“‘Having paid for his bracelet, the bishop took it, and was just about to step into his carriage, when a policeman tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Hallo, Jim! you’re up to your old tricks again, are you? You’ll just come along with me,’ and he brought him back into the shop. Hunt & Roskell said there was some mistake, that the gentleman was an American bishop, that he had just bought a £100 bracelet and paid for it with an excellent £100 note. ‘Just let me look at the note, will you?’ said the policeman. He looked at it and said, ‘Yes, it’s just as I thought; this note is one of a particularly clever batch of forgeries, which are very difficult to detect, and the man is no more a bishop than you are. We will go off to the police-station at once. I will take the note and go on with the prisoner in the carriage, and you must send your men in a cab to meet us and bear witness.’ So the policeman took the bishop and the bracelet and the note, but when Hunt & Roskell’s men reached the police-station, they had not yet arrived; and they have never been heard of since!’”
“April 15.—Dined with Mrs. Rogerson, daughter of my dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart. Irving was there. I ventured to tell him how I thought his play was spoilt by the changes he had recently made, and why, and he was quite simple, as he always is, not the least offended, and in the end agreed with me, and said he should alter the changes as I suggested, and send me a box that I might come and see the improvement. He said how, ever since he heard me tell a story at Lord Ducie’s, he had wished I should do something in public. He ‘did not know if I wanted money, but thought I could make any sum I liked.’ He ‘believed he could guarantee’ my making £8000 a year! He advised my doing what he had intended doing himself when he had been ‘making a mere nothing of ten guineas a week, and felt that could not go on.’ He intended to have got Wilkie Collins to write him a story, and to take a room at the Egyptian Hall, fit it up in an old-fashioned way, sit down by the fire, and then take the audience, as it were, at once into his room and confidence. ‘But in your case,’ he said, ‘you need not apply to Wilkie Collins.’”
“April 16.—Miss Northcote’s wedding in Westminster Abbey. I had a capital place in a stall just behind Princess Louise and Princess Mary of Teck. The church was crowded, and though it was a bitter wind outside, it was quite glorious within, all the forest of arches tinted with golden sunlight. Arthur gave the blessing magnificently, as he always does. There were 350 people at the breakfast afterwards, which was at Lord Beaconsfield’s house in Downing Street. There were endless little tables. I sat at one with Lady Aberdare, Lady Middleton, and young Lord Colchester. I was glad to see the dear little Lady Winifred Herbert again, growing up fast, but with the same sweet innocent expression, walking about with Jim Cranbourne, who is a charming boy.”
“April 23.—Dined with Lady Charlemont. Old Mr. Planché was there, and talked much about the favourable characteristics of the present Duke of Wellington; how before his father died he said how grief for his death would be aggravated by perpetual consciousness of his own name and position. ‘Think what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced and only I come in!’ Poor Mr. Planché, celebrated as a wit and story-teller in former times, is becoming painfully aware of having outlived the patience of his auditors!
“Lady Charlemont said, ‘Whenever I make a very naughty quotation from ‘Don Juan,’ I always preface it by saying, ‘As Dr. Watts touchingly observes.’”
“April 26.—Dined at Mrs. Stratford Dugdale’s. Lord Crewe was there, with the most extraordinary and diabolic-looking red flower in his button-hole. He always has one of these weird orchids, and delights to surprise people with them.”
“April 28.—A pleasant morning with Mrs. Hollond, Sir Hampton Lorraine, and others at Grosvenor House. The rooms were quite lovely, and the flowers more so—great blue-green bowls filled with cowslips; great glasses of blue bells, with a few yellow jonquils intermixed.