After which I dare not name two or three others whose French was not less perfect than that which Prince Bismarck praised. The Prince was a good judge, as well he might be. French had become to him almost a second mother tongue; as, indeed, it must be to a European diplomatist.
To the list of men who were to be met in those days at breakfasts the name of Mr. George Brodrick ought to be added. He was a scholar, a writer, a journalist, and one of those men who never could understand why the world would not come round to his way of thinking and to him. He had real abilities, which survived a university education. He was born into a respectable place in the world, of good family, with good opportunities, but was never a man of the world. To be of the world in the true sense of the phrase a man must, I take it, have a fairly accurate notion of his relation to the world. That Brodrick had not. His ambitions were political, and most of all parliamentary; but they remained ambitions. He could not understand how to commend himself to a constituency; nor would he ever have conformed to the inexorable standards of the House of Commons. He expected the House and its standards to conform to him.
Struggling with a fine courage for the unattainable, Mr. Brodrick meantime occupied himself with journalism, and was for many years a leader-writer on The Times. The story which points his intense self-concentration as well as any other connects itself with that period. He was a guest in a house in Scotland, and while there continued composition of those more or less Addisonian and rather academic essays which, when printed on the leader page of The Thunderer, became leaders, and very good leaders of their kind. He saw fit to write them in the drawing-room and in the morning when men are commonly supposed to be elsewhere. There were ladies and they talked. Presently Mr. Brodrick rose, marched over to his hostess and said to her: "Lady X., I really must ask you to ask these ladies not to carry on their conversation in this room. I am engaged upon a most important article and my thoughts are distracted by talk which has no importance at all."
His appearance and dress were those of a man who gave no thought to either. He was rather tall, angular, uncouth, a stoop in the shoulders, and his figure consisted of K's. He had the projecting teeth which French caricaturists used to give to English "meesses," in whom it is extremely rare. Some person of genius untempered with mercy called him "Curius Dentatus"; and the nickname lasted as long as Brodrick lasted. With his teeth, and his knees and elbows sawing the air, and his umbrella, and his horse all ribs, he was the delight of the Row. Everybody liked him but everybody laughed at him. In the end he renounced journalism and renounced politics and became Warden of Merton. It was thought he would not be a good Head of a College nor get on with his students, but he falsified all predictions, governed wisely and well, won the affection of the boys under him, and died lamented. I suppose the explanation is that he had at bottom a genuine sincerity of nature.
But I am wandering far and I return to Lady Arthur and her house and her guests.
The form of salon which Lady Arthur Russell preferred was a salon preceded by a dinner. It was never a large dinner. Except in a few houses, the banquets of forty or fifty people or more so dear to the New York hostess are not given in London, nor is mere bigness reckoned an element of social success. In the biggest capital of the world, where society far exceeds in numbers the society of any other capital, people are content with moderation. A dinner of forty people is a lottery in which each guest has two chances and no more. His luck and his hopes of being amused or interested depend wholly on his right- and left-hand neighbours.
Lady Arthur, being by birth a Frenchwoman, had French ideas on this and other subjects. She did not choose her guests alphabetically, nor by rank, nor for the sake of a passing notoriety. Lions you might meet at her house but they were not expected to roar; nor did they. Neither at dinner nor after dinner were more people asked than could be managed. Large parties are, of course, given in London but they do not constitute a salon. It is of the essence of a salon that people shall not be left wholly to themselves, as in a large party they must be, but shall be looked after. Affinities do not always find themselves. They have to be brought together. Others have to be kept apart. No authority is needed. Intuitions, a quick eye for situations, and a gentle skill in distribution are the gifts which go to the making of a good hostess. These Lady Arthur had. By mere smartness she set little store. I suppose the house in Audley Square which Lord Arthur Russell built never passed for a particularly smart house. Of houses which are called and which are "smart" there are scores in London. Of salons there are very few. Herself the daughter of a French viscount, and with her husband brother to a duke, Lady Arthur had no particular need to concern herself about mere smartness. That is a reputation not altogether difficult to acquire. The King's smile may confer it. Not, perhaps, the late Queen's of whom one more than usually brilliant butterfly remarked:
"But the Queen, you know, never was in society."
Which perhaps, in the sense intended, was true.