The Imperishable Past

By E. F. BENSON

THERE is probably not a single person who ever reads any- thing at all, however high-brow or low-brow his taste, who does not enjoy browsing over the files of old newspapers. But let no one be discouraged by an aphorism of Lord Macaulay's printed on the dust-cover of this delightful volume, _in which he states that the only true history of a Country is to be found in its newspapers. Such a sentiment, to begin with, is highly misleading : if Lord Macaulay had said that a dozen false histories of a country could be found therein he would have been nearer the mark, and in any case the last thing that the browser over files wants to learn is the true history of his country ; for that he can go to odious history primers or indeed to Lord Macaulay's own book.

What such a reader is in search of is the foibles and fashions and gossip of bygone days, and he at once skips anything of serious import, which might be called history. The worst of this pleasant pastime is that bound-up files of newspapers are extremely ponderous objects and the bulk of their contents prodigiously dull : sleep is liable to intervene and to be shat- tered by the thunderous report of the volume slipping on to the floor. What the epicure in files wants, and here has got, is a judicious and indefatigable explorer who will extract from these tomes picturesque and astounding and absurd tit-bits with illustrations of a Pilentum or Lady's Accelerator or of Prince Albert in a frock-coat and top-hat standing on an unprotected dickey and driving the Queen and her infant daughter in a sledge drawn by two black steeds adorned with immense plumes of ostrich feathers, over the frozen steppes in the vicinity of Brighton.

Such a collection as this sometimes gives odd shocks and surprises to those who imagine that in the last hundred years there has been a great advance in the conveniences of life and in the emancipations of women. Sitting warm by his hot- water pipes and remembering the chilly saloons of his youth, the elderly reader will take it almost as a personal affront to know that in 1808 a cabinet-maker of Bond Street, whose extensive premises could not be kept warm by a dozen fires, installed a system of central heating of such fervour that his workmen could melt their glue by setting the glue-pots on the pipes. Or, if he rejoices at the athleticism of women today and takes the pictures of ladies' hurdle races and hockey matches as a sign of a freedom only newly won, he will be astonished to learn that in the year 1811, when county cricket matches between mere males were non-existent, the females of Surrey played the females of Hampshire in a two-days' match. They were of all ages and sizes, we read, from fourteen to forty, and a Hampshire lass made 41 before she was run out. Two amateur Noblemen got up the teams and had a wager of five hundred guineas on the result. Do the young ladies of today imagine that they wear striking toilettes ? Let them read how Queen Victoria, lately married, walked on the Chain-pier at Brighton in a Tartan plaid pelisse of French merino, trimmed with fur and a straw bonnet decorated with red and black velvet. Or if they think that their modern bathing costumes would have made the Victorians blush and swoon in a fever of modesty, they will learn that Mrs. Bell, in the year 1844, provided bathing suits, cap and all, which could be carried in a lady's reticule.

There are those again who fondly believe that their pretty green or purple hair is something new. Not at all : in 1858 green and purple hair, indeed hair of any colour of the rainbow, was quite common, because women would use spurious imita- tions of Hewlett's celebrated Tyrian liquid, and if they or gentlemen with green whiskers got tired of these polychromatic effects, they could apply genuine Hewlett and become black or brown again. Ten years ago ladies thought that their appear- ance in knickerbockers was a sartorial novelty. It was not ; for in 1851 a young American lady gave a lecture on the good sense of Bloomers (and a very lively lecture it was) ; and another, similarly clad, essayed to walk 800 miles in 800 hours.

News from the Past : 1805-1887. Compiled by Yvonne ffreneb. (Collancz. 7s. 6d.)

As for Poudre Subtil, the effect of which today is the subject of so many illustrations in the Press, Mr. J. Delerbise inventest it: or something similar in 1817.

On every page indeed the record of the past obliterates the more modern claims to novelty. In the 'nineties, for instance, motor-cars were held to be something new : there was great opposition to them; and for a while they were, as being

mechanically. propelled vehicles on the subjected' to the same restrictions as traction engines, and a man with a red flag had to walk in front of them. Yet • in 1819 the ingenious Mr. Birch exhibited to the Duke and Duchess of Kent his Velocimanipede (there is a mOdern word; if ever there was one !), and it was nothing else than a motor-cycle with accommodation for a lady. One man guided the front wheel, another at the back worked the machinery, and the lady took the air. In 1830 steam-carriages traversed the public roads at twelve miles an hour, and thirty years later Lord Caithness threaded the crowds of market day at an even higher speed, without alarming horses or running over anybody. As for aerial transport, Mr. Egg in 1816 was at work on a steam- driven balloon with wings to act as rudders, "for the avowed purpose of carrying the nobility and gentry to Paris and subsequently elsewhere " twenty at a time, in ten hours instead of seventy-three, and his passengers could snap their fingers at extortionate innkeepers and custom-house officials. To be quite honest, there seems to be some doubt whether this dolphin-shaped balloon (evidently stream-lined) ever took the sky, but there is no evidence that it did not. On the railroad in 1837 Mr. Stephenson constructed an engine which would draw a train at fifty miles an hour, or with its tender alone at eighty miles.

Or do we fondly suppose that the red and greeh traffic lights of the street are a modern invention ? A better knowledge of the year 1868 would convince us of the contrary.

There were red lights and green lights at the crossings by Westminster Bridge Road, on exactly the same principles as today, which " dispensed with the gesticulations of policemen," and probably resulted in a similar mortality among pedestrians. The Lord Chamberlain was subjected to the same opprobrium as today for permitting at one theatre a show quite as subversive of public morals as another which he had prohibited elsewhere, and the authorities who ordered

the exhibition of pictures by D. H. Lawrence to be closed will be happy to learn that a picture by. W. Etty, .R.A., at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1841 was thought to call for the interference of the police.

All such prophetic anticipations of the future by the century- old past are justly dear to the browsers on files, and they will find that on the whole we are much as we were. Perhaps in 1934 a fight between a lion and six dogs would not be per- mitted, nor, if it was, should we flock to see it, but while the Albert Hall is still thronged to see a prize-fight between heavy- weights, who can say that our savage instincts have really deteriorated ? As for our national sentimentality, it was as exuberant then as now. In 1812, - when. Mrs.

Siddons, the adored of all theatre-goers, gave her farewell performance, choosing Macbeth for the play,- the audience

insisted that after the sleep-walking scene there should be no more Shakespeare, and when the curtain rose again there was their idol sitting at a table, and 'she delivered her farewell

address in rhymed couplets. A similar situation would certainly arise today if a film star ,to. be seen for posi- tively the last time had her great scene in the middle of the play.

Certainly there was a period, roughly from 1914 to 1924, when cynicism and disillusion were rampant, but there .was special cause for that, and surely, if we may judge from best-selling books, and from newspapers and from sundry recent ebullitions of popular feeling, we are again beginning to drip with the Victorian sentimentality which we once affected to despise but secretly cherished. As a nation we may be shopkeepers, though often very poor ones, but shopkeeping is only our pastime. Our business is to live up to that profound senti- mentalism from whieli we cannot escape. -