Strathfieldsaye may have been in old days the scene of many political incidents. The latest was one at which I myself was present. The heroine of it was Miss Meresia Nevill, Lady Dorothy's daughter, who afterward achieved renown as a luminary of the Primrose League. She was then in her novitiate only, and the duke one morning whispered to her that he would give her a lesson in oratory. I was asked to be present at it, but otherwise it was to be strictly secret. Accordingly after breakfast she, I, and the duke met by appointment in the library. The doors were locked, and Miss Nevill, who had brought some memoranda with her scribbled on a half-sheet of letter paper, was told by the duke to take her stand on the hearth rug and give him a specimen of her powers by declaiming what she proposed to say, he himself being seated on a sofa watching her. "Now," he said, "begin." Bashfully consulting her notes, and speaking with apologetic rapidity, Miss Nevill began to murmur, "My lords, ladies and gentlemen." "No!" ejaculated the duke; "my dear young lady, no! Mouth it out like this: "My lords—ladies—and—gentlemen." Don't say it as if you were saying your prayers." In this humorous but most admirable advice there was no great verbal brilliance; but his tendency to verbal brilliance showed, on one occasion at all events, how capable it was of translating itself into the highest form of literary art. A favorite amusement of his was making translations from Horace. Among the passages which had specially provoked this enterprise was one the Latin of which is so terse and pungent that it has often been pronounced untranslatable. It is the passage in which Horace describes true happiness as that of the man who, looking back from to-morrow, is able to say, "I was really alive all yesterday." Dryden's pithy version of it is to the effect that the sole true happiness is that of the man:
Who, secure at eve, can say,
"To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day."
The duke's version was on a yet higher level than this, embodying in it a concentrated pungency and a curiosa felicitas which were quite in the vein of Horace, but contain a thought not present in the original. They were comprised in these few words:
Happy if only I enjoy
My rival's envy for a day.
It is true this specimen of the duke's wit in literature does not bear directly on the question of wit in social conversation; and yet it may lead the mind to questions which are very closely akin to it. The felicity of the duke's translation has a very close resemblance to the curiosa felicitas of Pope—for instance, in his "Characters of Women" and his celebrated satire on Addison. Nearly all Pope's satires are addressed, if not to a small society, yet at all events to a small public, and outside that limited body they would have neither vogue nor meaning.
CHAPTER VII
VIGNETTES OF LONDON LIFE
Byron's Grandson and Shelley's Son—The World of Balls—The "Great Houses," and Their New Rivals—The Latter Criticized by Some Ladies of the Old Noblesse—Types of More Serious Society—Lady Marian Alford and Others—Salons Exclusive and Inclusive—A Clash of Two Rival Poets—The Poet Laureate —Auberon Herbert and the Simple Life—Dean Stanley—Whyte Melville—"Ouida"—"Violet Fane"—Catholic Society—Lord Bute—Banquet to Cardinal Manning—Difficulties of the Memoir-writer—Lord Wemyss and Lady P—— —Indiscretions of Augustus Hare—Routine of a London Day—The Author's Life Out of London
The few portraits and anecdotes which I have just sketched or recorded are sufficient, let me say once more, to illustrate two general facts. They indicate the way in which society owes much of its finer polish to it. They emphasize the fact that, when I first knew it myself, it was very much smaller than it has since then become, and, though divided into sections even then, was very much more cohesive. Let me pass from this latter fact to some of my own experiences as connected with it.
For young men who are already equipped with influential friends or connections, a society which is relatively small and more or less cohesive is in some ways more easy of access than one which is more numerous, but in which, unless their means are ample enough to excite the competitive affection of mothers, they are more likely to be lost. In this respect I may look on myself as fortunate, for my circle of acquaintances very rapidly widened as soon as, having done with Oxford, I began to stay in London for more than a week at a time, and secured a habitation, more or less permanent, of my own. While I was first looking about for one which I thought would be suitable, Wentworth returned the hospitality which I had previously shown him at Oxford by putting me up for a fortnight at his house on the Chelsea Embankment, and during this visit an incident took place which, if merely judged by the names of the few persons concerned in it, might be thought picturesquely memorable.