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30 chapters
CHAPTER I THE NINETIES
CHAPTER I THE NINETIES
The late Mr. Justin McCarthy’s vivid Portraits of the Sixties , the late Mr. George Russell’s admirable volume dealing with the men and women of the Seventies, and Mr. Horace Hutchinson’s more recent Portraits of the Eighties form together an invaluable biographical guide to a period second in interest to none in modern history. It is the business of a less distinguished pen to attempt to give some account of leading figures during the last years of the century and of the reign of Queen Victoria
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CHAPTER II THE EARL OF ROSEBERY
CHAPTER II THE EARL OF ROSEBERY
“I would give you a piece of plate if you could get that lad to work; he is one of those who like the palm without the dust.” So wrote Mr. William Cory, one of the masters at Eton in the Sixties, concerning a favourite pupil, Lord Dalmeny, later to be widely famed as Earl of Rosebery and Prime Minister of England. Mr. Cory seems to have belonged to a rather rare class of men, and a perhaps still rarer class of schoolmasters: those who really like boys and enjoy themselves in very young society.
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CHAPTER III CECIL RHODES
CHAPTER III CECIL RHODES
The Nineties were the high and palmy days of the great Randlords and the “Kaffir Circus.” The romance of the time was expressed, perhaps better than in the verse of Mr. Kipling, by a song then popular about “sailing away” and “coming back a millionaire.” There was a certain virtue even in sailing away; it denoted contempt for the petty dullness of the British Isles, and to be contemptuous of the home of the race was then the mark of extreme patriotism. But most admirable of all was to come back
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CHAPTER IV MR. GLADSTONE
CHAPTER IV MR. GLADSTONE
It was in the nature of things that the majestic and challenging personality of Mr. Gladstone should evoke such variety of worship and censure that even to-day, after all has been written concerning him, the plain seeker after truth is not a little perplexed. For he knows the man was great, and even very great, and that not merely in the sense of filling a great place over a great space of time; there was something above and beyond all that. Mr. Gladstone was more than the sum of all that Mr. Gl
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CHAPTER V GEORGE MEREDITH
CHAPTER V GEORGE MEREDITH
George Meredith was impatient of talk about life’s ironies; he took things as they came, accepted Fate’s decrees with fortitude, and did not blame Nature for being natural. That is to say, he took up this attitude in debate; internally he might and did lament over things not specially lamentable. And, whatever he might say, he can hardly have failed to feel something of the irony of his position in the Nineties. He had won through long years of total neglect and hard toil. He had passed the hard
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CHAPTER VI LORD SALISBURY
CHAPTER VI LORD SALISBURY
In the Berlin Conference days Bismarck described Lord Salisbury as “a lath painted to look like iron.” By the Nineties the sneer had lost point in every particular. To the dullest it was clear that Lord Salisbury had not painted himself or got himself painted; whatever the man might or might not be, he was genuine, incapable himself of pose, and equally incapable of inspiring others to spread a legend concerning himself. It was equally clear (though perhaps only to the more discerning) that he d
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CHAPTER VII LORD KITCHENER
CHAPTER VII LORD KITCHENER
At the battle of Omdurman, fought on September 2, 1898, the Dervishes had 10,800 killed and some 16,000 wounded; the losses of the British and Egyptian forces amounted to only 47 killed and 342 wounded. This fact must be borne in mind in considering the character of that enormous Kitchener legend which grew up—or rather started up almost in a single night—late in the Nineties. At the beginning of the decade the name of Herbert Kitchener conveyed nothing to people outside an extremely narrow mili
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CHAPTER VIII THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE
CHAPTER VIII THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE
There are certain things that come to one only in maturity. One is a taste for Jane Austen. Another is a correct sense of the meaning and importance of such men as Spencer Compton Cavendish, Knight of the Garter, eighth Duke of Devonshire, Marquis of Hartington, Earl of Devonshire, Earl of Burlington, Baron Cavendish of Hardwicke, and Baron Cavendish of Keighley. To a young man in the Nineties the mere fact of the Duke’s importance was obvious enough. Had he not been in politics time out of mind
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CHAPTER IX ARCHBISHOP TEMPLE
CHAPTER IX ARCHBISHOP TEMPLE
It is related of Frederick Temple, when he was Bishop of London, that he offered two shillings to a cabman who had brought him from somewhere near Piccadilly to Fulham Palace. The cabman looked at the Bishop more in sorrow than in anger. “Would St. Porl,” he asked, “if he were alive now, treat a poor man like that?” “No,” said Temple, “if St. Paul were alive he would be at Lambeth, and the fare there is only a shilling.” The wit and the philosophy were equally characteristic of the gnarled old m
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CHAPTER X LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
CHAPTER X LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
In 1880 Lord Randolph Churchill was regarded as a trifler; in 1885 he was definitely numbered among the three or four men who counted in British politics; in 1890 he was, politically speaking, a ghost; and in 1895 he died. His whole political career—or at least that part of it which could distinguish him from the ordinary representative of a family borough—scarcely extended to fifteen years; the significant part of it was compressed within five. Yet those five years sufficed to give him an ascen
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CHAPTER XI HERBERT SPENCER
CHAPTER XI HERBERT SPENCER
I remember hearing a Nonconformist divine of the Nineties denounce the young man who, instead of taking a class, spent his Sunday afternoon “reading Herbert Spencer.” It struck me at the time that the reverend gentleman was fighting an unusually extinct Satan. For even in the Nineties the number of young men who desecrated the Sabbath in this particular fashion was very small. Herbert Spencer had reached the stage of being much quoted and little read. Indeed, the reverence in which he was held h
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CHAPTER XII MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND MR. BALFOUR
CHAPTER XII MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND MR. BALFOUR
The life of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, like that of the Chevalier d’Artagnan, was spent in three sets of duels. The first was with a great man’s men; the second was with the great man himself; the third was with an old friend made out of a still older enemy. The first were duels of routine, provoking no great feeling—deadly, it might be, but unenvenomed; the second were duels of policy, in which awe and the instinct of self-preservation were as much elements as hatred; the third were duels of fatal
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CHAPTER XIII OSCAR WILDE
CHAPTER XIII OSCAR WILDE
One evening in the early summer of 1895 the newsboys were shouting “All the winners.” Yet one line on their placards gave the lie to that eternal cry which mocks the death of great men and the fall of great empires. It referred to the sentence which, in due time, was to give birth to the one indisputably genuine and serious thing Oscar Wilde wrote, the Ballad of Reading Gaol . OSCAR WILDE. Oscar Wilde was one of the losers; in the long list of men of genius who have paid just forfeit it is not e
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CHAPTER XIV SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
CHAPTER XIV SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
Those who seek the legislative monument of Sir William Harcourt must examine the Finance Act of 1894, which put real estate on the same footing as personal in the matter of death duties. A facetious writer once observed that the principle of graduation so beautifully exemplified in this measure must have been suggested to Sir William by a study of his own name, which is an excellent example of ascending values. William and George are but degrees in the ordinary, but with Venables we definitely r
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CHAPTER XV BISHOP CREIGHTON
CHAPTER XV BISHOP CREIGHTON
When Mandell Creighton was Bishop of London it fell to him to admonish an earnest High Church Vicar, working in the East End, on the subject of incense. The Vicar, pleading hard for his point, appealed to his record as a parish priest. “Dr. Creighton,” he said solemnly, “for twenty-five years I have held here a cure of souls, and——” Before he could finish the sentence Creighton cut in with a joke. “Cure them, certainly,” he said, “but surely you need not smoke them.” The jest was quite in Creigh
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CHAPTER XVI JOHN MORLEY
CHAPTER XVI JOHN MORLEY
I remember hearing John Morley—it was then impossible to conceive of him as containing the germ of John Viscount Morley—addressing one of the many “flowing tide” meetings which were among the chief public events of the early Nineties. I can recall nothing of the speech, except that it was about the Irish question; Mr. Morley had just been over to Ireland, and some officious policeman had struck him with a baton, or something of that sort—a proceeding which had naturally annoyed him, and imparted
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CHAPTER XVII W. T. STEAD
CHAPTER XVII W. T. STEAD
It was in the late Nineties that I first met the most talked-of journalist of his day. Though still on the sunny side of fifty, W. T. Stead gave the impression of age. His face, where the grizzling beard did not hide it, was deeply lined, and his movements had that kind of conscious alertness which, in its contrast with the self-possessed and even lazy confidence of youth in its physical competence, is a sure indication of advancing years. He was given to loose home-spuns, which made his figure
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CHAPTER XVIII SIR HENRY FOWLER
CHAPTER XVIII SIR HENRY FOWLER
On the surface at least there was an incurable ordinariness about Henry Hartley Fowler, afterwards first Viscount Wolverhampton. His parts, though sound, were not brilliant; imagination he had none; his voice was harsh and unsympathetic; his appearance was singularly ungainly, and he was the sort of man who always looks at his worst when best dressed; he had absolutely no “way” with him; he rose by unexciting degrees to a rather dull sort of eminence; and at the best he could only be counted a f
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CHAPTER XIX AUBREY BEARDSLEY
CHAPTER XIX AUBREY BEARDSLEY
Aubrey Beardsley represented most authentically a special aspect of the Nineties. There were two main attitudes in the thought of the period. Most that was virile was Imperialistic; Mr. Kipling was but the greatest of a whole school, and Mr. Chamberlain did not so much form an Imperialistic party as place himself at the head of a party already formed. There was much that was admirable in this enthusiasm, but it tended, like most enthusiasms, to a certain falsity of view. Mr. Balfour has remarked
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CHAPTER XX LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH
CHAPTER XX LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH
When any man declaims “Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” it is not easy to avoid the suspicion that (whatever his passion for principle) he is pretty sure that the heavens will not fall. If the heavens did fall he would forget all about the fine “quillets of the law.” Any woman, according to Beckie Sharp, can be good on a sufficient income; and with men, also, the love of principle thrives best in comfortable surroundings. The true test of honesty is not whether a man will resign an Under-Secretaryshi
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CHAPTER XXI THOMAS HARDY
CHAPTER XXI THOMAS HARDY
It is no exaggeration to say that for many people the publication of Tess of the D’Urbervilles was the most important event of the Nineties. For nearly twenty years the name of Thomas Hardy had been associated with a constantly ascending literary reputation. Under the Greenwood Tree , emerging modestly in 1872, was practically unnoticed despite its merits, and the bulk of a small edition found its way to that graveyard of authors’ hopes, the threepenny tray of the second-hand bookshop. But there
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CHAPTER XXII EARL SPENCER
CHAPTER XXII EARL SPENCER
In a famous passage Lord Morley of Blackburn referred to a meeting during the early Nineties in the famous library at Althorp: “A picture to remember. Spencer with his noble carriage and fine red beard. Mr. Gladstone, seated on a low stool, discoursing as usual, playful, keen, versatile; Rosebery, saying little, but now and then launching a pleasant mot ; Harcourt, cheery, expansive, witty. Like a scene from one of Dizzy’s novels, and all the actors men with parts to play.” The scene is now almo
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CHAPTER XXIII SIR H. M. STANLEY
CHAPTER XXIII SIR H. M. STANLEY
Sir Henry Morton Stanley made a double appeal to the imagination of the early Nineties. He represented both the old romance of adventurous travel and the new romance of mechanical efficiency. It was his luck to do considerable things exactly at the time when exploration had become scientific, but had not ceased to be picturesque. A generation before there was glamour, but little good business, in the conquest of the wild; on the whole the betting was decidedly on the wild. A generation later the
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CHAPTER XXIV JUSTIN McCARTHY
CHAPTER XXIV JUSTIN McCARTHY
I first met Justin McCarthy in the schoolroom of a little Gloucestershire village. It was during the short-lived “union of hearts” between the General Election of 1886 and the general upset which followed the Parnell divorce case. Justin McCarthy was appearing on the platform of a popular county member of that time, one Arthur Brend Winterbotham, a fine specimen of the more hearty type of middle-class Liberal. Winterbotham had the reputation of a shrewd man of business; he was a Stroud Valley we
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CHAPTER XXV LORD LEIGHTON AND G. F. WATTS
CHAPTER XXV LORD LEIGHTON AND G. F. WATTS
The Nineties were rich in painters of all kinds. People bought pictures then, and all sorts of pictures; in those days of still happy and careless barbarism there was no veto on any school, and one could hang things of almost any school in almost any surroundings. The influence of the Prince Consort was not altogether dead, and people unashamedly admired the picture with a story, as well as the portrait with a likeness. So the older-school painters were still for the most part extremely comforta
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CHAPTER XXVI CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON—WILLIAM BOOTH
CHAPTER XXVI CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON—WILLIAM BOOTH
I have remarked in another place that the man who takes his religion too seriously stands suspect of not quite believing in it. Those who are never troubled with doubts are prone to a wild hilarity which often exposes them to the charge of irreverence and coarse handling of sacred things. Since Nonconformity has widened, and new theologies have been propounded, it has become almost oppressively refined. When it was very narrow and dogmatic, and assured of itself, its chief exponents were often c
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CHAPTER XXVII SOME LAWYERS
CHAPTER XXVII SOME LAWYERS
Dim enough now is the memory of the Parnell Commission. There are few who, without reference to record, could give an intelligent summary of the findings of the unhappy judges whom political exigency condemned for over a year to take “evidence” concerning a vast amount of miscellaneous matter incapable of legal proof. But from the general vagueness of that dreary inquiry there still stand out in sharp and abrupt relief two main figures. One is that of an ageing man, bald and bowed, of a threadba
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CHAPTER XXVIII OLD AND NEW JOURNALISTS
CHAPTER XXVIII OLD AND NEW JOURNALISTS
What we do, are, and suffer journalistically was determined for us in the Nineties. The decade was the meeting-ground of opposing forces, and the battle between them was largely fought to a decision before the end. In 1890 the old “solid” journalism—and it was very solid indeed—decidedly enjoyed pride of place; the newer journalism was not too firmly established; the newest journalism had conquered but an insignificant portion of the weekly Press, and had gained no daily representative. Ten year
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CHAPTER XXIX SOME ACTORS
CHAPTER XXIX SOME ACTORS
Theatrically the Nineties were less interesting than the preceding decade. The Eighties saw the great glories both of the Savoy and the Lyceum; they might be likened to a glorious May and a blazing June; the Nineties were rather a tired late summer fading into an inglorious autumn. There was little new, and the old was not quite at its best. Perhaps it was the discovery by a large class of a new pleasure that chiefly contributed to make the theatre of thirty and forty years ago an institution on
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In a work like the present, where personal impressions are so largely mingled with the results of general and special reading, it is not easy to give the authority for every statement. Specific borrowings are indicated in the text. The author, however, would like to add an acknowledgment of his general obligation to the following:...
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