SOCIAL CHANGES

I have been invited to make some comments on recent changes in society, and I obey the call, though not without misgiving. "Society" in its modern extension is so wide a subject that probably no one can survey more than a limited portion of its area; and, if one generalizes too freely from one's own experience, one is likely to provoke the contradictions of critics who, surveying other portions, have been impressed by different, and perhaps contrary, phenomena. All such contradictions I discount in advance. After all, one can only describe what one has seen, and my equipment for the task entrusted to me consists of nothing more than a habit of observation and a retentive memory.

I was brought up in that "sacred circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" of which Mr. Beresford-Hope made such excellent fun in "Strictly Tied Up." As Mr. Squeers considered himself the "right shop for morals," so the Whigs considered themselves the right shop for manners. What they said and did every one ought to say and do, and from their judgment there was no appeal. A social education of this kind leaves traces which time is powerless to efface—"Vieille École, bonne École, begad!" as Major Pendennis said. In twenty-five years' contact with a more enlarged society, one has found a perpetual interest in watching the departure, gradual but nearly universal, from the social traditions of one's youth. The contrast between Now and Then is constantly reasserting itself; and, if I note some instances of it just as they occur to my mind, I shall be doing, at any rate in part, what has been required of me.

I will take the most insignificant instances first—instances of phrase and diction and pronunciation. I am just old enough to remember a greatgrandmother who said that she "lay" at a place when she meant that she had slept there, and spoke of "using the potticary" when we should speak of sending for the doctor. Some relations of a later generation said "ooman" for woman, and, when they were much obliged, said they were much "obleeged." "Brarcelet" for bracelet and "di'monds" for diamonds were common pronunciations. Tuesday was "Toosday," and first was "fust." Chariot was "charr'ot," and Harriet "Harr'yet," and I have even heard "Jeames" for James. "Goold" for gold and "yaller" for yellow were common enough. Stirrups were always called "sturrups," and squirrels "squrrels," and wrapped was pronounced "wropped," and tassels "tossels," and Gertrude "Jertrude." A lilac was always called a "laylock," and a cucumber a "cowcumber." The stress was laid on the second syllable of balcony, even as it is written in the "Diverting History of John Gilpin":—

"At Edmonton his loving wife
From the balcony spied

Her tender husband, wondering much
To see how he did ride."

N.B.—Cowper was a Whig.

Of course, these archaisms were already passing away when I began to notice them, but some of them survive until this hour, and only last winter, after an evening service in St. Paul's Cathedral, I was delighted to hear a lady, admiring the illuminated dome, exclaim, "How well the doom looks!"

Then, again, as regards the names of places. I cannot profess to have heard "Lunnon," but I have heard the headquarters of my family called "'Ooburn," and Rome "Roome," and SÈvres "Saver," and Falmouth "Farmouth," and Penrith "Peerith," and Cirencester "Ciciter."

Nowadays it is as much as one can do to get a cabman to take one to Berwick Street or Berkeley Square, unless one calls them Berwick or Burkley. Gower Street and Pall Mall are pronounced as they are spelt; and, if one wants a ticket for Derby, the booking-clerk obligingly corrects one's request to "Durby."

And, as with pronunciation, so also with phrase and diction—

"Change and decay in all around I see."

When I was young the word "lunch," whether substantive or verb, was regarded with a peculiar horror, and ranked with "'bus" in the lowest depths of vulgarity. To "take" in the sense of eat or drink was another abomination which lay too deep for words. "You take exercise or take physic; nothing else," said Brummel to the lady who asked him to take tea. "I beg your pardon, you also take a liberty," was the just rejoinder.

I well remember that, when the journals of an Illustrious Person were published and it appeared that a royal party had "taken luncheon" on a hill, it was stoutly contended in Whig circles that the servants had taken the luncheon to the hill where their masters ate it; and, when a close examination of the text proved this gloss to be impossible, it was decided that the original must have been written in German, and that it had been translated by some one who did not know the English idiom. To "ride," meaning to travel in a carriage, was, and I hope still is, regarded as the peculiar property of my friend Pennialinus;[12] and I remember the mild sensation caused in a Whig house when a neighbour who had driven over to luncheon declined to wash her hands on the ground that she had "ridden in gloves." The vehicle which was invented by a Lord Chancellor and called after his name was scrupulously pronounced so as to rhyme with groom, and any one indiscreet enough to say that he had ridden in "the Row" would probably have been asked if he had gone round by "the Zoo."

"Cherry pie and apple pie; all the rest are tarts," was an axiom carefully instilled into the young gastronomer; while "to pass" the mustard was bound in the same bundle of abominations as "I'll trouble you," "May I assist you?" "Not any, thank you," and "A very small piece."

Then, again, as to what may be called the Manners of Eating. A man who put his elbows on the table would have been considered a Yahoo, and he who should eat his asparagus with a knife and fork would have been classed with the traditional collier who boiled his pineapple. Fish-knives (like oxidized silver biscuit-boxes) were unknown and undreamt-of horrors. To eat one's fish with two forks was the cachet of a certain circle, and the manner of manipulating the stones of a cherry pie was the articulus stantis vel cadentis. The little daughter of a great Whig house, whose eating habits had been contracted in the nursery, once asked her mother with wistful longing, "Mamma, when shall I be old enough to eat bread and cheese with a knife, and put the knife in my mouth?" and she was promptly informed that not if she lived to attain the age of Methuselah would she be able to acquire that "unchartered freedom." On the other hand, old gentlemen of the very highest breeding used after dinner to rinse their mouths in their finger-glasses, and thereby caused unspeakable qualms in unaccustomed guests. In that respect at any rate, if in no other, the most inveterate praiser of times past must admit that alteration has not been deterioration.

Another marked change in society is the diminution of stateliness. A really well-turned-out carriage, with a coachman in a wig and two powdered footmen behind, is as rare an object in the Mall as a hansom in Bermondsey or a tandem in Bethnal Green. Men go to the levÉe in cabs or on motor-cars, and send their wives to the Palace Ball in the products of the CoupÉ Company. The Dowager Duchess of Cleveland (1792-1883) once told me that Lord Salisbury had no carriage. On my expressing innocent surprise, she said, "I have been told that Lord Salisbury goes about London in a brougham;" and her tone could not have expressed a more lively horror if the vehicle had been a coster's barrow. People of a less remote date than the Duchess's had become inured to barouches for ladies and broughams for men, but a landau was contemned under the derogatory nickname of a "demi-fortune," and the spectacle of a great man scaling the dizzy heights of the 'bus or plunging into the depths of the Twopenny Tube would have given rise to lively comment.

A pillar of the Tory party, who died not twenty years ago, finding his newly-married wife poking the fire, took the poker from her hands and said with majestic pain, "My dear, will you kindly remember that you are now a countess?" A Liberal statesman, still living, when he went to Harrow for the first time, sailed up the Hill in the family coach, and tradition does not report that his schoolfellows kicked him with any special virulence.

I have known people who in travelling would take the whole of a first-class carriage sooner than risk the intrusion of an unknown fellow-passenger: their descendants would as likely as not reach their destination on motor-cars, having pulled up at some wayside inn for mutton chops and whisky-and-soda.