Part 25 (1/2)
This was only a coloured way of saying that Midleton had none of the detach as we are notto help those we love
St John has the sah spirits and keenness now that he had then and the same sweetness and simplicity There are only a feo and true to irlhood as his--Lady Horner, Miss Tomlinson [Footnote: Miss May Tooes, wife of General Sir Toes]--but ever since we met in 1880 he has taken an interest in ned when he was Secretary of State for War and bore it without blae and a high sense of duty; these coive him a better place in the hearts of e was into a fa his particular quality and flavour; even his mother- in-law--a dear friend of mine--never understood him and was amazed when I told her that her son-in-laorth all of her children put together, because he had more nature and more enterprise I have tested St John now for
Lord Pee Wyndham were the handsomest of the Souls Pembroke was the son of Sidney Herbert, fa the Crimea I met him first the year before I came out Lord Kitchener's friend, Lady Waterford--sister to the present Duke of Beaufort--wrote toif Laura could dine with her, as she had been thrown over at the lastwoman As my sister was in the country, my mother sent me I sat next to Arthur Balfour; Lord Pembroke was on the other side, round the corner of the table; and I re intoxicated with my own conversation and theBalfour and Peer was He told me several years later that he had sent round a note in theher what the nairl with the red heels was, and that, when he read her answer, ”Margot Tennant,” it conveyed nothing to hi Lord Pe men I ever saw: the others, as I have already said, were the late Earl of Wemyss, Mr Wilfrid Blunt--whose memoirs have been recently published--and Lord D'Abernon [Footnote: Our Ambassador in Berlin] He was six foot four, but his face was even ht There was Russian blood in the Herbert family and he was the eldest brother of the beautiful Lady Ripon [Footnote: The late wife of the present Marquis of Ripon]
He hter of the twentieth Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot, as nearly as fine to look at as he his at that dinner that he had known Disraeli and had been proovernment, but had been too ill at the time to accept it This developed into a discussion on politics and Peeblesshi+re, leading up to our county neighbours; he asked me if I knew Lord Elcho, [Footnote: The father of the present Earl of Wemyss and March] of whose beauty Ruskin had written, and ned property in my county
”Elcho,” said he, ”always expected to be invited to join the government, but I said to Dizzy, 'Elcho is an i of party government and looks upon it as dishonest for even three people to attereeotist!' To which Disraeli replied, 'Worse than that! He is an Elchoist!'”
Although Lord Pembroke's views on all subjects were remarkably wide--as shown by the book he published called Roots--he was a Conservative We formed a deep friendshi+p and wrote to one another till he died a few years after e In one of his letters to me he added this postscript:
Keep the outer borders of your heart's sweet garden free froarish flowers and wild and careless weeds, so that when your fairy Godmother turns the Prince's footsteps your way heyour nature or his oers, and only half-guessing at the treasure within, tear himself reluctantly away, and pass sadly on, without perhaps your ever knowing that he had been near
This, I iave a correct impression of me as I appeared to some people ”Garish flowers” and ”wild and careless weeds”
describe e Pembroke put them on the ”outer,” not the inner, borders of my heart
In the tenth verse of Curzon's poem, allusion is h not consciously pretentious, provoked considerable merriment She ”stumbled upwards into vacuity,” to quote h
There is no one left to-day at all like George Peariousness, variety of tastes--yachting, art, sport and literature--his beauty of person and hospitality to foreigners uished centre of any co's translation of the Odyssey, in which he wrote on the fly- leaf, ”To Margot, who most re present, a diaer, which I alear close tothe Souls, Milly Sutherland [Footnote: The Dowager duchess of Sutherland], Lady Windsor [Footnote: The present Countess of Plymouth] and Lady Granby [Footnote: The present duchess of Rutland] were the women whose looks I admired most Lady Bro [Footnote: Countess Broho died a few years ago], mentioned in verse eleven, was Lady Pembroke's handsome sister and a famous Victorian beauty Lady Granby--the Violet of verse nine, Gladys Ripon [Footnote: My friend Lady de Grey] and Lady Windsor (alluded to as Lady Gay in verse twenty-eight), were all wo appearance: Lady Bro, a Roman coin; Violet Rutland, a Burne-Jones Medusa; Gladys Ripon, a court lady; Gay Windsor, an Italian Prioirl and the only un us She was the daughter of Sir Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria's faest Liberals I ever h socially uncouth, had a touch of her father's genius; she said of a court prelate to oes God's butler!”
It was through Betty and Maggie Ponsonby that I first ood-looking as the beauties I have catalogued, nor more intellectual than Lady Horner or Lady Weh was the cleverest of us Her flavour was more delicate, her social sensibility finer; and she added to chronic presence of uised effrontery I do not suppose she was ever unconscious in her life, but she had no self- pity and no egotis, flowers, painting and colour left her cold She was not a ga and she never invested in parlour tricks; yet she created more fun for other people than anybody
She was a woenius, who, if subtly and accurately described, either in her mode of life, her charm, wits or character, would have ht--like all over-agreeable feht h was fundamentally sound, and the truest friend that ever lived Possessed of social and ant to fall into the trap of the candid friend, but nevertheless she could, when asked, give both counsel and judgment with the sympathy of a man and the wisdoht and that I would still seek if I were unhappy, because her genius lay in a penetrating understanding of the human heart and a determination to redress the balance of life's unhappiness Etty and I attracted the same people She h of Taplow Court] a ladiator capable of challenging the world in boating and boxing
Of their soldier sons, Julian and Billy, I cannot write They and their friends, Edward Horner, Charles Lister and Raymond Asquith all fell in the war They haunt my heart; I can see them in front of me now, eternal sentinels of youth and manliness
In spite of a voracious appetite for enjoyh was perfectly happy either alone with her family or alone with her books and could endure, with enviable patience, cold ugly country-seats and fashi+onable people I said of her when I first knew her that she ought to have lived in the days of the great King's one to her if I were sad, but never if I were guilty
Most of us have asked ourselves at one tio to if we had done a wicked thing; and the interesting part of this question is that in the answer you will get the best possible indication of huo to So-and-so, because they would understand my temptation and make allowances for me”; but the majority would choose the confidante h would be that confidante
She had neither father nor uishedand beloved friends, Lord and Lady Cowper of Panshanger, now, alas, both dead Etty had eternal youth and was alive to everything in life except its irony
If for health or for any other reason I had been separated fro, I would as soon have confided theh as to any of my friends
To illustrate the jealousy and friction which the Souls caused, I must relate a conversational scrap I had at this time with Lady Londonderry,[Footnote: The late Marchioness of Londonderry] which caused so our critics
She was a beautiful woeous and violent, with a h her nature was i One day she said to ood friend and a bad enemy No kiss-and-make-friends about me, my dear!”
I have often wondered since, as I did then, what the difference between a good and a bad enemy is
She was not so well endowed intellectually as her rival Lady de Grey, but she had a stronger will and was of sounder te wistful, reflective or retiring about Lady Londonderry She was keen and vivid, but crude and i conceited and of talking about books which we had not read, a habit which I have never had the teton Syht out a book of essays, which were not very good and caused no sensation