vivace
1
A VERY different England, that of 1890, and yet curiously the same. In some ways so fabulous, so remote from us; in others so near, terrifyingly near and like us. An England morally buried in great foggy wrappings of hypocrisy and prosperity and cheapness. The wealth of that England, the maritime power of that England, its worse than R. L. S. optimism, its righteous cant! Victoria, broad-bottomed on her people’s will; the possessing class, heavy-bottomed on the people’s neck. The working class beginning to heave restively, but still Moody and Sankeyish, still under the Golden Rule of “Ever remember, my dear Bert, you may one day be manager of that concern.” The middle classes, especially the traders, making money hand over fist, and still “praying that our unexampled prosperity may last.” The aristocracy still pretty flip, keeping its tail up. Still lots of respect for Rank and Property – Dizzy not long dead, and his novels not yet grotesques, not yet wholly a fossil parody. The intellectuals aesthetic and Oscarish, or aesthetic and Burne-Morrisy, or Utilitarian and Huxley-Darwinish.
Come where the booze is cheaper.
Where I could live on a pound a week in lux-u-ry.
The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should ALL be as Happy as KING.
Consols over par.
Lord Claud Hamilton and White at the Admiralty, building, building, building.
Building a majestic ruin.
George Moore an elegant scandal in a hansom; Hardy a rural atheistic scandal, not yet discovered to be an intolerable bore; Oscar prancing negligently, O so clever, O so lad-di-dah.
Rummy old England. Pox on you, you old bitch, you’ve made worms’ meat of us. (We’ve made worms’ meat of ourselves.) But still, let me look back upon thee. Timon knew thee.
The Winterbournes were not gentry, but nourished vague and unfounded traditions of past genteel splendours. They were, however, pretty comfortable middle-class. Worcestershire, migrated to Sheffield. Methodist on female side; C. of E. on the Winterbourne side. Young George Augustus – father of our George – was pretty comfortable. His mother was a dominating old bitch who destroyed his initiative and courage, but in the eighties hardly any one had the sense to tell dominating bitch-mothers to go to hell. George Augustus didn’t. At fifteen he wrote a Nonconformist tract (which was published) expressing nothing but his dear Mamma’s views. He became top of his school, in conformity with dear Mamma’s views also. He did not go to Oxford, as he wanted, because dear Mamma thought it unpractical. And he did pass his examinations as a lawyer, because dear Mamma thought it so eminently right that he should have a profession and that there should be a lawyer in the family. George Augustus was a third son. The eldest son became a Nonconformist parson, because dear Mamma had prayed for guidance on her marriage night and during her first pregnancy (only, she never mentioned such horrid occurrences, even to her husband, but – she had “prayed for guidance”), and it had been revealed to her that her firstborn must take up The Ministry. And take it up, poor devil, he did. The second son had a little bit of spunk, and his dear Mamma made him a waster. Remained George Augustus, dear Mamma’s darling chick, who prayed at her knee, and was flogged regularly once a month by dear Papa, because the Scripture says: Spare the rod, spoil the child. Dear Papa had never done anything in particular, lived on his “means”, was generally rather in debt, and spent the last fifteen years of his life praying to the C. of E. God in the garden, while dear Mamma prayed to John Wesley’s God in her bedroom. Dear Mamma admired dear pious Mr. Bright and grand Mr. Gladstone; but dear Papa recollected and even read all the Works of the Right Hnble. the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.
Still. George Augustus was pretty comfortable. The one thing he wanted in life was to be pretty comfortable. After he became a full-blown solicitor, at the age of twenty-four, a family council was held. Present: Dear Mamma, dear Papa, George Augustus. Nothing formal, of course, just a cosy little family gathering after tea, round the blazing hearth (coal was cheap in Sheffield then), rep curtains drawn, and sweet domestic peace. Dear Papa opened the proceedings:
“George, you are now come to man’s estate. At considerable sacrifice, your dear Mamma and I have given you a Profession. You are an Admitted Solicitor, and we are proud – I think we may say ‘proud’, Mamma? – that we have a legal luminary in the family…
But dear Mamma could not allow dear Papa even the semblance of authority, respected not even the forms of Limited Domestic Monarchy, and cut in:
“Your Papa is right, George. The question is now, what are you going to do in your Profession?”
Did a feeble hope of escape cross the bright young mind of George Augustus? Or was that supine love of being pretty comfortable, added to the terror of disobeying dear Mamma, already dominant? He murmured something about “getting in with a respectable and old-established firm in London.” At the word “London” dear Mamma bridled. Although Mr. Gladstone spent much of his time in London, it was notorious in Sheffield Nonconformist circles that London was a haunt of vice, filled with theatres and unmentionable women. Besides, dear Mamma was not going to let George Augustus off so easily; she still meant he should plough a deuce of a long furrow of filial obedience.
“I cannot hear of London, George. It would break my heart and bring your dear Papa’s grey hairs” (dear Papa hated to be reminded that he was bald) “in sorrow to the grave, if you went to the bad in that dreadful town. Think how we should feel if we heard you had visited a theatre! No, George, we shall not fail in our duty. We have brought you up to be a God-fearing Christian man.” et patata etpatati.
The upshot was, of course, that dear George Augustus did not go to London. He didn’t even get an office of his own in Sheffield. It was agreed that George Augustus would never marry (except for a whore or two, furtively and ineffectually possessed on furtive ineffectual sprees in London, George Augustus was a virgin), but would spend his life with dear Mamma, and (afterthought) dear Papa. So some structural alterations were made in the house. Another entrance was made, with a new brass plate engraved in copperplate:
G. A. WINTERBOURNE SOLICITOR
Three rooms, somewhat separated from the rest of the house, were allotted to George Augustus – a bedroom, an “Office”, and a “cosy study”. Needless to say, George Augustus did very little practice, except when his dear Mamma in an access of ambition procured him the job of making the will of some female friend or of drawing up the conveyance of the land for a new Wesleyan Chapel. What George Augustus did with most of his time is a bit of a puzzle – twiddled his thumbs, and read Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer and George Augustus Sala mostly.
This lasted three or four years. Dear Mamma had her talons deep into George Augustus, vamped on him hideously; and was content. Dear Papa prayed in the garden and read the Right Hnble. etcetera’s novels, and was uneasily content. George Augustus was pretty comfortable, and thought himself rather a hell of a bhoy because he occasionally sneaked off to a play or a whore, and bought some of the Vizetelly books on the sly. But there was one snag dear Mamma had not foreseen. Dear Papa had been fairly decently educated and brought up; he had, when a young man, travelled annually for several weeks, and had seen the Fields of Waterloo, Paris, and Ramsgate. After he married dear Mamma, he had to be content with Malvern and Ramsgate, for he was never allowed again to behold that wicked Continent. However, such is the force of Tradition, George Augustus was annually allowed a month’s holiday. In 1887 he visited Ireland; in 1888, Scotland; in 1889, the Lake District, with “pilgrimages” to the “shrines” of those unblemished geniuses, Wordsworth and Southey. But in 1890 George Augustus went to “rural Kent”, with “pilgrimages” to the Dingley Dell country and to the “shrine” of Sir Philip
