Part 6 (2/2)
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 circulish 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 But he desires that it should do so in the right ht places; and of these conditions he holds that he is the best, and, indeed, an infallible, judge
”The Prince of Wales is the Bismarck of London society: he is also its microcosm All its idiosyncrasies are reflected in the person of His Royal Highness Its hopes, its fears, its aspirations, its solicitudes, its susceptibilities, its philosophy, its way of looking at life and of appraising character--of each of these is the Heir-Apparent the ht for, I should be inclined to give it as the social area of which the Prince of Wales is personally cognizant, within the limits of which he visits, and every member of which is to sohness But for this central authority, Society in London would be in i into the same chaos and collapse as the universe itself, were one of the great laws of nature to be suspended for five racious lady who is now Queen Mother, I may trust myself to speak I first saw her at Harrow Speeches, when I was a boy of 18, and from that day to this I have admired her more than any woman whom I have ever seen To the flawless beauty of the face there was added that wonderful char youth which no sumptuosities of dress and decoration could conceal To see the Princess in Society was in those days one of ested to my mind the idea of a Puritan Maiden set in the midst of Vanity Fair
We have seen that the centre of Society at the period which I ah House, and that centre was encircled by rings of various coton in the one direction, and Port was composed of personal friends, and, as personal friendshi+p belongs to private life, wewas coreat houses--”The Palaces,” as Pennialinus[23] calls theuished by numbers, but are called ”House,” with a capital H And first a these I must place Grosvenor House As I look back over all the entertain to coh, Duke of Westlorious 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 un in a tentative sort of hen there is a sudden pause, and ”God Save the Queen” is heard in the front hall The Prince and Princess of Wales have arrived, and their entrance is a pageant worth seeing With courtly grace and pretty poreat gallery, walled with the canvasses of Rubens, which serves as a dancing-rooht hours fly swiftly till one o'clock suggests the tender thought of supper, which is served on gold plate and Sevres china in a garden-tent of Gobelins tapestry ”'What a perfect fao Bohun, as he extracted a couple of fat little birds fro they do in such perfect taste How safe you were to have ortolans for supper!'”[24]
Next in my recollection to Grosvenor House, but after a considerable interval, co than the other; built by the Duke of York and bought by the Duke of Sutherland, with a hall and staircase designed by Barry, perfect in proportion, and so harliola_ ht deceive the very elect into the belief that it is marble There, as at Grosvenor House, ealth and splendour and the highest rank; a hospitable host and a handsouished Grosvenor House, was lacking, and the aspect of the whole place, on an evening of entertainment, was rather that of aCross, the abode of the historic Percys, had disappeared before I ca place to Northumberland Avenue; but there were plenty of ”Houses” left Near where the Percys had flourished, the Duke of Buccleuch, a u House, and Londoners have not yet forgotten that, when the Thahfare should be deflected, so that itdown to the river In the faewater House, Lord Beaconsfield harangued his disconsolate supporters after the disastrous election of 1880, and predicted that Conservative revival which he did not live to see Close by at Spencer House, a beautiful specimen of the decorative work of the Brothers Adaather round the host, who looked like a Van dyke Another of their resorts was Devonshi+re House, which Horace Walpole pronounced ”good and plain as the Duke of Devonshi+re who built it” There the 7th Duke, as a mathematician and a scholar, but no lover of society, used to hide behind the door in sheer terror of his guests, while his son, Lord Hartington, afterwards 8th Duke, gazed with ill-concealed aversion on his political supporters Lansdowne House was, as it still is, a Palace of Art, with all the dignity and amenity of a country house, planted in the very heart of London During the last quarter of a century the creation of Liberal Unionism has made it the headquarters of a political party; but, at the time of which I write, it was only a place of select and beautiful entertaining
Apsley House, the abode of ”The Son of Waterloo,” could not, in my ti as a ton relics Norfolk House was, as it is, the headquarters of Roman Catholic society, and there, in 1880, was seen the unique sight of Matthew Arnold doing obeisance to Cardinal New party[25] Dorchester House, architecturally considered, is beyond doubt the grandest thing in London; in those days occupied by the accomplished Mr Holford, who built it, and now let to the American Ambassador
Chesterfield House, with its arcaded staircase of marble and bronze froeware, was built by the fourth Lord Chesterfield, as he tells us, ”a the fields;” and contains the library in which he wrote his fa the acknowledged sanctuary of the Whig party, still stands ah its hayfields have, I fear, fallen into the builders' hands Macaulay's Essay, if nothing else, will always preserve it from oblivion
I have written so far about these ”Houses,” because in virtue of their i characteristics they formed, as it were, an inner, if not the innerh House But of course Society did not dwell exclusively in ”Houses,” and any social chronicler of the period which I a stretch of Piccadilly, dividing the ”W” from the ”SW” district On the upper side of it, Portman Square, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, the Grosvenor Streets and Brook Streets, Curzon Street, Charles Street, Hill Street; and below, St Jarave Square and Eaton Square, Lowndes Square and Cheshaton, we coe, Nor its social career on the coe of the present Speaker,[26] April 1st, 1876 Below it, Prince's Gate and Queen's Gate and Prince's Gardens, and all the wilds of South Kensington, then half reclai territory, not even half reclaiement, has of late years developed into a ”residential quarter” of high repute Fill all these streets, and a dozen others like them, with rank and wealth and fashi+on, 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 parallelograent Street, and Hyde Park, enclosedof wealth and beauty, than the world had ever collected in such a space before” This was very well for Sydney (who lived in Green Street); but he flourished when Belgravia had barely been discovered, when South Kensington was undreamed-of; and, above all, before the Heir Apparent had fixed his abode in Pall Mall Had he lived till 1863, he would have had to enlarge his irls who adorned Society when I first knew it, I will not speak A sacred awe makes me mute The ”Professional Beauties” and ”Frisky Matrons” who disgraced it, have, I hope, long since repented, and it would be unkind to revive their na, the ”cheery boys,” the ”dancing dogs,”--the Hugo Bohuns and the Freddy Du Canes--can be iood fellows; friendly, sociable, and obliging; but their ; and the companionshi+p of a club or a ballroom seemed rather vapid when compared with Oxford:--
”Theyouth that went there, The shi+ning, unforgettable, imperial days we spent there”
But here and there, swi rare in the vast whirlpool of Society, one used to encounter remarkable faces Most remarkable was the face of Lord Beaconsfield,--past seventy, though nobody kno much; with his black-dyed hair in painful contrast to the corpse-like pallor of his face; with his Blue Ribbon and dia eyes which still bespoke his unconquerable vitality
Someti round toward the back of his neck, and a rose in his button-hole, looking like a rather unwilling captive in the hands of Mrs Gladstone, who nity of bearing which had distinguished her ever since the days when she and her sister, Lady Lyttelton, were ”the beautiful Miss Glynnes” Robert Lowe, not yet Lord Sherbrooke, was a celebrity who ure with his ruddy face, snohite hair, and purblind gaze The first Lord Lytton--Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist--was dead before I came to London; but his brilliant son, ”Owen Meredith,” in the intervals of official eure in Society; curled and oiled and decorated, with a countenance of Sehton--toof hereditary friends--had a personality and a position altogether his own His appearance was typically English; hisas a Frenchman's Thirty years before he had been drawn by a master-hand as Mr Vavasour in _Tancred_, but no lapse of time could stale his infinite variety He was poet, essayist, politician, public orator, country gentleoer, and acted each part with equal zest and assiduity When I first knew hiton Street, froe a la mode” The site is now occupied by the Ritz Hotel, and his friendly ghost still seems to haunt the Piccadilly which he loved
”There on warm, mid-season Sundays, Fryston's bard is wont to wend, Whoenial friend; Knohere shrewd hard-handed craftsmen cluster round the northern kilns, He whohton, but the Gods call dicky Milnes”[27]
When first I entered Society, I caught sight of a face which instantly arrested my attention A very smallchin, and trenchant nose, the remains of reddish hair, and an extremely alert and vivacious expression The broad Red Ribbon of a GCB uished person; and I discovered that he was the Lord Chief Justice of England,--Sir Alexander cockburn, one of the ures in the social annals of the 'thirties and 'forties, the ”Hortensius” of _Endymion_, whose ”sunny face and voice of music” had carried him out of the ruck of London dandies to the chief seat of the British judicature, and had made him the hero of the Tichborne Trial and the Alabae of intellectual fa, the least poetical-looking of poets Trim, spruce, alert, with a cheerful ht have been a Cabinet Minister, a diplo 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”
The strealed, and, at the period of which I aton, afterwards, as 8th Duke of Devonshi+re, leader of the Liberal Unionists,in doorways and corners Mr Arthur Balfour, weedy and as rereat possessions, who had written an unintelligible book butin Parlia absurdly youthful, was spoken of as cherishi+ng lofty ambitions
Later on, I may perhaps say ured in it; but now I hts and shows Matthew Arnold once wrote to his mother: ”I think you will be struck with the aspect of London in May; the wealth and brilliancy of it is es, the riders, and the walkers in Hyde Park, on a fine evening in May or June, are alone worth coh written some years before, was eminently true of Rotten Row and its adjacent drives when I first frequented them Frederick Locker, a minor poet of Society, asked in some pensive stanzas on Rotten Row:
”But where is now the courtly troop That once rode laughing by?
I h of Lady Di”
Lord Cantilupe, of whoeneration, died before I was born, and Lady Di Beauclerck had married Baron Huddleston and ceased to ride in Rotten Row before I came to London; so my survey of the scene was unmarred by Locker's reflective melancholy, and I could do full justice to its charraceful spectacle in this world than Hyde Park at the end of a long su in the merry month of May?
Where can we see such beautiful woallant cavaliers, such fine horses, such brilliant equipages? The scene, too, is worthy of such agreeable accessories--the groves, the glea waters, and the triuhts of Surrey and the lovely glades of Kensington” This passage would need so if it were to describe the Park in 1911, but in 1880 it was still a photograph