married ladies scarcely ever received men visitors or danced except on rare occasions. Late in the forties five o'clock teas were just coming into vogue, the old Duchess of Bedford's being, as I considered, very dreary festivities. Swiss peasant girls with little brooms of wood shavings attracted the children in the streets with their song of "Who'll buy a Broom ? " These have been replaced by shrill-voiced urchins yelling " Winner ! Winner ! " and by the obnoxious whistle summoning a cab. Up till the end of the forties the old hackney CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 41 coaches, with straw in the bottom for the passengers' feet, with drivers clad in seven-caped coats, and with their miserable jades, still crawled about the London streets. It was told of a certain beau that he arrived at dinner with a straw hanging to his shoe : he apologised for this, saying his carriage had not returned from his wife's funeral, and he had been compelled to come in a hackney coach. The cabs were painted yellow, and the drivers were perched on little boxes at the side, instead of, as now, at the back. These were not of long duration, and were soon superseded by the four-wheeler and the hansom cab. Mail coaches of course were still running to all places to which the railroads had not yet penetrated. In 1837, a Y ear f great severity, the mails were carried from Canterbury to Dover in sleighs. Omnibuses were few, with straw in the bottom. The lowest fare was six- pence, and in them never was a lady seen. Ladies of fashion went out for a solemn drive round the Park on Sundays ; but no lady went in a single- horse carriage till Lord Brougham invented the carriage which still bears his name. The Victoria, the barouche or landau, appeared later on. No lady would willingly have driven down St. James's Street, or have dreamt of stopping at a club door. No lady of fashion went out to dinner except in a chariot, which was pronounced " charrot," with a coachman in a wig, and with one or two men- 42 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN servants in silk stockings. Indeed, the yellow chariot and the tall footmen with long staves behind the old Duchess of Cleveland's chariot are fresh in the memory of even young people, and must still have been seen by the present generation, who can recollect Lady Mildred Beresford Hope's pony carriage with two outriders. It is impossible, even in an article as frivolous as this, to pass by in absolute silence the glorious progress of the Queen's reign. In 1836 there were 52,000 convicts living in foreign lands in a state of bestial immorality. Now, notwithstanding the increase of population, there are only 4000 under- going penal servitude, and in this country. In 1837 4000 debtors were lying in common cells, with damp brick walls, with no bedding, and herded with murderers and common malefactors. Now transportation and imprisonment for debt have been abolished. Just before the Queen's accession a little boy was condemned to death for breaking a confectioner's window and stealing sweets. Now no one can be hanged for a less crime than murder. Executions are not in public ; the terrible scenes of witnessing them are done away with, and I hope the sensational hoisting of the black flag will soon be a thing of the past. A friend of mine told me how in his youth he used to witness the executions at Tyburn. And there still exists on the top of the house near the Marble Arch, which, CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 43 when I was young, belonged to the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, a bench from which the frivolous and fashionable world used to witness with indifference, if not amusement, these terrible executions. Re- duction of sentences has been followed by diminu- tion of criminals, the young are protected from the shame and cruelty of becoming gaol-birds, and the whole system of prison discipline is now laid on wise and merciful lines. Lunatics are treated with careful kindness, in- stead of being chained together on beds of straw, naked, handcuffed, and shown at twopence a head for each visitor. Factory Acts have been passed by which children of four, five, and six have been saved from being harnessed to trucks in coal mines and being forced to climb chimneys. Women have been protected in dangerous trades. We have public baths for health and cleanliness. Free trade has made food cheap, to the enormous advantage of the consumer. There is free education for the children of the poor, at a cost of 10,000,000 per annum to the nation ; cheap postage, cheap news- papers, cheap books, and free libraries are all aiding to fit the democracy for their duties. In 1837 80,000 letters were posted ; now there are 200,000,000 posted yearly. In 1837 hospitals were in a horrid state, and no nurses of a higher type than Dickens's Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prigg existed. Children's hospitals there were none. Now 44 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN the health of the people is cared for as it never was before, and it may almost be said the dumb speak and the blind receive their sight. Mortality has been lessened ; pain has been mitigated by anaesthetics ; surgical operations, once perilous or impossible, are now safely performed ; and hos- pitals abound and are nobly endowed. The old man of my early recollections, crippled by gout and disease, is no longer to be seen ; and men of an age advanced beyond the experience of those days are overtaken by kindly Death on the bicycle track or on the golf links. Picture galleries have been instituted, parks and museums and gardens thrown open, and the old Pharisaical Sabbatarianism, which closed them on the only days when artisans and workmen could enjoy them, has been banished to a certain degree. As lately as 1845 nobody could carry a bundle, sleep, or walk in a working-dress in St. James's Park ; and the Royal Parks, as compared with the present time, were a howling wilderness, without a flower-bed or a shrubbery. The lovely park in Battersea, the scene of modern cycling, consisted of damp market gardens, where asparagus, which was called " Battersea grass," was cultivated. I am aware that " the wind that blows upon an older head blows no longer from a happy shore," but, looking back over the long vista of fifty years, I see improvements everywhere, with few excep- CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE 45 tions. Men's morals, and certainly their language, have improved, excessive drinking has become un- fashionable and almost unknown in the society of gentlemen, cigars and cigarettes have replaced the filthy habit of taking snuff, night-caps and stuffy four-posters and sweltering feather-beds have been replaced by fresh air and tubs, and electricity has snuffed out cotton-wicked candles and rid us of tinder-boxes ; and may ere long rid us of gas. Everybody is clean, and it would be difficult to find a man or a woman in society who is not en- gaged in some good and useful work, or some endeavour to help others in the sorrows and struggles of life. Finally, in the language of Lord Brougham, the late Queen could boast that " she found law dear, and she left it cheap ; she found it a sealed book, she left it a living letter ; found it the patrimony of the rich, and left it the inheritance of the poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppres- sion, and left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence." And now I have done. I know that it is for the old only to dream dreams and the young to see visions ; but having dreamt my dream, I in- dulge for a moment in the privilege of the young ; and while humbly acknowledging that there are many social problems to be solved, and that, as Machiavelli said, " a free government, in order to 46 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN maintain itself free, has need every day of some new provision in favour of liberty," I think I see a vision of the glories to be accomplished in suc- ceeding generations, and cherish a faith " which is large in time, and that which shapes it to some perfect end." " This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in its go-cart Patience give it time To learn its limbs there is a hand that guides." Ill QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS ONCE more, under the authority and with the sanction of the King, is the country taken into the confidence of Queen Victoria. Surely no sovereign has ever courted more fully or more willingly the fierce light of publicity on a reign which calls for no concealment or disguise. Mr. A. C. Benson and Lord Esher, to whom the King entrusted the selection now published from the letters of her late Majesty, tell us that it is made from 500 to 600 volumes, and therefore the three volumes now published can only be considered -as a valuable prScis of the whole. To this precis it is not possible in the space of an article to do justice, or indeed to do more than touch superficially on the chief events recorded in the late Queen's correspondence. Probably more has been written in the lives of contemporary statesmen of this period of English history than of any other, and little will be found in the record of events which is new. Few now remain on life's stage who can recollect the early days of Princess Victoria and her corona- 47 48 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN tion in 1838. To those few the letters now pub- lished will come as a great and interesting addition to their knowledge of contemporary history, while those of a more recent period will welcome an introduction to the intimate and inner life of the great constitutional monarch who ruled over this country for more than half a century. There are thousands of enthusiastic motorists who are whirled from place to place in their cars who have never had the opportunity or taken the trouble to examine into the mechanism which supplies the motive power of their machines ; and so there exist many thousands of people who have been content to accept their knowledge of history from text-books, who now will be able to understand the inner machinery of the State and of the vast constitutional influences exercised by the reigning sovereign. The early pages of Queen Victoria's letters will show how capable the young Princess was of deep and strong affections. Having lost her father, the Duke of Kent, when she was but a baby, she concentrated her childish affections on her uncle, a brother of her mother, Prince Leopold, who after his refusal of the Greek throne had undertaken to be King of Belgium, and had left this country when the Princess was still a child. In 1834 she writes : "I had so hoped and wished to have seen you again, my beloved uncle." And the uncle, QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 49 whom she frequently says she longed to call her father, deserved to be beloved, for his copious letters clearly show his deep affection for the little Princess, whom he wished to see educated in a way that would fit her for the throne she was then likely to occupy. Under the direction of this uncle and the personal guidance of her governess, Fraulein Lehzen, at fourteen years old she was able to write to King Leopold and tell him she would like to read Sully's " Memoirs," and was studying Rollin's " Ancient History," Russell's " Modern Europe," and " Clarendon's Rebellion," and out of her lesson- time she was reading accounts of the wars in Spain, Portugal, and the South of France, and the history of her own country, "as of course," she added, " that is one of my first duties." This while other young ladies of her age were only going through the ordinary schoolroom curriculum, and playing the harp and working samplers for the benefit of posterity. The relations between King William IV. and the Duchess of Kent were far from amicable, and the poor Princess was not allowed, to her intense sorrow, to be present at his coronation. Before she came to the throne she had won universal admiration from all sorts and conditions of men, and the oft-told tale of her coronation and her feelings, taken from her own journal, bears another repetition. Lord Palmerston, surely no mean judge of char- 50 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN acter, said that any Minister who had to deal with her would soon find that she was no ordinary person. Creevey was a cynic and no flatterer, and describes a dinner to which he was invited, where he sat opposite to her Majesty and could not take his eyes off her. " I never saw," he says, " a more pretty and natural devotion than she shows her mother ; a more homely little being you can- not imagine when she is at her ease, and she is evidently always wishing to be more so." With all her natural good qualities the Princess was fortunate, in addition to King Leopold, in having so good an adviser as her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. A great and immediate confid- ence sprang up between them which ripened as time went on. Each letter shows how deep this friendship and how constant these communications had become, and when his defeat came about and Sir Robert Peel insisted upon the change of the ladies of the Queen's household, it was easy to see how real was the sorrow with which she contem- plated the change of Government. During her after-discussions with Sir Robert Peel, she exclaims, in a letter to Lord Melbourne, " All that happened in that eventful day came back most forcibly to my mind, and brought with it my grief." The poor Queen could hardly bear Sir Robert Peel's cold manner. " Oh," she says, " how dif- ferent, how dreadfully different to that frank, open, QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 51 natural, most kind, warm manner of Lord Mel- bourne ! " Then the Queen describes in embittered language Peel's conduct in wishing that she should give up her ladies of the household on the change of Ministry, a course which she successfully re- sisted. And then she tells Lord Melbourne how she wishes he could have been present at her interview with Sir Robert, as he would have been pleased with her composure and great firmness. It is interesting to notice how before the end of the Queen's reign this causa teterrima belli had ceased to exist. On Peel's declining to form a Govern- ment, there is no concealment of the Queen's pleasure at the return of her old Minister to office. Her anxiety about Lord Melbourne's health and her almost daily inquiries afford a wonderful picture of the relationships that can exist between a sove- reign and a subject. Charles Gore tells of one night when the Queen after dinner put her finger up to her lips and said " hush," and the guests looking round saw Lord Melbourne fast asleep in his chair. It is said that Lord Melbourne never swore in her presence, which, as we know what a proficient he was in the art, shows a watchfulness and respect which upsets the old theory that familiarity breeds contempt. But beyond the help that Lord Melbourne was always ready to give, King Leopold had provided her Majesty with a confidential and prudent adviser 52 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN in Baron Stockmar, who had been his own private secretary. According to the King's estimate, he must have been a man of extraordinary knowledge, ability and wisdom, and few men ever so com- pletely justified all that was said of him. When Sir Robert Peel obtained his enormous majority and became Prime Minister in 1841, Baron Stock- mar saw the danger of the private communications which still continued between the Queen and her old friend, Lord Melbourne. This correspondence, he wisely considered, would be productive of the greatest possible danger, especially to Lord Mel- bourne as the head of the Opposition. Its con- tinuance could not be kept a secret, and he had heard it talked of openly at a dinner-table by Mrs. Norton. Everything that went wrong, he said, would be attributed by Peel to the influence of Lord Melbourne. So serious did the Baron con- sider the position that, in consultation with Prince Albert, he prepared a memorandum which, it was settled, was to be presented in a personal interview between Lord Melbourne and Mr. Anson, the Prince's private secretary. The account of the meeting had best be told in Mr. Anson's own words : " Melbourne read the memorandum atten- tively twice through with an occasional change of countenance and compression of lips. He said on concluding it, ' This is a most decided opinion indeed.' Anson told him that the Prince felt that QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 53 if the Queen's confidence in Peel was in a way to be established, it would be extremely shaken by Lord Melbourne's visit to the Queen at such a moment. He felt it would be better that Lord Melbourne's appearance should be in London, where he would meet the Queen only on terms of general society. At the same time the Prince was ex- tremely reluctant to give an opinion upon a case which Lord Melbourne's own sense of right ought to decide. Anson added how he feared his speech of yesterday in the House of Lords had added another impediment to his coming at this moment, as it had identified him with and established him as the head of the Opposition party, which Anson had hoped Melbourne would have been able to avoid. Melbourne, who was then sitting on the sofa, rushed up on this and went up and down in a violent frenzy, exclaiming, ' God eternally damn it. Flesh and blood cannot stand this. I only spoke upon the defensive, which Ripon's speech at the beginning of the session rendered quite neces- sary. I cannot be expected to give up my position in the country, neither do I think it is to the Queen's interest that I should.' After a long pause Lord Melbourne said, 'I certainly cannot think it right,' though he felt sure that some means of communication of this sort was no new precedent. He took care never to say anything which could bring his opinion in opposition to Sir Robert's, and 54 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN he should distinctly advise the Queen to adhere to her Ministers in everything, unless he saw the time had arrived at which it might be resisted. The principal evil, replied Anson, to be dreaded from the continuance of Lord Melbourne's influence was, according to the Baron's opinion, that so long as the Queen felt she could resort to Lord Melbourne in her difficulties, she never would be disposed (from not feeling the necessity) to place any real confidence in the advice she received from Peel." But we are forestalling matters of paramount and overwhelming importance to the happiness of the Queen, who, on the i5th October 1839, wrote to her uncle announcing her engagement to Prince Albert, telling him that " he seems perfection." Charles Gore, who was much about the Court in the early days of the reign, tells us of Prince Albert's visit to Windsor, and how he was kept waiting in the corridor with the household before starting for a ride in the Park. The Queen, as we have all seen in engravings, wore a habit almost touching the ground and a schoolboy's cap with a tassel on her head. Soon the Ministers and household fell back, and the Prince was allowed to ride at her Majesty's side, and on their return to the Castle he was no longer made to wait with the household in the corridor, but had been accepted as the Queen's husband. But the time of their engage- ment was not free from the troubles which beset QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 55 poorer people in the course of their true love when settlements have to be considered. It was pro- posed that 50,000 a year should be granted to the Prince, but after a long discussion, and with Sir Robert Peel's concurrence, it was reduced to 30,000 a year. No doubt the hardness of the times contributed to the reduction that was effected. Lord Brougham, in a cruel vein of sarcasm, pre- sented a petition from a poor man to the House of Lords begging to be given enough money to drink Prince Albert's health in a mug of beer. The marriage ceremony was all that could be desired inside St. James' Chapel. Outside there was rain, and I well recollect the sea of umbrellas in the Mall in front of the Palace covering the multitude of sightseers. It was in 1845 that Sir Robert Peel's announce- ment of dissensions in the Cabinet was made to the Queen at Osborne, and her Majesty, though much annoyed at her Ministers leaving her in such a crisis, had recourse to her old friend and adviser, Lord Melbourne, but told him that she would not feel justified in asking him to return to his former position. Lord John Russell was sent for, but, after some time for consideration, declined to form a Government, and Sir Robert Peel returned, having succeeded in persuading Mr. Gladstone to join him as Secretary of State for the Colonies. This vacated the seat for Newark, which Mr. Gladstone held 56 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN under the nomination of the Duke of Newcastle, who was a Protectionist, and in these circumstances he declined to be nominated, but held office with- out a seat in the House of Commons as Secretary of State. It is curious to note how extraordinary a thing the Queen considered it that Lord Grey should have wished at this time, when Free Trade was to the front, that Mr. Cobden should be offered a seat in the Cabinet. Among these letters is a curious memorandum by Prince Albert giving an account of a Council, where he says Sir Robert has an immense scheme in view " he will remove all Protection and abolish all monopoly." " The experiments he had made in 1842 and 1845 with boldness and with caution had borne out the correctness of the principle. The wool duty was taken off, and wool sold higher than it had ever done before. Foreign cattle were let in, and the cattle of England stood better in the market than they ever had done before." As a compensation to the landed interest, he would take over and put on the Consolidated Fund the rural police, and establish a Public Prosecutor. The great struggle of Protection and Free Trade was going on, and, partly owing to the Irish famine, the Tory Party, with its huge majority of ninety, elected to support the Corn Laws, was shattered, and for the time broken up. The Queen was delighted QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 57 with Sir Robert Peel's speech on the opening of the Session of 1846, and it is evident that at this time her dislike to him was rapidly disappearing ; but having, in spite of all the bitter attacks from Disraeli, carried the Repeal of the Corn Laws, he was beaten in the House of Lords on an Irish Coercion Bill and resigned his office. Sir Robert Peel writes to the Queen after his defeat saying that " he firmly believed that the recent attack made upon him was the result of a foul conspiracy concocted by Disraeli and Lord George Ben thick." To Cobden " the manufacturer," whose entrance into the Cabinet, advocated by Lord Grey, had been the subject of such astonishment a short time before, Sir Robert Peel in noble language attri- buted the success of his measures, and after this Lord John Russell said he must be offered Cabinet office. There was a false and malicious story that the news of the Repeal of the Corn Laws was extracted from Sidney Herbert and given to the Times by Mrs. Norton ; but I had it on the authority of Sir William Stephenson, who was then private secre- tary to Sir Robert Peel, that it was deliberately given to the Times by Lord Aberdeen, in order to catch the American mail, with the object of conciliating the United States and to obtain the settlement of the Oregon Treaty. At this time especially the Queen's letters show 58 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN her extraordinary knowledge of the position of foreign questions throughout Europe, in which her interest never for a moment flagged, and she was always ready to take a leading part in the delibera- tions of her Ministers. Well might the philosopher exclaim : " Happy is he who does not grow weary of his work," for there can be no doubt that this happiness was hers. Labor ipse voluptas / To many idlers in the world it must come as a surprise how she found time to perform her numerous duties her interviews with statesmen, her corres- pondence with her uncle King Leopold, the care and education of her children. Her Majesty was immersed in politics ; she was, as we all know, a severe critic of Lord Palmerston's despatches, when- ever he allowed her to see them. She was very watchful and tenacious of anything connected with appointments, about all of which she required full information. She had strong opinions about affairs in Portugal whose Queen (Donna Maria Pia) had been an early friend of hers and Spain, and was much concerned about a quarrel which had sprung up in the Cantons of Switzerland called the War of the Sonderbund, a religious war in which Lord Palmerston, with great astuteness, postponed arbi- tration till the necessity for it ceased. With all these conflicting occupations she did not forget her old friend, Lord Melbourne, to whom she graciously offered the Garter, which he did not feel justified QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 59 in accepting on account of the expense attendant on the bestowal of the order. In addition to all these anxieties came the news of Louis Philippe's ignominious flight as Mr. Smith, with his whiskers shaved off, a casquette on his head, a rough overcoat, and immense goggles. The news of his arrival was at once communicated to the Queen by Lord Palmers ton, and immediately arrangements were made to place Claremont at the disposal of the ex- King and Queen of France. Amid all these revolutionary surroundings, in a letter to her uncle she explains that she was able to cope with these troubles : " Thank God," she says, " I am particularly well and strong in every respect, which is a blessing in these awful, sad, heart-breaking times. From the first I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk were politics, but I never was calmer and quieter or less nervous. Great events make me quiet and calm, and little trifles fidget me and irritate my nerves. But I feel grown old and serious, and the future is very dark. God, how- ever, will come to help and protect us, and we must keep up our spirits." Ucalegon was very near in 1848 to the other thrones on the Continent, and the Queen was soon the centre of those who were alarmed at the revolu- tion in Paris. The King of Prussia considered the emeute in Paris as an attempt to spread the principles 60 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN of revolution by every means throughout the whole of Europe, and urged the power of united speech, not arms, and appealed to the Queen " whose powerful word might alone carry out the task of telling France that any breach of the peace with reference to Italy, Belgium and Germany would undoubtedly be a breach ' with all of us,' so that we should with all the power that God has given us let France feel by sea and by land, as in the years '13, '14, and '15, what our union may mean ! " Then, after blessing Providence for Lord Palmers ton being at the Foreign Office, on both knees he ad- jures the Queen to act for the welfare of Europe. Palmerston's insubordination at that time is familiar to us all, and the relations between the Queen and her Minister were daily becoming more strained. Lord John Russell remonstrated with him in vain, and felt that things could not long continue as they were. On the 23rd of November Lord Palmerston writes to the Queen that he is at Brocket engaged in the melancholy occupation of watching the gradual extinction of the lamp of life of one who was " not more distinguished by his brilliant talents, his warm affections and his first-rate understanding, than by those sentiments of attachment to your Majesty which rendered him the most devoted subject who ever had the honour to serve a Sovereign." The Queen tells King Leopold : " Our poor old friend died on the 24th. QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 61 I sincerely regret him, for he was truly attached to me, and though not a firm Minister, he was a noble, kind-hearted, generous being." At the end of 1848 the Queen received an auto- graph letter from Pio Nono, beginning : "To the Most Serene and Potent Sovereign Victoria, the illustrious Queen of England, Pius Papa Nono," announcing his flight from the Holy City, and adding " that in conformity with your exalted magnanimity, your justice and known desire to maintain order in public affairs, you will by no means suffer the same to be wanting to us at this most lamentable time," which, being interpreted, meant a request for help. There was some dis- cussion as to how this appeal should be answered, but finally it was settled that the Queen's letter should commence : " Most Eminent Sir," and should regret that he was obliged to leave Rome, and nothing more. Before arrangements could be made to meet the Queen's desire to remove Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office, there occurred one of those un- foreseen coincidences which often disturb political calculations. A Portuguese Jew, Don Pacifico, had his house pillaged by a mob at Athens. He made an ex- travagant claim on the Greek Government, which was not allowed, and he made an appeal to the Home Government. Lord Palmerston took a high 62 ONE CITY AND MANY MEN line and despatched a fleet to the Piraeus demand- ing compensation for Don Pacifico. This high- handed action was condemned in the House of Lords, but a vote of want of confidence in the House of Commons gave an opportunity to Lord Palmerston, of which he was prompt to avail him- self. He obtained a magnificent triumph which made him at once the most popular man in the country. This was followed by Lord Palmerston's approval of an assault on the cruel Austrian woman- flogger Haynau by the employes in a great London brewery he had gone to visit. This assault Lord Palmerston justified, which shocked the Queen. At this moment, though personally he had lost her confidence, he was far too great a man to be summarily dismissed from the Foreign Office. All sorts of arrangements were discussed by her Majesty and Lord John Russell for effecting his removal in a way satisfactory to him. But all the negotiations failed ; he was offered the Irish Lord Lieutenancy and a British peerage, and not unnaturally declined them both. Again, Lord Palmerston was attacked, and again he added to his growing popularity by a speech lasting from dusk to dawn on the foreign policy of the Govern- ment, and by this, which was known as the " Civis Romanus sum Speech," he became for the moment the most prominent figure in the country. The division found the Ministry in a majority of forty- QUEEN VICTORIA'S LETTERS 63 six, which made the Queen consider the House of Commons as " becoming very unmanageable and troublesome." " There is no question," her Majesty says, " of delicacy and danger in which Lord Palmerston will not arbitrarily and without reference to his colleagues or Sovereign engage this country." In the meantime Sir Robert Peel had fallen from his horse and received injuries from which he died. The troubles of the Government over the Ecclesi- astical Tithes Bill were great, and they were beaten on Mr. Locke King's extension of the Franchise Bill by a majority of forty-eight. It was impos- sible for the Government to remain, and the Queen sent for Lord Stanley. After many negotiations and attempts to form a coalition Government, Lord John Russell resumed office. The whole of the ensuing correspondence is full of the Queen's earnest desire to remove Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office, which Lord John Russell conceived would again destroy the Government. At last, at the end of the year, the coup