Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country

As for higher teaching, all our principal Colonies have their Universities. In the mother country, corresponding progress since the legislation of 1870 was at work was shown by the ability of the framer of that measure, the late W. E. Forster, himself well known in the Colonies, before his death in 1885, to point to the fact that the school attendance from being seven per cent. before his Act was passed had within fifteen years’ operation of that measure risen to seventeen per cent. In the Australasian Colonies the results are not less striking than in the mother country or in the Canadian. In 1837 New South Wales was without a constitution as well as without any elementary education machinery of its own. Within rather less than half a century the institution of responsible government had been followed by an Education Act on the same lines as the English Act of 1870, but providing inter-mediate schools as well, with the result that the last census in Victoria shows that, of every 10,000 children of school age, 9,500 could read, and more than 8,500 could write.

These are specimen cases which establish the point that the extension of English power is accompanied by the spread of whatever advantages modern civilization can bring. As was seen in the preceding chapter, since the Colonial Bishoprics movement of 1851, religion has followed everywhere in the wake of our Empire. So, too, has education. These are the things which distinguish the Colonial methods of Great Britain from those of any other country whether in earlier or in contemporary times.

Dependencies, i. e. places necessary for the maintenance of Empire, but not suitable for permanent British habitation; Crown Colonies, controlled by a Governor, and legislated for by orders in Council, with, as soon as the soil is ripe for it, some representative Council on the spot, reduplications of the mother country under foreign suns, with Constitutions of their own and representative Government after the pattern of the United Kingdom; these are the different heads under which the Colonial Empire that has grown up in our age may be divided. As this Empire is in itself new, so the machinery for its central administration in the form in which it now exists is a product of the present reign. Evelyn the diarist, writing under date February 28th, 1671, mentions his appointment as a member of the Committee of the Privy Council, that had been established in 1660 for controlling the foreign plantations. This Council in 1672 was joined to the Council of Trade, the entire body being called the Council of Trade and Plantations. That was reconstituted in 1695, and again in 1748, when India came under its charge, continuing to remain under it until the appointment of the Board of Control in 1784.

At the beginning of our century, War and Colonies formed the province of a single Secretary of State and continued to do so till 1854. The first Colonial Secretary holding that office alone was Sir George Grey, followed in 1859 by the Duke of Newcastle. This was the Peelite duke whose father had founded the Newcastle scholarship at Eton, and who himself accompanied the Prince of Wales to Canada in 1859. The Colonies were not the department he had desired when Lord Palmerston formed his last Government, but he did his work not unsympathetically and bequeathed his post in good order to Cardwell. The ablest of the earlier Colonial Secretaries was without doubt Lord Grey, son of the Reformer, who held the office in Lord John Russell’s Administration. During the forties, especially in 1849, Colonial sensitiveness was wounded by the perpetual motions brought forward in the House of Commons by Joseph Hume and others of his party for reducing the salary of Colonial Governors,119 accompanied as these motions were by language not complimentary to the new polities. Not without party criticism had the office of Parliamentary Under Secretary been created in 1810. The same opposition was called forth by the appointment of Permanent Under Secretaries, and Legal Advisers to the Home Government in 1867, in 1870, 1874, and by the vote for the new Colonial offices in Downing Street first occupied in 1876. In 1897 politicians of all parties take the same patriotic pride in the Colonial Empire, while an ex-Radical leader is that Empire’s Minister. The increased popularity of Colonial in preference to United States emigration is shown by the fact that in 1837 35,264 persons went to the Colonies, and some sixty years later the number was 52,029.

The pride that the Queen’s subjects take in the Empire beyond seas, created by Anglo-Saxon enterprise, and the honour they derive from it are accompanied by the growing interest with which the Colonies are regarded by political thinkers who see in their development an anticipation of the constitutional movements soon to be witnessed on British soil. The Australian legislatures have not only kept pace with, they have stolen a march on, the socialistic Radicals of the old country. New Zealand generally has led the way. This and three other Colonies, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, have adopted Woman’s Suffrage with the legislative freaks which seem to be its sequel. To the action of this franchise is attributed the proposal recently made in one of these Parliaments to give every domestic servant a statutory holiday once a week. Tasmania, too, will not apparently be satisfied till she has secured the Swiss Referendum for ending disputes between the two legislative Chambers by submitting the single point in issue to the constituencies. Tasmania, also, has made several efforts, as yet unsuccessfully, to acclimatise the Hare system of proportional representation which is now forgotten in England, save when some theorist uses a periodical re-adjustment of our franchise, to revive its interest. South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales, have also attempted, but not as yet carried, the establishment of national banks; perilous experiments enough for any new, or for that matter old, country.

Individual effort gave England its Colonies. The same agency – as embodied in a Gibbon Wakefield, who began life by being Secretary to Lord Durham in Canada 1838, who, 1839, obtained the annexation and colonization of New Zealand, and who in 1849 published The Art of Colonization; in a Sir William Molesworth, the pioneer of Colonial self-government; who, obtaining from Palmerston the great object of his ambition, the Colonial Secretaryship 1853, died shortly afterwards; more recently in the fourth Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary (1866-7; 1874-8) – applied the social cement which has joined the new countries with the old in personal rather than in merely political relation. Colonial patriotism was also reasonably gratified on its intellectual side by Mr Lowe’s sojourn in New South Wales 1843-50, and by Sir Robert G. W. Herbert’s share in the Administration of Queensland before he became Colonial Under Secretary in London.

A shrewd Colonial statesman not long since observed that if another flying Australian, but a born and bred Colonial horse, were to win the Derby, no whisper of separation from the British Crown would ever be heard among the most advanced of Colonial democrats. Popular enthusiasm at the Antipodean winner of the Blue Ribbon would spread from Epsom Downs throughout the kingdom; it would be flashed along every wire or transmitted by every cable to the four winds of heaven; the Colonists would cease to complain that they, or their products, were not appreciated by the mother country. This half serious remark contains more than a grain of truth; it points to the fact that the grievance alleged by our kinsman beyond sea against the headquarters of their race is sentimental, rather than practical. Pending the Derby winner from beyond seas, the less sternly democratic of England’s Colonial cousins have appreciated the peerages bestowed on a few of them, and can point to other substantial proofs that they have become a power in English society. Thus they have founded clubs in London; they possess a party of their own in the House of Commons, and entertain the social leaders of the old country at their balls and parties during the season in famous restaurants, or at their own homes.

Till the Victorian age was well developed, the latter day American elements in London fashion were unheard of. To-day these leaven the whole of our social life. It is those born under the Stripes and Stars who relieve, at a princely rental, English nobles of house property which its owners are not occupying, and supply Countesses and Duchesses to the English peerage. The great feature of our time has been the concentration of our people in the Metropolis. A like gravitation to towns has indeed taken place throughout the whole country. Between the eighties and the nineties, the increase of the urban population has been 3,016,579; the decrease of the rural has been 139,545.120

With respect to this movement, as in other matters, London has shown itself the true mirror of England. For a proof of this, it would be enough to mention the Langham Hotel, and those caravanserais which have followed it, down to the latest and most palatial of all, the Hotel Cecil. That the capital thus socially re-created has been successfully reorganized as the most cosmopolitan and modish centre of fashion for two hemispheres is due largely to the agency of American dollars and American arbiters of elegance. In the thirties and the sixties the gifted men who were sent to represent the United States in the old country, a Washington Irving, and a Lothrop Motley, made their Embassies social centres for the most pleasant company of the time, attracted famous men from their own country, one of whom, the Rev. Cleveland Coxe,121 formed a lasting link between the two chief branches of the Anglo-Saxon Church, most of these Transatlantic visitors left behind them brilliant reputations as conversationalists.

More recently a Russell Lowell and a Bayard have adorned this tradition. In their day, the American season following hard upon the London season proper has become a regular, and to all concerned most profitable, observance in the social calendar. The dictatresses of polite life from the other side of the Atlantic generally have been educated in Paris, not a few of them by the daughter of Emile Souvestre at that institution for turning intelligent girls into charming women, Les Ruches, Fontainebleau; they always bring with them to their London homes the tastes of citizens of the world. These tastes are gratified as successfully on the Thames as on the Seine; it is la belle Americaine who has most visibly impressed her image on the capital where, since the Second Empire fell, she has chiefly delighted to dwell; she decided that English life needed enlivening: she has enlivened it and continues to do so effectually. Some restlessness is constitutional to her, as also to the Anglo-Indians and Colonials who are perennially so much with us; thus largely to please her the London season is now subdivided into innumerable parts. It would be truer to say some form of that season lasts all the year round. The constant locomotion from one centre, or from one country seat to another, began, as has been already seen, with the Prince Consort. It has not been discouraged by later representatives of the Crown. From the day that in 1860 the Prince of Wales visited the tomb of George Washington, he has never lost the American heart. The new London régime exactly suits the future peeresses of the old country when they are fresh from New York.

The constant alternations of Hyde Park promenades, not only with suburban racecourses, but with long days under summer suns given to Thames-side picnics, or with rapid flittings on any opportunity to and fro between Mayfair on the one hand, the Boulevard des Italiens, Monte Carlo, or Homburg on the other: these innovations have been brought about by the American Londoner more than by any other single person. The Colonial millionaire or millionairess has not yet been so fully developed as their Transatlantic equivalents. But the process is going steadily forward, no doubt with similar results to follow.

The contrast between the amount of international friction that was caused before the Oregon Boundary dispute, and the Trent difference, between the two countries were composed in 1846 and in 1863, respectively, and the comparative ease with which the Venezuela Question in our own day was settled, suggests the solid international advantages of the arrangement under which New York and London have become socially one and the same capital, having their pleasures, their lions and lionesses, their favourite composers, authors, dramatists and players, in common.

The late Mr Samuel Ward, who is as well remembered in London as in New York, and who liked to be called the prince of bon vivants at Delmonico’s, the king of the lobby at Washington, was a cultivated little old gentleman, of whom it is difficult to conceive as ever having been much less, or more, than some seventy-odd years of age. He was known throughout the whole Anglo-Saxon world as ‘Uncle Sam.’ He had become popular in English society soon after the examples of the then Lord Hartington and Lord Rosebery included America in the grand tour of every educated Briton. He really did something to entitle him to his universal sobriquet. He was the founder of a social and literary Anglo-American school which has struck its roots deep in the chosen homes of English fashion. As Californian gold preceded Australian, so the Transatlantic force that has transformed the social England of our day has come before the fully organized exercise of a Colonial power of the same sort. But every year brings one visibly nearer its final development, with all the international advantages which will no doubt accompany that event.122

1

Edited by Dr Ernst Regel – Berlin, 1894.

2

The grandfather of the fifth Marquess. As Lord Henry Petty, he had so long since as 1806 been Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1848 he was President of the Council, and led the peers in the Russell Government. Died 1863.

3

But much of the Forest being saved by the Common rights had not at any time been enclosed.

4

The Age of Gold, vol. i. p. 37.

5

While these lines are being prepared for the press there appears in a London newspaper a statement of the prices current at the Western Australia gold fields in the summer of 1896. They may be compared with the figures given in the text and are as follows: – Tea 3s., flour 10d., sugar 1s., bacon 3s., beef and mutton 4d. to 8d., cheese 2s. 6d., coffee 3s., tobacco 8s., and preserved potatoes 1s. 9d. per lb.; milk (condensed) 1s. 9d. per tin; flour 20s. per 50 lbs.; and eggs 10s. a dozen; but the cost of living generally, as compared with earnings, is low. On the Ashburton River gold fields mutton is 4d., beef 6d., flour 10d., tea 3s., sugar 9d. to 1s., preserved potatoes 1s. 6d., salt 1s., rice 1s., and oatmeal 1s. 3d. per lb. On the Yilgarn gold fields meat is 9d. to 1s. a lb., flour 10s. to 30s. per 50 lb. bag, tea 3s. 6d. a lb., and other provisions are equally scarce and dear. At Coolgardie, to the east of Yilgarn, flour costs £3 per 200 lbs., bread 1s. per 1½ lb. loaf, butter 2s. 3d. per lb., potatoes 6d. per lb., sugar 8d. per lb., tinned milk 1s. 3d. per lb., bacon 1s. 9d. per lb., salt 6d. per lb., and board and lodgings £3 to £7 a week. On the Murchison gold fields in the North, the prices per lb. are: Flour 8d., sugar 8d., tea 3s. 6d., tobacco 6d., fish 1s. 6d., mutton 8d., beef 8d., butter 3s., and tinned meats 1s. 3d.

6

Still more than this was given to get men on the home voyage from Melbourne.

7

See Our Railways. By John Pendleton. Cassell & Co.

8

Brought down to 1897 instead of 1881, these mutatis mutandis figures are derived from Mr Mallock’s most useful book.

9

In the West of England, with which the writer is specially acquainted, this is generally the case.

10

These figures are taken from ‘Art Sales,’ by George Redford, privately printed, 1882.

11

Now Sir William Agnew.

12

All the details of art prices given in this chapter are derived from Mr G. Redford’s authentic record of art sales, first privately printed in 1888. For other information the writer is indebted to the late Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.

13

See Picciotto’s Anglo-Jewish History for all these early facts about the Jews.

14

The idea of the Exhibition being ‘universal’ was not that of the Prince, but of the Committee of the Society of Arts. It was first suggested in fact by Mr Thomas Winkworth.

15

Most of the time he was at Ghent. His stay there is known in French history as La cour de Gand.

16

These anecdotes are given from Mr Reeves’ volume already mentioned. They are suggestive of incident if not uniformly accurate in fact. The correction of the Waterloo incident given above commended itself to some among Baron Lionel’s friends who would be likely to know.

17

While Lord Palmerston has become a historical name, Lord Beaconsfield’s precedents are daily, alike by friends and foes, cited as living forces.

18

See Quarterly Review, July, 1896.

19

This anecdote was often told by Lord Shaftesbury.

20

Not, however, the most appreciated by his master.

21

Now of course Battersea Park.

22

Who, to the regret of all who knew his abilities, died February 1897, having exercised influence rather than achieved distinction.

23

While he yet lives, his enduring monuments are his blocks of working men’s dwellings in the King’s Cross district and elsewhere.

24

The guarantees against undue delegation are stringent and successful.

25

Opinions vary as to the workability of this clause in the shape in which it left the Lords.

26

E.g. In a typical Surrey village, where there are no Nonconformists, the Chairman is the Vicar, but of 38 Gloucestershire parishes, where dissenters abound, only in two or three.

27

Urban District Councils have taken the place of Local Boards; they are in fact town councils of those districts which are not incorporated into municipalities.

28

Molesworth’s History of England, vol. i. p. 19.

29

As a fact, the County chairman is most likely a J.P. already.

30

For valuable facts and figures, bringing this chapter down to the latest date the writer is indebted to Mr Henry Chaplin and his staff at the Local Government Board, as for much other useful help to Sir Henry Fowler, Sir Charles Dilke, the Rev. Charles Cox, D.D., and to Mr G. W. E. Russell.

31

In addition to Sir Charles Dilke, Sir Henry Fowler and others already mentioned, the writer is indebted for invaluable help in the preparation of facts and the revision of proofs in this portion of the book to Mr W. J. Soulsby the accomplished private secretary to a succession of Lord Mayors of London.

32

An account of the University Settlements in East London. Edited by John M. Knapp, Oxford House, Bethnal Green. Rivington, Percival & Co. 1895.

33

England: Its People, Polity and Pursuits. 2 vols. Cassell & Co. 1 vol. Chapman & Hall.

34

This usage varies under different Administrations and at different epochs. Mr Forster [1870] was an actual Education Minister. His Liberal successors have been so since; his Conservative successors only in a qualified sense.

35

See Report of the Secondary Education Commission, vol. i. passim, but especially, pp. 44, and seq.

36

These have produced not a few famous men even in this generation: Thus Bishop Stortford shares with Oriel, Oxford the honour of educating Mr Cecil Rhodes.

37

As the writer has a personal reason for knowing, this is the year in which the amalgamation first took a definite shape, though it was not perhaps fully carried out till a little later.

38

This point was dwelt upon strongly in the letters of London correspondents to the French press at the time of the 1887 Jubilee.

39

Recent legislation providing for the information of the working classes on this point, by the display of lists in factories, has not given entire satisfaction to the persons interested.

40

The statistics showing the new rungs in the educational ladder in this chapter have been supplied to the writer by Mr G. H. Croad of the London School Board, by other gentlemen in like positions and by private friends in the Education Department. Thanks are also due to Sir John Gorst, and to Mr Mundella for the kind trouble they have taken in checking the facts of the narrative portion, and for making valuable suggestions.

41

This, during the youth of the late Rev W. G. Cookesley was said by that authority to be, not hyperbole, but historical fact.

42

This title has been denied to the King here named, but Waynflete, also an Eton benefactor as well as official, was himself transferred by Henry from Winchester to Eton, becoming Headmaster and Provost successively.

43

For the facts and figures in this chapter showing the relations of the old public schools to the new educational tests, as for the facts of Eton expenditure, the writer is indebted to the Rev. Edmond Warre, D.D., the Headmaster, who has placed at his disposal all the necessary data.

44

See Eothen, edn. 1896 – Blackwood, p. 7.

45

Now in vogue at nearly all the pleasure towns in southern England.

46

The name of Frank as well as of Charles Mathews was often on the bills of this theatre during the sixties.

47

Census of England and Wales, 1891. Vol. iv. General Report, pp. 64 and fg.

48

For a valuable dissertation, to which the present writer is much indebted on this subject, see A. J. Ogilvy —Westminster Review, 1891. Vol. 136, pp. 289 to 297.

49

W. Cunningham on the Malthusian theory —Macmillan’s Magazine, Dec. 1883.

50

In addition to the published official statistics from which the above facts and figures are taken, the writer is indebted to the Registrar-General for much useful information, and to Mr G. Shaw-Lefevre for further friendly help.

51

See Molesworth’s History of England. Vol. i. p. 90 and fg.

52

Commons Journal, xci. 319.

53

In the Upper House, there is perhaps no one to whom the classics are more familiar as literature than Lord Morley.

54

For nearly all the details as to the structural arrangements of the two Houses of Parliament, and to the particulars of what may be called their social life, the writer desires to express his grateful acknowledgments to Mr Archibald Milman, C.B., a Clerk of the House of Commons. On other parliamentary points, he is not less indebted to Sir Charles Dilke, and to many more Members of Parliament, only a few of whom now survive.