George William Erskine Russell

“ It is the Prince of Wales who transacts its ceremonial business, and exhibits to the masses the embodiment of the monarchical principle. If there were no Marlborough House, there would be no Court in London. The house of the Prince of Wales may be an unsatisfactory substitute for a Court, but it is the only substitute which exists, and it is the best which, under the circumstances, is attainable.
"In his attitude to English Society, the Prince of Wales is a benevolent despot. He wishes it to enjoy itself, to disport itself, to dance, sing, and play to its heart's content. ”

“ These are the amenities of electioneering; but a man who enters on a political campaign expecting fair treatment from his opponents is indeed walking in a vain shadow. The ordinary rules of fairplay and straightforward conduct are forgotten at an election. In a political contest people say and do a great many things of which in every-day life they would be heartily ashamed. An election-agent of the old school once said to me in the confidence of after-dinner claret, "For my own part, when I go into a fight, I go in to win, and I'm not particular to a shade or two." ”

“ When Parliament met in February, 1877, he was ready with all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the Turkish Government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he sustained the strife with a versatility, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised the enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, and filled his antagonists with a rage akin to frenzy. ”

“ It is only made endurable to them by sport and gambling and boisterous house-parties; and when, from one cause or another, these resources fail, they are frankly bored, and long for London. They are no longer content, as our fathers were, to entertain their friends with hospitable simplicity. So profoundly has all society been vulgarized by the worship of the Golden Calf that, unless people can vie with alien millionaires in the sumptuousness with which they "do you"—delightful phrase,—they prefer not to entertain at all. An emulous ostentation has killed hospitality. ”

“ Yet another personage of intellectual fame who was to be met in Society was Robert Browning, the least poetical-looking of poets. Trim, spruce, alert, with a cheerful manner and a flow of conversation, he might have been a Cabinet Minister, a diplomatist, or a successful financier, almost anything except what he was. "Browning," growled Tennyson, "I'll predict your end. You'll die of apoplexy, in a stiff choker, at a London dinner-party." ”

“ Mr. Harcourt, to whom we are so much indebted, was still at Eton. Piccadilly had not been widened. The Arches at Hyde Park Corner had not been re-arranged. Glorious Whitehall was half occupied by shabby shops; and labyrinths of slums covered the sites of Kingsway and Shaftesbury Avenue.
But, though London is now a much prettier place than it was then, I doubt if it is as socially magnificent. The divinity which hedged Queen Victoria invested her occasional visits to her Capital with a glamour which it is difficult to explain to those who never felt it. ”

“ Dinner and luncheon and supper must, I suppose, be reckoned among the permanent facts of life; but there is, or was, one meal of which I have witnessed the unwept disappearance. It had its roots in our historic past. It clung to its place in our social economy. It lived long and died hard. It was the Breakfast-Party. When I first lived in London, it was, like some types of human character, vigorous but unpopular. No one could really like going out to breakfast; but the people who gave Breakfast-Parties were worthy and often agreeable people ”

“ Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really vinous. ”

“ Fill all these streets, and a dozen others like them, with rank and wealth and fashion, youth and beauty, pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence, and you have described the concentric circles of which Marlborough House was the heart. Sydney Smith, no mean authority on the social capacities of London, held that "the parallelogram between Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Hyde Park, enclosed more intelligence and ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world had ever collected in such a space before." ”

“ I can remember quite clearly that, even in my Harrow days, the idea of Life as Service was always present to my mind: and it was constantly enforced by the preaching of such men as Butler, Westcott, and Farrar.
"Here you are being educated either for life or for fashion. Which is it? What is your ambition? Is it to continue, with fewer restrictions, the amusements which have engrossed you here? Is it to be favourite or brilliant members of a society which keeps want and misery at a distance? ”

“ Under the shock of the surprise, London suddenly awoke to the consciousness of a corporate life. On every side men were stirred by an honest impulse to give the experiment a good start; to work the new machine for all it was worth; and to make the administration of Greater London a model for all lesser municipalities. The Divisions of London, for the purposes of its new Council, were the same as its Parliamentary Divisions, but each constituency returned two members, and the City four. ”

“ The "Menu" of a dinner at the Ship Hotel at Greenwich lies before me as I write. It contains turtle soup, eleven kinds of fish, two entrées, a haunch of venison, poultry, ham, grouse, leverets, five sweet dishes, and two kinds of ice. Well, those were great days—we shall not look upon their like again. Let a poet [28] who knew what he was writing about have the last word on Dinner.
"We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without Cooks. ”

“ As I look back over all the entertainments which I have ever seen in London, I can recall nothing to compare with a Ball at Grosvenor House, in the days of Hugh, Duke of Westminster, and his glorious wife. No lesser epithet than "glorious" expresses the combination of beauty, splendour, and hospitable enjoyment, which made Constance, Duchess of Westminster, so unique a hostess. Let me try to recall the scene.
Dancing has begun in a tentative sort of way, when there is a sudden pause, and "God Save the Queen" is heard in the front hall. ”

“ In a London home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots through the back-windows of the nursery will not elevate even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, [Pg 128] no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the previous owners are not known to you even by name. ”

“ In the present day, if a season of financial pressure sets in, people shut up their country houses, let their shooting, cut themselves off with a sigh of relief from all the unexciting duties and simple pleasures of the Home, and take refuge from boredom in the delights of London. In London life has no duties. ”

“ Home is the secret of our honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn, with all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never [Pg 127] die out of their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with father and mother, in the healthy gladness of their childhood. ”

“ A curious tradition of privileged insolence, which runs through all English history from the days when great men kept Jesters and the Universities had their Terræ Filii, asserts itself, by immemorial usage, at an election. People who would be perfectly civil if one called on them in the ordinary way, and even rapturously grateful if they could sell one six boxes of lucifers or a pound of toffee, permit themselves a freedom of speech to the suppliant candidate, which tests the fibre of his manhood. ”

“ My home was intensely Evangelical, and I lived from my earliest days in an atmosphere where the salvation of the individual soul was the supreme and constant concern of life. No form of worldliness entered into it, but it was full of good works, of social service, and of practical labour for the poor. All life was lived, down to its minutest detail, "as ever in the great task-Master's eye." ”

“ We must be impatient of a state of society in which healthy dwellings and unadulterated food and pure water and fresh air are made the monopolies of the rich. We must be eager to do our part [Pg 361] towards abolishing filth and eradicating disease, and giving free scope to those beneficent laws of Nature which, if only we will obey them, are so manifestly designed to promote the welfare and the longevity of man. If we believe that every human being has equally and indefeasibly the right to be happy, we must find our chief interest and most satisfying occupation in Social Service. ”

“ At the sound of these voices the old idols fell—Laissez-faire and Laissez-aller, Individualism and Self-content, Unrestricted Competition and the Survival of the Fittest. They all went down with a crash, like so many dishonoured Dagons; and, before their startled worshippers had time to reinstate them, yet another voice of warning broke upon our ears. The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, describing the enormous amount of preventable misery caused by over-crowding, startled men into recognizing the duty of the State to cope with the evil. ”

“ On the whole, I owe my chief enjoyment to Scott, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and to Pickwick more than to any single book. But I think the keenest thrill of intellectual pleasure which I ever felt passed through me when, as a boy at Harrow, I first read Wordsworth's "Daffodils."
Our home, in its outward aspects, was extremely bright and cheerful. We had, as a family, a keen sense of fun, much contempt for convention, and great fluency of speech; and our material surroundings were such as to make life enjoyable. ”

“ But, when all the old battle-cries have died out of our ears, gentler voices begin to make themselves heard. All at once we realize that a great part of our old contentions was only sound and fury and self-deception, and that, though the causes for which we strove may have been absolutely right, our opponents were not necessarily villains. In a word, we have learnt the Secret of Oxford. ”

“ Whatever tends to make the Home beautiful, attractive, romantic—to associate it with the ideas of pure pleasure and high duty—to connect it not only with all that was happiest, but also with all that was best, in early years—whatever fulfils these purposes purifies the fountain of national life. A home, to be [Pg 142] perfectly a home, should "incorporate tradition, and prolong the reign of the dead." It should animate those who dwell in it to virtue and beneficence, by reminding them of what others did, who went before them in the same place, and lived amid the same surroundings. ”

“ That London as well as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. ”

“ It mattered nothing that he had never seen his host or hostess, nor they him. Corney Grain expressed the situation in his own inimitable verse:
"Old Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball—
And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all.
Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed,
And the guest said 'Good-night' to the butler instead."
But light come, light go. Ball-going is elysian when one is very young and cheerful and active, but it is a pleasure which, for nine men out of ten, soon palls. Dinner-society, as Cardinal Grandison knew, is a more serious affair, and admission to it is not so lightly attained. ”

“ Five and thirty years have sped their course. My Home in the country has ceased to exist; and I find myself numbered among that goodly company who, in succeeding ages, have loved London and found it their natural dwelling-place. I fancy that Lord St. Aldwyn is too much of a sportsman to applaud the sentiment of his ancestor who flourished in the reign of Charles II., but it is exactly mine.
"London is the only place of England to winter in, whereof many true men might be put for examples. If the air of the streets be fulsome, then fields be at hand. ”

“ It must be remembered that "dining" is not the only form of eating. Mr. Gladstone, who thought modern luxury rather disgusting, used to complain that nowadays life in a country house meant three dinners a day, and, if you reckoned sandwiches and poached eggs at five o'clock tea, nearly four. [Pg 179] Indeed, the only difference that I can perceive between a modern luncheon and a modern dinner is that at the former meal you don't have soup or a printed Menu. There have always been some houses where the luncheons were much more famous than the dinners. ”

“ Forces were working side by side which knew nothing of each other, but which were all tending to the same result. The Church, boldly casting aside the trammels which had bound her to wealth and culture, went down into the slums; brought the beauty and romance of Worship to the poorest and the most depraved, and compelled them to come in. ”