“The Duchess of Cleveland went out walking this morning in beating rain and bitter wind—blind, broken-kneed, and eighty-four as she is. ‘Well, you are a brave woman, Duchess,’ some one said as she came in. ‘You need not take the trouble to tell me that: I know that I am a brave woman,’ she answered.
“Old Miss Thornton called—Lady Leven’s sister. She talked much of the misuse of charitable funds in dinners to directors, payment of matrons, ex-matrons, &c., and said, ‘There really ought to be a society formed for the demolition of charitable institutions.’
“At dinner the Duchess vehemently inveighed against the deterioration of the times. ‘Was there ever anything so ridiculous and uncalled-for as a school-feast?’—‘But it is such a pleasure to the children.’—‘Pleasure to them! In my days people were not always thinking how children were to be amused. Children were able to amuse themselves in my day. It is not only with the lower classes: all classes are the same—the same utterly demoralising system of indulgence everywhere. Why are not the children kept at home to learn to wash and sew and do their duty?’—‘But the school-feast is only one day in the year.’—‘One day in the year! Fiddlesticks! don’t tell me. I tell you it’s utterly demoralising. Why, if the feast is only one day, it unhinges them for ten days before and ten days after.
“‘Formerly, too, people knew how to live like gentlemen and ladies. When they built houses, they built houses fit to live in, not things in which the walls were too thin to allow of the windows having any shutters.... Why, now people do not even know how to keep a great house. Look at ——, do you think she knows it, with her alternate weeks for receiving visitors. That is not what ought to be; that is not hospitality. A great house ought to be open always. The master and mistress never ought to feel it a burthen, and if it was properly managed, they never would. There should always be a foundation of guests in the house, a few relations or intimate friends, who would be quite at home there, and who would be civil and go out to walk or drive, or do whatever might be necessary to amuse the others. There ought to be no gêne of any kind, and there ought to be plenty of equipages—that should be quite indispensable.’
“The conversation fell upon Rogers the poet. ‘Mr. Rogers came here once,’ said Lady Wensleydale, ‘and I did not like him; I thought him so ill-bred. He came with the Duchess of Bedford of that time, who was the most good-natured woman in the world, and when he went out into the park and came in quite late for luncheon, she said he must have some, and went into the dining-room herself to see that he had it properly, and while he was eating cold beef, mixed him herself a kind of salad of oil and vinegar, which she brought to him. He waited a moment, then took up a piece of the beef in his fingers, rolled it in the sauce, and, walking round the table, popped it into the Duchess’s mouth. She went into the drawing-room afterwards and complained to his friend Luttrell about it, “What can I have done that Mr. Rogers should treat me so?” Luttrell said, “I have known Rogers for sixty years, and have never yet been able to account for any one of his vagaries.”
“‘Rogers and Luttrell were great friends, though they always quarrelled. When they walked out together, they never walked side by side, but always one behind the other.
“‘Rogers met Lord Dudley at one of the foreign watering-places, and began in his vain way, “What a terrible thing it is how one’s fame pursues one, and that one can never get away from one’s own identity! Now I sat by a lady the other night, and she began, ‘I feel sure you must be Mr. Rogers.’”—“And were you?” said Lord Dudley, looking up into his face quite innocently. It was the greatest snub the poet ever had.
“‘Rogers hated Monckton Milnes. He was too much of a rival. If Milnes began to talk, Rogers would look at him sourly, and say, “Oh, you want to hold forth, do you?” and then, turning to the rest of the party, “I am looking for my hat; Mr. Milnes is going to entertain the company.”’
“Holmhurst, Sept. 1.—I had rather dreaded the tête-à-tête journey with the Duchess to-day, and truly it was a long one, for we had an hour to wait at Ampthill Station, and then missed the express at Bletchley. When we first got into the carriage the Duchess said, ‘Well, now, I am going to be quiet and rest my eyes,’ which I thought was a hint that I was to take my book; but very soon she got bored and said, ‘I can’t see, and am obliged to go on asking the names of the stations for want of being amused;’ so then I was obliged to talk to her all the rest of the way.
“At Ampthill she told me how she was going to London to meet Admiral Inglefield, who was going to help her to ‘pick a child out of the gutter.’ ‘That child,’ she said, ‘will some day be Earl Powlett. Lord Powlett took a wager that he would run away with the lady-love of one of his brother-officers, and he did run away with her; but she made it a condition that he should marry her before a Registrar, which he believed was illegal, but it was not, and they were really married. Her only child, a boy, was brought up in the gutter. His name is Hinton, and he is presentable,[216] which his wife is not, for she is a figurante at the opera; but she gets more than the other danseuses, because she has the courage to stand unsupported upon a tight-rope, which the others have not. Powlett offered his son £400 if he would go away from England and never come back again, but he refused, so then he would only give him £100. He lives by acting at small theatres, but sometimes he does not live, but starves. He had four children, but one is dead. It is the eldest I mean to take away and place with a clergyman and his wife, that he may learn something of being a gentleman. I shall undertake him for three years, then I shall see what he is likely to be fit for. If I live so long, I can settle it; if not, I must leave the means for it. Facts are stranger than fiction.’