Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography

by George William Erskine Russell

As far as I know, I am the only survivor of those delightful feasts.

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; and there were few who had the hardihood to say them Nay.

The most famous breakfast-parties of the time were given by Mr. Gladstone, on every Thursday morning in the Session; when, while we ate broiled salmon and drank coffee, our host discoursed to an admiring circle about the colour-sense in Homer, or the polity of the ancient Hittites. Around the table were gathered Lions and Lionesses of various breeds and sizes, who, if I remember aright, did not get quite as much opportunity for roaring as they would have liked; for, when Mr. Gladstone had started on a congenial theme, it was difficult to get in a word edgeways. One of these breakfast-parties at 10, Downing Street, stands out in memory more clearly than the rest, for it very nearly had a part in that "Making of History" which was then so much in vogue. The date was April 23, 1885. The party comprised Lady Ripon, Lord Granville, Dean Church, and Miss Mary Anderson, then in the height of her fame and beauty. We were stolidly munching and listening, when suddenly we heard a crash as if heaven and earth had come together; and presently we learned that there had been an explosion of dynamite at the Admiralty, about a hundred yards from where we were sitting. The proximity of nitro-glycerine seemed to operate as a check on conversation, and, as we rose from the table, I heard Miss Anderson say to Miss Gladstone, "Your pa seemed quite scared."

Other breakfast-givers of the time were Lord Houghton, Lord Arthur Russell, Mr. Shaw-Lefevre (afterwards Lord Eversley), and Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury); and there were even people so desperately wedded to this terrible tradition that they formed themselves into Clubs with no other object than to breakfast, and bound themselves by solemn pledges to meet one morning in every week, and eat and argue themselves into dyspepsia. Sydney Smith wrote thus to a friend: "I have a breakfast of philosophers to-morrow at ten punctually—muffins and metaphysics, crumpets and contradiction. Will you come?" That inviting picture, though it was drawn before I was born, exactly describes the breakfast-parties which I remember. One met all sorts of people, but very few Mary Andersons. Breakfasters were generally old,—politicians, diplomatists, authors, journalists, men of science, political economists, and everyone else who was most improving. No doubt it was a priceless privilege to meet them; yet, as I heard them prate and prose, I could not help recalling a favourite passage from Mrs. Sherwood's quaint tale of Henry Milner:—

"Mr. Dolben, as usual, gave utterance at breakfast to several of those pure and wise and refined principles, which sometimes distil as drops of honey from the lips of pious and intellectual old persons." It was breakfast that set Mr. Dolben off. We are not told that he distilled his honey at dinner or supper; so his case must be added to the long list of deleterious results produced by breakfasting in public.

Conversation must, I think, have been at rather a low ebb when I first encountered it in London. Men breakfasted in public, as we have just seen, in order to indulge in it; and I remember a terrible Club where it raged on two nights of every week, in a large, dark, and draughty room, while men sat round an indifferent fire, drinking barley-water, and talking for talking's sake—the most melancholy of occupations. But at these dismal orgies one never heard anything worth remembering. The "pious and intellectual old persons" whom Mrs. Sherwood admired had withdrawn from the scene, if indeed they had ever figured on it. Those who remained were neither pious nor intellectual, but compact of spite and greediness, with here and there worse faults. But some brighter spirits were coming on. To call them by the names which they then bore, Mr. George Trevelyan and Mr. John Morley were thought very promising, for social fame in London takes a long time to establish itself. Sir William Harcourt was capital company in the heavier style; and Lord Rosebery in the lighter. But Mr. Herbert Paul was known only to the Daily News, and Mr. Augustine Birrell's ray serene had not emerged from the dim, unfathomed caves of the Chancery Bar.

So far, I have been writing about Conversation with a capital "C,"—an elaborate and studied art which in old days such men as Sharpe and Jekyll and Luttrell illustrated, and, in times more modern, Brookfield and Cockburn and Lowe and Hayward. For the ordinary chit-chat of social intercourse—chaff and repartee, gossip and fun and frolic—I believe that London was just as good in 1876 as it had been fifty years before. We were young and happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with one another. "It was roses, roses all the way." Our talk was unpremeditated and unstudied, quick as lightning, springing out of the interest or the situation of the moment, uttered in an instant and as soon forgotten. Everyone who has ever made the attempt must realize that to gather up the fragments of such talk as this is as impossible as to collect shooting stars or to reconstruct a rainbow.

But, though I cannot say what we talked about in those distant days, I believe I can indicate with certainty two topics which were never mentioned. One is Health, and the other is Money. I presume that people had pretty much the same complaints as now, but no one talked about them. We had been told of a lady who died in agony because she insisted on telling the doctor that the pain was in her chest, whereas it really was in the unmentionable organ of digestion. That martyr to propriety has no imitator in the present day. Everyone has a disease and a doctor, and young people of both sexes are ready on the slightest acquaintance to describe symptoms and compare experiences. "Ice!" exclaimed a pretty girl at dessert. "Good gracious, no. So bad for indy!" And her companion, who had not travelled with the times, learned with interest that "indy" was the pet name for indigestion.

Then, again, as to money. In the "Sacred Circle of the Great Grandmotherhood," I never heard the slightest reference to income. Not that the Whigs despised money. They were at least as fond of it as other people, and, even when it took the shape of slum-rents, its odour was not displeasing; but it was not a subject for conversation. People did not chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if they made their own money in trades or professions, they did not regale us with statistics of profit and loss. To-day everyone seems to be, if I may use the favourite colloquialism, "on the make"; and the devotion with which people worship money pervades their whole conversation, and colours their whole view of life. "Scions of Aristocracy," to use the good old phrase of Pennialinus, will produce samples of tea or floor-cloth from their pockets, and sue quite winningly for custom. A speculative bottle of extraordinarily cheap peach-brandy will arrive with the compliments of Lord Tom Noddy, who has just gone into the wine-trade; and Lord Magnus Charters will tell you that, if you are going to rearrange your electric light, his firm has got some really artistic fittings which he can let you have on specially easy terms.