The "swells" of the "sixties"—Old Lord Claud Hamilton—My first presentation to Queen Victoria—Scandalous behaviour of a brother—Queen Victoria's letters—Her character and strong common sense—My mother's recollections of George III. and George IV.—Carlton House, and the Brighton Pavilion—Queen Alexandra—The Fairchild Family—Dr. Cumming and his church—A clerical Jazz—First visit to Paris—General de Flahault's account of Napoleon's campaign of 1812—Another curious link with the past—"Something French"—Attraction of Paris—Cinderella's glass slipper—A glimpse of Napoleon III.—The Rue de Rivoli The Riviera in 1865—A novel Tricolor flag—Jenny Lind—The championship of the Mediterranean—My father's boat and crew—The race—The Abercorn wins the championship.
Every one familiar with John Leech's Pictures from Punch must have an excellent idea of the outward appearance of "swells" of the "sixties."
As a child I had an immense admiration for these gorgeous beings, though, between ourselves, they must have been abominably loud dressers. They affected rather vulgar sealskin waistcoats, with the festoons of a long watch-chain meandering over them, above which they exhibited a huge expanse of black or blue satin, secured by two scarf-pins of the same design, linked together, like Siamese twins, by a little chain.
A reference to Leech's drawings will show the flamboyant checked "pegtop" trousers in which they delighted. Their principal adornment lay in their immense "Dundreary" whiskers, usually at least eight inches long. In a high wind these immensely long whiskers blew back over their owners' shoulders in the most comical fashion, and they must have been horribly inconvenient. I determined early in life to affect, when grown-up, longer whiskers than any one else—if possible down to my waist; but alas for human aspirations! By the time that I had emerged from my chrysalis stage, Dundreary whiskers had ceased to be the fashion; added to which unkind Nature had given me a hairless face.
My uncle, old Lord Claud Hamilton, known in our family as "The Dowager," adhered, to the day of his death, to the William IV. style of dress. He wore an old-fashioned black-satin stock right up to his chin, with white "gills" above, and was invariably seen in a blue coat with brass buttons, and a buff waistcoat. My uncle was one of the handsomest men in England, and had sat for nearly forty years in Parliament. He had one curious faculty. He could talk fluently and well on almost any topic at indefinite length, a very useful gift in the House of Commons of those days. On one occasion when it was necessary "to talk a Bill out," he got up without any preparation whatever, and addressed the House in flowing periods for four hours and twenty minutes. His speech held the record for length for many years, but it was completely eclipsed in the early "eighties" by the late Mr. Biggar, who spoke (if my memory serves me right) for nearly six hours on one occasion. Biggar, however, merely read interminable extracts from Blue Books, whereas my uncle indulged in four hours of genuine rhetorical declamation. My uncle derived his nickname from the fact that in our family the second son is invariably christened Claud, so I had already a brother of that name. There happen to be three Lord Claud Hamiltons living now, of three successive generations.
I shall never forget my bitter disappointment the first time I was taken, at a very early age, to see Queen Victoria. I had pictured to myself a dazzling apparition arrayed in sumptuous robes, seated on a golden throne; a glittering crown on her head, a sceptre in one hand, an orb grasped in the other. I had fancied Her Majesty seated thus, motionless during the greater part of the twenty-four hours, simply "reigning." I could have cried with disappointment when a middle-aged lady, simply dressed in widow's "weeds" and wearing a widow's cap, rose from an ordinary arm-chair to receive us. I duly made my bow, but having a sort of idea that it had to be indefinitely repeated, went on nodding like a porcelain Chinese mandarin, until ordered to stop.
Between ourselves, I behaved far better than a brother of mine once did under similar circumstances. Many years before I was born, my father lent his Scotch house to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort for ten days. This entailed my two eldest sisters and two eldest brothers vacating their nurseries in favour of the Royal children, and their being transferred to the farm, where they had very cramped quarters indeed. My second brother deeply resented being turned out of his comfortable nursery, and refused to be placated. On the day after the Queen's arrival, my mother took her four eldest children to present them to Her Majesty, my sisters dressed in their best clothes, my brothers being in kilts. They were duly instructed as to how they were to behave, and upon being presented, my two sisters made their curtsies, and my eldest brother made his best bow. "And this, your Majesty, is my second boy. Make your bow, dear," said my mother; but my brother, his heart still hot within him at being expelled from his nursery, instead of bowing, STOOD ON HIS HEAD IN HIS KILT, and remained like that, an accomplishment of which he was very proud. The Queen was exceedingly angry, so later in the day, upon my brother professing deep penitence, he was taken back to make his apologies, when he did precisely the same thing over again, and was consequently in disgrace during the whole of the Royal visit. In strict confidence, I believe that he would still do it to-day, more than seventy-two years later.
During her stay in my father's house the Queen quite unexpectedly announced that she meant to give a dance. This put my mother in a great difficulty, for my sisters had no proper clothes for a ball, and in those pre-railway days it would have taken at least ten days to get anything from Edinburgh or Glasgow. My mother had a sudden inspiration. The muslin curtains in the drawing-room! The drawing-room curtains were at once commandeered; the ladies'-maids set to work with a will, and I believe that my sisters looked extremely well dressed in the curtains, looped up with bunches of rowan or mountain-ash berries.
My mother was honoured with Queen Victoria's close friendship and confidence for over fifty years. At the time of her death she had in her possession a numerous collection of letters from the Queen, many of them very long ones. By the express terms of my mother's will, those letters will never be published. Many of them touch on exceedingly private matters relating to the Royal family, others refer to various political problems of the day. I have read all those letters carefully, and I fully endorse my mother's views. She was honoured with the confidence of her Sovereign, and that confidence cannot be betrayed. The letters are in safe custody, and there they will remain. On reading them it is impossible not to be struck with Queen Victoria's amazing shrewdness, and with her unfailing common sense. It so happens that both a brother and a sister of mine, the late Duchess of Buccleuch, were brought into very close contact with Queen Victoria. It was this quality of strong common sense in the Queen which continually impressed them, as well as her very high standard of duty.
My brother George was twice Secretary of State for India. The Queen was fond of suggesting amendments in the wording of dispatches relating to India, whilst not altering their sense. My brother tells me that the alterations suggested by the Queen were invariably in the direction of simplification. The Queen had a knack of stripping away unnecessary verbiage and reducing a sentence to its simplest form, in which its meaning was unmistakably clear.
All Queen Victoria's tastes were simple. She liked simplicity in dress, in food, and in her surroundings. If I may say so without disrespect, I think that Queen Victoria's great hold on her people came from the fact that, in spite of her high station, she had the ideals, the tastes, the likes and dislikes of the average clean-living, clean-minded wife of the average British professional man, together with the strict ideals as to the sanctity of the marriage-tie, the strong sense of duty, and the high moral standard such wives usually possess.
It is, of course, the easy fashion now to sneer at Victorian standards. To my mind they embody all that is clean and sound in the nation. It does not follow that because Victorians revelled in hideous wall-papers and loved ugly furniture, that therefore their points-of-view were mistaken ones. There are things more important than wall-papers. They certainly liked the obvious in painting, in music, and perhaps in literature, but it hardly seems to follow logically from that, that their conceptions of a man's duty to his wife, family, and country were necessarily false ones. They were not afflicted with the perpetual modern restlessness, nor did they spend "their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing"; still, all their ideas seem to me eminently sweet and wholesome.
In her old age my mother was the last person living who had seen George III. She remembered perfectly seeing the old King, in one of his rare lucid intervals, driving through London, when he was enthusiastically cheered.
She was also the last person alive who had been at Carlton House which was pulled down in 1826. My mother at the age of twelve danced as a solo "The Spanish Shawl dance" before George IV. at the Pavilion, Brighton. The King was so delighted with her dancing that he went up to her and said, "You are a very pretty little girl, and you dance charmingly. Now is there anything I can do for you?" The child answered, "Yes, there is. Your Majesty can bring me some ham sandwiches and a glass of port-wine negus, for I am very hungry," and to do George IV. justice, he promptly brought them. My mother was painted by a French artist doing her "shawl dance," and if it is a faithful likeness, she must have been an extraordinarily pretty child. On another occasion at a children's party at Carlton House, my uncle, General Lord Alexander Russell, a very outspoken little boy, had been warned by his mother, the Duchess of Bedford, that though the King wore a palpable wig, he was to take no notice whatever of it. To my mother's dismay, she heard her little brother go up to the King and say, "I know that your Majesty wears a wig, but I've been told not to say anything about it, so I promised not to tell any one."
Carlton House stood, from all I can learn, at the top of the Duke of York's steps. Several engravings of its beautiful gardens are still to be found. These gardens extended from the present Carlton House Terrace to Pall Mall. Not only the Terrace, but the Carlton, Reform, Travellers', Athenaeum, and United Service Clubs now stand on their site. They were separated from Pall Mall by an open colonnade, and the Corinthian pillars from the front of Carlton House were re-erected in 1834 as the portico of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
As a child I had a wild adoration for Queen Alexandra (then, of course, Princess of Wales), whom I thought the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life, and I dare say that I was not far wrong. When I was taken to Marlborough House, I remembered and treasured up every single word she said to me. I was not present at the child's tea-party at Marlborough House given by the little Princess, including his present Majesty, when SOME ONE (my loyalty absolutely refuses to let me say who) suggested that as the woven flowers on the carpet looked rather faded, it might be as well to water them. The boys present, including the little Princes, gleefully emptied can after can of water on to the floor in their attempts to revive the carpet, to the immense improvement of the ceiling and furniture of the room underneath.
In the "sixties" Sunday was very strictly observed. In our own Sabbatarian family, our toys and books all disappeared on Saturday night. On Sundays we were only allowed to read Line upon Line, The Peep of Day, and The Fairchild Family. I wonder if any one ever reads this book now. If they haven't, they should. Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild were, I regret to say it, self-righteous prigs of the deepest dye, whilst Lucy, Emily, and Henry, their children, were all little prodigies of precocious piety. It was a curious menage; Mr. Fairchild having no apparent means of livelihood, and no recreations beyond perpetually reading the Bible under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Fairchild had the peculiar gift of being able to recite a different prayer off by heart applicable to every conceivable emergency; whilst John, their man-servant, was a real "handy-man," for he was not only gardener, but looked after the horse and trap, cleaned out the pigsties, and waited at table. One wonders in what sequence he performed his various duties, but perhaps the Fairchilds had not sensitive noses. Even the possibly odoriferous John had a marvellous collection of texts at his command. It was refreshing after all this to learn that on one occasion all three of the little Fairchilds got very drunk, which, as the eldest of them was only ten, would seem to indicate that, in spite of their aggressive piety, they had their fair dose of original sin still left in them. I liked the book notwithstanding. There was plenty about eating and drinking; one could always skip the prayers, and there were three or four very brightly written accounts of funerals in it. I was present at a "Fairchild Family" dinner given some twenty years ago in London by Lady Buxton, wife of the present Governor-General of South Africa, at which every one of the guests had to enact one of the characters of the book.
My youngest brother had a great taste for drawing, and was perpetually depicting terrific steeplechases. From a confusion of ideas natural to a child, he always introduced a church steeple into the corner of his drawings. One Sunday he had drawn a most spirited and hotly-contested "finish" to a steeplechase. When remonstrated with on the ground that it was not a "Sunday" subject, he pointed to the church steeple and said, "You don't understand. This is Sunday, and those jockeys are all racing to see which of them can get to church first," which strikes me as a peculiarly ready and ingenious explanation for a child of six.
In London we all went on Sundays to the Scottish Presbyterian Church in Crown Court, just opposite Drury Lane Theatre. Dr. Cumming, the minister of the church at that time, enjoyed an immense reputation amongst his congregation. He was a very eloquent man, but was principally known as always prophesying the imminent end of the world. He had been a little unfortunate in some of the dates he had predicted for the final cataclysm, these dates having slipped by uneventfully without anything whatever happening, but finally definitely fixed on a date in 1867 as the exact date of the Great Catastrophe. His influence with his flock rather diminished when it was found that Dr. Cumming had renewed the lease of his house for twenty-one years, only two months before the date he had fixed with absolute certainty as being the end of all things. All the same, I am certain that he was thoroughly in earnest and perfectly genuine in his convictions. As a child I thought the church—since rebuilt—absolutely beautiful, but it was in reality a great, gaunt, barn-like structure. It was always crammed. We were very old-fashioned, for we sat down to sing, and we stood to pray, and there was no instrument of any sort. The pew in front of us belonged to Lord Aberdeen, and his brother Admiral Gordon, one of the Elders, always sat in it with his high hat on, conversing at the top of his voice until the minister entered, when he removed his hat and kept silence. This was, I believe, intended as a protest against the idea of there being any special sanctity attached to the building itself qua building. Dr. Cumming had recently introduced an anthem, a new departure rather dubiously welcomed by his flock. It was the singular custom of his congregation to leave their pews during the singing of this anthem and to move about in the aisles; whether as a protest against a daring innovation, or merely to stretch their limbs, or to seek better places, I could never make out.
Dr. Cumming invariably preached for over an hour, sometimes for an hour and a half, and yet I never felt bored or wearied by his long discourses, but really looked forward to them. This was because his sermons, instead of consisting of a string of pious platitudes, interspersed with trite ejaculations and irrelevant quotations, were one long chain of closely-reasoned argument. Granted his first premiss, his second point followed logically from it, and so he led his hearers on point by point, all closely argued, to an indisputable conclusion. I suppose that the inexorable logic of it all appealed to the Scottish side of me. His preaching had the same fascination for me that Euclid's propositions exercised later, even on my hopelessly unmathematical mind.
Whatever the weather, we invariably walked home from Drury Lane to South Audley Street, a long trudge for young feet, as my mother had scruples about using the carriages on Sundays.
Neither my father nor my mother ever dined out on a Sunday, nor did they invite people to dinner on that day, for they wished as far as possible to give those in their employment a day of rest. All quite hopelessly Victorian! for, after all, why should people ever think of anybody but themselves?
Dr. Cumming was a great bee-fancier, and a recognised authority on bees. Calling one day on my mother, he brought with him four queen-bees of a new breed, each one encased in a little paper bag. He prided himself on his skill in handling bees, and proudly exhibited those treasures to my mother. He replaced them in their paper bags, and being a very absent-minded man, he slipped the bags into the tail pocket of his clerical frock-coat. Soon after he began one of his long arguments (probably fixing the exact date of the end of the world), and, totally oblivious of the presence of the bees in his tail pocket, he leant against the mantelpiece. The queen-bees, naturally resenting the pressure, stung him through the cloth on that portion of his anatomy immediately nearest to their temporary prison. Dr. Cumming yelled with pain, and began skipping all round the room. It so tickled my fancy to see the grim and austere minister, who towered above me in the pulpit every Sunday, executing a sort of solo-Jazz dance up and down the big room, punctuated with loud cries, that I rolled about on the floor with laughter.
The London of the "sixties" was a very dark and dingy place. The streets were sparingly lit with the dimmest of gas-jets set very far apart: the shop-windows made no display of lights, and the general effect was one of intense gloom.
Until I was seven years old, I had never left the United Kingdom. We then all went to Paris for a fortnight, on our way to the Riviera. I well remember leaving London at 7 a.m. on a January morning, in the densest of fogs. So thick was the fog that the footman had to lead the horses all the way to Charing Cross Station. Ten hours later I found myself in a fairy city of clean white stone houses, literally blazing with light. I had never imagined such a beautiful, attractive place, and indeed the contrast between the dismal London of the "sixties" and this brilliant, glittering town was unbelievable. Paris certainly deserved the title of "La Ville Lumiere" in a literal sense. I like the French expression, "une ville ruisselante de lumiere," "a city dripping with light." That is an apt description of the Paris of the Second Empire, for it was hardly a manufacturing city then, and the great rim of outlying factories that now besmirch the white stone of its house fronts had not come into existence, the atmosphere being as clear as in the country. A naturally retentive memory is apt to store up perfectly useless items of information. What possible object can there be to my remembering that the engine which hauled us from Calais to Paris in 1865 was built by J. Cail of Paris, on the "Crampton" system; that is, that the axle of the big single driving-wheels did not run under the frame of the engine, but passed through the "cab" immediately under the pressure-gauge?—nor can any useful purpose be served in recalling that we crossed the Channel in the little steamer La France.
In those days people of a certain class in England maintained far closer social relations with people of the corresponding class in France than is the custom now, and this was mutual. Society in both capitals was far smaller. My father and mother had many friends in Paris, and amongst the oldest of them were the Comte and Comtesse de Flahault. General de Flahault had been the personal aide-de-camp and trusted friend of Napoleon I. Some people, indeed, declared that his connection with Napoleon III. was of a far closer nature, for his great friendship with Queen Hortense was a matter of common knowledge. For some reason or another the old General took a fancy to me, and finding that I could talk French fluently, he used to take me to his room, stuff me with chocolate, and tell me about Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812, in which he had taken part, I was then seven years old, and the old Comte must have been seventy-eight or so, but it is curious that I should have heard from the actual lips of a man who had taken part in it, the account of the battle of Borodino, of the entry of the French troops into Moscow, of the burning of Moscow, and of the awful sufferings the French underwent during their disastrous retreat from Moscow. General de Flahault had been present at the terrible carnage of the crossing of the Beresina on November 26, 1812, and had got both his feet frost-bitten there, whilst his faithful servant David had died from the effects of the cold. I wish that I could have been older then, or have had more historical knowledge, for it was a unique opportunity for acquiring information. I wish, too, that I could recall more of what M. de Flahault told me. I have quite vivid recollections of the old General himself, of the room in which we sat, and especially of the chocolates which formed so agreeable an accompaniment to our conversations. Still it remains an interesting link with the Napoleonic era. This is 1920; that was 1812!
I can never hear Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" without thinking of General de Flahault. The present Lord Lansdowne is the Comte de Flahault's grandson.
Nearly fifty years later another interesting link with the past was forged. I was dining with Prince and Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein at Schomberg House. When the ladies left the room after dinner, H. R. H. was good enough to ask me to sit next him. Some train of thought was at work in the Prince's mind, for he suddenly said, "Do you know that you are sitting next a man who once took Napoleon I.'s widow, the Empress Marie Louise, in to dinner?" and the Prince went on to say that as a youth of seventeen he had accompanied his father on a visit to the Emperor of Austria at Schonbrunn. On the occasion of a state dinner, one of the Austrian Archdukes became suddenly indisposed. Sooner than upset all the arrangements, the young Prince of Schleswig-Holstein was given the ex-Empress to lead in to dinner.
I must again repeat that this is 1920. Napoleon married Marie Louise in 1810.
Both my younger brother and I were absolutely fascinated by Paris, its streets and public gardens. As regards myself, something of the glamour of those days still remains; Paris is not quite to me as other towns, and I love its peculiar smell, which a discriminating nose would analyse as one-half wood-smoke, one-quarter roasting coffee, and one-quarter drains. During the eighteen years of the Second Empire, Paris reached a height of material prosperity and of dazzling brilliance which she has never known before nor since. The undisputed social capital of Europe, the equally undisputed capital of literature and art, the great pleasure-city of the world, she stood alone and without a rival. "La Ville Lumiere!" My mother remembered the Paris of her youth as a place of tortuous, abominably paved, dimly lit streets, poisoned with atrocious smells; this glittering town of palaces and broad white avenues was mainly the creation of Napoleon III. himself, aided by Baron Georges Haussmann and the engineer Adolphe Alphand, who between them evolved and made the splendid Paris that we know.
We loved the Tuileries gardens, a most attractive place for children in those days. There were swings and merry-go-rounds; there were stalls where hot brioches and gaufres were to be bought; there were, above all, little marionette theatres where the most fascinating dramas were enacted. Our enjoyment of these performances was rather marred by our anxious nurse, who was always terrified lest there should be "something French" in the little plays; something quite unfitted for the eyes and ears of two staid little Britons. As the worthy woman was a most indifferent French scholar, we were often hurried away quite unnecessarily from the most innocuous performances when our faithful watch-dog scented the approach of "something French." All the shops attracted us, but especially the delightful toy-shops. Here, again, we were seldom allowed to linger, our trusty guardian being obsessed with the idea that the toy-shops might include amongst their wares "something French." She was perfectly right; there WAS often something "very French," but my brother and I had always seen it and noted it before we were moved off from the windows.
I wonder if any "marchands de coco" still survive in Paris. "Coco" had nothing to do with cocoa, but was a most mawkish beverage compounded principally of liquorice and water. The attraction about it lay in the great tank the vendor carried strapped to his back. This tank was covered with red velvet and gold tinsel, and was surmounted with a number of little tinkling silver bells. In addition to that, the "marchand de coco" carried all over him dozens of silver goblets, or, at all events, goblets that looked like silver, in which he handed out his insipid brew. Who would not long to drink out of a silver cup a beverage that flowed out of a red and gold tank, covered with little silver bells, be it never so mawkish?
The gardens of the Luxembourg were, if anything, even more attractive than the Tuileries gardens.
Another delightful place for children was the Hippodrome, long since demolished and built over. It was a huge open-air stadium, where, in addition to ordinary circus performances, there were chariot-races and gladiatorial combats. The great attraction of the Hippodrome was that all the performers were driven into the arena in a real little Cinderella gilt coach, complete with four little ponies, a diminutive coachman, and two tiny little footmen.
Talking of Cinderella, I always wonder that no one has pointed out the curious mistake the original translator of this story fell into. If any one will take the trouble to consult Perrault's Cendrillon in the original French, he or she will find that Cinderella went to the ball with her feet encased in "des pantoufles de vair." Now, vair means grey or white fur, ermine or miniver. The word is now obsolete, though it still survives in heraldry. The translator, misled by the similarity of sound between "vair" and "verre," rendered it "glass" instead of "ermine," and Cinderella's glass slippers have become a British tradition. What would "Cinderella" be as a pantomime without the scene where she triumphantly puts on her glass slipper? And yet, a little reflection would show that it would be about as easy to dance in a pair of glass slippers as it would in a pair of fisherman's waders.
I remember well seeing Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie driving down the Rue de Rivoli on their return from the races at Longchamp. I and my brother were standing close to the edge of the pavement, and they passed within a few feet of us. They were driving in a char-a-banes—in French parlance, "attele a la Daumont"—that is, with four horses, of which the wheelers are driven from the box by a coachman, and the leaders ridden by a postilion. The Emperor and Empress were attended by an escort of mounted Cent-Gardes, and over the carriage there was a curious awning of light blue silk, with a heavy gold fringe, probably to shield the occupants from the sun at the races. I thought the Emperor looked very old and tired, but the Empress was still radiantly beautiful. My young brother, even then a bigoted little patriot, obstinately refused to take off his cap. "He isn't MY Emperor," he kept repeating, "and I won't do it." The shrill cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" seemed to me a very inadequate substitute for the full-throated cheers with which our own Queen was received when she drove through London. I used to hear the Emperor alluded to as "Badinguet" by the hall-porter of our hotel, who was a Royalist, and consequently detested the Bonapartes.
My father had been on very friendly terms with Napoleon III., then Prince Louis Napoleon, during the period of his exile in London in 1838, when he lived in King Street, St. James'. Prince Louis Napoleon acted as my father's "Esquire" at the famous Eglinton Tournament in August, 1839. The tournament, over which such a vast amount of trouble and expense had been lavished, was ruined by an incessant downpour of rain, which lasted four days. My father gave me as a boy the "Challenge Shield" with coat of arms, which hung outside his tent at the tournament, and that shield has always accompanied me in my wanderings. It hangs within a few feet of me as I write, as it hung forty-three years ago in my room in Berlin, and later in Petrograd, Lisbon, and Buenos Ayres.
One of the great sights of Paris in the "sixties," whilst it was still gas-lighted, was the "cordon de lumiere de la Rue de Rivoli." As every one knows, the Rue de Rivoli is nearly two miles long, and runs perfectly straight, being arcaded throughout its length. In every arch of the arcades there hung then a gas lamp. At night the continuous ribbon of flame from these lamps, stretching in endless vista down the street, was a fascinatingly beautiful sight. Every French provincial who visited Paris was expected to admire the "cordon de lumiere de la Rue de Rivoli." Now that electricity has replaced gas, I fancy that the lamps are placed further apart, and so the effect of a continuous quivering band of yellow flame is lost. Equally every French provincial had to admire the "luxe de gaz" of the Place de la Concorde. It certainly blazed with gas, but now with electric arc-lamps there is double the light with less than a tenth of the number of old flickering gas-lamps; another example of quality vs. quantity.
Most of my father and mother's French friends lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Their houses, though no doubt very fine for entertaining, were dark and gloomy in the daytime. Our little friends of my own age seemed all to inhabit dim rooms looking into courtyards, where, however, we were bidden to unbelievably succulent repasts, very different to the plain fare to which we were accustomed at home. Both my brother and myself were, I think, unconscious as to whether we were speaking English or French; we could express ourselves with equal facility in either language. When I first went to school, I could speak French as well as English, and it is a wonderful tribute to the efficient methods of teaching foreign languages practised in our English schools, that at the end of nine years of French lessons, both at a preparatory school and at Harrow, I had not forgotten much more than seventy-five per cent. of the French I knew when I went there. In the same way, after learning German at Harrow for two-and-a-half years, my linguistic attainments in that language were limited to two words, ja and nein. It is true that, for some mysterious reason, German was taught us at Harrow by a Frenchman who had merely a bowing acquaintanceship with the tongue.
In 1865 the fastest train from Paris to the Riviera took twenty-six hours to accomplish the journey, and then was limited to first-class passengers. There were, of course, neither dining-cars nor sleeping cars, no heating, and no toilet accommodation. Eight people were jammed into a first-class compartment, faintly lit by the dim flicker of an oil-lamp, and there they remained. I remember that all the French ladies took off their bonnets or hats, and replaced them with thick knitted woollen hoods and capes combined, which they fastened tightly round their heads. They also drew on knitted woollen over-boots; these, I suppose, were remnants of the times, not very far distant then, when all-night journeys had frequently to be made in the diligence.
The Riviera of 1865 was not the garish, flamboyant rendezvous of cosmopolitan finance, of ostentatious newly acquired wealth, and of highly decorative ladies which it has since become. Cannes, in particular, was a quiet little place of surpassing beauty, frequented by a few French and English people, most of whom were there on account of some delicate member of their families. We went there solely because my sister, Lady Mount Edgcumbe, had already been attacked by lung-disease, and to prolong her life it was absolutely necessary for her to winter in a warm climate. Lord Brougham, the ex-Lord Chancellor, had virtually created Cannes, as far as English people were concerned, and the few hotels there were still unpretentious and comfortable.
Amongst the French boys of our own age with whom we played daily was Antoine de Mores, eldest son of the Duc de Vallombrosa. Later on in life the Marquis de Mores became a fanatical Anglophobe, and he lost his life leading an army of irregular Arab cavalry against the British forces in the Sudan; murdered, if I remember rightly, by his own men. Most regretfully do I attribute Antoine de Mores' violent Anglophobia to the very rude things I and my brother were in the habit of saying to him when we quarrelled, which happened on an average about four times a day.
The favourite game of these French boys was something like our "King of the Castle," only that the victor had to plant his flag on the summit of the "Castle." Amongst our young friends were the two sons of the Duc Des Cars, a strong Legitimist, the Vallombrosa boy's family being Bonapartists. So whilst my brother and I naturally carried "Union Jacks," young Antoine de Mores had a tricolour, but the two Des Cars boys carried white silk flags, with a microscopic border of blue and red ribbon running down either side. One day, as boys will do, we marched through the town in procession with our flags, when the police stopped us and seized the young Des Cars' white banners, the display of the white flag of the Bourbons being then strictly forbidden in France. The Des Cars boys' abbe, or priest-tutor, pointed out to the police the narrow edging of red and blue on either side, and insisted on it that the flags were really tricolours, though the proportion in which the colours were displayed might be an unusual one. The three colours were undoubtedly there, so the police released the flags, though I feel sure that that abbe must have been a Jesuit.
The Comte de Chambord (the Henri V. of the Legitimists) was virtually offered the throne of France in either 1874 or 1875, but all the negotiations failed because he obstinately refused to recognise the Tricolour, and insisted upon retaining the white flag of his ancestors. Any one with the smallest knowledge of the psychology of the French nation must have known that under no circumstances whatever would they consent to abandon their adored Tricolour. The Tricolour is part of themselves: it is a part of their very souls; it is more than a flag, it is almost a religion. I wonder that in 1875 it never occurred to any one to suggest to the Comte de Chambord the ingenious expedient of the Des Cars boys. The Tricolour would be retained as the national flag, but the King could have as his personal standard a white flag bordered with almost invisible bands of blue and red. Technically, it would still be a tricolour, and on the white expanse the golden fleur-de-lys of the Bourbons could be embroidered, or any other device.
Even had the Comte de Chambord ascended the throne, I am convinced that his tenure of it as Henri V. would have been a very brief one, given the temperament of the French nation.
My youngest brother managed to contract typhoid fever at Cannes about this time, and during his convalescence he was moved to an hotel standing on much higher ground than our villa, on account of the fresher air there. A Madame Goldschmidt was staying at this hotel, and she took a great fancy to the little fellow, then about six years old. On two occasions I found Madame Goldschmidt in my brother's room, singing to him in a voice as sweet and spontaneous as a bird's. My brother was a very highly favoured little mortal, for Madame Goldschmidt was no other than the world-famous Jenny Lind, the incomparable songstress who had had all Europe at her feet. She had then retired from the stage for some years, but her voice was as sweet as ever. The nineteenth century was fortunate in having produced two such peerless singers as Adelina Patti and Jenny Lind, "the Swedish Nightingale." The present generation are not likely to hear their equals. Both these great singers had that same curious bird-like quality in their voices; they sang without any effort in crystal-clear tones, as larks sing.
In 1865 it was announced that there would be a great regatta at Cannes in the spring of 1866, and that the Emperor Napoleon would give a special prize for the open rowing (not sculling) championship of the Mediterranean. We further learnt that the whole of the French Mediterranean fleet would be at Villefranche at the time, and that picked oarsmen from the fleet would compete for the championship. My father at once determined to win this prize; the idea became a perfect obsession with him, and he determined to have a special boat built. When we returned to England, he went to Oxford and entered into long consultations with a famous boat-builder there. The boat, a four-oar, had to be built on special lines. She must be light and fast, yet capable of withstanding a heavy sea, for off Cannes the Mediterranean can be very lumpy indeed, and it would be obviously inconvenient to have the boat swamped, and her crew all drowned. The boat-builder having mastered the conditions, felt certain that he could turn out the craft required, which my father proposed to stroke himself.
When we returned to Cannes in 1866, the completed boat was sent out by sea, and we saw her released from her casing with immense interest. She was christened in due form, with a bottle of champagne, by our first cousin, the venerable Lady de Ros, and named the Abercorn. Lady de Ros was a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and had been present at the famous ball in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo in 1815; a ball given by her father in honour of her youngest sister.
The crew then went into serious training. Bow was Sir David Erskine, for many years Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons; No. 2, my brother-in-law, Lord Mount Edgcumbe; No. 3, General Sir George Higginson, with my father as stroke. Lord Elphinstone, who had been in the Navy early in life, officiated as coxswain. But my father was then fifty-five years old, and he soon found out that his heart was no longer equal to the strain to which so long and so very arduous a course (three miles), in rough water, would subject it. As soon as he realised that his age might militate against the chance of his crew winning, he resigned his place in the boat in favour of Sir George Higginson, who was replaced as No. 3 by Mr. Meysey-Clive. My father took Lord Elphinstone's place as coxswain, but here, again, his weight told against him. He was over six feet high and proportionately broad, and he brought the boat's stern too low down in the water, so Lord Elphinstone was re-installed, and my father most reluctantly had to content himself with the role of a spectator, in view of his age. The crew dieted strictly, ran in the mornings, and went to bed early. They were none of them in their first youth, for Sir George Higginson was then forty; Sir David Erskine was twenty-eight; my brother-in-law, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, thirty-four; and Lord Elphinstone thirty-eight.
The great day of the race arrived. We met with one signal piece of ill-luck. Our No. 3, Mr. Meysey-Clive, had gone on board the French flagship, and was unable to get ashore again in time, so at the very last minute a young Oxford rowing-man, the late Mr. Philip Green, volunteered to replace him, though he was not then in training. The French men-of-war produced huge thirty-oared galleys, with two men at each oar. There were also smaller twenty and twelve-oared boats, but not a single "four" but ours. The sea was heavy and lumpy, the course was five kilometres (three miles), and there was a fresh breeze blowing off the land. Our little mahogany Oxford-built boat, lying very low in the water, looked pitiably small beside the great French galleys. It wasn't even David and Goliath, it was as though "Little Tich" stood up to Georges Carpentier. We saw the race from a sailing yacht; my father absolutely beside himself with excitement.
Off they went! The French galleys lumbering along at a great pace, their crews pulling a curiously short stroke, and their coxswains yelling "En avant, mes braves!" with all the strength of their lungs. It must have been very like the boat-race Virgil describes in the fifth book of the Aeneid. There was the "huge Chimaera" the "mighty Centaur" and possibly even the "dark-blue Scylla" with their modern counterparts of Gyas, Sergestus, and Cloanthus, bawling just as lustily as doubtless those coxswains of old shouted; no one, however, struck on the rocks, as we are told the unfortunate "Centaur" did. Still the little mahogany-built Abercorn continued to forge ahead of her unwieldy French competitors. The Frenchmen splashed and spurted nobly, but the little Oxford-built boat increased her lead, her silken "Union Jack" trailing in the water. All the muscles of the French fleet came into play; the admiral's barge churned the water into creaming foam; "mes braves" were incited to superhuman exertions; in spite of it all, the Abercorn shot past the mark-boat, a winner by a length and a half.
My father was absolutely frantic with delight. We reached the shore long before our crew did, for they had to return to receive the judge's formal award. He ceremoniously decorated our boat's bows with a large laurel-wreath, and so—her stem adorned with laurels, and the large silk "Union Jack" trailing over her stern—the little mahogany Oxford-built boat paddled through the lines of her French competitors. I am sorry to have to record that the French took their defeat in a most unsportsmanlike fashion; the little Abercorn was received all down the line with storms of hoots and hisses. Possibly we, too, might feel annoyed if, say at Portsmouth, in a regatta in which all the crack oarsmen of the British Home Fleet were competing, a French four should suddenly appear from nowhere, and walk off with the big prize of the day. Still, the conditions of the Cannes regatta were clear; this was an open race, open to any nationality, and to any rowing craft of any size or build, though the result was thought a foregone certainty for the French naval crews.
Our crew were terribly exhausted when they landed. They had had a very very severe pull, in a heavy sea, and with a strong head-wind against them, and most of them were no longer young; still, after a bath and a change of clothing, and, quite possibly, a brandy-and-soda or two (nobody ever drank whisky in the "sixties"), they pulled themselves together again. It was Lord Mount Edgcumbe who first suggested that as there was an afternoon dance that day at the Cercle Nautique de la Mediterranee, they should all adjourn to the club and dance vigorously, just to show what sturdy, hard-bitten dogs they were, to whom a strenuous three-mile pull in a heavy sea was a mere trifle, even though some of them were forty years old. So off we all went to the Cercle, and I well remember seeing my brother-in-law and Sir George Higginson gyrating wildly and ceaselessly round the ball-room, tired out though they were. Between ourselves, our French friends were immensely impressed with this exhibition of British vigour, and almost forgave our boat for having won the rowing championship of the Mediterranean.
At the Villa Beaulieu where we lived, there were immense rejoicings that night. Of course all our crew dined there, and I was allowed to come down to dinner myself. Toasts were proposed; healths were drunk again and again. Speeches were made, and the terrific cheering must have seriously weakened the rafters and roof of the house. No one grudged my father his immense satisfaction, for after all he had originated the idea of winning the championship of the Mediterranean, and had had the boat built at his sole expense, and it was not his defects as an oarsman but his fifty-five years which had prevented him from stroking his own boat.
Long after I had been sent to bed, I heard the uproar from below continuing, and, in the strictest confidence, I have every reason to believe that they made a real night of it.
Two of that crew are still alive. Gallant old Sir George Higginson was born in 1826, consequently the General is now ninety-four years of age. The splendid old veteran's mental faculties are as acute as ever; he is not afflicted with deafness and he is still upright as a dart, though his eyesight has failed him. It is to Sir George and to Sir David Erskine that I am indebted for the greater portion of the details concerning this boat-race of 1866, and of its preliminaries, for many of these would not have come within the scope of my knowledge at nine years of age.
Sir David Erskine, the other member of the crew still surviving, ex-Sergeant-at-Arms, was a most familiar, respected, and greatly esteemed personality to all those who have sat in the House of Commons during the last forty years. I might perhaps have put it more strongly; for he was invariably courteous, and such a great gentleman. Sir David was born in 1838, consequently he is now eighty-two years old.
One of my brothers has still in his keeping a very large gold medal. One side of it bears the effigy of "Napoleon III., Empereur des Francais." The other side testifies that it is the "Premier Prix d'Avirons de la Mediterrannee, 1866." The ugly hybrid word "Championnat" for "Championship" had not then been acclimatised in France.
Shortly after the boat-race, being now nine years old, I went home to England to go to school.
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