Those Viv aci ous Victorians

As We Were. By E. F. Benson. (Longmans. 18.s.) Wirttx the Queen and the Archbishop have left the scene, and one Duchess has deftly disposed of the portrait of her husband's mistress, and another of a " masher " who followed her ; when Gladstone and Robert Browning and Alfred Austin, and Lady Londonderry and Lady Ripon, Swinburne and Wilde, Lady Dorothy Neville and Henry Chaplin—all the notable people of half-a-century—have played their parts in Mr. Benson's glittering yet intensely human peepshow, it is with a real pang of regret that we take leave of his company. He is so wise and witty ; there is such verve and delicacy in his descriptions that we do not wonder at the popularity that must have been Iris: if style be the man, here is one who is rich in experience and knowledge, a full man, and a happy one.

We begin with a pincushion of rich crimson velvet, in the headmaster's house in Wellington College, which bore on its dome a majestic Royal Crown. "It was there, it was ready, it was worthy . . . . of its dumb but distinguished rae." The Queen was expected. And before she makes her appearance, we have a gorgeous and unforgettable picture of the "smiling oasis of pnblie respectability and sobriety into which the social caravans entered about the year 1840." lint,.Of 'eourse, is before Mr. Benson took an interest in affairs, but he can remem- ber—in the 'sixties—his invalid Aunt Emmeline, a "static and recumbent figure" who lay in bed and "had bronchitis (just as she might have had a dog or a canary) " and Grand- mamma Sidgwiek, " behind whom when she went to attend service in the school chapel there walked a servant carrying her Bible, her prayer-book.

her Wellington College hymn-book. She herself carried bead-bag containing her handkerchief and a vinaigrette, inside which was a tiny piece of sponge soaked in aromatic vinegar. All the ladies of any refinement in those days were apt to feel faint -in church. . . On her head was a bonnet with purple strings tied underneath her chin, and according to tile weather she WON a and-skin jacket or an Indian shawl of many colours."

The future author of Dodo observed every detail of her dress and appearance : we can see him, when allowed to watch

her in the final stages of dressing for dinner, examining that inexhaustible walnut-wood box with mother-of-pearls on the lid, which contained her jewellery • •

:- "Them was a' neeklace of garnets, consisting of delicate safe rayed stare, with -earrings and 'a brooch to match, a necklace of Jet for'sad.aritii)4iSOrics. a brooeh of diamonds with a ruby in the (+entre, arletherStesteseeting a largo bunch of "white grapes, another • cif 'rridartie-iNrork ininute chlotwocf tesscrae'showing.'a'rhacsm(at

ruin, another a cameo of my father's head in profile set in solid sausages of gold. There was a bracelet, swarming like an ant heap with small turquoises, a memorial bracelet, made entirely of the hair of some defunct relative with a clasp of emeralds and pearls, and one of broad gold with circular Wedgewood plaques let into it, and enamelled lockets also containing hair. By day and for evening toilet, she, like every Christian lady of the time,wore a cross round her neck.

" She had smooth brown hair on which mystic rites were per- formed. . . . First of all she let her hair down and drew thick tresses of it (as much as she required) from the centre of her forehead in curving eaves over the tops of her ears, so that the lobes of them only remained visible, and holding these strands firmly in place, she applied to them a brown stick of adhesive cosmetic called • bandoline,' till the hair that formed these eaves was glued together in one shining surface like a polished board. . . ."

But we must leave Mrs. Sidgwick, with her small grandson prancing downstairs after her, and pass over the ceremonies antecedent to a dinner party which he witnessed through the balustrade of the stairs ; and the rich foods which the guests consumed, and the tender music they heard before the men of the party went to the pantry in padded jackets and forage caps to indulge in the disgusting habit of smoking.

The Queen arrives at Wellington College and uses (or does not use) the pincushion (we shall never know which), weeps a little over the foundation-stone laid by the Prince Consort, visits the dormitories, disapproves of the tuck-shop, plants a tree. The next chapter is an extraordinarily vivid summary of her whole reign, compressed into scarcely more than a dozen pages with a skill that hides skill. We forbear to quote, where each sentence scintillates.

Family history follows, and Mr. Benson has remarkable stories to tell of the times of his grandfather, including how he studied astrology, and assisted in raising the Devil, until, appalled by the results, he forswore black magic for ever. Also of a friend of his grandfather's who attended a Roman

Catholic service in Waterford at which the priest declared to

his congregation that certain souls then in purgatory would appear in church. When the prayers for the scads of the departed were being said, the Englishman saw that there were small, black, mysterious shapes creeping out from under the altar and moving about on the floor of the chancel. A sudden impulse came to him to pick one up, which he was able to do unobserved in the dint light. When the service was over, he said to the friend who had accompanied him :—

I've got a soul in my pocket, and here it is.'

" Ho took it and laid it on the table. It was, as he had observed, thickly but loosely wrapped about in crape, and he unwound it, layer after layer, not knowing what he should find. At length the last covering came away, and there was a fine crab. His host was much troubled.

Now you must away for your life,' lie said, ' and that's all about it. The priest is sure to have counted how many souls he put under the altar, and he'll find that there's one missing !'" The interesting thing about these family records, as Mr. Benson observes, is the light they throw. on the prevalence of superstition well into the middle of last century. But perhaps the vividest incident in a book crammed with incident is his father's courtship of his cousin, Minnie Sidgwiek, eleven years old at the time he fell in love with her. "That very able and masterful young man" had been reading Tennyson's 'Princess" With her ; and after that, talking to her mother one night, he records in his diary that he told her that "if Minnie grew up the same sweet clever girl she was, she would make such a wife as I had often said I should most pray for myself." Mr. Benson -continues "Mrs. Sidgwick not unnaturally was a good deal startled at this sort of option he claimed on a child of eleven, and she told him tactfully that he must not make up his mind yet, and that Minnie, he must remember, had not yet -got a Mind at all in these matters. The very next year, however, he persuaded Mrs. Sidgwick to allow him to speak to her on "The Subject." What follows, written down by the future Archbishop in his diary, is a most touching and beautiful *seene, which we must forbear to quote.

"And then (continues Mr. Benson) this little authentic love store, so precise and fabulous with its readings of Tennyson's 'Princess' and its adorable heroine of twelve years old, tenderly and exquisitely plighting herself and striving to t set herself to man ' without as yet the slightest notien of what it all meant, becomes a very real

sffair. . . . She mast certainly grow taller, and she must cultivate her mind and be much more diligent at the readings and the lessons

he new daily set her, as lover bet as tutor also, BO BB to be worthy of . When my mother was just seventeen, there Came !1i8 aPPOlOtBiellt to be first headmaster of Wellington College..., . and so the little girl Whorntie. had chosen 1.14 the age of eleven, and who had plightedher troths tcichiin at the age' of twelvii, became

. . his. From that time onwards, she was the staff on which he leaned. and the wings that gave him flight."

As beautiful, indeed, of a quality that compels reverence, and remains in memory as a thing almost too sacred for print (yet printed, will help many to bear their own losses) is the Archbishop's description, again quoted from his diary, of the death of Martin, the author's elder brother, who might have been the most brilliant of all the Bensons, had he lived.

But what we have already given of these memories covers barely a quarter of their contents. The rest is less domestic but not less intimate, for we go on with the author into the great world in which he found himself as an immensely popular young novelist and connoisseur, who was asked every- where and did far more than meet everyone, for he had a genius for friendship that made hini loved by men and women of most varying tastes and occupations ; moreover, he possessed personal talents out of the ordinary—for music, archaeology and golf, for instancy, as well as for literature—which brought him in touch with many interests. We write in the past tense. but Mr. Benson is still in the prime of his power. Indeed he has never written a better book, nor one so carefully balanced, " I confess I was then tipsy with the joy of life," he says of the days of Beardsley and Whistler—and also of Dore' and Frith's "Derby Day" incidentally—and of Stevenson and Hardy and Kipling and Henry James, whom he all knew personally and here describes (the latter described him as" a very interesting, acute, charming, modern youth—modern highly, with only a tendency to place Golf too high in his intellectual interests ") ; "but the ferment still stirs in me, and the horns still blow with undiminished magic when I read Tess of the LEI' titles or the Jungle Book."

The magic contains, and Mr. Benson's admirers, old and young, will find that his memories are not only vastly enter- taining, but a permanent contribution to literature.