Glimpses Of London Society

( Originally Published 1912 )

BOUGHTON, the painter, declared London to be the most hospitable city in the world. "You need not be distinguished or of aristocratic birth, but you must be interesting or have done something interesting — that's all they ask here," he said, speaking of the passports necessary for social recognition.

Without going as far as Boughton, I think there is no other city in the world where one may meet such diversified people under one roof as there, where even modest achievement gains a foothold for itself in the company of prelates and patricians, statesmen and leaders of the professions, both learned and artistic.

Literature, science, and art are recognized socially to a greater extent than elsewhere, though, to be sure, there are some houses which, more than others, restrict themselves to people of their own class and political or' religious affiliation.

Let me recall a house in Harley Street where at luncheon, dinner, or in the drawing-room you were sure to meet most of the celebrities of the day. There you might see the dapper Lord Roberts, the taciturn Kitchener, and the vivacious Wolseley. Whatever party was in power, whether the prime minister was Mr., Gladstone, oracular and gracious, or Lord Salisbury, reticent and cold, or Mr. Balfour, debonair, smiling, and suave -- the prime minister came, and between him and a duchess might be placed Henry Irving (one could never meet him that he did not ask one to something, to supper in the Beefsteak Room or to a tremendous dinner), or Ellen Terry (who to the children of the house was always "Aunt Nellie"), or George Grossmith, or Lord Kelvin, or Lord Leighton, or the lord chief justice; while somewhere down the table you might find a new-born dramatist whose piece had just been produced, or a young novelist who had done something out of the common, or some one like Burnham, the American scout, after his return from service against the Boers in South Africa. Trojan and Tyrian sat peacefully at the same table judges and barristers, Liberals and Conservatives, Irish Nationalists and Unionists, such as Colonel Sanderson, the belligerent member for Ulster; ambassadors, editors, and actors. But no one was there who had not won distinction of some kind.

I will call the hostess Lady B . Punch had a picture of Stanley in the African bush with a bushman saluting him as he pushed through the jungle.

"We. have met before," says the bushman, to the surprise of the explorer.

"Indeed! Where?"

"At Lady B 's "

One day, when I was making a call, we spoke of a brilliant and erratic man who had come to grief in a recent scandal. He had been convicted of perjury, and had disappeared from the haunts in New York and London where his wit had made him welcome.

With a sly look from her husband to me, she said: "He was so nice, and isn't it a pity? But I dare say that the next time you come to England you'll find him here again."

"Never!" cried her husband, who was one of the most distinguished of English judges. "I" — with extreme emphasis on the pronoun — "I draw the line at those who have been in jail."

"Oh, don't be so narrow, dear," she protested. "They are the most interesting people in the world."

Diversified as the guests were and dissimilar in creed, station, politics, and occupations, the influence of her personality was always sufficient to reconcile them and interest them in one another. Politics and religion were of course, always eschewed in conversation, but ample latitude was given for the amicable discussion of other topics. As an instance of this freedom, I remember that at one of the dinners, which included several peers, an aggressive and satirical young man who edited one of the leading English reviews declared: "There's nothing I enjoy more than rejecting an article by a member of the House of Lords. He's sure to be a duffer!"

Did their lordships bridle and darken? Did the others show anxiety — the hostess alarm? Not a bit of it. Everybody laughed.

"You do occasionally publish articles by such people,the Duke of Marlborough for instance," one of the peers suggested, referring not to the present duke but to his father.

"Ah, yes! But see what a blackguard he is! He's quite eligible on that account."

Thereupon he launched out into derision of England. As all who ride in omnibuses know, the scale of fares in England is often based on the distance between one tavern and another, as between the Red Lion and the Angel, or between the Cat and the Fiddle and the Elephant and Castle. "The only country in the world that measures its stages from pub to pub," he cried scornfully, making this but one count in a comprehensive indictment of England's depravity. Nobody minded. They all took him humorously. He was one of the successes of the dinner. And I may add that, of all people, the Englishman of modern society is the least touchy under criticism. He likes nothing more than raillery against his national foibles. And this critic was a professional railer; he was then the editor of an important review.

One night I sat at the right of Lord Randolph Churchill, who was only one chair removed from the host, and the conversation between them turned on the difficulties of public speaking. "Have you ever been embarrassed by finding that after telling your audience there were three points to which you particularly wished to call their attention, and elaborating the first two, you could not remember a word of what you meant to say on the third?"

The question was asked by the host.

Lord Randolph was then plainly a doomed and shattered man. He shook as if in a palsy; his voice was woolly and stuttering, almost unintelligible. The ladies had retired to the drawing-room, and he put on the table before him a case of cigarettes, which he smoked greedily. Only half the case held cigarettes; the other half was filled with cotton wool, a fresh piece of which he rammed into his amber holder for each smoke, his purpose being, I suppose, to reduce the nicotine. But notwithstanding his battered appearance, his mind seemed as acute as ever.

"Yes," he replied, out of a cloud of smoke, "that has happened to me more than once, but it never gave me trouble. I found an easy way out.

'Gentlemen,' I have said to them, I told you that there were three things which I desired to emphasize. I have mentioned two, only two. Much more, very much more could be said, but I appeal to your intelligence. Is it necessary for me to go any further? to waste any more of your time or my own on a question, the answer to which is so obvious? Haven't I said enough to convince you as fully as I am convinced my-self?' They have been quite satisfied with this, and while they were applauding I have swung into another part of the subject. Gross duplicity, but it has saved me as, sometimes, only duplicity will do."

At another dinner I sat next to a plump and florid lady of most discomposing urgency. I had not met her before, and was ignorant even of her name. She preened herself for a moment, and then, without any preliminaries beyond a glance down the table, a pick at her skirt, and a touch of her tiara, plunged the question, with her eyes disturbingly focused on mine: "Do you believe in platonic love?"

It struck me that this was not quite fair —that she ought to have given me some warning. With a consciousness of fatuity and futility, I shambled into the reply, "Let me think about it, but in the meantime hadn't you better ask Lord B ?"

I had presence of mind enough, at all events, to refer her to the proper quarter for information. Lord B had the misfortune, as he put it, to preside in that court which is more likely than any other experience to make a cynic of a man.

"Lord B do you believe in platonic love?"

He lost no time in his answer: "I have heard of it, but I never met a case of it in the divorce court."

He was one of the most delightful men I have ever had the good fortune to meet; lofty in thought and dignified in bearing, impressive in appearance and in voice, simple in taste and manner, kind beyond words, and, like his wife, never happier than when surrounded by their multitudinous friends.

Strange as it may seem, the judges who try divorce cases in England are also judges of probate and of admiralty. I remember Lord B - saying to me, in reference to an admiralty case he had tried, that the only conclusion you could come to from the evidence in cases of collision at sea was that no collision had occurred, because by the testimony, the captain and crew of each ship had strictly and scrupulously obeyed the rules of the road, so that collision must have been impossible.

Taking the liveliest interest in his maritime cases, he decided on one occasion to make a personal test of the colour sense of two captains who were in dispute before him, and took them with him to those disastrous Channel shoals, the Goodwin Sands, near the estuary of the Thames, where passes inward and outward the most important part of the empire's traffic. Neither of the men could distinguish in the dark between the reds and greens of the steering-lights, and they were also bewildered by the vagaries of the transmission of sound through fogs.

Most of the judges and many barristers were, of course, frequent among the guests of that house. I have been at the Royal Courts of Justice in the afternoon, and watched them, gowned and bewigged, at their solemn work the judges precise, austere, portentous, Rhadamanthine; the barristers deferential, ingratiating, and all attention. Then they have assembled at dinner in the evening, like Olympians descending from their pedestals, as worldly-wise, as merry, and as familiar as common mortals. Who could have been more human and amusing than the late Lord Chief Justice Russell of Killowen (once Sir Charles Russell), a stately, hand-some man of commanding presence; or his successor, the present Lord Chief Justice Alverstone, who, when he can be persuaded to sing after dinner, may select W. S. Gilbert's nonsensical song from "Trial by Jury," and rattle it off with the greatest spirit — the song in which the judge describes his early days when he had

A couple of shirts and a collar or two, And a ring that looked like a ruby.

The late Justice Day was another guest, he upon whose name was obvious and easy play. In criminal trials he was so severe that he became " Judgment Day "; when he married, ` Wedding Day "; at Bristol, "Day of Reckoning"; and one day when he was seen to nod on the bench, "Day of Rest." Once, when he was trying a case, a prolix barrister tried his patience, and at the end of a long and tedious speech spoke of some bags which were in question. " They might, me lud, have been full bags, or half-full bags, or again they might have been empty bags."

"Quite so, quite so," the judge assented, adding dryly and significantly : "Or they might have been wind bags."

On one occasion the conversation turned to the thoroughness of the administration of the law in Great Britain. "We sweat the law in England to get all the justice out of it we can," declared a vivacious gentleman who sat next to me, and I infer that no one doubted his sincerity or the truth of what he said. He soon drifted into a very different topic, and showed his preference for it — the turf. He was called " the sporting judge," and it was whispered that at dawn on the days before the Derby you could find him in mufti on Epsom Downs, a cloth cap on his head, following the horses as they were exercised, and making up his mind about them before he took the train to town for his seat on the bench. He was jokingly asked for "tips," and, after protesting that they were worth nothing, offered one "for a consideration." What was the "consideration" to be ? "The best golf ball that can be bought in England."

Gossip said that his knowledge of the turf had helped him to the bench. At the races, the wife of a lord chancellor asked him to put a trifle for her on a horse of his own selection. He did so, and won. When he handed the winnings to her she complimented him.

"What an excellent judge you are."

And, as he bowed, he whispered, "Please say that to the lord chancellor. I am not as good a judge as he can make me."

His appointment followed. But that was probably a mere coincidence, if it was not invented out of whole cloth for the sake of the story. He was an ornament to the bench, learned and enlightened, witty, human — a popular judge, if such a thing can be.

"You'll be kind to us if any of us are brought before you?" some one inquired. His face, as mobile as an actor's, wrinkled, and he pricked the questioner with his poignant eyes. "I shall surely see that justice is done," he replied dryly, leaving an implication, tacit but unescapable, that innocence would not be taken for granted.

That a man in his position should be an avowed lover of the turf may ruffle American prejudices, but it is to be remembered that horse-racing is the national sport of the United Kingdom; it attracts all classes, and nearly every man, from king to cabman, puts "a bit on the 'osses."

Argument and long speeches being discouraged, the talk at such houses is likely to be desultory; one often wished that one could have an expansion of what came to one only in provoking fragments. There were flares, without lasting illumination. A ball was neatly thrown and caught, and while one was admiring the skill with which two players were handling it between them, it passed to the other end of the table and dropped out of sight.

The late Lord Dufferin came in to luncheon very late one day, and after he had apologized to the hostess, he whispered to me that he had been detained at his home by the late Earl of Kimberley. "A wonderful man — a fascinating man! It is amazing how much he knows. He knows everything — everything! — all the corners of the earth and all the men in it. Except," — a pause — "except when to stop."

Discretion of that kind is essential in London nowadays. Doctor Johnson would not be tolerated, and Macaulay, rightly indignant, would go home surcharged with the undistributed and pent-up encyclopaedic erudition which a frivolous world, unappreciative of its needs, turns its back on.

Of course a few bores were there, but they were rare. They were apt to be of the kind that favours the paradox and the inversion, the fashionable trick of flouting the orthodox and the conventional, and saying the exact opposite of what is expected. Sometimes that passes for wit, or honest revolt, but it takes an Oscar Wilde, or a Shaw to make it illusive and more than a transparent and laborious trick.

Ada Rehan was another frequent guest " Aunt Ada" to the children, who were as much at home behind the scenes in the evening with her, or with "Aunt Nellie," as they were in their own house.

The stage in England is a part of society. Not long ago I picked up a century-old biographical dictionary of actors, and looked up their parentage. They nearly all were the offspring of people in humble circumstances, who also had been actors or innkeepers, wig makers, and small tradesmen. Refer to the last edition of "Who's Who," and see how many of them are college and university men, who have left the law or medicine, or the army or the navy, to wear the sock and buskin without reproach. You meet actors constantly in English society, not merely those who are famous, like Irving or Tree, but also those who are novices in the profession. I remember seeing Henry Irving implored by a personage of the highest rank to visit him, and how curtly and with ill-concealed indifference Irving "turned down" — the slang somehow fits the incident what might have seemed to be a conspicuous honour. And some of us are left who can recall a dinner at which a lord chief justice, when invited to respond to the toast of "England," replied that as Irving was present he was the better man for the ceremony.

Nor do I forget how Sarah Bernhardt once kept us waiting nearly an hour for luncheon. For the rest of us it may not have mattered, but Mr. Balfour was there detained beyond his usual hour for getting to the House of Commons. When she came in, radiant and childishly unconscious of delinquency, we all could have excused him if he had revealed a little coolness and impatience. He had been restless and anxious before, but as soon as she came he fell under her spell, as Antony under Cleopatra's, and, without a word or look of upbraiding, devoted himself to her for fully another half hour — meanwhile leaving us in apprehension lest the empire should disintegrate in the absence of that astute and faithful helmsman.

One could not help contrasting Ellen Terry and Ada Rehan, the former so volatile and demonstrative, so suggestive of her art, the latter so shy and uncommunicative, so sparing in the use of that melodious voice which thrilled us in the theatre. I once urged Miss Rehan to write her reminiscences.

"Ah, no!" she sighed. "I'm not a writer; I'm nothing but an actress. I believe the cobbler is wise in sticking to his last."

She was always unaffectedly diffident as to her abilities, even when in her ascendancy she had three countries at her feet.

One saw many contrasts there — Thomas Hardy, small, retiring, sensitive, melancholy, self-effacing, and Harold Frederic, an overgrown boy of thirty-odd, exuberant, beaming, self-confident, and cocksure, who could talk about himself and his achievements by the hour and make us glow over them as much as he himself did. What would have offended in another became mysteriously charming in him. He made egotism pleasant by hypnotizing us into his own point of view, and his glory became ours.

When he told us how he had made Grover Cleveland President of the United States, we had to believe him; and when he declared that if he chose he could be President himself, it did not seem in the least ridiculous. He had the complacency and assurance of a boastful boy, and yet, instead of being odious, his defects were transmuted and struck us only as a vein of engaging and humorous ingenuousness.

After all, self-appreciation is sincere, while self-depreciation may be open to suspicion. People differed about him, as they do about all of us, but most of us found him lovable without shutting our eyes to his faults, which were those of irresponsiblity, fortuity, and instability, rather than of premeditation or hardness.

Generous and infectiously good-humoured with those he cared for, he was a fierce champion of their perfection and would not compromise on less than the admission of that. He did not discriminate when friendship bound him; the enemy of a friend became his enemy, and he espoused his friend's cause as relentlessly as though it had been his own. He was always holding a brief for some one.

Only great persuasion could bring him out to such parties as I have been describing. He had a coterie of his own which he preferred — authors, politicians, painters, and actors. You could find him at the Savage Club, or the National Liberal Club, among the Radicals and Irish Nationalists. Most of his work was done in dingy and haunted chambers in Furnival's Inn, and some of it in the suburban villa he had at Surbiton, which he called Oneida Lodge, after his native place, a name distorted, much to his amusement, by those who came to the back door, into "One-eyed Lodge."

It was strange to see the Marquis of Dufferin and Frederic at the same table, for in Frederic's novel, "The Market Place," that nobleman — under a fictitious name, of course — had been portrayed as the dupe of the upstart financier, whose original was plainly drawn from Whittaker Wright, the blower of bubbles, the prodigious swindler, who, when he found English law inexorable, poisoned himself in the dock as soon as a long-term sentence on him had been pronounced.

The novel could not have been pleasant to Lord Dufferin, for, though his counterfeit was illusory in the text, the illustrator drew an unmistakable likeness of him in the pictures; the graceful figure, the highbrowed, intellectual head, and the courtier like mien. You could never have seen him for a moment without recognizing in him a distinguished man. There was not a bit of pomposity about him. He was full of humour and sympathy; but below the smiling surface one could perceive the diplomat, cautious, discriminating, and deliberate, who made all his contacts provisionally and sensed them through invisible antennae. That in the end he could become the dupe of such a man as Whittaker Wright is incomprehensible and inexplicable. He emerged from that scandal with his honour untarnished and his fortune gone; it probably was the irreparable wound to his pride that killed him.

I must not leave the reader with the idea that Thomas Hardy is always sombre. I think he resents being classed as a pessimist. The humour that flashes in his novels streaks and illumines his conversation also. One day we left a luncheon party together, and he looked comically at the ruffled and veined nap of his hat. "I had meant to get a new one," he sighed, "but then my publisher sent my copyright account, and I couldn't."

At another luncheon, the host exhibited some trophies of travel, including the war club of Sitting Bull. As Hardy swung the weapon, which taxed his strength, he murmured, "How much I should like to have that in my hand when I encounter the critic who calls 'Jude the Obscure,' 'Jude the Obscene'!"

A little laughter did not relieve the embarrassment of some of us who heard him, for the culprit was among us. She was the lady who had sat next to him.

The company always included many delightful women, and I remember the consternation caused among them one day by Burnham, the scout. He explained that he attributed his success as a scout to the acuteness of his sense of smell; it was like a bloodhound's. "There's no one here to-day," he affirmed, "who at any time anywhere in the future I could not recognize in the dark. Yes, I could tell you, and you, and you," nodding at an alluring group in modish apparel, "by the way you smell."

For an awful moment the conversation flagged.