The Days Before Yesterday Part 9

The lines would probably have been more neatly worded than this, but the flow of improvised blank verse from both sisters was inexhaustible.

The somewhat unusual names of Semolina and Tapioca had been adopted for the heroine and confidante on account of their rhythmical advantages, and a certain pleasant Shakespearean ring about them.

I know another family who from long practice have acquired the habit of addressing each other in flowing periods of Johnsonian English. They never hesitate for an epithet, and manage to round off all their sentences in Dr. Johnson's best manner. I was following the hounds on foot one day, with the eldest daughter of this family, when, as we struggled through a particularly sticky and heavy ploughed field, she panted out, "Pray let us hasten to the summit of yonder commanding eminence, whence we can with greater comfort to ourselves witness the further progress of the chase," and all this without the tiniest hesitation; a most enviable gift! A son of this family was once riding in the same steeplechase as a nephew of mine. The youth had lost his cap, and turning round in his saddle, he shouted to my nephew in the middle of the race, between two fences, "You will perceive that I have already sacrificed my cap, and laid it as a votive offering on the altar of Diana." One would hardly have antic.i.p.ated that a youthful cavalry subaltern, in the middle of a steeplechase, would have been able to lay his hands on such choice flowers of speech. Unfortunately, owing to the time lost by these well-turned periods, both the speaker and my nephew merely figured as "also ran."

In the "seventies" some of the curious tricks of p.r.o.nunciation of the eighteenth century still survived. My aunts, who had been born with, or before the nineteenth century, invariably p.r.o.nounced "yellow" as "yaller." "Lilac" and "cuc.u.mber" became "laylock" and "cowc.u.mber," and a gold bracelet was referred to as a "goold bra.s.slet." They always spoke of "Proosia" and "Roosia," drank tea out of a "chaney" cup, and the eldest of them was still "much obleeged" for any little service rendered to her, played at "cyards," and took a stroll in the "gyarden." My grandfather, who was born in 1766, insisted to the end of his life on terming the capital of these islands "Lunnon," in eighteenth-century fashion.

Possibly people were more cultured in those days, or, at all events, more in the habit of using their brains. Imbecility, whether real or simulated, had not come into fashion. My mother told me that in her young days a very favourite amus.e.m.e.nt in country houses was to write imitations or parodies of some well-known poet, and every one took part in this. Nowadays no one would have read the originals, much less be able to imitate them. My mother had a commonplace book into which she had copied the cleverest of these skits, and Landseer ill.u.s.trated it charmingly in pen-and-ink for her.

Any one reading the novels of the commencement of the nineteenth century must have noticed how wonderfully popular practical jokes, often of the crudest nature, then were. A brutal practical joke always seems to me to indicate a very rudimentary and undeveloped sense of humour in its perpetrator. Some people with paleolithic intellects seem to think it exquisitely humorous to see a man fall down and hurt himself. A practical joke which hurts no one is another matter. All those privileged to enjoy the friendship of the late Admiral Lord Charles Beresford will always treasure the memory of that genial and delightful personality. About thirty years ago an elderly gentleman named Bankes-Stanhope seemed to imagine that he had some proprietary rights in the Carlton Club. Mr. Bankes-Stanhope had his own chair, lamp, and table there, and was exceedingly zealous in reminding members of the various rules of the club. Smoking was strictly forbidden in the hall of the Carlton at that time. I was standing in the hall one night when Lord Charles came out of the writing-room, a big bundle of newly written letters in his hand, and a large cigar in his mouth. He had just received a shilling's-worth of stamps from the waiter, when old Mr. Bankes-Stanhope, who habitually puffed and blew like Mr.

Jogglebury-Crowdey of "Sponge's Sporting Tour," noticed the forbidden cigar through a gla.s.s door, and came puffing and blowing into the hall in hot indignation. He reproved Lord Charles Beresford for his breach of the club rules in, as I thought, quite unnecessarily severe tones.

The genial Admiral kept his temper, but detached one penny stamp from his roll, licked it, and placed it on his forefinger. "My dear Mr.

Stanhope," he began, "it was a little oversight of mine. I was writing in there, do you see?" (a friendly little tap on Mr. Bankes-Stanhope's shirt-front, and on went a penny stamp), "and I moved in here, you see"

(another friendly tap, and on went a second stamp), "and forgot about my cigar, you see" (a third tap, and a third stamp left adhering). The breezy Admiral kept up this conversation, punctuated with little taps, each one of which left its crimson trace on the old gentleman's white shirt-front, until the whole shilling's-worth was placed in position.

Mr. Bankes-Stanhope was too irate to notice these little manoeuvres; he maintained his hectoring tone, and never glanced down at his shirt-front. Finally Lord Charles left, and the old gentleman, still puffing and blowing with wrath, struggled into his overcoat, and went off to an official party at Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's, where his appearance with twelve red penny stamps adhering to his shirt-front must have created some little astonishment.

In the '86 Parliament there was a certain Member, sitting on the Conservative side, who had the objectionable habit of removing his boots (spring-sided ones, too!) in the House, and of sitting in a pair of very dubious-coloured grey woollen socks, apparently much in want of the laundress's attentions. Many Members strongly objected to this practice, but the delinquent persisted in it, in spite of protests. One night a brother of mine, knowing that there would shortly be a Division, succeeded in purloining the offending boots by covering them with his "Order paper," and got them safely out of the House. He hid them behind some books in the Division Lobby, and soon after the Division was called. The House emptied, but the discalced legislator retained his seat. "A Division having been called, the honourable Member will now withdraw," ordered Mr. Speaker Peel, most awe-inspiring of men. "Mr. Speaker, I have lost my boots," protested the shoeless one. "The honourable Member will at once withdraw," ordered the Speaker for the second time, in his sternest tones; so down the floor of the House came the unfortunate man--hop, hop, hop, like the "little hare"

in Shock-headed Peter. The iron ventilating gratings were apparently uncomfortable to shoeless feet, so he went hopping and limping through the Division Lobby, affording ample glimpses of his deplorably discoloured woollen footwear. Later in the evening an attendant handed him a paper parcel containing his boots, the attendant having, of course, no idea where the parcel had come from. This incident effectually cured the offender of his unpleasant habit. The accusation of neglecting his laundress may have been an unfounded one. In my early youth I was given a book to read about a tiresome little girl named Ellen Montgomery, who apparently divided her time between reading her pocket-Bible and indulging in paroxysms of tears. The only incident in the book I remember is that this lachrymose child had an aunt, a Miss Fortune, who objected on principle to clean stockings. She accordingly dyed all Ellen's stockings dirt-colour, to save the washing. It would be charitable to a.s.sume that this particular Member of Parliament had an aunt with the same economical instincts.

I must plead guilty to two episodes where my sole desire was to avoid disappointment to others, and to prevent the reality falling short of the expectation. One was in India. Barrackpore, the Viceroy of India's official country house, is justly celebrated for its beautiful gardens.

In these gardens every description of tropical tree, shrub and flower grows luxuriantly. In a far-off corner there is a splendid group of fan-bananas, otherwise known as the "Traveller's Palm." Owing to the habit of growth of this tree, every drop of rain or dew that falls on its broad, fan-shaped crown of leaves is caught, and runs down the grooved stalks of the plant into receptacles that cunning Nature has fashioned just where the stalk meets the trunk. Even in the driest weather, these little natural tanks will, if gashed with a knife, yield nearly a tumblerful of pure sweet water, whence the popular name for the tree. A certain dull M.P., on his travels, had come down to Barrackpore for Sunday, and inquired eagerly whether there were any Travellers' Trees either in the park or the gardens there, as he had heard of them, but had never yet seen one. We a.s.sured him that in the cool of the evening we would show him quite a thicket of Travellers'

Trees. It occurred to the Viceroy's son and myself that it would be a pity should the globe-trotting M.P.'s expectations not be realised, after the long spell of drought we had had. So the two of us went off and carefully filled up the natural reservoirs of some six fan-bananas with fresh spring-water till they were brimful. Suddenly we had a simultaneous inspiration, and returning to the house we fetched two bottles of light claret, which we poured carefully into the natural cisterns of two more trees, which we marked. Late in the afternoon we conducted the M.P. to the grove of Travellers' Trees, handed him a gla.s.s, and made him gash the stem of one of them with his pen knife.

Thanks to our preparation, it gushed water like one of the Trafalgar Square fountains, and the touring legislator was able to satisfy himself that it was good drinking-water. He had previously been making some inquiries about so-called "Palm-wine," which is merely the fermented juice of the toddy-palm. We told him that some Travellers'

Palms produced this wine, and with a slight exercise of ingenuity we induced him to tap one of the trees we had doctored with claret.

Naturally, a crimson liquid spouted into his gla.s.s in response to the thrust of his pen-knife, and after tasting it two or three times, he reluctantly admitted that its flavour was not unlike that of red wine.

It ought to have been, considering that we had poured an entire bottle of good sound claret into that tree. The ex-M.P. possibly reflects now on the difficulties with which any attempts to introduce "p.u.s.s.yfoot"

legislation into India would be confronted in a land where some trees produce red wine spontaneously.

On another occasion I was going by sea from Calcutta to Ceylon. On board the steamer there were a number of Americans, princ.i.p.ally ladies, connected, I think, with some missionary undertaking. When we got within about a hundred miles of Ceylon, these American ladies all began repeating to each other the verse of the well-known hymn:

"What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,"

over and over again, until I loathed Bishop Heber for having written the lines. They even asked the captain how far out to sea the spicy breezes would be perceptible. I suddenly got an idea, and, going below, I obtained from the steward half a dozen nutmegs and a handful of cinnamon. I grated the nutmegs and pounded the cinnamon up, and then, with one hand full of each, I went on deck, and walked slowly up and down in front of the American tourists. Soon I heard an ecstatic cry, "My dear, I distinctly smelt spice then!" Another turn, and another jubilant exclamation: "It's quite true about the spicy breezes. I got a delicious whiff just then. Who would have thought that they would have carried so far out to sea?" A sceptical elderly gentleman was summoned from below, and he, after a while, was reluctantly forced to avow that he, too, had noticed the spicy fragrance. No wonder! when I had about a quarter of a pound of grated nutmeg in one hand, and as much pounded cinnamon in the other. Now these people will go on declaring to the end of their lives that they smelt the spicy odours of Ceylon a full hundred miles out at sea, just as the travelling M.P. will a.s.sert that a tree in India produces a very good imitation of red wine. It is a nice point determining how far one is morally responsible oneself for the unconscious falsehoods into which these people have been betrayed.

I should like to have had the advice of Mrs. Fairchild, of the Fairchild Family upon this delicate question. I feel convinced that that estimable lady, with her inexhaustible repertory of supplications, would instantly have recited by heart "a prayer against the temptation to lead others into uttering untruths unconsciously," which would have met the situation adequately, for not once in the book, when appealed to, did she fail to produce a lengthy and elaborately worded pet.i.tion, adapted to the most unexpected emergencies, and I feel confident that her moral armoury would have included a prayer against tendencies to "leg-pulling."

To return to the London of the "seventies" and "eighties" after this brief journey to the East, nothing is more noticeable than the way public interest in Parliamentary proceedings has vanished. When I was a boy, all five of the great London dailies, The Times, Morning Post, Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Daily News, published the fullest reports of Parliamentary news, and the big provincial dailies followed their example. Every one then seemed to follow the proceedings of Parliament with the utmost interest; even at Harrow the elder boys read the Parliamentary news and discussed it, and I have heard keen-witted Lancashire artisans eagerly debating the previous night's Parliamentary encounters. Now the most popular newspapers give the scantiest and baldest summaries of proceedings in the House of Commons. It is an editor's business to know the tastes of his readers; if Parliamentary reports are reduced to a minimum, it must be because they no longer interest the public. This, again, is quite intelligible. When I first entered Parliament in 1885 (to which Parliament, by the way, all four Hamilton brothers had been elected), there were commanding personalities and great orators in the House: Mr. Gladstone, John Bright, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Hartington, Henry James and Randolph Churchill. When any of these rose to speak, the House filled at once, they were listened to with eager attention, and every word they uttered would be read by hundreds of thousands of people next day. Nowadays proceedings in Parliament seem to be limited to a very occasional solo from the one star-performer, the rest of the time being occupied by uninteresting interludes by his understudies, all of which may serve to explain the decline in public interest. At the time of the Peace of Paris in 1856, on the termination of the Crimean War, there were in the House of Commons such outstanding figures as Gladstone, Disraeli, Lord John Russell, John Bright, and Palmerston; the statesman had not yet dwindled into the lawyer-politician.

I only heard Mr. Gladstone speak in his old age, when his voice had acquired a slight roughness which detracted, I thought, from his wonderful gift of oratory. Mr. Gladstone, too, had certain peculiarities of p.r.o.nunciation; he always spoke of "const.i.tootional"

and of "noos." John Bright was a most impressive speaker; he obtained his effects by the simplest means, for he seldom used long words; indeed he was supposed to limit himself to words of Saxon origin, with all their condensed vigour. Is not Newman's hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light,"

considered to be a model of English, as it is composed almost entirely of monosyllables, and, with six exceptions, of words of Saxon origin?

John Bright's speaking had the same quality as Cardinal Newman's hymn.

In spite of his eloquence, John Bright's prophecies were invariably falsified by subsequent events. I have never heard any one speak with such facility as Joseph Chamberlain. His utterance was so singularly clear that, though he habitually spoke in a very low voice, every syllable penetrated to all parts of the House. When Chamberlain was really in a dangerous mood, his voice became ominously bland, and his manner quieter than ever. Then was the time for his enemies to tremble.

I heard him once roll out and demolish a poor facile-tongued professional spouter so completely and remorsely that the unfortunate man never dared to open his mouth in the House of Commons again. I think that any old Member of Parliament will agree with me when I place David Plunkett, afterwards Lorth Rathmore, who represented for many years Trinity College, Dublin, in the very front rank as an orator.

Plunkett was an indolent man, and spoke very rarely indeed. When really roused, and on a subject which he had genuinely at heart, he could rise to heights of splendid eloquence. Plunkett had a slight impediment in his speech; when wound up, this impediment, so far from detracting from, added to the effect he produced. I heard Mr. Gladstone's last speech in Parliament, on March 1, 1894. It was frankly a great disappointment. I sat then on the Opposition side, but we Unionists had all a.s.sembled to cheer the old man who was to make his farewell speech to the a.s.sembly in which he had sat for sixty years, and of which he had been so dominating and so unique a personality, although we were bitterly opposed to him politically. The tone of his speech made this difficult for us. Instead of being a dignified farewell to the House, as we had antic.i.p.ated, it was querulous and personal, with a peevish and minatory note in it that made anything but perfunctory applause from the Opposition side very hard to produce. Two days afterwards, on March 3, 1894, Mr. Gladstone resigned. In the light of recent revelations, we know now that his failing eyesight was but a pretext.

Lord Spencer, then First Lord of the Admiralty, had framed his Naval Estimates, and declared that the shipbuilding programme outlined in those Estimates was absolutely necessary for the national safety. Mr.

Gladstone, supported by some of his colleagues, refused to sanction these Estimates. Some long-headed Members of the Cabinet saw clearly that if Lord Spencer insisted on his Estimates, in the then temper of the country, the Liberal party would go to certain defeat. Accordingly, Mr. Gladstone was induced to resign, as the easiest way out of the difficulty. I do not gather, though, that those of his colleagues who, with him, disapproved of the Naval Estimates, thought it their duty to follow their chief into retirement.

I am amused on seeing on contents bills of news-papers, as a rare item of news, "All-night sitting of Commons."

In the 1886 Parliament practically every night was an all-night sitting. Under the old rules of Procedure, as the Session advanced, we were kept up night after night till 5 a.m. Some Members, notably the late Henry Labouchere, took a sort of impish delight in keeping the House sitting late. Many Front-Bench men had their lives shortened by the strain these late hours imposed on them, notably Edward Stanhope and Mr. W. H. Smith. Mr. W. H. Smith occupied a very extraordinary position. This plain-faced man, who could hardly string two words together, was regarded by all his friends with deep respect, almost with affection. My brother George has told me that, were there any disputes in the Cabinet of which he was a member, the invariable advice of the older men was to "go and take Smith's advice about it." Men carried their private, domestic, and even financial troubles to this wise counsellor, confident that the advice given would be sound. Mr.

Smith had none of the more ornamental qualities, but his fund of common sense was inexhaustible, he never spared himself in his friends'

service, and his high sense of honour and strength of character earned him the genuine regard of all those who really knew him. He was a very fine specimen of the una.s.suming, honourable, high-minded English gentleman.

In the 1886 Parliament, Mr. Akers-Douglas, now Lord Chilston, was Chief Conservative Whip and he was singularly fortunate in his a.s.sistant Whips. Sir William Walrond, now Lord Waleran, Sir Herbert Maxwell, and the late Sidney Herbert, afterwards fourteenth Earl of Pembroke, formed a wonderful trio, for Nature had bestowed on each of them a singularly engaging personality. The strain put on Members of the Opposition was very severe; our constant attendance was demanded, and we spent practically our whole lives in the precincts of the House. However much we longed for a little relaxation and a little change, it was really impossible to resist the blandishments of the a.s.sistant Whips. They made it a sort of personal appeal, and a test of personal friendship to themselves, so grudgingly the contemplated visit to the theatre was abandoned, and we resigned ourselves to six more hours inside the over-familiar building.

Sir William Hart-d.y.k.e had been Chief Conservative Whip in the 1868-1873 Parliament. He married in May 1870, in the middle of the session at a very critical political period. He most unselfishly consented to forego his honeymoon, or to postpone it, and there were rumours that on the very evening of his wedding-day, his sense of duty had been so strong that he had appeared in the House of Commons to "tell" in an important Division. When Disraeli was asked if this were true, he shook his head, and said, "I hardly think so. Hart-d.y.k.e was married that day. Hart-d.y.k.e is a gentleman; he would never kiss AND 'tell.'" As a pendant to this, there was another Sir William, a baronet whose name I will suppress.

With execrable taste, he was fond of boasting by name of his amatory successes. He was always known as "William Tell."

In 1886 the long hours in the House of Commons hung very heavily on our hands, once the always voluminous daily correspondence of an M.P. had been disposed of. My youngest brother and I, both then well under thirty, used to hire tricycles from the dining-room attendants, and have races up and down the long river terrace, much to the interest of pa.s.sers-by on Westminster Bridge. We projected, to pa.s.s the time, a "Soulful Song-Cycle," which was frankly to be an attempt at pulling the public's leg. Our Song-Cycle never matured, though I did write the first one of the series, an imaginative effort ent.i.tled "In Listless Frenzy." It was, and was intended to be, utter nonsense, devoid alike of grammar and meaning. I quoted my "Listless Frenzy" one night to an "intense" and gushing lady, as an example of the pitiable rubbish decadent minor poets were then turning out. It began--

"Crimson wreaths of pa.s.sionless flowers Down in the golden glen; Silvery sheen of autumnal showers; When, my beloved one, when?"

She a.s.sured me that the fault lay in myself, not in the lines; that I was of too material a temperament to appreciate the subtle beauty of so-and-so's work. I forget to whom I had attributed the verses, but I felt quite depressed at reflecting that I was too material to understand the lines I had myself written.

My brother was a great admirer of the Ingoldsby Legends, and could himself handle Richard Barham's fascinating metre very effectively. He was meditating "A Pseudo-Ingoldsbean Lay," dealing with leading personalities in the then House of Commons. The idea came to nothing, as an "Ingoldsby Legend" must, from its very essence, be cast in a narrative form, and the subject did not lend itself to narrative.

Although it has nothing to do with the subject in hand, I must quote some lines from "The Raid of Carlisle," another "Pseudo-Ingoldsbean Lay" of my brother's, to show how easily he could use Barham's metre, with its ear-tickling double rhyme, and how thoroughly he had a.s.similated the spirit of the Ingoldsby Legends. The extracts are from an account of an incident which occurred in 1596 when Lord Scroop was Warden of the Western or English Marches on behalf of Elizabeth, while Buccleuch, on the Scottish side, was Warden of the Middle Marches on behalf of James VI.

"Now, I'd better explain, while I'm still in the vein, That towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, Though the 'thistle and rose' were no longer at blows, They'd a way of disturbing each other's repose.

A mode of proceeding most clearly exceeding The rules of decorum, and palpably needing Some clear understanding between the two nations, By which to adjust their unhappy relations.

With this object in view, it occurred to Buccleuch That a great deal of mutual good would accrue If they settled that he and Lord Scroop's nominee Should meet once a year, and between them agree To arbitrate all controversial cases And grant an award on an equable basis.

A brilliant idea that promised to be a Corrective, if not a complete panacea-- For it really appears that for several years, These fines of 'poll'd Angus' and Galloway steers Did greatly conduce, during seasons of truce, To abating traditional forms of abuse, And to giving the roues of Border society Some little sense of domestic propriety.

So finding himself, so to speak, up a tree, And unable to think of a neat repartee, He wisely concluded (as Brian Boru did, On seeing his 'illigant counthry' denuded Of cattle and grain that were swept from the plain By the barbarous hand of the pillaging Dane) To bandy no words with a dominant foe, But to wait for a chance of returning the blow, And then let him have it in more suo."

These extracts make me regret that the leading personalities in the Parliament of 1886 were not commemorated in the same pleasant, jingling metre.

CHAPTER VIII

The Foreign Office--The new Private Secretary--A Cabinet key--Concerning theatricals--Some surnames which have pa.s.sed into everyday use--Theatricals at Petrograd--A mock-opera--The family from Runcorn--An embarra.s.sing predicament--Administering the oath--Secret Service--Popular errors--Legitimate employment of information--The Phoenix Park murders--I sanction an arrest--The innocent victim--The execution of the murderers of Alexander II.--The jarring military band--Black Magic--Sir Charles Wyke--Some of his experiences--The seance at the Pantheon--Sir Charles' experiment on myself--The Alchemists--The Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher's Stone--Lucid directions for their manufacture--Glamis Castle and its inhabitants--The tuneful Lyon family--Mr. Gladstone at Glamis--He sings in the glees--The castle and its treasures--Recollections of Glamis.

Having successfully defeated the Civil Service Examiners, I entered the Foreign Office in 1876, for the six or eight months' training which all Attaches had to undergo before being sent abroad. The typewriter had not then been invented, so everything was copied by hand--a wearisome and deadening occupation where very lengthy doc.u.ments were concerned.

The older men in the Foreign Office were great sticklers for observing all the traditional forms. Lord Granville, in obedience to political pressure, had appointed the son of a leading politician as one of his unpaid private secretaries. The youth had been previously in his father's office in Leeds. On the day on which he started work in the Foreign Office he was given a bundle of letters to acknowledge. "You know, of course, the ordinary form of acknowledgment," said his chief.

"Just acknowledge all these, and say that the matter will be attended to." When the young man from Leeds brought the letters he had written, for signature that evening, it was currently reported that they were all worded in the same way: "Dear Sirs:--Your esteemed favour of yesterday's date duly to hand, and contents noted. Our Lord Granville has your matter in hand." The horror-stricken official gasped at such a departure from established routine.

As was the custom then, after one month in the Foreign Office, my immediate chief gave me a little lecture on the traditional high standard of honour of the Foreign Office, which he was sure I would observe, and then handed me a Cabinet key which he made me attach to my watch-chain in his presence. This Cabinet key unlocked all the boxes in which the most confidential papers of the Cabinet were circulated. As things were then arranged, this key was essential to our work, but a boy just turned twenty naturally felt immensely proud of such a proof of the confidence reposed in him. I think, too, that the Foreign Office can feel justifiably proud of the fact that the trust reposed in its most junior members was never once betrayed, and that the most weighty secrets were absolutely safe in their keeping.

I have narrated elsewhere my early experiences at Berlin and Petrograd.

In every capital the Diplomatists must always be, in a sense, sojourners in a strange land, and many of them who find a difficulty in amalgamating with the people of the country must always be thrown to a great extent on their own resources. It is probably for this reason that theatricals were so popular amongst the Diplomats in Petrograd, the plays being naturally always acted in French.

Here I felt more or less at home. My grandmother, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, was pa.s.sionately fond of acting, and in my grandfather's time, one room at Woburn Abbey was permanently fitted up as a theatre. Here, every winter during my mother's girlhood, there was a succession of performances in which she, her mother and brothers and sisters all took part, the Russell family having a natural gift for acting. Probably the very name of Charles Matthews is unfamiliar to the present generations, so it is sufficient to say that he was THE light comedian of the early nineteenth century. The Garrick Club possesses a fine collection of portraits of Charles Matthews in some of his most popular parts.

Charles Matthews acted regularly with the Russell family at Woburn, my mother playing the lead. I have a large collection of Woburn Abbey play-bills, from 1831-1839, all printed on white satin, and some of the pieces they put on were quite ambitious ones. My mother had a very sweet singing voice, which she retained till late in life; indeed a tiny thread of voice remained until her ninety-third year, with a faint remnant of its old sweetness still clinging to it. After her marriage, her love of theatricals still persisted, so we were often having performances at home, as my brothers and sisters shared her tastes. I made my first appearance on the stage at the age of seven, and I can still remember most of my lines.

At Petrograd, in the French theatricals, I was always cast for old men, and I must have played countless fathers, uncles, generals, and family lawyers. As unmarried girls took part in these performances, the French pieces had to be considerably "bowdlerized," but they still remained as excruciatingly funny as only French pieces can be.