Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country

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Escott Thomas Hay Sweet. Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. TWO EPOCHS OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY CONTRASTED

CHAPTER II. THE NEW WEALTH

CHAPTER III. TRANSFORMATION BY STEAM

CHAPTER IV. THE ARISTOCRACY OF WEALTH AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS

CHAPTER V. THE RICH MEN FROM THE EAST

CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AS A MORAL GROWTH OF VICTORIAN ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII. THE NEW ERA IN ENGLISH PARISHES

CHAPTER VIII. THE NEW ERA IN ENGLISH COUNTIES

CHAPTER IX. COUNTY COUNCILS AND CLASS FUSION

CHAPTER X. THE SOCIAL FUSING AND ORGANIZING OF THE TWO NATIONS OF ‘SIBYL’

CHAPTER XI. FROM AN UNTAUGHT GENERATION TO FREE SCHOOLS

CHAPTER XII. THE LADDER OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS MIRRORS OF THE AGE

CHAPTER XIV. THE NEW OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

CHAPTER XV. FROM THE OLD SOCIAL ORDER TO THE NEW

CHAPTER XVI ‘THE PLAY’S THE THING’

CHAPTER XVII. THE STRANGER WITHIN OUR GATES AND OUR OWN TEEMING MILLIONS

CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS A LANDMARK OF POLITICAL PROGRESS UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA

CHAPTER XIX. CROWN, COUNTRY AND COMMONS

CHAPTER XX. ROYALTY AS A SOCIAL FORCE

CHAPTER XXI. CROWN AND SWORD

CHAPTER XXII. FROM WOODEN WALLS TO FLOATING ENGINES

CHAPTER XXIII. TRANSFORMATIONS OF VICTORIAN SCIENCE

CHAPTER XXIV. CECILIA’S TRIUMPHS

CHAPTER XXV. TRANSFORMED AND TRANSFORMING ART

CHAPTER XXVI. POPULAR CULTURE IN THE CRUCIBLE

CHAPTER XXVII. NEWSPAPER PRESS TRANSFORMATION SCENES

CHAPTER XXVIII. TRANSFORMATIONS IN INVALID LIFE

CHAPTER XXIX. TRANSFORMATIONS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

CHAPTER XXX. THE QUEEN’S SUBJECTS AT PLAY – ACTIVE OR SEDENTARY

CHAPTER XXXI. THE REIGN OF LAW AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS: – HOME AND COLONIAL

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As it is to-day, so, during the earlier years of the present reign, both before and after the Great Exhibition of 1851, Hyde Park was the social parade ground, not only of the capital, but of the Kingdom. Then, as now, its human panorama was the representative reflection of the social conditions not less than of the typical personages of the era.

Throughout the later forties or the fifties, the loungers from the provinces were certainly not less numerous in Hyde Park than to-day. Foreign visitors were beginning to be a feature in the Metropolitan summer. But the scale on which the London season half a century ago was observed was so small as to resemble but faintly its successors known to the present generation. Society scarcely exceeded the dimensions of a family party. Hyde Park itself seemed a Royal pleasure ground first, a popular resort afterwards, to which strangers were, as to the Park at Windsor, admitted by favour of the first Constitutional Sovereign, to behold the pastimes of the rising generations of Royalty. The little boy and girl, steering their ponies through the maze of carriages, horses, or pedestrians, were the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. Observers noted with appreciative criticism the progress made from day to day by the young riders. Other of the Queen’s descendants of age still more tender, followed with their parents in an open carriage, the exact build of which had been introduced by the Prince Consort, and were manifestly being instructed by their father or mother in the art of acknowledging gracefully the respectful salutations of spectators.

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But neither the intellectual workers, nor the social butterflies attracted more attention than a middle-aged, rather over-dressed lady in a very gorgeous carriage, which might have become a Lord Mayor, and a big, heavy man, with drab-coloured, wiry hair, who sometimes sat beside her. The chariot and its occupants seemed to interest the country visitors in the Park more than did the distinguished persons already mentioned. The gentleman was George Hudson, the ‘railway King,’ who had not only made a fortune himself, but had been the cause of many others rolling in wealth scarcely less than his own. Within a few years he was still visible in the same enclosure, not, however, in the gaudy equipage, but as a pedestrian. The crash, in fact, had come. King Hudson had fallen on evil days. But having dragged none down in his descent, nor disclosed any secrets of the prison house, he kept friends who helped him in his adversity. The house at Knightsbridge, which is now the French Embassy, knew of course Hudson no more. Its fashionable assemblages since it became a diplomatic residence cannot have been more brilliant than those which met there when Hudson was its master. Nor, indeed, has its social splendour since been eclipsed by any of those more recent hosts whom commercial success has incorporated among the sons and daughters of fashion. Hudson’s dinner table, or Mrs Hudson’s reception room, were graced, habitually by the great Duke of Wellington, by the Duke of Cambridge, and occasionally by other Princes of the blood Royal. Nor, during his decline, did Hudson fail to carry himself with good humour, and even dignity. His simple, harmless, almost pathetic vanity had perhaps combined with his shrewd Yorkshire common sense to support him under his adversities. A sum which realised £600 a year had been subscribed for him, the trustees of his annuity being Sir George Elliot, and Mr Hugh Taylor. His wife and his sons were alive. But he preferred living in a solitary lodging in London. His freedom from all anxiety made this season of eclipse, he protested, the happiest time of his life. A courteous recognition from the great Lord Grey in the Park, or the kindly concession to him of the chair which he had occupied, in other years, in the smoking room of the Carlton, shed something more than a transitory gleam of comfort upon his darkened fortunes, and were recited by the old man with his north country burr to the friends with whom, to the last, he used to dine. Like another fallen star of a different system, in an earlier age, Beau Brummell, Hudson passed several years of his eclipse at a hotel in Calais, where he was visited by more friends than had ever looked in upon the great dandy of the Georgian epoch during the twilight hours of his life.

Such, then, were the chief among the more representative figures to be met with on the brightest and most varied of the social parade grounds of the capital during the earlier years of the Victorian epoch.

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