Part 5 (2/2)
I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games There were several, but the best hat Laura and I invented: one was called ”Styles,” another ”Cluetable or Mineral”--a third, ”Epigraerous of all ”Character Sketches” We were given no time-limit, but sat feverishly silent in different corners of the rooreed that we had all written enough, the iven to our umpire, who read them out loud Votes were then taken as to the authorshi+p, which led to first-rate general conversation on books, people andwith Bret Harte and Laurence Oliphant and going on to Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Lionel Tennyson, [Footnote: Brother of the present Lord Tennyson] Harry Cust and Doll Liddell: all good writers the caricatures to co in theof the Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, better known as ”Lady A”; Colonel Saunderson--a faeave a; any loose vanity, jealousy, or over-competitiveness were certain to be shown up; and those who took the buttons off the foils in the duel of arguood deal in areater precision and care than they are played now and froood at the-card at Glen till after I ed to dine downstairs to prevent the couely re whist
Laura was a year and a half older than I was and came out in 1881, while I was in Dresden The first party that she and I went to together was a political crush given by Sir William and Lady Harcourt I was introduced to Spencer Lyttleton and shortly after this Laura met his brother Alfred
One day, as she and I were leaving St Paul's Cathedral, she pointed out a young man to me and said:
”Go and ask Alfred Lyttelton to come to Glen any time this autumn,” which I promptly did
The advent of Alfred into our family coincided with that of several new e Wyndham, Harry Cust, the Crawleys, Jack Pease, ”Harry” Paulton, Lord Houghton, Mark Napier, Doll Liddell and others High hopes had been entertained by ht ton --who, to do him justice, never proposed to any of us except in the paternal iination--his nerve was shattered and ere left to ourselves
Some weeks before Alfred's arrival, Laura had beenthat ere considered ”fast”; she told ht in our bedrooive it up I listened closely to what she had to say, and at the end remarked that it appeared to reed with me and said that people ere easily shocked were like women who sell stale pastry in cathedral towns; and he advised us to take no notice whatever of what any one said We hardly knew theof the word ”fast”
and, as my mother went to bed punctually at eleven, it was unthinkable that men and women friends should not be allowed to join us Our bedrooht- nursery into a sitting-room The shutters were removed and book- shelves put in their place, an idea afterwards copied by my friends The Morris carpet and chintzes I had discovered for myself and chosen in London; andfrohts, fox-hunts, Virgins and Wagner In one of the turrets I hung my clothes; in the other I put an altar on which I kept iven to me by the shepherd's son and which is on -jackets and sat up in bed with coloured cushi+ons behind our backs, while the brothers and their friends sat on the floor or in coas was turned low, a brilliant fire ht of a single candle, tell ghost- stories or discuss current affairs: politics, people and books
Not only the young, but the oldout aloud to us Thomas Hill Green's lay sermons; and when he had finished I asked him how much he had loved Green, to which he replied:
”I did not love his should shock any one appeared fantastic; and as reed with me, they were continued
It was not this alone that disturbed Laura; she wanted to reat flirt, other types of a more brilliant kind obscured this vision and she had become profoundly undecided over her own love-affairs; they had worked so much upon her nerves that when Mr Lyttelton caia and unable to see him
My father welco personality, he was Gladstone's nephew and had been brought up in the Liberal creed
On the evening of his arrival, we all went out after dinner There had been a terrific gale which had destroyed half a wood on a hill in front of the library s and anted to see the roots of the trees blown up by dynahter in novels than in life and it was pitch dark Alfred and I, walking araily to each other as we stumbled over the broken brushwood by the side of the Quair burn As we approached the wood a white birch lay across the water at a slanting angle and I could not resist leaving Alfred's side to walk across it It was, however, too slippery for ed into the burn and scra stockings, no harm was done
Our party had scattered in the dark and, as it was past ht, alked back to the house alone When we returned, we found everybody had gone to their roohed under eight stone, he lifteddown, he kissed ht to me
Two days after thisLaura, who had been gradually recovering, ell enough to leave her room that day; and I need hardly say that this had the i Alfred's visit
On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton
After what Mrs Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he appeared to me in those early days
Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent nature, even more spoilt than ere He was as cool and as fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional
Every one adored hiah order He was neither a gambler nor an artist He respected discipline, but loathed asceticism
What interested me most in hiion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant His ua physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved co was farther from the truth In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool temperament and a peppery intellectual te out a patent in hilishman, warranted like a dye never to lose colour To his In Edward Lyttelton's adraph of his brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train, sucking an orange, ”a s a cheroot at the station,” was looked upon, not only by Alfred but by his biographer, as an ”irresistible challenge to fling the juicy, but substantial, fragner's cheek” At this we are told that ”Alfred collapsed into noble convulsions of laughter” I quote this incident, as it illustrates the difference between the Tennant and the Lyttelton sense of huhter was a tornado or convulsion to which they succu to Edward Lyttelton's book, it was only done with napkins, sounds forether--books, h at the sa to ht that, laughing as loud as the Lytteltons do, they would have loved Lear? Alfred says none of them think him a bit funny and was quite testy when I said his was the only family in the world that didn't”
It was his manliness, spirituality and freedom from pettiness that attracted Alfred to Laura; he also had infinite charer Lady Grey wrote of her husband to Henry when thanking him for his sympathy: