I will also record a hospitable sojourn in old days at Northwood Park, the splendid abode of Isle-of-Wight Ward (grandfather to my school and college friend Ward of the Aristotle class and Oxonian persecution), where I once spent a week in my father's time: and similarly a visit at Lord Spencer's perfect villa near Ryde: and at other pleasant homes, made to me frequently welcome, the chief being Wotton, the classic mansion of one of my oldest friends.
Also long ago,--see a former page,--I purposely dismissed with only a word our lengthened visits in my father's day at Inveraray Castle with the old Duke of Argyll, and Holkar Hall with Lord George Cavendish, as private domesticities,--whilst a casual other few as at Ardgowan, Rozelle, Herriard, Losely, and the like, gratefully on my memory, shall be thus briefly recorded here: Ardgowan is the magnificent abode of my friend Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart, after whose grandmother as my sponsor I am named Farquhar; Rozelle, the hospitable mansion of Captain Hamilton, where I sojourned many days, meeting the _élite_ of Ayr, and among them the aged niece of Burns in the poet's own country; Herriard House, my old school-friend Frank Ellis's heritage under his name of Jervoise, and Losely--"of the manuscripts," where I have often visited my late excellent friend James More Molyneux.
Of course, like everybody else who may be lifted a trifle above the crowd, I have experienced, almost annually, the splendid hospitalities of the Mansion House and most of the City Companies: may they long continue, and not be spunged away by Radical meanness! all classes are united and gratified thereby, for the poorest get the luxurious leavings, and the feasts are paid for by benefactors long departed from the scenes of their successful merchandise. All that seeming prodigality and luxury have good uses. But I will mention (of course without the hint of a name or place) one only instance of excessive splendour, quite needless and to my mind vulgar. A great magnate (not a royalty, I need hardly say) invited four guests to dine with his home party; the four were my father and mother, my brother Dan and myself, humble guests enough; and yet behind each of twelve chairs stood a gorgeous flunkey in powder and bright livery, with my lord's gentleman superadded in undertaker's evening trim, while the Earl himself wore his star and garter! Of course too the buffet and the table were loaded, with resplendent plate. That, scene of ostentation has been on the gray matter of my brain ever since young manhood, and I relieve myself now of the reminiscence for the first and last time. In another page I speak of Prince Astor's pure gold service when I dined with him at New. York; and I have grateful memory of the almost palatial splendour wherewith a rich publisher entertained his guest at his castle under Arthur's Seat; but in every case (and I might name others) my heart's aspiration has been, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." Mr. Vanderbilt was not happy with his millions; neither probably is poor Jack without a shot in his locker.