If., • • " • • • .., ' • ' •••• ASIEIERE 4 nrn.,,:u. ." ""'""".,.. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. H Fll'TH AVENUE, NE\V YOl\lt 2%l EAST 20TH STREET, CHICAGO TI\EMONT TEMPLE, , BOSTON US UNIVEI\SITY AVENUE, TOI\ONTO LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Lro. 39 l'ATERNOSTl!I\ 11.0\V, E C 4, LONDON 1) NICOL IIOAD, BOMBAY 6 OLD COURT HOUSII STaF.F.T, CALCUTTA MOUNT ROAD, MADI\AS . - AS \\r'E'.",;\\TERE A VICTORIAN PEEP SHOW By E. F. BENSON AUTHOR OF "DODO," "SIR FRANCIS DRAKE," l!TC. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LONDON , NEW YORK · TORONTO MDCCCCXXX ;BEll!!ON. ·:~~WE WERE •'. COPYRIGHT • 1930 BY E. F, BENSON FIRST EDITION Plffffll Ill 1'D 11111"2> tt.\ffl 0, AIClllc.l. CONTENTS CIIAl''.l'Ell PAGE I. THE PINCUSHION 1 II. EARLY VICTORIAN 22 . III. FAMILY HISTORY • 85 IV. LJNCOLN AND TRURO 59 v. Two SISTERS 75 VI. THREE MoNUMENTAL FIGURES 91 VII. CAMBRIDGE 107 VIII. ATHENS 182 IX. THRllllll GREAT LADIES AND OTHERS 147 :x:. Two ScANDALS 178 XI. Rm:a:mLs 215 XII. MORE VICTORIANS 248 XIII. T:a:m Mov:mM:lllNT ol!' THlll NINETIES 268 . INDlllX 297 V NOTE I HAVE to thank the Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, for their great courtesy in giving me the fullest possible access to the diary and private papers of my father which are the property of the College Library. E. F. BENSON LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS E. F. Benson . Frontispiece Victoria as a child . Facing page 24 E. W. Benson . 60 William Ewart Gladstone 98 Oscar Browning [ "O. B."] 114 A quiet round game 186 Oscar Wilde at work 210 Algernon Swinburne and his friend Gosse • 240 -vii AS WE WERE A VICTORIAN PEEP SHOW CHAPTER I THE PINCUSHION PERHAPS the pincushion will make as good a beginning as anything, that peerless object of the period, dated beyond dispute or discussion or suspicion, for which I have dived so sedulously and so fruitlessly into drawers full of Victorian relics, seeking it like a pearl in depths long undisturbed by any questing hand. But though I cannot find it, the search was richly rcwiirded in other respects, for it brought to light treo,sures long forgotten, but instantly and intimately fa miliar when seen again: there was a dog-eared book of manu script music, containing among other ditties the famous tear-compelling song "Willy, we have missed you," there was a pair of goblets incredible even when actually beheld and handled, chalice-shaped, of cloudy pink glass outlined in gilt: there was a globular glass paper-weight, in which were embedded, like a layer of flies in amber, small g,audy objects, vastly magnified and resembling sections of jam-roll and sea-a.ncmoncs: and there were oval cards with pictures of flowers on them, which once certainly belonged to the ap paratus of the round game called "Floral Lotto" so justly popular in the seventies. But the pearl of great price, the pincushion, did not discover itself to my divings, and its disappearance is a matter of deep regret to me, for it must have been very rare and marvellous even when it was quite 1 AS WE WERE new, and if it was in my possession today I would confidently challenge the world to produce ·a similar specimen. But when I force myself to think dispassionately of it, I realize that it would be now sixty-six years old, so that even if I could put my hand on all of it· that is mortal, I should but find there shreds of disintegrated red velvet and scattered beads, of which the thread had long perished. Yet since it was (though not new when I first saw it) one of the earliest objects to which I gave my unstinted admiration, I can de scribe the sumptuous manner of it with a very minute fidel ity, for it is one of those memories of early childhood, photographed on my mind in colours as bright as itself. Picture then (with an effort) a domed and elliptical ob long, the sides of which below the dome were perpendicular. [ ts scale, shape and size were those of a blancmange for not less than eight people: such was the pincushion. It was covered, dome and sides alike, with rich crimson velvet, and .round the lower edge of the dome ran a floral pattern, worked in white glass beads, slightly opalescent. Down the perpendicular sides it was draped with many tassels of these, swinging free, and on the top of the dome was worked a Royal Crown, also of beads. So majestic and unusw1l an object, though strictly in the :finest taste of the period, must have been made to order, or, at the very least, the H.oyd Crown must have been added to it, in order that the pin cushion should worthily fill the very special part for which it was cast in the year 1864. Its one official appearance, the scene in which, behind closed doors, it stood on a certain dressing-table ready to perform the function which was the cause of its sumptuous existence was only brief: indeed .we shall never know whether it actually ever functioned at all. B.ut it was there, it was ready, it was worthy, and in order to make clear the full situation, it is necessary lightly to sketch the previous act of the drama in which it may have played (though I repeat that we shall never know whether it did) its dumb but distinguished role. For the moment the THE PINCUSHION 3 pincushion vanishes waiting for the cue of its first appear ance. Wellington College, founded in memory of the great Duke, was opened in 1859, and my father not yet thirty years of age, was appointed first head-master. It was intended to provide a good education on special terms for the sons of officers in the army whose widows were in needy circum stances, but other boys were to be admitted as well, and its charter was that of a public school. The Prince Consort was Chairman of the governing body and, for the very short remainder of his life, its welfare was a constant interest to him, and the subject of innumerable memoranda. At his desire, my father had spent the summer of 1858 in Germany and Prussia, in order to study the methods of education in the academies of the Fatherland: the Prince Consort hoped that he would pick up some useful hints as to the general lines on which Wellington College should be conducted. This hope was not realized, for he came back with a profound conviction that English methods were vastly superior to those which he had gone abroad to study, and that there were no hints whatever to be gained from Germany. A f cw months after the school was opened, he married my mother, then just eighteen years of age, and they lived in a house that was part of the College building. The numbers were •not large at :first, and every evening after prayers, which the whole school attended, she shook hands with every individual ·boy and wished him good night; she was uni versally known as "Mother Benjy," being at the most two or three years older than the senior boys. The boys at first wore a uniform approved and partly de signed by the Prince Consort, and it remarkably resembled that of the porters and ticket-collectors of the South Eastern railway on which Wellington College was situated. This gave rise to little confusions. Lord Derby, for instance, when paying a visit to the College on the annual Speech day, presented the outward half of his return ticket to a