SOCIAL LIFE 171 



home to London we were invited to Ockham Park 

 after tea-time, for a quiet farewell call. Lord 

 Lovelace was exceptionally agreeable, the conversa- 

 tion was general, and the evening passed by most 

 pleasantly. It had been arranged that his carriage 

 should take us back ; he accompanied us to it, and 

 wished us good-bye in the most friendly and courteous 

 manner. No one outside his household, and very 

 few of these, saw him again alive. It appeared that 

 he dressed himself for dinner, and after coming down- 

 stairs fell dead on the floor. 



I saw much of Richard, afterwards Sir Richard, 

 Burton and of Lawrence Oliphant in those days. 

 There were exceedingly pleasant social gatherings held 

 after each meeting of the Geographical Society of 

 geographers and others, who were invited by Admiral 

 Murray to his rooms in the Albany. He was an ex- 

 cellent host, and justly popular among a great variety 

 of men whom he had the tact to bring harmoniously 

 together in his chambers. Bishop Wilberforce, who 

 prided himself on worldly savoirfaire^ was occasionally 

 a guest ; Burton was habitually there, but his usual 

 conversation in those days was not exactly of a stamp 

 suitable to episcopal society. I was present at the 

 first introduction of these two men, whose behaviour 

 was most comic, each trying to act the part appro- 

 priate to the other, and, I must add, doing it most 

 successfully, and to all appearance quite naturally. 

 Burton was a great reader, generally to be seen at 

 the Athenaeum with a folio volume before him, and 

 he was a prodigious note-taker during his travels. 

 He lent me his notebook on Zanzibar, of which I 

 shall shortly speak again, and I was astonished at 



