10 FOX-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



whose return to the ordinary salutation of '' good- 

 morning '' was at least abrupt, and hardly en- 

 couraging to further conversation. Mrs. Carlyle, 

 on the contrary, never ceased to talk in a strident 

 voice with broad Scotch accent. A comet in 

 this circle was the Honourable James Macdonald, 

 whom I first met at the Grange, little thinking 

 I should have the good fortune to know him so 

 intimately in future years. To all the world he 

 was Jim Macdonald ; to the last Duke of Cam- 

 bridge he was Military Secretary and Equerry 

 for nearly forty years, with a sunny face bubbling 

 with merriment, hair like white satin, and a voice 

 like a silver bell ; the fascination of his company 

 was indeed irresistible. Brookfield was very 

 agreeable, with a knack of putting a humorous 

 construction upon the most simple matters of 

 fact. He was supposed to be the original of 

 Thackeray's Charles Honeyman in the New- 

 comes, though I could never quite recognise the 

 portrait myself. Anyhow, Thackeray must have 

 known the Brookfields well, inasmuch as it is on 

 record that he was a guest at the first dinner-party 

 of their early days, when the hostess modestly 

 asked if she might help him to a tartlet, and the 

 great novelist, grasping the situation and the proba- 

 bility of an adjacent pastry-cook, quietly replied, 

 ''If you please, and pray give me a twopenny one/' 



