“He was so surprised at the number of servants: ‘And does all _that_ sleep in the house?’ he said.
[Illustration: THE BLOODY GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.][111]
“In the evening he sang ‘Nellie,’ and his ‘Drame’--of a blind Spanish musician with a violin, watching windows for money, a perfect passion of avarice and expectation.”
“_July 11._--Luncheon with Lady Morley, meeting Miss Flora Macdonald, who has still a reminiscence of the great beauty which brought such a surprise to the old Duchess of Gloucester when she asked Victor Emmanuel what he admired most in England, and he answered so promptly, ‘Miss Flora Macdonald.’ Lady Katherine Parker described--‘because, alas! it was discovered that we date just a little farther back than the Leicesters,’ having to sit near ----, the most airified man in London. She was congratulated afterwards upon his having condescended to speak to her, but said he wouldn’t, only his neighbour on the other side was even more insignificant than herself, and to her he did not speak at all. He said, apropos of a dinner at Dorchester House, ‘Pray who _are_ these Holfords?’--‘Oh,’ said Lady Katherine, ‘I believe they are people who have got a little shake-down somewhere in Park Lane.’
“I was at the ‘shake-down’ in the evening--something quite beautiful. The staircase is that of an old Genoese palace, and was one blaze of colour, and the broad landings behind the alabaster balustrades were filled with people, sitting or leaning over, as in old Venetian pictures. The dress of the time entirely lends itself to these effects. I sat in one of the arcades with Lady Sarah Lindsay and her daughters, then with Lady Carnarvon. We watched the amusing contrasts of the people coming upstairs--the shrinking of some, the _dégagée_ manner of others, the dignity of a very few--in this, no one to be compared with Princess Mary. The Prince and Princess of Wales were close by (he very merry, talking with much action, like a foreigner), also the Prince and Princess of Prussia. Lady Somers looked glorious in a black dress thickly sprinkled with green beetles’ wings and a head-dress of the same.
“With Lady Carnarvon I had a long talk, and could not help feeling how truly one might apply to her Edgar Poe’s lines:--