MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOISON
IIMAGINE that for my grandchildren the phrase " a famous hostess " will seem archaic, having associations as outmoded as those suggested to my own generation by such words as incroyables or " macaronis." Even those of us who remember the Edwardian period might find it difficult exactly to define what the phrase at that date really implied. In the year 1909 it would not have been employed naturally as a description of the eminent chatelaines who entertained their friends or relations in our most stately homes. We took it for granted that the owners of Hatfield, Badminton, Chats- worth, Goodwood, Longleat and the rest filled their bedrooms on Saturdays_ and holidays with a constant succession of poorer relations and elderly guests. Some of these great ladies were known to enjoy offering hospitality to their friends and families; others were known to regard this duty as a heavy - burden. Yet it would no more have occurred to those who wrote social paragraphs for the newspapers to describe the former as "famous" than as it would have occurred to them to denounce the latter as inhospitable. In what,-therefore, did this " fame " consist ? It did not depend upon the grandeur of the house to which these people were invited, any more than it depended upon the number and frequency of the guests; it depended upon the hostess's vitality and powers of selection. In the great houses of England the aunts and cousins of the owners would reappear with perhaps wearisome iteration; the visitors-book spread upon the hall-table would show the same names recurring, at the appointed seasons, year by year. It often happened that the greater territorial magnates actually preferred old friends to new, and were too indolent to face the effort of mingling with unaccustomed minds. Consult the visitors-book of any of our large houses during the Edwardian period, and you will notice a striking monotony of reception, and a tendency to prefer elderly contemporaries to the young, or wild, or strange. A " famous " hostess was one who broke through this crust of habit and who applied to the composition of her parties such gifts of energy, selection and combination as she possessed. * * * • * - At the same time, I doubt whether those who were expert at assessing grades of social significance would have applied the epithet " famous " to a hostess belonging to the middle or lower-income groups. The house or houses in which enter- tainment was offered had to be of a certain standard of magni- tude, even of magnificence, before it or they qualified for " fame." It was customary in those distant Edwardian days for a hostess to publish in the newspapers, or at least in the Morning Post, a detailed list of the persons to whom she had given hospitality over the week-end. This curious practice caused pain to the other hostesses whose list was less impres- sive, even as it aroused envy in the breasts of those potential guests who have not been, and never would have been, invited to so select a party. The prestige of those whose names figured in the Morning Post on a really exceptional list was much enhanced; they smiled and glittered until the following Thursday, much to the mortification of their friends. This odious practice was, I am glad to say, almost wholly discarded after the death of King Edward and the ensuing World War No. I. Yet already before 1910 the more fastidious hostesses had abandoned the habit of advertising the names of their guests in the public prints. It was those who clung on to the practice who were regarded by the newspapers as meriting the epithet " famous." * * * * As the years passed this reticence on the part of the more selective hostesses became a fashionable habit. People like Mrs. Charles Hunter or Lady Colefax, who, at Hill Hall or Old Buckhurst, gathered around them 'a cohort of gifted visitors, never permitted any mention of themselves or their guests to appear in the newspapers; they cherished their privacy as care- fully as they cherished their friends. Owing to some merciful dispensation the younger generation do not painfully miss the social entertainments which have now become impracticable and which their elders so thoroughly enjoyed. I do not think they are much to be pitied in being deprived of the vast balls and receptions of the Edwardian epoch; but I do think' that the disappearance of the week-end house-parties is a sad depriva- tion. How exciting it used to be to travel down to the country on Saturday, wondering what lasting intimacy might not,,be forged before Monday morning came ! How abrupt and strained, as compared to these leisurely opportunities for friendship, are the fleeting relations offered on those occasions when we stand jammed together with glasks of sherry in our hands ! To those of us who recall slow hours of conversation beside the fountains, it is but scant satisfaction to grab a word here and there amid the clangour of over-croifded rooms. • The art of conversation can flourish only in an atmosphere of quietude; it perishes when we are hampered or harried by restrictions of space and time. A few exceptional men, such as after-dinner speakers, actually enjoy standing up when they talk. Coleridge, for instance, would maintain an erect position when savouring his own discourse, and would in fact remain standing with closed eyes long after his interlocutor had sought safety in flight. But most of us, when we indulge in conversation, prefer to be seated in a small circle with no outside noises beyond the tinkle of water in the pool.
These reflections, which, by a more modern writer, would be accompanied by the abominable epithet " nostalgic," have been suggested to me by the death at Panshanger last week of Lady Desborough. She would never have been defined as " a famous hostess " in the faintly derogatory sense in which I have used that phrase. She was one of-the most patrician women of her age; her distinction might have seemed alarming had it not been that her fastidiousness was accompanied by an artistic perfection of courtesy, which, while it protected her from all intrusiveness, enabled the young and the old, the shy and the self-assured, the humble and the eminent, to feel that in her presence they all started at least upon an equal level. The dignity of her stance, the formidable carriage of her head and shoulders, were mitigated by the intelligence and humour that sparkled in her slanting eyes. A less magnificent woman would have been shattered by the violent deaths of her three almost legendary sons; a less vital character might have been subdued by the slow malady of her final years. She faced her fearful tragedies with statuesque endurance; she gave to illness itself a calm and lovely elegance. Even when confined to a single room at Panshanger she retained her splendid curiosity in the varied doings of the outside world; from her bed she would write pathetically illegible letters, sharing with others, the treasures of her miraculous and varied past. I have one of these letters before me, written to assist me when I was working on a biography of King George V. " Remember," she wrote, " remember always, that he was an amusing man :—amusing in our sense of the word." She was very ill when she took the pains to send me that valuable message of advice. '
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I see that she has been described as " the last of 'The Souls '." Certainly she was a leading member of that exclusive fraternity; Arthur- Balfour, Lord Curzon and Evan Charteris were among her oldest, and most intimate friends. But the point about Lady Desborough was that, unlike many of her contem- poraries, she was just as interested in the younger generation as in the old. At Taplow in former days she would gather around her, not the elder statesmen only, but also youths and maidens of beauty or promise. What a privilege it was for the young to be able thus to mingle in equality with their distin- guished seniors ! Or, when the eminent had retired to their rooms, to stroll together on May midnights through the scented azaleas and watch the moonlight glinting on the Thames.
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