"Fiety-One Years or Victorian Lire.""
By the Dowager Countess of Jersey (Murray. 18s, net.)
Lady Jersey is unable to find among her recollections any of those restraints and limitations commonly supposed to have been typical of the Victorian upbringing.—It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine a wider range of interest and sympathy than that provided by her early experiences, or anything more truly educative than the various society and abundant travel which she describes. There ig no particular mention of sport, but its absence does not seem to have left a blank, and the lady proficients in golf and lawn tennis have till to prove whether they "weather" as well as their predecessors whose atmosphere wae strongly tinted with family affection among themselves and responsible charity vis-A-vis the outer world. Lady Jersey, whose infancy wag surrounded by the battalions of uncles and aunts appurtenant to her Leigh and Grosvenor parentage, "cannot recall one, either man or woman, who did not try to Set up to a standard of right." She cites a confession of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain "that he had really believed that the so-called upper classes' were, taken as a whole, the idle, selfish, self-indulgent, and generally pernicious people whom he had denounced, but that when he came to know them he realised that they were a very different sot of individuals." The Victorian "way of life,' as reflected in thes pages, has certainly no need to blush for its instincts, or for its part in the world's economy.
Tt was a now remote past that Lady Jersey touched in her meeting with old Lord Brougham and in her acquaintance with the Lady Jersey who had brought the Child fortune into her husband's family by her marriage in 1801, while her honeymoon at Fonthill stirs. the associations of the 18th century in one of its most bizarre aspects. A royal visit to Stoneleigh, left somewhat ungracious impressions of the Prine Consort's stiffness with children, and a glimpse of the Empress Frederick helps ta an understanding of her unpopularity in Germany The Crown Prince and Princess came and talked to us very kindly, but I could not help thinking the latter rather indiscreet, as when I made a futile remark as to the fine sight presented by the Palace she returned, ''A finer sight at Buckingham Palace," then, lowering her voice, ''and prettier faces!' True: enough, but add little risky addressed to a stranger, with possible eavesdroppers, Bismarck, on the same visit, was drawn into an incidental apologia. "They accuse me of having changed a nation of poets into a nation of military politicians, but it is because we have!so long been the anvil, that it had to be done. One has to be either the hammer or the Lady Jersey does not bring many English politicians into her picture, but there is one piquant glimpse of Mr. Chamberlain, for whom she shows unusual appreciation I have been told that more than one person first. saw Mr. Chamberlain rowing on the lake at Osterley in a tall hat and with a pipe in his mouth! I rather think that it was at a garden party in 1888, just after the death of the Emperor Frederick.' Almost everyone appeared in mourning, which somebody said made it look like a funeral wake tempered with strawberries. Poor Beatrice Chamberlain, however, appeared 1m a sort of plaid gown, which mae her very unhappy. She confided to Lady Latham that she had just retu-no? from France and had not known that people were wearing mourning—moreover, she belonged to some society in Birmingham (a very sensible one) which agreed not to wear mourning except for quite the nearest relatives. She was afraid we might think that her clothes were duo to. lier Radical principles, which we certainly did not.
Impressions of India and Australia account for a large proportion of the volume, and Theosophists wil? not probably welcome an anecdote of one of their former leaders Professor Max Miller told me that he had said to him, "Colonel Alcott, with all your fine ideas for doing good how can you lend yourself to that nonsense of broken ten-cups and so on "And," continued Max Muller, "he looked down through his funny blue spectacles and answered, All religions 4 must be manured'—which surely gave away the whole show."
The Aga Khan, who receives an approximation to divine honours from certain of his followers, is quoted as declaring that "being a god was not all beer and skittles Lady Jersey appears to have had an eye for the picturesque in theology When the Munshi was explaining this theory of upward progress Mr. Rees
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.