George William Erskine Russell

“ Very often the dinner was carved on the table. One could ask for a second slice or another wing without feeling greedy, and the claret and amontillado were within the reach of every guest. This, I consider, was genuine hospitality, for it was natural, easy, and unostentatious.
But now, according to all accounts, the spirit of entertaining is utterly changed. A dinner is not so much an opportunity of pleasing your friends as of airing your own magnificence; and ostentation, despicable in itself, is doubly odious because it is emulous. If A has a good cook, B must have a better. ”

“ The State is built upon the Home; and, as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London.
"Home! Sweet Home!" Yes. (I am quoting now from my friend, Henry Scott Holland.) That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For forty years we have never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their languages by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our honest British Protestant virtues. ”

“ That is what we all repeat, and all believe, and cheer to the echo. And, behind all our British complacency about it, nobody would deny the vital truth that there is in this belief of ours. 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 fountains of national life. A home, to be perfectly a home, should "incorporate tradition, and prolong the reign of the dead." ”

“ Then the fun begins, and the bright hours fly swiftly, till one o'clock suggests the tender thought of supper, which is served on gold plate and Sèvres china in a garden-tent of Gobelins tapestry. And now it is time for a move; and our youth, extricating himself from the undesired attentions of the linkmen, pops into a hansom and speeds to Piccadilly, where he finds delights of a different kind—no Royalty, no pomp, no ceremony; but a warm welcome, and all his intimate friends, and the nicest girls in London eager for a valse. ”

“ Just now, its dark foliage and dusky glades suggest all the romantic associations of Gustave Doré's forests, with a tall trooper of the Life Guards and a bashful nursery-maid, for a Red Cross Knight and an Enchanted Princess. If we go further afield and climb the uplands of Highgate and Hampstead, we look down upon a boundless and beautiful city dimly visible through a golden haze. But the difference between the environs of London now and the same environs when Lord Beaconsfield described them is that they are now united to the centre by an unbroken network of gaslit streets. ”

“ People, who have nothing to do but to amuse themselves, work at that entrancing occupation with redoubled energy on Sundays. If they are in London, they whirl off to spend the "week-end" amid the meretricious splendours of the stockbroker's suburban paradise; and, if they are entertaining friends at their country houses, they play bridge or tennis or croquet; they row, ride, cycle, and drive, spend the afternoon in a punt, and wind up the evening with "The Washington Post." ”

“ For people who had a country house the interests of life were very much bound up in the park and the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket-ground, the kennel, the stable, and the garden. I remember, when I was an undergraduate, lionizing some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to Oxford, then in the "high midsummer pomp" of its beauty. But all they said was, in the pensive tone of an unwilling exile, "How beautifully the sun must be shining on the South Walk at home!" ”

“ However popular or successful or happy a Public-School boy might be at Eton or Harrow, he counted the days till he could return to his pony and his gun, his ferrets and rat-trap and fishing-rod. Amid all the toil and worry of active life, he looked back lovingly to the corner of the cover where he shot his first pheasant, or the precise spot in the middle of the Vale where he first saw a fox killed, and underwent the disgusting baptism of blood.
Girls, living more continuously at home, entered even more intimately into the daily life of the place. ”

“ Religion is coming down to jugglers and table-turnings and philanderings with cults brought, like the rites of Isis, from the East; and as for patriotism, it is turned on like beer at election times, or worked like a mechanical doll by wire-pullers. We belong to one of the most corrupt generations of the human race. To find its equal one must go back to the worst times of the Roman Empire, and look devilish close then. But it's uncommonly amusing to live in an age of decadence; you see the funniest sights and you get every conceivable luxury, and you die before the irruption of the barbarians. ”

“ Poor we have none, and our rich are fled to Scotland or Norway, Homburg or Marienbad. The seats are sparsely tenanted by "stern-faced men" (like those who arrested Eugene Aram) , whom business keeps in London when their hearts are on the moors; over-burdened mothers, with herds of restless schoolboys at home for the holidays and craving for more ardent delights than Stucco Gardens yield; decayed spinsters of the type of Volumnia Dedlock, who, having exhausted the hospitable patience of their ever-diminishing band of friends, are forced to the horrid necessity of spending the autumn in London. ”

“ But here in England we crown our kings as we have crowned them for a thousand years, and our act of crowning is the august symbol of a nation's story and a people's will. For before ever the ministers of God approach the altar, before the sacred emblems of sovereignty are hallowed, before the Christian's Mysteries begin, before the Eternal Spirit is invoked and the consecrating unction bestowed, the English people plays its part, and, through the mouth of its chief citizen asserts its fundamental place in the system of the Kingly Commonwealth. ”

“ But we of the twentieth century live in an age of æsthetic revival, and, though perhaps we do not mourn so heartily, we certainly mourn more prettily. One lady at least there is who knows how to combine the sincerity of sorrow with its becoming manifestation; and Queen Alexandra in mourning garb is as delightful a vision as was Queen Alexandra in her clothing of wrought gold, when she knelt before the altar of Westminster Abbey and bowed her head to receive her diamond crown. ”

“ Giles, as he sits down to dinner after a day of exciting work: "It is a pleasent thing to see an opulent and prosperous man of business, sanguine and full of health and a little overworked, at that royal meal, Dinner. How he enjoys his soup! And how curious in his fish! How critical in his entrée, and how nice in his Welsh mutton! His exhausted brain rallies under the glass of dry sherry, and he realizes all his dreams with the aid of claret that has the true flavour of the violet." "Doctors," said Thackeray, who knew and loved them, "notoriously dine well. ”

“ We follow the direction given, and suddenly we are there—not at Rosebank, but quite out of even Greater London. The street ends abruptly. Trams and trains and gas and shops are left behind, and all at once we are in the country. The road is lined with hedgerows, dusty indeed, but still alive. Elms of respectable dimensions look down upon big fields, with here and there an oak, and cows resting under it. ”

“ I am irresistibly reminded of the Bishop in "Little Dorrit," who, when all the guests were extolling Mr. Merdle's wealth, spoke pensively about "the goods of this world," and "tried to look as if he were rather poor himself." In vain I protested that I meant no injurious allusion to Monte Carlo, and proposed to substitute "Mansions in the Isle of Wight" for "Villas in the Riviera." The substitution availed me nothing. "You say 'Mansions.' Do you really know more than one? And how do you know that the schoolmaster who bought it did not marry a wife with a fortune? ”

“ Lately it has been my privilege to address a considerable gathering of Oxford undergraduates, all keenly alive to the interests and controversies of the present hour, all devotedly loyal to the tradition of Oxford as each understood it, and all with their eyes eagerly fixed on "the wistful limit of the world." With such an audience it was inevitable to insist on the graces and benedictions which Oxford can confer, and to dwell on Mr. Gladstone's dogma that to call a man a "typically Oxford man" is to bestow the highest possible praise. ”

“ The decay of prejudice in the sphere of politics is even more remarkable than in that of religion. In old days, political agreement was a strong and a constraining bond. When people saw a clear right and wrong in politics, they governed their private as well as their public life accordingly. People who held the same political beliefs lived and died together. In society and hospitality, in work and recreation, in journalism and literature—even in such seemingly indifferent matters as art and the drama—they were closely and permanently associated. ”

“ Similarly, the human but unregenerate landowners of fashionable London say, as they survey their possessions, "This Square belongs to me," "That place in the shade is Mine," while the August sun beats down on the malodorous street, and tottering paupers peer wistfully at the benches under the plane trees, and street-boys flatten their noses against the iron railings and madly yearn for cricket-pitches so smooth and green. ”

“ With the exception of Constantinople, there is no city in the world that can for a moment enter into competition with it. For himself, though in his time something of a rambler, he is not ashamed in this respect to confess to a legitimate Cockney taste; and for his part he does not know where life can flow on more pleasantly than in sight of Kensington Gardens, viewing the silver Thames winding by the bowers of Rosebank, or inhaling from its terraces the refined air of graceful Richmond. ”

“ The shadows temper the garish splendour of mosaic and gold and electricity, and enhance the dominant sense of vastness and grandeur. And prayer ascends on the wings of music and sweet boy-voices ring, and the distant altar, with its gleaming lights, focuses the meaning and purpose of the whole. And then the great "Communion of Hymns" unites us all, American and English, Londoner and countryman, as citizens of a city not built with hands, patriots of a country which is not marked on the terrestrial globe. ”

“ Let Peers enjoy their tea; [8]
But whisky, beer, or even wine
Is good enough for me."
[151]
XXI 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.
"He may live without lore—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?" ”

“ Thus we have seen a lady Senior Wrangler and a lady Senior Classic, and I myself have the honour of knowing a sweet girl-graduate with golden hair, who got two Firsts at Oxford.
The face of the earth is covered with Girls' High Schools, and Women's Colleges standing where they ought not. I am told, but do not know, that girl-undergraduates are permitted to witness physiological experiments in the torture-dens of science; and a complete emancipation in the matter of reading has introduced women to regions of thought and feeling which in old days were the peculiar domain of men. ”

“ One can entertain or not entertain, spend much or spend little, live on one's friends or be lived on by them, exactly as one finds most convenient: and unquestionably social freedom is a great element in human happiness.
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. ”

“ But, when all the old battle-cries have died out of our ears, we begin to perceive humaner voices. 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. All the time that we were fighting and fuming, the higher and subtler influences of the place were moulding us, unconscious though we were, to a more gracious ideal. ”

“ We are living in an age of decadence, and we pretend not to know it. There is not a feature wanting, though we cannot mention the worst of them. We are Romans of the worst period, given up to luxury and effeminacy, and caring for nothing but money. We care no more for beauty in art, but only for a brutal realism. Sport has lost its manliness, and is a matter of pigeons from a trap, or a mountain of crushed pheasants to sell to your own tradesmen. ”

“ If our friend cannot afford to lose £50 in an evening he will not be asked to dine at a house which reckons itself as belonging to "the Mode"; or if, for old acquaintance' sake, he is allowed to find a place at the dinner-table, he is compelled to sit all the evening by the least attractive daughter of the house, or to listen to some fogey, too fossilized for Bridge, discoursing on the iniquities of Mr. Birrell's Bill. "Tobacco," said Lord Beaconsfield, "is the Tomb of Love." If he were with us now, he would pronounce that Bridge is the Extinguisher of Hospitality. ”