GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



conversation, as we learn from the " Journal," tempted the family 

 party, whenever he came, to sit up late Lady Holland being 

 relieved to find that he had as little inclination to talk politics as 

 she then had. 



But in this respect she changed in later years, and when the 

 Whigs were in power, as everybody knows, the old house, under her 

 regime, was their social headquarters. The tables were still over- 

 crowded at times, as in earlier years ; and Lord Jeffreys in 1840 

 the year of Lord Holland's death being invited to dine there on 

 Sunday en jamille, was astonished to find a goodly company of 

 sixteen, assembled, " foreign ambassadors and everyone ! " In 

 those later days Palmerston and Lord John Russell might be seen 

 there : and old Talleyrand : ' his face like a corpse his hair, 

 thickly powdered and pomatumed, hanging down straight on either 

 side of his face, like a pair of tallow candles, but whose odd appear- 

 ance was forgotten when he began to talk." 



The hostess managed these heterogeneous elements with admir- 

 able tact. She encouraged the talk, but let no one talk too much 

 not even Macaulay, whose prodigious memory for facts led him 

 sometimes to tire his audience however appreciative before he 

 exhausted his subject. At such times she ruthlessly applied the 

 closure with, " Now, Macaulay, that's enough of that ; can't you 

 give us something else ? " 



Epigrams sparkled, and witticisms flashed, at that wonderful 

 table, like the old silver and cut and jewelled glass upon it, and the 

 wine that, without excess, passed round the polished board. There 

 was fun in plenty without flippancy, and serious talk that was never 

 dull. And if an argument threatened to become over warm, or 

 a repartee were too pungent, or my Lady were displeased, because 

 the French cook was ill, and the favourite dishes or even the 

 dining-hour itself delayed the host might be trusted to restore 

 good humour. 



And what mattered it if the guests did elbow and jostle one 

 another sometimes in the dining-room, when there would be room 

 and to spare in the great library later ? The season permitting, 

 they wandered out into the gardens, and after sunset, in the soft 

 summer darkness, listened to the nightingales answering one another 

 in the great avenue or the " Green Lane," that favourite walk before 

 mentioned, that is still a lovely forest glade, and which now forms 



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