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 
régime, 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 famille, 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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