Chapter VI: Part 6

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 and responsibility. 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.

XXVIII

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, with just a faint tinge or _nuance_ of 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 sheep
Enrich the Eldest, while the Younger Sons
Monopolize 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 that was 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 the eighteenth 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 Statesman who refuses her the suffrage. Perhaps her enthusiasms are less altruistic, and then she may pillage her friends at Bridge, or supply the _New York Sewer_ with a weekly column of Classy Cuttings. "Are you the _Daily 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.

XXIX

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 an evasion, 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-biblia_ set 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-biblia_ led 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 on _In Cider_ and _Inside 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 due
To Orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits,
Thy gift, Pomona! in Miltonian verse,
Adventurous, I presume to sing; of verse
Nor skill'd nor studious; but my native soil
Invites 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-Sutton
Could 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 trunk
With trophies torn from Bishop Monk,
And he has really tattered foully
The vestments of good Bishop Howley.
No buttons could I late discern on
The garments of Archbishop Vernon,
And never had his fingers mercy
Upon the garb of Bishop Percy;
While buttons fly from Bishop Ryder
Like 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 of apostolic 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 the _Daily Telegraph_, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of the _Times_, 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 the _salons_ of 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 said_ to 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."

XXX

THE GARTER

"Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said----

I should uncommonly like to be a Knight of the Garter?" If such there be, let him forswear this column and pass on to the Cotton Market or the Education Bill. Here we cater for those in whom the historic instinct is combined with picturesque sensibility, and who love to trace the stream of the national life as it flows through long-descended rites. Lord Acton wrote finely of "Institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." No institution fulfils this ideal more absolutely than the Order of the Garter. One need not always "commence with the Deluge"; and there is no occasion to consult the lively oracles of Mrs. Markham for the story of the dropped garter and the chivalrous motto. It is enough to remember that the Order links the last enchantments of the Middle Age with the Twentieth Century, and that for at least four hundred years it has played a real, though hidden, part in the secret strategy of English Statecraft.

We are told by travellers that the Emperor of Lilliput rewarded his courtiers with three fine silken threads of about six inches long, one of which was blue, one red, and one green. The method by which these rewards were obtained is thus described by an eye-witness: "The Emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over it, sometimes creep under it, backwards and forwards, several times, according as the stick is elevated or depressed. Whoever shows the most agility and performs his part best of leaping and creeping is rewarded with the blue coloured silk, the next with the red, and so on."

To-day we are not concerned with the red silk, wisely invented by Sir Robert Walpole for the benefit of those who could not aspire to the blue; nor with the green, which illustrates the continuous and separate polity of the Northern Kingdom. The blue silk supplies us with all the material we shall need. In its wider aspect of the Blue Ribbon, it has its secure place in the art, the history, and the literature of England; though perhaps the Dryasdusts of future ages will be perplexed by the Manichæan associations which will then have gathered round it. "When," they will ask, "and by what process, did the ensign of a high chivalric Order which originated at a banquet become the symbol of total abstinence from fermented drinks?" Even so, a high-toned damsel from the State of Maine, regarding the Blue Ribbon which girt Lord Granville's white waistcoat, congratulated him on the boldness with which he displayed his colours, and then shrank back in astonished horror as he raised his claret-glass to his lips. In one of the prettiest of historical novels Amy Robsart is represented as examining with childish wonder the various badges and decorations which her husband wears, while Leicester, amused by her simplicity, explains the significance of each. "The embroidered strap, as thou callest it, around my knee," he said, "is the English Garter, an ornament which Kings are proud to wear. See, here is the star which belongs to it, and here is the diamond George, the jewel of the Order. You have heard how King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury----" "Oh, I know all that tale," said the Countess, slightly blushing, "and how a lady's garter became the proudest badge of English chivalry."

There are certain families which may be styled "Garter Families," so constant--almost unbroken--has been the tradition that the head of the family should be a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order. Such is the House of Beaufort; is there not a great saloon at Badminton walled entirely with portraits of Dukes of Beaufort in their flowing mantles of Garter-Blue? Such is the House of Bedford, which has worn the Garter from the reign of Henry VIII. till now; such the House of Norfolk, which contrived to retain its Garters, though it often lost its head, in times of civil commotion. The Dukes of Devonshire, again, have been habitual Garter-wearers; and the fourteenth Earl of Derby, though he refused a dukedom, was proud to accept an extra Garter (raising the number of Knights above the statutory twenty-five), which Queen Victoria gave him as a consolation for his eviction from the Premiership in 1859. _Punch_, then, as now, no respecter of persons, had an excellent cartoon of a blubbering child, to whom a gracious lady soothingly remarks, "Did he have a nasty tumble, then? Here's something pretty for him to play with." The Percys, again, were pre-eminently a Garter Family; sixteen heads of the house have worn Blue silk. So far as the male line was concerned, they came to an end in 1670. The eventual heiress of the house married Sir Hugh Smithson, who acquired the estates and assumed the name of the historic Percys. Having, in virtue of this great alliance, been created Earl of Northumberland, Sir Hugh begged George III. to give him the Garter. When the King demurred, the aspirant exclaimed, in the bitterness of his heart, "I am the first Northumberland who ever was refused the Garter." To which the King replied, not unreasonably, "And you are the first Smithson who ever asked for it." However, there are forms of political pressure to which even Kings must yield, and people who had "borough influence" could generally get their way when George III. wanted some trustworthy votes in the House of Commons. So Sir Hugh Smithson died a Duke and a K.G., and since his day the Percys have been continuously Gartered.

But it is in the sphere of rank just below that of the "Garter Families" that the Blue silk of Swift's imagination exercises its most potent influence. Men who are placed by the circumstances of their birth far beyond the temptations of mere cupidity, men who are justly satisfied with their social position and have no special wish to be transmogrified into marquises or dukes, are found to desire the Garter with an almost passionate fondness. Many a curious vote in a stand-or-fall division, many an unexpected declaration at a political crisis, many a transfer of local influence at an important election has been dictated by calculations about a possible Garter. It was this view of the decoration which inspired Lord Melbourne when, to the suggestion that he should take a vacant Garter for himself, he replied, "But why should I? I don't want to bribe myself." This same light-hearted statesman disputes with Lord Palmerston the credit of having said, "The great beauty of the Garter is that there's no d---- d nonsense of merit about it;" but it was undoubtedly Palmerston who declined to pay the customary fees to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, and on being gravely told that, unless he paid, his banner could not be erected in St. George's Chapel, replied that, as he never went to church at Windsor or anywhere else, the omission would not much affect him.

What made the recent Chapter of the Garter peculiarly exciting to such as have æsthetic as well as historic minds was the fact that, for once, the Knights might be seen in the full splendour of their magnificent costume. No other Order has so elaborate a paraphernalia, and every detail smacks deliciously of the antique world. The long, sweeping mantle of Garter-blue is worn over a surcoat and hood of crimson velvet. The hat is trimmed with ostrich feathers and heron's plumes. The enamelled collar swings majestically from shoulder to shoulder; from it depends the image of St. George trampling down the dragon; and round the left knee runs the Garter itself, setting forth the motto of the Order in letters of gold. It is a truly regal costume; and those who saw Lord Spencer so arrayed at the Coronation of King Edward might have fancied that they were gazing on an animated Vandyke. These full splendours of the Order are seldom seen, but some modifications of them appear on stated occasions. The King was married in the mantle of the Garter, worn over a Field-Marshal's uniform; and a similar practice is observed at ceremonies in St. George's Chapel. The Statutes of the Order bind every Knight, on his chivalric obedience, to wear the badge--the "George," as it is technically called--at all times and places. In obedience to this rule the Marquis of Abercorn, who died in 1818, always went out shooting in the Blue Ribbon from which, in ordinary dress, the badge depends. But those were the days when people played cricket in tall hats and attended the House of Commons in knee-breeches and silk stockings. Prince Albert, whose conscience in ceremonial matters was even painfully acute, always wore his Blue Ribbon over his shirt and below his waistcoat; and in his ancient photographs it can be dimly traced crossing his chest in the neighbourhood of his shirt studs. But to-day one chiefly sees it at dinners. A tradition of the Order requires a Knight dining with a brother-Knight to wear it, and after dinner one may meet it at an evening party. The disuse of knee-breeches, except in Royal company, makes it practically impossible to display the actual Garter; unless one chooses to follow the example of the seventh Duke of Bedford, who, being of a skinny habit and feeling the cold intensely, yet desiring to display his Garter, used to wear it buckled round the trouser of his left leg. Lord Beaconsfield, in his later years, used to appear in the evening with a most magnificent Star of the Garter which had belonged to the wicked Lord Hertford, Thackeray's Steyne and his own Monmouth. It was a constellation of picked diamonds, surrounding St. George's Cross in rubies. After Lord Beaconsfield's death it was exposed for sale in a jeweller's window, and eventually was broken up and sold piecemeal. There was an opportunity missed. Lord Rosebery ought to have bought it, and kept it by him until he was entitled to wear it.

In picture-galleries one can trace the evolution of the Blue Ribbon through several shades and shapes. In pictures of the Tudor and Stuart periods it is a light blue ribbon, worn round the neck, with the George hanging, like a locket, in front. In Georgian pictures the ribbon is much darker, and is worn over the left shoulder, reaching down to the right thigh, where the George is displayed. I have heard that the alteration of position was due to the Duke of Monmouth, who, when a little boy, accidentally thrust his right arm through the ribbon, with a childish grace which fascinated his father. The change of colour was due to the fact that the exiled King at St. Germain's affected still to bestow the Order, and the English ribbon was made darker, so as to obviate all possible confusion between the reality and the counterfeit. Of late years, this reason having ceased to operate, the King has returned to the lighter shade.

The last Commoner who wore the Garter was Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert Peel refused it. It is the only honour which, I think, Mr. Gladstone could have accepted without loss of dignity. For he truly was a Knight _sans peur et sans reproche_, worthy to rank with those to whom, in the purer days of chivalry, the Cross of St. George was not the reward of an intrigue but the symbol of a faith.

XXXI

SHERIFFS

The late Mr. Evelyn Philip Shirley, of Ettington, the most enthusiastic and cultured of English antiquaries, was once describing the procedure observed on the rare occasion of a "Free Conference" between the Houses of Parliament. "The Lords," he said, "sit with their hats on their heads. The Commons stand, uncovered, at the Bar; and the carpet is spread not on the floor but on the table, illustrating the phrase 'on the _tapis_.' Those are the things which make life really worth living."

I cannot profess to equal Mr. Shirley in culture, but I yield to no man in enthusiasm for antiquarian rites. Like Burke, I "piously believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." With Mr. Gladstone, I say that "the principle which gives us ritual in Religion gives us the ceremonial of Courts, the costume of judges, the uniform of regiments, all the language of heraldry and symbol, all the hierarchy of rank and title."

My antiquarian enthusiasm for the Garter must not be allowed to brush aside the more obvious topic of the Sheriffs. That just now[10] is a topic which, as the French say, palpitates with actuality. November is the Sheriffs' month; in it they bloom like chrysanthemums--doomed, alas! to as brief a splendour. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex--those glorious satellites who revolve round the Lord Mayor of London as the Cardinals round the Pope--are already installed. Their state carriages of dazzling hue, and their liveries stiff with gold bullion, have flung their radiance (as the late Mr. J. R. Green would have said) over the fog and filth of our autumnal climate.

"Who asketh why the Beautiful was made?
A wan cloud drifting o'er the waste of blue,
The thistledown that floats along the glade,
The lilac blooms of April--fair to view,
And naught but fair are these; and such I ween are you.
Yes, ye are beautiful. The young street boys
Joy in your beauty----"

But I am becoming rhapsodical, and with less excuse than "C. S. C.," whose poetic fire was kindled by the sight of the Beadles in the Burlington Arcade.

[10] November 1896.

On Monday the 12th of November, being the morrow of St. Martin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in clothing of wrought gold and figured silk, attending the ghost of what was once the Court of Exchequer, nominates three gentlemen of good estate to serve the office of High Sheriff for each of the counties of England. Be it remarked in passing that the robe of black and gold which the Chancellor wears on this occasion is that which Mr. Gladstone's statue in the Strand represents, and which, as a matter of fact, he wore at the opening of the Law Courts in December 1882, when, to the astonishment of the unlearned, he walked in procession among the Judges.

Early in the new year--on "the morrow of the Purification" to wit--the Lord President of the Council submits the names of the nominated Sheriffs, duly engrossed on parchment, to the King, who then, with a silver bodkin, "pricks" the name of the gentleman who in each county seems the fittest of the three for the august and perilous office of High Sheriff.

I love to handle great things greatly; so I have refreshed my memory with the constitutional lore of this high theme. The etymology of "Sheriff" I find to be (on the indisputable authority of Dr. Dryasdust) "Scirgeréfa--the 'Reeve' or Fiscal Officer of a Shire." In the Saxon twilight of our national history this Reeve, not yet developed into Sheriff, ranked next in his county to the Bishop and the Ealdorman, or Earl. In those days of rudimentary self-government, the Reeve was elected by popular vote, but Edward II., who seems to have been a bureaucrat before his time, abolished the form of election except as regards the cities, and from his time onwards the High Sheriff of a county has been a nominated officer. Until the days of the Tudors, the High Sheriff wielded great and miscellaneous powers. He was the military head of the county. He commanded the "Posse Comitatus," in which at his bidding every male over fifteen was forced to serve; and he was, in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the executant and minister of the law.

_Quomodo ceciderunt fortes!_ Henry VIII. at one fell swoop terminated the Sheriff's military power and made the new-fangled Lord-Lieutenant commander of the local forces; and successive Acts of Parliament have, by increasing the powers of courts and magistracies, reduced the civil power of the Sheriff to a dismal shadow of its former greatness. Still, in the person of his unromantic representative, the "Bound Bailiff," he watches the execution of civil process in the case of those who, to use a picturesque phrase, have "outrun the constable"; still, with all the pantomimic pomp of coach and footmen, trumpeters and javelin-men, he conducts the Judges of Assize to and from the court; and still he must be present in court when the capital sentence is pronounced. I believe I am right in stating that there is no such document as a "Death-warrant" known to English jurisprudence. The only warrant for the execution of a felon is the verbal sentence of the Judge pronounced in open court; and, as the High Sheriff is responsible for the due execution of that sentence, he must be present when it is pronounced, in order that he may know, by the evidence of his own eyes, that the person brought out for execution is the person on whom the sentence was pronounced. It is probable that many of my readers recollect the first Lord Tollemache, a man who combined singular gifts of physical strength with a delicate humanitarianism. He had been High Sheriff of Cheshire in very early life, and, till he was elevated to the Peerage, it was possible that his turn might come round again. Contemplating this contingency, he said that if he were again charged with the execution of a capital sentence, he should, on his own authority, offer the condemned man a dose of chloroform, so that, if he chose, he might go unconscious to his doom.

The duties connected with the capital sentence are, of course, infinitely the most trying of those which befall a High Sheriff; but even in other respects his lot is not an unmixed pleasure. If he is a poor man, the expense of conducting the Assizes with proper dignity is considerable. A sensitive man does not like to hear invidious comparisons between his carriages, horses, and liveries, and those of his predecessor in office. He winces under the imputation of an unworthy economy; and, if his equipage was conspicuously unequal to the occasion, the Judges have been known to express their displeasure by sarcasms, protests, and even fines. The fining power of a Judge on circuit is a mysterious prerogative. I have no notion whether it is restrained by statutory limitations, by what process the fine is enforced, or into whose pocket it finds its way. Some years ago the High Sheriff of Surrey published a placard at the Guildford Assizes setting forth that the public were excluded from the court by the Judge's order and in defiance of law, and warning his subordinate officers against giving effect to the order for exclusion. The Judge pronounced the placard "a painfully contumacious contempt of the Court," and fined the High Sheriff £500. My memory does not recall, and the records do not state, whether the mulcted officer paid up or climbed down.

If the High Sheriff has a friend or kinsman in Holy Orders, the Assizes afford an excellent opportunity of bringing him to public notice in the capacity of Sheriff's Chaplain; for the Chaplain preaches before the Judges at the opening of the Assize, and, if he is ambitious of fame, he can generally contrive to make something of the occasion. But few Chaplains, I should think, have emulated the courage of Sydney Smith, who at the York Assizes in 1824 rebuked the besetting sins of Bench and Bar in two remarkably vigorous sermons on these suggestive themes--"The Judge that smites contrary to the Law" and "The Lawyer that tempted Christ."

Broadly, I suppose it may be said that the people who really enjoy being High Sheriffs are not those who, by virtue of long hereditary connexion with the soil, are to the manner born; but rather those who by commercial industry have accumulated capital, and have invested it in land with a view to founding a family. To such, the hospitalities paid and the deference received, the quaint splendour of the Assize, and the undisputed precedence over the gentlemen of the County, are joys not lightly to be esteemed. When Lothair was arranging the splendid ceremonial for his famous Coming of Age, he said to the Duchess, "There is no doubt that, in the County, the High Sheriff takes precedence of every one, even of the Lord-Lieutenant; but how about his wife? I believe there is some tremendous question about the lady's precedence. We ought to have written to the Heralds' College." The Duchess graciously gave Mrs. High Sheriff the benefit of the doubt, and the ceremonies went forward without a hitch. On the night of the great banquet Lothair looked round, and then, "in an audible voice, and with a stateliness becoming such an incident, called upon the High Sheriff to lead the Duchess to the table. Although that eminent man had been thinking of nothing else for days, and during the last half-hour had felt as a man feels, and can only feel, who knows that some public function is momentarily about to fall to his perilous discharge, he was taken quite aback, changed colour, and lost his head. But Lothair's band, who were waiting at the door of the apartment to precede the procession to the hall, striking up at this moment "The Roast Beef of Old England," reanimated his heart, and, following Lothair and preceding all the other guests down the gallery and through many chambers, he experienced the proudest moment in a life of struggle, ingenuity, vicissitude, and success."

XXXII

PUBLISHERS

There is a passage in Selden's "Table-Talk" which, if I recollect it aright, may be paraphrased in some such form as this: The Lion, reeking of slaughter, met his neighbour the Sheep, and, after exchanging the time of day with her, asked her if his breath smelt of blood. She replied "Yes," whereupon he snapped off her head for a fool. Immediately afterwards he met the Jackal, to whom he addressed the same question. The Jackal answered "No," and the Lion tore him in pieces for a flatterer. Last of all he met the Fox, and asked the question a third time. The Fox replied that he had a cold in his head, and could smell nothing. _Moral_: "Wise men say little in dangerous times." The bearing of this aphorism on my present subject is sufficiently obvious; the "times"--not _Times_--are "dangerous" alike for authors and publishers, and "wise men" will "say little" about current controversies, lest they should have their heads snapped off by Mr. Lucas and Mr. Graves, or be torn in pieces by Mr. Moberley Bell.

Thus warned, I turn my thoughts to Publishers as they have existed in the past, and more particularly to their relations with the authors whose works they have given to the world. How happy those relations may be, when maintained with tact and temper on both sides, is well illustrated by an anecdote of that indefatigable penwoman, "the gorgeous Lady Blessington." Thinking herself injured by some delay on the part of her publishers, Messrs. Sanders & Otley, she sent her son-in-law, the irrepressible Count D'Orsay, to remonstrate. The Count was received by a dignified gentleman in a stiff white cravat, whom he proceeded to assail with the most vigorous invective, until the cravated gentleman could stand it no longer and roundly declared that he would sacrifice Lady Blessington's patronage sooner than subject himself to personal insult. "Personal?" exclaimed the lively Count. "There's nothing personal in my remarks. If you're Sanders, then d---- Otley; if you're Otley, then d---- Sanders."

It is to be feared that a similar imprecation has often formed itself in the heart, though it may not have issued from the lips, of a baulked and disillusioned author. Though notoriously the most long-suffering of a patient race, the present writer has before now felt inclined to borrow the vigorous invective of Count D'Orsay. Some six months before American copyright was, after long negotiation, secured for English authors, Messrs. Popgood and Groolly (I borrow the names from Sir Frank Burnand) arranged with me for the publication of a modest work. It was quite ready for publication, but the experienced publishers pointed out the desirability of keeping it back till the new law of copyright came into force, for there was a rich harvest to be reaped in America; and all the American profits, after, say, five thousand copies were sold, were to be mine alone. A year later I received a cheque, 18s. 6d., which, I imagine, bore the same relation to the American profits as Mrs. Crupp's "one cold kidney on a cheese-plate" bore to the remains of David Copperfield's feast. On enquiry I was soothingly informed by Popgood and Groolly that the exact number of copies sold in America was 5005, and that the cheque represented (as per agreement) the royalty on the copies sold, over and above the first five thousand. That the publishers should have so accurately estimated the American sale seemed to me a remarkable instance of commercial foresight.

Not much more amiable are the feelings of the author towards the publisher who declines his wares; and I have always felt that Washington Irving must have had a keen and legitimate satisfaction in prefixing to his immensely popular "Sketch-Book" the flummery in which old John Murray wrapped up his refusal of the manuscript:--

"I entreat you to believe that I feel truly obliged by your kind intentions towards me, and that I entertain the most unfeigned respect for your most tasteful talents. If it would not suit me to engage in the publication of your present work, it is only because I do not see that scope in the nature of it which would enable me to make those satisfactory accounts between us which I really feel no satisfaction in engaging."

Now, surely, as Justice Shallow says, good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable. While Murray dealt in good phrases, his rival Longman expressed himself through the more tangible medium of good cheques. He was the London publisher, and apparently the financier, of the _Edinburgh Review_, and, according to Sydney Smith's testimony, his fiscal system was simplicity itself. "I used to send in a bill in these words, 'Messrs. Longman & Co. to the Rev. Sydney Smith. To a very wise and witty article on such a subject; so many sheets, at forty-five guineas a sheet,' and the money always came." Here is another passage from the financial dealings of the same great house, which during the last fifty years has caused many a penman's mouth to water. On the 7th of March 1856 Macaulay wrote in his diary: "Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest-day. The work had been near seven years in hand."

After that glorious instance, all tales of profit from books seem flat and insignificant. As a rule, we have to reckon our makings on a far more modest scale. "Sir," said an enthusiastic lady to Mr. Zangwill, "I admire 'The Children of the Ghetto' so much that I have read it eight times." "Madam," replied Mr. Zangwill, "I would rather you had bought eight copies." Even so, with our exiguous profit on eight copies duly sold, our state is more gracious than that of more deserving men. Here is a touching vignette from a book of travels, which was popular in my youth: "At _table d'hôte_ there is a charming old gentleman who has translated Æschylus and Euripides into English verse; he has been complimented by the greatest scholars of the day, and his publishers have just sent him in his bill for printing, and a letter to know what the deuce they shall do with the first thousand."

Such are the joys of publishing at one's own risk. Hardly more exhilarating is the experience of knocking at all the doors in Paternoster Row, or Albemarle Street, or Waterloo Place, and imploring the stony-hearted publisher to purchase one's modest wares. Old John Murray's soothing formula about "most tasteful talents" has been reproduced, with suitable variations, from that time to this. No one experienced it oftener than the late Mr. Shorthouse, whose one good book--"John Inglesant"--made the rounds of the Trade, until at length Messrs. Macmillan recognized its strange power. In their hands, as every one knows, the book prospered exceedingly, and the publishers who had rejected it were consumed by remorse. In this connexion my friend Mr. James Payn used to tell a story which outweighs a great many acrid witticisms about "Barabbas was a Publisher" and Napoleon's one meritorious action in hanging a Bookseller. Payn was "reader" to Smith and Elder, and in that capacity declined the manuscript of "John Inglesant." Some years afterwards this fact was stated in print, together with an estimate of what his error had cost his firm. Payn, who was the last man to sit down patiently under a calumny, told the late Mr. George Smith that he felt bound in self-respect to contradict a story so derogatory to his literary judgment. "If I were you," replied Mr. Smith, "I wouldn't do that, for, as a matter of fact, you did reject the manuscript, and we have lost what Macmillans have gained. I never told you, because I knew it would annoy you; and I only tell you now to prevent you from contradicting 'an ower true tale.'" Payn used to say that, in all the annals of business, considerate forbearance had never been better exemplified. Against this story of his failure to perceive merit Payn was wont to set his discovery of Mr. Anstey Guthrie. The manuscript of "Vice Versa," bearing the unknown name of "F. Anstey," came in ordinary course into his hands. He glanced at the first page, turned over, read to the end, and then ran into Mr. Smith's room saying, "We've got the funniest thing that has been written since Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'" And the public gave unequivocal evidence that it concurred in the verdict.

Let a "smooth tale of love" close these reminiscences of Publishers. Some forty years ago, when all young and ardent spirits had caught the sacred fire of Italian freedom from Garibaldi and Swinburne and Mrs. Browning, a young lady, nurtured in the straitest of Tory homes, was inspired--it is hardly too strong a word--to write a book of ballads in which the heroes and the deeds of the Italian Revolution were glorified. She knew full well that, if she were detected, her father would have a stroke and her mother would lock her up in the spare bedroom. So, in sending her manuscript to a publisher, she passed herself off as a man. Her vigorous and vehement style, her strong grasp of the political situation, and her enjoyment of battle and bloodshed, contributed to the illusion; her poems were published anonymously; other volumes followed; and for several years the publisher addressed his contributor as "Esquire." At length it chanced that both publisher and poetess were staying, unknown to each other, at the same seaside place. Her letter, written from--let us say--Brighton, reached him at Brighton; so, instead of answering by post, he went to the hotel and asked for Mr. Talbot, or whatever great Tory name you prefer. The porter said, "There is no Mr. Talbot staying here. There is a Miss Talbot, and she may be able to give you some information." So Miss Talbot was produced; the secret of the authorship was disclosed; and the negotiations took an entirely new turn, which ended in making the poetess the publisher's wife.

XXXIII

HANDWRITING

When "The Book of Snobs" was appearing week by week in _Punch_, Thackeray derived constant aid from suggestive correspondents. "'Why only attack the aristocratic Snobs?' says one estimable gentleman. 'Are not the snobbish Snobs to have their turn?' 'Pitch into the University Snobs!' writes an indignant correspondent (who spells _elegant_ with two _l_'s)."

Similarly, if I may compare small things with great, I am happy in the possession of an unknown friend who, from time to time, supplies me with references to current topics which he thinks suitable to my gentle methods of criticism. My friend (unlike Thackeray's correspondent) can spell _elegant_, and much longer words too, with faultless accuracy, and is altogether, as I judge, a person of much culture. It is this circumstance, I suppose (for he has no earthly connexion with the Army), which makes him feel so keenly about a cutting from a newspaper which he has just sent us:--

"In a report just issued by the War Office on the result of examinations for promotion many officers are said to be handicapped by their bad handwriting. Some show of 'want of intelligence, small power of expression, poor penmanship--in fact, appear to suffer from defective education.'

"On the other hand, the work of non-commissioned officers shows intelligence and power of concise expression, while penmanship is good.