JIBE LIGHTS ON 
 ^ENGLISH SOCIETY 
 
 SKETCHES FROM LIFE 
 
 SOCIAL & SATIRICAL
 
 
 
 V
 
 $33 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS 
 ON ENGLISH SOCIETY.
 
 AXD SONS, PRINTERS, FANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 THE COUNTRY-HOUSE. FLIRT. 
 
 I. Frontispiece.
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS 
 ON ENGLISH SOCIETY, 
 
 OB 
 
 SKETCHES FROM LIFE, SOCIAL & SATIRICAL, 
 
 E. C. GRENYILLE MURRAY, 
 
 AUTHOR OP ' THE MEMBER FOR PARIS,' THAT ARTFCTL VICAR,' ETC. 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 WITH NEARLY 300 ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 IX TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 V1ZETELLY & CO., 10 SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND. 
 
 1881. 
 
 [All rights resented.]
 
 TO 
 
 THE QUEEN. 
 
 MADAM, 
 
 A threefold purpose has animated me 
 in dedicating this book to your Majesty. In the 
 first place, as a loyal subject, I eagerly embrace the 
 opportunity of laying before you the tribute of my 
 homage. In the second place, I am proud, as a 
 man of letters, to seek for iny work the notice 
 of a Sovereign, not the least of whose titles to 
 the gratitude of a distant posterity will be, that in 
 her reign, and owing, in no small degree, to her 
 fostering care, arts and letters have so flourished 
 in this island that the Age of Victoria may challenge 
 comparison with the Ages of Elizabeth and Anne. 
 Thirdly, as an Englishman, I venture to submit 
 for the consideration of the Head of our race a 
 careful study of some of the most important aspects 
 of English society, as at present constituted.
 
 VI DEDICATION. 
 
 A survey of the condition of the English people 
 leaves one much to be thankful for, especially the 
 fact that its best expression is modelled on the pure 
 example of your Majesty's life. But if this nation 
 is to continue to lead the vanguard of progress, 
 and persistently to move towards the perfect ideal 
 of a great kingdom, united under the sway of a 
 beloved line of Princes, it is obvious that it behoves 
 us to look the defects of our social and political 
 system boldly in the face, neither extenuating aught r 
 nor setting down aught in malice. An evil ac- 
 knowledged is half cured ; above all, in the country 
 for which your Majesty's ancestors did so much to 
 secure the priceless boon of liberty of thought and- 
 discussion. Much, however, remains to be done - r 
 and our very freedom, which none dare openly 
 attack, is at this moment exposed to subtle and 
 dangerous machinations. 
 
 Your Majesty's prerogative and the mighty in- 
 fluence of your august person have been steadily 
 exercised, throughout a long and glorious reign, in 
 support of every cause that approved itself to the 
 best spirits of the time. Your Majesty's gracious 
 intervention has redressed many a wrong, has given.
 
 DEDICATION. Vll 
 
 hope to the oppressed, and taught the most powerful 
 of the earth to respect the unwritten laws of equity 
 and honour. 
 
 That your Majesty may long be spared to be 
 the protectress of the weak and the terror of evil- 
 doers, and still to direct your people in the way of 
 peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and 
 piety, is the fervent prayer, 
 
 MADAM, 
 
 Of your Majesty's most devoted grateful Servant 
 and faithful Subject, 
 
 E. C. GRENVILLE MUERAY.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 SOCIETY is a many-headed thing; it is not easy to 
 take its photograph ; and perhaps a too faithful like- 
 ness would not be accepted by those who know it 
 best as a correct portrait. 
 
 This is the difficulty. Society wears a conven- 
 tional expression, and has struck a conventional atti- 
 tude once and for all. Like the customers of the late 
 Madame Rachel, she covers her face with pearl-powder 
 and rouge, and means to be beautiful for ever. The 
 artist must not be curious to see what lies under her 
 enamelling. Mr. Du Maurier's clever young painter, 
 who won renown and wealth by doing the portrait 
 of Lady Midas, showed the way which all writers 
 might perhaps, if they consulted their own interests, 
 follow with most profit. But how would Hogarth 
 have painted Lady Midas? How would her ladyship 
 have fared at the hands of George Cruikshank, Mr. 
 Sambourne, or Signor Pellegrini?
 
 X TKEFACE. 
 
 The writer must claim, the same liberty as the 
 artist, the more so as his works obtain a lesser pub- 
 licity. The books of Fielding and Smollett possibly 
 Thackeray's Book of Snobs too are not read by new 
 thousands every day; but Hogarth's pictures, mul- 
 tiplied indefinitely by engraving, are seen constantly 
 by millions of eyes all the world over. There are- 
 fashions in printed matter; but apparently none in 
 pictures, which, if true to life, are admitted to an 
 everlasting popularity. All critics cry to the artist,. 
 1 Copy Nature avoid the lay-figure.' 
 
 Probably Society in the eighteenth century did 
 not much relish the satire of the ' Mariage a la 
 Mode ;' and we know how George II. expressed him- 
 self about the ' March of the Guards to Finchley.' 
 That picture is now the chief ornament of the col- 
 lection at the Foundling Hospital. Is it that the 
 Governors of the Foundling have become less loyal ? 
 No ; but because the picture is recognised as a good 
 piece of painting, throwing a valuable ' side-light' on 
 queer manners which have now passed out of exist- 
 ence. And doubtless, if his Majesty's pet soldiers 
 mended their ways, Hogarth's sermon in oils had 
 something to do with it.
 
 PREFACE, XI 
 
 When there is a tacit understanding among, 
 public men that Government must be carried on 
 by an organised system of falsehood, deceit, and 
 injustice; when no official statement, however 
 solemn and precise, can claim respect or belief - T 
 when all but the rich are driven from the judg- 
 ment-seat, and hope for the orderly redress of 
 wrongs is mocked by law-costs ; when our social 
 polity arouses serious and widespread discontents; 
 when administration is paralysed by parliamentary 
 insanity, Reform is needed, and Reform is near. 
 
 It is no longer a party question ; it concerns 
 every person who can distinguish between right 
 and wrong; and if many powerful individuals are 
 always opposed to the public interest, sensible 
 people should unite to detect them, and to put 
 down their influence. But if we reward every one 
 who ventures to lift his voice against existing abuses 
 with ostracism ; if officials who profit by notorious 
 abuses are allowed to silence honest accusers with 
 rattening and slanderous clamour, it is hard to see 
 what can be done. Nepotism and patronage are at the 
 bottom of it ; and all that has been discovered about 
 patronage shows that it is most often given for fear
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 or money. Such facts look ugly in print ; but Dapper 
 .and Capper can talk of them with perfect coolness at 
 their clubs, and so can Flapper. 
 
 It is positively marvellous that the best talent 
 of our land has so long remained in voluntary ob- 
 scurity, and that men who have made politics the 
 study of their lives are content to write their own 
 degradation daily in essays and leading articles, as 
 though the good things and honourable professions 
 of this world were the natural heritage of dolts only. 
 It is quite disconcerting again to think how noble a 
 calling diplomacy might be, and to see how pitiful a 
 thing it is. It was the business of my choice. It 
 cost me a great deal of money to follow it; and I 
 was ultimately hustled out of active service by a 
 clerk who had embezzled my salary. But for seven- 
 teen years I worked at diplomacy as an ambitious 
 lawyer drudges at the law. I loved it as a soldier 
 loves his sword. 
 
 In a word, I believed in it. Diplomacy seemed 
 to me that which it might and should be a simple 
 and peaceful method of furthering all the best and 
 highest interests in the world. I considered it the 
 nurse, the tutor, and guardian of commerce; the
 
 PKEFACE. X11I 
 
 pioneer of science; the harbinger of peace, destined 
 to banish strife and discord from the earth. I thought 
 that it should teach nations to know and understand 
 each other so well that disputes and misapprehen- 
 sions would become impossible, and that it should 
 be the messenger of kindness and good- will among 
 all peoples. 
 
 I collected, with laborious care, whatever seemed 
 to me in any way to bear upon the duties I had, or 
 might have, to perform. No fact appeared to me 
 too trifling, no research too minute, that gave me a 
 clearer knowledge of things belonging to my profes- 
 sion. By these means I slowly accumulated some 
 facts and useful precedents ; and I spent ten years of 
 my life in compiling a work on international law. 
 A deceased clerk alone knows what has become 
 of it. It was seized by his order, together with my 
 private papers, now (1881) near three lustres since; 
 and I have never been able to get news of them, 
 though the Queen herself very kindly supported my 
 application to a Secretary of State for the return of 
 my lost property. I should say that her Majesty 
 most graciously did so, but it was really a kind act ; 
 and I like to speak of it, as it is graven in my heart.
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 I have written these lines with all the sad 
 and yearning love which an exile feels towards his 
 country. I have suffered twelve years of banish- 
 ment not from any displeasure of my Sovereign, or 
 from popular clamour, but from the resentment of an 
 official who had grown rich and influential by the 
 misappropriation of public money; and though he 
 has long since gone to render his account before a 
 tribunal where no demurrer can be pleaded, his work 
 survives him. No good can be done but through 
 some man's sorrow. It is enough for me to have 
 laboured to a great end in books which have found 
 favour from many indulgent readers. 1 look upon, 
 the public as a genial friend, in whose company one 
 need never weary; and having worked, according 
 to my most inadequate ability, to make some things 
 better than they are, I can listen to the outcry of 
 those whose illicit gains stand in jeopardy, without 
 being much disturbed by it. ' It is an ill bird,' 
 they say, 'who fouls his own nest.' True. But 
 what should be said of the bird that seeks to cleanse 
 it? 
 
 Unhappily, no evil can be attacked without say- 
 ing some hard things of persons who gain by it.
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 Every man belonging to that class then seeks out 
 the cap that fits him, puts it on his head triumph- 
 antly, as if he had made a discovery creditable to 
 his discernment, and, though no personal affront was 
 meant him, imprudently claims a right to be angry. 
 Some people who go thus in search of grievances may 
 be merely weak-minded folk, who are only doing 
 wrong in an orthodox way, as their fathers did before 
 them. They feel at once sore and ill-used, there- 
 fore, when their queer little trades are described in 
 plain language. They believe that it is a proper 
 and constitutional thing to wax fat in idleness, and 
 to kick against all who interfere with their compla- 
 cent enjoyment of other folks' goods. When I have 
 been obliged to write home truths about them, I 
 have always done so with reluctance ; and have sin- 
 cerely regretted that it was impossible to call public 
 attention to much mischief in any other way. 
 
 After all is said and done, however, the pursuit 
 of literature is scarcely satisfactory. When our best 
 labours are over, we feel that so much might have 
 been done which has been left undone, and that 
 what has been done might have been done better. 
 The opinions of a writer at the conclusion of his task
 
 XVI PREFACE. 
 
 are seldom precisely the same as when he began it, 
 and the most thoughtful workman in revising his 
 book will find some passages on which he would 
 have bestowed more care, and others which he 
 would, perhaps, have rejected altogether. I think, 
 therefore, if I were to write these pages over again, 
 I should treat some subjects with a sterner pen, and 
 more emphatically denounce the follies and absurdi- 
 ties which I have touched here and there with too 
 light a hand. Reader, farewell ! 
 
 E. C. GKENVILLE MUREAY. 
 
 Paris, June 1, 1881.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 FLIRTS. 
 
 i. ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL ..... 9 
 n. THE FLIRT'S POWER . . . . . .26 
 
 in. THE FLIRT IN THE SEASON 32: 
 
 iv. THE FLIRT FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT . . .45 
 
 v. THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS .... 59 
 
 vi. THE ECCLESL\STICAL FLIRT 69- 
 
 vii. REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE ... 83 
 
 vai. THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE . . 93 
 
 ix. THE SEASIDE FLIRT 103 
 
 x. THE TOURIST FLIRT 119 
 
 xi. COUNTRY-HOUSE AND TOWN-HOUSE FLIRTS . . . 128- 
 
 xu. THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT 135 
 
 xin. THE STUDIOUS FLIRT ...... 142 
 
 ON H.B.M.'s SERVICE. 
 
 i. INTRODUCTORY ....... 151 
 
 ii. AMBASSADORS ........ 157 
 
 in. ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY ...... 170 
 
 iv. SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY ...... 183 
 
 v. SECRETARIES OF LEGATION . . . . . .195 
 
 vi. ATTACHES , . . . . ... . 203- 
 
 vii. CONSULS-GENERAL ....... 217 
 
 vin. CONSULS ........ 223 
 
 ix. VICE-CONSULS . - . . . . . . 229- 
 
 x. QUEEN'S MESSENGERS ...... 235 
 
 xi. INTERPRETERS ....... 244 
 
 xu. AMBASSADRESSES ....... 248' 
 
 VOL. I. b
 
 XVlil CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 SEMI-DETACHED WIVES. 
 
 i. INTRODUCTORY ........ 257 
 
 ii. AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS . . . . . .201 
 
 in. SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT .... 276 
 
 iv. CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI ..... 287 
 
 V. A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WlFE . . . 303 
 
 vi. ULYSSES AND PENELOPE . . . 319
 
 FLIRTS.
 
 I. 
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENEEAL. 
 
 persons pos- 
 sess some good 
 qualities, know 
 this, and wish 
 others to know 
 it. The process 
 of making them 
 known to one's own sex may be characterised under 
 various names, while the endeavour to attract the 
 opposite sex by them and at the same time toying, 
 as it were, with the passion of love constitutes Flir- 
 tation. 
 
 VOL. i. B
 
 10 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 One can obtain the appreciation of one's own sex 
 by doing ordinary duties well ; but to gain the good- 
 will of the other sex, who may not be in a position 
 to judge of our genuine merits, requires a manner 
 more or less artificial. Flirtation is, therefore, a 
 forced means of making oneself agreeable to a per- 
 son of the other sex. In the greater or less trans- 
 parency of the artifice lies the science of flirting 
 which has infinite shades, from unblushing coquetry 
 to the most delicate power of fascination. Society 
 would be a dull thing without this science. If it 
 were possible that women should cease for a short 
 time to care what men thought about them, most of 
 us, moralists or not, would be glad to see that short 
 time ended. 
 
 Men and women flirt, but women more than men ; 
 and they also show it more. "Women are less able 
 than men to live without admiration, and have less 
 other work in life than the labour of securing praise. 
 At the same time they cannot so well keep their flirta- 
 tions out of sight. A man travels, and is, in very 
 few places, really intimately known ; a woman is, in 
 some few places at least, closely watched. None of a 
 man's friends know precisely with how many women 
 he flirts ; a woman's friends keep an exact account of 
 the number of her admirers. A man, to be called a 
 Flirt, must flirt to the point of abandoning all other
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 11 
 
 occupation ; but a very little affability, squandered 
 under the form of smiles, procures the title for a 
 woman. 
 
 A girl is a Flirt who exchanges a coy glance 
 with a middle-aged eligible bachelor who picks up a 
 glove she has dropped ; she is something worse than 
 a Flirt a minx if she makes herself pleasant to 
 another girl's betrothed. The iron rule of modesty, 
 which men have imposed upon women as a protec- 
 tion against their wiles, leaves young women scarcely 
 free to move or speak in the presence of the trousered 
 sex without risk of being thought ' forward ;' but 
 women themselves are much sterner in their definition 
 of forwardness than men. In feminine judgment 
 every girl or pretty young woman is forward, and 
 consequently a Flirt, who monopolises the attention 
 of males in a social circle. This she can do by being 
 too modest, as well as by being not modest enough ; for 
 her own sex will not account as modesty the grace 
 which charms without attempting to do so. Men 
 never speak so ill of the worst women as women do of 
 the best among their sex who have the art of pleasing. 
 There are men whom all other men join in praising; 
 but there has scarcely lived a woman wife, virgin, 
 or saint who has not had detractors amongst other 
 women. Should there have been some few exceptions 
 which prove this general rule, they will be found
 
 12 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 to have flourished in the ranks of the fearfully and 
 unutterably ugly. 
 
 Every woman has flirted ; but AVC are not con- 
 cerned with the women whose innocent flirtations 
 are but the gush of youthful spirits, or with those 
 who owe the title of Flirt to the mere malignity of 
 their own sex. The Flirts of whom we propose to 
 treat are those who flirt of malice prepense. In these 
 flirting is the art of sexual tantalisation. 
 
 It may also be termed, less philosophically, the 
 art of playing with fire and getting scorched, more or 
 less often. All Flirts burn themselves, once at least. 
 Some squeal when they but singe their finger-tips, 
 and retire straightway from the game with their eyes- 
 full of tears. These are third-class Flirts, having no 
 real heart in the play. The recollection of their first 
 smart makes them redden and tingle till they become 
 old women, when, perhaps, they smile, and wish the 
 burn could come over again. It was a third-class 
 Flirt who, on the strength of a short and sharp ac- 
 quaintance with the ways of the other sex, invented 
 such sayings as ' Man is perfidious.' 
 
 The second-class Flirts get frequently burned 
 without ever quite inuring themselves to the pain. 
 They resemble dullish boys who play at football be- 
 cause they must, but never surmount the fear of 
 being shinned. Sometimes the second-class Flirt
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 
 
 13 
 
 gives up playing, and learns to laugh at her burns ; 
 more often she goes on till she can play no longer, 
 and wearily sums up her experience of the sport as 
 * all burns and no pleasures.' 
 
 But the first-class Flirt cares not a pin for 
 scorches. She is the salamander who lives in the 
 fire. Sparks fly round her and she revels in them ; 
 she is all over scars, and surveys them complacently 
 as a soldier does his wounds. Flirt from the 
 nursery, Flirt in her teens, Flirt in her prime, she 
 continues flirting when she is an old woman, and
 
 14 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 flirts on her deathbed with the doctor. If she 
 could come to life for a moment in her coffin, she 
 would flirt with the undertaker. Commend us to 
 this class of Flirt for making the heads of men flame 
 like the tops of lucifer-matches. She sets quiet 
 households a-fire ; everything turns to tinder on her 
 passage, and when she is buried an odour of brim- 
 stone hovers over her tomb. Her old lovers would 
 be afraid to lift up the grave- slab that covers her 
 lest they should see little blue-forked flames leap out 
 diabolically. 
 
 We are not sufficiently versed in etymology to say 
 when the word ' Flirt' first came into use, and from 
 what it is derived. It seems to have dethroned the 
 French coquette, which appears frequently in the 
 writings of eighteenth-century authors; but coquette, 
 which is described by some as a polite variant of 
 coquine, and by others as the mere feminine of coquet, 
 which, though it now means ' natty,' originally had 
 the same signification as our English coxcombish, 
 or cock's-comb. The word coquette is not much 
 more than two centuries old. How were Flirts 
 and coquettes called before that ? The inconstancy 
 of women is no new thing, alas; and though not 
 catalogued in Scripture among the ills to which 
 human flesh is heir, it drew many a dolorous ode 
 from the earliest writers of Greece and Rome. Anac-
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 15 
 
 reon made epigrams on the subject ; and Horace, in 
 his plaintive lines to Barine, the l terror of Roman 
 mothers,' tells her that he could not believe her per- 
 fidious oath under any circumstances. 
 
 Matters had certainly not improved in the chival- 
 rous ages, when knights spent half their time in fight- 
 ing for their mistresses, and the other half in cursing 
 their fickleness; and Francis I. is found scratching 
 upon a window-pane, still to be seen in the Chateau 
 de Blois, 
 
 ' Souvent femme varie, 
 Bien fol qui s'y fie.' 
 
 Shakespeare, who wrote under the reign of a 
 Flirt, had plenty to say in disparagement of women, 
 and drew many Flirts without giving them that 
 name. Portia and Beatrice were both pretty fair 
 triflers, and so was Rosalind, of whom her lover 
 warbled : 
 
 ' As the cat seeks after kind, 
 So will lovely Eosalind.' 
 
 But a good apology for flirting is put into Othello's 
 mouth when he says, in defence of Desdemona, that 
 it is no reproach to a woman if she lays herself out 
 to be pleasing. He subsequently departed from this 
 view, when he smothered his wife ; but this little 
 piece of hastiness did not alter the soundness of his 
 previous conclusions.
 
 16 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 The truth is, that Shakespeare lived in an age 
 when centuries of knight-errantry, joustings, floral 
 games, courts of love, and what not, had taught 
 women to think a vast deal of themselves. They 
 flirted more than now, perhaps, only men had learned 
 to bear it better. A poor wretch who had been 
 fighting three years for his lady-love in the Holy 
 Land returned to claim her after this probation : 
 but their meeting befell on a day when it was pour- 
 ing cats and dogs; whence it arose that the knight, 
 as he threw himself at his mistress's feet with both 
 knees in a puddle, besought her to get under shelter, 
 and cast his mantle over her shoulders. The lady, 
 instead of being touched by this care for her health, 
 was indignant. '"What!' she exclaimed. 'If you 
 have eyes to perceive that it rains at such a moment 
 as this, you cannot love me !' And she condemned 
 him, for his breach of gallantry, to remain silent for 
 a whole year, if he would win her. That sort of 
 thing would not do nowadays. It belonged to an 
 epoch when women doled out their smiles economi- 
 cally, and thought a man well indemnified for wounds 
 or chronic rheumatism by leave to kiss their finger- 
 tips. A disgusted Scot, who seems to have been 
 ahead of his age, wrote, in Jamie VI. 's time, 
 
 ' 0, the lasses o' the Cannongate, 
 They are so wondrous nice ;
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 17 
 
 They wulna gi'e a single kiss 
 But for a double price. 
 
 Gar hang 'em ! gar hang 'em ! 
 
 Each upon a tree, 
 
 For I'll get as gude outside the gate 
 For a baubee !' 
 
 Did he get a good kiss for a baubee ? We doubt it. 
 He may have stolen the kiss and paid the baubee 
 afterwards, as conscience-money; but the canny fel- 
 low's having appraised the lowest marketable value 
 of a kiss at a halfpenny worth a shilling of our 
 money goes far to show that this agreeable saluta- 
 tion was not held cheap. However, our Scotsman 
 deserves to be noted as a social reformer, who pro- 
 tested against the airs which women were giving 
 themselves. He said, ' Gar hang 'em !' as the Edin- 
 burgh mobs used to hang bakers in those days, when 
 they sold their loaves too dear ; and he advocated the 
 cheapening of the relations between sexes, which is 
 a boon not to be lost sight of among the other debts 
 we owe to the Land o' Cakes. 
 
 A hundred years later a French courtier, visiting 
 Scotland, was enabled to chronicle that an admirable 
 feature in North British maidens was the fondness 
 they showed for embracing strangers on both cheeks. 
 There has since been a slight reaction in these 
 matters ; but never mind every Scotch lassie now 
 subscribes to the doctrine :
 
 18 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 v,-. 
 
 ' Gin a body 
 Kiss a body 
 
 Need a body cry V 
 
 It was the Puritans who, in England, first reminded 
 women that they were made to suckle fools and
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 19 
 
 chronicle small-beer. Drab gowns and a modest de~ 
 meanour were the things they enjoined, and women 
 have testified their appreciation of this reform by their 
 unwavering retrospective allegiance to the Cavalier 
 party ever since. Charles II. did but restore the 
 reign of women for a brief space; and soon the 
 Georgian era was to come, with its days of hard drink- 
 ing, which turned men into sots, unfit to be flirted 
 with. When gallants rolled under the table after 
 dinner, of what power were soft glances and witching 
 smiles? The bottle is woman's worst rival: she 
 knows it; and the only wonder is that, in the fierce 
 tussle for supremacy which now ensued between 
 Drink and Woman, the receptacle for liquor should 
 have been able to hold its own for more than a hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 There never was such a graceless, loveless, flirtless 
 period as the last century. Men treated women like 
 tavern-wenches, and, having wooed them between two 
 hiccoughs, eloped with them on the spur of a tipsy 
 impulse. There were Mayfair marriages, Fleet mar- 
 riages, and marriages at Gretna Green. The hot 
 blood of the day, whiskified and lustful, was too im- 
 patient to brook a long courtship or the delay of banns 
 or license. The Duke of Hamilton married one of 
 the Misses Gunning with a bed-curtain ring; and 
 abductions of heiresses by penniless rakes were so-
 
 20 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 frequent that Parliament had to legislate on the 
 matter. In that period of rowdy boozings, prize- 
 fights, cock-fights, punch-clubs, and duels, society 
 staggered, and its morals smelt of the bagnio. It was 
 deemed a compliment to a woman to make her the 
 
 toast of a drunken orgy ; and as many women passed 
 over to the enemy, which they had fruitlessly com- 
 bated, and began to drink as hard as the men, powder 
 in id patches came into fashion to hide flushed cheeks 
 und swollen eyelids. 
 
 Pah! it rct'ks with a foul whiff, that corrupt 
 eighteenth century; and nothing less than the five- 
 and-twenty years' war which ushered in the nine-
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 21 
 
 teenth was needed to make its men sober and its 
 women coy once more. In the life of camps the love- 
 for women burns with a purer light ; and the brave- 
 are ever gentle, courteous, and timid towards the- 
 weak. Then poets arose amid the clash of our arms ; 
 and after Waterloo, Scott, Byron, Moore, and the 
 Lakeists drew English thoughts towards chivalrous 
 romance and pastoral idyl. The accession of a girl- 
 Queen did the rest ; and gradually, as the Sovereign's- 
 influence, as wife and mother, pervaded the Court, 
 and spread thence over the people, woman's ascend- 
 ency swelled to the full flood again, till it eventually 
 overflowed, and feminised the whole surface of 
 society. 
 
 We nowadays heap all our luxury on our wo- 
 men. Men have renounced the gold-laced coats, 
 ruffles, and jewelry of their forefathers; but they 
 cover their women with the costliest textures and 
 with rivers of precious stones. Nothing is too plain 
 or ugly for male attire, nothing too gaudy for wo- 
 man's ; and while the tailor's bill shrinks every year 
 through the invention of rough colourless cloths im- 
 possible to wear out, the milliner's expands every 
 season, because the ingenuity of modistes is for ever 
 desiring tints so delicate that they can hardly bear 
 the light, and trains so long that they are unfit for 
 walking.
 
 22 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 So much richness calls for display, and it is the 
 ^ambition of the modern woman to show herself every- 
 where. She is no longer content with the empire 
 of the drawing-room, ballroom, and theatre ; she must 
 reign in the open 
 air; and sports have 
 beeninvcnted cro- 
 quet, skating, and 
 lawn tennis in 
 which she can mix 
 with men and dwarf 
 them. Balls have 
 been multiplied for 
 her sake, till there 
 is not a house- 
 holder with ten 
 square feet of par- 
 lour but bids his 
 friends once or
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 
 
 23 
 
 twice a year to a carpet dance; picnics have 
 become the rage; water-parties and walking-tours 
 exhibit woman's taste in fancy costumes, and her 
 powers of hand and foot, for she does not disdain 
 to pull an oar, and will back herself for a ' discre- 
 tion' to walk long distances. She has invaded the 
 hunting-field and shooting-covert; she has climbed on 
 to the box-seat of four-in-hands ; and reforming our
 
 24 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 [">> 
 
 religion according to her own views of the aesthetic, 
 she has given us Ritualism. The club remained, until 
 lately, as a last refuge to man ; but mixed clubs like the
 
 ABOUT FLIRTS IN GENERAL. 
 
 25 
 
 Orleans and the Lotos have already been started, and, 
 before long, woman will have forced open the doors 
 of other houses. This will be the crowning triumph 
 at which she has been aiming for years, and when she 
 has achieved it, man's subjection will be complete. 
 Then we shall see floating over White's and the 
 Marlborough the emblem of female supremacy a 
 cambric handkerchief scented with opoponax. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 26 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE FLIRT'S POWER. 
 
 The goal of woman is marriage, and flirting is to 
 girls a means of reaching the goal; in the case of 
 married women it is a pastime, a consolation, or a 
 vengeance. Both the girl and the married Flirt pro- 
 ceed by the same methods, though the one faces the 
 goal and the other turns her back to it. The career 
 of the former may close at the altar in great honour,, 
 that of the latter is apt to end with a tumble into the 
 Divorce Court ; for the essence of flirting is, that it is- 
 a stolen pleasure and a speculation, whose future 
 results cannot be foreseen. 
 
 Flirting is, anyhow, a pleasant thing ; and, without 
 looking so far as to see how it ends, one may acknow- 
 ledge it as a source of the most gratifying emotions 
 obtainable on this earth. What would society be 
 "without it? from the modest girl whose uncon- 
 scious arts encourage the bashful lover to be bold, 
 down to the experienced coquette, who shoots with 
 an unerring aim glances that are meant to leave a 
 festering wound. Every woman who flirts stimulates
 
 THE FLIRT S POWER. 
 
 27 
 
 AN EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY COQUETTE. 
 
 for the moment the vanity of the man whom she tries 
 to please. Flirting is flattery in action. It may be 
 so delicate as to leave a balm on the wounds it 
 inflicts; and since of all forms of vanity the ambi- 
 tion to charm the other sex is, in both men and 
 women, that which is first born and last dies, and 
 which moreover rages strongest whilst it lives,
 
 28 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 there is no limit to the voluptuousness which may 
 be caused by exciting it. 
 
 The imagination of the man who is flirted with 
 expands into radiant visions; his blood flows in 
 quicker pulses. Look at him when the eye of the 
 coquette falls upon him deep and quiet, or light and 
 playful, or with an electric flash. However worn 
 and prosy he may be, his face beams, he throws out 
 his chest, his voice is tuned into the softest inflec- 
 tions, or becomes uncontrollable from sudden emotion. 
 So long as his charmer is within sight, he follows her 
 with his gaze, dumbly soliciting a second glance, as 
 a man holds out his glass to be refilled ; and when she 
 is gone, he glides into the most pleasing pensiveness. 
 He is castle-building. No matter how often a man 
 may have been mocked, the coaxing, caressing look 
 of some new face, seen for the first time, will elevate 
 him over present cares, and make him, it may be 
 but for a brief instant, a poet. Eclogues and epics, 
 fairer than have ever been printed, are composed 
 daily in the hearts of commonplace men who could 
 not rhyme two lines on paper ; for every man is able 
 to imagine himself the hero of a romance, and the 
 woman who inspires that romance gifts him with the 
 fancy to create a heroine. 
 
 Women would be too vain if they could realise 
 the power of their seductions. It is lucky for men
 
 THE ITLIRT'S POWER. 29 
 
 that they cannot. They themselves have no such 
 impressionability as men, except in cases where their 
 hearts or fortunes are deeply involved. A woman 
 loves once in her life, and it is in the power of her 
 lover to throw her, by a mere look, into shivering fits 
 or silent ecstasies ; she can also, on occasions, be 
 made extremely wretched or happy by a man whom 
 she does not love, but desires to marry. Save in these 
 instances, however, she cares nothing for man's looks. 
 A male Flirt may amuse, oifend, or frighten her ; but 
 there will be no magic thrilling in her sensations, no 
 giddy whirl of her mind, no castle-building. How coldly 
 impervious a pure-minded woman can be to incend- 
 iary declarations was seen in poor Werther's case : 
 
 ' Charlotte, when she saw his body 
 Borne before her on a shutter, 
 Like a well-conducted person, 
 
 Went on catting bread-and-butter.' 
 
 But supposing the situation had been reversed, and 
 Charlotte, instead of a staid matron, had been a girl 
 Flirt, setting her cap at Werther, a well-conducted 
 married man, would Werther have remained insen- 
 sible ? Not likely. There is no use in denying that 
 men cannot match women in callous propriety ; for 
 neither age, nor dignity, nor marriage-vows will steel 
 them against the shafts of the Flirt. 
 
 A little saucy-eyed girl of seventeen will turn the
 
 30 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 head of a prudent king, make a hoary statesman for- 
 get his intriguing business, and drive a pious bishop 
 into terrible wrestling with the devil. It is this uni- 
 versal laxity in men's morals which arms women with 
 their tremendous power power of which, we repeat, 
 few of them can guess the extent. But some of them do 
 guess it in time, and make a wild use of their weapons 
 of offence out of pure malice, and without a thought 
 of deriving any advantage from their recklessness 
 beyond the intimate satisfaction of having done mis- 
 chief. Cruelty is no name for the heartless delibera- 
 tion with which some of these pretty creatures will 
 plunge a dagger into the heart which they have first 
 set fluttering to assure themselves of its being alive. 
 
 Say, for instance, that a young man at the opera, 
 standing up in the stalls between the acts to recon- 
 noitre the boxes, lets his glance fall upon a woman 
 of surpassing beauty. Their eyes meet, and she 
 does not turn hers away, but examines the man a 
 moment, smiles vaguely, and then goes on talking 
 with her box-companion. But in another moment 
 she has looked again at the man, and this time, when 
 their eyes meet, a tinge of modest confusion over- 
 spreads her cheeks ; she hesitates, then throws a 
 wistful glance, which says, as plainly as possible, 1 1 
 wish we knew each other. I feel drawn towards you.' 
 
 One such glance suffices to set the man's heart
 
 THE FLIRT AT THE OPERA. 
 ' She sweeps by with the coldest of unconscious stares." 
 
 I. 3 o.
 
 THE FLIRT'S POWER. 
 
 31 
 
 and head a-flame, and at the close of the performance 
 behold him on the grand staircase waiting to see his 
 charmer come out. But she is a practised Flirt, who 
 has only amused herself by trying the killing-power 
 of her eyes ; just as a man, when going out to shoot, 
 may prove his double-barrel by knocking a miser- 
 able sparrow off a branch, so, with the coldest of 
 unconscious stares, she sweeps by, leaving the pre- 
 sumptuous wight dumbfoundered. He slinks off 
 with a lagging step, out of conceit with himself, red 
 to his ear-tips, and full of bile. It may be years 
 before he recovers from this humiliation; and forget 
 it he never will, if he lives to a hundred. There are 
 some men who have carried the deep scar of one false 
 glance all through their lives.
 
 32 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE FLIRT IN THE SEASON. 
 
 We prefer the Flirt with a purpose, who does not 
 waste her powder upon sparrows, but finds a suitable 
 object for every eye-shot. As we have said, there are 
 innocent Flirts and guilty ones, and both can be seen 
 during the London season flourishing in great num- 
 bers in all the resorts of festivity. The innocent 
 Flirt, who comes out under a chaperon to hunt for 
 a husband, begins operations bashfully. She is taken 
 to be presented at one of the Drawing-rooms; 
 and if it be a novel delight it is also a trying 
 one to find herself driving down St. James's-street 
 with bare][shoulders in broad daylight. She sports a 
 train three yards long, and a pearl necklace. On 
 descending from their carriage in the palace-yard, she 
 and her chaperon are surrounded by young men in 
 showy uniforms, military, naval, and diplomatic, who 
 bustle to offer their arms and murmur compliments. 
 She is introduced to a youth in blue swallowtail and 
 kerseymere breeches an attache home on leave 
 who begs to act as escort, and pilot her through the
 
 THE FLIKT IN THE SEASON. 33 
 
 crowded rooms, whilst a handsome young giant in 
 the scarlet-and-gold of the dragoons does the same 
 duty for the chaperon. 
 
 The press is so great and the scene so imposing 
 that the bashful girl is glad to accept the arm of the 
 sucking- diplomatist, who whispers to her the names 
 of all the great people whom they jostle. Here a past 
 premier with his star and garter; there a duchess 
 and her daughter ; there an archbishop and his wife ; 
 droves of admirals pushing nieces before them; 
 and troops of generals doing their best for flocks of 
 damsels who were the belles of garrison - towns. 
 What a sight for a girl who has but just left the 
 schoolroom, and who, not a year before, received 
 her last whipping from a martinet governess ! 
 
 The ceremony of curtsying to the Sovereign or the 
 Princess cheek-by-jowl with the greatest personages in 
 the land endows a girl with an assurance which never 
 forsakes her afterwards. She perceives that the 
 great are not so very formidable after all, and that 
 good looks can hold their own even at Court. From 
 the circle of princes and ministers grouped around 
 the Throne, more than one admiring glance falls on 
 her ; and the Royal page who gathers up her train 
 and chucks it over her arm as she retires from 
 Royalty's presence does this more civilly than to titled 
 dowagers with diamonds in their hair. Trust a girl,.
 
 34 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 even a country-bred one, for noticing how many other 
 girls, prettier than herself, there may be at one of 
 these Drawing-rooms. The polite attache, who joins 
 her again after she has issued from the throne-room, 
 mutters something nice about the grace with which 
 she bears herself. He thinks her dress lovely, its 
 train unique ; and so forth. 
 
 The girl smiles ; she only believes half those com- 
 pliments (for she has had a first experience of flat- 
 tery from country cousins at home), and yet she 
 notices that guardsmen make way respectfully to 
 let her pass; that grizzled veterans, whose breasts 
 are covered with medals, nudge each other at her 
 approach ; and that sundry old ladies, with mortally 
 plain daughters, eye her with that stony stare which, 
 when it is levelled by woman at woman, is as good 
 as purest incense. So, although her Majesty provides 
 not so much as a cup of tea for the refreshment of 
 her loyal subjects, who tire themselves in standing 
 for hours in her saloons and other hours on the stair- 
 case waiting for their carriages, our incipient Flirt 
 does not mind the fatigue. Her hair has got 
 rumpled; her dress, disarranged in the crush, has 
 lost half a yard of trimming ; and one of her satin 
 shoes is slipping off; but the attache sticks close to 
 her saying pleasant things, and the dragoon behind 
 adds his word of testimony to the effect which her
 
 THE FLIRT IN THE SEASON. 
 
 35 
 
 charms have produced. So this is to her a day of 
 nectar-drinking. She has been presented at Court ; 
 she has had a success ; and for that moment at least 
 the world seems to be lying at her feet like a ball. 
 
 In a few days more she is in the very midst of the 
 eddy of fashionable life. She returns from balls at
 
 06 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 six in the morning, and does not leave her bed till 
 midday. She has no sooner breakfasted than she 
 must put on her habit for a ride in Rotten Row, 
 where she wondrously soon gets to know the faces of 
 the habitues, many of whom bow to her, whilst others 
 wheel their nags round and canter by her side, asking 
 her to promise them waltzes for the next dance at 
 Lady A.'s or the Duchess of B.'s. At two she is 
 
 home again and dressing for an afternoon outing. 
 One day there is a flower-show at the Botanical 
 Gardens; on another a fancy bazaar; on another
 
 THE FLIRT IN THE SEASON. 37 
 
 some pigeon-shooting at Hurlinghani. On Sundays 
 there is the Zoo, varied by an occasional drive to 
 Richmond, or a dinner at the Trafalgar at Greenwich. 
 
 At all these places the Flirt finds opportunities 
 for airing her attractions, and practising those wiles 
 which a girl learns as quickly as a kitten learns to 
 frisk. She is noted for a beauty; her chaperon 
 commends her for a sweet temper, enlarges on her 
 talent as a pianist, and hints at 'expectations.' 
 Matrimonial candidates are not wanting, and it be- 
 comes the Flirt's care to select the fittest. If she be 
 a clever girl, she does this without offending anybody, 
 and keeps the whole squad of her suitors still expect- 
 ant up to the last moment, when, having booked an 
 eligible offer, she can safely relapse into the chaste 
 reserve of brides-elect. 
 
 The talent which some maidens show in thus 
 playing off rival admirers against one another is 
 something to see. If the heart does not get foolishly 
 caught in the snares of some ' Detrimental,' the mind 
 remains free to work out the problem of how to secure 
 wealth and social position without too much self- 
 sacrifice. A girl who may not be intent on marrying 
 for love is yet anxious that her husband shall be 
 kind ; and the secret of so many oddly-matched wed- 
 dings between brides in their teens and grizzly men 
 past middle age is, that a girl often discovers that she
 
 38 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 has more chance of being tenderly treated by an old 
 man than by a young one. Anyhow, she watches 
 very keenly to see if the wooers who flit around her 
 show signs of temper, stinginess, or jealousy. 
 
 She would not have much chance of enlightening 
 herself on these points if her flirtations were confined 
 to the morning rides or afternoon recreations above 
 mentioned ; but Ascot and Goodwood, the Eton and 
 Harrow Match at Lord's, the parties fines at the 
 Orleans Club, and the cotillons at balls enable her 
 to study men for hours at a time, and to take her 
 mental notes as to character. A man may conceal his 
 defects during an afternoon ; but it is rare when he 
 does not let something of them peep out in the course 
 of a day's excitement about horse-racing, or during a 
 long cotillon, when he is made to go through figures 
 in which he is converted into a laughing-stock, and 
 must show how he can stand banter. 
 
 During Ascot week, for instance, the chaperon 
 possibly hires a lodge near the course, goes to witness 
 the four days' racing, and gives little dinners every 
 evening to pleasant acquaintances whom she has met 
 in the Grand Stand. Some of these inveigle the Flirt 
 into betting. It used to be the custom for girls to 
 bet gloves (when they did bet) ; but this has grown 
 tame, and a girl now wagers hard money, or ' discre- 
 tions' which mean jewelry or a private settlement of
 
 THE FLIKT IN THE SEASON. 39 
 
 a long milliner's bill. However, a Flirt would do 
 well to be careful about indulging in this form of 
 dissipation, for men do not really like a betting-girl. 
 Many a smart miss has thrown a good matrimonial 
 chance away by unguardedly taking a bet which had 
 
 been offered to prove her. Again, 'discretions' are 
 awkward things, for, if a girl loses, the gallant game- 
 ster is apt to demand a settlement in the shape of a 
 kiss, and to snatch it in a quiet corner, if voluntary 
 payment be refused.
 
 40 SIDE -LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 The Ascot week, however, is sure to bring instruc- 
 tive lessons. It is then that the Flirt sees how ill 
 the sportive young baronet bears his losses on the 
 turf, while the middle-aged merchant, who has, per- 
 haps, lost three times as much, remains as serene as 
 ever. The one stands revealed as a cantankerous 
 cub; the other as a man of nerve and good taste. 
 Race succeeds race, and the differences become more 
 accentuated. In the evening, at dinner, the baronet 
 is absent-minded and sour, talks of the villany of book- 
 makers, and swears that his favourite was * roped ;' 
 the merchant overflows with anecdote, and proves 
 that his appetite has not been impaired a jot. 
 
 The next day, at luncheon, on the top of a drag 
 which has been tooled down from London by some 
 noble member of the Four-in-hand Club, the young 
 baronet drinks too much champagne, and his hand 
 trembles as he holds up his field-glass to watch the 
 start in a race on which he has risked a pot of money ; 
 the elderly merchant meanwhile devotes himself to 
 the Flirt, and shows by his light chatting that he has 
 an eye for something beyond the pecuniary aspects of 
 a race. He points out the beauties of the course, the 
 multicoloured line of jockeys breaking up for a pre- 
 liminary canter, the picturesque effect of the mass of 
 carriages thronging near the stand. Nor does he for- 
 get to make an appointment to meet his fair companion
 
 THE FLIKT IN THE SEASON. 
 
 41 
 
 again at Goodwood, nor to mutter a few words about 
 the attractions of his own country estate, which he 
 
 has just begun to plant with trees. There is no flat- 
 tery like that of paying assiduous attention to a woman 
 in despite of surrounding excitements; and at this 
 game elderly men much excel young ones. 
 VOL. i. D
 
 42 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 But the young ones come to the front again in 
 ballrooms, and especially in cotillons. Of late years 
 it has become the fashion to give calico-balls for the 
 encouragement of native industry; so our Flirt is 
 sure to appear once or more in the course of the 
 season at one of these charitable hops, tricked out 
 in some cheap stuff at fivepence a yard. A white- 
 calico dress looped with bunches of scarlet tape, a 
 red rose in her hair, and another at her girdle this 
 is her costume, and she contrives to create as much 
 effect in it as if it had come from Worth's, in Paris. 
 Your true Flirt always likes dancing, and seems never 
 to tire. Her card is filled up within a few minutes of 
 her entry into the ballroom, with the exception of the 
 one or two dances which she reserves in petto for 
 favourites ; and she gaily trips through every valse 
 and quadrille. 
 
 Middle-aged admirers are fain to play the wall- 
 flower, and look on glumly during these untiring per- 
 formances, which indicate a strength of muscle and 
 a dashing disposition of mind not to be competed with 
 by any man who has reached his fortieth year. The 
 most prudent fogeys do not attempt to join in the 
 dancing, sensibly recognising that those who take 
 part in cotillons are apt to make exhibitions of 
 themselves. A portly quadragenarian trotting over 
 a polished floor with a grotesque pasteboard head on
 
 THE FLIRT IN THE SEASON. 
 
 his shoulders, or a bunch of canvas carrots in his 
 mouth (for the humours of these cotillon figures
 
 44 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 are various), has often forced a Flirt to stuff her 
 handkerchief between her lips. However, there is 
 a cotillon figure where the ladies invite the gentlemen 
 to dance; and here the Flirt may soothe an elderly 
 lover's feelings by preferring him before younger 
 men; or, again, she may gladden him by selecting 
 his youngest and best-looking rival as the butt for all 
 her malice, forcing him to sport the ass's head or the 
 carrots, to gallop round the room on all-fours, and so 
 forth. This can be done with the greater safety, as a 
 young man is never displeased at being made to cut 
 antics in cotillons. 
 
 c.
 
 THE FLIET FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE FLIRT FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 
 
 Fanny is the Flirt-daughter of a Flirt-mother, who 
 never had a chance of becoming anything else but a 
 thorn to the other sex. Her parents were separated 
 by mutual consent when she was about six years old, 
 and she was taken to live with the one whom she 
 knew and liked the least. But her mother was a 
 beautiful creature, who won her admiration before se- 
 curing her love : she was always so brightly dressed, 
 so gay (when not out of temper), and she received 
 such a number of well-dressed men in her drawing- 
 rooms ! Few ladies came ; and 
 little Fanny grew up to prefer gentle- 
 men, because they took her 
 on their knees and gave her 
 bonbons.
 
 46 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Her mother's fits of temper were like rapid alterna- 
 tives of cloud or sunshine. If things went wrong 
 if there were creditors or such -like annoyances 
 Fanny got slapped for nothing, and would run howl- 
 ing down to the kitchen to take comfort of the 
 maid, a middle-aged sharp-eyed Frenchwoman, who 
 was paid with mamma's cast-off dresses, and with 
 vails from the visitors. 
 
 Fanny received no education to speak of; for her 
 mother, who wanted her to play Propriety in the 
 drawing-room when she received visitors, or in the 
 carriage when she drove in the Park, could not think 
 of sending her to school. Sometimes a governess came 
 to give her lessons ; but governesses and mamma had 
 a trick of quarrelling, chiefly about Fanny's back- 
 wardness and the impossibility of making her learn 
 anything so long as her mother encouraged her in 
 idleness and saucy ways. When mamma was in a 
 good-humour she would have Fanny brought into 
 her dressing-room, and spent hours in covering her 
 with finery, combing her hair, and washing her hands 
 in milk of almonds to make them white. She said 
 that the wild little mite had the same blue eyes as 
 herself; and she took pleasure in hearing gentlemen 
 say that she would grow up as pretty as a fairy. 
 
 The time came, however, when Fanny was called 
 up less and less often into the presence of visitors.
 
 THE FLIKT PROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 47 
 
 This was when she had reached her tenth year, and 
 began to look too much of a hoyden for a mother
 
 48 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 who wished to appear perennially twenty-five. As a 
 consequence, she took to living a great deal with the 
 servants in the kitchen. They employed her to fetch 
 and carry, and opened her small mind wonderfully 
 with their tattle. She could hardly read large print, 
 but was aware that the potman courted Sue the 
 housemaid, and that when a certain policeman looked 
 over the area-railings, softly whistling, he was after 
 Meg the cook. Then she learned what duns meant, 
 and saw many of them parleying with Jack the 
 page-boy, a precocious imp, who treated her on terms 
 of easy familiarity, and got her to steal pomatum and 
 scented soaps for him out of her mother's dressing- 
 room. By and by this lad informed her that ' missus' 
 was going to 'old Gooseberry,' which he explained 
 to mean 'blue smash,' or anything else that signified 
 bankruptcy. 
 
 The servants did not receive their wages regularly, 
 and set meals were no longer the rule in the dining- 
 room. Fanny therefore ate with the servants, while 
 her mother took breakfast in bed and generally dined 
 out. Sometimes mamma would vanish for six weeks 
 together to Paris or the seaside, and on her return 
 rate Fanny sharply for looking such a slut. The 
 truth is Fanny enjoyed her mother's absences; for 
 they allowed her to go gadding about with the ser- 
 vants, who took her to Rosherville, and wound up the
 
 THE PLIET FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 49 
 
 excursion with a happy evening at some music-hall, 
 where she and the precocious page drank negus out 
 of the same tumbler. This blissful life was abruptly 
 interrupted when Fanny was fourteen. An execution 
 was put into the house. Fanny's mother contrived 
 to secrete her jewels, and went off to the Continent 
 with them ; and Fanny herself was sent to reside with 
 a distant connection, a curate in Yorkshire. 
 
 It was three years before the mother and daughter 
 met again, and by that time Fanny had learned to 
 read, write, gabble French, and strum three tunes on 
 the piano. The curate's wife imparted to her such 
 knowledge as she possessed; the curate teased her 
 with moral lectures ; but on the whole she rather en- 
 joyed her life at the parsonage, where she had plenty 
 of playfellows, and was held in some respect by reason 
 of her London experiences. She became a romp, 
 and had the pleasure of seeing the curate's male 
 progeny fight with their fists for the honour of danc- 
 ing attendance on her. She was just sixteen when 
 Tom, the eldest boy, who was fourteen and a half, pro- 
 posed they should elope together, and set up house 
 with eleven and sixpence he had saved out of his 
 pocket-money. She flew at rather higher game in 
 accepting the advances of a country-town baker's 
 heir, who paid his court by presenting her with small 
 fruit-pies, which he made surreptitiously with his
 
 50 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 father's flour. This flirtation was in a fair way to- 
 wards driving the young baker to commit suicide in 
 one of his own ovens, when Fanny was called away 
 
 from the parsonage to join her mother, who had 
 returned to London, and expressed her intention of 
 bringing her daughter l out.' 
 
 Fanny was rather sorry to leave the parsonage for 
 the purpose of resuming what she remembered as a
 
 THE FLIET FEOM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 51 
 
 life of discomfort; but she found her mother much 
 changed. By some arrangement with Fanny's father 
 all debts had been paid, and the separated wife was- 
 to enjoy a handsome allowance payable monthly, 
 but contingent on no further debts being contracted. 
 Later on the daughter discovered that this arrange- 
 ment had been effected by parentally defrauding her 
 of some property to which she was entitled under her 
 mother's marriage settlement. Anyhow, the mainten- 
 ance allowed was sufficient to keep mother and child 
 in decent state. They had a brougham, a footman, a 
 well-furnished house in the West-end, and a margin 
 to buy an occasional opera-box with. Fanny learned 
 that she was to become her mother's bosom friend 
 and companion, and do her best to catch a husband 
 who should provide them both with a sumptuous 
 establishment. 
 
 Fanny was exceedingly pretty, andher queer bring- 
 ing-up had rendered her knowing as a young cat. She 
 was not slow to discern that her respected mother was. 
 selfishness in petticoats, and only set store by her as. 
 a marketable commodity; nevertheless, she took a 
 semi-contemptuous liking for the faded, light-headed, 
 garrulous lady, who initiated her into the arts by 
 which men may be cozened. Not that such arts 
 really need teaching like an abstruse science, for 
 women pick them up intuitively; but young Flirts-
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 
 can always learn something from older ones, espe- 
 cially when these older ones know the fortune and 
 parentage of every man in society.
 
 THE FLIRT FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 53 
 
 Fanny went to balls, and her mother told her 
 afterwards the exact worldly position of every 
 partner with whom she had danced. She bade her 
 beware of 2000/. a year, which is but gilded misery; 
 5000/. with landed property, said she, was too often 
 comparative pauperism, for the land ate up most of 
 the income ; 10,0007. a year derivable from a bank or 
 manufactory, and with an M. P. ship annexed, would 
 do as a pis-aller ; but it Avould be foolishness not to 
 pitch one's ambition on the best things at once, and 
 go in straight for a coronet and 50,000/. per annum. 
 Such prizes, she told her, frequently fall to the lot of 
 girls who have nothing but their good looks to bring 
 their husbands. Fanny, who began to think no small 
 champagne of herself on finding her beauty attract 
 general notice, laid the maternal maxims to heart, and 
 trifled with a great number of suitors whom most 
 other girls in her position would have been glad to 
 catch. She did not flout them, but behaved worse 
 leading each one on separately to hope and hope till, 
 finding a better, she dropped him as unceremoni- 
 ously as a spoilt flower. 
 
 During her first season she was all the rage. 
 Afterwards at Spa, and during a round of visits in 
 country houses, she kept eligible men round her in 
 shoals; but she was too giddy to see that such 
 chances as she then had would never come again, and
 
 54 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 she became noted for an incorrigible Flirt before the 
 novelty of dancing upon men's hearts and vanities 
 had in any way begun to pall upon her. During her 
 second season she was less in vogue than the first; 
 but setting it down for a dull season, she adjourned 
 her hopes without losing any of her illusions. At 
 her third season, however, her eyes opened somewhat, 
 
 for she who had flirted with everybody began to be 
 flirted with in her turn by men who made fun of her. 
 This is always a sign of decadency. Fanny's 
 mother grew cross, and accused her of not knowing 
 how to play her cards ; the girl retorted with vehe-
 
 THE FLIRT FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 55 
 
 ment recriminations, and there were some fine scream- 
 ing scenes between the attached couple. On the 
 whole, Fanny's mother did wrong to initiate quarrels, 
 for she had everything to lose by wounding the girl's 
 pride. Fanny took a brooding resolution, that when 
 she married it should be for herself alone, and that she 
 would never allow her mother to set foot in her house. 
 
 She insensibly lapsed into the second manner of 
 Flirts, which is one of great softness. She saw that 
 several men whom she had rejected had married, and 
 were both prosperous and happy which made her 
 jealous and cautious, but not more easy to please; 
 for looking at her marriage from a purely personal 
 point of view, she was now unconsciously more fasti- 
 dious than when she regarded it as a speculation in 
 which her mother was to have a half share. On the 
 other hand, men. knowing her to be a Flirt, were not 
 duped by her softened manner ; and many held aloof 
 who would have urged their suits if they could have 
 believed she would have treated them au serieux. 
 
 She was still so pretty as to seem a most desir- 
 able acquisition to men who count beauty for much 
 in the choice of a wife ; and she had a small tender 
 spot in her heart just enough to keep her romantic 
 after many deceptions. So it befell that one bright 
 day she began to take a serious interest in one of 
 her love-affairs with a young gentleman of property.
 
 56 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 The wooer had good looks and good temper on his 
 side ; and she really liked him so much so that her 
 cheeks flamed and her pulses throbbed on several 
 occasions when she thought a proposal was impending. 
 But he heard of her reputation, turned shy, and 
 suddenly jilted her by which blow she was nearly 
 driven out of her senses. For several days it seemed 
 to her as if life had lost all its savour all its pro- 
 spects ; then she rallied, and, becoming reckless from 
 her humiliation, threw herself at the head of the first 
 man who offered himself. This person chanced to 
 be a middle-aged archaeologist, who was as much 
 embarrassed as flattered by the hazard which put him 
 in possession of a young, brilliant, and very expen- 
 sive wife, much too skittish for him to manage. 
 
 His archaeological studies were not benefited in 
 consequence. Flirts like Fanny do not make good 
 wives. The girl had married more to spite her 
 mother than to please herself ; and once she had ex- 
 hausted the pleasure of seeing her parent gnash her 
 teeth, she found out that she had mated,, herself to a 
 man by no means congenial to her tastes. The archae- 
 ologist had married in order to have a home ; Fanny 
 wanted to enjoy her privileges as a matron by gad- 
 ding about to amusements too costly for her hus- 
 band's purse. In their early days of connubial bliss, 
 when free from the rheumatic attacks to which a
 
 THE FLIRT FROM EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 57 
 
 misplaced ardour on the subject of lake dwellings 
 had rendered him liable, her husband used to escort 
 her on these occasions; but he soon grew tired of 
 his role. A demand for extra pin-money pro- 
 duced a coolness between the couple; the first mil- 
 liner's bill, about a yard in length, occasioned a 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 58 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 \ 
 
 decided breach. Fanny's mother did not help to 
 mend matters, for, being called in as an ally by her 
 reconciled and repentant daughter, she went to work 
 as mothers-in-law not unfrequently do, and entered 
 her protest against the marital theories of economy. 
 Then daily bickerings arose, stinging speeches and 
 mutual recriminations ; all of which ended at last by 
 the archaeologist making a cheerful surrender of half 
 his income for the sake of seeing his wife and her 
 mother leave his house together. 
 
 Thereupon the husbandless pair of Flirts resumed 
 their old life in company. It was not a joyous life. 
 For the young wife especially it became a weary 
 round of dissipations, which, being now aimless, was 
 bereft of all zest. She could not marry again whilst 
 her husband was alive, and the continuance of her ali- 
 mony depended on her not breaking any of the com- 
 mandments that concern marriage. On the whole, 
 Fanny learned, rather too late, that flirting is a wind 
 which seldom blows light craft on a prosperous 
 voyage. . 6
 
 THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 
 
 In the catalogue of Flirts this variety has many 
 representatives. England is a country of large fami- 
 lies; all the girls in a family cannot be pretty, and 
 it will often happen that amongst half a dozen sisters, 
 one only has any pretensions to comeliness. This one 
 is called ' the Beauty,' and she becomes in a house- 
 hold what the ' favourite' is in a racing-stable. All 
 the family hopes are centred upon her, and she is 
 expected to win good matrimonial stakes for herself 
 that she may provide well for her sisters afterwards. 
 
 Her sisters do not much like her as a rule how 
 should they? She eclipses them whenever they 
 appear together : she is a butterfly, and they so many 
 gray moths. Nevertheless Beauty is not treated in 
 the Cinderella fashion, for that is a style which has 
 grown antiquated. Nowadays Cinderella's ugly 
 sisters would have calculated the advantages of pos- 
 sessing a relative who could bring them to great 
 honour, and comfort them on every side. 
 
 Besides, Beauty often has a mother who keeps the
 
 60 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 ugly sisters in subjection. Appraising with maternal 
 shrewdness the perfections of the one child who is- 
 
 the living image of what she herself was, or thinks 
 herself to have been, the judicious parent gives out 
 that Beauty is delicate, and requires special petting
 
 THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 61 
 
 that she is also a very sensitive child, and must not 
 be teased. With more or less good grace, the sisters 
 submit to see Beauty lie in bed longer than they, 
 wear prettier dresses, and drink a glass of port-wine 
 every day at luncheon. Jealousy goads them to snub 
 the favoured one now and then with tart speeches, 
 or to pinch her slyly in corners and plead provoca- 
 tion which does not save them from correction at 
 the maternal tongue or hands. 
 
 It is more pleasing to reflect that in frequent 
 cases the ugly sisters join quite as cordially as their 
 mother in the recognition of Beauty's queenship. If 
 they be a well-taught good-natured family in strait- 
 ened circumstances say, the daughters of a country 
 clergyman it becomes evident to them that they 
 cannot all go up to London to enjoy themselves at 
 balls and flower-shows ; so they get to feel a sort of 
 pride in the sister who is to wear the family colours, 
 and, whilst enjoying her winsome face, wish it luck 
 for their own sakes. These are beauties who have 
 been passionately loved and admired by their ill- 
 favoured kin. 
 
 In any case, Beauty is sure to be spoiled by the 
 family acknowledgment of her charms ; and by the 
 time she is consigned to the London aunt or god- 
 mother who has undertaken to bring her out, she has 
 formed rather rosy anticipations of the triumphs that
 
 62 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 await her. Nobody has exactly told her that she has 
 been sent to London to catch a husband; but she 
 
 understands what hopes have been placed upon her r 
 and feels that she is not intended to return home 
 unengaged. However, her first parties in town 
 cause her a sharp disappointment. She passes un- 
 noticed among the crowd of other beauties ; she is 
 jostled on staircases; her chaperon has actually to 
 finesse in order to find her partners ; and these, far 
 from being overwhelmed by her charms, treat her 
 with remarkable composure, and talk a drawling 
 persiflage which she does not understand. 
 
 All this is very different from what Beauty had
 
 THE FLIKT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 63 
 
 expected, on the faith of a society experience derived 
 from three-volume novels. She had pictured well- 
 dressed men of title and fortune thronging round her 
 in circles five deep ; and a particular one, dark, very 
 tall, calm, muscular, sardonic towards men and gentle 
 as a lamb towards herself, who should do violent 
 things in her honour, and eventually win her hand 
 by cowing all his rivals like a very lion-tamer. A 
 country Flirt has always to unlearn a great deal when 
 she comes up to town ; and the intermediary period 
 between the discarding of old ideas arid the acquisi- 
 tion of new puts her in much the same shivering 
 plight as moulting birds, when their worn feathers 
 have gone and the fresh brilliant plumage is grow- 
 ing. This morally denuded plight is also one full of 
 peril. 
 
 Beauty may let herself be caught unawares by a 
 sapient fowler, whose snares were too cunning to be 
 suspected. Feeling that even the smooth places of. 
 society are strange to her tread, how can she guess 
 its pitfalls? The jargon of ballrooms; the indifference 
 which everybody seems to express towards every- 
 thing ; the competition with other beauties whom she 
 sees to be prettier, sprightlier, gayer than herself; 
 and, above all, the bewildering whirl of new faces : 
 these things abash her. It appears to her as though 
 she never met the same persons twice. Every day
 
 64 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 brings fresh introductions ; so that a partner whom 
 she chances to encounter at three different houses in 
 the course of a fortnight gladdens her like an old 
 friend. This partner is a foAvler, and in Beauty's 
 artless welcome of him lies his chance. 
 
 But the chaperon is watchful. Beauty is warned 
 that the partner is a Detrimental, and so learns her 
 first lesson of the dangers of town. If she escapes 
 the danger by treating Detrimental guardedly on 
 the fourth occasion of their meeting, she is in a 
 manner seasoned, and walks thenceforth with a 
 securer foot. 
 
 Then comes her bright time, when she discovers 
 that the position of a belle during the London season 
 is not quite what she had dreamed. It is neverthe- 
 less a pleasant position after all. Her aunt need take 
 no trouble now to find partners for her. The circle 
 of her acquaintance gradually expands, till it includes 
 nearly a couple of hundred unmarried men, whose 
 names she cannot remember, and of whom she knows 
 nothing more than what they have told her about 
 themselves between the figures in a quadrille or 
 during the panting halts of a waltz. Not having 
 memory enough to recollect all these physiognomies, 
 she is often surprised when a man whom she had 
 taken for a stranger comes up and asks her to dance, 
 on the strength of an introduction at a previous ball.
 
 THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 65 
 
 Some partners officers, government clerks, or young 
 barristers have the polite effrontery to tell her, in so 
 many words, that she is an uncommonly pretty girl. 
 The first time she turns scarlet ; but perceiving her 
 complimenter whisper, a few minutes afterwards, in 
 the ear of another pretty girl, who merely giggles, 
 she takes such free-and-easy banter for what it is 
 worth, and learns to be surprised at nothing. 
 
 Meanwhile, from out of the two hundred men 
 who have been presented to her, a dozen or so, who 
 habitually move within her aunt's ' set,' turn up 
 more often than others; and among these, again, 
 some half dozen are pronounced by her aunt to be 
 ' very nice,' which, in her phraseology, means ' eli- 
 gible.' London lives much in sets; and Beauty has 
 to cure herself of the delusion that her range of choice 
 is unlimited. Towards the end of the season she gets 
 somehow to see that she may really have the pick of 
 three out of the eligible six, and that the result of 
 three months' dancing, dressing, and sight-seeing is 
 that she must choose at short notice whether she will 
 marry a junior partner in an indigo firm, a solicitor 
 of forty in rising practice, or a shy squire of thirty, 
 who looks down at the carpet and traces patterns on 
 it with the point of his boot while he is speaking to 
 her. 
 
 Good-bye to visions of dashing earls with com-
 
 66 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 missions in the guards, to tall dark muscular men 
 with lamb-like manners, and to all the big prizes in 
 the marriage lottery ! The plain fact has to be faced 
 that Beauty's aunt cannot afford to take charge of 
 her for a second season ; and that the girl must make 
 her selection and seal her fate before society 'goes out 
 of town ;' failing which she will have to return home 
 and shift for herself as she can amongst those ugly 
 sisters of hers. 
 
 It is really a very trying moment, and it seems to 
 the girl as though events had rolled with such steam- 
 like rapidity that the end of the season has come 
 before she has had time to look about her. Nobody 
 has won her heart, and it does not strike her that any 
 of the three gentlemen above mentioned evinces the 
 signs of a violent passion towards herself. Her aunt 
 hints that the rising solicitor is an admirable man, so 
 prudent, wise, and well-to-do ; but Beauty prefers the 
 shy squire, because he seems kind and manageable, 
 which the solicitor does not. The lawyer soon per- 
 ceives this, and, having no time to waste, retires from 
 the contest in a huff, which so piques the aunt 
 that she reads Beauty a sharp lesson upon giddiness ; 
 whereon Beauty, feeling miserable, vents her wretch- 
 edness by a fit of sulking towards the squire, who, 
 taking fright, after one particularly depressing tete-a- 
 tC'te, retires also.
 
 THE FLIRT WHO HAS PLAIN SISTERS. 
 
 67 
 
 These calamities leave only the indigo partner in 
 the field ; but Beauty cannot rally in time to snatch 
 at this man without knowing anything of his character, 
 as she says. He seems pert and perky ; he talks of 
 everything with disparagement ; and Beauty does 
 not think she could be happy with him, at least not 
 till she has had time to study him a little more. So 
 at a final garden-party she neglects to give him the 
 necessary amount of encouragement ; the next day he
 
 68 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 leaves a p.p.c. card ; and the aunt informs Beauty, 
 with a mixture of anger and pity, that the season is 
 over now, and her chance at an end. ' I've done my 
 best for you, my dear ; but girls nowadays are not 
 what they were in my time. We always knew when 
 to be serious. We were aware that men can't be 
 trifled with, for pretty faces are as plentiful as black- 
 berries ; and it is quite a mistake for a girl to suppose 
 that if she flirts with a man, he can't go away and find 
 just as good as herself anywhere.' 
 
 Beauty is surprised to hear that she has been 
 flirting. It appears to her as though the swift round 
 of society amusements had left her no leisure to do 
 anything half so deliberate. She goes home dis- 
 consolate enough ; and perhaps two years later, after 
 having in the mean time eked out the weariest of 
 existences with her ugly sisters, she marries a farmer 
 or a curate. But to the end of her life the recollec- 
 tion of her one London season lingers in her mind 
 as a phantasmagoria, a whirligig, a dervish dance, 
 and she decides that she did not get fair play in being 
 blamed for not having chosen a husband in the so 
 rare intervals of thought that were left her between 
 one pleasure and another. Country beauties cling a 
 long time to the fallacy that husband-choosing is a 
 matter for reflection, wherein they differ from their 
 town sisters.
 
 BEAUTY'S SINGLE LONDON SEASON. 
 ' The aunt informs Beauty that the season is over and her chance at an end." 
 
 1.68.
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIET. 69 
 
 YI. 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIKT. 
 
 The desire of bishops to promote their sons-in-law 
 has long been notorious and praiseworthy. A bishop 
 may educate his son and leave his promotion to 
 others ; for too many dignitaries of the bishop's own 
 surname, holding his appointments, would cause a 
 scandal; but a son-in-law bears a different family 
 name, so his advancement is a much easier matter. 
 For this reason the clerical candidates for the hand of 
 a right reverend lord's daughter are always numerous 
 and eager. 
 
 It does not follow that a bishop's daughter always 
 cares to marry a clergyman. Bishops are of many 
 sorts: the worldly-minded, the scholarly, the pious, 
 and the ascetical. The two first categories generally 
 take their families to town during the parliament- 
 ary session; the last two leave them in their dio- 
 ceses and go to London alone, lodging en garqon 
 under the hospitable roof of Lambeth Palace, where 
 three sets of rooms are reserved in Lollards' Tower 
 for prelates in their case. Now a girl whose episco-
 
 70 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 pal father belongs to a noble family, and obtained 
 liis mitre solely owing to his connections, is rather 
 disposed to wed a landowner or a soldier than a 
 priest ; again, the daughter of an ex-college don or 
 public-school head-master has hankerings after a life 
 different from that which she has led among cloisters 
 or collegiate closes. Her father's promotion is sure 
 to have elated her ambition a little. She thinks 
 man is seen at his best in a scarlet coat. She 
 wonders what a military messroom can be like. 
 She has read in novels that officers are gallant cheer- 
 ful fellows, who make their spouses lead merry lives; 
 and all that she has seen of them herself their 
 startling clothes when out of uniform, their mous- 
 taches and eyeglasses, nay, the odour of the choice 
 cigars they smoke have a tantalising effect upon 
 her senses. There were no cigars smoked in her 
 father's household, and she had indeed learned to 
 connect the use of tobacco with a precocious de- 
 pravity of morals ; for her right reverend parent, 
 when he was head-master of Whippingham Grammar 
 School, used to birch, with merciless severity, boys 
 who were caught polluting themselves with smoke in 
 secret corners. 
 
 The don-bishop's daughter, if she be pretty, sel- 
 dom abandons herself to excessive devotion. Her 
 father (whom much scholarship has converted at
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 71 
 
 heart into a semi-pagan) rather discourages that kind 
 of thing, as tending to trouble and social indignity. 
 Whilst he was a -schoolmaster he inculcated attend- 
 ance at chapel as a duty ; likewise the reading of 
 pious books on Sundays, because they conduced to 
 learning as well as edification. Religion and lessons 
 were so inseparably connected in the girl's mind that 
 the mere sight of a ' Paley' or ' Butler' recalled 
 tedious Sunday tasks, while the reading of a collect 
 in church stirred memories of bygone Sabbaths, when 
 these pithy prayers had to be learned by rote and 
 recited to a governess before breakfast under pain 
 of bad marks. 
 
 A don's daughter (if pretty as above said) is seldom 
 a lover of books, pedagogic ways, or academical or ec- 
 clesiastical architecture. A tender remembrance and 
 liking for these things may come back to her in after- 
 life, when she has long lived apart from them; but 
 while growing in her teens she can imagine nothing 
 more dull than to vegetate all one's days in an atmo- 
 sphere of ink and schoolroom stuffiness. She envies 
 the boys or undergraduates when they go away for 
 the vacations ; and if she can get acquainted with 
 some of them whom her parents occasionally invite 
 to tea, she prefers the society of those who can talk 
 with her about scenes having nothing to do with 
 rectories or scholastic institutions. She looks down
 
 72 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 upon clergymen's sons ; and herein takes after her 
 parents, who show much more favour to the boys 
 whose fathers own broad acres or prosperous 
 banks. 
 
 The compensation which a don's daughter obtains 
 for her otherwise tiring life is the having plenty of 
 young male eyes to admire her. She gets her first 
 schooling in vanity from marking how the fifth-form 
 boys stare at her and nudge each other as she walks 
 into chapel with her mother. If her beauty have shone 
 forth very early, doubtless one of the young cubs, 
 bolder than the rest, takes to ogling her, and finds an 
 opportunity for sending her some anonymous dog- 
 gerel. He also shows off his prowess for her in the 
 cricket-field or on the river, getting bowled out by 
 a full-pitch or catching crabs in the gallant attempt 
 to overdo himself. These things may cause the don's 
 daughter to smile, but they afford her early practice 
 in flirting ; so that by and by, when her father is pro- 
 moted to the pomp of lawn-sleeves, she is ready to 
 try her proficiency in the wider arena of fashionable 
 life. Hazard, which plays many pranks, may not 
 unlikely throw in her way the identical young gentle- 
 man who made such good use of his bat in her honour ; 
 and if he turn out to have property or prospects, and 
 to be as pleasant and enterprising as in his days of 
 puppyhood, missy may possibly close her career as.
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 73 
 
 a Flirt by taking him for better or worse. Peda- 
 gogue bishops often catch as sons-in-law adults whom 
 they have whipped in youth, and would sometimes 
 like to whip again. 
 
 Matters are different with the daughters of 
 bishops of the pious or ascetic sort. By these arc 
 meant prelates of rigidly Low-Church views or highly 
 developed Ritualists, but in both cases earnestly reli- 
 gious bishops, not pedagogues or men of the world. 
 Such men have usually been rectors of large parishes, 
 or preaching canons noted for controversy. Their 
 zeal has spread to their families. Wife, sons, daugh- 
 ters, have all enrolled themselves under the banner 
 of the Church Militant ; and the daughters especially 
 desire nothing better than to continue in ecclesiasti- 
 cal harness all their lives by being paired off with 
 clergymen of congenial zeal, snugly beneficed. 
 
 Clerical fervour is so apt to impart primness to 
 young ladies that the daughter of a religious bishop 
 is generally a demure puss, of starched ways and 
 great inner slyness. She wears her hair smoothed 
 clown in bands, affects black dresses with plain 
 collars and cuffs, and descants gravely upon the sin 
 of worldliness ,to her class at the Sunday-school. 
 For all this she has a knowledge of the temptations 
 of the flesh and the ways of the devil, such as is not 
 to be matched by any individual amongst her father's 
 VOL. i. F
 
 74 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 clergy ; whilst on points of doctrine she could out- 
 argue a refractory archdeacon. Her mode of flirting 
 consists in propounding to young clergymen ques- 
 tions to test their orthodoxy; and the compliments 
 she best relishes are those implied in an unreserved 
 surrender to the law, which she lays down with far
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 75 
 
 greater promptitude and decision than the Court of 
 Arches. If her proclivities be towards High Church, 
 she adorns her album with photographs of Messrs. Mac- 
 konochie, Purchas, Bennett, and Tooth, and can reca- 
 pitulate volubly, in tones of muffled indignation, all 
 the counts upon which these just men were unjustly 
 condemned at law. If she be of Evangelical bias, she 
 deplores the relapses towards the errors of Rome, and 
 cherishes a scheme for bringing Baptists, Shakers, 
 Quakers, and Jumpers all within the Anglican com- 
 munion. 
 
 To do this sort of ecclesiastical maiden justice, 
 she seldom dallies long with the divine whom she 
 makes up her mind to choose ; and what is more, she 
 is very prone to select a curate who has little else 
 but the clothes in which he stands, superadded to the 
 physical or moral qualities which have rendered him 
 lovable. There is in this much calculation, mixed 
 up with love and a modicum of Christian charity, 
 for Miss Prim knows the advantage of becoming wife 
 to a friendless divine, who has no power of himself to 
 help himself. She is far too shining a light to be 
 hidden under a marital bushel. She must be mistress 
 not only in her new home which is her incontest- 
 able right but in her future husband's parish, which 
 might not seem so much a matter of right if the said 
 husband derived that parish from other hands than
 
 76 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 hers. Trust her for taking care that her bridegroom 
 gets the fattest benefice in her father's gift at the 
 
 "-^^L 
 
 time of her engagement, with a promise of transfer 
 to other and fatter ones as fast as they become
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 77 
 
 vacant; and depend upon it, she feels no manner of 
 scruple for the unstinted use which she makes of my 
 lord's patronage on behalf of the consort whom she 
 is pleased to regard as a ' chosen vessel.' 
 
 Unfortunately bishops are not lords temporal but 
 lords temporary, and the good things which they can 
 dispense when alive are not to be bequeathed at their 
 deaths. Prelates' daughters have sometimes found 
 out that this drawback operates very much to their 
 eventual humiliation and misery. Clerical husbands 
 who have been uxorially driven by wives who wielded 
 their father's croziers, so to say, have been known to 
 jib nay, to kick out when their right reverend 
 fathers-in-law had been laid in the cathedral vaults, 
 where no more loaves and fishes could be got out 
 of them. But such cases are really so painful that 
 one had better not pursue the matter further. 
 
 We come now to the Ecclesiastical Flirt, who is 
 the daughter of a plain parson, never destined to 
 attain episcopal honours. The position of girls whose 
 fathers are clergymen in straitened circumstances has 
 at all times been difficult, for the children of a gentle- 
 man aspire to marry persons of gentle rank, whereof 
 the supply is not always equal to the demand in 
 lonely parishes. Doubtless, when it comes to the 
 hard pass of marrying a tradesman or remaining 
 single, the country clergyman's daughter generally
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 decides not to bide a virgin ; but years must have
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 79 
 
 ripened her face and judgment pretty considerably 
 before she acknowledges that she is reduced to the 
 stiff alternative ; commonly her early prime is wasted 
 in the waiting for the wooer of suitable fortune and 
 station whom she imagines to be always coming, and 
 who so seldom does come. Thus it is that the 
 country parson's daughter flirts with every eligible 
 man within reach. 
 
 She has the curate (it was she who first dis- 
 covered that dear papa wanted some assistance) ; she 
 has the parish doctor, whom she makes every excuse 
 for consulting, not on her own behalf, for her plan is 
 to be always counted as healthy, but on account of 
 dear papa or of some pet parishioners ; and again, 
 the parish doctor's assistant, or his medical friend, the 
 young Sawbones, fresh from Guy's, who comes and 
 stays with him for a week. Then the squire's son 
 takes lessons from the. rector at uncertain intervals, 
 and calls frequently with trout or hothouse flowers, 
 for which the rector's daughter thanks him gushingly ; 
 and with so much ecstatic phrasing on her love for 
 flowers that the young hobbledehoy ends by wishing 
 he had let the flowers be. 
 
 It is upon the bachelor vicar of the neighbourhood 
 that the rectory Flirt has all the while set her heart. 
 She delicately hints he must feel very strange, all 
 alone in that queer old house ? Asks who helps him
 
 80 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 in visiting the women ? Who looks to the efficiency 
 of the schoolmistress? Is he not afraid of getting 
 into eccentric bachelor habits, like dear old Mr. A., 
 who is never fully dressed till 2 P.M. ; or that good 
 Mr. B., who has not dined out for seven years, except 
 on Easter Monday ? If he should be ill, will he be
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL FLIRT. 81 
 
 sure and let her know ? She can nurse ; she nursed 
 poor aunt Jane in her last illness. 
 
 The unmarried vicar listens to all this half-sheep- 
 ishly, but he has to hear a good deal more. He is 
 really a fish so well worth netting that his colleague's, 
 gushing child leaves him no peace. Her father,she 
 says, is the last of the old yeomen ; her great-grand- 
 father was knighted : her mother is the daughter of a 
 rural dean. She the gushing child wants occupa- 
 tion. She cleans the church, and decorates it at 
 Christmas and Easter. She will decorate his if he 
 likes. She always reads the Parish Magazine, the 
 Penny Post, and the Record (or Church Times, as the 
 case may be). Will he help her to keep up her 
 French ? Might she offer to teach him music ? 
 Mamma cannot go out much ; will he take their house- 
 on his rounds? He will always find some one at 
 home (a slight simper and twinkle in the eye give 
 emphasis to the words ' some one'), and she will be so 
 happy if he will come more often and take a quiet 
 cup of tea ! 
 
 Here the child becomes pensive, and strikes a 
 pathetic vein. She has had some thoughts, says she, 
 of becoming a ' sister.' Does her friend advise her to 
 take that course? She feels so lonely sometimes, 
 having no one to care for, and be understood by r 
 that she thinks it would be a relief to her to don the
 
 82 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 nun's habit and spend her life in doing good. He 
 must not talk of leaving the parish what would the 
 poor do without him? Of course he has enemies; 
 every truly good man has ; but some of whom he 
 little dreams are taking his part in everything. She 
 could not bear to think that if he went away she 
 should never see him again. 
 
 There is something wondrous pitiful in these 
 struggles which the smaller sort of Ecclesiastical Flirt 
 has to make in the hunt after a husband and an 
 establishment; and it is dismal to relate that so 
 much finessing is mostly wasted. Bachelor vicars 
 have a partiality for brides who can bring them a 
 little money, and who, besides, entertain towards the 
 clergy that soothing reverence which is not often 
 felt by parsons' daughters who have lived among 
 'the cloth' all their lives. However, a man who 
 marries a parson's daughter seldom makes a very 
 bad bargain. These young ladies turn out better 
 than their brothers are proverbially supposed to do, 
 although it certainly is a fact that if a parson's 
 daughter, through disappointment in legitimate flirt- 
 ing, branches off on the down-road to the pit of 
 destruction, she mostly takes a clean header off the 
 brink, and goes to the very bottom of that pit at one 
 jump.
 
 REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 83 
 
 REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 
 
 The 'garrison hack,' as she is more humorously 
 than respectfully called, has been the heroine of a 
 hundred novels; and she is a type true to every 
 country that boasts an army save Turkey, perhaps, 
 where women are kept locked up. 
 
 The British army differs from others, however, in 
 being largely officered with rich men, and so the 
 daughters of its colonels and majors have finer op- 
 portunities than their sisters in other lands. In 
 France, officers are so notoriously poor that a War- 
 Office regulation obliges a lieutenant to sign a decla- 
 tion on his word of honour that the young lady whom 
 he wishes to marry has a dower of at least 1000/. The 
 dower for captains is 1600/., and so on; and yet it 
 seems that numerous French officers marry on no more 
 than the regulation dower, and contrive to rub along 
 somehow not unpleasantly. In England, marriage is 
 often a saving to an officer, inasmuch as it withdraws 
 him from mess. If a linesman have 5001. a year of
 
 84 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 his own besides his pay he will generally find it 
 cheaper to set up a house with a sensible little wo- 
 man than to run up bills for expensive dinners, and 
 squander his substance in cards, bets, and billiards. 
 But needs must that a man should be in the infantry 
 to find marriage a paying business ; for the sensible 
 little woman who weds a cavalry officer thinks her- 
 self bound to keep up a certain state, and she will 
 ride because her husband does. Two chargers for 
 
 ^^ 
 
 the captain, a hack for the little woman, a pony-car- 
 riage, grooms, and all the rest of it, mean 15001. at 
 once, putting things at the lowest figure; so if a
 
 REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 
 
 85 
 
 hussar or dragoon cannot command that much, matri- 
 mony in his case is the preliminary to sending in his 
 papers. 
 
 This being so, there is a marked difference be- 
 tween the cavalry and the infantry Flirt. The former 
 stands several pegs above the latter, and is altogether 
 a gayer, bolder, and faster strategist. She has to 
 
 manoeuvre among richer men some very rich and 
 she seldom pitches her ambition, to begin with, on 
 anything lower than a landed estate and a town house. 
 Her tone may be more or less loud that depends 011 
 the regiment with which she is connected but she 
 knows that the cavalry never go in for cheapness or
 
 86 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 humdrum amusements, and she mostly forces her own 
 tastes somewhat in order to keep pace with the jolly 
 companions from whose midst she hopes a husband 
 will some day slip out. 
 
 Here it is worth remarking that girls seldom in 
 their hearts enjoy fastness. That proverb about every 
 woman being at heart a rake may be more or less true y 
 but it means in any case that women like a little quiet 
 rakiness indoors not the boisterous recreations of the 
 other sex. A girl often schools herself to an apparent 
 passion for hard riding, stout, underdone meats, furious 
 waltzing, lawn-tennis, and even shooting pheasants ; 
 but the pangless way in which she surrenders these 
 pastimes after marriage proves how little she inwardly 
 cared for them. Civilisation cannot obliterate nature 
 nor wholly transform woman, who is a stay-at-home 
 bird, into a scourer of hedgerows and fields. But 
 girls take, by the instinct of vanity and of sexual 
 attraction, to the occupations which are likely to bring 
 them most into contact with men ; and if they think 
 that fastness pleases the males who surround them r 
 they assume it so long as it serves their purpose. 
 
 In this they sometimes overshoot their mark. A 
 fast man does not desire a fast wife ; and officers, who 
 maybe thoughtless fellows in other respects, frequently 
 calculate how far their incomes would stretch in the 
 hands of a lively girl who looks upon coins as play-
 
 EEGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 87 
 
 things for the game of ducks and drakes. There is no 
 example of a colonel's daughter failing to obtain a hus- 
 band if she be nice-looking, sweet-tempered, and modest. 
 The very stillness of her life, contrasting with the riot 
 in the midst of which l plungers' breathe, is an allure- 
 ment to wedded blessedness. How often, when racked 
 by a headache consequent on mixed liquoring, a beard- 
 less officer curses the dull round of debauchery in 
 which he revolves, like an ass turning a hydrant ! He 
 thinks it a beastly thing that he should get fuddled 
 night after night ; he recognises the vanity of ' Nap' 
 and loo ; he wonders how he can be such a dolt as to 
 lay impossible wagers with Brown and Smith, and to 
 back himself with the cue against 'Cannon' Robinson. 
 If out of the fumes of his late-hour drinkings there 
 rises the face of the colonel's jolly little lass a girl 
 with no nonsense about her, straight and true as 
 steel the reflective sub is apt to grow maudlin. In- 
 scrutable Fate ofttiines uses a headache to open the 
 understanding of the plunger, and a night's debauch 
 ushers in a morning of virtuous resolutions, ending 
 in a proposal towards luncheon-time. 
 
 When at mess plungers speak civilly of a girl, or 
 when they avoid mentioning her name at table, and 
 only communicate their impressions about her in 
 laudatory terms, whispered in the smoking-room or 
 in private corners, then one may be sure the girl is-
 
 88 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 no talker of slang or taker of five-barred gates. She 
 may be an arrant Flirt nevertheless, for her gentle 
 modesty may be all makebelieve ; but she will never 
 be a garrison hack. Plungers are seldom deep 
 enough to see through feminine hypocrisy, and accept 
 a quiet girl's virtues at their apparent worth ; but the 
 term of ' hack' is labelled at once on the girl who is 
 free with her smiles, even when she may be in reality 
 much staider of purpose than a more demure minx. 
 
 The garrison hack is a girl who has no mother, or 
 whose mother is a weak and foolish person. She be- 
 comes fast through ignorance; and grows faster and 
 faster because she mistakes the encouragements of her 
 father's officers for genuine admiration. Her father 
 may not know much about the management of girls, 
 and lets her act as she pleases, without seeing any 
 Jiarm in it. He too mistakes the girl's popularity for 
 a reputation of the proper sort. He is proud to hear 
 men extol his ' Jenny's' prowess in the saddle; he 
 boasts that he taught her early to like horses, and 
 blurts out good easy man that he has no notion of 
 n. girl's being a milksop. Maybe he frowns somewhat 
 the first time he catches a word of downright stable 
 lingo upon Jenny's lips; but when the novelty of the 
 thing has worn off he pays no further heed, and gets 
 an impression that girls always talked so and always 
 will. After a while he grows so blind to his nice
 
 U -o 
 
 "J 2 
 
 S o 
 
 5
 
 REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 89 
 
 daughter's goings-on that he is indignantly astonished 
 and huffed when some elderly aunt or other matronly 
 friend in petticoats thinks it her duty to hint that 
 dear Jenny's conduct might give rise to misconstruc- 
 tion. ' Stuff and nonsense,' says he, l I'd like to see 
 the man who'd misconstruct I'd have his ears off !' 
 
 A garrison hack's father has never a suspicion of 
 the lengths to which she goes. What he sees is a 
 trifle beside the reality, and what this reality is not 
 a soul knows but the girl herself. 
 
 She is a Flirt who has thrown off the reserve of 
 her sex, and a subtle deterioration of her moral sense 
 eventually blunts her perception of right and wrong. 
 It is not enough that she should hunt, dance with 
 twenty different partners at every ball, and encour- 
 age men to tell her queer messroom anecdotes, at 
 which she giggles ; besides all this, she tipples 
 champagne till her cheeks turn quite pink and 
 her eyes glisten; she lets her fingers be squeezed 
 by her partners, and only makes a pretence of anger 
 when some bold one kisses her in a corner. Where 
 is the harm in kissing ? She is not such a prude as 
 to make a fuss about trifles. She thinks she can well 
 defend herself, and so she does ; until one day, her 
 heart getting entangled within the wiles of an un- 
 usually good fellow, and champagne aiding, maybe, 
 to throw her off her guard, her defences fail her at 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 90 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the wrong moment. Then consternation follows, and 
 for a week she sobs in private, dreaming of suicide 
 and all sorts of other unfashionable things, including 
 elopement with the seductive aggressor, and love in a 
 
 cottage for ever afterwards. 
 
 But the aggressor always happens to be deep 
 in his tradesmen's books, and unable to afford so
 
 REGIMENTAL FLIRTS ON HOME SERVICE. 91 
 
 much as the luxury of an elopement. He explains 
 this very softly, and consoles the frail one, advising 
 her not to redden her eyes like that, lest other fellows 
 should notice it. Then philosophy ensues. The ex- 
 perienced maiden reflects that hidden faults are no 
 faults, and that her aggressor is an honourable fellow 
 who can keep a secret. He does keep it ; and so do 
 others subsequently, one after another, so fast as the 
 careless Flirt treats them to fragments of her love. It 
 is a maxim in such cases that what has been done 
 once may be done again that one may as well be 
 hanged (if hanged at all) for twenty black sheep as 
 for one white lamb: and the garrison hack's final 
 consolation is that, ' They all do it!' 
 
 It may seem to the innocent reader that a startling 
 charge is conveyed in the foregoing paragraph ; but 
 it would be a much more startling thing if a girl 
 could adopt the manners of wild boys, mix with them, 
 drink with them, and retain her purity through it all. 
 As well suppose that a full-blown rose could be tossed 
 from hand to hand without losing some of its leaves. 
 Novelists are bound to portray garrison hacks as vir- 
 gins without spot, but garrison officers know that 
 they are but flesh and blood, which are fragile 
 things. A well-broken hack, however, does not come 
 to lasting grief because she has had a fall or two : this 
 again is one of your novelist's wilful delusions. She
 
 92 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 takes heart, on the contrary, struggles on, and is never 
 so near to marriage as when her reputation for fast- 
 ness is so well established that no one can find any- 
 thing to say against her that has not been said before. 
 A reaction then sets in, and a new set of officers com- 
 ing to join the regiment, she has the advantage of 
 playing upon chivalrous and unprejudiced young 
 minds, who refuse to believe all that is whispered 
 about ' so jolly a girl.' The newly -joined sub is often 
 an unwary being, and the practised Flirt has little 
 difficulty in alluring him to some pass where the 
 paternal colonel is made to intervene, asking him if 
 his intentions are honourable. There is always hope 
 for a garrison Flirt so long as her father retains active 
 command. Luck only begins to desert her when, 
 papa being put upon half-pay, she retires to some 
 watering-place, and falls into the ranks of common- 
 place Flirts who, towards the period between five- 
 and-twenty and thirty, fire their arrows at large 
 against all mankind. 
 
 There is an old saw as to the kind of men who 
 make the best husbands. It is equally applicable to 
 women. The garrison hack always makes a good 
 wife: tolerant, companionable, and an excellent ad- 
 viser in difficulties. She has sown her wild-oats, but 
 her husband is none the wiser, for they were sown in 
 the dark.
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 93 
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 
 
 Gibraltar, Malta, Canada, and India are all 
 capital places for garrison Flirts. They get a clear 
 field in these localities; for the native ladies can 
 seldom match them, even when they try. Now 
 besides the cavalry Flirt already described, there is 
 the infantry Flirt, who offers two or three varieties. 
 First comes the girl who professes to live in the 
 worship of red coats, and will never marry a civilian. 
 Then the girl who is secretly sick of the army, and 
 would like to catch a nabob, a ship-owner, fur-trader, 
 or something solid of that kind. And next we have 
 the young married Flirt, who is wedded to a marching 
 sub, whose professional advancement she must assist 
 by her affability towards his superior officers. 
 
 This last type is common to all professions ; but 
 in colonial garrisons the young married Flirt has 
 opportunities not afforded her at home. At an 
 Indian station, for instance, she is often the only 
 .pretty woman in the place. Other women there are,
 
 94 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 but ugly. The colonel's wife is fat and fifty; the 
 major's is thin and sour; the adjutant has a young 
 wife who gives herself airs, but is mortally plain, and
 
 THE KEGIMEXTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 95 
 
 for that reason affects a rigid propriety of demeanour, 
 and takes up her ground as the inveterate enemy of 
 the Flirt. But the Flirt does not care a pin. She is 
 hospitable to profusion, as Indian cheapness in all 
 things but beverages allows her to be ; and if her 
 husband's means do not admit of his purchasing 
 unstinted wine and Allsopp, she makes him run 
 up debts. One thing is certain: that her guests 
 never lack for anything, and her drawing-room be- 
 comes the regular rendezvous of the garrison officers 
 and the Civil Service officials two or three times a 
 week. It is at once a club, a refreshment-room, and 
 something like a casino. The Flirt sings a little, 
 plays a little, and dances a good deal. She is always 
 ready to let the room be cleared for a waltz. She 
 practises Indian dances with scarves, and the dances 
 of the Almees, or rather those plastic contortions 
 which go by Terpsichorean names among the beauties 
 of Eastern seraglios. 
 
 The numerous servants that attend upon an 
 Indian household enable a pretty woman to give 
 herself all the graces of a queen. She is worried by 
 no menial work; everything is done for her; she has 
 only to lie on a sofa and command, whilst obedient 
 Hindoos work the punkahs above her pretty head, or 
 brush flies away from her with bunches of peacocks' 
 feathers. Then England and its fashions being so
 
 96 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 far away, the Indian station belle can improvise 
 fashions for herself, selecting cuts, colours, and 
 
 \ ^-^b wFsTZF* 
 
 textures which she knows to be best suited to her 
 style of beauty. She comes out in surprising Indian
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 97 
 
 shawls, Chinese silks, light and transparent as 
 muslin, and Japanese satins of heavenly azure blue. 
 At all these experiments in dress some of them 
 very risquees the other women exclaim, but by and 
 by they pay her the sincerest flattery of imitation ; 
 for they see that the men like it, and break out into 
 continual raptures about the Flirt's being irresistibly 
 fascinating, original, and adorable ; quite too nice, 
 in fact, to use the jargon a la mode. 
 
 A beauty who has been plain Miss Brown at 
 home, living in a small villa at Rochester or South- 
 sea, feels on reaching Indian soil as if she had been 
 promoted to a throne. She can do no ill. From the 
 colonel to the smallest drummer-boy, every soul in 
 the regiment is her slave. She has the band to play 
 outside her bungalow when she gives a dinner. She 
 good-naturedly patronises the sergeants' wives ; and 
 if a smart-looking private strikes her fancy she gets 
 him promoted. In the ' matter of leave-giving, 
 punishments, and petty regimental persecutions, she 
 is supreme arbiter; and if a subaltern happens to 
 offend her, he had best exchange rapidly into another 
 corps, for she has quite power enough to crush him 
 like a beetle. No man can guess the might of a 
 regimental beauty's little finger until he has foolishly 
 put himself in the way of being pressed down by it. 
 
 The mere fact that a woman should be a Flirt
 
 98 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 proves her husband to be a very weak man or a base 
 one. Generally he is a rogue ; for there is a some- 
 thing in the honourable character even of a weak 
 man which exercises a moral restraint upon his wife, 
 and prevents her from transgressing given bounds. 
 Or if she be irrestrainable, she goes clean over the 
 bounds ostentatiously and defiantly, leaving her 
 weak lord to maunder or fly into vindictive rages 
 like an infuriated sheep, according to his mood at 
 the moment. 
 
 But when one sees a young woman cutting frisky 
 capers under the marital eye, one may be sure that 
 her husband is a creature who makes some profit out 
 of the said jinks ; and this is truer in the army than 
 elsewhere. The husband of a Regimental Flirt may 
 not fill his brother-officers Avith respect; but the 
 world wags very prosperously with him for all that. 
 The debts which he contracts get somehow paid ; he 
 never wants a good coat for his back, nor a fine- 
 flavoured cigar, nor a five-pound note for pocket- 
 money. Promotion comes to him rather out of the 
 regular way ; and if at a pinch he wants a few hun- 
 dred pounds to better his social status, the sum is 
 opportunely got on easy terms from a relative of his 
 wife's, whose name she does not mention and which 
 he forgets to ask. 
 
 By degrees the creature is dragged up by his-
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 99 
 
 wife to some post of permanent emolument, where 
 he is in a position to crow over other men, his betters. 
 He generally sets up as an implacable censor of 
 morals. He lays the ban of his respectability upon 
 youngsters who have been guilty of boyish follies, 
 and helps to expel such from the service and from 
 clubs 'for conduct unbecoming officers and gentle- 
 men.' He possibly ends by getting to be a general, 
 a colonial governor, or a bank director. So long as 
 his wife remains pretty she is his Providence, and he 
 treats her with proper respect. When she ceases 
 to please he often rewards her for past benefits by 
 beating her or driving her to drink by a systematic 
 course of verbal unkindness, such as only fellows 
 of his kidney can use towards women. Occasionally,. 
 if the Flirt has retained her power of attraction 
 after the bloom of youth has gone, husband and wife 
 remain allies till death parts them. Madame be- 
 comes the centre of a social circle of strong religious 
 proclivities, and her husband piously leads in the sing- 
 ing of a hymn after a tea-fight. 
 
 The Regimental Flirt who is utterly sick of the 
 army might seem to be an uncommon sort of girl ; 
 but just as there are ecclesiastical Flirts who are 
 weary of the Church and its ministers, so there are 
 regimental damsels upon whom an overdose of 
 military life has produced the usual effects of a
 
 100 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 surfeit. This is especially prone to be the case with 
 the daughters of those poor officers who have to 
 pinch themselves and half-starve their families in 
 order to keep up what they call their dignity. A girl 
 of this class can see no fun in the gold lace that costs 
 so much money, and in the taxing duties which 
 bring in so little pay. Even the music of the regi- 
 mental band becomes odious to her ears, from a 
 recollection of the heavy subscription which is wrung 
 from her impecunious father to maintain it. 
 
 Or again, a girl of innate refinement is cast by 
 ill-luck with a regiment whose officers happen to be 
 a raffish set of snobs and churls pipe-smokers, beer- 
 swillers, courters of barmaids and shop-wenches. 
 The regiment is ordered abroad, and she has an 
 opportunity of taking stock of them all on board the 
 troopship. There, if anywhere, their social qualities 
 ought to come out ; but there is not a man among 
 the number whom she can flirt with. At dinner in 
 the saloon, at the daily parade of the men on the 
 fo'c's'le, in the moonlight evenings on deck, the dis- 
 gusted girl espies their clownishness and lack of wit. 
 She compares them with the officers of the other 
 * reliefs' on board some of them nice dashing fellows 
 in the cavalry and with the naval officers of the 
 troopship, all of them perfect gentlemen, of good 
 manners and great gallantry, and she moans to think
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 
 
 I. 100.
 
 THE REGIMENTAL FLIRT ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 101 
 
 that her fate has bound her to a regiment of such 
 dolts. 
 
 The troopship reaches its destination say Gib- 
 raltar and the boorish lot sink into the same low 
 habits as at home, becoming more offensive, however, 
 in their conceit at lording it on a foreign soil. Then 
 the refined girl falls to hating these officers, and 
 through them the whole regiment, and by degrees the 
 entire army. Bringing her sarcastic powers to bear 
 upon the routine of military life, she decides that the 
 whole thing is a ridiculous mummery; she even 
 doubts the valour of the officers she so intensely dis- 
 likes, and thinks she would not trust them to fight in 
 time of war. She says these things bitterly enough 
 in their hearing; she repeats them in the hearing of 
 civilians, which is much worse, and thereby draws 
 down scoldings from her father. Perhaps she has a 
 bout of words with the colonel's wife, who affects to 
 be proud of the regiment, and a tiff with the colonel 
 himself, who growls that, if she were his child, he 
 would have her whipped. 
 
 There is no limit to the animosity of a girl who- 
 has once given out that she hates the service, and 
 makes a point of inculcating her contempt for it on 
 others. The army has so many detractors among the- 
 mercantile classes, whom the arrogance of officers 
 displeases, that a girl of this kind now and then weds
 
 102 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 a wealthy merchant, on the strength of ' the sharp 
 funny things' she has said about ' those oafs in red 
 coats.' Or she marries a parson. Regimental girls 
 are at all times very much inclined to do that; for to 
 them the quiet parsonages or collegiate cloisters, 
 which certain ecclesiastical Flirts find so slow, are 
 elysium. Nothing enchants the Regimental Flirt so 
 much as to be quit of the atmosphere of tobacco-smoke 
 and pipeclay, which so tickles the senses of her clerical 
 sister. Her dream is of vicarages overgrown with 
 honeysuckle and eglantine ; her delight is in choral 
 church-services; and her ideal of a hero generally 
 appears in white cravat and an M.B. waistcoat, if not 
 in a cassock of the new Ritualist fashion. If mankind 
 w T ere ruled by a paternal government, the daughters 
 of clergymen would marry officers, and those of officers 
 clergymen, and the world would possibly be happier 
 than it is just at present.
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 103 
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 
 
 There is a girl who, living in a remote country 
 place, goes to the seaside for one month in the year. 
 Of course, during that month of comparative bliss she 
 flirts. But all through the rest of the year she does 
 no flirting even by letter. So, albeit to her seaside 
 acquaintance she may seem a Flirt, yet it is obvious 
 that flirting is only her recreation, not her business. 
 She is no more a Flirt than a man who occasionally 
 pops at a sparrow is a sportsman. 
 
 The true Seaside Flirt lives by the sea. The half- 
 season is her harvest-time, when there are a few visi- 
 tors to notice her, but not enough to eclipse her. In 
 the full season there are balls, races, concerts ; in the 
 half-season there is flirting. A ride upon the sands, 
 even on the backs of ill-saddled donkeys, may easily 
 be turned into an imaginary ride for life. A shrimp- 
 ing excursion, besides offering chances for a display 
 of neat ankles, brings about solitary wanderings, two 
 by two, among the rocks. A sail in a small boat in 
 rough weather affords opportunities for the exhibi- 
 tion of nerve and nautical knowledge combined ;
 
 104 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 while a fishing-party by torchlight leads to so many 
 nice things in the way of huddlirigs together under 
 one tarpaulin, little screams when the boat rocks, 
 delighted exclamations and joint action when the fish 
 is speared or netted, that the mere mention of it 
 will set any acute girl blushing. 
 
 Should the place be a port, the landing of foreign 
 cattle may be construed into danger, and may be made
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 
 
 I. 105.
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 105 
 
 the occasion of a gallant rescue; or an injudicious at- 
 tempt to swim at bathing-time will perhaps challenge 
 the bravery of the other sex. Here it may be remarked 
 that the foreign custom, which puts men into bathing- 
 costumes as well as women, has its advantages, if only 
 this one of allowing the rescuer of a fair swimmer to 
 carry his lovely burden on to the beach in sight of an 
 applauding crowd, which cannot well be done arrayed 
 as Englishmen are at present when they bathe. 
 
 There is no little circumstance which a clever girl 
 -will not convert into a chance for flirting. The well- 
 timed loss of a purse or a dog in the place where our 
 lone damsel is a stranger, a dispute with a fly-driver, 
 the loss of a hat in a high wind, a sudden sousing 
 from a too boisterous wave, or the dropping of a hand- 
 kerchief over the pier-railings, are all little difficulties 
 that may be turned to account: 'So silly of me so 
 good of you : really I ought to have some one always 
 by my side to take care of me.' 'Lucky some one!* 
 *0, you're joking; but really I'm ashamed to have 
 .given you so much trouble.' 
 
 The paradise of a Flirt, though, is a yacht. No 
 horrid billiard-room to take up the time of the inte- 
 resting man ; no need to run away from cigar-smoke 
 in the exhilarating fresh air. Frequent meals, and 
 gay; frequent nips of liqueurs, or mulled wines, to 
 keep the cold out, and prescribed as indispensable to 
 
 VOL. i. H
 
 106 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 health ; and then the privilege of appearing to lose 
 one's balance, and needing the prop of a stalwart arm.. 
 No visible impropriety either if the proprietor of the 
 stalwart arm does hug a little in conveying the fair 
 and unsteady one to a seat. Add to this that Eti- 
 quette, which would be shocked at seeing Miss Jill 
 and Mr. Jack walking up and down an hotel corridor 
 for an hour at midnight, can look on unmoved at a 
 moonlight promenade on the deck of a yacht, even
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 107 
 
 when it extends pretty far into the small hours. 
 Life is a chain of inconsistencies. 
 
 The one-month-a-year Flirt has a keen eye for the 
 names on the visitors' list of the seaside town to 
 which she resorts. The odds are that she discovers 
 on it some man she knows her brother's friend, or 
 the son of papa's friend anyhow, one with whom she 
 has flirted before, and whom she describes as ' the only 
 man who can wrap my scarf comfortably round me 
 on this bitterly cold beach.' This paragon she ferrets 
 out and catechises as to what he has done since they 
 last met. She is sure he has been flirting, and lectures 
 him about it, saying it is high time he settled down 
 soberly, as she herself thinks of doing. Thereupon 
 she walks her truant off to see some dear, interesting, 
 gossiping old sailor. If he did not go with her, she 
 might not find the man : does he mind being seen so 
 often walking with her? 
 
 When a young friend is engaged to be married, 
 the Flirt eagerly becomes her chaperon, knowing that 
 her male acquaintances will rally round her more 
 quickly while she is protecting the fair flower. And 
 when the Flirt is again alone, she keeps very close to 
 some old gentleman friend in a Bath-chair, sometimes 
 carrying on a flirtation with him, for want of better 
 material ; sometimes using him as a convenient escort. 
 
 Our friend, thanks to an iron constitution, which
 
 108 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the month of ozone-breathing develops finely, does 
 more execution in the daytime than in the even- 
 ings. She is not quite enough informed about arts, 
 sciences, or London tattle to shine in conversation, 
 nor sufficiently accomplished to dazzle by her music 
 and dancing. Her circumstances do not enable her 
 to compete in dress with ladies and nymphs of the 
 1 great world ;' but her powers of sustaining a fatigu- 
 ing walk, row, or ride ; her ready flow of small talk, 
 and quick sympathy, make her a delightful compan- 
 ion wherever the proportion of gentlemen to ladies 
 is about three to one. It is only when temporary 
 helplessness looks pretty that she assumes it ; one of 
 her favourite sayings in merry company being, 
 1 Wherever there's fun going I'm your man.' 
 
 Poor girl ! she does not get quite as much fun as 
 would be good for her; for when her month at the 
 seaside or on board a yacht is gone and how. fear- 
 fully quick it goes ! she feels in a sad way while 
 packing up her boxes to return home. One more 
 year's pleasure past, and another twelvemonth's 
 dulness to come. It is only a cynic who would 
 grudge this interesting occasional Flirt the amount 
 of enjoyment she can squeeze out of her four weeks' 
 annual trifling with the strong sex. 
 
 There is another sort of Seaside Flirt, who is found 
 more often on foreign coasts, and in the smaller
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 109 
 
 towns thereof, than at Brighton or Scarborough. 
 She is the daughter of somebody under a cloud. 
 
 Her father or perhaps her brother has gone to 
 the dogs. She finds it pleasanter not to live in Eng- 
 land. She has no taste for purposeless travelling, 
 and soon establishes herself in some quiet watering- 
 place such as Fecamp, Treport, or St. Valery. She 
 has sense enough to conquer her first impulse to- 
 wards utter seclusion, and to select a place ""not too 
 lonely ; possibly she will go so far as to select Dieppe ; 
 but not Boulogne, which has too bad a name. She 
 has given her address to a few friends, and some few 
 more may find her out. But she is aware that a 
 large number of her summer friends will never ask 
 for her again, and she is resigned. 
 
 This girl has perhaps not been a Flirt in England. 
 Staid old country ladies had been her valued friends ; 
 gentlemen had respected her highly; some had been 
 intimate with her, but she had not cared for flirt- 
 ing, nor encouraged it. Flirting is tame between 
 old family friends, and it was among these that she 
 lived. 
 
 But coming without introduction and alone with 
 her mother to a new place, the desolate English girl 
 has new habits to contract and new schemes to form. 
 Her acquaintance now is among the ephemeral 
 passers-by. Men are struck with her beauty and
 
 110 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 with her air of melancholy, which she tries in vain to 
 throw off. They cannot get at her history, which, of 
 course, heightens the interest in her. They find her 
 infinitely more agreeable than the empty-headed 
 milliner's lay-figures which they are accustomed to 
 meet at such places ; and if by chance some portion 
 of her story leaks out, the pity of the men silences 
 the tongues of the women who would rail against 
 her. So, by degrees, after one man has innocently 
 asked for her home-address, that he may have the 
 pleasure of renewing his acquaintance with her, and
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. Ill 
 
 another has told her that he prolongs his stay in the 
 place solely on her account, and a third has owned 
 that a neighbouring seaside town has more attractions 
 in the way of scenery, but not (with a bow) such 
 company as one meets here, the fair exile insensibly 
 yields to the temptations of flattery, and, finding 
 that every one expects her to flirt, turns and drifts 
 with the stream. 
 
 It is virtually a question of flirt or sink. She 
 fears that by avoiding company she would confess to 
 the intense shame she feels at the disgrace that has 
 fallen on her family. She also recognises that, 
 having no longer a chance of getting married through 
 family influence, she must secure an establishment if 
 she can, by her own sole charms and accomplish- 
 ments. She sits and works at some piece of tapestry, 
 as the French ladies do in the local assembly-rooms, 
 while the band plays of an afternoon ; she attends 
 Sunday services at the British Consulate ; she is 
 always superlatively neat in dress ; and she remarks 
 that she can play the most difficult pieces of music 
 at sight. She is very assiduous at cultivating her 
 French ; it may some day be the only language that 
 she will have the opportunity of speaking. Yet she 
 does not like France, and would not settle there for 
 worlds, so she thinks. '0, those Frenchmen! such 
 figures!' she owns, laughing, to an English adorer,
 
 112 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 'Why, Marquis! you are looking younger than ever.' 
 ' Yes, truly, it's an old habit of mine. I'm Conservative.' 
 
 and they quiz the Gaul in company. The adorer is 
 young, and has a tawny moustache. He speaks low, 
 and looks into her eyes whilst addressing her. He 
 seems to know nothing of her history, and alludes to
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIKT. 113- 
 
 a pleasant country hall and park which he will in- 
 herit when his uncle dies. For the present he has- 
 only an allowance of 500/. a year; but he knows a 
 friend who married upon that and got on famously, 
 because his wife loved him and made a little money 
 go a long way. Does she know how to husband 
 money ? ' Let me look at that ring on your finger,' 
 breaks off the adorer suddenly, and adds that it 
 reminds him of one which his mother used to wear. 
 The ring is held out, and the little hand with it. 
 Adorer inspects both, and gives a squeeze. ' !' ex- 
 claims the fair exile, pink and agitated; but a ped- 
 dler, offering polished pebbles for sale, interrupts this 
 idyl on the beach, and the proposal which was starting 
 to the adorer's lips is adjourned till the morrow. 
 
 Alas, before next day somebody has been at 
 work saying something, and the adorer has vanished. 
 He has not even gone through the formality of forg- 
 ing an excuse for his departure, and saying good-bye. 
 He has decamped, as though he had had a narrow 
 escape of a great danger. Exula does not cry, but 
 sets her lips and perceives that there is a gulf thence- 
 forth between her and the land of her birth. She 
 makes sure it was that odious Mrs. Black, with the 
 ugly daughters, who circulated her story. Mrs. 
 Black cuts her next time they meet on the parade ; 
 young Black, with the eye-glass, remains faithful to.
 
 114 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 her, but has the impudence to wink as he accosts 
 her. Young Brown, too, a fellow with orange 
 whiskers and a good heart, tells her that the women 
 are abusing her like pitch, but that he doesn't care. 
 She packs Black and Brown about their business. 
 No more English company for her. She is too sen- 
 sitive to brook slights, and too proud to accept sym- 
 pathy ; she will not stoop either to the degradation 
 of going to mix with other prescripts at Boulogne, 
 where none would dare cast the stone at her. She 
 and her mother change their residence, and repair to 
 a town wholly French, where they commence the 
 process of entirely denationalising themselves. 
 
 Exula changes her religion. She and her mother 
 go to mass and make friends with the parish priest,
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 115 
 
 who comes sometimes to dinner. They have French 
 servants ; read French newspapers ; and give up cor- 
 responding with England. Their piety gets talked of 
 in the town, and the priest gives out that they are fer- 
 vent Catholics who have left their Protestant country 
 because they could not practise their religion in peace 
 there. Every Frenchman knows that religious per- 
 secutions are still rife in Queen Victoria's dominions. 
 By dint of prudence, propriety, and paying their 
 way regularly by dint also of the unsuspecting 
 priest's good offices the two Englishwomen collect 
 a little coterie of French friends round them. The 
 girl is too pretty not to excite attention. She ac- 
 cepts invitations to thes. She consents to show off 
 at the piano, and sings some English ballads which 
 become the rage. Her French improves apace, and 
 she can understand the compliments of red-trousered 
 officers, as well as bandy chit-chat with young ren- 
 tiers. However, marriage is a business in France, 
 &nd before any Frenchman commits himself to an 
 offer, inquiries are made through the priest as to 
 the amount of dot which the ' belle Miss' possesses. 
 The intimation that she is living on an allowance 
 which may or may not be continued after her mar- 
 riage thins off a number of candidates. Not but 
 that several young men of twenty-five and thirty 
 would be content to marry her without dower did
 
 116 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 their papas and mammas permit it ; but their papas 
 and mammas will not, and according to French law 
 they have power to prohibit. 
 
 There remain some men past forty. The English 
 girl touches them wonderfully by her enthusiasm 
 about France. There never were such men as 
 Frenchmen. So much politer than the men of other 
 countries so much wittier, braver, and more com- 
 panionable. The literature of France is delightful, 
 so are its climate, wines, theatres, cities, boule- 
 vards, and the dresses of its ladies. The English 
 girl says she is dying to learn how to dress like 
 Frenchwomen, who have &je ne sais quoi impossible 
 for foreigners to catch. The gallant Gaul assures 
 her that she has quite seized that je ne sais quoi, 
 and completed it with a touch of English grace and 
 piquancy. The time comes when the exiled girl 
 sees that one at least among the middle-aged wooers 
 who say these things sincerely feels them. He is 
 fat and bald, but he has 600/. a year, which looks 
 bigger because he calls it 15,000 francs of income. 
 He evidently thinks it a fine competency too, for it 
 enables him to live in greater comfort than an Eng- 
 lishman with twice the money. He has a country 
 house which he styles a chateau, a garden which he 
 terms a park ; he is mayor of his village, and a 
 knight of the Legion of Honour.
 
 THE SEASIDE FLIRT. 
 
 117 
 
 Such partis are not to be caught every day, 
 remarks the priest the day before the man of forty's 
 maternal uncle comes to pop the question in his
 
 118 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 nephew's name, for Frenchmen think it bad taste 
 to go through this formality in person. One may- 
 be sure that the maternal uncle lays great stress 
 on the fact that his nephew asks for no dot; such 
 disinterestedness seems to him to savour of medi- 
 S3val chivalry. He says that the notary will draw 
 up a contract in which mademoiselle will have a 
 suitable portion settled on her. Mademoiselle's 
 mother thereon accepts, and mademoiselle herself 
 fixes a day when she and her ripe betrothed shall 
 be introduced to all their friends assembled for the 
 signature of the abovesaid contract as an affianced 
 couple. After all, this is a better ending than many 
 other exiles can pretend to. The English girl who 
 in her own country should marry a fat man of 
 forty, of dubious lineage and having but 600/. per 
 annum, would not be thought to be doing well for 
 herself; but circumstances and lands alter cases.
 
 THE TOURIST FLIRT. 11<) 
 
 THE TOURIST FLIRT. 
 
 The Flirt who has failed to find a husband 
 during the London season may recruit her health in 
 travelling for a fresh campaign, and perhaps pick 
 up what she wants into the bargain. In foreign 
 hotels marriages are arranged as frequently as in 
 London drawing-rooms. 
 
 But the tourist season is more suitable to the 
 married Flirt than to the girl. The latter, held in 
 bondage by her family accompanied often by a 
 cohort of brothers and younger sisters and inclined, 
 for prudence sake, to be more demure abroad than 
 in England, stands at something of a disadvantage 
 towards the married Flirt, who looks upon touring 
 as a period of complete liberty. She may have her 
 husband with her, or may be travelling alone with 
 her maid and a dame de compagnie ; perhaps her 
 husband is dead, or perhaps he has ceased to care 
 for her jinks in any case the married Flirt, being 
 removed from the control of prudish English eyes, 
 plunges with delight into the freedom of incognito
 
 120 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 existence. As her objects are not similar to the 
 girl Flirt's, she has not the same reasons to be par- 
 ticular. It matters little whether her neighbour at the
 
 THE TOUKIST FLIRT. 
 
 121 
 
 table d'hote be eligible as a husband since she has no 
 thought of marrying him. So long as he is agree- 
 able, gallant, enterprising, she can get out of him 
 all the fun she wants. In this way the married 
 Flirt picks up cavalieri serventi wherever she goes 
 
 to-day a Frenchman, to-morrow a Russian Prince, 
 next week a Wallachian shiny with hair-oil and 
 diamonds. She has a smattering of all languages, 
 or, at least, can understand a compliment in any 
 
 tongue. 
 
 To some of these married Flirts autumn travel- 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 122 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 ling is really the most pleasurable business. Look 
 at the pretty blue-eyed Englishwoman who steps 
 out of her hotel on the Rhigi to watch the sun rise 
 on a crisp September morning. She is wrapped in 
 a fur cloak to keep the cold off, and a polite Italian 
 with moustache who stands beside her arranges its 
 folds, and lends his arm that she may steady herself 
 on the rocky ground. She had never seen that 
 Italian before yesterday, when he sat next her at 
 the table dltute ; but it turns out that they are both 
 
 THE FROZEN CORPSES AT THE HOSPICE ST. BERNARD. 
 
 going the round of Switzerland, and it is tacitly 
 agreed that they shall go together. 
 
 Why not? There is no spoken convention 011 
 the subject, and they do not drive up to the station 
 in the same cab, nor, on arriving at their destinations,
 
 THE TOURIST FLIRT. 123 
 
 repair to their hotel in company; but they contrive 
 to travel in the same railway carriages, and in the 
 different hotels where they alight their rooms are 
 often contiguous. One week you may find them at 
 the Hotel National of Geneva, whence they pro- 
 ceed on steamboat trips about Lake Leman as far 
 as Ouchy or Vevey. The week after behold them 
 at Lucerne or at Berne, sauntering together under 
 the arcades of the picturesque old streets, or feed- 
 ing the bears in the municipal bear-pit. But sud- 
 denly there is a dissolution of partnership ; for in 
 another few days our married Flirt turns up at either 
 Ems or Homburg, but this time with a Bavarian 
 'Count to escort her when she goes to drink the 
 waters. 
 
 The German watering-places have much declined 
 from their gaiety since the gambling-tables have 
 been closed ; and those who go to them in the hope 
 of finding any vestige of the old revelry are disap- 
 pointed. Ten years ago they were the casinos of the 
 plutocracy throughout Europe. Now they have be- 
 come the resort of a good many people who posi- 
 tively require the waters for purposes of health, 
 and whose Bath-chairs are not an enlivening feature 
 in the gardens of the Kursaals. Nevertheless, the 
 beautiful scenery remains, and the bands of music, 
 and the attraction of an occasional crowned head,
 
 124 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 who comes with a large suite, and causes crowds of 
 aristocratic families to come also. 
 
 The married Flirt at Ems will possibly find it
 
 THE TOUKIST FLIRT. 
 
 125 
 
 convenient to declare that her health is delicate. 
 Her physician has prescribed her the waters that 
 taste of steel, and she must mind and take two hours' 
 walking exercise every day. These are fine oppor- 
 tunities for the Bavarian Count. By a happy coin- 
 cidence he is always loitering near the ferruginous 
 spring when the lady comes down at eight, at noon, 
 and at 4 P.M. to take her drink. He passes her the 
 
 goblet which the German attendant wench hands up 
 brimming with the tepid stuff ; he laughs with her 
 at the grimaces she makes; and then when the 
 jorum has been gulped down he is ready to attend 
 her in her walk at a quick march through the gar- 
 dens, or out into the country among the woods and 
 fields of maize. As all this whets the appetite, the
 
 126 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Bavarian is delighted to see how his fair England- 
 erin tackles the viands and wines at the hotel din- 
 ner. The Italian might not have been so pleased, for 
 men of his nation like to see a woman feed herself 
 with pastry and confetti ; and perhaps that was why she 
 parted from him. Honeymooning in Germany requires 
 that both should be of one mind about eating. 
 
 Besides, eating forms one of the chief resources of 
 flirting. On the Mediterranean steamers that ply 
 between Marseilles and Civita Vecchia, and thence 
 to Brindisi and Alexandria, the Flirt, freshened by 
 the salt breezes, makes her four or five meals a day ;. 
 and half the time of her lovers is spent in fetching 
 her ices or glasses of sugared water on deck between 
 whiles. For you can get ices on board these Medi- 
 terranean boats ; and when the blue sea is calm as a 
 lake, and the sun not too hot to prevent the passen- 
 gers from sitting under an awning, the Flirt finds it 
 not disagreeable to relieve the trouble of returning 
 answers to foolish questions of the soft sort by trifling 
 with one of those many-hued blocks of Neapolitan 
 ice which look like soap. 
 
 However, even the Mediterranean is apt to 
 tumble about; and in such rough conjunctures all 
 continental gallants, whether Frenchmen, Bavarians, 
 or Greeks, dive hastily into their cabins, leaving the 
 English tourists masters of the deck. The English-
 
 THE TOURIST FLIRT. 
 
 127 
 
 man is not very prone to sea-sickness, and for this 
 reason makes a better maritime companion to the 
 Flirt than any other. Being adventurous, too, he 
 will, perhaps, prolong his acquaintance with the lady 
 who has struck his fancy at Brindisi by accompanying 
 her to Egypt, where they steam up the Nile together 
 as far as the second cataract, and do the Pyramids 
 on their way back. Everybody knows that doing 
 the Pyramids with a lady involves nothing less than 
 lifting her continually in one's arms, to assist her 
 ascent from stone to stone until the platform on the 
 summit is reached. There are, to be sure, black 
 Nubians, whose business it is to do this for money ; but 
 the tourist who would win a pretty Flirt's regard 
 will not surrender such delicious labour to hirelings.
 
 128 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 COUNTRY-HOUSE AND TOWN-HOUSE FLIRTS. 
 
 'What is all this smoke about?' '0 sir, it's Miss 
 Louie, who got on to the roof last night with Mr. 
 Tom, and stopped up all the chimneys with old 
 newspapers.' 
 
 Miss Louie is a Country-house Flirt, who de- 
 lights in playing practical jokes with her cousin 
 Tom, or with anybody else who may be handy. 
 She thinks nothing of clipping up a hair-brush into 
 the bed of a bachelor guest. She makes apple-pie 
 beds for crusty old gentlemen, judges and suchlike; 
 she muffles up the clappers of bells ; puts aperient 
 waters into the tea-urn; and paints the tail of a 
 Countesses pet Havannah sky-blue. 
 
 The Countess happens to be a Flirt too a grande 
 dame too high placed for scandal to assail her. She 
 abhors practical joking, and preaches to Louie a 
 sort of connection of hers on the utter bad taste of 
 the thing. Louie does not care. She puts on a 
 comical pout when being lectured, and delights to 
 plague the Countess above all other women. Why?
 
 COUNTRr-HOUSE AND TOWN-HOUSE FLIRTS. 129 
 
 Because the Countess is what Louie calls an arrant 
 poacher, for ever trying to appropriate unattached 
 men, who are not fair game for married women. 
 
 Louie is nineteen, but looks younger. She 
 would have got married two years ago, but for 
 practical jokes played upon suitors who had serious 
 intentions towards her. Wishing to try the nerve of 
 one, she took a loaded gun from his hand, said, 
 4 Mind your eye,' and shot both barrels over his 
 head, within an inch of his hat. He swooned with 
 fright, and Louie laughed till the tears ran out of her 
 eyes. Another suitor was bragging of his horseman- 
 ship. Louie defied him to ride a donkey of her own, 
 which she alleged to be as tame as a lamb ; but she 
 had sent Tom to hire a vicious Nubian jackass from 
 a strolling circus; and when the horseman had be- 
 stridden this beast, it carried him through a quickset 
 hedge, where he left much of his clothes and por- 
 tions of his skin. He did not forgive his inamorata 
 for the intense mirth with which she hailed this 
 exploit. 
 
 Louie likes no one except Tom, whom she plagues 
 as much as others, and who often calls her a ' little 
 brute.' There has been no talk of marriage between 
 them. Tom would hesitate proposing to a girl who 
 might sew up his coat-tails on his wedding morning. 
 She, on her side, has no present thoughts of matri-
 
 130 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 mony. She likes flirting too well. She flirts with 
 everybody; deliberately leading one man after 
 another to believe that she is in earnest, and then 
 coolly enlightening him as to her real sentiments by 
 some joke, which sends him away besplashed with 
 ridicule and gnashing his teeth. Louie is very 
 pretty, and can assume all sorts of manners. She 
 can sham sentiment, melancholy, deep corroding 
 love ; and she once nearly drove a simple silly lover 
 frantic with terror, by saying she would die for him, 
 and flinging herself into a lake with her clothes on. 
 She can swim; and when she scrambled out re- 
 marked, laughing, that she had tried the water-cure 
 for love, and that truly it had cured her. 
 
 Louie does not like London, though she has 
 spent two whole seasons there, and beguiled her 
 weariness as she could by decoying the Countess's 
 lovers from her. She was the Countess's visitor; 
 and my lady had to threaten more than once to send 
 her home. There is no describing the pitch of secret 
 enmity to which these two arrived ; and if it had not 
 been for the fear of what Louie's malicious tongue 
 would say were she packed off, her ladyship would 
 have broken with the girl once and for ever. 
 
 For the Countess is one of those ladies for whom 
 life is love and love is life. She has a husband, but 
 never troubles herself as to his whereabouts. They
 
 COUNTRY-HOUSE AND TOWN-HOUSE FLIRTS. 131 
 
 are occasionally together, when they are good friends, 
 enough, unless the Countess happens to be troubled 
 with one of her nervous headaches, which make her 
 waspish; but at ordinary times my lord goes his
 
 132 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 way and my lady hers. Twenty men at least, among 
 the best in society, have, turn by turn, acted as the 
 Countess's cavaliere servente, attending her in all 
 places, and having their petites entrees to her boudoir ; 
 but, as we have already said, she is too high perched 
 for scandal to touch her. Who has a right to com- 
 plain if her husband, does not ? She changes lovers 
 almost as frequently as a jockey does horses. Every 
 man who is for the moment a 'lion' in society be- 
 comes the butt of her shafts ; and many of these 
 lions, succumbing, have had the honour of being led 
 in her train for a week or two like pet spaniels. She 
 has tried all sorts of men : poets, painters, warriors, 
 statesmen, and foreigners. An Italian and a Hun- 
 garian fought about her with pistols; a Frenchman 
 and a Spaniard exchanged blustering epigrams in 
 her honour. The. very effrontery of the things she 
 says and does closes the mouths of people who 
 would criticise her if she were more timid. No- 
 body believes ill of her, because if people believed 
 anything at all they would have to believe too much. 
 Such a monitress as my lady might have con- 
 verted madcap Louie into a Flirt of the finest bril- 
 liancy, and she conscientiously tried her best for the 
 girl whom she befriends for family reasons. But 
 Louie like most practical -joking maidens has 
 money of her own, and does not care whether she is
 
 COUNTRY-HOUSE AND TOWN-HOUSE FLIRTS. 133. 
 
 befriended or not. At any rate, she claims to go- 
 her own way, and that way is not the Countess's. 
 
 Perhaps she divines more about her chaperon's 
 goings on than she ought to be able to do if girls 
 were as innocent as novels paint them. She ha& 
 uttered a queer thing or two at times, which have 
 made the Countess's ears tingle, and turned her 
 lover for the nonce to the colour of mulberry. ' My 
 dear, you must weigh your words,' her ladyship 
 would say, biting her lips. * Why, if there's nothing 
 in them they can't hurt you,' was the pert response. 
 
 Girls like this Miss Louie have their uses, for, 
 Flirts themselves, they can divulge all the tricks of
 
 134 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 their craft for the amusement of ears masculine. 
 They are the spies and traitresses of the women's 
 camp. For the sake of raising a laugh they will 
 blow up secrets like so much loose powder, and they 
 are the first to tell men that the saintly purity, the 
 angelic sweetness, the virginal modesty ascribed to 
 women and girls are all ' bosh.' Louie has before 
 now entertained her cousin Tom with recitals of the 
 conversations she used to hold at school with other 
 girls, and there was the grin of semi-incredulity on 
 Tom's lips at the enormity of these conversations. 
 When reproached for her flightiness by those who 
 have a right to reproach her, Louie usually says, ' 0, 
 boys will be boys; why shouldn't girls be boys too?* 
 Flirts of Louie's temperament make good wives 
 for hypochondriacal men, who may be the better for 
 a little healthy excitement ; and, on the whole, it may 
 be said that the man who marries a Flirt at all had 
 best wed a merry one.
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT. 135 
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIKT. 
 
 Until arriving at the age of twenty-five the girl 
 of sentimental mood is only a quiet uninteresting 
 maiden, with a strong bias for poetry, chiefly of the 
 modern school, that will not scan or construe. She 
 has an album, and collects autographs; she writes 
 verses, and has drafted the plot of a three-volume 
 novel, not written ; she despises this age of money. 
 One day she wakes up and reflects that woman was 
 not made to live alone. Many of her old school- 
 friends are already wives and mothers ; and in the 
 numerous novels from Mudie's which she peruses she 
 notices a tendency to depreciate the matrimonial 
 chances of virgins who have reached her time of life. 
 Her poetical instinct warns her that there is no 
 romance in old maids. 
 
 So she rouses for the fray and puts on war-paint. 
 A fine figure and carriage, a well-trained intellect, a 
 strictly conventional manner, a good family connec- 
 tion, a few art-treasures as heirlooms, a domestic 
 taste underlying her keen poetical sympathy with
 
 136 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 wives of the Guinevere pattern all these things 
 might combine to make her an excellent wife for a 
 man of easy temper, not addicted to claim autocratic 
 powers in the home circle. 
 
 But Lavinia as we may call her is beset by 
 difficulties caused by her peculiar temperament, 
 nourished on Tennyson and Browning, and fortified 
 by Swinburne. An average man will not do for a 
 damsel who feels a deep contempt for men who have 
 not, like herself, set their faces against a mercenary 
 age. Lavinia's husband must be in some twenty 
 respects superior to all other women's husbands. He 
 need not be rich or noble ; she would, on the whole, 
 prefer that he should be neither, so that he might not 
 dwarf her with his superiority. But he must have 
 every sort of physical and intellectual advantage, co- 
 operating to make him a glorious compound of mind 
 and matter. He must be handsome and modest, fas- 
 cinating and faithful; able to knock down an ox one 
 minute, and tenderly to fasten a fallen earring to his 
 wife's ear the next. He must be peaceful, yet firm ; 
 an artist, orator, sportsman, statesman; a hero of land, 
 sea, or balloons, yet never bored by small-talk; a 
 savant, without being a pedant ; well dressed, but not 
 extravagant such a man as never was, even in books, 
 and, alas, never can be. 
 
 But Lavinia believes in his existence, in her power
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT. 
 
 I. 136.
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT. 137 
 
 to find him, in her ability to discover merit which 
 before was hidden. So she draws out, examines, and 
 criticises all her male friends. Of female friends she 
 has only one, and into her ears she pours her plaint. 
 The poet is sickly, the dragoon fast, the divine slow, 
 the merchant ignoble, the baronet a roue. Not one 
 may marry her; and at last, by dint of disenchant- 
 ments, she grows sour, except to her canary, and hates 
 men almost as much as she detests married women. 
 But she sketches miniatures with pen and pencil of 
 the man she could have loved, and these much re- 
 semble the wax presentments in barbers' windows. 
 
 The Sentimental Flirt, after a period of mis- 
 anthropic retirement, often takes to literature, and 
 flirts with authors. She submits a copy of her verses 
 to the Laureate, and, getting a polite reply, is em- 
 boldened to try a work in prose. While the book is 
 going through the press she has an exciting time cor- 
 recting proofs; but disillusions await her when the 
 critics fall to flouting her heroes and heroines with 
 ridicule. Her second attempt is not so trashy as the 
 first. She aims determinedly at success by a story of 
 conjugal impropriety, which strikes one of the most 
 sensitive chords in the breasts of habitual readers of 
 novels; and though this second book gets a lavish 
 share of abuse, it elevates its authoress to a distinct 
 position in the world of letters. 
 
 VOL. i. K
 
 138 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Then she begins literary and epistolary flirtations 
 with publishers, editors of magazines, brother authors, 
 and foreign translators. She defends the moral scope 
 of her works in letters to the reviews, and develops a 
 thesis of her own as to a recondite meaning of the 
 Seventh Commandment. She mocks at British pru- 
 dery, and says to herself that genius was ever ven- 
 turesome. She puts a bust of Byron in her study. 
 Surprise is created among the public when it be- 
 comes known that the authoress of so much 'spice' 
 is not an experienced widow, nor a lady living 
 on a pension earned by long service in the 'half- 
 world,' but a lady of good connections, still young, 
 and strictly virtuous. Strictly virtuous women of a 
 sentimental turn often astonish the world by the 
 depth and range of their knowledge. 
 
 But perhaps the Sentimental Flirt has taken to 
 charity, instead of literature. In this case she be- 
 comes a distinguished member of the Society for the 
 Protection of Animals. She busies herself about the 
 grievances of dogs, cattle, and cats; she founds a 
 home for motherless kittens; she bans the barbarity 
 of foxhunting and game-shooting, and has serious 
 ideas of inquiring whether the owners of racehorses 
 cannot be brought to punishment for causing their nags 
 to be unduly flogged. For men she does not care 
 at least, not for Englishmen; but she will gladly start
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT. 139 
 
 a fund to relieve Turks, Bulgarians, or Cossacks, 
 because she conceives them to be animated with senti- 
 ments more romantic than she has met with in her 
 own country. 
 
 After all, our highly-cultured Lavinia is not proof 
 against the blandishments of heroes of the Corsair 
 type, and she becomes less and less proof against 
 them as she grows older. Towards her thirty-second 
 year she starts on a tour for Italy, and nearly leaves 
 her reputation in the hands of a seductive Sicilian 
 brigand, with a sugarloaf hat. She takes to painting, 
 and gets Neapolitan lazzaroni to pose for her. One of 
 this set becomes her servant, a strapping dark-eyed 
 fellow, with merry white teeth, whom she calls Beppo, 
 and who answers her in a fondling whine, addressing 
 her as 'Eccellenza.' She, perhaps, marries this crea- 
 ture, and soon after has to advertise in the papers that 
 she will not be responsible for any debts which he 
 may contract in her name. 
 
 Or, instead of marrying, Lavinia falls into anxiety 
 about her soul, and embarks in spiritual flirtations 
 with monks and plump Italian priests. She goes to 
 Rome, and signalises herself by dropping on her knees 
 in the streets when religious processions pass; she 
 kisses the toe of St. Peter's statue; she requests an 
 audience of the Pope, and has a fit of hysterics in the 
 Holy Father's presence. Her rotund monkish friends
 
 140 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 and still more rotund priestly advisers encourage her 
 to give largely of her substance to conventual estab- 
 lishments; and during a week or two she wonders 
 how she would herself look in a nun's habit. If it 
 were possible to dress in white, with a scarlet cross
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL FLIRT. 
 
 141 
 
 -and cape, she thinks she would take the vow ; but the 
 white- and-scarlet Carmelites happen to be a rigidly 
 cloistered order, whose regulations would not suit 
 Lavinia's taste. She would like to walk about the 
 streets in nun's attire ; but, seeing that the nuns who 
 walk about are robed in hideous blacks and grays, 
 she eventually gives up the idea. 
 
 Possibly Lavinia's impulses towards religion and 
 self-sacrifice one day branch off in a Mahometan 
 direction, and lead her into an Egyptian or Turkish 
 .seraglio. Lady Ellenborough is not the only English- 
 woman by many who has discovered that romance, 
 though banished from the rest of the world, still finds 
 a refuge in the breasts of Mussulman cheiks; nor 
 xloes the polygamous system rebuff, for a cheik who 
 takes one gushing English spouse soon finds that he 
 has got as many wives as he can manage.
 
 142 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 THE STUDIOUS FLIRT. 
 
 Before taking leave of our subject we have a few 
 words to say about the Studious Flirt. 
 
 The woman who is truly scientific is not a Flirt. 
 The genuine frequenter of the Round Room of the 
 British Museum, of the South Kensington picture- 
 galleries, or the lectures of the Society of Arts, would 
 no more favour the advances of the male sex than 
 would Pallas herself. But every true article has its 
 imitations, every flower its parasites ; and though the 
 firmly-rooted wallflower of the National Gallery or 
 of Exeter Hall would doubtlessly shrivel up like a 
 mimosa under the male touch, yet the parasites, who 
 are not truly studious, but only wish to seem so, 
 behave very differently. Indeed, they too readily 
 avail themselves of the opportunities which their 
 pursuits furnish them to carry on their flirtations in 
 the most open way. 
 
 Young men, pushed by circumstances into learned 
 society, may meet with young women dragged thither 
 by relations; or desperate Flirts may even repair to
 
 THE STUDIOUS FLIRT. 143 
 
 these meetings on their own account, to hunt down 
 the men who are too shy to show themselves at wed- 
 ding-breakfasts and similar matrimonial marts. And 
 there are few things easier than to beg prettily for an 
 explanation of that little difficulty which Indocta can 
 never understand without a guide, but which Studi- 
 osus of course knows thoroughly how to explain. 
 
 An excuse being thus found for half-hours of con- 
 versation in which the chaperon takes little part, the 
 down-hill road is safe and pleasant. Sometimes an 
 old book-grub is sooner captured than a young one, 
 both as being less on his guard and also as being less 
 closely watched by the dragon aunt who generally 
 presides over the destinies of studious young men. 
 But woe to the damsel to whom the literate old gentle- 
 man uses the words ' my dear' ! They mean that 
 he is married long ago, and can be nothing to her. 
 Even if widowed, those who say ' my dear' to a girl 
 seen for the first time, seldom care to marry twice. 
 
 There is a Studious Flirt, who really has no 
 pretence about her. She has received an education 
 of a very learned sort, which has early filled her 
 mind with a taste for science. She is, perhaps, the 
 daughter of a professor or archasological lecturer. 
 She began to assist her father in correcting proofs 
 when she was sixteen, and by the time she was 
 twenty she had learned to take a serious interest in
 
 144 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 his pursuits. At her father's suggestion she tries her 
 hand at an essay, which gets printed in a magazine. 
 It treats of ' Woman's Dress in the Middle Ages,' 
 and gives proof of observation and historical research. 
 The style is, of course, loose, and the affected use of 
 learned words makes the article read somewhat 
 ludicrously to the critics. It gets ' whipped' in con-
 
 THE STUDIOUS FLIRT. 145 
 
 sequence. The young lady bites her lips, but rallies. 
 Her next contribution to the press is couched in a 
 more serious vein, and secures for her a few compli- 
 ments from the critics. After this, Miss Studiosa 
 gets formally admitted into the ranks of the learned. 
 
 She dons a double eyeglass, and lets herself be 
 elected an honorary fellow of an Archaeological 
 Society. Accompanied by her father, she joins sum- 
 mer excursions into Cornwall and Wales, where 
 cromlechs, funeral tumuli, and vestiges of Roman 
 camps are to be found. She carries a reticule, into 
 which she drops bits of flint, which are supposed to 
 be arrow-heads and lance-heads of the Age of Stone. 
 She becomes a connoisseur in antediluvian remains, 
 and you could not deceive her about the precise age 
 of a broken earthenware pot excavated from a sand-pit. 
 
 But archaeological excursions may lead to flirting. 
 Those young professors in spectacles are often sly 
 fellows, who can wink in stray corners, and convert 
 the inspection of an old bone into an occasion for 
 saying soft things. Studiosa is not made of wood, 
 and listens kindly to the compliments that are paid 
 her. For all that, she would rather flirt with a 
 dragoon than with a savant, because woman likes to 
 assert her superiority, and there is no possibility of 
 doing this with a man who knows more about bones 
 and tumuli than she does.
 
 146 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 But perhaps Studiosa botanises. In this case 
 there are many fine days, when she can exchange 
 soft nothings with young gentlemen interested, like 
 
 her, in collecting ferns and orchids. She wears a 
 tin box slung to her side. She stoops to find rare
 
 THE STUDIOUS FLIRT. 147 
 
 specimens of vegetation growing in rocky nooks. 
 Some of these are out of her reach, and she requires 
 assistance to climb up to them. Studiosus, fresh from 
 Oxford, lends her a hand or a 'back-up.' Between 
 them they succeed in uprooting the rare vegetable. 
 Studiosa, in consigning it to her tin box, says, 'So 
 kind of you !' Studiosus answers : ' There is nothing 
 I would not do for you.' After which he tries his 
 tongue at a compliment: 'I wish I were that 
 fern.' 'Why?' 'Because it is next your heart. 7 
 ' !' says Studiosa, and slings the tin box round to 
 her right side ; but she has blushed, and Studiosus is 
 half caught already. If she will only be kind to him 
 during the rest of the botanising trip, he will make 
 her an offer of marriage at the moment of separation. 
 
 Studiosa, however, may go in for abstruser sub- 
 jects than archeology and botany. There are many 
 free-thinking young ladies in these times. They 
 have read Darwin, Renan, Herbert Spencer, and 
 Huxley. They have made up their minds that thi& 
 is an age of shams; that religion is an error; and 
 society, as at present established, a delusion. They 
 sneer when they pass churches ; they contribute to- 
 atheistical publications ; they think that marriage is 
 a civil contract, and that sensible people should 
 never have the nuptial knot tied in a church. 
 
 Studiosa, as an atheist, is sure to be an awful
 
 148 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 person, and will either not marry at all or will marry 
 a curate after she has repented. Men do not much 
 care to have free-thinking wives ; but a pious curate, 
 falling in with a comely infidel, may haply try to 
 convert her, and render himself very interesting in 
 her eyes by so doing. He will speak so softly that 
 Studiosa will be touched. She will have learned by 
 this time that science is vanity, and that the reading 
 of Darwin brings no spiritual consolation. She will 
 hanker after church services, and dream of getting 
 married in a church in regular bridal attire and with 
 full choral service. If she have a little money the 
 curate will propose to her, and they will make a great 
 fuss together about her taking the Communion for 
 the first time, and thereby sealing her abjuration. 
 Learned young ladies who have forsworn religion 
 are generally most anxious to have their reentry into 
 the fold affirmed in the most solemn manner possible. 
 If Studiosa could have her way she would, when 
 marrying the curate, have all Darwin's and Kenan's 
 books burned at the altar.
 
 ON H.B.M.'s SERVICE.
 
 > 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 A YOUNG man with a handle 
 to his name, and who has 
 
 an inborn talent for doing 
 nothing agreeably, may 
 find the British Diplo- 
 matic Service as pleasant 
 a profession as he can 
 select. Other people find 
 their way into it, but are 
 never quite at ease there. Diplomacy, in our time, 
 can hardly be called a serious business, out of Russia. 
 Formerly, Austria and Germany had some important 
 negotiations, relating to dynastic questions, always
 
 152 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 going on at foreign Courts ; and their Ambassadors 
 were often consummate masters of the difficult and 
 delicate art of pleasing wisely. Now an Ambassador 
 has no field for action. A pair of permanent clerks 
 connected by an electric wire manage all his official 
 affairs ; and whenever any event in the country where 
 he resides arouses the smallest public attention, a lynx- 
 eyed company of newspaper correspondents take the 
 blush off his news, and put him to shame with it. 
 
 A modern Ambassador is not even allowed to be 
 bumptious. He must eat the humble-pie offered to 
 him, with lowliness and thanksgiving, if steadfastly 
 minded to keep his salary. For, should he make 
 any noises whatever, the local Government laugh 
 him to scorn. They do not dream of wasting words 
 on him, as the courtly Ministers of a bygone age 
 were wont to do, when an Ambassador's dignity was 
 held by international lawyers to be identical with 
 that of the Sovereign whom he was supposed to 
 represent. They merely set on foot a notable plan 
 for obtaining his recall by private letters. Confi- 
 dential notes having reference to his alleged back- 
 slidings are frequently exchanged between influen- 
 tial personages ; and as a host of rivals have been 
 waiting for his Excellency's discomfiture ever since 
 the day when his appointment first appeared in the 
 Gazette, they soon get wind of his misfortune, and
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 153 
 
 make an ugly rush at him, so that he is speedily 
 brought to naught. A very small knot of people 
 closely tied together really govern the world just 
 now ; an Ambassador must contrive to form one of 
 its threads, and to remain tightly bound in his place, 
 if he expects to lie safe and snug. 
 
 A supple-backed colourless person, who observes 
 the conditions tacitly dictated to him, will have no 
 cause to complain of his lot while his connections 
 are in office. The principal posts in the service are 
 handsomely paid ; several noblemen and gentlemen 
 have been known to receive from seven to ten thou- 
 sand pounds a year, with a liberal margin for contin- 
 gencies, though it was sometimes thought that they 
 would hardly have earned so much for themselves in 
 law or medicine, which are, nevertheless, better paid 
 than most professions. A friendly Secretary of State, 
 boldly backed up by the permanent officials in his 
 department, has, indeed, several ways of making 
 things pleasant to an Ambassador in whom he truly 
 delights. Outfits, travelling allowances, secret-ser- 
 vice funds, are all nice comfortable things in their 
 way when discreetly managed; and they are entirely 
 at the disposal of strong-minded public servants, who 
 cordially sympathise with each other. 
 
 One bold British diplomatist, who was but a 
 modest Envoy in rank, very good-naturedly received 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 154 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 a hundred and odd thousand pounds in a few months 
 from the sources above mentioned ; and his accounts 
 were enough to make most persons wink, when per- 
 mitted to look at them. The archives of the Foreign 
 Office are, however, so discreetly preserved, that 
 few indeed were the individuals outside the depart- 
 ment who had any occasion for winking at these 
 sublime figures. Another worthy man, who gave 
 highly-respected dinners on returning to his native 
 land, brought 700,OOOZ. home with him as the fruit of 
 his prudent negotiations ; and this solid addition to 
 our national wealth would have promptly founded 
 a peerage, and remained with us in a legislative 
 form to this day, had not its possessor wandered with 
 it into foreign stocks and got lost. 
 
 Now if mere Envoys thrive so prodigiously as to 
 become Envoys Extraordinary indeed under favour- 
 able conditions, how (ay, how indeed?) may not an 
 Ambassador flourish when properly fostered and 
 sheltered while raising the wind? One of them, who 
 practised the invigorating trade of a pawnbroker 
 during the piping revolutionary times which sent 
 the Imperial house of Bonaparte flitting, got several 
 fine estates into his hands, and a curious collection 
 of house property and jewelry, at extremely moderate 
 prices. He has been highly respected ever since. 
 
 The romantic East is still the real gold-field of
 
 INTEODUCTOKY. 155 
 
 diplomacy. Very big things indeed are sententiously 
 dropped into the pockets of Ambassadors, who calmly 
 hold them open and gaze upon the stars, absorbed 
 in contemplation too lofty and ethereal to remark a 
 sound so mundane as the chink of coin. The busi- 
 ness is quite religiously contrived when an experi- 
 enced Ambassador once gets into the knack of it. 
 A large grant of land in a populous city for a church 
 or a cemetery may be converted into hard cash with 
 a piety almost affecting ; and a shrill wife has often 
 increased her stock of family diamonds, in an alto- 
 gether surprising way, merely by early knowledge of 
 a Court scandal before it was bruited abroad. In one 
 case a Royal abdication, kept secret, under diplomatic 
 guidance, till the latest moment, gave rise to some 
 very spirited transactions in the regalia, while the 
 treasures of the local church were disposed of at 
 such reduced prices that a Cabinet Minister recouped 
 himself for losses in Canadian railways by a discreet 
 speculation in them. 
 
 Of course the resident diplomatists, who were ear- 
 liest in the secret, made a still more delightful thing 
 of it. Ambassadors have often had cheerful windfalls 
 of this sort in recent years; and the intelligence of 
 a national bankruptcy, which happened within living 
 memory, was as good as the daily discovery of a 
 gold-mine, as long as it could be kept dark. One
 
 156 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 fine honest fellow made 200, OOO/. sterling out of it 
 in almost less than no time ; thereby demonstrating, 
 in an engaging and pleasant manner, how becoming 
 and nice a thing it is to be a friend of one's Prince. 
 
 Persons of quality, with the fine breeding of 
 exalted station about them, do not pass each other 
 money-bags from hand to hand, as vulgar people do ; 
 they rather take an opportunity of presenting money's 
 worth to gentlemen and ladies in good society who 
 are of use to them, with the assurance of their perfect 
 consideration. This method of standing in for a valu- 
 able thing is altogether more decorous and polite. 
 
 Most of our Ambassadors were poor men on 
 starting in life. One of them used to tell how he 
 lived in his gay youth over a pork-butcher's, and 
 dined off a biscuit. After his demise his personal 
 property was estimated for probate as only just 
 under 400,0007. None of them have ever been 
 heard of in connection with any money scrape after 
 returning from an embassy. Perhaps it is a law of 
 Nature that they are miraculously endowed with 
 large bankers' accounts in their mature years. Per- 
 haps it is the nature of our law so to provide for 
 them. Perhaps of all public men they deserve best 
 of their country ; for we are never called upon to 
 hear their speeches, and the true bent of their genius 
 lies in cookerj r .
 
 AMBASSADORS. 157 
 
 II. 
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 A few years ago there were only five of these au- 
 gust creatures going about on the face of the earth as 
 representatives of the majesty of Great Britain. One 
 started in his ennobling life as a lawyer's clerk; one was 
 a Scotchman who married a title ; and the other three 
 were titled born. None of them had ever written, done, 
 or said anything remarkable, or they never could have 
 risen to their conspicuous eminence for promotion 
 came slowly to all of them. Even the Scotchman 
 spent thirty-seven patient years in climbing to the 
 gilded rank of Excellency. The way to promotion, 
 was, of course, made easier to the persons of title ; 
 but even the most popular member of the greatest 
 ducal family of the governing Whigs could not do the 
 ambassadorial thing in less than twenty-two years. 
 Indeed, it must be thoroughly well known and un- 
 derstood by all whom it concerns and their name is 
 legion that there is nothing in a man before he 
 is honoured with the most brilliant reward in the 
 public service. Lord Dalling was the last person of
 
 158 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 real ability who was appointed English Ambassador, 
 and he has had no successor. Indeed, candid 
 politicians in the confidence of Government admit 
 that he would never have obtained such an honour 
 save by a miracle, and never have kept it under 
 any circumstances but for the fortunate chance that 
 he happened to be an invalid, who was nearly always 
 on leave of absence, and who was steadfastly believed 
 to be upon the point of death. 
 
 The place of British Ambassador at a foreign 
 Court would indeed be intolerable to any man of' 
 average energy and mature intellect. He has no 
 power of initiative in any business; and his public 
 conduct is absolutely under the control of telegraph 
 wires, which are for ever instructing him, night and 
 day. By his own countrymen he is considered as a 
 peg on which to hook complaints. The courtiers of 
 the country where he resides treat him with civil 
 scorn if he gives himself airs, and as a Jack Pudding 
 if he does not. The Ambassadors of Russia, who are 
 intrusted with real powers, and are commonly the 
 intimate personal friends of their Sovereign, feel an 
 unfeigned contempt for him ; and the Ambassadors 
 of other constitutional States regard him as a fellow- 
 actor in the performance of a heavy farce, which 
 has ceased to attract public notice. In truth, the 
 Ambassadors of constitutional States have an un-
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 159 
 
 comfortable sensation that they are all pretending to 
 be what they are not. 
 
 The worst of their business is, that even foreign
 
 160 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 princes and potentates, who used to give our Am- 
 bassadors a friendly hand now and then, and help 
 them to go on shamming with their august support, 
 are now frightened out of their wits at the sight of 
 them. Ambassadors such as the first Earl of Malmes- 
 bury and the late Earl Granville actually did possess 
 a good deal of Royal and Imperial confidence, which 
 was useful upon occasion ; but King Clerk's dishonest 
 trick of printing the private conversations of mon- 
 archs in Foreign-Office blue-books, abominably edited, 
 has closed such sources of information; so that a 
 judicious prince, who meets an Ambassador by acci- 
 dent, shuts up his mouth with a snap, as though 
 there were a steel clasp to it. 
 
 A deal of envy has been expressed in news-sheets 
 and elsewhere about the preference given to titles 
 over merit in the diplomatic service. Titles, how- 
 ever, make a goodly show in all Courts, while they 
 are still more favoured in Republics. A very small 
 lord looks larger and more important in the esteem 
 of rich and idle societies than a very great philoso- 
 pher. This fact being indisputable, however moral- 
 ists may carp at it, no Minister should be lightly 
 blamed for taking it into account when making his 
 promotions. A lord will do far better for a lay- 
 figure than a man of genius or a man of business; 
 and, as it is now universally acknowledged that Am-
 
 AMBASSADORS. 161 
 
 bassadors have no rights and no duties, dull empty 
 folk with sounding names can fill, with peculiar 
 decorum, so meaningless an office. 
 
 A fat man, in a fright, too, seems to run away 
 from danger with more haste and anxiety than a 
 large-minded and thoughtful statesman having serious 
 feelings as to his responsibilities and duty towards 
 his fellow-countrymen. It is quite refreshing to 
 remember the alacrity with which his Excellent 
 Plumpness the Right Honourable Bickerton Pemell 
 Lord Lyons removed himself out of harm's way at 
 the public expense during those alarming riots in 
 Paris a few years ago, leaving, with perfect taste and 
 an unruffled temper, the Queen's lieges to take care 
 of their own interests. Nobody missed the noble 
 and energetic gentleman who had rolled so fast away 
 from peril, and who was far more at his ease when 
 beyond danger than while exposed to any possible 
 mischance. Excellency Lyons, his cook, and his quar- 
 ter's salary, rejoiced in safety and quiet all through 
 a noisy war which convulsed the Rue du Fau- 
 bourg St. Honore" ; and they were a thousand times 
 better situated than that American, Mr. Washburne, 
 who looked after his fellow-countrymen in the be- 
 sieged metropolis of France, for less than a fourth of 
 the pay awarded to the high-souled Englishman. 
 Indeed it is a comfort to recollect that our represen-
 
 162 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 tative, during the whole war, prudently kept out of 
 all broils but those of his own kitchen, where he and 
 an imaginative cook held sympathetic council to- 
 gether over succulent meats and appetising sauces.
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 Such a man was, and is, an honour to his native land. 
 Let us rejoice in him. 
 
 There seems to be no certain rule for mount- 
 ing to the topmost round on the ladder of British 
 diplomacy. Men as brave and unselfish as Lord 
 Lyons have tumbled off from unexplained causes. 
 Each step is made by the help of patronage, and 
 therefore depends on luck. A perfectly colourless 
 well-behaved nobleman, who has been brought up by 
 an experienced mother, holding a good place behind 
 the scenes of the political stage, will always have a 
 nice chance, if he and his mamma live long enough 
 to make use of their friends and experience. She 
 will teach him to be patient and courteous ; never to 
 tread on anybody's toes or heels; never to be eager, 
 or apparently desirous, of promotion, till even rivals 
 and competitors cry out that his professional advance- 
 ment has been fairly earned. 
 
 When he means to move on he should go, as it 
 were, sideways rather than straightforward. Big 
 posts are best got by jumps in zigzag directions, so 
 as not to do violence to the jog-trot notions of secre- 
 taries of legation, more than sixty years old, yet full 
 of hope in the remote future. If an aspiring young 
 fellow and his mamma tumble over the heads of some 
 of these old boys they make an awful hubbub. It is 
 a good plan to pop in and out of the Foreign Office,
 
 164 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 to get brief spells of special service, to have some- 
 thing to do with a Royal Commission, and yet never 
 to be seen or heard of in a newspaper, unless in con- 
 nection with an extract from the Gazette. 
 
 It used to be said that attaches appointed to the 
 smaller Courts had most luck, but of late Fortune 
 seems to have changed her haunts. The youngest of 
 our Ambassadors, Lord Odo Russell, began his career 
 ^s a subordinate at Vienna, and ended it at Rome. 
 Lord Augustus Loftus passed eight years of his early 
 life in the remarkable retirement of Stuttgardt. 
 
 There are few Ambassadors on the pension-list, 
 and their retiring allowances are not large, considered 
 as the ultimate end of so much ambition and such 
 vaulting hopes. They are generally lords, however, 
 poor old souls, if that is any consolation to them; and 
 they cost the nation, when lumped together, no more in 
 superannuation doles than half, or maybe a third, of 
 the yearly earnings of a country solicitor in moderate 
 practice. Possibly they really want nothing. 
 
 They are great lights at their clubs, these frail 
 and worn-out wrecks and spars of forgotten vessels, 
 freighted with forgotten schemes, that have gone 
 down in the ocean of time. They are in earnest 
 request at christenings and weddings. Their names 
 are thought to look well in the trust-deeds of mar- 
 riage settlements; they are often fished for, but sel-
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 165 
 
 dom hooked, by promoters of public companies ; for 
 they sink heavily into silent pools, like large tench, 
 as soon as they have carried off the bait held out to 
 them. They may be met in fashionable neighbour- 
 hoods during the season, strutting grandly home-
 
 166 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 wards, with feeble knees, from pompous dinners, 
 where they have been the honoured guests. Their 
 orders and decorations are firmly sewn on to their 
 dowdy dress-coats by the hands of loving women, 
 who firmly believe that they are the centre of the 
 universe, round whom all other men are in duty 
 bound to revolve. They have small select companies 
 who admire them fervently once, or even twice, a 
 week, over weakish tea, and who listen to the favourite 
 stories of their youth as to the oracles of a prophet. 
 
 Now and again they ask a question in the House 
 of Lords, or propose to ask a question; for experi- 
 ence has long ago taught them not to be too hasty, 
 lest they should get into some difficulties with the 
 Ministry about their pension, or about 
 some sly old job in hiding, to which 
 they are fondly attached. They spend 
 weeks in preparing this ' question,' 
 till it becomes quite a marvel of anti- 
 quated official jargon, utterly incom- 
 prehensible to the human intellect. 
 Then if it is a fine day, if Ministers 
 look benign, and the rheumatism per- 
 mits, they go down with their ex- 
 cited womenkind to Parliament, and have a field- 
 day all to themselves. They utter, in a jaunty qui- 
 vering chirp, a few sentences about the old, old story
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 167 
 
 most familiar to them the Eastern Question, the 
 designs of France, or the views of Germany towards 
 the sea. Presently they are beckoned and coaxed and 
 petted and whisked away by the worshipful women 
 in time for their five-o'clock milk. The rest of their
 
 168 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 evening is passed in revising proofs of the wonderful 
 speech, which has been transmitted in manuscript, 
 through their confidential man-of-all-work, to the 
 editors of the morning papers, ' with Lord Protocol's 
 compliments.' The editors perhaps privately ejacu- 
 late ' Bosh !' but print it nevertheless, as in a manner 
 bound by the custom of their craft and country. 
 
 Sometimes Ministers, when hard pushed, will 
 even galvanise one of the awful old boys back into 
 real life for half an hour, and call him up to make an 
 authoritative statement, or denial, or warning, or 
 prophecy in the interests of Government, sending 
 him back with the l Garter,' or some grand sham of 
 that sort, for his trouble. His name as a politician 
 reads to the general public, at such times, like a 
 quotation from ancient history, producing, as it is 
 intended to produce, a truly grand effect in the way 
 of universal bewilderment. 
 
 Such poor counterfeits and shadows as herein 
 described are modern Ambassadors. An embassy 
 still seems sometimes to be what it has often been 
 before a sort of stately almshouse or retreat for 
 decayed politicians ; sometimes also it is a convenient 
 shelf on which to lay a dangerous rival, and make 
 him at once harmless and contemptible. The late 
 noble Marquises of Thormanby and High-down- 
 Derry were both neatly extinguished in this way
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 169 
 
 the one by a Tory Minister, the other by a Whig, for 
 no party has a monopoly of the tricks of the trade in 
 politics. The only question, however, which now 
 concerns the sane part of mankind is whether Am- 
 bassadors would, could, or should be something 
 better than they are. If they would be, perhaps 
 they could be; but when a weak-kneed mortal has 
 been for a long time laboriously climbing against 
 wind and weather to the top of a steep hill, he seldom 
 feels much inclined for 
 heroic exertion. Sleep 
 and a glass of sherry 
 are often more suited 
 to his mind. Probably 
 he takes the sherry 
 before the sleep. 
 
 The idea of ' should- 
 ness' or duty suggests 
 quite a different train 
 
 of thought. An Ambassador who had conceived 
 a thoroughly healthy notion of his position and 
 its proper functions might prove a very valuable 
 factor in this world of ours. He could hardly do so 
 much as Manchester men suppose for their imme- 
 diate trade profits, because a commercial traveller, 
 with a pushing disposition and a quick head for 
 fio-ures, can see clearer into small mercantile gains 
 
 & * 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 M
 
 170 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 than a ripe statesman. But he might so patiently 
 study the history, manners, circumstances, and go- 
 vernment of the country where he is accredited as 
 to make any misunderstandings about her strength, 
 finances, and resources impossible. Under our present 
 system of patronage and nepotism, an Ambassador 
 was the immediate cause of the Crimean "War, of the 
 Franco-German War, and of the Turco-Russian War 
 of 1877, whereas an Ambassador might have pre- 
 vented all these calamities. 
 
 In like manner a few far-sighted reasonable men 
 would have known enough of the resources of 
 Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Greece, and the South 
 American Republics to warn off rash trust in them, 
 and to have prevented the widespread ruin it occa- 
 sioned. They would at all times be able to forecast 
 some of the probabilities of the proximate future, 
 and to show where an investment in foreign secu- 
 rities would be prudent or otherwise. Trustworthy 
 and timely information is always beneficent in its 
 effects ; and to a wise Ambassador, who made a right 
 use of his opportunities, mankind might often owe 
 the discovery of new wealth, new truths, new forms 
 of happiness. It should be his especial work to dis- 
 course with men of science, to follow and examine 
 their experiments, to share, as it were, in their dis- 
 coveries, and to watch the precious fruit of thought
 
 AMBASSADORS. 171 
 
 and labour till it became ripe. It is melancholy to 
 think that the first idea of the electric telegraph seems 
 to have died stillborn in the mind of a poor mechanic, 
 that many valuable and beautiful arts have perished 
 unpreserved, and that there are still specifics favour- 
 able to health and life known to obscure savages 
 and village crones, but unknown to our physicians. 
 
 A thousand thousand secrets of Nature remain 
 unrevealed to us for want of intelligent inquiry ; and 
 every country has curious mysteries unexamined. 
 Is the ordinary practice of medicine right in France 
 or in England? They are often directly opposed to 
 each other. Which is the best code of criminal law ? 
 Nearly every nation has a different one. Why is 
 Chinese agriculture much more productive than 
 ours, while the soil and climate are less favourable? 
 How came it that Macadam imported the art of 
 road-making from Pekin, and not Lord Macartney? 
 It had been known in China for centuries; and 
 Macartney was there till 1794, whereas Macadam's 
 discovery was not made public till 1819. What are 
 the secrets of colour known to the carpet-makers of 
 Turkestan and to the shawl- weavers of Persia ? How 
 do the Arabian jugglers perform their marvels, such 
 as to make a tree grow, blossom, bear, and wither in 
 an hour, and recall dead snakes to life by music ? 
 What is the miraculous stone of which Sir Patrick
 
 172 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Colquhoun heard tidings at Corfu? What says the 
 horse-whisperer of Aleppo ? Is there any virtue in 
 the hazel-rod of the well-finder in Southern Russia ? 
 What is the drug which cures all disease, but death, 
 in Tartary ? It is administered by an untaught 
 peasant, and nobles, long past physicians' skill, resort 
 to him in numbers, and are cured. He will take no 
 money. Is it true that the mineral wealth of the 
 Ottoman Empire would pay her National Debt a 
 hundred times over ? 
 
 No Ambassador deals with such questions as these, 
 or is likely to do so, as matters are at, present con- 
 stituted. Suppose we tried a different sort of genius. 
 Not to speak of living men, what an Ambassador 
 Franklin made ! What an Ambassador Sir Humphrey 
 Davy would have made ! And if we could have per- 
 suaded Henry Holland, who was fond of travel, to 
 join him for a year as medical secretary ; and Erskine r 
 when he first turned his mind to the laAv ! He would 
 have been glad of the place of first legal attache, 
 instead of living a rough and tumble life with his- 
 wife in barracks at Minorca. What a flash such an 
 intellect would have cast into the darkness and 
 muddle of our legal procedure, with experience so 
 widened and improved had clerkly meddling per- 
 mitted ! James Watt, too, Avho had an uphill fight 
 with the world when young, might have made a
 
 AMBASSADORS. 173 
 
 figure in this sort of diplomacy, just about the time 
 when he was allowed ' by especial favour to establish 
 a small shop in Glasgow.' He and David Brewster 
 would have told us all something of the ' properties 
 of light' worth hearing; and would have made 
 together such an embassy as never left the shores of 
 England. 
 
 We prefer another mode of doing business. We 
 take a dreary old fellow with a handle to his name, 
 send him to a foreign Court, and pay some clerks to 
 exchange rigmarole with him. Then we despatch 
 another dull or dullish man, who is to know nothing 
 of that rigmarole, unless called upon temporarily to 
 take the place of the first old man. These two poor 
 creatures are called the Ambassador and the Secre- 
 tary of Embassy. They are seldom on speaking 
 terms ; and employ such mental energy as they have 
 in writing viperish private letters about each other. 
 
 4 D that pompous duffer ! he never goes on 
 
 leave,' murmurs the Honourable Daddleton or the 
 Honourable Babbleton. ' Why, hang it all, if I were 
 to go away for a day only, Doldrums' (the Honour- 
 able Babbleton's or Daddleton's nickname) ' would see 
 my " most secret and confidential" despatch about the 
 royal footman's startling revelation concerning the 
 Queen's new shoes ; and he would get at my best 
 source of information,' mutters Ambassador Faddle-
 
 174 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 ton, who is a lord, of course, or nearly of course.. 
 1 Quite right 1' observes Lady Faddleton, in an un- 
 compromising tone; and henceforth Daddleton or 
 Babbleton and the Right Honourable Lord Faddleton 
 sit watching each other, and hatching petty social 
 mischiefs. 
 
 The small fry are at it too. The military attache, 
 who is a general (goodness knows how or why), 
 feels permanently aggrieved because Daddleton or 
 Babbleton takes precedence of him as Secretary 
 of Embassy. The other attaches are jealous of 
 each other. Weedesby is ' my lord's favourite,' and 
 gets all the special service. Beadsby is consul and 
 librarian, which means pickings ; and Deedesby sulks 
 twice a week at a tavern dinner with Babbleton or 
 Daddleton, both being in a state of private revolt 
 against things in general. Their conversation is not 
 interesting to other people. Hyejincks, Shycock,. 
 and Crasshe, all golden youths belonging to the first 
 families, patronise the local amusements, and call 
 several actresses by their Christian names. l My 
 lord,' however, smiles at their doings, for he is some- 
 how in the grip of Shycock's father, Sir Underwood 
 Shycock (firm of Shycock, Downey, Dodger, & Co. r 
 of Lombard-street) ; Hyejincks is Lady Faddleton V 
 nephew; Crasshe is Lord Bango's son, and Bango is- 
 Secretary of State in command at the Foreign Office-
 
 AMBASSADORS. 
 
 175 
 
 Hyejincks, Shy cock, and Crasshe are mostly on leave 
 of absence, save when a new play or a new loan is 
 
 coming out.
 
 176 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 III. 
 
 ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY. 
 
 An En. Ex. and Min. Plen., as he is officially de- 
 signated in that great work of genius the ' Foreign- 
 Office List,' may be called the ordinarily successful 
 or working man of business in diplomacy. A steady 
 presentable fellow, who goes stolidly in for the thing ; 
 who has money, or knows how to make it silently, 
 and give it to the right people, is tolerably certain to 
 become an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Pleni- 
 potentiary towards the shady side of middle life. If 
 he is really in the confidence of influential people, and 
 can put the screw on them, he may even jump into 
 a mission at a single bound, though the thing does 
 not often happen nowadays, because persons who can 
 weigh heavily on Ministers of State employ their 
 power more advantageously : for no place in the dip- 
 lomatic service, as at present constituted, is worth the 
 attention of a man of energy, talent, and character. 
 
 There are a good many active bustling fellows 
 among our Envoys, who are not quite so much im- 
 peded by dignity as Ambassadors. The best of them,
 
 ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY. 
 
 177 
 
 however, seldom find anything to do since the tele- 
 graph from Downing-street became so confoundedly 
 communicative. Even the man in Persia, who used 
 only to be worried by a Gholaum, or orthodox official 
 courier, once every ten days, and Avas never expected 
 to answer a despatch in less than six months, is now 
 teased among his kabobs and rose-trees whenever 
 any permanent person in charge of the wires feels 
 naughty.
 
 178 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 The people at Pekin, Yedo, and even Tangier, which 
 a few years ago slept so pleasantly amidst her orange- 
 gardens and happy hunting-grounds, are troubled as 
 sorely. They are perpetually being bothered to give 
 explanations, and to furnish reports, and to answer 

 
 ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY. 17 9" 
 
 long lists of printed questions for some unholy com- 
 piler of statistics. It would not much signify if the 
 messages were all delivered in a bundle, or rubbish- 
 basket, once a week ; for their contents are of no con- 
 sequence, save that they put the recipient to a little 
 unnecessary annoyance, and generally to some need- 
 less expense. But unfortunately they are left sepa- 
 rately at the Minister's house in the small hours, by 
 special favour of the local authorities ; and the sleepy 
 diplomatist is often obliged to start up from his 
 slumbers to read them in his nightcap, lest they 
 should contain tidings of import, such as his abrupt 
 dismissal, or promotion, or transfer to another post. 
 
 The social position of British Envoys, too, is much 
 altered for the worse in our day. Thus the ' T. G.' or 
 travelling gentleman, as the fine old British tourist 
 was good-humouredly called at the legations thirty 
 years ago, when he came out with a special passport, 
 a travelling- carriage, and a suite of honour, carried 
 his welcome with him. He was generally a man 
 whose good word was worth having on his return to 
 England, and it was expected that he would bring 
 the latest scandals from the clubs and the cover-side. 
 The ' T. G.,' therefore, had scarcely arrived at hi& 
 hotel before the Minister's butler, who was rather an 
 august person, brought him a verbal invitation to- 
 dinner, which he was expected to answer verbally..
 
 180 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 He had good cause to brag of that dinner all his life 
 afterwards, and generally did so. The Envoy was a 
 truly splendid and magnificent creature, far above 
 butchers' bills. He kept open house, and not only 
 dined admirably, but his recognition immediately 
 gave the T. G. an entrance into good society. The 
 best political news and the most amusing stories 
 current were to be heard at his table, arid every one 
 who was worth seeing or knowing in the country 
 could be met there. 
 
 No part of the national taxation was more profit- 
 ably spent than that which went to keep up the 
 splendid hospitalities of such men as Stuart and Pon- 
 sonby, Normanby and Temple. To be on pleasant 
 and easy terms with them was part of a liberal educa- 
 tion. Now penny news-sheets and parliamentary riots 
 have awakened tourists to the uncomfortable know- 
 ledge that diplomatic salaries are of small account in 
 a banker's book unless eked out by serviceable wits ; 
 so the moneyed interests feel rather contempt than 
 respect for a wiggy old boy in a foreign town, who 
 cannot give them half such a good feed as the man- 
 ager of the branch shoddy-shop, who is flourishing in 
 the most fashionable part of the city, with a brace of 
 friendly cooks, and a music-hall songstress for a wife. 
 
 Several Envoys, too, who have scrambled into 
 uncertain places through money-lending attorneys,
 
 ENVOYS EXTRAORDINARY. 181 
 
 and have been a good deal fleeced in the process, are 
 in no haste to discourage an idea which spares them 
 the obstreperous visits and undisciplined appetites of 
 virtuous engineers prowling about with their capi- 
 talists, on the look-out for foreign contracts leading 
 straight into the Central Criminal Court. A modern 
 British Envoy, thus overwhelmed by travelling bag- 
 men and cheap excursionists of every denomination 
 has given up his time-honoured part of entertainer- 
 general to his fellow-countrymen. He is now rather 
 a diner-out than a dinner-giver ; and his saucepans 
 often have rest for a week together. Rich local 
 merchants, ambitious people struggling for a place 
 in polite company, thriving shopkeepers eager to 
 buy manners, are always glad to have a diplomatist 
 in leading-strings if the thing can be accomplished 
 on remunerative terms, and the man is a decent 
 sort of fellow who does not assume too much, 
 consequence. 
 
 The financiers and large usurers in great cities 
 like Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, 
 usually invite their diplomatists in batches, so that 
 one may see all the powers of the earth represented 
 at Herr Schnapsgeldt's Sunday villa. The smaller 
 capitalists, who have made but half a fortune, take 
 them in turns, one or two at a time. They are 
 mostly harmless old fellows, even over their cups;.
 
 182 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 being chiefly remarkable for hair-dye, stiff necker- 
 chiefs, and a steady faculty of digestion. Idleness 
 and small fixed incomes, free from every care but 
 the telegraph, endow them with a regular appetite 
 every day at the usual hour fixed by the social 
 customs of the place where they reside. They 
 become rare judges of other men's wines as they 
 grow in age and wisdom. 
 
 The wit and grace, the geniality and good-fellow- 
 ship, which brightened the missions of Howden and 
 Holland, Ellis, Heytestury, and Seymour, have died 
 out of the service. Lord Bloomfield was the last 
 of the cheery old school. 
 
 \
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 183 
 
 IV. 
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 
 
 Mr. Jenkins Bathurst Jenkinson-Jenkinson is a 
 fair average type of a Secretary of Embassy. There 
 is a tradition in his family that one of them was 
 the great-aunt by marriage of a personal friend of 
 the second Earl of Liverpool; and they have all 
 wisely claimed noble lineage ever since. Thus it 
 very naturally happened that when Lord John 
 Bustle, who had a great respect for the peerage, 
 was in power at the Foreign Office in 1852, he 
 appointed Jenkins first paid attache to the Paris 
 embassy right off. 
 
 ' The Lord deliver us from this dreadful Whig!' 
 gasped Mr. Hammond, when he saw the nomina- 
 tion lying in wet ink on ' LittlejohnV own table. 
 * Who would have thought that so small a creature 
 had such monstrous notions ?' Then it was rumoured 
 that Mr. Addington objected to instruct the chief 
 clerk of the period to make out the appointment 
 of Mr. Jenkinson, it being against all precedent. 
 
 Now, Mr. Addington was at this time permanent 
 Under-Secretary of State ; and Mr. Hammond was
 
 184 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the senior clerk who governed him, and the chief 
 clerk was a highly respected three-bottle man, who 
 had been at the battle of Waterloo. 
 
 Such a combination of official malcontents, and 
 the fact that they had a candidate of their own 
 (bound under conditions to pay an annuity upon 
 his salary to the chief clerk), would have staggered 
 any Secretary of State but Lord John. 
 
 ' You will witness stranger things than this, Mr. 
 Hammond,' squeaked his lordship, in that highly- 
 pitched voice which so long tried the gravity of the 
 Strangers' Gallery in both Houses of Parliament : ' I 
 mean to make myself an Earl, and you a Privy 
 Councillor, before long; you see if I don't.' 
 
 Indeed, Lord John Bustle carried out both these 
 intentions; but the Office was not to be appeased, 
 and ultimately triumphed even over the godfather 
 of the Reform Bill, so that the chief clerk's customer 
 for promotion had to be appointed after all, instead 
 of Jenkins. That favoured young man did, however, 
 contrive to wriggle edgeways into the diplomatic ser- 
 vice, and was smuggled off to a half-forgotten Court 
 in Northern Germany as soon as the usual negotia- 
 tions were completed. He did not, upon the whole, 
 come so badly out of the business, for the harmless 
 necessary attorney who touted for the Foreign Office 
 agent reported favourably of him, as a discreet
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 
 
 185 
 
 THE HARMLESS NECESSARY ATTORNEY. 
 
 young man with a still tongue and his aunt's sav- 
 ings, who was likely to leave his salary for an inde- 
 finite period in his agent's hands without asking 
 questions about it. From that time forward, there- 
 fore, Jenkins was considered as a safe person, who 
 might be officially mentioned on every change of 
 Government as ' a rattling good fellow, who had been 
 doocidly ill-used by Timbertoes in Lord John's time/ 
 VOL. i. N
 
 186 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 For Timbertoes was the endearing name by which 
 the Waterloo officer, who had been chief clerk, was 
 familiarly known ; and since his decease all the 
 musty peccadilloes of the department have been 
 laid at his door. 
 
 Mr. Jenkinson would have got on faster than he 
 did in the service, but he committed two capital 
 blunders at starting. He failed to secure the good 
 graces of his chief's wife, through dancing with and 
 paying too marked attentions to a bankeress, who 
 was her rival, at the first Court ball given after he 
 took possession of his post; and he committed the 
 unpardonable offence of shirking attendance on her 
 at shopping ; for he was but a lad, and inexperienced 
 in the ways of his profession. Sir Phipps Ryder, 
 who was head of the mission, took a grip against 
 him at his wife's bidding, as was natural and proper ; 
 so that Jenkins had an uneasy time of it till he could 
 afford to be transferred by the attorney to another 
 post, where his chief was a bachelor. 
 
 Here, however, he fell into a trap of a different 
 sort ; for, being determined to please the Envoy at any 
 price, he made himself so accommodating that this 
 diplomatist took himself off from a courtly residence 
 somewhat dull, and left his subordinate to manage 
 the mission business at his own expense. Mr. 
 Jenkinson-Jenkinson's savings were wofully dimi-
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 
 
 187 
 
 JENKINS AND THE BANKERESS. 
 
 nished by these proceedings ; for he did not dare to 
 touch his salary, even when promoted to the rank of 
 paid attache*, in consequence of further arrangements 
 with the touting attorney, made through a shrewd
 
 188 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 old uncle. Moreover, when Mr. Townshend Fox- 
 Robinson, his new master, found out to what good 
 service a docile chap like Jenkins could be put, that 
 worthy gentleman did all he could to obstruct his 
 subordinate's professional advancement, for fear that 
 some domineering young nobleman, without a rap, 
 should be sent out to him in place of the mild con- 
 venient Jenkinson, whom he had learned so well how 
 to appreciate. 
 
 This little game went on for six weary years. 
 Poor Jenkins got a gray hair with the miserable 
 thought that he might be ruined for ever by being 
 forced, in spite of all his sacrifices, to draw upon his 
 official pay in his agent's hands a course which he 
 had been warned by the touting attorney would ruin 
 his diplomatic prospects for ever. Just as Mr. 
 Jenkinson- Jenkinson, however, w r as about to sell out 
 his last thousand pounds in the Funds, which was all 
 that remained of the slender fortune he had in- 
 herited, honest Lord Malmesbury came into office, 
 and, having an inkling of the Jenkins case, quietly 
 shelved Mr. Townshend Fox-Robinson ; after w r hich 
 he transferred the long- suffering attache to Constan- 
 tinople, where the whole embassy staff were just then 
 handsomely boarded and lodged by Colonel Rose 
 afterwards Lord Strathnairn, the famous Indian hero. 
 
 At Constantinople Jenkins was lucky enough to
 
 LORD TRUFFLETON HANDING JENKINS HIS APPOINTMENT. 
 
 I. i8g.
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 189 
 
 obtain employment on special service, which brought 
 him into contact with a dowager Earl, then cruising 
 about the .Egean in his yacht. This illustrious legis- 
 lator, finding that the aspiring diplomatist could 
 make an omelette of tomatoes better than his own 
 cook, offered him free quarters for ever, in a moment 
 of culinary enthusiasm; and Jenkins might, on the 
 whole, have passed a more useful and agreeable life 
 had he taken service with the amiable voluptuary 
 rather than in the Foreign Office. But he could not 
 be brought to understand so plain a truth till too late. 
 His lordship (Earl Truffleton), however, was not 
 vindictive, and good-naturedly ordered his own con- 
 fidential solicitor a prince of the law, who lived in 
 Bolton-street, Piccadilly to negotiate with his pro- 
 fessional brother, the tout, to get another step up the 
 ladder for Jenkins. A fortnight afterwards, which 
 was just the time required for return of post, Truffle- 
 ton almost took his young friend's breath away by 
 tossing him his appointment as Secretary of Legation 
 in Switzerland, on handing him a basket of fresh eg-crg 
 
 7 O CO 
 
 to prepare for breakfast. 
 
 ' Of course,' observed his lordship, ' you can't go 
 to Berne. I never do. I shall want you here till 
 October, when the equinox will drive me home by 
 rail through Trieste. I will get you transferred to 
 Naples by next year. There are excellent tomatoes
 
 190 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 at Naples. You may run and see your friends while 
 I winter in Paris.' 
 
 ' How about leave ?' asked Jenkins dryly, being 
 somewhat puffed up with his new dignity, even in 
 presence of the patron who had pitched it to him. so 
 scornfully. 
 
 ' Leave !' answered Lord Truffleton, too much as- 
 tonished to swallow the mouthful of good food he 
 
 ' BARKER, MY LAWYER.'
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 191 
 
 had just taken before speaking. ' Barker, my lawyer, 
 could transport your agent and head man at the 
 F. 0. if the dog dared to interfere with my break- 
 fast ; and, by George, he should do it, too !' 
 
 Mr. Jenkinson-Jenkinson paid marked attention 
 to this powerful peer for the rest of his days; but 
 unfortunately he did not live long, or there is no 
 knowing how high he might and could and would 
 have pushed a young fellow who could handle a 
 frying-pan so deftly, and who so truly pleased his 
 taste. His lordship's conversation was most con- 
 siderate. 'Much better stop with me altogether, 
 Jumper,' the peer was wont to insist, having given 
 his friend a nickname derived from the accomplished 
 manner in which he tossed the materials for his lord- 
 ship's favourite breakfast. '1 will give you three 
 hundred a year, damme! and your livery I mean, 
 my man Davis can make your clothes. Pension too, 
 when you are too old for work.' It did not occur to 
 Lord Truffleton that he would ever become old. 
 
 ' You see, Jumper,' his lordship would shrewdly 
 observe at other times, when urging Jenkins to enter 
 his employment, 'I can afford to be liberal. My 
 ancestors did all the thieving and that kind of thing 
 for me, and my family have been honest for two 
 generations. Your present masters, on the contrary, 
 have all their thieving to do, and will flay you alive
 
 192 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 before they have done with you. My noble friend 
 Furby, though he ought to have money, if he has not 
 been bullied out of it, is worse than any of them. 
 My place is worth more than anything in the public 
 service except the F. 0. agencies, and you'll never get 
 the tip of your finger into that pie. Come, is it a bar- 
 gain ? No ? Ah, you'll think better of it to-morrow.' 
 That to-morrow never came. Lord Truffleton 
 died quite suddenly, choked by a grapestone, while 
 laughing over one of his own jokes after dinner, at 
 Venice. Jenkins was, of course, in attendance on 
 him, and sincerely expected a legacy ; but the kind- 
 hearted Earl could never bear the thought of any 
 one but himself, and naturally departed this life in- 
 testate. Immediately after this fact transpired Mr. 
 Jenkins was dryly recalled to his diplomatic duties 
 by telegraph. He never again met with such a 
 friend as Lord Truffleton ; but Naples was one of the 
 best posts in the service, till spoiled by Mr. Glad- 
 stone ; and as soon as Jenkins was Secretary of Lega- 
 tion he now and then got a spell as Charge d' Affaires. 
 Many easy-living English people of influence also 
 resided in the most beautiful of the Italian cities; and 
 Jenkins had opportunities, which he eagerly seized, 
 of rendering them small services, knowing from expe- 
 rience how good a thing it is to be on pleasing terms 
 with the aristocracy.
 
 SECRETARIES OF EMBASSY. 
 
 193 
 
 At length a wealthy Italian Duchess, who had 
 two British and one Wallachian husband, all living, 
 wanted the place of Secretary of Legation, near her 
 
 own marine villa, for the first attache, a rosy 
 young fellow, aged twenty-five, whose society she
 
 194 SIDE- LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 considered unusually edifying. Finally the great 
 agent, Mr. Cribb, finding that Jenkins had honestly 
 kept faith with him, and had already left eight years* 
 pay in his hands untouched since the last accounts 
 between them were settled privately in Truffleton's- 
 time, was really disposed to befriend so conscientious 
 a customer. Mr. Jenkinson, therefore, was half- 
 intoxicated, half-alarmed at receiving, quite unex- 
 pectedly, his promotion as Secretary of Embassy at 
 Berlin, which is the dullest post in the service. 
 
 He'was exhilarated, because it was a tremendous 
 jump upwards; such a bound as must make him 
 Minister Plenipotentiary ad int. very shortly, if he 
 could only keep it during a temporary eclipse of the 
 Ambassador. But he was also alarmed, because the 
 slippery place of Secretary of Embassy is often an 
 awkward stepping-stone to some abominable frying- 
 pan in South America. There was even a horrible 
 tradition of a Secretary of Embassy having been once 
 shipped off as Consul-General somewhere, and that so 
 much against his will that he died of a broken heart. 
 These were grim warnings; and Mr. Jenkinson- 
 Jenkinson henceforth devoted the entire energies of 
 his diplomatic intellect to keeping out of sight and 
 out of mind. The close of his career, like the be- 
 ginning of it, will depend entirely on chance.
 
 SECRETARIES OF LEGATION. 
 
 195' 
 
 V. 
 
 SECRETARIES OF LEGATION. 
 
 The Honourable Peregrine Villiers Timmins is a 
 demure colourless man of [forty-three, who never 
 had a friend or a sweetheart, lest either should inter- 
 fere with his professional prospects ; and therefore
 
 196 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 lie is Secretary of Legation at Copenhagen. There 
 is likewise talk of sending him to Yedo, as soon as 
 young Melgund- Stanley can be coaxed or scolded 
 away from Paris, where he is anxious to espouse a 
 lady of gallantry older than his mother. 
 
 Hartley and Beaudesert, brilliant Jack Canning 
 and gifted Philip Goldsworth, who started in life 
 with Timmins twenty years ago, have been all dis- 
 tanced in the race. Lord Fairflower, too, threw up 
 the service when he came into his family estates 
 after the death of his uncle; and Everhard Bullion, 
 the banker's son, thought he could do better for his 
 firm in Parliament, or with the Prince, than as old 
 Protocol's right-hand man at Vienna. Perhaps he 
 was right, perhaps not; but these and other retire- 
 ments, jobs, and resignations, which had taken place 
 during a score of years under six Secretaries of State, 
 had gradually cleared the coast for the Honourable 
 Timmins ; and there he is perched, like one of Mrs. 
 Carey's chickens half-way up a lighthouse, and never 
 likely to get much higher in this world. He has 
 two sets of shirt-studs, a collection of dress-boots, 
 a doubtful diamond which belonged to his grand- 
 mother, and a miscellaneous assembly of clothing 
 from all nations. That, with five hundred a year 
 in salary and four hair-brushes, represents the sum- 
 total of his possessions under the sun ; if a pair of
 
 SECRETARIES OF LEGATION. 197 
 
 rather frightened whiskers and a false tooth can 
 honestly be left out of the calculation. 
 
 The mental baggage of Timmins might be stowed 
 away in a wonderfully small compass. He has often 
 read in Burke and Debrett that he is the fourth son 
 of Conway- Lenox-Montague - Petty - Thynne - Dunk- 
 Fitzroy Viscount Nocashingmore, of County Tippe- 
 rary ; and nothing has yet occurred to disturb a 
 belief so advantageous to him in society. That is, 
 almost nothing ; nothing save an after-dinner conver- 
 sation which he once had with the present Viscount, 
 when he declined to back his lordship's bill of ex- 
 change for a hundred pounds, and was consequently 
 disowned by that august nobleman with much 
 promptitude and asperity. If the truth must be 
 told, the late Viscountess (heiress of Sloe, Twiggs, & 
 Twiggs, the great tea-dealers of Pudding-lane) had 
 separated from her husband very shortly after her 
 marriage, and had allowed him an annuity to let her 
 alone at Florence. But that is an old story now, 
 and need not be recalled. 
 
 Besides, it is not, perhaps, all true; for the 
 Honourable Peregrine is often pleased to relate 
 anecdotes of his early life, for the edification of the 
 counts and barons who strut about at the Court 
 where he resides ; and from these artless narratives 
 it is clear that Timmins must have passed the greater
 
 198 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 part of his infancy and youth in circumstances or 
 extraordinary splendour. Most of the continental 
 papers call him ' cet illustre fashionable, Milor Teems/ 
 
 and stoutly assert that he owes his title to a share 
 he possesses in the Times newspaper, which, as all 
 erudite foreigners are aware, is held by the Lord 
 Mayor of London and his more powerful vassals, 
 upon feudal tenures. Timmins has often found it
 
 SECRETARIES OF LEGATION. > 199 
 
 amusing, and even profitable, tacitly to encourage 
 this belief ; so that there prevails an opinion among 
 three French milliners and a German governess 
 established in the Danish metropolis that he is a 
 personage of no small importance. He would think 
 so too, if he did not get so awfully snubbed by his 
 master clerk at the Foreign Office, who is angry with 
 him for not paying tribute with a mind sufficiently 
 zealous and a hand open enough. 
 
 In truth, Tirnmins does not find his salary too 
 much for his own uses, and he will have to struggle 
 all his life with pecuniary embarrassments, as his 
 viscountly namesakes and possible progenitors have 
 done before him. His chief will never budge for a 
 week from the Swedish dominions, so that he cannot 
 get hold of the allowance of three guineas a day 
 which would be granted to him if placed now and 
 then in charge of H.M. Mission. 
 
 Then Sir Hookham Backhouse, K.C.B., her Bri- 
 tannic Majesty's Envoy to the King of Denmark, has 
 been saving candle-ends any time these thirty years. 
 He will never ask any one to dinner except on the 
 Queen's birthday, and then the dinner is a bad one. 
 Thus, upon the whole, the position enjoyed by the 
 Honourable Peregrine Timmins, for which he is 
 envied by one-half his contemporaries and despised 
 by the other, is hardly a satisfactory one if fairly
 
 200 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 examined. The Danish Royal Family would rather 
 he was richer, and that he made things better for 
 trade at Copenhagen. The Danish nobles wonder 
 why he does not entertain them ; and the Danish 
 ladies are partly surprised and partly indignant that 
 he never dances with any one who is unmarried, also 
 that he dances somewhat awkwardly, as one whose 
 purse is over-light, while his heels are over-heavy. 
 
 The great prize of a Secretaryship of Legation, so 
 coveted by attaches and consuls, is like some other 
 worldly splendours, and will not bear looking at too 
 closely. Timmins got it by a fluke, having been em- 
 ployed to make a shabby sort of secret report for the 
 purpose of whitewashing a man at the Foreign Office 
 who had blundered into a hot-headed scrape from 
 over-bumptiousness. In the end he got the place of 
 the man he had libelled, and brilliant George Beau- 
 desert was hustled out of the public service. The 
 smallest creatures do the work which God appointed 
 for them often quite unconsciously; and Timmins, 
 who may have privately owned to himself that he 
 was a contemptible sort of chap, who had gone back- 
 biting for hire, was merely an instrument in the 
 hands of Providence to teach a great soul patience, 
 and to lead it into higher regions of thought and 
 contemplation than those which are bounded by a 
 despatch-bag.
 
 SECRETARIES OF LEGATION. 201 
 
 Timmins got his small reward, such as it was 
 125/. paid quarterly or not, as he happened to be 
 in the good graces of the clerk who governed Lord 
 Furby. Once, when that terrible travelling Countess 
 Mawley was displeased with him for not capping her 
 courier, 100/. was deducted from Timmins's salary 
 all in a lump ; but he got over it ; and recently there 
 has sprung up a report that he is about to be mar- 
 ried to the large Baroness Schochchild (nee Hedges), 
 one of his mother's kindred, if the thing can be 
 arranged decently. 
 
 The Dowager Viscountess works hard at the 
 match every season at Kissingen, even going so far 
 as to pay her son's hotel-bills when he comes down 
 by express train to have his addresses rejected every 
 autumn. The Schochchild, however, though an airy 
 creature not more than fifty-seven, is beginning to 
 think that she must settle her 1200/. a year on 
 herself, and marry somebody in time for the next 
 coronation in France. Let us all hope she will 
 select Timmins. They will be an innocent couple, 
 and make quite a sensation in London if the Hon- 
 ourable Peregrine and his Baroness only spend their 
 income on the right people. The capital of 1200 
 a year must be at least 24,000/. ; and that is enough 
 to make a tolerable show for a time, if handled 
 boldly. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 202 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Timmins need not care much about settlements, 
 for lawyers can generally contrive to drive a coach- 
 and-six through any marriage contract that is to 
 say, if the thing has not been done before. But 
 there was an ugly story about in Vienna that made 
 some people suppose the Schochchild might have paid 
 the debts of a handsome Hungarian Baron Foray with 
 every ducat she could raise upon her jointure; and 
 such a mistake in finance, if it really happened, would 
 be a sad disappointment to Timmins.
 
 ATTACHES. 203 
 
 VI. 
 
 ATTACHES. 
 
 There was an extraordinary scene of rejoicing 
 and excitement in Lord Mereworth's household on 
 the day when my lady's favourite son, handsome 
 Hugh Paladin, was first nominated for an attache- 
 ship in the diplomatic service of the Earl of Furby. 
 Good luck seemed to follow the brave boy. He had 
 been captain of the Oppidans at Eton, he had taken 
 a double-first at Oxford, and yet was neither a prig 
 nor a pedant, so that he had carried off a fellowship 
 as easily and cheerily as Robert Cecil or Charles Mur- 
 ray. Now again he had been successful, and got a 
 chance in public life for which many smart young 
 fellows would give their ears, if wigs were still worn. 
 
 His father, Lord Mereworth, a peer of consider- 
 able influence, acknowledged with rather a sad look 
 and hesitating manner, when cross-questioned by his 
 wife, that he had been obliged to try all he knew 
 before he could get the boy's appointment; and that 
 Barker and Bullion-Huckster, the senior partner of 
 a firm where he had been advised to open a deposit
 
 204 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 account with his Michaelmas rents, had really more 
 to do with the success of his negotiations than either 
 his old friend the Premier, or his brother-in-law, who 
 was Lord Lieutenant of the county, and had gone 
 up to Downing-street with him to push the thing. 
 Nearly a score of peers too, all of whom liked 
 Mereworth, had even mobbed Lord Furby for him 
 at the Carlton. 
 
 Nothing, however, could be done till Barker was 
 consulted, on the advice of old Truffleton. 'Then 
 the business went easily enough,' added my lord 
 dryly ; and his wife could get nothing more out of 
 him, nor did she try much, having already obtained 
 all she wanted, and seeing that her Harry, good- 
 natured as he was generally, had determined to go 
 to sleep if pressed too closely. In truth my lord, 
 who was of a kind and generous nature, did not 
 like to take the gilt off his wife's fine new piece of 
 gingerbread ; and as she had made up her mind that 
 the Mereworth family influence, when resolutely 
 exerted, and backed up by all the county, could im- 
 pose its own conditions on any Government, he 
 thought it would be churlish to disturb a belief 
 which was but another name for her love and pride 
 of him. 
 
 Hugh's mere nomination for an attache'ship did 
 not quite settle his business as it would have done in
 
 ATTACHES 
 
 205 
 
 the gentlemanly old times. He had to pass rather a 
 stiff examination, and to cram ' a general knowledge' 
 of many things which were not true, and which would 
 have been of no importance to any human being if 
 they had been true. The publisher of ' Ker's Edi- 
 tion, 1862,' of an inaccurate book made something 
 by this process ; and so did several Whig printers of 
 dull antiquated volumes; though Lord Furby was a 
 Tory by trade.
 
 206 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Hugh Paladin scrambled through his examina- 
 tion as other hopeful and ambitious lads have done 
 before him, looking on the whole thing as quite 
 serious and respectable, poor boy ; for he had been 
 always a good deal at home, and the Mereworths, 
 who were a God-fearing set, never suffered their chil- 
 dren to drift away from fireside influences till my 
 lady got that wretched diplomatic craze into her 
 fond head. 
 
 Hugh was much changed, however, when he went 
 down to Morlands, the ancestral place of his people, 
 after six months' service on probation at the Foreign 
 Office. He had been employed in the ' Hong-Kong 
 Treaty Port ' department, which was Dolly O'CarroH's 
 room ; and Dolly was better known as ' The Noble 
 Cockahoop,' because he had injudiciously traced his 
 descent to the Irish Kings on making his first appear- 
 ance at the F. 0. twenty years before, in a coat cut 
 at Limerick, but which fitted him indifferently. 
 Cockahoop, at first goaded to madness by taunts 
 about his regal birth and conspicuous attire, had long 
 since become one of the best dressed and most un- 
 assuming men in the department. 
 
 Hugh had hardly been three days in this excellent 
 gentleman's room before he was inducted into all 
 the mysteries of leap-frog, which happened to be the 
 favourite game in the H. K. T. P. department just then ;
 
 ATTACHES. 207 
 
 and ere a single month was out the lad could sit 
 soaking sherry and talking salt scandals with the best 
 of them. The noble Cockahoop pronounced him to 
 be 'a rattling good fellow,' which was the highest 
 praise ever awarded to any officer in her Majesty's 
 service, and was by no means lavishly bestowed. It 
 is as satisfactory a form of laudation as any other ; 
 and what made it more gratifying to Hugh's feelings 
 was the fact that every one, from the permanent 
 Under-Secretary of State and the precis-writer down 
 to Mrs. Housekeeper Mary Langcake, indorsed the 
 noble Cockahoop's opinion. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lady Mereworth's sweet matronly 
 eyes wore a look somewhat pained and startled when 
 she saw her darling on Christmas-eve under the 
 stately roof-tree of time-honoured Morlands. He 
 had got on the most wonderful trousers ever seen ; 
 his hair, cut in the shoe-brush fashion lately imported 
 from Paris, was not a quarter of an inch long ; and 
 the waxed points of his mustachioes stood out on each 
 side of his face, as though he had just swallowed 
 every bite of two gold mice, except their tails. The 
 boy's handsome curly locks, which were a perpetual 
 delight to her maternal soul, were all clipped away; 
 and so, as the upper housemaid sorrowfully re- 
 marked, were ' his precious whiskers,' though my 
 lord's own gentleman sulked with her for three
 
 208 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Sundays running at church, and would not read 
 out of her prayer-book, because she mourned for 
 them. 
 
 Hugh did not stay long with his kinsfolk on this 
 occasion. He amazed them by some wonderful cos- 
 tumes, and broke out all over in a surfeit of strange 
 jewelry. Lord Mereworth also observed, with much 
 dry humour, on his advent at the cover-side in a 
 complete suit of white fluff, which had made him 
 look like a performing poodle, and had caused con- 
 siderable hilarity among the members of the hunt. 
 
 4 Indeed, sir !' replied the youthful diplomatist, 
 eyeing his father Avith much coolness ; ' poor things, 
 your country families about here ! I pity more than- 
 I condemn them. I wore the famous Compiegne 
 uniform. The Empress calls it " Costume de Poli- 
 chinelle voue a la Vierge.'' The noble Cockahoop, 
 my respected chief, describes the illustrious sporting 
 fraternity to which I have the honour to belong as 
 the "Holy Iced-Punch Order.'" 
 
 The impudent boy would have babbled on as 
 flippantly during the whole of breakfast-time, but 
 that Lord Mereworth's face looked so grave, and his 
 mother said, '0 Hugh!' in rather a scared voice; 
 for these worthy country folk, who seldom left their 
 ancestral woods, had no taste for jokes about reli- 
 gion.
 
 ATTACHES. 
 
 They could not find it in their hearts to scold 
 their boy, however, though his manners chilled and 
 shocked them a little ; and my lord got up with a 
 feeling of unusual sadness on the morning when the 
 youngest of his sons was about to leave him. John, 
 the heir, was with his regiment in Ireland ; Harry 
 was with the Mediterranean fleet ; and Christopher, 
 who was in the Church, never left his parish, for con- 
 scientious reasons; so that the old house woulcf seem 
 very dull when Hugh was gone also. 
 
 My lord went into his study, hung round with 
 riding-whips and fishing-rods, and where several 
 handsome gun-cases were piled one above the other 
 for autumn service ; and he began to whistle with a 
 rueful countenance. Then he dashed something 
 abruptly from one of his eyes, and took out his 
 cheque-book. 
 
 ' The boy will have to represent his country now 
 and then,' mused Lord Mereworth sagaciously. ' He 
 must have money, and the more he has the better. I 
 can do without an establishment in London this year, 
 and run up by express when there is a close division. 
 I must ride old Dobbin too another season, though 
 he is getting a little weak in that near fetlock joint.' 
 Puff, puff; and my lord lit a cigar to muster up 
 courage enough to write a draft in three figures,, 
 beginning with the Arabic numeral 5.
 
 210 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 ' God bless you, my child !' gasped Lady Mere- 
 worth hysterically, a few hours later on in the day, 
 when the family travelling carriage was at the hall- 
 door. 'God bless you, my child!' (kiss, kiss,) and 
 then she nestled up to him and gave him her own 
 prayer-book. 'Promise me always to say your 
 prayers, Hugh,' added the noble lady, too proud to 
 let a tear be seen, but weeping inwardly. Then she 
 put the dear kind hand, which had been blessed by 
 hundreds of the poor and helpless, into the breast- 
 pocket of her son's coat, and left there all her savings. 
 They amounted to just 200/. in new Bank of England 
 notes no more, for her ladyship conscientiously did 
 her duty by her husband's dinners. ' There is one 
 from me and and and one from your sister 
 Hester,' whispered my lady in her son's ear, taking 
 her breath rather shortly, but still keeping up ap- 
 pearances with infinite bravery. 
 
 ' Dearest, dearest Hugh ! has mamma told you 
 I won't " come out" till next year, so that you may 
 eclipse the King and all his Court?' asked a glorious 
 romp of seventeen, who hung on to his left arm, 
 delighted at the sacrifice she had made for her grand 
 brother. 
 
 ' Time is up !' said my lord, looking at his watch, 
 and making a sign to the outrider, who trotted for- 
 ward to open the park-gates near a farm which had
 
 g a 
 
 % o 
 
 W t! 
 
 H -M 
 
 W 2 
 
 O .3
 
 ATTACHES. 211 
 
 been lately enclosed. Then he thrust the watch into 
 his son's hands, and pushed him into the carriage 
 rather unceremoniously. 
 
 1 Heaven and earth ! what does the boy want 
 with so many boxes?' observed my lord presently, 
 to hide his emotion, when a turn in the road had 
 hidden the carriage. ' A German valet, too, shaved 
 as bald as a pumpkin ! What next?' 
 
 His wife put her hand upon his mouth, that soft 
 sweet hand which had so lately been busy in Hugh's 
 breast-pocket; his daughter gave him a crisp little 
 kiss on the nose ; and thus stifled, silenced, and en- 
 chanted by his womenkind, the country gentleman 
 returned to his usual avocations, and acquitted even 
 a poacher almost without parley, he was so happy 
 in the promises of greatness which the future held 
 out to his son. ' Heaven grant that he may be an 
 honour to his country,' said the stout baron to his 
 wife as they went to rest that night. ' He is clever and 
 honest, patient and aspiring, in spite of his light talk.' 
 
 'He will resemble his ancestor, Sir Frederick 
 Beaufoye, who was at the Congress of Verona, and 
 win an earldom for himself,' answered her ladyship, 
 with perfect confidence. 
 
 ' Ay,' continued my lord, taking quite the same 
 view of the case ; 'to be sure he will. I had never 
 thought of that, my dear.'
 
 212 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 So they fell asleep, and enjoyed some dreams of 
 marvellous grandeur all lit up by Love and Hope. 
 
 Hugh Paladin was pleased with his place when 
 he got there. He was not precisely ' treated as one 
 of the family,' though the commission of an Attache 
 
 LADY BAUGER.
 
 ATTACHES. 213 
 
 formerly enjoined his chief not ungracefully to give 
 the lad something like a home when he first went 
 away from his own people. Sir Bland Badger, his chief, 
 however, who was an old Harrovian, took a fancy to 
 him at once because he quoted Horace without ever 
 making a false quantity; and Lady Badger really 
 liked him because- he brought her the first violets 
 of the season, and he had learned from his mother 
 the gentle word and knightly homage which please 
 all worthy womanhood. He might have risen high in 
 the service under able guidance, with such qualities 
 as these. He was well born, well bred, not wanting 
 in worldly knowledge. With but even a modicum of 
 cash prudently invested, a pair of nimble heels, a happy 
 knack of Latin quotation, and a classical master, he 
 would almost certainly have advanced to the fore- 
 most and most responsible places in his profession. 
 
 But suddenly there was a hushed-up story about 
 him, a story which was carried about in whispers by 
 the Queen's messengers to all the hotels and coffee- 
 houses in Europe. An august lady had been pleased 
 to declare that the newest of the English attaches 
 4 could sing like an angel;' for she had heard him, 
 through the open window of his lodgings, exercising 
 a mellow tenor upon the robber-song in Schiller's Wal- 
 lenstein : 
 
 ' Frisch. auf Cameraden die Rappen gezaumt.'
 
 214 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 It had been far better for Hugh if he had never 
 learned German. Henceforth nothing would suit 
 the august personage but that she and Hugh should 
 sing all day long; and the lad's heart went out to her 
 in his songs. No one ever knew whether her heart 
 
 o 
 
 answered him; but she married another august 
 personage, and drifted away from him evermore. 
 Possibly Serene Highnesses have no hearts. He 
 seemed lost, somehow, after the stately wedding 
 in which he was obliged to take part officially. 
 Thenceforth he became incurably addicted to high 
 play and august company, though he could never 
 muster more than 700/. a year, as all the world 
 knew, including his fellowship and his mother's pin- 
 money. 
 
 He lived an awful dun-hunted life for twenty years 
 or more with his high-pacing ways and his heartache. 
 His profession seemed to him such a trumpery thing, 
 as, indeed, it was, when compared with what he had 
 lost, that he threw it up, to wander after the fatal 
 light which always led him farther and farther away 
 into pathless marshes. 
 
 Thus one morning, not long ago, some gentle- 
 men, who were reading the newspaper at their club, 
 lazily noticed an announcement stating that when 
 the leaves fall, there died ' at Monaco, on the 1st of 
 October, the Honourable Hugh Paladin, fourth son of
 
 ATTACHES. 
 
 215 
 
 Frank Fairfax, nineteenth Baron Mereworth.' Also, 
 in another part of the same paper, was an advertise- 
 ment intimating that ' unless the Honourable Hugh 
 Paladin took away within three weeks from that date 
 a brougham which he had left at Jobling's livery 
 stables, it would be sold to pay expenses.' 
 
 1 By the piper who played before Moses !' said
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Lord Truffleton (the present Truffleton, who drives 
 a sky-blue curricle), ' old Hugh died game. He 
 went through life on wheels to the last. He had 
 the best-appointed drag at Monaco.' 
 
 ' Yes two] drawled Lord Protocol. ' The Em- 
 press Helena was at Cannes all the winter.' Having 
 made this observation, his lordship glanced absently 
 out of the window, which was a way he had when 
 he thought he had made a point in the game of con- 
 versation.
 
 CONSULS-GENERAL. 217 
 
 VII. 
 
 CONSULS-GENERAL. 
 
 There are several varieties of this particoloured 
 species of public servant. But generally he is a dis- 
 appointed man who has missed his tip; and who 
 resembles neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red 
 herring. The man who is Consul-General in Mo- 
 rocco, the man who is Consul- General at Yedo, and 
 the man who is Consul-General at Teheran are ex- 
 ceptions to this rule, because they are also Minis- 
 ters ; and there are a few other gentlemen, known 
 to the Foreign Office, who are alleged to be satisfied 
 with their ambiguous condition in life for similar 
 reasons. One of them goes about, indeed, under the 
 odd title of ' Resident in the Persian Gulf,' which is 
 enough to silence the murmurs of any mortal. 
 
 The British Consular Service is perhaps the only 
 profession known among mankind in which a Secre- 
 tary of State can, if so minded, abruptly raise his 
 footman to a rank officially considered as equivalent 
 to that of Rear- Admirals and Major-Generals, Avith 
 far more than the pay usually enjoyed by these 
 superior officers. The British Consular Service, as 
 might be expected, has suffered accordingly. Per- 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 218 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 sons of character and education do not like to be 
 thrust against their will into offices, in which they 
 may be superseded at any moment by a Maltese 
 crimp an event which happened frequently under 
 the benign administration of Lord Furby ; that emi- 
 nently calm-minded Secretary of State having cau- 
 tiously divided his best consular patronage between 
 the honest class above mentioned, and any fine high- 
 spirited fellows of his family taken haphazard, so- 
 that they were only in want of a salary. 
 
 Also many bright dreams and towering ambitions 
 have lately ended in a consulate-general; because 
 Lord Furby finds a natural pleasure in degrading 
 the most eminent of the junior members of the diplo- 
 matic service, and they have either to take anything 
 he throws to them, and to submit to his lordship's 
 playful tricks with their emoluments, or to give up 
 their professional livelihood altogether. Even a 
 diplomatist does not like to starve in enforced idleness 
 at forty or fifty years of age ; and thus many doleful 
 elderly faces may be seen issuing from the Foreign 
 Office whenever Lord Furby returns to power in the 
 usual course of British events parliamentary. 
 
 Those dejected old fellows were once men of mark 
 and fair prospects, who, maybe, have served their 
 country, not without distinction, at half a dozen 
 capitals, from the petty Residenzstadt of some German
 
 CONSULS-GENERAL. 219 
 
 kingling to Teheran, the most splendid Court of the 
 East now left upstanding. Nevertheless Lord Furby 
 has metamorphosed them by discreet methods into 
 Consuls-General; and they would use their commis- 
 sions as waste paper if they were not unable to keep 
 up their life-assurances without a salary of some sort ; 
 after they have spent all their private property during 
 some score years of deferred hope, ending thus. ' Ay, 
 ending,' they growl bitterly, ' in abject dependence on 
 the mercy of a light-fingered lunatic.' 
 
 There is another sort of Consul-General, though 
 he is rather scarce. Herr von Geldermann and Baron 
 von Schnapwitz, for instance, have a perfectly well- 
 founded belief that the titular distinction of British 
 Consul-General has a business value for them; and 
 they profess this creed in common with reflective 
 commercial men of all nations. They have a notion 
 that their goods and persons would be protected by 
 the British flag in case of civil wars or foreign inva- 
 sion; and consular rank gives them not only a 
 social position, but several important privileges men- 
 tioned in elaborate works by Miruss, Bynkershoek, 
 and other eminent writers on international law pri- 
 vileges only encumbered by the condition that they 
 shall be never used. 
 
 Finally, there is the orthodox old Consul-General, 
 who was private secretary to Mr. De Mortmagne (of
 
 220 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the great divorce case) from 1841 to 1845, and who 
 has gradually writhed and crawled his way upwards 
 till all his hair has come off with the exertion. He is 
 still secretly frightened with the memories of it. This 
 kind of Consul-General believes that his post in some 
 African or South American mud village is the true 
 centre of the universe. He is commonly a highly
 
 CONSULS-GENERAL. 221 
 
 respected old donkey, who walks about in the undress 
 uniform of the consular service, with a formidable 
 band of gold-lace round his cap. Thus accoutred, 
 and inflated with the pride and pomp of office, he 
 looks like the steward of a Channel mail-boat in a 
 gale of wind ; expecting that all within hail will do 
 him obedience, as all may have need of his services. 
 
 His discourse in private life, and at its best, chiefly 
 refers to the high price of vegetables, and to the 
 changes which have occurred in the seasons since 
 he was a boy. Sometimes, however, he dilates with 
 extreme unction on the forgotten naughtinesses of a 
 bygone generation; bringing forth the shadows of 
 rakes and demireps from their unhonoured tombs, 
 and seeming to like to tell how they drank and 
 revelled, as though their poor grimaces and anti- 
 quated debauchery were the choicest part of history. 
 This variety of Consul-General frequently wears a 
 wig like the majestic wigs of George IV. ; and re- 
 joices with all his servile soul in the idea that he 
 personally resembles the fat and heartless old King. 
 His talk over his bottle, when in this vein of obstre- 
 perous loyalty, is not edifying; and a travelling 
 clergyman is sometimes startled to hear his country's 
 official representative volunteer to give imitations of 
 the manner in which all the Royal Dukes were used 
 to swear in the early part of the present century. In
 
 222 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 truth, the Consul-General was, perhaps, a notable 
 character himself in a small way, and on the back- 
 stairs of fashionable life ; so that he may have had 
 many opportunities of hearing and seeing how the 
 great of the earth disported themselves in the pre- 
 sence of their inferiors. 
 
 When he dies he will possibly bequeath about 
 thirty thousand pounds, more or less, for probate 
 duty, to some influential clerk in the Foreign Office ; 
 and also leave behind him a sealed packet of those 
 explosive letters in the great divorce case to the 
 Minister's sister, who was concerned in it. For 
 those letters got him his place, and materially helped, 
 with the influence of his heir the clerk, to keep it. 
 There is a rude sense of dog-like fidelity to his old 
 masters at the bottom of the vain old fellow's heart, 
 after all ; but he disowns his family because they are 
 shoemakers at Brighton, and it is a heavy sorrow to 
 him that he was not named after the late Bishop of 
 Osnaburg of blessed memory.
 
 CONSULS. 223 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CONSULS. 
 
 Lord Palmerston, in his most offhand way, dis- 
 posed of the social claims of Consuls when he told the 
 House of Commons that they were ' not gentlemen.' 
 They are, indeed, the strangest set of people ever got 
 together in the same profession. Large families of 
 aliens are imported wholesale, from time to time, into 
 the consular service ; and not long ago an exceedingly 
 disreputable company of persons, all closely related 
 by birth or marriage, held every post on the sea-line 
 of communication between Malta and Trebizond, ex- 
 tending therefrom again through Erzeroom to Tabreez 
 and Teheran. In like manner, a family of attorneys, 
 named Wilkins, did some quite amazing things with 
 the British consular service in the United States of 
 America. Nevertheless, the nobility is not altogether 
 unrepresented in this branch of the public accounts. 
 The family of one Scotch Earl alone have considerately 
 taken possession of two consulates-general and two 
 consulates, even carrying their patriotic condescen- 
 sion so far as to accept a vice-consulate. 
 
 As a rule, however, the consular service has
 
 224 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 been wisely looked upon by successive Secretaries of 
 State as a method of pensioning off those claimants 
 and dependents, of both sexes, who have gradually 
 gathered round them during an agitated political 
 life. Intelligent couriers, the sons of valued stewards, 
 valets, and cooks ; convenient witnesses in perplexing 
 law-suits ; the husbands of enterprising ladies ; with 
 a free sprinkling of active-minded persons out at 
 elbows and on the press, used to form the staple of 
 the consular service. 
 
 The best sort of Consul still known is the retired 
 naval officer, of the class often appointed formerly 
 by Lord Aberdeen and his immediate successors. 
 This Consul is a cheery, hospitable, straightforward 
 old fellow, with stout bandy legs, good weather 
 eye, and no nonsense about him. His consular 
 salary and his half-pay as a Commander R.N. carry 
 him cosily on to quarter-day in the style that he 
 lives ; for he does his marketing himself, and drinks 
 nothing but cold grog without sugar. A very not- 
 able type of official is this rare species of Consul, and 
 welcome as healthy weather in the house of every 
 British subject throughout his district. He is still 
 occasionally to be found in the Spanish seas and 
 elsewhere ; but has been almost elbowed out of the 
 service, by Lord Furby's lot, since 1866. 
 
 One of the last of them was Jack Fowler, who
 
 THE CONSULESS OF RHODES'S SONG. 
 
 I. 225.
 
 CONSULS. 225 
 
 married an English housemaid when he went home 
 on leave for the last time, and lived in great dignity and 
 honour ever afterwards. They had no children ; but 
 she was a great hand at a sea-pie when she had once 
 learned to make it, and she taught her Greek cook to 
 roast quails to perfection. Travellers who touched at 
 Rhodes on their way to Jericho during this bonny 
 housemaid's reign at her Majesty's consulate had 
 many causes to rejoice ; and she was one of them. 
 A rosy-cheeked free-hearted lady, with a voice some- 
 what breezy and shrill, was this Consuless ; but she 
 did not rule too visibly over her husband and his 
 guests when they were governable by unseen methods. 
 It was her favourite practice to appear after dinner,, 
 when her housewifely duties were well ended, and 
 sing a song of her childhood with exquisite archness 
 and spirit. It began and ended, after many inter- 
 mediate musical verses, something in this manner : 
 
 SONG OF THE CONSULESS AT EHODES. 
 
 ' foff ! siz the straingur, 
 
 foff ! an daway, 
 An daway flew Ms lie dark 
 Till the silver of day.' 
 
 A pilgrim going to Jerusalem for the Greek Easter, 
 and forced by stress of weather to put in at Rhodes,, 
 was so pleased with this melodious lyric, that he 
 sought and obtained permission to copy it from the
 
 '226 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Consuless's own dictation. Neither he nor she, how- 
 ever, was able to discover the language in which it 
 had been composed, till the editor of Notes and Queries 
 was referred to, and after deep study arrived at the 
 conclusion that the text might be restored into that 
 of a famous old English ballad. 
 
 Poor Jack Fowler's first fit was brought on by 
 Lady Jemima Heyday turning up her nose at this 
 song on a hot July evening. That lady and her 
 husband thought it due to their dignity to be rude 
 to their inferiors, because he was a Frankfort lottery- 
 loan man, who had changed his name from Heideck 
 on becoming a member of the British aristocracy, 
 and she was the eldest daughter of a baron, who had 
 often marched against his creditors into the impreg- 
 nable fortresses of the Court of Bankruptcy. Jack 
 might have recovered the blow to his consular dig- 
 nity and uxorial tenderness; but a few days after- 
 wards Lord Pedlington, the powerful banker, whose 
 junior partner was First Lord of the Admiralty, sent 
 off his scullion to buy l a few coals of the Consul,' 
 and evidently thought him a kind of bumboat man, 
 nominated by Government for the special behoof of 
 the Yacht Squadron. 
 
 Jack never held his head up after that, because 
 he fell a good deal in the esteem of his buxom con- 
 sort, the housemaid. She had previously considered
 
 CONSULS. 227 
 
 her ' Cauensle,' as she proudly called him, the repre- 
 sentative of our sovereign lady the Queen, seeing that 
 he fired off a gun every day in his kitchen-garden 
 before sitting down to dinner, which, she had been 
 assured, was a Royal custom at meal-time. Now 
 she felt that her self-esteem had had a fall. 
 
 She need not have been so down-hearted. There 
 were Consuls, such as Rawlinson at Bagdad and Rose 
 at Beyrout, who wielded more power than many 
 kings. A man who held even a Vice-Consulate at 
 Cos was seriously called ' Charlemagne' by his neigh- 
 bours because of his loftiness. At Aleppo there was 
 a Consul who dressed like a Turk, wore a long beard, 
 and went by the tremendous name of ' The Supreme 
 Being.' His father was one Bowker, who had done 
 something wrong for a Duke of Cumberland. 
 
 Indeed, the good-natured Consuless of Rhodes got 
 back some of her former respect for her husband's 
 rank when she went on a visit to a Consul at Broussa, 
 who marched every day to his roast mutton to the 
 sound of martial music, played by his entire family, 
 and solemnly served himself first at his own table in 
 honour of his regal character. Jack, however, only 
 murmured, ' Coals, Sarah Jane ; only think of that ! 
 and the blanked landlubber sent us twenty Turkish 
 piastres to pay for them, with a message that he did 
 not want any change.'
 
 228 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Jack could not reconcile his dignity to that part 
 of the story. He had never been offered a tip since 
 he wore the Queen's uniform, till he became a Consul , 
 and he vowed he would have sent in his resignation, 
 but that, on looking down the list of his colleagues^ 
 he saw the names of Burton, Playfair, Mansfield, 
 Drummond-Hay, Churchill, and Sandwith, names 
 which can only be mentioned with respect and 
 honour. 
 
 LORD PEDLINGTON'S SCULLION COMES TO BUT A FEW COALS.
 
 VICE-CONSULS. 229 
 
 IX. 
 
 ViCE-CONSULS. 
 
 The commissions of Consul-General empower 
 them to appoint Vice-Consuls, and their general 
 instructions enjoin them to do so whenever there 
 is a necessity for such appointments in the interests 
 of British trade or shipping. In practice, however, 
 they are never allowed to make such appoint- 
 ments; because a vice-consulate has been lately 
 considered by the prudent and eminently judicious- 
 minded Secretary of State who so long administered 
 the Foreign Office as a thing of value, to be promptly 
 snapped up and applied to his own use. A vice-con- 
 sulate in honest hands indeed is a very small thing, 
 being sometimes worth no more than 50/. a year, as 
 at Toulon. Very often the post is not paid at all. 
 
 A sharp person, however, untroubled by scruples, 
 can always make a cheerful occupation of it. He 
 may graft on to it a flourishing business as a money- 
 changer, an hotel-tout, a guide to the neighbouring 
 antiquities, a ship-chandler, a sailors' lodging-house 
 keeper. He can take part in various courageous and
 
 230 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 honest enterprises, which will seldom leave him with 
 an empty pocket; for he can always make matters 
 more or less unpleasant to seafaring men who object 
 to deal with him. The commonest sort of Vice- 
 Consul is therefore a keen-eyed agile creature, who i& 
 ever on the watch for small profits of all kinds, and 
 who makes them with astonishing energy and per- 
 severance, till he develops into a local notable, and 
 contrives to get his son or his nephew appointed in 
 his stead. 
 
 He can often lend money to the Consul, and 
 therefore keeps his chief well under his thumb. He 
 collects the fees and keeps the fee-books, takes charge 
 of seamen's wages, so that all the pickings and per- 
 quisites of consular business fall to him. His intel- 
 ligence is commonly composed in equal parts of 
 shrewdness and greed. He may be recognised in 
 most ports by the irrepressible gold-laced cap of his 
 order, and by the suspicious looks of the shipmasters- 
 who speak to him on business. His method of deal- 
 ing with their affairs, however, is more simple than 
 one would suppose, and it is always the same. He 
 merely gives them recommendations to the sea-lawyer, 
 whose bills of costs he is ready to certify, and witk 
 whom he is privately in partnership. 
 
 The Vice-Consul's trade is a good one, because 
 there is no check on the taxes extorted from ship-
 
 VICE-CONSULS. 231 
 
 owners in our days. The sensible practice of making 
 the Consul a notary, and holding him responsible for 
 the fees he levied, was abolished at the instance of a 
 late Assistant Under- Secretary of State, who had his 
 own reasons for most of the things he did. The 
 result is that British Consuls have now no interest in 
 transacting the notarial business of shipmasters at 
 reasonable prices fixed by law, and whenever they 
 can they shirk having anything to do with it. The 
 merchant-captain may thus be coolly handed over, 
 with his cargo and ship, to a waterside rogue, who 
 goes halves with the Vice-Consul in anything that 
 can be either coaxed or bullied out of him. 
 
 It is quite refreshing to see the puzzled aspect of 
 the master of a Newcastle collier, with the sharp 
 Vice-Consul on one side of him and the sea-lawyer 
 on the other. The shipmaster need not indeed 
 trouble himself much about the matter. It is the 
 shipowner who pays ; and it sometimes happens that 
 if Captain Drinkhard, of the Black-eyed Susan, has 
 run up too large a bill for grog and smiles at the 
 Vice-Consul's lodging-house, he can merge his ac- 
 count in the sea-lawyer's bill, and the Vice-Consul 
 will certify that it is all right. The money can easily 
 be raised by bottomry bonds, and all three are thus 
 made happy. 
 
 The Consul or Consul-General, as the case may
 
 232 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 THE PERPLEXED COLLIER CAPTAIN. 
 
 be, dare not complain of the lucrative transactions 
 of his Vice-Consul. Just in accordance with the 
 extent and success of them is the Vice-Consul certain 
 to have potent friends among the attorneys and capi-
 
 VICE-CONSULS. 233 
 
 talists who manage Lord Furby, and do perpetual 
 honour to that cool safe judgment and to that ad- 
 mirable statesmanship which has edified so many 
 millions of newspaper readers in this great country. 
 
 There is also another species of Vice-Consul, who 
 may be most accurately described as ' The Foreign- 
 Office Dodger.' When a Secretary of State has 
 notoriously had a relation of such a sort that his 
 name is too well known to be submitted to the Queen 
 for any important appointment, without a little cir- 
 cumlocution, that interesting individual may count 
 upon a vice-consulate such as will not even bring 
 him into hostile collision with the Civil Service Com- 
 missioners. He may reside at Dresden, at Naples, or 
 at Rome, in short, anywhere he pleases, so that he 
 does not come to England : and the Examiners will 
 leave him at peace. He will also be exempted from 
 &riy investigation into his capacities as soon as it is 
 convenient to provide him with a Royal commission ; 
 .and the Secretary of State may thus have things all 
 his own way, under a snug Order in Council, dated 
 June 4th, 1870. 
 
 Accordingly, the Foreign-Office Dodger who has 
 a calm and judicious patron, such as Lord Furby, may 
 be briskly moved from post to post without ever 
 being required actually to perform any duty at all. 
 Every move, however, will entitle him to an outfit, 
 
 VOL. i. Q
 
 234 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 and his lordship gave no less than ten of these hand- 
 some gratuities to one fortunate fellow. By and by 
 all in good time, or before say, for instance, in four 
 or five years, varied by profitable incidents of travel 
 4 the Foreign-Office Dodger' blooms brightly out upon 
 the world as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Ple- 
 nipotentiary, with a salary of 4000/. a year and a 
 step or two in another profession, say the Army or 
 Navy, just to keep our soldiers and sailors in good 
 heart about the distribution of public honours and 
 rewards. 
 
 Many neat things are done, too, in the special- 
 service way, for this class of Vice-Consul ; who is not 
 so common as he should be, though there are several 
 fine specimens of him just now in the service.
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGERS. 235 
 
 X. 
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGERS. 
 
 One of the pleasantest trades going, thirty years 
 ago, was that of a Queen's Messenger, and people who 
 dealt in such things got as much as seven thousand 
 pounds for the appointment. The salary of the place 
 was rather vague, but its emoluments were consider- 
 able, and the Messengers travelled over Europe in 
 well-appointed carriages of their own. Railways put 
 a stop to this, and materially diminished, not only 
 the profits, but the personal consequence of Queen's 
 Messengers, who came henceforth to be confused with 
 the crowd of ordinary first-class passengers by express 
 trains. Then a more precise figure was made to 
 represent their pay, and at last a reforming Secretary 
 of State who was, by the way, a Tory abolished 
 their perquisites. 
 
 Now Queen's Messengers are a humdrum com- 
 pany of orthodox persons. Some of the porters of 
 the more distant embassies, however, could tell 
 strange tales of their predecessors. One had such an 
 exalted idea of his rank in life that, when Lord
 
 236 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Ponsonby's gatekeeper at Vienna came out at mid- 
 night in his night-gear to receive the Messenger's 
 -despatches, the Messenger chivied him half-naked
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGEES. 237 
 
 down the street, for want of respect in not putting 
 on his livery. Another Messenger, being stopped in 
 Prussia for want of post-horses, rode forward upon a 
 cow, till he met a Prussian officer, whom he knocked 
 off his charger and took possession of it. He was 
 forbidden ever again to put foot in the country ; but 
 was ultimately begged off punishment by diplomatic 
 methods. All these honest gentlemen led exciting 
 lives, full of adventure, and became general reposi- 
 tories of good stories and miscellaneous facts about 
 all countries. 
 
 The crook in their lot was that the Foreign Office 
 clerks crowed over them, and that, though they had 
 a high opinion of themselves, their social position 
 was not distinctly recognised. There seems to have 
 been something shocking to the ears of gentlemen in 
 the name of Messenger, though their duties, rightly 
 considered, were scarcely beneath the attention of a 
 rising statesman or an ambitious soldier. Men of 
 rank and talent submitted without a murmur to be 
 shelved in the pompous tedium of a petty Court ; but 
 a client of Grenville or of Fox would have felt in- 
 sulted had it been proposed to him to obtain a prac- 
 tical view of the government and institutions of many 
 countries, in an inferior position. 
 
 As Queen's Messengers are entitled to the prompt- 
 est means of proceeding on their way, their baggage
 
 238 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 is exempt from search, and used in the good old times 
 to be filled with international presents from great 
 people. French bonnets, Brussels lace, and miscel- 
 laneous fashions choked their portmanteaus, carpet- 
 bags, and hat-cases, till there was a custom-house riot 
 about one of them, who brought over sixteen thou- 
 sand pounds' worth of shawls from Turkey for com- 
 mercial purposes. Now a Queen's Messenger can. 
 only demand that the Government seal on his des- 
 patch-bags shall be respected. The rest of his luggage 
 is open to inspection. Still a despatch-bag may be 
 made to hold a good deal, and often does so. 
 
 As to the political use of Queen's Messengers, 
 much may be said on both sides. They sometimes 
 afford a convenient means of gaining time, when an 
 Ambassador or his Government are in doubt as to 
 the course they should take, and would like to see 
 affairs ripen before they touch them again. In that 
 case they are despatched with a general printing of 
 paragraphs in evening papers, relating to the import- 
 ance of their errand. At other times their bags are 
 mostly full of love-letters, Foreign Office jokes, 
 tradesmen's bills, and culinary delicacies. 
 
 To a cursory observer it has sometimes appeared 
 that Ambassadors are more fond of fuss and import- 
 ance than desirous to incur the expense of them ; and 
 in connection with this subject it has been remarked
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGERS. 239 
 
 that, under Governments who pay their representa- 
 tives a fixed allowance for couriers, most of the 
 despatches sent by their Excellencies go through the 
 common post. When the taste for mystery and hocus- 
 pocus can be indulged free of cost to the Ambas- 
 sador, he seems willing to gratify it ; but when any- 
 thing is to be gained by dispensing with these things, 
 no more Messengers or special trains are required. 
 Mystery in the abstract is, of course, a fine thing. 
 
 Perhaps it is also a profitable thing. A story 
 got abroad, not long ago, of some mysterious gentle- 
 men, who carried on a funny little game, in which 
 Queen's Messengers, cipher despatches, and a foreign 
 loan were all unaccountably mixed up together. 
 A foreign State was about to repudiate its lia- 
 bilities, and timely notice of the fact was thus 
 opportunely brought to the knowledge of a favoured 
 few. I am bound to say I have formed my 
 own opinion of diplomatic mysteries in conse- 
 quence of this and similar transactions ever growing 
 more frequent. I apprehend that they sometimes 
 supply a very lucrative business, and have a brisk 
 sale. A lady has just made twenty thousand 
 pounds by one diplomatic secret; and she has dealt 
 regularly in them for many years. She is, of course, 
 a fascinating lady. Some mysterious gentlemen are 
 in correspondence with newspapers on remunerative
 
 240 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 terms, and sell the best items in the Messengers' bags- 
 by retail. There are quite a company of them thus- 
 engaged a company, too, with very limited lia- 
 bility. 
 
 Another of the causes of diplomatic secrecy and 
 sealed despatch-bags is that a whole set of people in 
 authority are sometimes frightened and ashamed of 
 the mess they have got into. The most touching 
 little incident of this kind is a well-known European 
 scandal, relating to a family of diplomatists who had 
 all borrowed money of a certain stock-jobber. The 
 secret affairs of their Embassy were most religiously 
 kept. The riddle of the Sphinx, the secret rites of 
 forgotten religions, were easy guessing to the won- 
 drous things which might, could, or should have 
 been concocted behind the impenetrable veil which 
 shrouded the proceedings of these diplomatists. 
 They had only confidence in one man on earth, and 
 he was the stock-jobber. So a more thriving and 
 mysterious set of fellows never blundered on toge- 
 ther in the dark, made wild mischief, as was seen too 
 late, and now sneer at all ill-conditioned people who 
 presume to blame them. 
 
 I am sorry to refer to these circumstances ; but 
 the misfortune is that if one makes a general charge 
 without particulars, an indignant army of expectant 
 younger sons cry out, ' Where are your proofs T
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGERS. 241 
 
 If you adduce plain, notorious, indisputable facts, 
 the same set of exasperating dunces change their 
 note, and exclaim, ' 0, the libeller ! 0, the calumnia- 
 tor!' till well-meaning writers, who wish to point 
 out a shocking abuse, really do not know how to- 
 state it so as to please them. 
 
 A curious illustration of the manner in which 
 diplomatic secrets are kept occurred some years 
 ago, under circumstances where no direct pecuniary 
 interest is presumably in question. One morning a 
 startling communication appeared in the Daily News, 
 a paper with which I had been officially forbidden to 
 have any connection. Nevertheless, the article was 
 attributed to me by the Foreign Office, and my 
 friends were aghast at the indignation expressed 
 against me. To hustle me out of the service without 
 even a preliminary inquiry was thought too mild 
 a punishment, and as I had an active enemy among 
 the upper clerks, a decree was passed that I should 
 be 'crucified.' To crucify a man was the depart- 
 mental word for badgering him till he was forced 
 to resign his commission. I had, however, an 
 ally in the enemy's camp, who told me what had 
 happened, and that 'traps' were about to be set for 
 me in consequence. Twenty-four hours afterwards 
 I had the original draft of the Daily News article in 
 my hands. It was written by the Ambassador's-
 
 242 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 private secretary, with marginal notes by his Excel- 
 lency, and it had been sent in the Messenger's bag. 
 This document having been shown to the Secretary 
 of State then in charge of Foreign Affairs, the 
 case was hushed up, and I heard no more of it. I 
 should hardly have got out of the scrape but for the 
 Ambassador's imprudence; but he had a habit of 
 carelessly tearing up his waste papers and tossing 
 them into a basket, instead of fitting up a regular 
 ' burning-room' for the purpose, such as they have 
 at the F. 0. 
 
 One word more about Queen's Messengers before 
 this brief notice of them comes to an end. The 
 bearer of important tidings is sometimes recom- 
 pensed with immediate promotion, especially if he 
 have suffered from danger and difficulty upon his 
 journey; and an officer who brings home news of 
 peace receives 500/. in accordance with immemorial 
 custom. For English Queen's Messengers, and for 
 them only, is neither reward nor promotion for good 
 services, however arduous. Two have received no 
 mark of official favour since 1843, one has been in 
 the same position since 1852. Thirty-seven years of 
 hard work gain no recognition whatever. Not a 
 single Messenger now on the staff enjoys even an 
 honorary distinction of any sort. A set of as fine, 
 frank, enterprising, quick-witted gentlemen as ever
 
 QUEEN'S MESSENGERS. 243 
 
 wore boots are condemned all their lives to remain 
 in a false and subordinate position ; to be hectored 
 by rude clerks, and to feel that the best directed 
 energy and the most devoted attention to their duties 
 are useless to them. A happy thought, which would 
 make the professional fortune of a foreign officer 
 employed on such a service, is sneered down or 
 pigeon-holed in Downing-street with supercilious 
 arrogance, and men who might be employed with 
 singular advantage to the country are converted into 
 mere postmen. Now we have certainly several 
 gentlemen among our Queen's Messengers who pos- 
 sess great ability, and who are keen observers, whose 
 experience, touching the state of countries through 
 which they are constantly travelling, might be of 
 great value in time of need. They are men of infinite 
 resource, courage, and judgment, yet we obstinately 
 refuse to credit them with any higher quality than 
 a stout constitution, and leave their minds to grow 
 sour with discontent. Once a Messenger, always a 
 Messenger, whose attempt to rise higher is a theme 
 for clerkly impertinence and dogged opposition.
 
 244 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 XL 
 
 INTERPRETERS. 
 
 Interpreters are now employed for the most part 
 only in embassies out of Europe. Their duty is to 
 translate official documents, and to interpret the con- 
 versation of their chiefs at official interviews. The 
 Interpreters employed by the Turkish Government 
 in their negotiations with Ambassadors accredited to 
 the Porte were in former times usually functionaries- 
 of very high rank. They were nearly always Greeks, 
 and they soon contrived to get the entire business of 
 foreign affairs into their hands. It was from them 
 that the hospodars of the rich provinces of Moldavia 
 and Wallachia were almost constantly chosen. Since 
 the outbreak of the Greek revolution, however, the 
 Greeks have lost much of their power and influence 
 at the Porte. 
 
 The duties of Interpreter require the utmost 
 honesty and delicacy. The Porte was quite right in 
 giving her Interpreters distinguished rank and 
 emoluments. A sound negotiator is not always a 
 clever linguist, and he must therefore employ some-
 
 INTERPRETERS. 245 
 
 body who is; that somebody must be thoroughly 
 trustworthy, for he will often have it in his power to 
 make or mar the objects of his chief. The Inter- 
 preters of the embassies at Constantinople have 
 higher salaries than the secretaries of embassy and 
 legation ; still they are not beyond temptation ; they 
 do not form part of the Diplomatic Corps, as they 
 ought to do ; their position in society is not recog- 
 nised ; they are not looked upon as gentlemen. This 
 is a very serious mistake, for they have literally all 
 the business of the embassies in their hands; they 
 are the official messengers between the Porte and the 
 embassies; they are the real ambassadors; all de- 
 pends on their tact, prudence, and ability. 
 
 On ordinary occasions it is useless for an Ambas- 
 sador to make a long, solemn, pompous visit to a per- 
 son who cannot understand a word he says. Therefore 
 he sends a dragoman, who is received without fuss or 
 ceremony; states his mission simply, without forms 
 or absurdities, and sometimes gets a plain and satis- 
 factory answer. I am afraid in my time there were 
 not half a dozen dragomans who could interpret 
 correctly the most trifling official document. The 
 muddle into which affairs must get where they are 
 singularly important and complicated, and yet are 
 clearly understood by no party concerned, is better 
 imagined than described. In short, the whole race of
 
 246 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 diplomatic interpreters are a weary lot, and it would 
 only rouse an outcry to speak of them as they 
 deserve. It would do no good whatever. Sir Alfred 
 Sandison at Constantinople is doubtless a good 
 Turkish scholar, and he is Oriental Secretary; but 
 he cannot do all the business of the embassy ; and I 
 see the six student dragomans were all appointed on 
 the same day (25th Oct. 1877). 
 
 Mr. Goschen must have got into odd perplexities 
 with such a staff, and the Turkish authorities must 
 have been quite unable to comprehend his language 
 or his wishes. Lord Palmerston long ago wished to 
 remedy this absurd state of things, and applied to 
 the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge to 
 recommend him the two most promising scholars 
 they could find. Then this is what happened : the 
 Dons both recommended their personal friends, look- 
 ing upon the chance of doing so as a snug piece of 
 patronage not to be thrown away. One of the per- 
 sons recommended was a marquis, the other the son 
 of a viscount, and both felt aggrieved that they were 
 not considered as regular members of the Diplomatic 
 Corps. Also they were left out in the cold too long, 
 they received no promotion, and were seldom em- 
 ployed ; so that they got sick of their business, and 
 the whole scheme broke down. 
 
 Lord Stratford de Redcliffe habitually employed
 
 INTERPRETERS. 
 
 247 
 
 Levantines, and quarrelled with them ; but the 
 Levantines were too much for him, and his pitched 
 battle with his chief dragoman, Stephen Pisani, 
 helped more than a little to upset him. Lord 
 Dalling had his own ways of getting at facts, and 
 knew the Turks well. Sir H. Layard, too, was not 
 wholly without means of making himself understood. 
 But if any one really wishes to know how and why 
 the Eastern Question has got into such a hopeless 
 muddle, he has only to ask himself what satisfactory 
 outcome could possibly issue from the negotiations of 
 people who habitually talk gibberish to each other.
 
 248 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 XII. 
 
 AMBASSADRESSES. 
 
 The whole of an Ambassador's family, and espe- 
 cially his wife, are peculiarly under the protection of 
 the State in which he resides. It is not, however, 
 altogether correct to say that the family of an Ambas- 
 sador share all the privileges of his rank and office ; 
 for his children and any relations who may reside 
 with him are merely treated as foreigners of similar 
 condition. The custom of Courts has, by degrees, 
 made an exception in favour of an Ambassador's 
 wife, to whom special honours are sometimes ac- 
 corded; but even in her case they have been fre- 
 quently disputed. Grotius, who was himself Ambas- 
 sador to the punctilious Court of France, makes no 
 mention whatever of the wives of Ambassadors, though 
 he must have been well aware of any honours due to 
 his wife, who accompanied him. The position of 
 Ambassadors' wives, therefore, appears to be very 
 much like that of the wives of Scotch Lords of 
 Session, and James I. decided their legal rank. ' I,' 
 observed the pedant King, in one of his lucid in-
 
 AMBASSADRESSES. 249 
 
 tervals between quoting Latin and slobbering his 
 courtiers, ' made the carles lords, but who made the 
 carlines ladies ?' 
 
 In former times, he who was sent upon an embassy 
 usually left his wife at home ; but when, during the 
 seventeenth century, permanent embassies came into 
 fashion, Ambassadors' wives remonstrated with such 
 energy and perseverance, that they were ever after- 
 wards allowed to follow their husbands, and by all 
 means to take their tongues with them. Then first 
 was heard the title of Ambassadress, with which 
 these ladies bedecked and ornamented themselves. 
 Nevertheless, a French Envoy at the Hague, a pro- 
 fane single man, who had paid no attention to the im- 
 portant revolution going on in the diplomatic world, 
 shrugged his bachelor shoulders at the arrival of a 
 Spanish Ambassador's wife, and immediately wrote 
 home to his Government, ' que c'etait une Ambassade 
 hermaphrodite,' a jest which delighted the French 
 Court vastly. 
 
 Italy has the honour of having given a title to 
 Ambassadors' wives ; and Sixtus V. is the love of a 
 Pope who confirmed it. The new dignity is said ta 
 have been invented as a peculiar mark of courtesy 1 
 towards Count Olivarez (a judicious statesman who 
 flourished under female rule), and who was then 
 Spanish Ambassador at the Vatican. This Count, 
 
 VOL. i. R
 
 250 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 father of the still more famous Minister of Philip IV. 
 (immortalised in Gil Bias), instantly seized upon the 
 opportunity of giving a banquet to the Roman 
 ladies ; and it is needless to add, that Spanish in- 
 terests at once became popular, for irresistible voices 
 were advocating them all day long, and possibly part 
 of the night, for ever afterwards during that genera- 
 tion. 
 
 The Pope was by no means a potentate accus- 
 tomed to do things by halves. Having once conferred 
 the title of Ambassadress upon the Countess OUvarez, 
 he determined that she should forthwith enjoy all 
 the advantages of her exalted rank. He permitted 
 her to kiss his toe; and the nieces of all the Car- 
 dinals remarked, with pardonable envy, that his 
 Holiness received her on this auspicious occasion 
 with the ceremony due to a Royal Princess. Hence- 
 forth her rank was fully acknowledged, and she began 
 immediately to quarrel for precedence with the prin- 
 cesses of Colonna and Orsini, so that no one could ever 
 venture to invite them to the same house together. 
 
 Meantime it soon became apparent to the Pope that, 
 since he had granted a brand-new handle to the name 
 of the Spanish Ambassador's wife, he must concede 
 the same advantages to the wives of other Ambassa- 
 dors, or prepare to leave the Vatican, as the only 
 means left him of escaping from their anger. To any
 
 AMBASSADRESSES. 251 
 
 person who has enjoyed favourable opportunities of 
 becoming acquainted with the vigorous proceedings 
 of a band of ladies, all of one mind on some par- 
 ticular subject affecting themselves, it will not be a 
 matter of surprise that the Pope submitted without 
 venturing upon a parley. He was painfully aware 
 that negotiations must have added to his humiliation ; 
 and thenceforth the wives of all Ambassadors have 
 held their own. Woe to those who do not religiously 
 bow down before a title bestowed by a Pope and worn 
 by a lady ! 
 
 Pope Sixtus, however, was possibly unaware of 
 the aspiring nature of the feminine soul, or it is a 
 question whether he would not rather have endured 
 an honourable martyrdom, to assure the peace of the 
 world, rather than have taken such a step. He 
 might have shut himself up in his palace, and excom- 
 municated the turbulent females in his nightcap 
 from an upper window. The thunders of the Church 
 in those days struck terror into the hearts of the 
 bravest. Perhaps they might have availed some- 
 thing against even a crowd of ladies ; or, if he had 
 held out till the last, and then died valiantly, he 
 would have been entitled to the respect and affection 
 of every usher and master of ceremonies in Europe. 
 
 Ambassadresses no sooner got their title recog- 
 nised than they resolved to display it in full dress
 
 252 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 as publicly as possible. Quiet sober old fogeys, all 
 tricks and wig, were promptly married by blooming 
 and strong-minded young women of property and 
 ambition. Widows of large fortune and a taste for 
 society lay in wait for tottering elderly gentlemen 
 who might have been their grandfathers, and led 
 them off, in spite of senile struggles, to the nearest 
 clergyman. There was quite a mania for Ambassa- 
 dors among marriageable ladies. Numerous females 
 who had long disappeared abruptly, in company 
 with a jewel-case and a captain in the guards, turned 
 up again in the most unexpected and distressing 
 manner, to insist upon an instant restitution of their 
 conjugal rights. Other energetic ladies, with false 
 fronts and immaculate reputations, who had hitherto 
 submitted to be stowed away in holes and corners,, 
 started off with great decision for foreign capitals; 
 and Ambassadors, who were whispering sweet no- 
 things in the interest of their country to the most 
 celebrated beauties of Paris or Madrid, were startled 
 by a well-remembered box on the ear and a peremp- 
 tory order to take larger lodgings, from an awful 
 creature in an antediluvian bonnet, whom they had 
 not seen for twenty years. Diplomacy, from being 
 rather a jolly profession than otherwise, became as 
 dull as the private life of a comic actor ; and most of 
 the small-legged, knock-kneed, dried-up old beaux.
 
 AMBASSADRESSES. 253 
 
 in peach-blossom coats, who were among the diplo- 
 matic notabilities of those times, thought of the 
 Pope with a feeling they were unable to express. 
 
 Moreover, the Ambassadresses appeared with such 
 pomp and splendour at the first Congress held after 
 their promotion, that no business could go on because 
 of them. Their husbands were obliged to rise in the 
 very smallest hours of the morning, and to meet by 
 .stealth, in order that they might consult upon some 
 means by which the Papal plague could be mitigated. 
 The French Ambassadress, of course, found them out, 
 .and at once raised the signal of revolt, while her 
 husband turned traitor to the cause of his colleagues. 
 Finally they got all they wanted, and the Congress 
 separated without doing much worthy of record. 
 
 Among the Ambassadresses best known to us is 
 the wife of Sir William Temple, who played a pro- 
 minent part in State affairs during his momentous 
 embassy to Holland. She negotiated a marriage 
 which was destined to change the history of England 
 that between William of Orange and Princess 
 Mary, daughter of James II. She carried on a long 
 .and very remarkable correspondence both with the 
 King and the Duke of York, who had to be managed 
 by very different methods. The wives of several 
 members of the illustrious house of Temple have 
 "been among the stateliest flowers of English woman-
 
 254 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 hood, and Lady Palmerston was not the least of 
 them. The extraordinary career of Lady Hamilton, 
 at the Court of Naples, shows what women can do 
 and dare ; and it is but folly to condemn one half 
 the world as triflers for the friskiness of a few dames 
 who love frolic too much. In our own time Madame 
 Dosne, Princess Lieven, Princess Eliza Troubetz- 
 koi have played a large part in politics ; and Lady 
 Waldegrave showed a fine clear wit when Queen of 
 London. The Marchioness of Salisbury helped to- 
 mar her husband's work, both abroad and at home. 
 The most gracious and best of all Ambassadresses, 
 however, in this generation was the Countess Cowley. 
 Her tact was innate, her mind active, and her man- 
 ners absolutely perfect.
 
 SEMI-DETACHED WIVES.
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 HE Semi-detached Wife is a 
 lady whose husband exists, 
 but not for her. He may be 
 in prison, or mad, or playing 
 the truant; he may be any- 
 thing or anywhere; but he is 
 not by her side, helping her 
 to the best slices of his do- 
 mestic bread-and-cheese, and 
 giving her the cosiest place on his couch, as a 
 tenderly attached husband should do. The Semi- 
 detached Wife is an 'acting' widow, but without
 
 258 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 widow's rank or privileges. She resembles those 
 Scotch peers, who, not sitting in the House of 
 Lords, are yet debarred from taking a seat in the 
 Commons. Sometimes the Semi-detached widow 
 owes her anomalous position to her own fault, 
 sometimes to her husband's; but in either case the 
 position is a trying one, and it is seldom that it can 
 be held for long without loss of character. 
 
 There is a cogent reason for this ; for all the 
 world being deeply interested in the subject of 
 matrimony, .those ladies who have failed in their 
 nuptial speculations find in every household a critic 
 ready to ask why. To those who have succeeded, her 
 failure may appear unintelligible ; to those who have 
 failed like herself, it may not always seem excusable, 
 since there may have been in it some peculiarity 
 which will cause others to think that her matri- 
 monial lot was, after all, preferable to theirs. 
 
 There have been some famous Semi-detached 
 Wives in history. Mesdames Shakespeare and Milton 
 found it hard to get on with husbands whom all man- 
 kind admired ; so did Lady Nelson and Lady Byron. 
 Here we have four ladies wedded to heroes four 
 ladies whose lots must have seemed enviable to their 
 respective contemporaries ; and yet how much would 
 they not have found to say on the other side of the 
 question, if they had had any able counsel to hold a
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 259 1 
 
 brief for them before the tribunal of history ! The 
 world has made up its mind that the four ladies 
 named were wrong in their matrimonial squab- 
 bles; for it seems to tally with the general fitness 
 of things that great men should have wives capable 
 of comprehending them, and resolved to make them 
 happy. But then great men are not always plea- 
 sant companions. They are apt to claim too much 
 domestic worship, forgetting that home is a temple 
 where wife should be the divinity. Let a great 
 man be content with having his statue in bronze 
 and marble on public market-places, but let him 
 refrain from asking his family to erect him a pedestal 
 beside his own hearth. Above all, let him not expect 
 that the wife who is accustomed to see him in his 
 nightcap will acquiesce in his continually adorning 
 that homely headdress with laurels. 
 
 Women will give much reverence in exchange 
 for a little love and tender treatment; but haughty 
 patronage bores them. It is much to be feared that 
 Shakespeare was by his own fireside a bore ; Milton, 
 with his mania for Greek and Latin studies, unques- 
 tionably was so ; poor Byron suffered from an inflamed 
 vanity which bled at the least touch ; and Nelson was 
 too fond of recounting to his lady the wondrous 
 stories of his hairbreadth escapes by land and sea. 
 At the seventy-seventh narrative of how gloriously
 
 260 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the French were served one day in the Bay of Biscay 
 the poor lady yawned, and no wonder. Nelson would 
 have yawned too, if he had heard for the seventy- 
 seventh time how her ladyship had worsted the 
 baker's boy in a wrangle about accounts. 
 
 Thus much for historical Semi-detached Wives ; 
 tmd now may be introduced some specimens of the 
 tribe who flourish in our midst at this present 
 writing.
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 261 
 
 II. 
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 
 
 Everybody who is personally acquainted with the 
 celebrities of the literary world has acknowledged 
 the faithful likeness of the photograph of Mrs. M. r 
 which figures in most shop-windows. The attitude 
 is slightly theatrical, and the expression of the 
 features affected. The lady is standing near a desk 
 covered with books ; a huge hound crouches on 
 a mat near her feet; she holds a quill-pen in her 
 hand, and is gazing with enrapt interest at a sheet 
 of paper, which the artist evidently intended to repre- 
 sent a page of manuscript, but which might just as 
 well be last week's butcher's-bill. This is exactly as 
 the popular novelist appears in real life, posturing 
 for the admiration of her friends. 
 
 Her age is about thirty-five, and she had talent 
 once, before she shredded it away by writing three 
 sensational novels every year, to say nothing of 
 magazine articles and essays on social subjects by 
 the score. In proportion as her ability diminished, 
 so, of course, did her vanity and intellectual petulancy
 
 262 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 increase. She railed at the critics, who had at first 
 encouraged her with the utmost kindness, but who 
 could not, without protesting, submit to the down- 
 pour of 'pot-boilers,' which her publishers had begun 
 to rain on their heads. She shrugged her shoulders 
 at remonstrance, and defied ' Grub-street' (as she 
 humorously styled the critical band) to shake her 
 popularity, yet with irritable inconsistency inveighed 
 against the squeamishness of the public, who allowed 
 the critics to warp their judgment. The truth is, 
 that at the time when Mrs. M. had the photograph 
 of herself and dog taken the public were beginning 
 to feel as if they had had a surfeit of her novels. 
 A story of murder, well told, in careful style and 
 with an artistic grouping of characters and incidents, 
 is entertaining enough ; but some vulgar tale of 
 crime or adultery, diluted in a thousand pages of 
 wishy-washy prose, with characters as lifeless as 
 barbers' blocks, and accessories having no more co- 
 hesion among themselves than the animalcula3 which 
 float about in a glassofTham.es water these are not 
 a treat, but a weariness, to the reader. He can get 
 his sensation much better and cheaper by reading 
 the assize reports in a penny journal. 
 
 Mrs. M. had a husband, who was a clergyman ; 
 but it was believed that his wife's hysterico-bilious 
 effusions had scared him into privacy, for he was
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 
 
 263 
 
 seldom to be met with. The two lived apart, though 
 not judicially separated nor, actually estranged from 
 each other; and Mrs. M. often alluded to the retiring 
 divine in a tone of half-contemptuous patronage, as if 
 he were a poor wight, whom she had signally hon- 
 oured by marrying. The reality was all the other
 
 264 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 way; for in the days when she was Miss X., the 
 authoress had been glad and right proud to shelter 
 her equivocal social position under the respected 
 name of a scholar and gentleman ; and poor Mr. M. 
 had taken her to wife whilst her young fame was still 
 in its bloom, and seemed to promise a magnificent 
 flowering in future days. Mr. M.'s weak health, 
 which rendered it advisable that he should live 
 much by the seaside, was alleged as the reason why 
 the couple did not reside under the same roof; but 
 Mr. M. made such sparing references to his wife, even 
 among those who knew him best, that persons often 
 enjoyed his acquaintanceship for some time before 
 they were led to discover his connection with the 
 novelist, and curious mistakes resulted from this state 
 of things. 
 
 One day, as he was travelling, a gentleman who 
 sat opposite him in the railway carriage fell into 
 conversation on literary matters, and the talk glided 
 on to Mrs. M.'s novels, which the gentleman fervently 
 abused. Mr. M. uttered lamentable moans, con- 
 curring in every word ; but the gentleman's astonish- 
 ment may be judged, when later in the day he met 
 this sighing parson at Mrs. M.'s own house (the 
 gentleman himself was a journalist), and was intro- 
 duced to him as her husband. It was not often that 
 Mr. M. put in an appearance at his wife's pretty
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 265 
 
 villa at Norwood ; and when he came the servants 
 often failed to recognise him, and requested his card. 
 His visits were generally on some charitable errand, 
 such as begging Mrs. M. to contribute a little of her 
 superfluity towards cases of exceptional destitution ; 
 and, to do her justice, she listened to such appeals 
 the more readily as Mr. M. never asked anything for 
 himself, seeing that he had a private maintenance of 
 his own, which, though small, sufficed for his needs. 
 
 Sometimes it was Mrs. M. who would pay her 
 husband a visit, swooping down, with maid, dog, and 
 ten boxes, on the country parsonage, where he might 
 be taking temporary duty for a friend. Perhaps 
 she felt the necessity of occasionally placing herself 
 sous pavilion conjugal for a few weeks, so as not to 
 let the world lose sight of the fact that she had l mar- 
 riage lines' to show; but these visits flustered all the 
 life out of Mr. M., for the authoress utilised them 
 for the purpose of ' noting down types from Nature.' 
 Seated in the rectory pew, with a loud bonnet on 
 her head and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses raised 
 to her eyes, she would stare about her during divine 
 service, and thought it no breach of good taste sud- 
 denly to whip out a kind of betting-book, and jot 
 down reflections suggested by some detail of archi- 
 tecture or the nasal intonations of the parish-clerk. 
 On week-days she would patronise farmers and local 
 
 VOL. i. s
 
 266 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 gentry, asking odd questions, as if she were in a land 
 of Caribbees, and everywhere proclaiming that she 
 intended to lay the scene of her next novel in this 
 part of the world ; by which means she would cause 
 a demand on Mudie's for at least three or four copies 
 of her work more than would otherwise have been 
 the case. 
 
 Generally speaking, however, Mrs. M. resided in 
 her luxurious extravagantly furnished Norwood home, 
 where she gave many semi-Bohemian parties, dig- 
 nified by the name of 'artistic and intellectual 
 reunions.' 1 At these delightful gatherings it was the 
 custom to say a great deal of good about Mrs. M.'s 
 works, and a great deal of evil about those of other 
 authoresses and authors not present. The hostess 
 would gushingly explain the drift of her last and 
 feeblest production, and the subtle sense of it, which 
 had escaped the critics. Her tongue would clatter 
 by the half-hour, as she expatiated on the high art 
 of realism in literature, as illustrated by the minutely 
 nauseous descriptions in which her pen revelled ; and 
 she would allude, with an affectation of deeply-con- 
 tained energy, to the mighty novel which she could 
 write, if she had to deal with a public freed from the 
 uncultured hypocrisy which reigns in the British 
 Isles. As Mrs. M.'s guests were not the leaders, but 
 usually the sycophantic riffraff, of literature, they
 
 AN INTELLECTUAL REUNION. 
 ' She expatiated on the high art of realism in literature. 
 
 1.266.
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 267 
 
 listened with well-feigned rapture to her verbiage, 
 being at heart thankful for past favours, in the shape 
 of succulent dinners, and hungrily anxious for a 
 continuance of the same. 
 
 Touching the question of Mrs. M.'s morals, and 
 whether she were chaste, or had ever been the con- 
 trary, or were likely to be, nobody in society cared 
 two pins ; but it was clearly her opinion that thou- 
 sands of eyes were intent to watch whether she took 
 any liberties with poor Mr. M.'s bright honour. 
 The minds of women who live outside the pale of 
 lawful conjugal restraints are habitually redolent 
 of unclean suspicions. They sniff the air for un- 
 savoury odours, and scent them from afar; they 
 blush at words that mean nothing ; they fidget with 
 nameless impulses, and fancy that everybody can 
 detect the signs of the guilty itch that torments 
 them. 
 
 Mrs. M. gave you her inky fingers to squeeze in 
 a sly way, as if this conventional mode of saluta- 
 tion might expose her to misinterpretation; she 
 placed a forefinger on her lips at times and in places 
 where there was no occasion for secrecy ; she drove 
 a French translator of her books half mad one night 
 by fainting in his arms in her own garden, and as- 
 suring him afterwards that all London would be 
 talking about it the next day. One of the favourite
 
 268 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 characters in her novels was the squealing female 
 who is always ready for an elopement with the first 
 male who comes to hand, be he baronet, groom, or 
 music-master. But nobody, so far as we are aware, 
 had ever proposed to elope with Mrs. M., or would 
 have ventured upon such an unnecessary proceeding 
 even to prove his love for a practical joke. She was 
 an invincible fortress whom no man has assailed a 
 fruit which the fabular fox would have called sour 
 even if it had taken a header into his mouth. 
 
 Much better than Mrs. M., and the whole of that 
 unsexed tribe who resemble her, do we love pretty r 
 laughing, madcap Nelly N., the actress, who was in
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 269 
 
 private life Mrs. P., though we believe her private 
 life, so far as P. was concerned, consisted chiefly in 
 telling him to go his ways, for that he and she had 
 never been made for each other. 
 
 Why did not P. apply to the Divorce Court for 
 release, seeing that he could have entered the wit- 
 ness-box with a sheaf of proofs under each arm, and 
 a train of witnesses at his heels enough to fill West- 
 minster Hall? Well, he loved his wayward, win- 
 some, sweet-singing, naughty Nell, and never de- 
 spaired that some day or other, when she had grown 
 tired of breaking his heart, she would come back to 
 him, who had forgiven her already times almost 
 seventy times seven. What made his infatuation the 
 more ludicrously touching was that he had nothing 
 in him that need have repelled an ordinary woman. 
 He was neither a bully, rogue, or drunkard ; but a 
 respectable hard-working young surgeon, who had 
 fallen in love with her one night when he had gone 
 to the theatre with an order from a friend, and with 
 whom she herself had been in love during six weeks or 
 so just time enough to marry him and repent of it. 
 
 She had a private house of her own, which had 
 been furnished for her by a Duke, somewhere near 
 Regent's Park, and poor P. often called there on a 
 Sunday (in the forenoon, before visitors came), and 
 appealed to her feelings. He wanted her to leave
 
 270 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the stage, and promised that if she would come 
 home with him, he would toil eighteen hours a day 
 that he might buy her the pretty dresses she was 
 so fond of. Sometimes his despairing prayers moved 
 her a little, and she would pass her hands through 
 his hair, saying : ' Don't cry, Tom, poor old boy ; I 
 don't mean to be unkind, you know; but really we 
 made a great mistake in marrying each other. I 
 am such a wicked thing, that I don't deserve to be 
 your wife; and if we lived together I should play 
 you such pranks, that some day you would pitch me 
 out of the window.' 
 
 Then she would laugh a little, and say that if 
 he threw her out of the window he would be hanged 
 for it, which would make her sorry ; and, amused 
 at this view, she would laugh outright, till he 
 joined in without ceasing to cry, for all his nerves 
 were jarring. It was horribly pathetic; but Nellie 
 was in the right, for poor P. was happier without 
 her than he could have been in her society. 
 
 The fact is that she would not, or could not, keep 
 straight. It was not that she had such an innate 
 
 o 
 
 love of gay company, but gay company loved her, 
 and had succeeded in turning her giddy little brain, 
 which, in its calmest moments, had not much more 
 steadiness than a weather-cock. The glare of the 
 footlights, the songs she warbled so blithely, the
 
 AUTHOKESS AND ACTRESS. 
 
 271 
 
 enthusiastic applause of audiences had become as 
 natural atmosphere to her ; she felt as though 
 stifled when removed from them ; and all this had
 
 272 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 brought its usual consequences of merry jinks in 
 private life dissipation, jewelry, champagne, lords, 
 flirting critics, amorous brother actors, and other 
 gay dogs galore. Why, bless her heart, Nell would 
 pawn all her bracelets to carry an apron full of 
 money to the widow of a scene-shifter who she had 
 heard was dying of hunger ; and one day she caught 
 up a little starveling wench whom she saw selling 
 violets, barefooted, in the streets, during a perishing 
 March wind, and, carrying her off in her brougham, 
 washed her, combed her, dressed her from head to 
 foot in velvets and furs, and finally sent her home 
 with two ten-pound notes in her purse. 
 
 All these things, and many others as impulsively 
 kind, could Nellie N. do; but to be serious for ten 
 minutes on any matter that concerned herself was 
 not in her. Yet she could sing those pure old 
 English ballads of love and faithful troth and 
 homely joys with such accents as drew tears from 
 the most hardened among the gilded crew who heard 
 her; and on the stage she was most successful in 
 enacting the characters of girls who are lovable for 
 all the virtues of fidelity which she herself did not 
 possess. Sometimes she would exclaim, with an in- 
 stant's seriousness and conviction, 'If I were a 
 man, and had such a wife as I am, I would strangle 
 her!'
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 273 
 
 She had repeatedly offered her husband money 
 to help him on in his profession; but he had, of 
 course, refused, and she respected him for it. One 
 day a very bright day in spring she alighted like 
 a whirlwind at his lodgings, scampered up the stairs, 
 and told him she had come to spend a long day 
 perhaps a whole week with him. She laughed and 
 cried, so did he ; they lunched together, and were 
 like bride and bridegroom again. But in the latter 
 part of the afternoon Nell grew suddenly serious ; 
 then hurriedly put on her bonnet, and, after cover- 
 ing poor Tom with kisses, fled the house. She had 
 been assailed by a passing fit of remorse; but it all 
 vanished as she heard a barrel-organ playing one 
 of her favourite airs, reminding her that it was im- 
 possible she could ever tear herself away from the 
 stage, where her heart and life were. 
 
 One night Nell came away from the theatre 
 with a headache ; next day she was worse, and the 
 symptoms of typhoid fever set in. She sent for her 
 husband as soon as she felt delirium coming on ; and 
 he nursed her night and day through what was des- 
 tined to be her first and last illness. If human skill 
 could have saved her he would have done it ; but the 
 case was, from the first, hopeless. At the approach 
 of death her consciousness returned for half an hour, 
 and she recognised him, though he was wofully
 
 274 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 altered. She sat up, with a vague glance in her 
 large eyes, and asked abruptly,
 
 AUTHORESS AND ACTRESS. 
 
 275 
 
 ' Tom dear, do you think they will burn me for 
 ever ?' 
 
 ' What an idea !' faltered wretched P., trying to 
 induce her to lie down again. 
 
 ' 0, I know I deserve it,' she continued, shaking 
 her head. ' But, Tom, I couldn't repent if I tried 
 ever so much; and if my life were to begin over 
 again, I am afraid I should act exactly as I have 
 done. I was born wicked, you see, and it's in my 
 nature; do you think they II take that into account?' 
 
 They did take it into account, we may be sure.
 
 "276 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 III. 
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 
 
 There is a category of Semi-detached "Wives pass- 
 ably common in high life; namely, those who live 
 under the same roof with their husbands, but have a 
 separate establishment, do as they please, see whom 
 they like, and only meet their lords at dinner-time 
 or in society. These estrangements are usually 
 managed so as to keep up appearances; and some- 
 times the disjoined parties contrive to remain very 
 good friends, though they are friends, and nothing 
 else. This, however, of course depends largely on the 
 causes which produced the separation. 
 
 There are wives who voluntarily placed them- 
 selves in semi-detached condition because of an 
 offence by their husbands; there are others who 
 have been semi-detached to avoid the worse fate of 
 a public scandal and divorce. In the former case 
 matters often jog on fairly well ; in the latter, the 
 wife's condition is sometimes a shade or two worse 
 than what we may believe purgatory to be. Yet 
 this, again, depends much on the rank of the parties;
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 277 
 
 husbands of the highest rank being invariably the 
 most forbearing. 
 
 All this is a question of money. Decorous es- 
 trangements are impossible among the middle and 
 lower classes, because the parties cannot afford to* 
 carry them on commodiously. Fancy a husband 
 and wife trying to remain punctiliously distant from 
 each other in a set of six-room lodgings, or a me- 
 chanic living on terms of well-bred reserve with the- 
 wife who cooks his dinner. Among working people 
 matrimonial squabbles are perforce settled by yells 
 and blows; in the classes next above, who can screw 
 together 100 to buy a divorce, the parties rush off 
 to Westminster, and pay lawyers to wash all their 
 dirty linen in public. 
 
 Balzac has well remarked that it is only under- 
 bred persons who care to hunt after proofs of their 
 own dishonour, and then trumpet them for the pub- 
 lic amusement. Save under very exceptional cir- 
 cumstances, a nobleman would not thank the rascal 
 who brought him tidings that my lady had forgotten 
 her marriage-vow. He would much rather hush up 
 so inconvenient a matter; and as for ladies of the 
 aristocracy, they are, of course, obliged to evince the 
 extremest indulgence touching the clandestine freaks- 
 of their husbands. Society would become a bear- 
 garden if gentlewomen made the same fuss as shop-
 
 278 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 keepers' wives every time their lords were convicted 
 of flirting. 
 
 A delinquent husband of wealth and position, 
 whose wife has put herself on semi-detached footing, 
 has only himself to thank for a catastrophe which 
 would never have occurred had he taken the com- 
 monest precautions to guard against his wife's dig- 
 nity being wounded. In most of these cases the 
 husband has acted so foolishly that it has been im- 
 possible for the wife to close her eyes to his esca- 
 pade, and, being a proud woman, she has told him 
 that she will never forgive it. She does not really 
 mean this ; if she could divine that her hasty words 
 would cause her to live for years and years alienated 
 from a man whom she has once loved, and perhaps 
 loves still nay, that death would part them before 
 they had become reconciled she would bite her 
 tongue off sooner than doom herself to such pitiful 
 loneliness. 
 
 But the words are pronounced in a moment of 
 just anger ; and the wealth of the parties gives them 
 such facilities for effecting a quiet separation, that 
 their new state of life soon becomes established as a 
 custom which neither of them can well breakthrough. 
 They live in different parts of the house, seldom see 
 each other except in the presence of servants or 
 strangers, and on all occasions treat each other with
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 279 
 
 a politeness which acts as a barrier to anything like 
 cordial impulsiveness. Then the servants of the 
 household, the relatives, and family friends, fall into 
 the secret of the arrangement, and acquiesce in it as 
 an accomplished fact ; so that it would need a world 
 of moral courage for either of the parties to venture 
 on the first step towards a reconciliation, much as 
 they both of them might secretly wish it. 
 
 Pride and false shame are terrible perpetuators of 
 strife. A proud woman may fret over the past, but 
 she will eat her heart out rather than let it be seen 
 what she suffers ; and, on his side, the husband, feel- 
 ing himself in the wrong, and judging of his Avife's 
 sentiments by her cold mien, fears to risk advances 
 which might be repelled to his discomfiture. Be- 
 sides, in these estrangements, time operates against 
 the wife, who, in growing older, sometimes loses 
 much of her attractiveness; while the husband, being 
 dependent for his means of solace, not on his good 
 looks, but on his money, finds no difficulty in com- 
 pensating himself for uxorial hostility after the Turk- 
 ish and Mormon fashions. 
 
 It. does not follow that a Semi-detached Wife 
 glides at once into infidelity. There are women 
 whose very pride keeps them pure in spite of all 
 temptation. But if it should be otherwise, and if a 
 woman should claim the same license as she sees her
 
 280 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 husband arrogate to himself as a right, the man only 
 gets what he richly deserves. On this point let there 
 be no sentimentalising, or sophistical talk about the 
 difference between sexes. Nature has made the 
 woman to be loved and cherished, and the husband's 
 marriage-vow confesses her claim to his exclusive 
 worship ; but if the husband chooses to go and love 
 and cherish other women, he must not be surprised 
 if his wife regards herself as absolved from her 
 own oath of faithfulness. Most husbands of aristo- 
 cratic rank recognise this logic (pulling more or less 
 wry faces as they do so) ; and their only stipulation 
 is that my lady should not get herself talked about, 
 or introduce into the family circle little boys and girls 
 whom the putative father could not dandle with feel- 
 ings of paternity. 
 
 Respecting Semi-detached Wives who have been 
 offenders in the preliminaries that led to separation, 
 it cannot be said that their lot is ever an enviable 
 one. The most rakish of men has always a great deal 
 to say about uxorial duty; and if he show himself 
 merciful on grounds of policy, he will often consider 
 it binding upon his dignity to treat his erring wife 
 with a cold disdain far worse than the cruelty of 
 downright abuse. Old men make terrible censors of 
 young wives who have stumbled. Although their 
 magnanimity may have proceeded solely from the
 
 THE ERRING WIFE. 
 
 1.280.
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 281 
 
 fear that they would cover themselves with ridicule 
 by a publication of their connubial woes, they recur 
 to their forgiveness with peevish iteration, until they 
 either cow their wives into the condition of hysteric 
 Magdalens, or drive them frantic into new exploits 
 worse than the first. It is not every Robin Gray 
 who can evince the equanimity of that old French 
 duke, who, patting his young wife's hand, remarked 
 pathetically : ' Ma chere amie, je me doutais bien que 
 cela m'arriverait, mais pas si tot.' 
 
 As a rule aged Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards 
 are incomparably more adroit in making the best of 
 a false position than Englishmen. They have more 
 tact, good-humour, and philosophy ; they shrink more 
 sensitively from ridicule, and have a keener insight 
 into the uselessness of lecturing a young and pretty 
 woman who is bent on going her own way. One of 
 these courtly old gentlemen, having been regaled by 
 his own valet with reports of things unsuspected, 
 
 VOL. i. T
 
 282 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY, 
 
 slipped a bank-note into the rogue's hand, and said : 
 'Hush! don't speak so loud. Madame might hear 
 you, and she would never forgive me.' Besides this, 
 duelling enables continental husbands to avenge 
 themselves in quiet summary ways that are not 
 within reach of the British. Innumerable foreigners 
 have been honourably pistolled at daybreak by 
 veteran husbands, who had the good taste never to 
 breathe a word to their young wives as to the mo- 
 tives which had led to these tragedies. 
 
 When a young husband ascertains things which 
 every husband is the happier for never learning, the 
 same philosophy cannot be expected of him as of an 
 older man. In the first place the lady has, generally 
 speaking, much less excuse for her misconduct ; and 
 if the husband be found condoning it, one may safely 
 presume that he has reasons for so doing which re- 
 dound little to his honour. Drunkards, scamps, and 
 men afflicted with some bestial mania or other, are 
 categories of men who do not care to face cross-ques- 
 tions in the Divorce Court; and there are other 
 husbands who object to turn guilty wives out of 
 doors, because they would turn out a great deal of 
 money and many valuable connections at the same 
 time. 
 
 These high-souled beings may be said to consti- 
 tute the majority among the young husbands of Semi-
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 
 
 283 
 
 detached Wives. They are tied by the tooth ; they 
 dare not raise a shout, because their mouths are full 
 of the roast meats which their wives have stuffed 
 there. 
 
 Say that young Mr. 0. has married Miss Q., whose 
 uncle John means to make her his heiress. Uncle 
 John becomes the Providence and oracle of his 
 niece's household. He pays the Christmas bills, 
 sends hampers of game and wine, has always a spare 
 20. note to satisfy Mrs. O.'s whims, and he helps on 
 Mr. 0. in his business or profession. If Mr. 0. were
 
 284 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 to go to this old gentleman and inform him that his 
 niece was a good-for-naught, he would be assisted 
 down-stairs by a kick in the coat-tails, uncle John 
 would take Mrs. 0. to his home, and Mr. 0. would 
 be left to provide himself with meats and divorce- 
 costs out of his own earnings. Mrs. 0., who knows 
 very well how the wind lies, has a gunpowdery way 
 of exclaiming, on the slightest provocation, that if 
 0. is not satisfied with her proceedings she will put 
 on her bonnet and go ; and the poor marital parasite 
 is fain to vapour off his wrath in virtuous bluster 
 which means nothing. 
 
 So little does Mrs. 0. care for the spiritless fellow 
 that she carries on her flirtations to his face. She 
 goes to the theatre without asking his leave, wears 
 jewelry which neither he nor uncle John ever paid 
 for though she will coolly tell uncle John in his 
 presence that the trinkets are her husband's gifts 
 and she will receive afternoon visits from gentle- 
 men of whose very names Mr. 0. is ignorant, but 
 whom he finds comfortably toasting their heels at 
 his drawing-room fire when he returns from his 
 office. One day Mrs. 0. sends him a telegram an- 
 nouncing that she has been summoned to Brighton, 
 and returns three days afterwards, saying she has 
 been to see her aunt she having no aunt. On 
 another occasion 0. receives an anonymous letter
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 
 
 " Mrs. O. receives afternoon visits from gentlemen of whose very names her husband is ignorant.'' 
 
 I. 284.
 
 SEPARATED BY MUTUAL CONSENT. 285 
 
 filled with four pages of revelations as to his wife's 
 amusements, and in nervous haste he pokes the dan- 
 gerous communication into the fire. Next a cook, 
 with whom Mrs. 0. has had words about a missing 
 joint, declares she will make a clean breast of every- 
 thing she knows to ' master ;' and master is obliged 
 thereupon to put on a face of hot indignation, and 
 order the hussy out of the house forthwith for 
 daring to insult her mistress. 
 
 In the end things come to such a pass that 0., 
 who has long ceased to threaten that he will com- 
 plain to uncle John, is in mortal dread lest uncle 
 John should scent out something of his own self 
 unaided. The sagacious relative has been seen to 
 gaze upon his niece with a frown; he puts uneasy 
 questions, and tells 0. with a look that has some- 
 what of a searching expression in it that young 
 wives like 'Jenny' require a good deal of super- 
 vision all of which makes the dew of anguish ooze 
 from O.'s brow. What if uncle John should be- 
 queath his precious money away from his niece ? 
 The thought is so horrible that 0. racks his brains 
 for expedients by which the truth may be concealed. 
 He becomes an active conniver in, as well as abettor 
 of, his own shame ; he invents the lies which his 
 wife shall tell; he instructs her to show herself a 
 little more affectionate towards him when the old
 
 286 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS OX ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 man is looking on ; and he himself drawls out such 
 long yarns about his Jenny's domestic virtues 
 that simple-hearted uncle John, who cannot sus- 
 pect the depths of the cur's unclean villany, pri- 
 vately sets him down as the greatest fool who ever 
 lived. 
 
 We repeat that husbands of Mr. O.'s type are not 
 by any means rare; but if you called them dogs 
 they might bring actions against you, and recover 
 damages.
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 287 
 
 IV. 
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 
 
 Some four years ago Mrs. S. came home from 
 Madras along with her three children, leaving her 
 
 < ' 7 O 
 
 husband behind in India. She cried a good deal at 
 parting with the honest Captain, and he himself was 
 equally affected, but the children's health required 
 the separation. European children born in India 
 generally begin to sicken about the fifth year; so it 
 becomes a question with all British officials who 
 cannot afford a summer residence for their little ones 
 ' up the hills,' whether they shall lose their wives for 
 a time, or their children for good and all. 
 
 There is the alternative of sending home the 
 children alone to be educated by an aunt ; but Mrs. 
 S. was an affectionate mother, who did not wish 
 her children to grow up out of her sight. 
 
 She went to live in London, taking a small house 
 in a shabby suburban neighbourhood, for economy 
 was an object. Captain S.'s income had been suffi- 
 cient to keep his family comfortably in India, but it 
 was hardly enough to maintain two establishments in
 
 288 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the style which officers deem suitable to their rank. 
 Mrs. S. soon began to regret her crowd of Indian 
 servants, her flowery bungalow, the festive hospitali- 
 ties of Madras, and that social queenship which all 
 English ladies (and especially young ones) hold on 
 Indian soil. The fogs and dirt of London, the dear- 
 ness of all things, the sauciness and slatternliness of 
 housemaids, and the lack of congenial society, told 
 upon her spirits, and made her think that Fate had 
 dealt hardly with her in condemning her to a life of 
 genteel pauperism and virtual widowhood. Mrs. S. 
 knew that five years, at least, must elapse before she 
 could see her husband again, for it would have been 
 unsafe to return with the children until they had 
 been thoroughly seasoned by European climate ; and 
 the Captain himself could not afford the expense of 
 six months' furlough and the journey simply to gra- 
 tify his affections. 
 
 Hundreds of Anglo-Indians stand in Mrs. S.'s 
 position, and a very trying one it is. They are 
 Semi-detached Wives, who, when they love their 
 husbands, are profoundly wretched, and when they 
 do not are very apt to treat their temporary freedom 
 as if it were a definite one. They act like widows of 
 the flightiest sort, frisk about to parties and places 
 of amusement, run up bills, omit to pay them, or pay 
 them with money never remitted from marital hands,
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 28$ 
 
 until some bright day the husband who has been, 
 privately warned by an officious friend or an anony- 
 mous letter lands unexpectedly at Southampton,, 
 posts up to London without announcing his arrival, 
 arid discovers a variety of queer things, which are 
 soon after revealed before a judge and jury, and 
 become the occasion of a Decree Nisi, with cost& 
 against one or more co-respondents. It has been 
 noticed that Anglo-Indian ladies form a large per- 
 centage of those who are cited before Sir James 
 Hannen's tribunal. 
 
 Mrs. S. was too straight- minded a little woman, and 
 moreover too fond of her children, to go wrong simply 
 because she felt bored by her new position. But the 
 depressing influence of London did undoubtedly de- 
 velop some irritable propensities in her, and ren- 
 dered her too pervious to sundry tales which began 
 to reach her, anent her gallant husband's mode of 
 comporting himself during her absence. Mrs. S. 
 had made some acquaintances among the Anglo- 
 Indian Londoners, and it was these who poisoned 
 her peace, under pretence of conveying to her salu- 
 tary warnings. They affected to pity her, and ad- 
 vised her to rebel. ' But what would you have me 
 do?' she inquired piteously. 'Why, do as we all do 
 pay the men back in their own coin,' was the ready 
 answer. Mrs. S. failed to see how such reprisals
 
 290 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 could console her for all she heard; and she felt very 
 miserable to think that Jack S. was demeaning him- 
 self so unblushirigly towards a certain odious Mrs. T., 
 that ' all London ' was gloating over his indiscretion. 
 
 Anglo-Indian ladies are continually receiving 
 letters from the East, and circulate among one an- 
 other all the gossip they contain, passing even the 
 letters themselves on to their more intimate friends. 
 In this way quite a fund of scandal reached Mrs. S. 
 regarding her husband. Anglo-Indian ladies also 
 receive many legates, in the form of officers or civil 
 functionaries on furlough, who have been deputed by 
 their husbands to bring them boxes of presents, such 
 as shawls, ivory nicknacks, toys, and what not ; and 
 one bright day Mrs. S. was favoured with the visit 
 of one of these emissaries, a middle-aged Civil Com- 
 missioner, with a beard two feet long, and a face like 
 hardbake. Gallant withal, and talkative, this sun- 
 burnt placeman unfolded a fine quantity of Madras 
 tattle, whilst he was helping Mrs. S. to unpack the 
 trunk full of Hindostanish produce, which Jack S. 
 had sent ; and finally he unfolded the state of his own 
 heart, which, said he, had burned with a pure flame 
 for Mrs. S. ever since he had quadrilled with her 
 at old Hookey's ball at Fort St. George, two years 
 previously. 
 
 The avowal was not made in such blunt terms as
 
 UNPLEASANT NEWS FROM THE EAST. 
 
 I. 290.
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 291 
 
 this; indeed it took several more visits before the 
 full sense of it became manifest. But Mr. Commis- 
 sioner Doubleyew was not a reticent mortal, and he 
 made the best speed in pressing on to his point, which 
 was, that Mrs. S.'s semi-detached status gave her an 
 admirable chance of reciprocating in perfect safety 
 the sentiments which bubbled within his own bosom, 
 and the which, he was persuaded, would end by 
 bursting their receptacle if she did not allow him to 
 give them a free vent. 
 
 Mrs. S. was divided between the desire to turn 
 Mr. Doubleyew out of doors with a broom, and the 
 much more feminine impulse to lock herself up and 
 have a good cry. She ordered the Commissioner 
 never to show his face again ; but he called the next 
 day to beg pardon, and again, several days in suc- 
 cession, to make sure that her forgiveness was com- 
 plete. There are men whom bolts and bars cannot 
 keep out. The bearded Commissioner had a stock 
 of effrontery which nothing could dash, and an in- 
 exhaustible vein of jocularity, which, while it ren- 
 dered him irresistibly amusing, was well calculated to 
 blind a female listener as to his real designs. Thus 
 will the light skirmishers of an army, thrown out in 
 front of a line of battle, conceal the movements of 
 the forces manoeuvring behind. Men, who know how 
 to make a lonely woman laugh, are always dangerous.
 
 292 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 However, Mrs. S. was dangerous herself as a 
 beautiful and well-armed citadel. Mr. Commissioner 
 Doubleyew, who had set out a-conquering, was out- 
 flanked in his siege operations, driven off his guns, 
 and finally made captive, with arms and baggage. 
 And the besieged won this victory with little trouble. 
 
 There sprang up between the two an attachment, 
 which was violently passionate on his side, and coolly 
 calculating on hers. She liked the man without 
 loving him : he was kind to her children, obedient to 
 her own slightest behests, a man of affluent circum- 
 stances and good professional prospects, who was 
 probably on the high road to a K.C.B.-ship -just the 
 person, in fact, to make her an excellent second hus- 
 band, in case she should decide upon divorcing 
 Jack S. Mr. Commissioner Doubleyew's friends told 
 him he was making a fool of himself; but he did not 
 think there lay any folly, or even unmanliness, in 
 urging a delightful woman to separate herself from a 
 fellow who was cutting capers three thousand miles 
 off, and evidently did not care for her a straw. He 
 intrigued among the Anglo-Indian ladies, so that 
 they should din into Mrs. S.'s ears incessant tales of 
 the Captain's jinks, and drive her to exasperation by 
 their cackling sympathy. He himself worked with 
 hypocritical cleverness by pretending to disbelieve 
 the awkward stories ; and he could not be got to
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 
 
 293 
 
 admit that certain bits of scandal published by the 
 Madras papers, and which sorely troubled Mrs. S.'s 
 peace of mind, could only refer to Captain S. All 
 this, however, simply made Mrs. S. feel the more 
 certain that, out of regard for her, he was hiding 
 a great deal of what he knew.
 
 294: SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 She felt a bitter resentment against her husband 
 for having exposed her to these indignities ; and 
 when, at last, she told the Commissioner that she 
 would play the tame victim no longer, she seemed to 
 hint that she relied upon his good offices to assist her 
 in all the legal steps necessary to procure her release. 
 This task Mr. Doubleyew accepted forthwith. A 
 couple of discharged servants recently returned from 
 Madras the one a lady's-maid, the other a drunken 
 butler; a slanderous major, who had a personal grudge 
 against Captain S. ; and two or three other loqua- 
 cious persons, whose belief in the Captain's guilt 
 was based mainly on hearsay reports, furnished a 
 mass of evidence which, submitted to those able 
 lawyers Messrs. Ferrit & Pry, made up a first-rate 
 brief to put into the hands of the eloquent Serjeant 
 Bumpus. 
 
 One vital element was, however, wanting to make 
 Mrs. S.'s case flawless, and that was the allegation of 
 cruelty. No cruelty, no divorce, is the law as re- 
 gards the weak sex. Mr. Pry begged the petitioner 
 to sift her recollections, and earnestly consider 
 whether there had never been a slap on the face, a 
 tweak of the ears, or 'just a little pinch on the arm 
 before witnesses, you know,' which could be magni- 
 fied into gross inhumanity ; but, rack her memory as 
 she might, Mrs. S. could not remember that Jack S.
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 295 
 
 had ever affronted her with so much as a harsh word. 
 This was unfortunate, and it remained for the Cap- 
 tain, by giving his wife a swinging box on the ears, 
 to perfect a case which was in other respects beauti- 
 fully complete. 
 
 The unfortunate officer had for some time past 
 been struck by a tone of discontent and covert in- 
 sinuation which pervaded his wife's letters, and also 
 by the curtness of these epistles. He answered in a 
 style of affectionate banter, thinking he had only to 
 deal with that jealousy which is a proof of love, and 
 comes pretty naturally to all young women who are 
 separated from their husbands ; but one morning 
 there fell upon his breakfast-table, like a bombshell, a 
 letter full of blots, tears, and wild reproaches, ending 
 with the distraught intimation that the writer had 
 confided her interests to persons who were willing 
 and able to protect her. The next mail brought a 
 communication from Messrs. Ferrit & Pry, who 
 begged to be informed of the name of Captain S.'s 
 solicitors, on whom they might serve a citation. 
 
 All this was absolute ruin to the Captain, who 
 found himself obliged to borrow money at high inte- 
 rest to return to England and prove his guiltlessness 
 of a charge which he considered mere trumpery, and 
 which really was so. He was compelled to mortgage 
 his commission, to renounce a chance of professional
 
 296 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 advancement which opportunely presented itself at 
 this moment, to sell off horses and divers other be- 
 longings at a loss, and to fritter away 100/. in a series 
 of telegrams, costing 51. each. However, he could 
 not disculpate himself by electricity; so home he 
 came, indignant, raging, and persuaded that his wife 
 must have lost her reason. 
 
 Perhaps a temperate explanation between the 
 parties might have set matters right, for Jack S. 
 loved his wife better than any woman on earth ; he 
 doted on his children too ; and Mrs. S. herself was 
 not yet so hardened but that the charm of his pre- 
 sence, coupled with a judicious display of kindness 
 and repentance on his part, might have moved her to 
 tears and forgiveness. But angry people go to work 
 in the wrong way, and the Captain, forgetting that 
 he was on his defence in the matter of Mrs. S., chose 
 to take umbrage at the assiduities of Mr. Commissioner 
 Doubleyew, of which it would seem that some little 
 bird had reported to him more than enough. He 
 taxed his wife with levity, heartlessness, dereliction 
 from all her duties as a mother ; and the result was a 
 scene of vituperative recrimination and sobbing, which 
 drew up the servants to the keyhole, and was finally 
 brought to a climax by the Captain's calling his wife 
 a simpleton, and dealing her such a slap on the cheek 
 as resounded through the passage, and thence carried
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 
 
 297 
 
 joyful echoes into the office of Messrs. Ferrit & Pry, 
 Pump-court, Middle Temple. 
 
 There was nothing for it then but to go to work 
 hammer and tongs. The Captain's lawyers retained 
 Mr. Rumpus, Q.C., and filed a counter-petition against 
 the wife and Mr. Commissioner Doubleyew as co- 
 respondent. A 
 day was set down 
 for the hearing; 
 and Bumpus and 
 Rumpus came in- 
 to court, with 
 freshly powdered 
 wigs, to do their * 
 best in a cause 
 which promised 
 plenty of fun. SERJEANT BUMPUS. 
 
 Who that has ever attended one of those ignoble 
 Divorce-Court suits has been able to refrain from sin- 
 cerely pitying the parties to it ? That women of the 
 sort who bring actions for breach of promise that 
 brazen-faced jades, tipsy trollops, and women who 
 have been bullied to the verge of idiotcy should 
 carry the confessions of their infamy or unendurable 
 wretchedness to this rowdy tribunal is comprehen- 
 sible; but that a woman having any vestige of 
 modesty or dignified good sense should do so is only 
 
 VOL. i. u
 
 298 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 explicable under the supposition that she has no idea 
 of what she is going to face. Long before her own 
 counsel, Bumpus, had finished opening her case, 
 Mrs. S. felt ready to sink through the floor from, 
 shame. Loud-whispering women in the galleries stared 
 at her through opera-glasses ; the barristers' benches 
 
 ogled her ; and 
 the spectators 
 crowding be- 
 hind greeted 
 every one of 
 Bumpus's hu- 
 morous pauses 
 with prolonged 
 titters. The 
 judge indulged 
 in an occasional 
 smile, and never ceased to take notes. 
 
 But after Bumpus it was the turn of Rumpus to 
 lift up his voice ; and then came the witnesses, 
 mumbling, prevaricating, nervous, and red, till the 
 laughter of the court gave them a moment of ribald 
 boldness, soon to be checked, however, by the tor- 
 ture of cross - questioning, which caused them to 
 writhe and spit out lie after lie. Then it was that 
 Mrs. S., burying her crimson face in her hands, felt 
 as though the wide earth could never afford her a
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 
 
 299 
 
 spot dark enough to hide in. Some of the abomin- 
 able accusations that were levelled against her by 
 Rumpus made her stagger and gasp, as if the be- 
 wigged rough were flailing at her with a whip. And 
 then those witnesses, what a crew ! 
 
 Suborned menials, who had peeped through 
 chinks; foul-minded old women, 'who had pieced 
 two and two together ;' cabmen, who swore to hav- 
 ing driven Mrs. S. to places she had never visited; 
 hotel-waiters and chambermaids, who thought they 
 could identify her as the lady who had occupied
 
 300 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 4 Xo. 26' with a gentleman ; a baker's boy, who had 
 seen a man, the very image of Mr. Doubleyew, issue 
 from her house at early morning ; and Private In- 
 quiry agents, who had lumped all these testimonies 
 into a concrete of nastiness ; these were the persons 
 who were subpoenaed to prove that Jack S.'s wife 
 
 had behaved 
 herself with the 
 Commissioner 
 as the vilest of 
 the vile. 
 
 'Aha, gentle- 
 men ofthejury/ 
 bawled Mr. 
 Rumpus, ' the 
 plaintiff is, you 
 see, a pretty 
 sort of person 
 to come into 
 court with a story of pretended wrongs. Now that 
 we have unmasked her, I look with confidence to 
 your verdict being in accordance with her deserts.' 
 
 After this burst of rhetoric Mrs. S. fainted, and 
 had to be carried out of court. 
 
 But British judges are shrewd men as well as- 
 learned ; and he who presided in the Divorce Court, 
 having winnowed the chaff of evidence from the 
 
 RUMPUS, Q.C.
 
 CANDIDATES FOR A DECREE NISI. 301 
 
 grain, pointed out that there was not enough of the 
 latter to feed even a scandal magpie. The jury, 
 without leaving their box, returned a verdict that 
 both parties had failed to substantiate their allega- 
 tions ; in other words, that both the Captain and Mrs. 
 S. were stainless; whereupon the judge paternally 
 expressed a hope that the combative couple would 
 contrive to make it up. 
 
 Make it up, indeed ! Just as if people who had 
 spent a whole day in bespattering each other with 
 mud would feel an inclination to rush into each 
 other's arms and kiss ! Mrs. S. might have forgiven 
 Captain Jack for his abandoned doings with Mrs. T., 
 but to her dying day she could never forget how he 
 had inhumanely sat by while Rumpus was belabour- 
 ing her; and the Captain, on his side, though he 
 might have overlooked the draining expenses to 
 which he had been put} and the utter ruin of Mrs. 
 T.'s reputation, which had been caused by his wife's 
 fault, could never pardon ' that blackguard Bumpus' 
 for having so savagely vilified him by her orders. 
 
 If it had not been for their soreness at the de- 
 plorable handling they had both undergone in court, 
 the pair would have rushed off to Westminster and 
 had a new tussle about the custody of their children ; 
 as it was, they agreed, through their solicitors, to 
 fee an eminent barrister 100?. to arbitrate on this
 
 302 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 point. The Captain declared he would never suffer 
 his wife to keep the children after the outrageous 
 way in which she had behaved ; and so the arbiter 
 decreed that the three little ones should be confided 
 to a relative, where their mother should be allowed 
 to visit them under restrictions as to time and fre- 
 quency. Captain S. of course undertook to bear the 
 costs of the arrangement, and to allow his wife so 
 much a year for her own maintenance. These things 
 being settled, the Captain returned to India. As for 
 Mr. Doubleyew, he likewise went back to his com- 
 missionership, but contrived to keep out of his 
 enemy's way, having been emphatically cautioned 
 that if he came within reach of him, he would be 
 made to dance a jig to the music of a horsewhip. 
 
 Moral of the foregoing little story: Mrs. S. will 
 remain an unhappy Semi-detached Wife so long as. 
 she and her husband are both alive.
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 303 
 
 V. 
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WlFE. 
 
 The Countess Z. may or may not have been nee 
 Matilda Thompson, but there is a rumour to this 
 effect which prevents her coronet from being re- 
 garded with the reverence usually bestowed on such 
 august symbols. When an ex-governess claims to 
 enter the spheres of nobility it is desirable that she 
 should walk in on the arm of the husband who has 
 ennobled her. Yet this the Countess has never been 
 enabled to do. Count Z. is alive, and flourishes with 
 all the vigour of a Polish magnate, who has managed 
 to save a comfortable income out of the wreck of his 
 down-trodden country's fortunes, but he and his wife 
 live apart. Why? 
 
 Count Z. resides chiefly on continental race- 
 courses ; and when greeted with an inquiry as to his 
 wife's health, he gazes at the tips of his boots, and 
 brings all his scattered wits to bear on the question 
 as to when he last heard from the faithful partner 
 of his pecuniary means, then looks up with a troubled 
 expression, and answers, ' She is very well, I think, 
 thank you,' and shambles off as if he were being
 
 304 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 poked fun at. The Countess is not quite so reti- 
 cent on the conjugal topic, for she is often heard 
 to remark that she expects the Count home ' every 
 day;' but the days roll themselves into months and 
 years, and still the Count never appears to rejoice 
 in the affectionate preparations which, we may con- 
 clude, are made every morning to receive him. 
 
 There is a little mystery at the bottom of this 
 situation which will, perhaps, bear looking into. 
 
 Count Z. is not the premier venu. He has dabbled 
 in war and politics ; been a general of insurgent 
 troops, a conspirator, member of a provisional govern- 
 ment, and, at odd moments, a pamphleteer of no 
 mean talent. At Warsaw, in 1863, he held the 
 Russians in check till brute numbers gave them the 
 victory; his compatriots adore him; and his head is 
 worth ever so many roubles on the Czar's territory 
 at this moment. 
 
 After the quenching of the Polish rebellion 
 Count Z., wounded and sick at heart, came to recruit 
 his health in England, where he was received with 
 the distinction usually accorded to foreign revolu- 
 tionists, though it is, for some inexplicable reason, 
 denied to those of indigenous growth. He became 
 the guest of a philo -Polish peer, and this peer's 
 children had a governess, who, like my lord, felt 
 enthusiastically towards barricade heroes in general,
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 305 
 
 and towards Count Z. in particular. The Count 
 soon won her heart, gave her a bracelet in exchange, 
 and thought he might cry quits on those terms. But 
 Miss Thompson was a better hand at a bargain. 
 
 She had three athletic brothers, who waited on 
 Count Z., and declared to him that if he did not 
 repair the breach he had occasioned in their sister's 
 honour, they would make such an example of him 
 that he would start thenceforth at his own shadow. 
 They hastened to add, that they would listen to no 
 foreigneering nonsense about duelling with sword or 
 pistols. If he hesitated to marry Miss Thompson 
 they would prosecute him for breach of promise of 
 marriage ; and after that, dog him from city to city, 
 and chastise him in public places. The eldest of 
 the three pulled out his watch, and gave Count Z. 
 fifteen minutes to make up his mind. 
 
 Now the revolutionary chief was a little man, but 
 valour does not depend on inches, and he was as brave 
 as a well-plucked weazel. If he had had to face a simple 
 question of dealing with three troublesome Thomp- 
 sons, he would have flown to the poker, and cracked 
 their three pates before they had had time to notice 
 which brother had been hit first. But Count Z. was 
 in heart and soul a gentleman, and most sedulous to 
 preserve unsullied the reputation he had acquired as 
 a soldier, patriot, and Liberal. He considered that
 
 306 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 the whole Polish cause would be involved in any 
 dishonour that befell him personally; and Heaven 
 knows that Poland had but too much cause to bewail 
 the unworthiness of many a son who ought to have 
 set a blameless example in exile. 
 
 In a cold and rapid way, judging his own case, 
 the Count saw that he had offended, and that there 
 were no excuses for him. Had he not abused the 
 hospitality of Lord X., by trifling with a governess 
 under his own roof? had he not trifled with the miser- 
 able girl herself, by dazzling her with his fame and 
 assumed love (Count Z., though brave, was not too 
 modest) ? and had he not given these three puddle- 
 blooded Englishmen the right to say that a Count Z. 
 had acted as a liar and a rogue ? What would all 
 honourable-minded Poles say if these things were 
 published in the newspapers? "What would his 
 countrymen of Warsaw think if they saw the Kussian 
 officers commenting on his case with jeers, as they 
 read it aloud in the cafes? and what would his 
 brother Liberals of the secret societies do if they 
 learned that he, the advocate of equality and popular 
 principles, had declined to marry a poor girl whom 
 
 he had ruined, simply because she was not his equal 
 
 
 in birth ? 
 
 The upshot of these dismal musings was that 
 Count Z. begged of the three Thompsons the hand of
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 307 
 
 their sister. He did not yield to craven fear, but 
 purely to the exigencies of his position as a man of 
 honour and a noble. And the marriage took place 
 accordingly, in the Polish church of London. 
 
 This, however, was but the first act of the matrimo- 
 nial comedy. When the wedding was over the happy 
 party adjourned to an hotel, and there Count Z. made 
 his wife a little speech in the presence of her brothers. 
 He said : ' Madame, you have fallen in love with my 
 name and fortune, and now they are both yours. 
 The latter within proper limits you may dispose of as 
 you please; but the former I require you to keep 
 free from blemish. I shall not live with you, for our 
 characters would ill agree ; but if it ever reaches me 
 that you have done anything calculated to bring my 
 name into dishonour, I shall come to your house, and 
 I shall shoot you /' 
 
 Then turning to the three Thompsons: 'And 
 you, gentlemen, be pleased to remember that as your 
 sister is my wife you have become my relations, and 
 I expect you to behave yourselves in such wise that 
 I shall never have to blush for you. I hope this 
 hint will suffice ; for you can ascertain by inquiries 
 among my friends that I am not a man to be trifled 
 with. I have done my duty; now do yours.' The 
 three Thompsons felt a momentary inclination to 
 smile, in the consciousness of their unassailability as.
 
 308 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Britons, but something in the look of Count Z.'s 
 steel-blue eyes checked this process of exhilaration. 
 Possibly they all three wished at that minute that 
 they had left their sister to take care of herself. 
 
 Count Z. went off to France, and abandoned him-
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 309 
 
 self to turf pursuits not as a blackleg, but as a 
 gentleman. He was fond of horseflesh; and having 
 nothing else to do, now that his mesalliance had 
 debarred him from domestic joys, he set up a racing- 
 stable, trained his horses himself, and ran them with 
 considerable success for the best prizes. His colours 
 have always been highly respected on the turf, be- 
 cause it is known that the nags who carry them run 
 1 straight.' 
 
 The Countess Z. remained in England, and began 
 to lead a life of compulsory virtue, the like of which 
 was never devised before for the enslavement and 
 worry of a Semi-detached Wife. Being a romantic 
 person, she soon had romance enough for her needs 
 in the circumstances and surroundings of her ex- 
 traordinary existence ; an existence of gilded fetters, 
 under close espionage, and with a vision of death's- 
 heads to haunt her by day and night. 
 
 Her husband had refused to introduce her into 
 London society, not wishing his wife to be laughed 
 at for her low origin or deficient manners by the 
 gentlemen among whom a Countess Z. ought to have 
 trod on a footing of equality; and he would not 
 allow her to reside abroad, because she might easily 
 have fallen there amongst other Semi-detached Wives- 
 of doubtful repute. As she was an Englishwoman, 
 her proper place was in England. If she were to go
 
 310 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 on the Continent, and he lived apart from her, people 
 might be asking questions. 
 
 He had given her four Polish servants, who were 
 devoted to him, with the same kind of fidelity as 
 Scottish clansmen displayed of yore towards their 
 chiefs. The eldest a lady whose husband was in 
 Siberia, and who had herself been rescued from 
 butchery at the hand of Russian soldiers by Count 
 Z.'s bravery acted as her housekeeper and, when 
 the Countess desired it, as her companion ; a younger 
 woman, the Count's foster-sister, was her maid; and 
 a pair of male Poles, Dobelwitz and Trikski, who 
 would have cut each other's throats, or any one else's, 
 at a sign from their master, whom they had served in 
 the wars, filled the posts of coachman and butler. 
 These servants had orders to treat their mistress 
 with the humblest deference; to obey her in all 
 things ; but to keep incessant watch over her actions. 
 The groom, footman, cook, and housemaids were 
 English, but had been carefully chosen for' their 
 respectability by the housekeeper, Madame Marieneff, 
 who spoke our language almost faultlessly. 
 
 At first the ex-Miss Thompson found her luxurious 
 existence pleasant enough. She had 4000/. a year 
 (a third of her husband's income), a fine house in 
 Belgravia, her carriage, and a box at the Opera ; and 
 it amused her to show herself in parks and thea-
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 311 
 
 
 tres, richly apparelled and attended. No hindrance 
 was placed in the way of her going to the seaside or 
 visiting her relatives in the country; and she was 
 free to receive at her own house what friends she 
 liked, provided only they were persons of unimpeach- 
 able character. She gathered round her some of her 
 former pupils who had married ; a few clergymen's 
 and doctors' wives ; some ladies with whom she be- 
 came acquainted in serving as patroness on charitable
 
 312 
 
 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 committees ; and sundry friends of her family who 
 had known her in childhood; altogether a decent
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 313 
 
 and presentable circle, which would have satisfied 
 any woman content to lead a quiet life that none 
 could carp at. 
 
 But the ex-Miss Thompson was not fashioned to 
 appreciate the blessings of humdrum respectability. 
 The instincts of virtue were not in her, nor the crav- 
 ings after paths of peace. It humiliated her to be 
 the only Countess in her circle. She would have 
 liked to awe her clergymen's wives and family friends 
 with throngs of sister countesses and baronesses, till 
 their souls grew sick with envy, and they learned to 
 feel how great an honour she, Countess Z., was 
 doing them in receiving them at her board. One 
 summer, at Scarborough, she fell in with an authen- 
 tic Polish Princess, as affable as she was rich and 
 pretty, and the pair became inseparable friends in 
 the course of a forenoon ; but as soon as Count Z. 
 received news of the intimacy he wrote one of his 
 laconic notes : ' Princess V. is not a suitable friend 
 for a lady of your rank ; she is an adventuress, and 
 I request you to drop her ; ' and drop her Miss 
 Thompson accordingly did, gnashing her teeth. 
 
 Her next move was the essentially feminine one 
 of seeing whether she could not induce her husband 
 to remember those idyllic days under Lord X.'s roof, 
 and make him fall in love with her again. The bar 
 to this was that Count Z. had never really been in 
 
 VOL. i. x
 
 314 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 love with her ; but of this she was not aware. After 
 all she was a well-favoured wench, with magnificent 
 hair and shoulders, who looked mighty well in cerise 
 or violet, and still better when she sat for her photo- 
 graph in black silk, and with a pensive expression, 
 intended to convey profundity of poetic thought. 
 She had read Tennyson and the Lakists, and, like 
 most other governesses, could dash off a grammatical 
 love-letter, loaded with quotations, points of admira- 
 tion, scraps of philosophy (from Tupper), and pass- 
 ages underlined. Of these she indited not a few, for 
 her husband's behoof, on mauve paper, emblazoned 
 with coronet and escutcheon. At first the Count 
 returned curt answers to them ; but finding they still 
 continued he lit his cigars with them, unread. 
 
 Stung to the quick at his silence, the ex-Miss 
 Thompson thought she would play yet one more card, 
 and, moved thereto partly by a melodramatic episode 
 she had witnessed at some theatre, determined to rush 
 off to Paris, surprise her husband, and throw herself 
 into his arms. But she had forgotten the telegraph. 
 Long before she had crossed the Channel the Count, 
 apprised by Madame Marieneff, had betaken himself 
 into seclusion; and on alighting at the Gare du Nord 
 the Countess was greeted by one of her husband's- 
 friends, a polite and elderly Polish Prince, who had 
 been deputed to express the Count's regret that urgent
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 315 
 
 business had called him into the country, but who 
 respectfully placed himself at the Countess's orders, 
 to show her the wonders of the French capital. 
 
 After a week's weary sight-seeing, and drives in 
 the Bois, under the escort of this courteous but 
 always impassive grandee, Countess Z. returned to 
 England, with rage and vengeance shooting fiery 
 throbs through her veins. 
 
 Her first step on reaching London was to call on 
 a solicitor of Gray's Inn, and inquire whether British 
 law furnished no remedy for a grievance so anoma- 
 lous as hers. The solicitor replied that she might 
 certainly plead for a restitution of conjugal rights, 
 and, if she could acquire proofs that her husband 
 was acting unfaithfully to her abroad, she might 
 apply for a divorce on the ground of desertion, &c. 
 But the lawyer felt obliged to add that Count Z, 
 being a foreigner, British courts of law would have 
 little hold upon him. He might snap his fingers at 
 citations ; withdraw the handsome allowance he wa& 
 making her ; and if sentenced, after a divorce, to pay 
 alimony, might refuse to do so, and throw the whole 
 costs of the action on herself. "Was her ladyship 
 prepared to run these risks ? asked the solicitor. 
 Her ladyship looked uncomfortable ; on second 
 thoughts it was obviously wiser to rest on her 4000/. 
 a year and be thankful.
 
 316 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 However, the solicitor had imparted to the ex- 
 governess one grain of comfort, in that he had pooh- 
 poohed Count Z.'s 'menaces about shooting. She 
 had been moved to tell him that she stood in danger 
 of her life if she did but speak a word of civility to 
 a strange gentleman ; and the lawyer had answered 
 that, God be praised, there was yet a gallows-tree in 
 Xewgate forgetting too readily, perhaps, as lawyers 
 are apt to do, that if Count Z. were suspended by 
 the neck, this fact, though reassuring to society at 
 large, might not bring all the compensation desirable 
 to his wife in her coffin. 
 
 Nevertheless, Miss Thompson took heart of grace, 
 und, feeling herself under the protection of the hang- 
 man, resolved that, since the abject appeals of love 
 had had no effect on her husband's heart, she would 
 try what a little jealousy could do. She set off to 
 pay a visit to Mr. Thompson, her father, taking only 
 her maid with her, and without loss of time em- 
 barked in a violent flirtation with a visitor at his 
 house, young Mr. Smith, an officer of the Line. One 
 night young Mr. Smith was picked up in a country 
 road, beaten to a jelly, and with his nose in a puddle. 
 When restored to his wits he stated that a pair of 
 garrotters had waylaid him ; but the police asked how 
 he could reconcile this version with the fact that he 
 had lost neither watch nor money.
 
 A VERY VIRTUOUS SEMI-DETACHED WIFE. 317 
 
 It subsequently reached the Countess's ears, by 
 mere accident, that during the whole time of her 
 sojourn in her father's house her two servants, Do- 
 belwitz and Trikski, whom she believed to be in 
 London, had been residing in the neighbouring town, 
 not three miles from her. There was nothing to 
 implicate them in the discomfiture of Lieutenant 
 Smith, and she was reduced on this point to bare 
 conjecture. But she owned to herself, with an in- 
 ward shudder, that her feet stood, in truth, on slip- 
 pery places, and that it behoved her to mind how 
 she walked. 
 
 More than twelve years have now elapsed since 
 Miss Thompson married the hero of "Warsaw, and 
 from first to last she has never made a slip. Ma- 
 dame Marieneff and the Poles still keep house for 
 her, and between them all she leads the sort of life 
 to which princesses of the blood arid ladies of feeble 
 intellect are subjected. Her enforced propriety has 
 earned her a good name, however, and not a few 
 admiring friends, who may suspect that there is some 
 mystery at the bottom of her life, but know not 
 what. She gives parties, and allays suspicions by 
 remarking that she is expecting the Count home 
 from day to day. She points to letters lying on the 
 table, and alludes to some piece of information which 
 they are supposed to contain, observing that the
 
 318 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 Count is an indefatigable and charming correspon- 
 dent. She also professes poor woman ! to have 
 seen him ' six weeks ago,' or ' last season,' at Brigh- 
 ton or St. Leonards, and to have spent ' a delightful 
 month' with him, though the real truth is that she has 
 not once looked on his face since her wedding-day. 
 
 The Count's political proclivities being well 
 known, he is always reported to be engaged in pre- 
 paring a movement against Russia ; and the Countess 
 adroitly plays her part as a good wife, intrusted with 
 all her husband's secrets, by expressing Russopho- 
 bian sentiments virulent to the intensest degree. In 
 pursuit of this same plan she subscribes to all funds 
 for the relief of sick and wounded Turks, in her hus- 
 band's name as well as her own. She confesses an 
 attachment to the Hungarian cause, pities the French 
 and Danes, has a bust of Garibaldi in her drawing- 
 room, and finds a good many warm things to say in 
 behalf of all revolutionists and exiles. It is a dismal 
 comedy she plays, but it must be owned she plays it 
 well ; and if she harbours as it may well be supposed 
 she does sentiments of the most unquenchable hatred 
 against all foreigners in general, and especially against 
 Poles, she wisely keeps them locked up in that inner- 
 most corner of her heart, where men and women do 
 best to confine those impulses which it would serve 
 them nothing to lay bare.
 
 ULYSSES AND PENELOPE. 319 
 
 VI. 
 
 ULYSSES AND PENELOPE. 
 
 The gilded miseries of Countess Z. have their 
 counterpart, but under a mitigated form, in the life of 
 Penelope, wife of that charming but always absent 
 soldier, Major Ulysses Gallivant, of the Staff. Pene- 
 lope was a good wife at first, and adored Ulysses, till 
 the latter grew tired of her fondling and sent her 
 home to England, under the pretext that the climate 
 of Malta, where he then resided, was not good for her. 
 Evidently the fogs of London were preferable. Galli- 
 vant himself, however, throve well in any climate 
 where there were fair women and snug bachelor 
 quarters. The man loved his ease. Marriage, after 
 the few years' trial he had given it, seemed fraught 
 with considerable drawbacks, not the least of which 
 was that when his wife was present Gallivant could 
 not flirt to the top of his bent. He had a queer con- 
 science, full of loopholes and turnings, and he had 
 ended by persuading himself somehow that, since 
 women may become such potent allies to a man in 
 his career, it would be good for his wife as well as for 
 himself that he should flirt. He would have argued
 
 320 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 in the same way as to the necessity for his getting' 
 regularly drunk, had he cared for drink. As it was, 
 he often took champagne 'for his stomach's sake,' 
 saying to himself that, as bread-winner of his little 
 household, it was his duty above all things to sustain 
 his health with good cheer. But he thought small- 
 beer was good enough for Penelope. 
 
 Ulysses Gallivant was an arrant liar. He lied 
 chiefly because he loved flattery, and must needs for 
 ever be relating adventures in which he had taken a 
 chief part, or explaining big schemes by which he 
 proposed to do wonders for himself, Penelope, and 
 the little ones. His adventures were mostly invented,, 
 and his schemes all came to nothing ; but it was years 
 before Penelope grew tired of hoping in him, and 
 detected his incorrigible mania for fibbing. Lying is 
 the one art in which men do not come to excel by 
 constant practice. On the contrary, lying, to be long 
 successful, should be practised sparingly, and never 
 without reason. Gallivant could not do the simplest 
 thing without enshrouding it with mystery, and tell- 
 ing lies to explain this mysteriousness. So it came to- 
 pass that every letter which he sent home to his wife 
 was full of the most wondrous falsehoods as to what 
 he was going to do, and why he did it. He was going 
 east; perhaps he should be ordered west. He had 
 become the confidant of his General ; the most bril-
 
 ULYSSES AND PENELOPE. 
 
 321 
 
 liaut honours were awaiting him ; he would be home 
 with his wife at Easter, quite certainly not later ; or
 
 322 SIDE-LIGHTS ON ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 he was pining for a sight of her, and could not endure 
 separation any longer. All this simply amounted to 
 saying that U. G., who had promised to be home at 
 Christmas, wanted to join a pleasant party who were 
 going to leave Calcutta to winter in the Hills. At 
 Easter, Gallivant had to join unexpectedly in an 
 expedition to the frontier ; and at midsummer he was 
 ordered with despatches to Cairo. Up the Nile, down 
 the Nile, in the field of battle, in the hunting-field, 
 here, there, everywhere, Gallivant was always coming 
 home, and never came. 
 
 This went on for years, and Penelope in her Lon- 
 don lodgings had to make a decent show of con- 
 tinually expecting the truant to return. But women 
 grow tired of waiting, and Penelope, who was fair r 
 had suitors. Tant pis for Gallivant. The childish 
 fibs which he blew homewards, like inflated toy- 
 balloons, very round and highly coloured, ceased at 
 length to be novel or amusing. Gas, gas, toujours 
 gas, is apt to tire. Penelope could not let her youth 
 be wasted in joyless languor. So long as she kept 
 up appearances, she would assuredly be doing her 
 duty quite as well as Ulysses did his ; and if he 
 were not satisfied, why, he might come home. 
 
 He has not come, and will probably not do so, 
 till some day, disease and disaster falling upon him r 
 he will return to spend the remainder of a peevish
 
 ULYSSES AND PENELOPE. 
 
 323 
 
 querulous old age at the fireside of the wife whom 
 he deserted. Then he will require nursing, and 
 Penelope will have the 
 joyful occupation of put- 
 ting hot flannels on his 
 back and feeding him 
 with cough lozenges. 
 One day he will have a 
 fit, but recover ; then 
 another, but get well 
 again. Penelope will have 
 to waste all her last stock 
 of good looks in tending 
 him through his final struggles with death ; till at 
 length, when her release comes, and she dons her 
 widow's cap, she will see tell-tale gray hairs frizzing 
 out underneath it. The poor woman's liberty will 
 have come too late. After living for years a husband- 
 less wife, she will have to die a husbandless widow ; 
 for of course those suitors who crowded round her 
 whilst Ulysses was away will have taken to flight 
 on his return. Penelope's is a sad story ; but then 
 Ulysses was a sad dog, and there are, unhappily r 
 many like him. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 Hf9*F