XXV

XXVSUPPER"S is the Supper, where all went in pairs;T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs."Though the merry muse of dear "C. S. C." may thus serve to introduce our subject, the repast which he has in view is only a very special and peculiar—one had almost said an unnatural—form of Supper. The Ball Supper, eaten anywhere between 12 o'clock and 2a.m., is clearly a thing apart from the Supper which, in days of Early Dinner, made England great. Yet the Ball Supper had its charms, and they have been celebrated both in prose and in verse. Byron knew all about them:—"I've seen some balls and revels in my time,And stay'd them over for some silly reason."One of those reasons was the prospect of supping with Bessie Rawdon,[9]the only girl he ever saw"Whose bloom could after dancing dare the dawn."In her society a fresh zest was added to "thelobster salad, and champagne, and chat" which the poet loved so well.Fifty years had passed, and a Ball Supper was (and for all I know may still be) much the same. "The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Every one seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper-hour—'Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart.''What a perfect family!' exclaimed Hugo Bohun as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly. 'Everything they do in such perfect taste! How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!'" But, after all, Ball Suppers are frivolities, and College Suppers scarcely more serious; although a modern bard has endeavoured to give them a classical sanction by making young Horace at the University of Athens thus address himself to his new acquaintance Balbus:—"A friend has sent me half-a-dozen braceOf thrush and blackbird from a moor in Thrace.These we will have for supper, with a dishOf lobster-patties and a cuttle-fish."And we may be sure that a meal where Horace was host was not unaccompanied by wine and song.But the Supper which I have in mind is thesubstantial meal which, during the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, formed the nightly complement to the comparatively early dinner. "High Tea" such as Dickens loved and described—"Bagman's Tea," as I was taught to call it,—became popular as tea became cheaper. You dined, say, at one, and drank tea (and ate accompaniments) at seven. But Supper, eaten at nine or ten o'clock, was a more substantial affair, and the poison of Tea, so much deprecated by our modern Coroners, was never suffered to pollute it. In the account of a supper in 1770 I have read this exhilarating item: "A turtle was sent as a Present to the Company and dress'd in a very highGout, after the West Indian manner;" and such a dish, eaten at bedtime, of course required vinous assistance. A forefather of my own noted in his diary for 1788, "The man who superintends Mrs. Cazalan's of New Cavendish Street suppers has a salary of £100 a year for his trouble;" and one may rest assured that Mrs. Cazalan's guests drank something more exhilarating than tea at her famous supper-table. "Guy Mannering" depicts the habits of Scotch Society at the close of the eighteenth century; and Counsellor Pleydell, coming hungry from a journey, suggests that a brace of wild ducks should be added to the "light family supper." These he ate "without prejudice to a subsequent tart," and with these viands he drankale and Burgundy, moralizing thus: "I love theCoena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that washes out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day." On the point of precedent, the Counsellor, or rather Sir Walter Scott, is at issue with Lord John Russell, who said, in protesting against dinner at eight o'clock: "Some learned persons, indeed, endeavour to support this practice by precedent, and quote the Roman Supper; but those suppers were at three o'clock in the afternoon, and ought to be a subject of contempt instead of imitation in Grosvenor Square." Supper at three in the afternoon! I must leave this startling statement to the investigations of Dryasdust. At the same period as that at which the Whig Essayist, not yet statesman, was protesting against late dinners, Sydney Smith was bewailing the effects of supper on the mind and temper:—"My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London and retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is lobster; and, when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous incumbrance, thedaughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea is effectually excluded from the mind."I take due note of the wordwine, but I believe it was usually mixed with water. Of Mr. Pitt, not a model of abstemiousness, it is recorded that he drank "a good deal of port wine and water at supper"; and Mr. Woodhouse, whom his worst enemy never accused of excess, recommended Mrs. Goddard to have "halfa glass of wine, asmallhalf-glass, in a tumbler of water," as an accompaniment to the minced chicken and scalloped oysters. Dr. Kitchener, who was a practising physician as well as a writer on Gastronomy, recommended for Supper "a Biscuit, or a Sandwich, or a bit of Cold Fowl, and a Glass of Beer, or Wine, and Toast and Water"; or for "such as dine very late, Gruel or a little Bread and Cheese, or Powdered Cheese, and a glass of Beer." They vaunt that medicine is a progressive science, but where is the practitioner to-day who would venture on these heroic prescriptions of 1825?I am accused of quoting too often from Lord Beaconsfield; and, though I demur to the word "too," I admit that I quote from him very often, because no writer whom I know scanned so carefully and noted so exactly the social phenomena of the time in which he lived. Here is his description of Supper in the year 1835:—"When there were cards there was always alittle supper—a lobster, and a roasted potato, and that sort of easy thing, with curious drinks; and, on fitting occasions, a bottle of champagne appeared."The Suppers cooked by the illustrious Ude at Crockford's Gaming House (now the Devonshire Club) were famous for their luxurious splendour; and, being free to all comers, were used as baits to inveigle ingenuous Youth into the Gambling-room; for you could scarcely eat a man's supper night after night and never give him his chance of revenge. But Suppers to be eaten amid the frantic excitements of a Gaming House were, of necessity, rather stimulating than substantial. For substantial Suppers we must turn to the life of a class rather less exalted than that which lost its fortune at "Crocky's". Dickens's Suppers, which may be taken to represent the supping habits of the Middle Class in 1837, are substantial enough, but rather unappetizing. Old Mr. Wardle, though the most hospitable of men, only gave Mr. Pickwick "a plentiful portion of a gigantic round of cold beef"—which most people would think an indigestible supper. Mrs. Bardell's system was even more culpable, according to Dr. Wynn Westcott, for she gave her friends a little warm supper of "Petitoes and Toasted Cheese," with "a quiet cup of tea." I do not exactly know what petitoes are, but I am sure that when stewed in tea they must be poisonous. When Mr. and Mrs.Kenwigs, in honour of their wedding-day, made a supper for their uncle, the Collector, they arranged the feast more hygienically, for their "pair of boiled fowls, large piece of pork, apple-pie, potatoes, and greens" were reinforced by a bowl of punch; and there is a quite delicious supper in the "Old Curiosity Shop," where a stew, worthy to rank with that which Meg Merrilies forced on the reluctant Dominie, is washed down with a pint of mulled ale.Thackeray, though he excelled at a Dinner, knew also, at least in his earlier and Bohemian days, what was meant by a Supper. Mr. Archer, the journalist in "Pendennis," who was so fond of vaunting his imaginary acquaintance with great people, thus described his evening repast at Apsley House:—"The Duke knows what I like, and says to the Groom of the Chambers: 'Martin, you will have some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of Pale Ale, and some brown Sherry ready in my study as usual.' The Duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early."But all this is fifty years ago and more. Do people eat supper nowadays? Of course the young and frivolous eat ball-suppers, and supper after the Theatre is a recognized feature of London life. But does any one eat supper in his own house? To be sure, a tray of wine andwater still appears in some houses just as the party is breaking up, and it is called a "Supper Tray," but is only the thin and pallid ghost of what was once a jolly meal.One more form of Supper remains to be recorded. In the circles in which I was reared it was customary to observe one day in the year as a kind of Festival of the Church Missionary Society or the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, according as the principles of the Incumbent were Low or High. The arrangements comprised a special service in church, with a sermon by that mysterious stranger "the Deputation from the Parent Society"; an evening meeting in the Town Hall; and a supper at the Rectory or the Squire's house. Bidden to such a festival, a friend of the Missionary cause wrote thus to the lady who had invited him: "I greatly regret that I cannot attend the service, and I very much fear that I shall not be in time for the meeting. But,d.v., I will be with you at Supper."XXVIINNS AND HOTELS"Anchovies and Sack after Supper" was honest Falstaff's notion of an apt sequence. But Anchovies, even in their modern extension of "Hors d'Œuvres," will not make a chapter; and Sack, in the form of Sherry, has been exhaustively discussed. I must therefore betake myself from Falstaff to Touchstone, whose enumeration of "Dinners and Suppers and Sleeping-hours" may serve my present need.Where to dine? Where to sup? Where to sleep? Momentous questions these; and at this instant they are in the thoughts and on the lips of thousands of my fellow-creatures as they journey through or towards London. October in London is a season with marked and special characteristics. Restaurants are crowded; Bond Street is blocked by shopping ladies; seats at the theatre must be booked ten days in advance.This October "Season" is the product of many forces. The genuine Londoners, who have been away, for health or sport or travel, in August andSeptember now come back with a rush, and hasten to make up for their long exile by feverish activity in the pursuit of pleasure. But the Londoners by no means have the town to themselves. The Country Cousins are present in great force. They live laborious but delightful days in examining the winter fashions; they get all their meals at Prince's or the Carlton; and they go to the play every night. To these must be added the Americans, who, having shot our grouse and stalked our deer and drunk of our medicated springs, are now passing through London on their way to Liverpool. As a rule, they buy their clothes in Paris, and leave the products of Bond Street and Grafton Street to the British consumer. But their propensity to Theatre-parties and Suppers endears them to managers and restaurant-keepers; and on Sunday they can be detected at St. Paul's or the Abbey, rendering the hymns with that peculiar intonation for which Chaucer's "Prioresse" was so justly admired. Even a few belated French and German tourists are still wandering disconsolately among "the sheddings of the pining umbrage" in the parks, or gazing with awe at the grim front of Buckingham Palace. Where do all these pilgrims stay? We know where they dine and sup; but where do they spend what Touchstone called their "sleeping-hours"? I only know that they do not spend them in Inns, for Inns as I understand the wordhave ceased to exist. They went out with "The Road."It has been remarked by not unfriendly critics that the author of these quiet meditations seems to live a good deal in the past, and people in whom the chronological sense is missing are apt to think me a great deal older than I am. Thus when I have recalled among my earliest recollections the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre (in 1856), I have been thought to be babbling of Drury Lane, which was burnt down in 1812; and so, when I say that in early life I travelled a great deal upon the Road, I shall probably be accused of having been born before railways were invented. What is true enough is that a prejudice against railways lingered long after they were in general use; some people thought them dangerous, some undignified, and I believe that there were some who even thought them wicked because they are not mentioned in the Bible. "I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla's trip from Birmingham?" says Lady Marney in "Sybil." "Have you not, indeed? She came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to comply with her wishes, only it wasnecessary that his companion should move at the same time, for they were chained together—two gentlemen sent to town for picking pockets at Shrewsbury races." "A Countess and a felon!" said Lord Mowbray. "So much for public conveyances." To these social perils were added terrors of tunnels, terrors of viaducts, terrors of fires which would burn you to an ash in your locked carriage, terrors of robbers who were supposed to travel first-class for the express purpose of chloroforming well-dressed passengers and then stealing their watches. Haunted by these and similar fears, some old-fashioned people travelled by road till well into the 'sixties. From my home in the South Midlands we took a whole day in getting to London, forty miles off; two to Leamington, three to Winchester; and those who still travelled in this leisurely mode were the last patrons of the Inn.It was generally a broad-browed, solid, comfortable-looking house in the most central part of a country town. Not seldom the sign was taken from the armorial bearings of the local magnate. There were a Landlord and a Landlady, who came out bowing when the carriage drove up, and conducted the travellers to their rooms, while the "Imperials" were taken down from the roof of the carriage. (Could one buy an "Imperial" nowadays if one wanted it? The most recentreference to it which I can recall occurs in the first chapter of "Tom Brown's School Days.") Very often the rooms of the Inn were distinguished not by numbers, but by names or tokens derived from the situation, or the furniture, or from some famous traveller who had slept in them—the Bow Room, the Peacock Room, or the Wellington Room. The Landlord had generally been a butler, but sometimes a coachman. Anyhow, he and his wife had "lived in the best families" and "knew how things ought to be done." The furniture was solid, dark, and handsome—mahogany predominating, here and there relieved with rosewood. There was old silver on the table, and the walls were covered with sporting or coaching prints, views of neighbouring castles, and portraits of the Nobility whom the Landlord had served. The bedrooms were dark and stuffy beyond belief, with bedsteads like classic temples and deep feather-beds into which you sank as into a quicksand. The food was like the furniture, heavy and handsome. There was "gunpowder tea"—green if you asked for it,—luscious cream, and really new-laid eggs. The best bottle of claret which I ever encountered emerged, quite accidentally, from the cellar of a village Inn close to the confluence of the Greta and the Tees, in a district hallowed by the associations of Rokeby and Mr. Squeers. When, next morning, you had paid your bill—not,as a rule, a light one—the Landlord and Lady escorted you to the door, and politely expressed a hope that you would honour them on your return journey. Then "Hey, for the lilt of the London road!" and the Montfort Arms, or the Roebuck, or the Marquis of Granby, is only a pleasant memory of an unreturning day.What in the country was called an Inn was called in London a "Family Hotel." It was commonly found in Dover Street, or Albemarle Street, or Bolton Street, or some such byway of Piccadilly; and in its aspect, character, and general arrangement it was exactly like the country Inn, only of necessity darker, dingier, and more airless. Respectability, mahogany, and horse-hair held it in their iron grip. Here county families, coming up from the Drawing Room, or the Academy, or the Exhibition, or the Derby, spent cheerful weeks in summer. Here in the autumn they halted on their return from Doncaster or Aix. Here the boys slept on their way back to Eton or Cambridge; hither the subaltern returned, like a homing pigeon, from India or the Cape.But the Family Hotel, like the Country Inn, has seen its day. When theTimeswas inciting the inhabitants of Rome to modernize their city, Matthew Arnold, writing in Miss Story's album, made airy fun of the suggestion. He represented"theTimes, that bright Apollo," proclaiming salvation to the "armless Cupid" imprisoned in the Vatican:—"'And what,' cries Cupid, 'will save us?'Says Apollo: 'Modernize Rome!What inns! Your streets too, how narrow!Too much of palace and dome!'"'O learn of London, whose paupersAre not pushed out by the swells!Wide streets, with fine double trottoirs;And then—the London hotels!'"Between the "Inns" of my youth and these "Hotels" of to-day the difference is so great that they can scarcely be recognized as belonging to the same family. Under the old dispensation all was solid comfort, ponderous respectability, and the staid courtesy of the antique world; under the new it is all glare and glitter, show and sham; the morals of the Tuileries and the manners of Greenwich Fair. The building is something between a palace and a barrack, with a hall of marble, a staircase of alabaster, a winter garden full of birds and fountains, and a band which deafens you while you eat your refined but exiguous dinner. Among these sumptuosities the visitor is no longer a person but a number. As a number he is received by the gigantic "Suisse" who, resplendent in green and gold, watches the approach to the palace; as a number he isregistered by a dictatorial "Secretary," enshrined in a Bureau; as a number he is shot up, like a parcel, to his airy lodgings on the seventh floor; as a number he orders his meals; as a number he pays his bill. The whole business is a microcosm of State Socialism: Bureaucracy is supreme, and the Individual is lost in the Machine. But, though the courtesies and the humanities and even the decencies of the old order have vanished so completely, the exactions remain much the same as they were. There is, indeed, no courtly landlord to bow, like a plumper Sir Charles Grandison, over the silver salver on which you have laid your gold; but there are gilt-edged porters, and moustached lift-men, and a regiment of buttony boys who float round the departing guest with well-timed assiduity; and the Suisse at the door, as he eyes our modest luggage with contemptuous glare, looks quite prepared, if need be, to extort his guerdon by physical force.The British Inn, whatever were its shortcomings in practice, has been glorified in some of the best verse and best prose in the English language. It will, methinks, be a long time before even the most impressionable genius of the "Bodley Head" pens a panegyric of the London Hotel.XXVIITRAVELThe October Season, of which I lately spoke, is practically over. "The misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind" are yielding place to cloud and storm. In a week's time London will have assumed its winter habit, and already people are settling down to their winter way of living. The last foreigner has fled. The Country Cousins have finished their shopping and have returned to the pursuit of the Pheasant and the Fox. The true Londoners—the people who come back to town for the "first note of the Muffin-bell and retreat to the country for the first note of the Nightingale"—have resumed the placidity of their normal life. Dinner-parties have hardly begun, but there are plenty of little luncheons; the curtains are drawn about four, and there are three good hours for Bridge before one need think of going to dress for dinner. And now, just when London is beginning to wear once again its most attractive aspect, at once sociable and calm, some perverse people, disturbers of thepublic peace, must needs throw everything into confusion by going abroad.Their motives are many and various. With some it is health: "I feel that Imusthave a little sunshine, I have been so rheumatic all this autumn," or "My doctor tells me that, with my tendency to bronchitis, the fogs are really dangerous." With some it is sheer restlessness: "Well, you see, we were hereallthe summer, except just Whitsuntide and Ascot and Goodwood; so we have had about enough of London. And our home in Loamshire is so fearfully lonely in winter that it quite gets on my nerves. So I think a little run will do us all good; and we shall be back by the New Year, or February at latest." With some, again, economy is the motive power; "What with two sons to allowance, and two still at school; and one girl to be married at Easter, and one just coming out, as well as a most expensive governess for the young ones, I assure you it is quite difficult to make two ends meet. We have got an excellent offer for Eaton Place from November to May, and some friends on the Riviera have repeatedly asked us to pay them a long visit; and, when that's done, one can liveen pensionat Montreux for next to nothing." Others are lured abroad by the love of gambling, though this is not avowed: "I do so love Monte Carlo—not the gambling, but the air, and, even if one does lose a franc or two at the tables, I always saythat we should lose much more at home, with Christmas presents, and Workhouse Treats, and all those tiresome things one has to do."It is not a joke—for I never joke about religion—it is a literal fact that in my youth the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" was interpreted as pointing to an enlargement of the human mind through increased facilities of travel. I do not guarantee the exegesis, but I note the fact. A hundred years ago, if parents wished to enlarge their son's understanding by sending him on the "Grand Tour" of Europe, they set aside twelve months for the fulfilment of their purpose. Young Hopeful set out in a travelling-carriage with a tutor (or Bear-Leader), a Doctor, and a Valet. The Bear-Leader's was a recognized and lucrative profession. In a diary for 1788, which lies before me as I write, I read: "Mr. Coxe, the traveller, has been particularly lucky as a Pupil-Leader about Europe. After Lord Herbert, he had Mr. Whitbred at £800 per ann., and now has Mr. Portman, with £1000 per ann." Patrick Brydone, scholar, antiquary, andvirtuoso, whose daughter married the second Earl of Minto, was "Pupil-Leader" (or Bear-Leader) to William Beckford. Sydney Smith was dug out of his curacy on Salisbury Plain in order to act as Bear-Leader to the grandfather of the present Lord St. Aldwyn. Charles Richard Sumner, who, as last of thePrince-Bishops of Winchester, drew £40,000 a year for forty years, began life as Bear-Leader to Lord Mount-Charles, eldest son of that Lady Conyngham whom George IV. admired; and he owed his first preferment in the Church to the amiable complaisance with which he rescued his young charge from a matrimonial entanglement. That was early in the nineteenth century; but forty years later the Bear-Leader was still an indispensable adjunct to the Grand Tour of Illustrious Youth. The late Duke of Argyll has told us how he made his travels sandwiched inside his father's chariot between his preceptor and his physician. When the Marquis of Montacute made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land he was even more liberally attended; for, in addition to his Bear-Leader, Colonel Grouse, he took his father's doctor, Mr Groby, to avert or cure the fevers, and his father's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, to guide his researches into the theology of Syria. Perhaps Lord Montacute existed only in Lord Beaconsfield's rich imagination; but Thackeray, who never invented but always described what he saw, drew a delightful portrait of "the Rev. Baring Leader," who, "having a great natural turn and liking towards the aristocracy," consented to escort Viscount Talboys when that beer-loving young nobleman made his celebrated journey down the Rhine.But, though a special divinity always hedged,as it still hedges, the travels of an Eldest Son, the more modest journeyings of his parents were not accomplished without considerable form and fuss. Lord and Lady Proudflesh or Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore travelled all over Europe in their own carriage. It was planted bodily on the deck of the steamer, so that its privileged occupants could endure the torments of the crossing in dignified seclusion; and, when once the solid shore of the Continent was safely reached, it was drawn by an endless succession of post-horses, ridden by postillions, with the valet and maid (like those who pertained to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock) "affectionate in the rumble." The inside of the carriage was a miracle of ingenuity. Space was economized with the most careful art, and all the appliances of travel—looking-glasses and luncheon-baskets, lamps and maps, newspapers and books—were bestowed in their peculiar and appropriate corners. I possess a "dining equipage" which made the tour of Europe not once but often in the service of a Diplomatist. It is shaped something like a large egg, and covered with shagreen. It contains a tumbler, a sandwich-box, and a silver-handled knife, fork, and spoon; the handle of each of these tools unscrews, and in their hollow interiors the Diplomatist carried his salt, sugar, and pepper. On the roof of the carriage was the more substantial luggage. A travelling-bath, though not unknown, was rather an exceptionalluxury, and, according to our modern notions, it was painfully small. A silver tub which sufficed for the ablutions of the great Duke of Marlborough through the campaigns which changed the face of Europe now serves as a rose-bowl at the banquets of Spencer House.The trunks, which were strapped to the roof of the travelling-carriage, were of a peculiar form—very shallow, and so shaped as to fit into one another and occupy every inch of space. These were called Imperials, and just now I referred to Tom Hughes's undeserved strictures on them. The passage fits neatly into our present subject: "I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies' maids, imperials and travelling-carriages, are an abomination unto me—I cannot away with them." To me, on the contrary, the very word "Imperial" (when divested of political associations) is pleasant. It appeals to the historic sense. It carries us back to Napoleon's campaigns, and to that wonderful house on wheels—his travelling-carriage—now enshrined at Madame Tussaud's. It even titillates the gastronomic instinct by recalling that masterly method of cooking a fowl which bears the name of Marengo. The great Napoleon had no notion of fighting his battles on an empty stomach, so, wherever he was, a portable kitchen, in the shape of a travelling-carriage, was close at hand. The cook and hismarmitonstravelled inside, with the appliancesfor making a charcoal fire at a moment's notice, while the Imperials on the roof contained the due supply of chickens, eggs, bread, and Bordeaux. In the preparation of a meal under such conditions time was money—nay, rather, it was Empire. The highest honours were bestowed on the most expeditious method, and the method called after Marengo took exactly twenty minutes.Here is testimony much more recent. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in the volume of "Reminiscences" which she has lately given to the world, thus describes her youthful journeys between her London and her Norfolk homes: "It took us two long days to get to Wolterton, and the cost must have been considerable. We went in the family coach with four post-horses, whilst two 'fourgons' conveyed the luggage." But travelling abroad was a still more majestic ceremonial: "We were a large party—six of ourselves, as well as two maids, a footman, and French cook; nor must I forget a wonderful courier, covered with gold and braid. He preceded our cavalcade and announced the imminent arrival of a great English Milord and his suite. We had two fourgons to hold thebatterie de cuisineand our six beds, which had to be unpacked and made up every night. We had, besides the family coach and a barouche, six saddle horses, and two attendant grooms."Travel in those brave days of old was a dignified,a leisurely, and a comfortable process. How different is Travel in these degenerate times! For the young man rejoicing in his strength it means, as Tom Hughes said forty years ago, "getting over a couple of thousand miles for three-pound-ten; going round Ireland, with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copy of Tennyson on the top of a Swiss mountain, or pulling down the Danube in an Oxford racing-boat." For those who have reached maturer years it may mean a couple of nights in Paris, just to see the first performance of a new play and to test the merits of the latest restaurant, or it may mean a week in New York to study the bearings of the Presidential election and to gather fresh views of the Silver Question. Dr. Lunn kindly invites the more seriously minded to a Conference at Grindelwald, where we can combine the delights of Alpine scenery and undenominational religion; and "the son of a well-known member of the House of Lords" offers to conduct us personally through "A Lion and Rhinoceros Hunting Party in Somaliland," or "A Scientific Expedition to Central Africa, to visit the supposed cradle of the human race and the site of the Garden of Eden." Nothing of Travelling-carriages and Imperials here! No "maid and valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense of independence andresponsibility. The modern traveller is shot like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under wonderfully uncomfortable conditions.XXVIIIACCOMPLISHMENTSA pictorial critic, commending the water-colour painting of Mr. Arthur Rich, says that, after examining his firm and serious work, "it is impossible to think that there is anything trivial in the art of Aquarelle—that it is, as has been said, 'a thing Aunts do.'"A thing Aunts do.I linger on the words, for they suggest deep thoughts. Many and mysterious are the tricks of language—not least so the subtle law by which certain relationships inevitably suggest peculiar traits. Thus the Grandmother stands to all time as the type of benevolent feebleness; the Stepmother was branded by classical antiquity as Unjust; and Thackeray's Mrs. Gashleigh and Mrs. Chuff are the typical Mothers-in-Law. The Father is commonly the "Heavy Father" of fiction and the drama. The Mother is always quoted with affection, as in "Mother-wit," our Mother-country, and our Mother-tongue. "A Brother," ever since the days of Solomon, "is born for adversity," and a Brother-officer implies a loyal friend. A Sister is the type of Innocence, withjust a faint tinge ornuanceof pitying contempt, as when the Vainglorious Briton speaks of the "Sister Country" across St. George's Channel, or the hubristic Oxonian sniggers at the "Sister University" of Cambridge. Eldest and Younger Sons again, as I have before now had occasion to point out, convey two quite different sets of ideas, and this discrepancy has not escaped the notice of the social Poet, who observes that—"Acres and kine and tenements and sheepEnrich the Eldest, while the Younger SonsMonopolize the talents and the duns.""My Uncle," in colloquial phrase, signifies the merchant who transacts his business under the sign of the Three Golden Balls; and to these expressive relationships must be added Auntship. "A thing Aunts do," says the pictorial critic; and the contumelious phrase is not of yesterday, for in 1829 a secularly-minded friend complained that young Mr. William Gladstone, then an Undergraduate at Christ Church, had "mixed himself up so much with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits." To paint in water-colour and to keep tame rabbits are pursuits which to the superficial gaze have little in common, though both are, or were, characteristic of Aunts, and both are, in some sense, accomplishments, demanding natural taste,acquired skill, patience, care, a delicate touch, and a watchful eye. Perhaps these were the particular accomplishments in which the traditional Aunt "specialized," though she had never heard that bad word; but, if she chose to diffuse her energies more widely, the world was all before her where to choose; and, by a singular reversal of the law of progress, there were more "accomplishments" to solicit her attention a hundred years ago than there are to-day.When the most fascinating of all heroines, Di Vernon, anticipated posterity by devoting her attention to politics, field sports, and classical literature, she enumerated, among the more feminine accomplishments which she had discarded, "sewing a tucker, working cross-stitch, and making a pudding"; and she instanced, among the symbols of orthodox femininity "a shepherdess wrought in worsted, a broken-backed spinet, a lute with three strings, rock-work, shell-work, and needle-work." We clear the century with a flying leap, and find ourselves in the company of a model matron, with surroundings substantially unchanged: "Mrs. Bayham-Badger was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it."Miss Volumnia Dedlock's accomplishments, though belonging to the same period, were slightly different: "Displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue and propounding French conundrums in country houses, she passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date, and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath." Perhaps she had been educated by Miss Monflathers, "who was at the head of the head Boarding and Day Establishment in the town," and whose gloss on the didactic ditty of the Busy Bee so confounded the emissary from the Waxworks."In books, or work, or healthful playis quite right as far as genteel children are concerned, and in their case 'work' means painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or embroidery." Do even Aunts paint on velvet, or cut ornaments out of coloured paper, in this "so-called Twentieth Century"? I know no more pathetic passage in the Literature of Art than that in which Mrs. Gaskell enumerated Miss Matty's qualifications for the work of teaching:—"I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play 'Ah! vous dirai-je maman?' on the piano; but thatwas long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace patterns very nicely for muslin embroidery, but that was her nearest approach to the accomplishment of drawing, and I did not think it would go very far. Miss Matty's eyes were failing her, and I doubted if she could discover the number of threads in a worsted-work pattern, or rightly appreciate the different shades required for Queen Adelaide's face, in the loyal wool-work now fashionable in Cranford."The allusion to Queen Adelaide's face fixes the narrative between 1820 and 1830, and George Eliot was depicting the same unenlightened period when she described the accomplishments provided by Ladies' Schools as "certain small tinklings and smearings." Probably all of us can recall an Aunt who tinkled on the piano, or a First Cousin once Removed who smeared on Bristol Board. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose invincible force and evergreen memory carry down into the reign of King Edward VII. the traditions of Queen Charlotte's Court, is a singularly accomplished Aunt, and she has just made this remarkable confession: "At different times I have attempted many kinds of amateur work, including book illumination, leather-working, wood-carving, and, of late years, a kind of old-fashioned paper-work, which consists in arranging little slips of coloured paper into decorative designs, as was done at the end of theeighteenth century. When completed, this work is made up into boxes, trays, or mounts for pictures." Surely in this accomplishment Miss Volumnia Dedlock lives again. And then Lady Dorothy, lapsing into reminiscent vein, makes this rather half-hearted apology for the domestic artistry of bygone days: "Years ago ladies used to spend much more of their time in artistic work of some kind or other, for there were not then the many distractions which exist to-day. Indeed, in the country some sort of work was a positive necessity; and though, no doubt, by far the greater portion of what was done was absolutely hideous, useless, and horrible, yet it served the purpose of passing away many an hour which otherwise would have been given up to insufferable boredom."Yes, the fashions of the world succeed one another in perpetual change; but Boredom is eternally the enemy, and the paramount necessity of escaping from it begets each year some new and strange activity. The Aunt no longer paints in water-colours or keeps tame rabbits, flattens ferns in an album, or traces crude designs with a hot poker on a deal board. To-day she urges the impetuous bicycle, or, in more extreme cases, directs the murderous motor; lectures on politics or platonics, Icelandic art, or Kamschatkan literature. Perhaps she has a Cause or a Mission pleads for the legal enforcement of Vegetarian Boots, or tears down the knocker of a Statesmanwho refuses her the suffrage. Perhaps her enthusiasms are less altruistic, and then she may pillage her friends at Bridge, or supply theNew York Sewerwith a weekly column of Classy Cuttings. "Are you theDaily Mail?" incautiously chirped a literary lady to an unknown friend who had rung her up on the telephone. "No, I'm not, but I always thought you were," was the reply; and so, in truth, she was.XXIXCIDERAn ingenious correspondent of mine has lately been visiting the Brewers' Exhibition, and has come away from it full of Cider. I mean "full" in the intellectual rather than the physical sense—full of the subject, though unversed in the beverage. He reminds me that Charles Lamb had his catalogue of "Books which are no books—biblia a-biblia," among which he reckoned Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket-books, Draughtboards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large, and Paley's Moral Philosophy. My correspondent suggests that, in a like spirit, a Brewer must have his catalogue of Drinks which are no drinks—pota a-pota—and that among them, if only the secret thoughts of his heart were known, he must reckon Cider. Yet at the Brewers' Exhibition there was a Literature of Cider, and that innocent-sounding beverage was quoted at a price per bottle at which Claret is not ashamed to be sold. That the men of Malt and Hops should thus officially recognize the existence of fermented apple-juice strikes my friend as an Economy of Truth; a suppression, or at least anevasion, of a deep-seated and absolute belief. They cannot really regard Cider as a drink, and yet they give it a place alongside that manly draught which has made old England what she is. I, on the other hand, who always like to regard the actions of my fellow-men in the most favourable light, prefer to think that the Brewers have been employing some portion of that enforced leisure, which the decay of their industry must have brought, in studying English literature, and that they have thus been made acquainted with the name and fame of Cider.Biblia a-bibliaset me thinking of Lamb, and when once one begins recalling "Elia" one drifts along, in a kind of waking reverie, from one pleasant fantasy to another.Biblia a-biblialed me on to "Dream Children," and Dream Children to Dream Riddles—a reverie of my own childhood, when we used to ask one another a pleasing conundrum which played prettily onIn CiderandInside her. But it made light of an illustrious name and had better be forgotten.Few, I fear, are the readers of John Philips, but, if such there be, they will no doubt recall the only poem which, as far as I know, has ever been devoted to the praise of Apple-wine. Philips was a patriotic son of Herefordshire, and in Hereford Cathedral he lies buried under bunches of marble apples which commemorate his poetical achievement:—"What soil the apple loves, what care is dueTo Orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits,Thy gift, Pomona! in Miltonian verse,Adventurous, I presume to sing; of verseNor skill'd nor studious; but my native soilInvites me, and the theme as yet unsung.""Orchats" is good; but how far these lines can be justly called Miltonian is a question which my readers can decide for themselves. At any rate, the poem contains more than four thousand lines exactly like them, and they had the remarkable fortune to be translated into Italian under the title of "Il Sidro." Philips was a Cavalier in all his tastes and sympathies: but even the Puritans, whom he so cordially detested, admitted the merits of Cider. Macaulay, with his characteristic love of irrelevant particularity, insists on the fact that, through all the commotions of the Great Rebellion and the Civil War, "the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire and the apple-juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire." Nor was it only in his purple prose that the great rhetorician glorified the juice of the apple. Many a reader who has forgotten all about John Philips will recall Macaulay's rhymes on the garrulous country squire who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to the society of Bishops:—"His Grace Archbishop Manners-SuttonCould not keep on a single button.As for Right Reverend John of Chester,His waistcoats open at the breasts are.Our friend has filled a mighty trunkWith trophies torn from Bishop Monk,And he has really tattered foullyThe vestments of good Bishop Howley.No buttons could I late discern onThe garments of Archbishop Vernon,And never had his fingers mercyUpon the garb of Bishop Percy;While buttons fly from Bishop RyderLike corks that spring from bottled cyder."From Macaulay and bottled Cyder (or Cider) the transition is easy to that admirable delineator of life and manners, Mrs. Sherwood; she was pretty much a contemporary of Macaulay's, and was a native of Worcestershire, which in its Cider-bearing qualities is not far removed from Herefordshire, beloved of Philips. Few but fit is the audience to which Mrs. Sherwood still appeals; yet they who were nurtured on "The Fairchild Family" still renew their youth as they peruse the adventures of Lucy, Emily, and little Henry: "The farmer and his wife, whose name was Freeman, were not people who lived in the fear of God, neither did they bring up their children well; on which account Mr. Fairchild had often forbidden Lucy, Emily, and Henry to go to their house." However, go they did, as soon as their parents' backs were turned; and Mrs. Freeman "gave them each a large piece of cake and something sweet to drink, which, she said, would do them good." But it turned out to be Cider, and did not do them good, for, "as they were never used to drink anything but water, it made them quite drunk for a little while."The mention of Worcestershire as a cider-growing county aptly introduces my unfailing friend Lord Beaconsfield, for, though he is less precise than I could wish in praise of Cider, he compliments it indirectly in his pretty description of "a fair child, long-haired, and blushing like a Worcestershire orchard before harvest-time." Once, indeed, the lover of Disraelitish romance seems to find himself on the track of Cider. Harry Coningsby is overtaken by a thunderstorm in a forest, and, taking refuge in a sylvan inn, makes friends with a mysterious stranger. The two travellers agree to dine together, when this eminently natural dialogue ensues. "'But Ceres without Bacchus,' said Coningsby, 'how does that do? Think you, under this roof, we could invoke the god?'"'Let us swear by his body that we will try,' said the stranger."Alas! the landlord was not a priest of Bacchus. But then these enquiries led to the finest Perry in the world." If only the Perry had been Cider, this quotation had been more apposite; but the themes, though not identical, are cognate.We have traced the praise of Cider in poetry and in romance, but it also has its place in biography, and even in religious biography. One of the most delightful portraits of a saint which was ever drawn is Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving." In the autumn of 1834—the last autumn of his life—that Prophet and man of God made a kind ofapostolic journey through Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Wales. From Kington, in Herefordshire, he wrote to his wife: "My dinner was ham and eggs, a cold fowl, an apple tart, and cheese; a tumbler of Cider, and a glass of Sicilian Tokay." And he adds a tender reference to "Ginger Wine in a long-necked decanter." It is always satisfactory to find the good things of this life not reserved exclusively for bad people.Sydney Smith, though a Canon of St. Paul's, was scarcely a Saint and not at all a Prophet; and through the study-windows of his beautiful parsonage in Somersetshire, he gazed on the glories of the Cider-vintage with an eye more mundane than that of Edward Irving. In 1829 he wrote from Combe Florey—"the sacred valley of flowers," as he loved to call it: "I continue to be delighted with the country. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."Cider is, I believe, still drunk at Oxford; and memory retains grateful recollections of Cider-cup beautiful as a liquid topaz, with a cluster of blue flowers floating on its breast. But the Cider-Cellars of London—places of, I fear, ill-regulated conviviality—have, as far as I know, long since closed their doors. Yet they, too, have their secure place in literature. The "Young Lion" of theDaily Telegraph, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of theTimes, thrilled with excitement at the prospect of inoculating the Leading Journal with "the divine madness of our new style—the style we have formed upon Sala. It blends the airy epicureanism of thesalonsof Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider Cellar." But that was written in 1870, and the style and the Cellars alike are things of the past. The official historian of Cider excels in that "dry light" which is the grace of history, and gravely tells us that "Cider (Zider, German) when first made in England was called wine." With a proper reluctance to commit himself to what is antecedently incredible, he adds that "the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador in France (1699),is saidto have passed off Cider for Wine." It is more plausibly stated that in later days the innocuous apple has been artfully mingled with the "foaming grape of Eastern France," and has been drunk in England as Champagne. The Hock-cup at Buckingham Palace is justly vaunted as one of the chief glories of our ancient polity. It is certainly the most delectable drink that ever refreshed a thirsty soul; and the art of concocting it is a State-Secret of the most awful solemnity. But there never was a secret which did not sooner or later elude its guardians; and I have heard that a Royal cellarer, in an expansive moment, once revealed the spell. German Wine and English Cider together constitute the Kingly Cup,"And, blended, form, with artful strife,The strength and harmony of life."

XXVSUPPER"S is the Supper, where all went in pairs;T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs."Though the merry muse of dear "C. S. C." may thus serve to introduce our subject, the repast which he has in view is only a very special and peculiar—one had almost said an unnatural—form of Supper. The Ball Supper, eaten anywhere between 12 o'clock and 2a.m., is clearly a thing apart from the Supper which, in days of Early Dinner, made England great. Yet the Ball Supper had its charms, and they have been celebrated both in prose and in verse. Byron knew all about them:—"I've seen some balls and revels in my time,And stay'd them over for some silly reason."One of those reasons was the prospect of supping with Bessie Rawdon,[9]the only girl he ever saw"Whose bloom could after dancing dare the dawn."In her society a fresh zest was added to "thelobster salad, and champagne, and chat" which the poet loved so well.Fifty years had passed, and a Ball Supper was (and for all I know may still be) much the same. "The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Every one seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper-hour—'Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart.''What a perfect family!' exclaimed Hugo Bohun as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly. 'Everything they do in such perfect taste! How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!'" But, after all, Ball Suppers are frivolities, and College Suppers scarcely more serious; although a modern bard has endeavoured to give them a classical sanction by making young Horace at the University of Athens thus address himself to his new acquaintance Balbus:—"A friend has sent me half-a-dozen braceOf thrush and blackbird from a moor in Thrace.These we will have for supper, with a dishOf lobster-patties and a cuttle-fish."And we may be sure that a meal where Horace was host was not unaccompanied by wine and song.But the Supper which I have in mind is thesubstantial meal which, during the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, formed the nightly complement to the comparatively early dinner. "High Tea" such as Dickens loved and described—"Bagman's Tea," as I was taught to call it,—became popular as tea became cheaper. You dined, say, at one, and drank tea (and ate accompaniments) at seven. But Supper, eaten at nine or ten o'clock, was a more substantial affair, and the poison of Tea, so much deprecated by our modern Coroners, was never suffered to pollute it. In the account of a supper in 1770 I have read this exhilarating item: "A turtle was sent as a Present to the Company and dress'd in a very highGout, after the West Indian manner;" and such a dish, eaten at bedtime, of course required vinous assistance. A forefather of my own noted in his diary for 1788, "The man who superintends Mrs. Cazalan's of New Cavendish Street suppers has a salary of £100 a year for his trouble;" and one may rest assured that Mrs. Cazalan's guests drank something more exhilarating than tea at her famous supper-table. "Guy Mannering" depicts the habits of Scotch Society at the close of the eighteenth century; and Counsellor Pleydell, coming hungry from a journey, suggests that a brace of wild ducks should be added to the "light family supper." These he ate "without prejudice to a subsequent tart," and with these viands he drankale and Burgundy, moralizing thus: "I love theCoena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that washes out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day." On the point of precedent, the Counsellor, or rather Sir Walter Scott, is at issue with Lord John Russell, who said, in protesting against dinner at eight o'clock: "Some learned persons, indeed, endeavour to support this practice by precedent, and quote the Roman Supper; but those suppers were at three o'clock in the afternoon, and ought to be a subject of contempt instead of imitation in Grosvenor Square." Supper at three in the afternoon! I must leave this startling statement to the investigations of Dryasdust. At the same period as that at which the Whig Essayist, not yet statesman, was protesting against late dinners, Sydney Smith was bewailing the effects of supper on the mind and temper:—"My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London and retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is lobster; and, when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous incumbrance, thedaughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea is effectually excluded from the mind."I take due note of the wordwine, but I believe it was usually mixed with water. Of Mr. Pitt, not a model of abstemiousness, it is recorded that he drank "a good deal of port wine and water at supper"; and Mr. Woodhouse, whom his worst enemy never accused of excess, recommended Mrs. Goddard to have "halfa glass of wine, asmallhalf-glass, in a tumbler of water," as an accompaniment to the minced chicken and scalloped oysters. Dr. Kitchener, who was a practising physician as well as a writer on Gastronomy, recommended for Supper "a Biscuit, or a Sandwich, or a bit of Cold Fowl, and a Glass of Beer, or Wine, and Toast and Water"; or for "such as dine very late, Gruel or a little Bread and Cheese, or Powdered Cheese, and a glass of Beer." They vaunt that medicine is a progressive science, but where is the practitioner to-day who would venture on these heroic prescriptions of 1825?I am accused of quoting too often from Lord Beaconsfield; and, though I demur to the word "too," I admit that I quote from him very often, because no writer whom I know scanned so carefully and noted so exactly the social phenomena of the time in which he lived. Here is his description of Supper in the year 1835:—"When there were cards there was always alittle supper—a lobster, and a roasted potato, and that sort of easy thing, with curious drinks; and, on fitting occasions, a bottle of champagne appeared."The Suppers cooked by the illustrious Ude at Crockford's Gaming House (now the Devonshire Club) were famous for their luxurious splendour; and, being free to all comers, were used as baits to inveigle ingenuous Youth into the Gambling-room; for you could scarcely eat a man's supper night after night and never give him his chance of revenge. But Suppers to be eaten amid the frantic excitements of a Gaming House were, of necessity, rather stimulating than substantial. For substantial Suppers we must turn to the life of a class rather less exalted than that which lost its fortune at "Crocky's". Dickens's Suppers, which may be taken to represent the supping habits of the Middle Class in 1837, are substantial enough, but rather unappetizing. Old Mr. Wardle, though the most hospitable of men, only gave Mr. Pickwick "a plentiful portion of a gigantic round of cold beef"—which most people would think an indigestible supper. Mrs. Bardell's system was even more culpable, according to Dr. Wynn Westcott, for she gave her friends a little warm supper of "Petitoes and Toasted Cheese," with "a quiet cup of tea." I do not exactly know what petitoes are, but I am sure that when stewed in tea they must be poisonous. When Mr. and Mrs.Kenwigs, in honour of their wedding-day, made a supper for their uncle, the Collector, they arranged the feast more hygienically, for their "pair of boiled fowls, large piece of pork, apple-pie, potatoes, and greens" were reinforced by a bowl of punch; and there is a quite delicious supper in the "Old Curiosity Shop," where a stew, worthy to rank with that which Meg Merrilies forced on the reluctant Dominie, is washed down with a pint of mulled ale.Thackeray, though he excelled at a Dinner, knew also, at least in his earlier and Bohemian days, what was meant by a Supper. Mr. Archer, the journalist in "Pendennis," who was so fond of vaunting his imaginary acquaintance with great people, thus described his evening repast at Apsley House:—"The Duke knows what I like, and says to the Groom of the Chambers: 'Martin, you will have some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of Pale Ale, and some brown Sherry ready in my study as usual.' The Duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early."But all this is fifty years ago and more. Do people eat supper nowadays? Of course the young and frivolous eat ball-suppers, and supper after the Theatre is a recognized feature of London life. But does any one eat supper in his own house? To be sure, a tray of wine andwater still appears in some houses just as the party is breaking up, and it is called a "Supper Tray," but is only the thin and pallid ghost of what was once a jolly meal.One more form of Supper remains to be recorded. In the circles in which I was reared it was customary to observe one day in the year as a kind of Festival of the Church Missionary Society or the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, according as the principles of the Incumbent were Low or High. The arrangements comprised a special service in church, with a sermon by that mysterious stranger "the Deputation from the Parent Society"; an evening meeting in the Town Hall; and a supper at the Rectory or the Squire's house. Bidden to such a festival, a friend of the Missionary cause wrote thus to the lady who had invited him: "I greatly regret that I cannot attend the service, and I very much fear that I shall not be in time for the meeting. But,d.v., I will be with you at Supper."

SUPPER

"S is the Supper, where all went in pairs;T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs."

Though the merry muse of dear "C. S. C." may thus serve to introduce our subject, the repast which he has in view is only a very special and peculiar—one had almost said an unnatural—form of Supper. The Ball Supper, eaten anywhere between 12 o'clock and 2a.m., is clearly a thing apart from the Supper which, in days of Early Dinner, made England great. Yet the Ball Supper had its charms, and they have been celebrated both in prose and in verse. Byron knew all about them:—

"I've seen some balls and revels in my time,And stay'd them over for some silly reason."

One of those reasons was the prospect of supping with Bessie Rawdon,[9]the only girl he ever saw

"Whose bloom could after dancing dare the dawn."

In her society a fresh zest was added to "thelobster salad, and champagne, and chat" which the poet loved so well.

Fifty years had passed, and a Ball Supper was (and for all I know may still be) much the same. "The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Every one seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper-hour—

'Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart.'

'What a perfect family!' exclaimed Hugo Bohun as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly. 'Everything they do in such perfect taste! How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!'" But, after all, Ball Suppers are frivolities, and College Suppers scarcely more serious; although a modern bard has endeavoured to give them a classical sanction by making young Horace at the University of Athens thus address himself to his new acquaintance Balbus:—

"A friend has sent me half-a-dozen braceOf thrush and blackbird from a moor in Thrace.These we will have for supper, with a dishOf lobster-patties and a cuttle-fish."

And we may be sure that a meal where Horace was host was not unaccompanied by wine and song.

But the Supper which I have in mind is thesubstantial meal which, during the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, formed the nightly complement to the comparatively early dinner. "High Tea" such as Dickens loved and described—"Bagman's Tea," as I was taught to call it,—became popular as tea became cheaper. You dined, say, at one, and drank tea (and ate accompaniments) at seven. But Supper, eaten at nine or ten o'clock, was a more substantial affair, and the poison of Tea, so much deprecated by our modern Coroners, was never suffered to pollute it. In the account of a supper in 1770 I have read this exhilarating item: "A turtle was sent as a Present to the Company and dress'd in a very highGout, after the West Indian manner;" and such a dish, eaten at bedtime, of course required vinous assistance. A forefather of my own noted in his diary for 1788, "The man who superintends Mrs. Cazalan's of New Cavendish Street suppers has a salary of £100 a year for his trouble;" and one may rest assured that Mrs. Cazalan's guests drank something more exhilarating than tea at her famous supper-table. "Guy Mannering" depicts the habits of Scotch Society at the close of the eighteenth century; and Counsellor Pleydell, coming hungry from a journey, suggests that a brace of wild ducks should be added to the "light family supper." These he ate "without prejudice to a subsequent tart," and with these viands he drankale and Burgundy, moralizing thus: "I love theCoena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that washes out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day." On the point of precedent, the Counsellor, or rather Sir Walter Scott, is at issue with Lord John Russell, who said, in protesting against dinner at eight o'clock: "Some learned persons, indeed, endeavour to support this practice by precedent, and quote the Roman Supper; but those suppers were at three o'clock in the afternoon, and ought to be a subject of contempt instead of imitation in Grosvenor Square." Supper at three in the afternoon! I must leave this startling statement to the investigations of Dryasdust. At the same period as that at which the Whig Essayist, not yet statesman, was protesting against late dinners, Sydney Smith was bewailing the effects of supper on the mind and temper:—

"My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London and retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is lobster; and, when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous incumbrance, thedaughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea is effectually excluded from the mind."

I take due note of the wordwine, but I believe it was usually mixed with water. Of Mr. Pitt, not a model of abstemiousness, it is recorded that he drank "a good deal of port wine and water at supper"; and Mr. Woodhouse, whom his worst enemy never accused of excess, recommended Mrs. Goddard to have "halfa glass of wine, asmallhalf-glass, in a tumbler of water," as an accompaniment to the minced chicken and scalloped oysters. Dr. Kitchener, who was a practising physician as well as a writer on Gastronomy, recommended for Supper "a Biscuit, or a Sandwich, or a bit of Cold Fowl, and a Glass of Beer, or Wine, and Toast and Water"; or for "such as dine very late, Gruel or a little Bread and Cheese, or Powdered Cheese, and a glass of Beer." They vaunt that medicine is a progressive science, but where is the practitioner to-day who would venture on these heroic prescriptions of 1825?

I am accused of quoting too often from Lord Beaconsfield; and, though I demur to the word "too," I admit that I quote from him very often, because no writer whom I know scanned so carefully and noted so exactly the social phenomena of the time in which he lived. Here is his description of Supper in the year 1835:—

"When there were cards there was always alittle supper—a lobster, and a roasted potato, and that sort of easy thing, with curious drinks; and, on fitting occasions, a bottle of champagne appeared."

The Suppers cooked by the illustrious Ude at Crockford's Gaming House (now the Devonshire Club) were famous for their luxurious splendour; and, being free to all comers, were used as baits to inveigle ingenuous Youth into the Gambling-room; for you could scarcely eat a man's supper night after night and never give him his chance of revenge. But Suppers to be eaten amid the frantic excitements of a Gaming House were, of necessity, rather stimulating than substantial. For substantial Suppers we must turn to the life of a class rather less exalted than that which lost its fortune at "Crocky's". Dickens's Suppers, which may be taken to represent the supping habits of the Middle Class in 1837, are substantial enough, but rather unappetizing. Old Mr. Wardle, though the most hospitable of men, only gave Mr. Pickwick "a plentiful portion of a gigantic round of cold beef"—which most people would think an indigestible supper. Mrs. Bardell's system was even more culpable, according to Dr. Wynn Westcott, for she gave her friends a little warm supper of "Petitoes and Toasted Cheese," with "a quiet cup of tea." I do not exactly know what petitoes are, but I am sure that when stewed in tea they must be poisonous. When Mr. and Mrs.Kenwigs, in honour of their wedding-day, made a supper for their uncle, the Collector, they arranged the feast more hygienically, for their "pair of boiled fowls, large piece of pork, apple-pie, potatoes, and greens" were reinforced by a bowl of punch; and there is a quite delicious supper in the "Old Curiosity Shop," where a stew, worthy to rank with that which Meg Merrilies forced on the reluctant Dominie, is washed down with a pint of mulled ale.

Thackeray, though he excelled at a Dinner, knew also, at least in his earlier and Bohemian days, what was meant by a Supper. Mr. Archer, the journalist in "Pendennis," who was so fond of vaunting his imaginary acquaintance with great people, thus described his evening repast at Apsley House:—

"The Duke knows what I like, and says to the Groom of the Chambers: 'Martin, you will have some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of Pale Ale, and some brown Sherry ready in my study as usual.' The Duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early."

But all this is fifty years ago and more. Do people eat supper nowadays? Of course the young and frivolous eat ball-suppers, and supper after the Theatre is a recognized feature of London life. But does any one eat supper in his own house? To be sure, a tray of wine andwater still appears in some houses just as the party is breaking up, and it is called a "Supper Tray," but is only the thin and pallid ghost of what was once a jolly meal.

One more form of Supper remains to be recorded. In the circles in which I was reared it was customary to observe one day in the year as a kind of Festival of the Church Missionary Society or the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, according as the principles of the Incumbent were Low or High. The arrangements comprised a special service in church, with a sermon by that mysterious stranger "the Deputation from the Parent Society"; an evening meeting in the Town Hall; and a supper at the Rectory or the Squire's house. Bidden to such a festival, a friend of the Missionary cause wrote thus to the lady who had invited him: "I greatly regret that I cannot attend the service, and I very much fear that I shall not be in time for the meeting. But,d.v., I will be with you at Supper."

XXVIINNS AND HOTELS"Anchovies and Sack after Supper" was honest Falstaff's notion of an apt sequence. But Anchovies, even in their modern extension of "Hors d'Œuvres," will not make a chapter; and Sack, in the form of Sherry, has been exhaustively discussed. I must therefore betake myself from Falstaff to Touchstone, whose enumeration of "Dinners and Suppers and Sleeping-hours" may serve my present need.Where to dine? Where to sup? Where to sleep? Momentous questions these; and at this instant they are in the thoughts and on the lips of thousands of my fellow-creatures as they journey through or towards London. October in London is a season with marked and special characteristics. Restaurants are crowded; Bond Street is blocked by shopping ladies; seats at the theatre must be booked ten days in advance.This October "Season" is the product of many forces. The genuine Londoners, who have been away, for health or sport or travel, in August andSeptember now come back with a rush, and hasten to make up for their long exile by feverish activity in the pursuit of pleasure. But the Londoners by no means have the town to themselves. The Country Cousins are present in great force. They live laborious but delightful days in examining the winter fashions; they get all their meals at Prince's or the Carlton; and they go to the play every night. To these must be added the Americans, who, having shot our grouse and stalked our deer and drunk of our medicated springs, are now passing through London on their way to Liverpool. As a rule, they buy their clothes in Paris, and leave the products of Bond Street and Grafton Street to the British consumer. But their propensity to Theatre-parties and Suppers endears them to managers and restaurant-keepers; and on Sunday they can be detected at St. Paul's or the Abbey, rendering the hymns with that peculiar intonation for which Chaucer's "Prioresse" was so justly admired. Even a few belated French and German tourists are still wandering disconsolately among "the sheddings of the pining umbrage" in the parks, or gazing with awe at the grim front of Buckingham Palace. Where do all these pilgrims stay? We know where they dine and sup; but where do they spend what Touchstone called their "sleeping-hours"? I only know that they do not spend them in Inns, for Inns as I understand the wordhave ceased to exist. They went out with "The Road."It has been remarked by not unfriendly critics that the author of these quiet meditations seems to live a good deal in the past, and people in whom the chronological sense is missing are apt to think me a great deal older than I am. Thus when I have recalled among my earliest recollections the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre (in 1856), I have been thought to be babbling of Drury Lane, which was burnt down in 1812; and so, when I say that in early life I travelled a great deal upon the Road, I shall probably be accused of having been born before railways were invented. What is true enough is that a prejudice against railways lingered long after they were in general use; some people thought them dangerous, some undignified, and I believe that there were some who even thought them wicked because they are not mentioned in the Bible. "I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla's trip from Birmingham?" says Lady Marney in "Sybil." "Have you not, indeed? She came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to comply with her wishes, only it wasnecessary that his companion should move at the same time, for they were chained together—two gentlemen sent to town for picking pockets at Shrewsbury races." "A Countess and a felon!" said Lord Mowbray. "So much for public conveyances." To these social perils were added terrors of tunnels, terrors of viaducts, terrors of fires which would burn you to an ash in your locked carriage, terrors of robbers who were supposed to travel first-class for the express purpose of chloroforming well-dressed passengers and then stealing their watches. Haunted by these and similar fears, some old-fashioned people travelled by road till well into the 'sixties. From my home in the South Midlands we took a whole day in getting to London, forty miles off; two to Leamington, three to Winchester; and those who still travelled in this leisurely mode were the last patrons of the Inn.It was generally a broad-browed, solid, comfortable-looking house in the most central part of a country town. Not seldom the sign was taken from the armorial bearings of the local magnate. There were a Landlord and a Landlady, who came out bowing when the carriage drove up, and conducted the travellers to their rooms, while the "Imperials" were taken down from the roof of the carriage. (Could one buy an "Imperial" nowadays if one wanted it? The most recentreference to it which I can recall occurs in the first chapter of "Tom Brown's School Days.") Very often the rooms of the Inn were distinguished not by numbers, but by names or tokens derived from the situation, or the furniture, or from some famous traveller who had slept in them—the Bow Room, the Peacock Room, or the Wellington Room. The Landlord had generally been a butler, but sometimes a coachman. Anyhow, he and his wife had "lived in the best families" and "knew how things ought to be done." The furniture was solid, dark, and handsome—mahogany predominating, here and there relieved with rosewood. There was old silver on the table, and the walls were covered with sporting or coaching prints, views of neighbouring castles, and portraits of the Nobility whom the Landlord had served. The bedrooms were dark and stuffy beyond belief, with bedsteads like classic temples and deep feather-beds into which you sank as into a quicksand. The food was like the furniture, heavy and handsome. There was "gunpowder tea"—green if you asked for it,—luscious cream, and really new-laid eggs. The best bottle of claret which I ever encountered emerged, quite accidentally, from the cellar of a village Inn close to the confluence of the Greta and the Tees, in a district hallowed by the associations of Rokeby and Mr. Squeers. When, next morning, you had paid your bill—not,as a rule, a light one—the Landlord and Lady escorted you to the door, and politely expressed a hope that you would honour them on your return journey. Then "Hey, for the lilt of the London road!" and the Montfort Arms, or the Roebuck, or the Marquis of Granby, is only a pleasant memory of an unreturning day.What in the country was called an Inn was called in London a "Family Hotel." It was commonly found in Dover Street, or Albemarle Street, or Bolton Street, or some such byway of Piccadilly; and in its aspect, character, and general arrangement it was exactly like the country Inn, only of necessity darker, dingier, and more airless. Respectability, mahogany, and horse-hair held it in their iron grip. Here county families, coming up from the Drawing Room, or the Academy, or the Exhibition, or the Derby, spent cheerful weeks in summer. Here in the autumn they halted on their return from Doncaster or Aix. Here the boys slept on their way back to Eton or Cambridge; hither the subaltern returned, like a homing pigeon, from India or the Cape.But the Family Hotel, like the Country Inn, has seen its day. When theTimeswas inciting the inhabitants of Rome to modernize their city, Matthew Arnold, writing in Miss Story's album, made airy fun of the suggestion. He represented"theTimes, that bright Apollo," proclaiming salvation to the "armless Cupid" imprisoned in the Vatican:—"'And what,' cries Cupid, 'will save us?'Says Apollo: 'Modernize Rome!What inns! Your streets too, how narrow!Too much of palace and dome!'"'O learn of London, whose paupersAre not pushed out by the swells!Wide streets, with fine double trottoirs;And then—the London hotels!'"Between the "Inns" of my youth and these "Hotels" of to-day the difference is so great that they can scarcely be recognized as belonging to the same family. Under the old dispensation all was solid comfort, ponderous respectability, and the staid courtesy of the antique world; under the new it is all glare and glitter, show and sham; the morals of the Tuileries and the manners of Greenwich Fair. The building is something between a palace and a barrack, with a hall of marble, a staircase of alabaster, a winter garden full of birds and fountains, and a band which deafens you while you eat your refined but exiguous dinner. Among these sumptuosities the visitor is no longer a person but a number. As a number he is received by the gigantic "Suisse" who, resplendent in green and gold, watches the approach to the palace; as a number he isregistered by a dictatorial "Secretary," enshrined in a Bureau; as a number he is shot up, like a parcel, to his airy lodgings on the seventh floor; as a number he orders his meals; as a number he pays his bill. The whole business is a microcosm of State Socialism: Bureaucracy is supreme, and the Individual is lost in the Machine. But, though the courtesies and the humanities and even the decencies of the old order have vanished so completely, the exactions remain much the same as they were. There is, indeed, no courtly landlord to bow, like a plumper Sir Charles Grandison, over the silver salver on which you have laid your gold; but there are gilt-edged porters, and moustached lift-men, and a regiment of buttony boys who float round the departing guest with well-timed assiduity; and the Suisse at the door, as he eyes our modest luggage with contemptuous glare, looks quite prepared, if need be, to extort his guerdon by physical force.The British Inn, whatever were its shortcomings in practice, has been glorified in some of the best verse and best prose in the English language. It will, methinks, be a long time before even the most impressionable genius of the "Bodley Head" pens a panegyric of the London Hotel.

INNS AND HOTELS

"Anchovies and Sack after Supper" was honest Falstaff's notion of an apt sequence. But Anchovies, even in their modern extension of "Hors d'Œuvres," will not make a chapter; and Sack, in the form of Sherry, has been exhaustively discussed. I must therefore betake myself from Falstaff to Touchstone, whose enumeration of "Dinners and Suppers and Sleeping-hours" may serve my present need.

Where to dine? Where to sup? Where to sleep? Momentous questions these; and at this instant they are in the thoughts and on the lips of thousands of my fellow-creatures as they journey through or towards London. October in London is a season with marked and special characteristics. Restaurants are crowded; Bond Street is blocked by shopping ladies; seats at the theatre must be booked ten days in advance.

This October "Season" is the product of many forces. The genuine Londoners, who have been away, for health or sport or travel, in August andSeptember now come back with a rush, and hasten to make up for their long exile by feverish activity in the pursuit of pleasure. But the Londoners by no means have the town to themselves. The Country Cousins are present in great force. They live laborious but delightful days in examining the winter fashions; they get all their meals at Prince's or the Carlton; and they go to the play every night. To these must be added the Americans, who, having shot our grouse and stalked our deer and drunk of our medicated springs, are now passing through London on their way to Liverpool. As a rule, they buy their clothes in Paris, and leave the products of Bond Street and Grafton Street to the British consumer. But their propensity to Theatre-parties and Suppers endears them to managers and restaurant-keepers; and on Sunday they can be detected at St. Paul's or the Abbey, rendering the hymns with that peculiar intonation for which Chaucer's "Prioresse" was so justly admired. Even a few belated French and German tourists are still wandering disconsolately among "the sheddings of the pining umbrage" in the parks, or gazing with awe at the grim front of Buckingham Palace. Where do all these pilgrims stay? We know where they dine and sup; but where do they spend what Touchstone called their "sleeping-hours"? I only know that they do not spend them in Inns, for Inns as I understand the wordhave ceased to exist. They went out with "The Road."

It has been remarked by not unfriendly critics that the author of these quiet meditations seems to live a good deal in the past, and people in whom the chronological sense is missing are apt to think me a great deal older than I am. Thus when I have recalled among my earliest recollections the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre (in 1856), I have been thought to be babbling of Drury Lane, which was burnt down in 1812; and so, when I say that in early life I travelled a great deal upon the Road, I shall probably be accused of having been born before railways were invented. What is true enough is that a prejudice against railways lingered long after they were in general use; some people thought them dangerous, some undignified, and I believe that there were some who even thought them wicked because they are not mentioned in the Bible. "I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla's trip from Birmingham?" says Lady Marney in "Sybil." "Have you not, indeed? She came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to comply with her wishes, only it wasnecessary that his companion should move at the same time, for they were chained together—two gentlemen sent to town for picking pockets at Shrewsbury races." "A Countess and a felon!" said Lord Mowbray. "So much for public conveyances." To these social perils were added terrors of tunnels, terrors of viaducts, terrors of fires which would burn you to an ash in your locked carriage, terrors of robbers who were supposed to travel first-class for the express purpose of chloroforming well-dressed passengers and then stealing their watches. Haunted by these and similar fears, some old-fashioned people travelled by road till well into the 'sixties. From my home in the South Midlands we took a whole day in getting to London, forty miles off; two to Leamington, three to Winchester; and those who still travelled in this leisurely mode were the last patrons of the Inn.

It was generally a broad-browed, solid, comfortable-looking house in the most central part of a country town. Not seldom the sign was taken from the armorial bearings of the local magnate. There were a Landlord and a Landlady, who came out bowing when the carriage drove up, and conducted the travellers to their rooms, while the "Imperials" were taken down from the roof of the carriage. (Could one buy an "Imperial" nowadays if one wanted it? The most recentreference to it which I can recall occurs in the first chapter of "Tom Brown's School Days.") Very often the rooms of the Inn were distinguished not by numbers, but by names or tokens derived from the situation, or the furniture, or from some famous traveller who had slept in them—the Bow Room, the Peacock Room, or the Wellington Room. The Landlord had generally been a butler, but sometimes a coachman. Anyhow, he and his wife had "lived in the best families" and "knew how things ought to be done." The furniture was solid, dark, and handsome—mahogany predominating, here and there relieved with rosewood. There was old silver on the table, and the walls were covered with sporting or coaching prints, views of neighbouring castles, and portraits of the Nobility whom the Landlord had served. The bedrooms were dark and stuffy beyond belief, with bedsteads like classic temples and deep feather-beds into which you sank as into a quicksand. The food was like the furniture, heavy and handsome. There was "gunpowder tea"—green if you asked for it,—luscious cream, and really new-laid eggs. The best bottle of claret which I ever encountered emerged, quite accidentally, from the cellar of a village Inn close to the confluence of the Greta and the Tees, in a district hallowed by the associations of Rokeby and Mr. Squeers. When, next morning, you had paid your bill—not,as a rule, a light one—the Landlord and Lady escorted you to the door, and politely expressed a hope that you would honour them on your return journey. Then "Hey, for the lilt of the London road!" and the Montfort Arms, or the Roebuck, or the Marquis of Granby, is only a pleasant memory of an unreturning day.

What in the country was called an Inn was called in London a "Family Hotel." It was commonly found in Dover Street, or Albemarle Street, or Bolton Street, or some such byway of Piccadilly; and in its aspect, character, and general arrangement it was exactly like the country Inn, only of necessity darker, dingier, and more airless. Respectability, mahogany, and horse-hair held it in their iron grip. Here county families, coming up from the Drawing Room, or the Academy, or the Exhibition, or the Derby, spent cheerful weeks in summer. Here in the autumn they halted on their return from Doncaster or Aix. Here the boys slept on their way back to Eton or Cambridge; hither the subaltern returned, like a homing pigeon, from India or the Cape.

But the Family Hotel, like the Country Inn, has seen its day. When theTimeswas inciting the inhabitants of Rome to modernize their city, Matthew Arnold, writing in Miss Story's album, made airy fun of the suggestion. He represented"theTimes, that bright Apollo," proclaiming salvation to the "armless Cupid" imprisoned in the Vatican:—

"'And what,' cries Cupid, 'will save us?'Says Apollo: 'Modernize Rome!

What inns! Your streets too, how narrow!Too much of palace and dome!'

"'O learn of London, whose paupersAre not pushed out by the swells!

Wide streets, with fine double trottoirs;And then—the London hotels!'"

Between the "Inns" of my youth and these "Hotels" of to-day the difference is so great that they can scarcely be recognized as belonging to the same family. Under the old dispensation all was solid comfort, ponderous respectability, and the staid courtesy of the antique world; under the new it is all glare and glitter, show and sham; the morals of the Tuileries and the manners of Greenwich Fair. The building is something between a palace and a barrack, with a hall of marble, a staircase of alabaster, a winter garden full of birds and fountains, and a band which deafens you while you eat your refined but exiguous dinner. Among these sumptuosities the visitor is no longer a person but a number. As a number he is received by the gigantic "Suisse" who, resplendent in green and gold, watches the approach to the palace; as a number he isregistered by a dictatorial "Secretary," enshrined in a Bureau; as a number he is shot up, like a parcel, to his airy lodgings on the seventh floor; as a number he orders his meals; as a number he pays his bill. The whole business is a microcosm of State Socialism: Bureaucracy is supreme, and the Individual is lost in the Machine. But, though the courtesies and the humanities and even the decencies of the old order have vanished so completely, the exactions remain much the same as they were. There is, indeed, no courtly landlord to bow, like a plumper Sir Charles Grandison, over the silver salver on which you have laid your gold; but there are gilt-edged porters, and moustached lift-men, and a regiment of buttony boys who float round the departing guest with well-timed assiduity; and the Suisse at the door, as he eyes our modest luggage with contemptuous glare, looks quite prepared, if need be, to extort his guerdon by physical force.

The British Inn, whatever were its shortcomings in practice, has been glorified in some of the best verse and best prose in the English language. It will, methinks, be a long time before even the most impressionable genius of the "Bodley Head" pens a panegyric of the London Hotel.

XXVIITRAVELThe October Season, of which I lately spoke, is practically over. "The misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind" are yielding place to cloud and storm. In a week's time London will have assumed its winter habit, and already people are settling down to their winter way of living. The last foreigner has fled. The Country Cousins have finished their shopping and have returned to the pursuit of the Pheasant and the Fox. The true Londoners—the people who come back to town for the "first note of the Muffin-bell and retreat to the country for the first note of the Nightingale"—have resumed the placidity of their normal life. Dinner-parties have hardly begun, but there are plenty of little luncheons; the curtains are drawn about four, and there are three good hours for Bridge before one need think of going to dress for dinner. And now, just when London is beginning to wear once again its most attractive aspect, at once sociable and calm, some perverse people, disturbers of thepublic peace, must needs throw everything into confusion by going abroad.Their motives are many and various. With some it is health: "I feel that Imusthave a little sunshine, I have been so rheumatic all this autumn," or "My doctor tells me that, with my tendency to bronchitis, the fogs are really dangerous." With some it is sheer restlessness: "Well, you see, we were hereallthe summer, except just Whitsuntide and Ascot and Goodwood; so we have had about enough of London. And our home in Loamshire is so fearfully lonely in winter that it quite gets on my nerves. So I think a little run will do us all good; and we shall be back by the New Year, or February at latest." With some, again, economy is the motive power; "What with two sons to allowance, and two still at school; and one girl to be married at Easter, and one just coming out, as well as a most expensive governess for the young ones, I assure you it is quite difficult to make two ends meet. We have got an excellent offer for Eaton Place from November to May, and some friends on the Riviera have repeatedly asked us to pay them a long visit; and, when that's done, one can liveen pensionat Montreux for next to nothing." Others are lured abroad by the love of gambling, though this is not avowed: "I do so love Monte Carlo—not the gambling, but the air, and, even if one does lose a franc or two at the tables, I always saythat we should lose much more at home, with Christmas presents, and Workhouse Treats, and all those tiresome things one has to do."It is not a joke—for I never joke about religion—it is a literal fact that in my youth the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" was interpreted as pointing to an enlargement of the human mind through increased facilities of travel. I do not guarantee the exegesis, but I note the fact. A hundred years ago, if parents wished to enlarge their son's understanding by sending him on the "Grand Tour" of Europe, they set aside twelve months for the fulfilment of their purpose. Young Hopeful set out in a travelling-carriage with a tutor (or Bear-Leader), a Doctor, and a Valet. The Bear-Leader's was a recognized and lucrative profession. In a diary for 1788, which lies before me as I write, I read: "Mr. Coxe, the traveller, has been particularly lucky as a Pupil-Leader about Europe. After Lord Herbert, he had Mr. Whitbred at £800 per ann., and now has Mr. Portman, with £1000 per ann." Patrick Brydone, scholar, antiquary, andvirtuoso, whose daughter married the second Earl of Minto, was "Pupil-Leader" (or Bear-Leader) to William Beckford. Sydney Smith was dug out of his curacy on Salisbury Plain in order to act as Bear-Leader to the grandfather of the present Lord St. Aldwyn. Charles Richard Sumner, who, as last of thePrince-Bishops of Winchester, drew £40,000 a year for forty years, began life as Bear-Leader to Lord Mount-Charles, eldest son of that Lady Conyngham whom George IV. admired; and he owed his first preferment in the Church to the amiable complaisance with which he rescued his young charge from a matrimonial entanglement. That was early in the nineteenth century; but forty years later the Bear-Leader was still an indispensable adjunct to the Grand Tour of Illustrious Youth. The late Duke of Argyll has told us how he made his travels sandwiched inside his father's chariot between his preceptor and his physician. When the Marquis of Montacute made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land he was even more liberally attended; for, in addition to his Bear-Leader, Colonel Grouse, he took his father's doctor, Mr Groby, to avert or cure the fevers, and his father's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, to guide his researches into the theology of Syria. Perhaps Lord Montacute existed only in Lord Beaconsfield's rich imagination; but Thackeray, who never invented but always described what he saw, drew a delightful portrait of "the Rev. Baring Leader," who, "having a great natural turn and liking towards the aristocracy," consented to escort Viscount Talboys when that beer-loving young nobleman made his celebrated journey down the Rhine.But, though a special divinity always hedged,as it still hedges, the travels of an Eldest Son, the more modest journeyings of his parents were not accomplished without considerable form and fuss. Lord and Lady Proudflesh or Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore travelled all over Europe in their own carriage. It was planted bodily on the deck of the steamer, so that its privileged occupants could endure the torments of the crossing in dignified seclusion; and, when once the solid shore of the Continent was safely reached, it was drawn by an endless succession of post-horses, ridden by postillions, with the valet and maid (like those who pertained to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock) "affectionate in the rumble." The inside of the carriage was a miracle of ingenuity. Space was economized with the most careful art, and all the appliances of travel—looking-glasses and luncheon-baskets, lamps and maps, newspapers and books—were bestowed in their peculiar and appropriate corners. I possess a "dining equipage" which made the tour of Europe not once but often in the service of a Diplomatist. It is shaped something like a large egg, and covered with shagreen. It contains a tumbler, a sandwich-box, and a silver-handled knife, fork, and spoon; the handle of each of these tools unscrews, and in their hollow interiors the Diplomatist carried his salt, sugar, and pepper. On the roof of the carriage was the more substantial luggage. A travelling-bath, though not unknown, was rather an exceptionalluxury, and, according to our modern notions, it was painfully small. A silver tub which sufficed for the ablutions of the great Duke of Marlborough through the campaigns which changed the face of Europe now serves as a rose-bowl at the banquets of Spencer House.The trunks, which were strapped to the roof of the travelling-carriage, were of a peculiar form—very shallow, and so shaped as to fit into one another and occupy every inch of space. These were called Imperials, and just now I referred to Tom Hughes's undeserved strictures on them. The passage fits neatly into our present subject: "I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies' maids, imperials and travelling-carriages, are an abomination unto me—I cannot away with them." To me, on the contrary, the very word "Imperial" (when divested of political associations) is pleasant. It appeals to the historic sense. It carries us back to Napoleon's campaigns, and to that wonderful house on wheels—his travelling-carriage—now enshrined at Madame Tussaud's. It even titillates the gastronomic instinct by recalling that masterly method of cooking a fowl which bears the name of Marengo. The great Napoleon had no notion of fighting his battles on an empty stomach, so, wherever he was, a portable kitchen, in the shape of a travelling-carriage, was close at hand. The cook and hismarmitonstravelled inside, with the appliancesfor making a charcoal fire at a moment's notice, while the Imperials on the roof contained the due supply of chickens, eggs, bread, and Bordeaux. In the preparation of a meal under such conditions time was money—nay, rather, it was Empire. The highest honours were bestowed on the most expeditious method, and the method called after Marengo took exactly twenty minutes.Here is testimony much more recent. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in the volume of "Reminiscences" which she has lately given to the world, thus describes her youthful journeys between her London and her Norfolk homes: "It took us two long days to get to Wolterton, and the cost must have been considerable. We went in the family coach with four post-horses, whilst two 'fourgons' conveyed the luggage." But travelling abroad was a still more majestic ceremonial: "We were a large party—six of ourselves, as well as two maids, a footman, and French cook; nor must I forget a wonderful courier, covered with gold and braid. He preceded our cavalcade and announced the imminent arrival of a great English Milord and his suite. We had two fourgons to hold thebatterie de cuisineand our six beds, which had to be unpacked and made up every night. We had, besides the family coach and a barouche, six saddle horses, and two attendant grooms."Travel in those brave days of old was a dignified,a leisurely, and a comfortable process. How different is Travel in these degenerate times! For the young man rejoicing in his strength it means, as Tom Hughes said forty years ago, "getting over a couple of thousand miles for three-pound-ten; going round Ireland, with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copy of Tennyson on the top of a Swiss mountain, or pulling down the Danube in an Oxford racing-boat." For those who have reached maturer years it may mean a couple of nights in Paris, just to see the first performance of a new play and to test the merits of the latest restaurant, or it may mean a week in New York to study the bearings of the Presidential election and to gather fresh views of the Silver Question. Dr. Lunn kindly invites the more seriously minded to a Conference at Grindelwald, where we can combine the delights of Alpine scenery and undenominational religion; and "the son of a well-known member of the House of Lords" offers to conduct us personally through "A Lion and Rhinoceros Hunting Party in Somaliland," or "A Scientific Expedition to Central Africa, to visit the supposed cradle of the human race and the site of the Garden of Eden." Nothing of Travelling-carriages and Imperials here! No "maid and valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense of independence andresponsibility. The modern traveller is shot like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under wonderfully uncomfortable conditions.

TRAVEL

The October Season, of which I lately spoke, is practically over. "The misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind" are yielding place to cloud and storm. In a week's time London will have assumed its winter habit, and already people are settling down to their winter way of living. The last foreigner has fled. The Country Cousins have finished their shopping and have returned to the pursuit of the Pheasant and the Fox. The true Londoners—the people who come back to town for the "first note of the Muffin-bell and retreat to the country for the first note of the Nightingale"—have resumed the placidity of their normal life. Dinner-parties have hardly begun, but there are plenty of little luncheons; the curtains are drawn about four, and there are three good hours for Bridge before one need think of going to dress for dinner. And now, just when London is beginning to wear once again its most attractive aspect, at once sociable and calm, some perverse people, disturbers of thepublic peace, must needs throw everything into confusion by going abroad.

Their motives are many and various. With some it is health: "I feel that Imusthave a little sunshine, I have been so rheumatic all this autumn," or "My doctor tells me that, with my tendency to bronchitis, the fogs are really dangerous." With some it is sheer restlessness: "Well, you see, we were hereallthe summer, except just Whitsuntide and Ascot and Goodwood; so we have had about enough of London. And our home in Loamshire is so fearfully lonely in winter that it quite gets on my nerves. So I think a little run will do us all good; and we shall be back by the New Year, or February at latest." With some, again, economy is the motive power; "What with two sons to allowance, and two still at school; and one girl to be married at Easter, and one just coming out, as well as a most expensive governess for the young ones, I assure you it is quite difficult to make two ends meet. We have got an excellent offer for Eaton Place from November to May, and some friends on the Riviera have repeatedly asked us to pay them a long visit; and, when that's done, one can liveen pensionat Montreux for next to nothing." Others are lured abroad by the love of gambling, though this is not avowed: "I do so love Monte Carlo—not the gambling, but the air, and, even if one does lose a franc or two at the tables, I always saythat we should lose much more at home, with Christmas presents, and Workhouse Treats, and all those tiresome things one has to do."

It is not a joke—for I never joke about religion—it is a literal fact that in my youth the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" was interpreted as pointing to an enlargement of the human mind through increased facilities of travel. I do not guarantee the exegesis, but I note the fact. A hundred years ago, if parents wished to enlarge their son's understanding by sending him on the "Grand Tour" of Europe, they set aside twelve months for the fulfilment of their purpose. Young Hopeful set out in a travelling-carriage with a tutor (or Bear-Leader), a Doctor, and a Valet. The Bear-Leader's was a recognized and lucrative profession. In a diary for 1788, which lies before me as I write, I read: "Mr. Coxe, the traveller, has been particularly lucky as a Pupil-Leader about Europe. After Lord Herbert, he had Mr. Whitbred at £800 per ann., and now has Mr. Portman, with £1000 per ann." Patrick Brydone, scholar, antiquary, andvirtuoso, whose daughter married the second Earl of Minto, was "Pupil-Leader" (or Bear-Leader) to William Beckford. Sydney Smith was dug out of his curacy on Salisbury Plain in order to act as Bear-Leader to the grandfather of the present Lord St. Aldwyn. Charles Richard Sumner, who, as last of thePrince-Bishops of Winchester, drew £40,000 a year for forty years, began life as Bear-Leader to Lord Mount-Charles, eldest son of that Lady Conyngham whom George IV. admired; and he owed his first preferment in the Church to the amiable complaisance with which he rescued his young charge from a matrimonial entanglement. That was early in the nineteenth century; but forty years later the Bear-Leader was still an indispensable adjunct to the Grand Tour of Illustrious Youth. The late Duke of Argyll has told us how he made his travels sandwiched inside his father's chariot between his preceptor and his physician. When the Marquis of Montacute made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land he was even more liberally attended; for, in addition to his Bear-Leader, Colonel Grouse, he took his father's doctor, Mr Groby, to avert or cure the fevers, and his father's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bernard, to guide his researches into the theology of Syria. Perhaps Lord Montacute existed only in Lord Beaconsfield's rich imagination; but Thackeray, who never invented but always described what he saw, drew a delightful portrait of "the Rev. Baring Leader," who, "having a great natural turn and liking towards the aristocracy," consented to escort Viscount Talboys when that beer-loving young nobleman made his celebrated journey down the Rhine.

But, though a special divinity always hedged,as it still hedges, the travels of an Eldest Son, the more modest journeyings of his parents were not accomplished without considerable form and fuss. Lord and Lady Proudflesh or Mr. and Mrs. Goldmore travelled all over Europe in their own carriage. It was planted bodily on the deck of the steamer, so that its privileged occupants could endure the torments of the crossing in dignified seclusion; and, when once the solid shore of the Continent was safely reached, it was drawn by an endless succession of post-horses, ridden by postillions, with the valet and maid (like those who pertained to Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock) "affectionate in the rumble." The inside of the carriage was a miracle of ingenuity. Space was economized with the most careful art, and all the appliances of travel—looking-glasses and luncheon-baskets, lamps and maps, newspapers and books—were bestowed in their peculiar and appropriate corners. I possess a "dining equipage" which made the tour of Europe not once but often in the service of a Diplomatist. It is shaped something like a large egg, and covered with shagreen. It contains a tumbler, a sandwich-box, and a silver-handled knife, fork, and spoon; the handle of each of these tools unscrews, and in their hollow interiors the Diplomatist carried his salt, sugar, and pepper. On the roof of the carriage was the more substantial luggage. A travelling-bath, though not unknown, was rather an exceptionalluxury, and, according to our modern notions, it was painfully small. A silver tub which sufficed for the ablutions of the great Duke of Marlborough through the campaigns which changed the face of Europe now serves as a rose-bowl at the banquets of Spencer House.

The trunks, which were strapped to the roof of the travelling-carriage, were of a peculiar form—very shallow, and so shaped as to fit into one another and occupy every inch of space. These were called Imperials, and just now I referred to Tom Hughes's undeserved strictures on them. The passage fits neatly into our present subject: "I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies' maids, imperials and travelling-carriages, are an abomination unto me—I cannot away with them." To me, on the contrary, the very word "Imperial" (when divested of political associations) is pleasant. It appeals to the historic sense. It carries us back to Napoleon's campaigns, and to that wonderful house on wheels—his travelling-carriage—now enshrined at Madame Tussaud's. It even titillates the gastronomic instinct by recalling that masterly method of cooking a fowl which bears the name of Marengo. The great Napoleon had no notion of fighting his battles on an empty stomach, so, wherever he was, a portable kitchen, in the shape of a travelling-carriage, was close at hand. The cook and hismarmitonstravelled inside, with the appliancesfor making a charcoal fire at a moment's notice, while the Imperials on the roof contained the due supply of chickens, eggs, bread, and Bordeaux. In the preparation of a meal under such conditions time was money—nay, rather, it was Empire. The highest honours were bestowed on the most expeditious method, and the method called after Marengo took exactly twenty minutes.

Here is testimony much more recent. Lady Dorothy Nevill, in the volume of "Reminiscences" which she has lately given to the world, thus describes her youthful journeys between her London and her Norfolk homes: "It took us two long days to get to Wolterton, and the cost must have been considerable. We went in the family coach with four post-horses, whilst two 'fourgons' conveyed the luggage." But travelling abroad was a still more majestic ceremonial: "We were a large party—six of ourselves, as well as two maids, a footman, and French cook; nor must I forget a wonderful courier, covered with gold and braid. He preceded our cavalcade and announced the imminent arrival of a great English Milord and his suite. We had two fourgons to hold thebatterie de cuisineand our six beds, which had to be unpacked and made up every night. We had, besides the family coach and a barouche, six saddle horses, and two attendant grooms."

Travel in those brave days of old was a dignified,a leisurely, and a comfortable process. How different is Travel in these degenerate times! For the young man rejoicing in his strength it means, as Tom Hughes said forty years ago, "getting over a couple of thousand miles for three-pound-ten; going round Ireland, with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copy of Tennyson on the top of a Swiss mountain, or pulling down the Danube in an Oxford racing-boat." For those who have reached maturer years it may mean a couple of nights in Paris, just to see the first performance of a new play and to test the merits of the latest restaurant, or it may mean a week in New York to study the bearings of the Presidential election and to gather fresh views of the Silver Question. Dr. Lunn kindly invites the more seriously minded to a Conference at Grindelwald, where we can combine the delights of Alpine scenery and undenominational religion; and "the son of a well-known member of the House of Lords" offers to conduct us personally through "A Lion and Rhinoceros Hunting Party in Somaliland," or "A Scientific Expedition to Central Africa, to visit the supposed cradle of the human race and the site of the Garden of Eden." Nothing of Travelling-carriages and Imperials here! No "maid and valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense of independence andresponsibility. The modern traveller is shot like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under wonderfully uncomfortable conditions.

XXVIIIACCOMPLISHMENTSA pictorial critic, commending the water-colour painting of Mr. Arthur Rich, says that, after examining his firm and serious work, "it is impossible to think that there is anything trivial in the art of Aquarelle—that it is, as has been said, 'a thing Aunts do.'"A thing Aunts do.I linger on the words, for they suggest deep thoughts. Many and mysterious are the tricks of language—not least so the subtle law by which certain relationships inevitably suggest peculiar traits. Thus the Grandmother stands to all time as the type of benevolent feebleness; the Stepmother was branded by classical antiquity as Unjust; and Thackeray's Mrs. Gashleigh and Mrs. Chuff are the typical Mothers-in-Law. The Father is commonly the "Heavy Father" of fiction and the drama. The Mother is always quoted with affection, as in "Mother-wit," our Mother-country, and our Mother-tongue. "A Brother," ever since the days of Solomon, "is born for adversity," and a Brother-officer implies a loyal friend. A Sister is the type of Innocence, withjust a faint tinge ornuanceof pitying contempt, as when the Vainglorious Briton speaks of the "Sister Country" across St. George's Channel, or the hubristic Oxonian sniggers at the "Sister University" of Cambridge. Eldest and Younger Sons again, as I have before now had occasion to point out, convey two quite different sets of ideas, and this discrepancy has not escaped the notice of the social Poet, who observes that—"Acres and kine and tenements and sheepEnrich the Eldest, while the Younger SonsMonopolize the talents and the duns.""My Uncle," in colloquial phrase, signifies the merchant who transacts his business under the sign of the Three Golden Balls; and to these expressive relationships must be added Auntship. "A thing Aunts do," says the pictorial critic; and the contumelious phrase is not of yesterday, for in 1829 a secularly-minded friend complained that young Mr. William Gladstone, then an Undergraduate at Christ Church, had "mixed himself up so much with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits." To paint in water-colour and to keep tame rabbits are pursuits which to the superficial gaze have little in common, though both are, or were, characteristic of Aunts, and both are, in some sense, accomplishments, demanding natural taste,acquired skill, patience, care, a delicate touch, and a watchful eye. Perhaps these were the particular accomplishments in which the traditional Aunt "specialized," though she had never heard that bad word; but, if she chose to diffuse her energies more widely, the world was all before her where to choose; and, by a singular reversal of the law of progress, there were more "accomplishments" to solicit her attention a hundred years ago than there are to-day.When the most fascinating of all heroines, Di Vernon, anticipated posterity by devoting her attention to politics, field sports, and classical literature, she enumerated, among the more feminine accomplishments which she had discarded, "sewing a tucker, working cross-stitch, and making a pudding"; and she instanced, among the symbols of orthodox femininity "a shepherdess wrought in worsted, a broken-backed spinet, a lute with three strings, rock-work, shell-work, and needle-work." We clear the century with a flying leap, and find ourselves in the company of a model matron, with surroundings substantially unchanged: "Mrs. Bayham-Badger was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it."Miss Volumnia Dedlock's accomplishments, though belonging to the same period, were slightly different: "Displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue and propounding French conundrums in country houses, she passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date, and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath." Perhaps she had been educated by Miss Monflathers, "who was at the head of the head Boarding and Day Establishment in the town," and whose gloss on the didactic ditty of the Busy Bee so confounded the emissary from the Waxworks."In books, or work, or healthful playis quite right as far as genteel children are concerned, and in their case 'work' means painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or embroidery." Do even Aunts paint on velvet, or cut ornaments out of coloured paper, in this "so-called Twentieth Century"? I know no more pathetic passage in the Literature of Art than that in which Mrs. Gaskell enumerated Miss Matty's qualifications for the work of teaching:—"I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play 'Ah! vous dirai-je maman?' on the piano; but thatwas long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace patterns very nicely for muslin embroidery, but that was her nearest approach to the accomplishment of drawing, and I did not think it would go very far. Miss Matty's eyes were failing her, and I doubted if she could discover the number of threads in a worsted-work pattern, or rightly appreciate the different shades required for Queen Adelaide's face, in the loyal wool-work now fashionable in Cranford."The allusion to Queen Adelaide's face fixes the narrative between 1820 and 1830, and George Eliot was depicting the same unenlightened period when she described the accomplishments provided by Ladies' Schools as "certain small tinklings and smearings." Probably all of us can recall an Aunt who tinkled on the piano, or a First Cousin once Removed who smeared on Bristol Board. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose invincible force and evergreen memory carry down into the reign of King Edward VII. the traditions of Queen Charlotte's Court, is a singularly accomplished Aunt, and she has just made this remarkable confession: "At different times I have attempted many kinds of amateur work, including book illumination, leather-working, wood-carving, and, of late years, a kind of old-fashioned paper-work, which consists in arranging little slips of coloured paper into decorative designs, as was done at the end of theeighteenth century. When completed, this work is made up into boxes, trays, or mounts for pictures." Surely in this accomplishment Miss Volumnia Dedlock lives again. And then Lady Dorothy, lapsing into reminiscent vein, makes this rather half-hearted apology for the domestic artistry of bygone days: "Years ago ladies used to spend much more of their time in artistic work of some kind or other, for there were not then the many distractions which exist to-day. Indeed, in the country some sort of work was a positive necessity; and though, no doubt, by far the greater portion of what was done was absolutely hideous, useless, and horrible, yet it served the purpose of passing away many an hour which otherwise would have been given up to insufferable boredom."Yes, the fashions of the world succeed one another in perpetual change; but Boredom is eternally the enemy, and the paramount necessity of escaping from it begets each year some new and strange activity. The Aunt no longer paints in water-colours or keeps tame rabbits, flattens ferns in an album, or traces crude designs with a hot poker on a deal board. To-day she urges the impetuous bicycle, or, in more extreme cases, directs the murderous motor; lectures on politics or platonics, Icelandic art, or Kamschatkan literature. Perhaps she has a Cause or a Mission pleads for the legal enforcement of Vegetarian Boots, or tears down the knocker of a Statesmanwho refuses her the suffrage. Perhaps her enthusiasms are less altruistic, and then she may pillage her friends at Bridge, or supply theNew York Sewerwith a weekly column of Classy Cuttings. "Are you theDaily Mail?" incautiously chirped a literary lady to an unknown friend who had rung her up on the telephone. "No, I'm not, but I always thought you were," was the reply; and so, in truth, she was.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

A pictorial critic, commending the water-colour painting of Mr. Arthur Rich, says that, after examining his firm and serious work, "it is impossible to think that there is anything trivial in the art of Aquarelle—that it is, as has been said, 'a thing Aunts do.'"

A thing Aunts do.I linger on the words, for they suggest deep thoughts. Many and mysterious are the tricks of language—not least so the subtle law by which certain relationships inevitably suggest peculiar traits. Thus the Grandmother stands to all time as the type of benevolent feebleness; the Stepmother was branded by classical antiquity as Unjust; and Thackeray's Mrs. Gashleigh and Mrs. Chuff are the typical Mothers-in-Law. The Father is commonly the "Heavy Father" of fiction and the drama. The Mother is always quoted with affection, as in "Mother-wit," our Mother-country, and our Mother-tongue. "A Brother," ever since the days of Solomon, "is born for adversity," and a Brother-officer implies a loyal friend. A Sister is the type of Innocence, withjust a faint tinge ornuanceof pitying contempt, as when the Vainglorious Briton speaks of the "Sister Country" across St. George's Channel, or the hubristic Oxonian sniggers at the "Sister University" of Cambridge. Eldest and Younger Sons again, as I have before now had occasion to point out, convey two quite different sets of ideas, and this discrepancy has not escaped the notice of the social Poet, who observes that—

"Acres and kine and tenements and sheepEnrich the Eldest, while the Younger SonsMonopolize the talents and the duns."

"My Uncle," in colloquial phrase, signifies the merchant who transacts his business under the sign of the Three Golden Balls; and to these expressive relationships must be added Auntship. "A thing Aunts do," says the pictorial critic; and the contumelious phrase is not of yesterday, for in 1829 a secularly-minded friend complained that young Mr. William Gladstone, then an Undergraduate at Christ Church, had "mixed himself up so much with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits." To paint in water-colour and to keep tame rabbits are pursuits which to the superficial gaze have little in common, though both are, or were, characteristic of Aunts, and both are, in some sense, accomplishments, demanding natural taste,acquired skill, patience, care, a delicate touch, and a watchful eye. Perhaps these were the particular accomplishments in which the traditional Aunt "specialized," though she had never heard that bad word; but, if she chose to diffuse her energies more widely, the world was all before her where to choose; and, by a singular reversal of the law of progress, there were more "accomplishments" to solicit her attention a hundred years ago than there are to-day.

When the most fascinating of all heroines, Di Vernon, anticipated posterity by devoting her attention to politics, field sports, and classical literature, she enumerated, among the more feminine accomplishments which she had discarded, "sewing a tucker, working cross-stitch, and making a pudding"; and she instanced, among the symbols of orthodox femininity "a shepherdess wrought in worsted, a broken-backed spinet, a lute with three strings, rock-work, shell-work, and needle-work." We clear the century with a flying leap, and find ourselves in the company of a model matron, with surroundings substantially unchanged: "Mrs. Bayham-Badger was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it."Miss Volumnia Dedlock's accomplishments, though belonging to the same period, were slightly different: "Displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of coloured paper, and also singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue and propounding French conundrums in country houses, she passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date, and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath." Perhaps she had been educated by Miss Monflathers, "who was at the head of the head Boarding and Day Establishment in the town," and whose gloss on the didactic ditty of the Busy Bee so confounded the emissary from the Waxworks.

"In books, or work, or healthful play

is quite right as far as genteel children are concerned, and in their case 'work' means painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or embroidery." Do even Aunts paint on velvet, or cut ornaments out of coloured paper, in this "so-called Twentieth Century"? I know no more pathetic passage in the Literature of Art than that in which Mrs. Gaskell enumerated Miss Matty's qualifications for the work of teaching:—

"I ran over her accomplishments. Once upon a time I had heard her say she could play 'Ah! vous dirai-je maman?' on the piano; but thatwas long, long ago; that faint shadow of musical acquirement had died out years before. She had also once been able to trace patterns very nicely for muslin embroidery, but that was her nearest approach to the accomplishment of drawing, and I did not think it would go very far. Miss Matty's eyes were failing her, and I doubted if she could discover the number of threads in a worsted-work pattern, or rightly appreciate the different shades required for Queen Adelaide's face, in the loyal wool-work now fashionable in Cranford."

The allusion to Queen Adelaide's face fixes the narrative between 1820 and 1830, and George Eliot was depicting the same unenlightened period when she described the accomplishments provided by Ladies' Schools as "certain small tinklings and smearings." Probably all of us can recall an Aunt who tinkled on the piano, or a First Cousin once Removed who smeared on Bristol Board. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose invincible force and evergreen memory carry down into the reign of King Edward VII. the traditions of Queen Charlotte's Court, is a singularly accomplished Aunt, and she has just made this remarkable confession: "At different times I have attempted many kinds of amateur work, including book illumination, leather-working, wood-carving, and, of late years, a kind of old-fashioned paper-work, which consists in arranging little slips of coloured paper into decorative designs, as was done at the end of theeighteenth century. When completed, this work is made up into boxes, trays, or mounts for pictures." Surely in this accomplishment Miss Volumnia Dedlock lives again. And then Lady Dorothy, lapsing into reminiscent vein, makes this rather half-hearted apology for the domestic artistry of bygone days: "Years ago ladies used to spend much more of their time in artistic work of some kind or other, for there were not then the many distractions which exist to-day. Indeed, in the country some sort of work was a positive necessity; and though, no doubt, by far the greater portion of what was done was absolutely hideous, useless, and horrible, yet it served the purpose of passing away many an hour which otherwise would have been given up to insufferable boredom."

Yes, the fashions of the world succeed one another in perpetual change; but Boredom is eternally the enemy, and the paramount necessity of escaping from it begets each year some new and strange activity. The Aunt no longer paints in water-colours or keeps tame rabbits, flattens ferns in an album, or traces crude designs with a hot poker on a deal board. To-day she urges the impetuous bicycle, or, in more extreme cases, directs the murderous motor; lectures on politics or platonics, Icelandic art, or Kamschatkan literature. Perhaps she has a Cause or a Mission pleads for the legal enforcement of Vegetarian Boots, or tears down the knocker of a Statesmanwho refuses her the suffrage. Perhaps her enthusiasms are less altruistic, and then she may pillage her friends at Bridge, or supply theNew York Sewerwith a weekly column of Classy Cuttings. "Are you theDaily Mail?" incautiously chirped a literary lady to an unknown friend who had rung her up on the telephone. "No, I'm not, but I always thought you were," was the reply; and so, in truth, she was.

XXIXCIDERAn ingenious correspondent of mine has lately been visiting the Brewers' Exhibition, and has come away from it full of Cider. I mean "full" in the intellectual rather than the physical sense—full of the subject, though unversed in the beverage. He reminds me that Charles Lamb had his catalogue of "Books which are no books—biblia a-biblia," among which he reckoned Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket-books, Draughtboards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large, and Paley's Moral Philosophy. My correspondent suggests that, in a like spirit, a Brewer must have his catalogue of Drinks which are no drinks—pota a-pota—and that among them, if only the secret thoughts of his heart were known, he must reckon Cider. Yet at the Brewers' Exhibition there was a Literature of Cider, and that innocent-sounding beverage was quoted at a price per bottle at which Claret is not ashamed to be sold. That the men of Malt and Hops should thus officially recognize the existence of fermented apple-juice strikes my friend as an Economy of Truth; a suppression, or at least anevasion, of a deep-seated and absolute belief. They cannot really regard Cider as a drink, and yet they give it a place alongside that manly draught which has made old England what she is. I, on the other hand, who always like to regard the actions of my fellow-men in the most favourable light, prefer to think that the Brewers have been employing some portion of that enforced leisure, which the decay of their industry must have brought, in studying English literature, and that they have thus been made acquainted with the name and fame of Cider.Biblia a-bibliaset me thinking of Lamb, and when once one begins recalling "Elia" one drifts along, in a kind of waking reverie, from one pleasant fantasy to another.Biblia a-biblialed me on to "Dream Children," and Dream Children to Dream Riddles—a reverie of my own childhood, when we used to ask one another a pleasing conundrum which played prettily onIn CiderandInside her. But it made light of an illustrious name and had better be forgotten.Few, I fear, are the readers of John Philips, but, if such there be, they will no doubt recall the only poem which, as far as I know, has ever been devoted to the praise of Apple-wine. Philips was a patriotic son of Herefordshire, and in Hereford Cathedral he lies buried under bunches of marble apples which commemorate his poetical achievement:—"What soil the apple loves, what care is dueTo Orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits,Thy gift, Pomona! in Miltonian verse,Adventurous, I presume to sing; of verseNor skill'd nor studious; but my native soilInvites me, and the theme as yet unsung.""Orchats" is good; but how far these lines can be justly called Miltonian is a question which my readers can decide for themselves. At any rate, the poem contains more than four thousand lines exactly like them, and they had the remarkable fortune to be translated into Italian under the title of "Il Sidro." Philips was a Cavalier in all his tastes and sympathies: but even the Puritans, whom he so cordially detested, admitted the merits of Cider. Macaulay, with his characteristic love of irrelevant particularity, insists on the fact that, through all the commotions of the Great Rebellion and the Civil War, "the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire and the apple-juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire." Nor was it only in his purple prose that the great rhetorician glorified the juice of the apple. Many a reader who has forgotten all about John Philips will recall Macaulay's rhymes on the garrulous country squire who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to the society of Bishops:—"His Grace Archbishop Manners-SuttonCould not keep on a single button.As for Right Reverend John of Chester,His waistcoats open at the breasts are.Our friend has filled a mighty trunkWith trophies torn from Bishop Monk,And he has really tattered foullyThe vestments of good Bishop Howley.No buttons could I late discern onThe garments of Archbishop Vernon,And never had his fingers mercyUpon the garb of Bishop Percy;While buttons fly from Bishop RyderLike corks that spring from bottled cyder."From Macaulay and bottled Cyder (or Cider) the transition is easy to that admirable delineator of life and manners, Mrs. Sherwood; she was pretty much a contemporary of Macaulay's, and was a native of Worcestershire, which in its Cider-bearing qualities is not far removed from Herefordshire, beloved of Philips. Few but fit is the audience to which Mrs. Sherwood still appeals; yet they who were nurtured on "The Fairchild Family" still renew their youth as they peruse the adventures of Lucy, Emily, and little Henry: "The farmer and his wife, whose name was Freeman, were not people who lived in the fear of God, neither did they bring up their children well; on which account Mr. Fairchild had often forbidden Lucy, Emily, and Henry to go to their house." However, go they did, as soon as their parents' backs were turned; and Mrs. Freeman "gave them each a large piece of cake and something sweet to drink, which, she said, would do them good." But it turned out to be Cider, and did not do them good, for, "as they were never used to drink anything but water, it made them quite drunk for a little while."The mention of Worcestershire as a cider-growing county aptly introduces my unfailing friend Lord Beaconsfield, for, though he is less precise than I could wish in praise of Cider, he compliments it indirectly in his pretty description of "a fair child, long-haired, and blushing like a Worcestershire orchard before harvest-time." Once, indeed, the lover of Disraelitish romance seems to find himself on the track of Cider. Harry Coningsby is overtaken by a thunderstorm in a forest, and, taking refuge in a sylvan inn, makes friends with a mysterious stranger. The two travellers agree to dine together, when this eminently natural dialogue ensues. "'But Ceres without Bacchus,' said Coningsby, 'how does that do? Think you, under this roof, we could invoke the god?'"'Let us swear by his body that we will try,' said the stranger."Alas! the landlord was not a priest of Bacchus. But then these enquiries led to the finest Perry in the world." If only the Perry had been Cider, this quotation had been more apposite; but the themes, though not identical, are cognate.We have traced the praise of Cider in poetry and in romance, but it also has its place in biography, and even in religious biography. One of the most delightful portraits of a saint which was ever drawn is Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving." In the autumn of 1834—the last autumn of his life—that Prophet and man of God made a kind ofapostolic journey through Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Wales. From Kington, in Herefordshire, he wrote to his wife: "My dinner was ham and eggs, a cold fowl, an apple tart, and cheese; a tumbler of Cider, and a glass of Sicilian Tokay." And he adds a tender reference to "Ginger Wine in a long-necked decanter." It is always satisfactory to find the good things of this life not reserved exclusively for bad people.Sydney Smith, though a Canon of St. Paul's, was scarcely a Saint and not at all a Prophet; and through the study-windows of his beautiful parsonage in Somersetshire, he gazed on the glories of the Cider-vintage with an eye more mundane than that of Edward Irving. In 1829 he wrote from Combe Florey—"the sacred valley of flowers," as he loved to call it: "I continue to be delighted with the country. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."Cider is, I believe, still drunk at Oxford; and memory retains grateful recollections of Cider-cup beautiful as a liquid topaz, with a cluster of blue flowers floating on its breast. But the Cider-Cellars of London—places of, I fear, ill-regulated conviviality—have, as far as I know, long since closed their doors. Yet they, too, have their secure place in literature. The "Young Lion" of theDaily Telegraph, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of theTimes, thrilled with excitement at the prospect of inoculating the Leading Journal with "the divine madness of our new style—the style we have formed upon Sala. It blends the airy epicureanism of thesalonsof Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider Cellar." But that was written in 1870, and the style and the Cellars alike are things of the past. The official historian of Cider excels in that "dry light" which is the grace of history, and gravely tells us that "Cider (Zider, German) when first made in England was called wine." With a proper reluctance to commit himself to what is antecedently incredible, he adds that "the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador in France (1699),is saidto have passed off Cider for Wine." It is more plausibly stated that in later days the innocuous apple has been artfully mingled with the "foaming grape of Eastern France," and has been drunk in England as Champagne. The Hock-cup at Buckingham Palace is justly vaunted as one of the chief glories of our ancient polity. It is certainly the most delectable drink that ever refreshed a thirsty soul; and the art of concocting it is a State-Secret of the most awful solemnity. But there never was a secret which did not sooner or later elude its guardians; and I have heard that a Royal cellarer, in an expansive moment, once revealed the spell. German Wine and English Cider together constitute the Kingly Cup,"And, blended, form, with artful strife,The strength and harmony of life."

CIDER

An ingenious correspondent of mine has lately been visiting the Brewers' Exhibition, and has come away from it full of Cider. I mean "full" in the intellectual rather than the physical sense—full of the subject, though unversed in the beverage. He reminds me that Charles Lamb had his catalogue of "Books which are no books—biblia a-biblia," among which he reckoned Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket-books, Draughtboards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large, and Paley's Moral Philosophy. My correspondent suggests that, in a like spirit, a Brewer must have his catalogue of Drinks which are no drinks—pota a-pota—and that among them, if only the secret thoughts of his heart were known, he must reckon Cider. Yet at the Brewers' Exhibition there was a Literature of Cider, and that innocent-sounding beverage was quoted at a price per bottle at which Claret is not ashamed to be sold. That the men of Malt and Hops should thus officially recognize the existence of fermented apple-juice strikes my friend as an Economy of Truth; a suppression, or at least anevasion, of a deep-seated and absolute belief. They cannot really regard Cider as a drink, and yet they give it a place alongside that manly draught which has made old England what she is. I, on the other hand, who always like to regard the actions of my fellow-men in the most favourable light, prefer to think that the Brewers have been employing some portion of that enforced leisure, which the decay of their industry must have brought, in studying English literature, and that they have thus been made acquainted with the name and fame of Cider.

Biblia a-bibliaset me thinking of Lamb, and when once one begins recalling "Elia" one drifts along, in a kind of waking reverie, from one pleasant fantasy to another.Biblia a-biblialed me on to "Dream Children," and Dream Children to Dream Riddles—a reverie of my own childhood, when we used to ask one another a pleasing conundrum which played prettily onIn CiderandInside her. But it made light of an illustrious name and had better be forgotten.

Few, I fear, are the readers of John Philips, but, if such there be, they will no doubt recall the only poem which, as far as I know, has ever been devoted to the praise of Apple-wine. Philips was a patriotic son of Herefordshire, and in Hereford Cathedral he lies buried under bunches of marble apples which commemorate his poetical achievement:—

"What soil the apple loves, what care is dueTo Orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits,Thy gift, Pomona! in Miltonian verse,Adventurous, I presume to sing; of verseNor skill'd nor studious; but my native soilInvites me, and the theme as yet unsung."

"Orchats" is good; but how far these lines can be justly called Miltonian is a question which my readers can decide for themselves. At any rate, the poem contains more than four thousand lines exactly like them, and they had the remarkable fortune to be translated into Italian under the title of "Il Sidro." Philips was a Cavalier in all his tastes and sympathies: but even the Puritans, whom he so cordially detested, admitted the merits of Cider. Macaulay, with his characteristic love of irrelevant particularity, insists on the fact that, through all the commotions of the Great Rebellion and the Civil War, "the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire and the apple-juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire." Nor was it only in his purple prose that the great rhetorician glorified the juice of the apple. Many a reader who has forgotten all about John Philips will recall Macaulay's rhymes on the garrulous country squire who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to the society of Bishops:—

"His Grace Archbishop Manners-SuttonCould not keep on a single button.As for Right Reverend John of Chester,His waistcoats open at the breasts are.Our friend has filled a mighty trunkWith trophies torn from Bishop Monk,And he has really tattered foullyThe vestments of good Bishop Howley.No buttons could I late discern onThe garments of Archbishop Vernon,And never had his fingers mercyUpon the garb of Bishop Percy;While buttons fly from Bishop RyderLike corks that spring from bottled cyder."

From Macaulay and bottled Cyder (or Cider) the transition is easy to that admirable delineator of life and manners, Mrs. Sherwood; she was pretty much a contemporary of Macaulay's, and was a native of Worcestershire, which in its Cider-bearing qualities is not far removed from Herefordshire, beloved of Philips. Few but fit is the audience to which Mrs. Sherwood still appeals; yet they who were nurtured on "The Fairchild Family" still renew their youth as they peruse the adventures of Lucy, Emily, and little Henry: "The farmer and his wife, whose name was Freeman, were not people who lived in the fear of God, neither did they bring up their children well; on which account Mr. Fairchild had often forbidden Lucy, Emily, and Henry to go to their house." However, go they did, as soon as their parents' backs were turned; and Mrs. Freeman "gave them each a large piece of cake and something sweet to drink, which, she said, would do them good." But it turned out to be Cider, and did not do them good, for, "as they were never used to drink anything but water, it made them quite drunk for a little while."

The mention of Worcestershire as a cider-growing county aptly introduces my unfailing friend Lord Beaconsfield, for, though he is less precise than I could wish in praise of Cider, he compliments it indirectly in his pretty description of "a fair child, long-haired, and blushing like a Worcestershire orchard before harvest-time." Once, indeed, the lover of Disraelitish romance seems to find himself on the track of Cider. Harry Coningsby is overtaken by a thunderstorm in a forest, and, taking refuge in a sylvan inn, makes friends with a mysterious stranger. The two travellers agree to dine together, when this eminently natural dialogue ensues. "'But Ceres without Bacchus,' said Coningsby, 'how does that do? Think you, under this roof, we could invoke the god?'

"'Let us swear by his body that we will try,' said the stranger.

"Alas! the landlord was not a priest of Bacchus. But then these enquiries led to the finest Perry in the world." If only the Perry had been Cider, this quotation had been more apposite; but the themes, though not identical, are cognate.

We have traced the praise of Cider in poetry and in romance, but it also has its place in biography, and even in religious biography. One of the most delightful portraits of a saint which was ever drawn is Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving." In the autumn of 1834—the last autumn of his life—that Prophet and man of God made a kind ofapostolic journey through Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Wales. From Kington, in Herefordshire, he wrote to his wife: "My dinner was ham and eggs, a cold fowl, an apple tart, and cheese; a tumbler of Cider, and a glass of Sicilian Tokay." And he adds a tender reference to "Ginger Wine in a long-necked decanter." It is always satisfactory to find the good things of this life not reserved exclusively for bad people.

Sydney Smith, though a Canon of St. Paul's, was scarcely a Saint and not at all a Prophet; and through the study-windows of his beautiful parsonage in Somersetshire, he gazed on the glories of the Cider-vintage with an eye more mundane than that of Edward Irving. In 1829 he wrote from Combe Florey—"the sacred valley of flowers," as he loved to call it: "I continue to be delighted with the country. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."

Cider is, I believe, still drunk at Oxford; and memory retains grateful recollections of Cider-cup beautiful as a liquid topaz, with a cluster of blue flowers floating on its breast. But the Cider-Cellars of London—places of, I fear, ill-regulated conviviality—have, as far as I know, long since closed their doors. Yet they, too, have their secure place in literature. The "Young Lion" of theDaily Telegraph, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of theTimes, thrilled with excitement at the prospect of inoculating the Leading Journal with "the divine madness of our new style—the style we have formed upon Sala. It blends the airy epicureanism of thesalonsof Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider Cellar." But that was written in 1870, and the style and the Cellars alike are things of the past. The official historian of Cider excels in that "dry light" which is the grace of history, and gravely tells us that "Cider (Zider, German) when first made in England was called wine." With a proper reluctance to commit himself to what is antecedently incredible, he adds that "the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador in France (1699),is saidto have passed off Cider for Wine." It is more plausibly stated that in later days the innocuous apple has been artfully mingled with the "foaming grape of Eastern France," and has been drunk in England as Champagne. The Hock-cup at Buckingham Palace is justly vaunted as one of the chief glories of our ancient polity. It is certainly the most delectable drink that ever refreshed a thirsty soul; and the art of concocting it is a State-Secret of the most awful solemnity. But there never was a secret which did not sooner or later elude its guardians; and I have heard that a Royal cellarer, in an expansive moment, once revealed the spell. German Wine and English Cider together constitute the Kingly Cup,

"And, blended, form, with artful strife,The strength and harmony of life."

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