Individual effort gave England its Colonies. The same agency—as embodied in a Gibbon Wakefield, who began life by being Secretary to Lord Durham in Canada 1838, who, 1839, obtained the annexation and colonization of New Zealand, and who in 1849 published The Art of Colonization; in a Sir William Molesworth, the pioneer of Colonial self-government; who, obtaining from Palmerston the great object of his ambition, the Colonial Secretaryship 1853, died shortly afterwards; more recently in the fourth Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary (1866-7; 1874-8)—applied the social cement which has joined the new countries with the old in personal rather than in merely political relation. Colonial patriotism was also reasonably gratified on its intellectual side by Mr Lowe’s sojourn in New South Wales 1843-50, and by Sir Robert G. W. Herbert’s share in the Administration of Queensland before he became Colonial Under Secretary in London.
A shrewd Colonial statesman not long since observed that if another flying Australian, but a born and bred Colonial horse, were to win the Derby, no whisper of separation from the British Crown would ever be heard among the most advanced of Colonial democrats. Popular enthusiasm at the Antipodean winner of the Blue Ribbon would spread from Epsom Downs throughout the kingdom; it would be flashed along every wire or transmitted by every cable to the four winds of heaven; the Colonists would cease to complain that they, or their products, were not appreciated by the mother country. This half serious remark contains more than a grain of truth; it points to the fact that the grievance alleged by our kinsman beyond sea against the headquarters of their race is sentimental, rather than practical. Pending the Derby winner from beyond seas, the less sternly democratic of England’s Colonial cousins have appreciated the peerages bestowed on a few of them, and can point to other substantial proofs that they have become a power in English society. Thus they have founded clubs in London; they possess a party of their own in the House of Commons, and entertain the social leaders of the old country at their balls and parties during the season in famous restaurants, or at their own homes.
Till the Victorian age was well developed, the latter day American elements in London fashion were unheard of. To-day these leaven the whole of our social life. It is those born under the Stripes and Stars who relieve, at a princely rental, English nobles of house property which its owners are not occupying, and supply Countesses and Duchesses to the English peerage. The great feature of our time has been the concentration of our people in the Metropolis. A like gravitation to towns has indeed taken place throughout the whole country. Between the eighties and the nineties, the increase of the urban population has been 3,016,579; the decrease of the rural has been 139,545.[120]
With respect to this movement, as in other matters, London has shown itself the true mirror of England. For a proof of this, it would be enough to mention the Langham Hotel, and those caravanserais which have followed it, down to the latest and most palatial of all, the Hotel Cecil. That the capital thus socially re-created has been successfully reorganized as the most cosmopolitan and modish centre of fashion for two hemispheres is due largely to the agency of American dollars and American arbiters of elegance. In the thirties and the sixties the gifted men who were sent to represent the United States in the old country, a Washington Irving, and a Lothrop Motley, made their Embassies social centres for the most pleasant company of the time, attracted famous men from their own country, one of whom, the Rev. Cleveland Coxe,[121] formed a lasting link between the two chief branches of the Anglo-Saxon Church, most of these Transatlantic visitors left behind them brilliant reputations as conversationalists.
More recently a Russell Lowell and a Bayard have adorned this tradition. In their day, the American season following hard upon the London season proper has become a regular, and to all concerned most profitable, observance in the social calendar. The dictatresses of polite life from the other side of the Atlantic generally have been educated in Paris, not a few of them by the daughter of Emile Souvestre at that institution for turning intelligent girls into charming women, Les Ruches, Fontainebleau; they always bring with them to their London homes the tastes of citizens of the world. These tastes are gratified as successfully on the Thames as on the Seine; it is la belle Americaine who has most visibly impressed her image on the capital where, since the Second Empire fell, she has chiefly delighted to dwell; she decided that English life needed enlivening: she has enlivened it and continues to do so effectually. Some restlessness is constitutional to her, as also to the Anglo-Indians and Colonials who are perennially so much with us; thus largely to please her the London season is now subdivided into innumerable parts. It would be truer to say some form of that season lasts all the year round. The constant locomotion from one centre, or from one country seat to another, began, as has been already seen, with the Prince Consort. It has not been discouraged by later representatives of the Crown. From the day that in 1860 the Prince of Wales visited the tomb of George Washington, he has never lost the American heart. The new London régime exactly suits the future peeresses of the old country when they are fresh from New York.
The constant alternations of Hyde Park promenades, not only with suburban racecourses, but with long days under summer suns given to Thames-side picnics, or with rapid flittings on any opportunity to and fro between Mayfair on the one hand, the Boulevard des Italiens, Monte Carlo, or Homburg on the other: these innovations have been brought about by the American Londoner more than by any other single person. The Colonial millionaire or millionairess has not yet been so fully developed as their Transatlantic equivalents. But the process is going steadily forward, no doubt with similar results to follow.
The contrast between the amount of international friction that was caused before the Oregon Boundary dispute, and the Trent difference, between the two countries were composed in 1846 and in 1863, respectively, and the comparative ease with which the Venezuela Question in our own day was settled, suggests the solid international advantages of the arrangement under which New York and London have become socially one and the same capital, having their pleasures, their lions and lionesses, their favourite composers, authors, dramatists and players, in common.
The late Mr Samuel Ward, who is as well remembered in London as in New York, and who liked to be called the prince of bon vivants at Delmonico’s, the king of the lobby at Washington, was a cultivated little old gentleman, of whom it is difficult to conceive as ever having been much less, or more, than some seventy-odd years of age. He was known throughout the whole Anglo-Saxon world as ‘Uncle Sam.’ He had become popular in English society soon after the examples of the then Lord Hartington and Lord Rosebery included America in the grand tour of every educated Briton. He really did something to entitle him to his universal sobriquet. He was the founder of a social and literary Anglo-American school which has struck its roots deep in the chosen homes of English fashion. As Californian gold preceded Australian, so the Transatlantic force that has transformed the social England of our day has come before the fully organized exercise of a Colonial power of the same sort. But every year brings one visibly nearer its final development, with all the international advantages which will no doubt accompany that event.[122]