SOCIETY’S SUNDAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 77

SOCIETY’S SUNDAY.

[Copyright.]

Society is a big word that may be given either a‘ wide or a narrow application, according to the point of view of the person who uses it. To the reformer or to the student of national history it means something quite different from the conception which it calls up in the mind of the average being. In dealing with some serious aspects of the subject, we should probably accord to it the reformer’s meaning, while in thinking of a more frivolous side we should restrict its use to the description of that portion of the world where one amuses oneself, to whose inhabitants life is one long picnic rather than a matter of mere bread-winning. (Society’s Sunday is a frivolous one, and our subject being such, we use the word more or less in its restricted meaning. Society, then, consists of a very small minority of the nation. But in so far as it influences the conduct of others and sets the fashions for the rest of the inhabitants of the realm, it is not a negligible minority. The manners and customs of this autocracy—or should one say plutocracy in these democratic days?—gradually filter down to the lovver strata and make or mar the lives of the people. These social customs and fashions are continually changing, and continually new standards are being erected, in which the multitude follows suit, though a long way behind. MODERN CHANGES. In the use or abuse of the English Sunday recent changes are very marked, and the whole of the nation’s pre-conceived ideas on the subject are slowly, but surely, being turned topsy-turvy. Fifty years ago matters were very different in this respect. It was all the thing then for society to keep holy the Sabbath Day by attending Divine service, and church-going was considered a public duty, as well as (possibly) a spiritual privilege. “When a gentleman is sur ses terres, he must give an example to the country people; and if I could turn a tune I even think I should sing. The Duke of St. David’s, whom I have the honour of knowing, always sings in the country, and, let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from the family pew.” So said that old worldling. Major Pendenuis, and as he moved "only in the best society, he certainly was one who ought to he supposed to know all the intricacies of the right thing to do on all occasions Thackeray has also a favourite passage in “Esmond,” where Harry finds Lady Castlewood attending Divine service on a Sunday morning in the village church, as she was accustomed to do. These and countless other literary references go to show what was, in generations previous to ours, the accepted way of spending at least a part of society’s Sunday. Perhaps they were not all highly religious persons. It might even' he of some of them that the poet wrote that — They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs Grundy. THE SOCIETY. SUNDAY. At least, church-going by the great world appears to have been always a matter of fashion. When conventional conformity was the thing, people conformed.' Before'our insular ideals began to be compared with the less exacting freedoms of the Continental Sunday, popularised by the greater frequency of travels in Europe and more general contact with the inhabitants of other lands, English people certainly attended church regularly. Nowadays*. for the same reason —fashion — society does not do so. Belief and unbelief have little to do with the generalisation. Probably there is no more unbelief in the world now than there was in the straitest times of Great Victoria, when one had to set an example before the servants. or prove oneself a solid pillar of Church and State. Family life was—and not so very long ago—a fashion, one that was beautifully upheld by the appearance in church of the great man with his faithful spouse and his crowd of Tittle olive branches around him. To-day all this is changed. In the. country, at least, churchgoing is honelessly unfashionable, though it was more especially in the country that the society of a former generation made an effort always to fill the family pew. A few people from the big house may wander to church, but, for the majority, games, flirtations, intrigues, fill the day, and the serious ritual of clothes displaces that of the Divine service. If one stays up all night playing bridge one may find some difficulty in getting up in time to go to church on the following morning. If evening light is more kindly to one’s complexion than the relentless clear-eyed hours of common-sense morning, one may, if one has a tenderness for that complexion, easily persuade onself to remain perdu—at least until the earliest of them have passed over to the great majority. In the afternoon there are the stables and the kennels to be visited bv the men, and by any of the women who may he interested in them. . Sunday, when there is

no shooting to be done, is a great time for this, and the rest of the day is filled up with the usual round of bridge and dinner. FASHIONS IN CHURCH-GOING. In London service begins at a late hour, and certain churches are filled to overflowing by society, especially when the particular sms of their own classes are to be pilloried. Father Vaughan, for instance, had a huge following when he preached his now famous series of sermons on the ‘'Sins of Society,” and a very large percentage of his congregations was composed of members of the smart set. It may be, as the Graphic suggested, that there was ‘‘more smiling than weeping when they discussed his torrid sermons,” or that, as another paper put it, “ the smart set themselves love notoriety so muc that they would rather be held up to reprobation than think that Father Vaughan had not heard of them.” One doubts whether .such reasons for attendance are any more ignoble than that fear of Mrs Grundy which certainly animated some of the 'churchgoers of an earlier time.

Mothers with . marriageable daughters sometimes use the opportunity of trotting them out tc Matins, in the hope of capturing eligible men. ‘‘We are going to such-and-such a church on Sunday, to hear Sp-aud so. Such a good preacher, and everybody is going. We shall have a spare scat. .Do join us, and come back to luncheon with us afterwards.”

These Sunday luncheon parties are huge and important society functions. Unattached men are more at liberty than on other days, and it is easier to get them together. Sunday has perhaps always been a day on which one eats too much, and probably it always will be. Even in Lent it is a feast day-*-significant fact I And society, both with, and without the capital letter, is conservative on this point.

The rest of the day is very much like other days, except that as more company is kept it is even more of a working-day than any. of the other si;: for the household servants. Callers, bridge, dinner, more bridge, and other amusements fill up the hours, and anyone brought up in the old-fashioned way would have much difficulty in realising that the day was indeed the Day of iaest.

In the city, outside society's magic circles, things still remain as they were. The matutinal influx of wage-earners ceases. The postman’s steady tramp and rat-a-tat as he goes -on his rounds is not heard. The jangling of the church bells takes the place of the rumbling of business traffic. All the places of amufeernent are closed. Only certain solidly educative places are open to the Sabbatarian public.It is only by these who can afford to amuse themselves in their own or their friends’ houses on any day of the w r eek that Sunday can be spent as a day of real social frivolity.